[00:00:09.01] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.12] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.22] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.25] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.25] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast, where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And welcome back. If you are new, welcome.
[00:00:24.29] - Taylor
Welcome.
[00:00:25.26] - Gordon
Yeah. So last week we had a bit of an issue with voice syncing, which meant that we tried to go back and fix it, and it took a few days to do that. So it was released a little bit later than it normally is. So we apologise for that. If you were waiting for the next episode and it didn't arrive. It did arrive, but just a little bit later than normal. So first of all, any news this week? Not from me. You're running iOS 18 Beta, aren't you? On your phone. Any big changes there as far as you can see?
[00:01:01.13] - Taylor
Not that I'm aware of.
[00:01:02.20] - Gordon
Okay. There are lots of changes. Maybe you're just not seeing any benefit to them at the moment.
[00:01:07.18] - Taylor
Probably.
[00:01:08.20] - Gordon
Okay, shall I start this week?
[00:01:10.07] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:11.06] - Gordon
So I had a very busy Monday, mainly because, I think I spoke about this before. I have a power pack and I use that to power my speaker, my sound equipment, my microphone and my music when I'm doing a park show in the middle of a field or somewhere where there isn't any power. And it's been working fine for me for years. And because of not keeping it charged, because there's a lead acid battery in it like you would have in a car. And if you don't use your car for a long time, the battery just dies. And then you can jumpstart it. But the battery, the maximum amount of capacity that battery has is degraded. And I think that's probably what's happened to my one, because with lead acid batteries, you're supposed to charge them every four to six weeks. I tried my best, but I'm not sure I did. I don't use it all that often, but I do use it. And when I use it, I need it because there's no power anywhere else. So, I went looking for a brand new one. In fact, I went to Halfords, which is where I got my previous one, and they don't sell any of these anymore.
[00:02:36.09] - Taylor
Oh.
[00:02:36.20] - Gordon
None at all. I think they had one, but it was more of a jumpstarting power pack rather than a power pack battery with an invertor. So the invertor is the plug socket, and that's what I need. I need something that I can plug a plug socket into and it will power my devices. So I phoned up the company that made my one, a company called Ring, and they told me that they haven't made one for a long time now, many years. But they suggested I unscrew the back, have a look at the battery, and see if I can get a replacement battery. And I thought, well, that's a really good idea, because if the battery is the bit that's the problem, just replacing the battery with a new one should then bring it back up to as it was when I bought it. So I went looking and typed in the code that was written on the battery, and unfortunately, they are no longer made. And the replacements that are available, because it has to be a specific size and shape to fit into the box, and the replacements that are available have the terminals reversed. So I needed the positive on the right and the negative on the left, and all of the ones I found that were compatible had that reversed. And there's no way of me being able to put it in back to front because of the way the box is made and so on. So that was a nonstarter. So I started looking to see what else was available and found a company called Hampshire Generators. Now, these are people who specialise in power packs and generators. So I phoned them up and I said, "Look, I'm not entirely sure what I need. I'm hoping that you'll be able to help me." And he went through the process of figuring out what storage I needed in a battery pack. And I didn't actually know what I needed because the previous one was rated at 33 amp-hours, and I didn't know what that meant. It doesn't really mean anything. But today's unit of measurement is Watt-hours. And so you'll have a number, for example, 300 Watt-hours, and that will be the capacity of a battery. And that means that you can get 300 Watts out of it in an hour. That's what it means. So if it's a consistent 300 watts, it will last for one hour and that's it. It will then be depleted. So we went through all the things I had. I went through my speaker, which is the biggest draw. And on the back of the speaker, it says maximum 200 Watts. We went, "Okay, so let's go with the maximum." I don't know what it actually is drawing. I've got no way of knowing. I didn't have a multimeter or anything that I could use. And in fact, even if I did, I'm not entirely sure I'd know what to do with it to be able to measure that voltage. And I've got the other bits in my box as well. No idea what they were pulling, but we estimated 100 watts, which I think is an overestimation at the time, but 300 watts. And he said, "And how long do you need it to last for?" And I thought, "Well, if I'm doing a two-hour party, I need it to last about two and a half hours." So a bit before, a bit afterwards. So we went for a two and a half hours, 300 watts. So 300 times two and a half gives us 750. So 750 Watthours is what I would need to be able to power that equipment for two and a half hours, assuming it was 300 watts. So we talked about a couple of different options, and the one I went for is the newest technology, which is a life... I'm not entirely sure how you write this or pronounce this, but I'll put it in the show notes because I can look it up. But it's basically lithium batteries. And my previous battery required between 8 and 10 hours of being plugged in to charge it. The new one takes 60 minutes.
[00:06:49.12] - Taylor
That's very good.
[00:06:50.04] - Gordon
That's good, isn't it? 60 minutes to charge it. It's 783 Watt hours, I believe, which is just a little bit over what I was needing. I've gone for an EcoFlow or an EcoFlow. I don't know how you pronounce it. E-C-O.
