[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.23] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.10] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.07] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.01] - 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 thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:24.26] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:25.25] - Gordon
It's been a week with lots of expenditure for me.
[00:00:30.00] - Taylor
Yeah, and me.
[00:00:30.23] - Gordon
I've been busy spending lots of money, and so have you. In fact, I think we've probably spent a similar amount. Maybe you've just pipped me a little bit. But so just very quickly, I will tell you a couple of things I've spent money on, and then we'll get into our topics. My roller banners that I've been using for my children's show are starting to show a bit of wear and tear. They're starting to get a little bit damaged. They don't look their best. So, I have redesigned the header so that it fits my new brand. The brand has changed over a little bit and the banners that were made were before that happened, so it's nice to do that and I've sent them for printing. Now, the banners that I have are, I think they're seven years old. I don't go for the very cheap ones because I find that it's false economy.
[00:01:26.12] - Gordon
You end up just throwing them away after a year or two. These ones have lasted seven years, and that's because they are a quality product that I spent more money on. My banners are £110 each, and I bought two of them. Now, that sounds a lot for a banner. You can get a lot cheaper ones, but not ones that last for seven years, and I like the quality. And to be honest, I'd much prefer to have good quality ones than ones that I'm not entirely happy with. That's the reason for that. That's one of the things I bought. I also bought a new bunny hutch. The bunny hutch that I've got, again, is about six years old and it's starting to fall to pieces. And I'm just worried that I'm going to go out and find my bunny rabbit is trapped at the bottom of the hutch because the top has fallen in. Not the roof, but the top level. So I've got a new one of those that just needs putting together. So replacing and finding things that need work and maintenance and replacing is what I've been doing. There is another big purchase, but that's going to be part of my topic for the week.
[00:02:33.20] - Gordon
Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:02:36.13] - Taylor
I'll mention what I've purchased this week.
[00:02:39.02] - Gordon
Yeah, go for it.
[00:02:39.29] - Taylor
I upgraded my MacBook to the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max.
[00:02:47.01] - Gordon
Which is here. And very, very smart it is too.
[00:02:51.14] - Taylor
It's a really nice computer. It's the black version. So, it's the first black laptop that I've owned and I've used. It's really good. I really, really like it. I upgraded just because I wanted... I bought my last MacBook about five years ago, almost, and I wanted to upgrade to a new one, have faster specs, things like that, and it's going to last me a longer time. I've also had been doing really well in my business, so I wanted to reward myself for doing well and obviously having some long, long nights, getting projects finished and stuff. So trying to find that balance of working, but also enjoying the fruits of my work.
[00:03:43.17] - Gordon
Yeah, and It's an expensive time for you because you're moving out as well. So that's all part of the process, isn't it?
[00:03:52.11] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:52.20] - Gordon
So, yeah, get things now while you can still afford it, I guess.
[00:03:55.28] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:57.23] - Gordon
Right. Let's get straight into our topics. Do you want to go first or shall I?
[00:04:01.03] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:04:02.06] - Gordon
Off you go.
[00:04:02.29] - Taylor
I want to talk about Raycast. Raycast is a a spotlight power tool app. I've spoken about Alfred before, which is a replacement for the built-in Apple Spotlight. Raycast is a newer version and iteration of it, built by completely different people, different teams. It's more modern, so it's built on things like No.js and React and things like that. And so building integrations and extensions is a lot easier. You can write basically everything in the code. But there's an extension store, which again is all open source. So, there's a lot of people that build and maintain extensions inside of the app. Now, the app adds lots of things that you want to be able to easily access from your keyboard. So, things like searching for files, things like being able to hit tab and be straight into a chat with AI. For a very, very quick question, for example, you don't want to open up the entire browser or the desktop, and you don't want to save the history. You don't really care about the history. You just want to know an answer. You have things like creating one-time passwords and things like that.
[00:05:24.26] - Taylor
So it's links that you can then send to clients. I've got another one that shows me the train times for the next 30 minutes for any station in the