[00:07:09.06] - Taylor
Eco.
[00:07:09.21] - Gordon
It sounds like Eco, but I'm pretty sure that in the shop they said it was Echo. The EcoFlow River 2 Pro. That's what I went for. It's got three plug sockets on the front. It's got USB. You can charge it from your car when your car is running. So if I'm on my way to a gig and it's not got power in it, I can plug it in and charge it while I'm driving, which is great. It's also got an app which shows me how much power it has in it, and it connects via Bluetooth and stuff. And so I had a show on Wednesday in a park, and I needed it for Wednesday. And in my mind, it was next week on Wednesday. So I had a week to sort out the battery problem. As it turns out, I had three days to sort it out. So they could send it to me and it was going to take two days, which meant that it would be with me on Wednesday, which is the day I needed it. And that wouldn't give me any time to figure out how to use it, power it up, charge it up, might even not arrive before I leave to go to my park show. So that wasn't really an option. So they were called Hampshire Generators.
[00:08:28.22] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:08:28.28] - Gordon
Because they based in Hampshire.
[00:08:31.19] - Taylor
Funny that.
[00:08:32.14] - Gordon
Having said that, the sales guy I was talking to was in Wales. But anyway, their head office or the headquarters is in Hampshire, near Southampton. And I looked it up on Google Maps, it's like an hour and a half away.
[00:08:44.24] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:08:45.08] - Gordon
I thought, "do you know what? It's lunchtime, it's Monday. It's worth my time to actually drive down there, pick it up, come back, get it all charged up and test it just to make sure it works just for that peace of mind so that when I go to my show on the Wednesday, I'm not going to be crossing my fingers and hope it works." The reason being is that at these shows, if it's a nice day in this park in northwest London, there's normally 300 to 500 people who come and watch the show. And if I haven't got a speaker and microphone, I have to shout. And if I have to shout for a whole hour's show, it's going to really damage my voice and it's going to be very difficult for everyone to hear me. When people are laughing, they might miss what I say and so on and so forth. I have done a show in the past without a microphone, and I decided there, and then I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't want to do it again. So it was really important to me that I got this system and made sure it worked as it should be. So I went down, bought one, came back. So a three-hour round trip.
[00:09:59.29] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:10:00.10] - Gordon
And I plugged it in. It was on 40% already. So I thought, "I'll give it a go, see how it works, make sure it does work." And I did. So I plugged everything in, played some music, started talking through my microphone, plugged it into the speaker, and it was telling me how many Watts it was pulling at that point. And it was pulling 34 Watts.
[00:10:26.03] - Taylor
That's pretty good then.
[00:10:26.22] - Gordon
And at 40%, that meant I had five hours worth of time that I could consistently use 34 Watts. So once it gets... I haven't even tested. I have no idea how long it's going to tell me once it's fully charged. But at five hours, that's two parties, and that's at 40% charge. So it's plenty for what I need. It's smaller than my previous unit; it's more powerful; it's quicker to charge. It's going to be great. And I'm really looking forward to using it now. I might even use it for other things, like if I go away for a weekend or something, take it with me as a backup, because I can charge my phone, I can charge iPads, I can even charge my laptop from it without any problems at all. If I want to, it comes with an option to buy solar panels. It's like £250 or something for solar panels, and then you can charge it using solar panels, which is going to take, I think it's about five hours or so. But that's another option I can look at if I wanted to, if I start using it a lot. And because it's newer technology, new batteries, I don't have to keep charging it every four to six weeks. I can leave it for months at a time.
[00:11:48.17] - Taylor
That's good.
[00:11:49.18] - Gordon
And it will keep its charge. Plus, and this was the big thing for me, five year warranty. If there's any problems with the batteries within five years, I can get it replaced or repaired under warranty. And last of all, the recharge cycle, it says, is 3,000 times before the batteries will degrade to 80 % of their capacity. Well, 3,000 times. I mean, that's me for life, that is. If I use it four or five times a year, which is what I am currently doing, then I think the batteries are going to wear out before I get to the recharge limit. It wasn't cheap. I have to say it wasn't cheap. It was, I think I paid £649. But if I look at that as a long term investment for my business, I've got five years warranty. So take that 649 and divide it by five, which is the minimum period I'll have it. That's a reasonable cost per year. Divide that by the number of shows, and we're looking at £30 a show-ish to be able to have that facility. And if I start using it for other things as well, then obviously that cost comes down even further. So that peace of mind now is something I have. Now, I spent my whole Monday basically sorting this problem out. So the moral of the story is, if there's something that's not working as you expect it to or not as you want it to, spend a bit of time to figure out what you need to do to fix it, because I don't have to worry anymore. I've got another park show. I've got another event coming up where I'm going to need it. And I know that it's going to work because I can just pick it up, take it out, look and see how much power it's got. This one tells me how long it's going to last for. The other one just had one to four bars, which is useless. You've no idea how long a bar is going to last. And if the battery is playing up, it could go from four bars down to one bar in a few minutes. It's completely useless. So that's what I got from this week, and I'm really pleased I did. What would you like to talk about?
[00:14:15.22] - Taylor
I'm going to talk about giving yourself cues, as in C-U-E-S.
[00:14:23.12] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:14:24.07] - Taylor
So when I am helping in the Fluent communities, I often write code snippets.
[00:14:33.20] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:14:34.14] - Taylor
And I normally use my code snippet like dumping ground, where I just put code snippets on and share a link, basically. It's all it does. It just is a place for me to put code, and it's a self-hosted version with WordPress. It's a bit like a service called Pastebin, but it's all my own stuff. And that works well. However, what I've come to realise is that they would be better on Snippet Club. So what I normally do is I'll write the snippet, send it off, and then go, "Oh, that'd be a nice snippet. I'll add it to my list of snippets to add at some point." And it would make much more sense if I just wrote the snippet directly on Snippet Club and then shared the link to Snippet Club. Because that way people can find other snippets that I've written - if I'm in the Fluent community, there's a lot of Fluent Forms and Fluent CRM snippets that I've written. And so by sharing that, it gets more exposure. But I'm also doing half the amount of work. And so what I'm trying to do is set myself cues and make my life easier by creating tools and systems that make it easier to do those things. So for example, I made it super easy and quick to create a new snippet by creating a text expander that I could write //snippet, and it would take me directly to the page that I could create a new snippet from for my dumping ground. So thinking about how I can do that for Snippet Club, for example, is there a way I can go add a new snippet in a Alfred, which is my command panel, and just take me directly to creating a brand new post. And that got me thinking, is there other places and other ways I can take advantage of this? So one of them is, by the way, having my gym bag ready to go on my bed for the morning when I'm going to the gym. It's that physical cue of, "okay, cool, I've got all my stuff ready. I just need to pick it up and go." I have a lot of things that I have in their place ready to go so that should I need it, I know where that I don't have to think about it. So it's just things like this where I want to make sure that I don't have to think, "where do I need to put this or how do I do this?" It's just there ready to go. And it improves the time that I spend on things.
[00:17:17.14] - Gordon
Yeah, so it's a little bit like being prepared, like a scout, good scout, be prepared. Make sure you plan for the following day, the night before. And as far as your snippet goes, it's a bit... Something I was told once is "always deal with paperwork once." So don't get paperwork, look at it and go, "Oh, yeah, good. I'll deal with that later." Put it down. It then goes on a pile, something else goes on top of it and it goes to the bottom of the pile, never gets dealt with or it does get dealt with, but it takes forever. If I open some post and something needs doing, now I will do it, get it done, out of the way, job done. So I'm not dealing with that paperwork more than once. And you're doing effectively the same thing. So instead of doing the snippet, sending it off, that bit's done, I must put that on to Snippet Club, you're going, Right, this is the snippet. I'm going to put it on the Snippet Club send the person to it, and therefore I've done two things in one action.
[00:18:21.13] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:21.20] - Gordon
And that's a really, really good thing.
[00:18:23.17] - Gordon
So it's streamlining your workflow, would you say?
[00:18:27.16] - Taylor
Yeah. And I think also just I don't I enjoy writing the tutorials and the actual written part of it. I enjoy creating the snippets and stuff like that, but I don't enjoy having to explain what a snippet is, how it works and things like that. And I think the more I do it, the easier it gets. And just seeing as well how I can expand on and make my life easier. So having some sort of built-in workflow that I can use, for example, text expander to create an outline of how a snippet should look. So it could be a title of the snippet, and then it could be, 'add your snippet here.' And then there could be another heading that says 'breakdown,' which has a list basically already set up. And so all I then need to do is fill in the blanks. And so, again, I don't have to think about "how do I structure this? How do I do this and that?" It's just fill in the blanks and then post it. And so the barrier to writing then becomes a lot less. Obviously I have to think about how I want things to be structured beforehand and do that once. But then once I've done that, I then don't have to think about it.
[00:19:43.02] - Gordon
Yeah, that's really good. Just making your life easier and making it quicker to do things. And then you can get back to doing the things you enjoy doing rather than the things that you always see as being a bit of a hassle.
[00:19:56.16] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:57.22] - Gordon
Perfect. Anything else you would to say today?
[00:20:00.25] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:20:01.26] - Gordon
Me neither. So thank you so much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube, Facebook we are not on currently. We're posting the link to it after the show goes live and the notes have been done. So please subscribe, like, share, follow, whatever you want to do on YouTube.
[00:20:25.16] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:20:31.02] - Gordon
That was slick, wasn't it? My one. Yeah, very slick. Also, you can find us on your favourite podcast platform. Just look for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," and you'll be able to subscribe to us on there as well. Thank you for joining us. As always, we'll be back with you, hopefully, as long as everything goes well at 1pm next Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:20:54.23] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:20:57.05] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:20:57.24] - Taylor
Bye.
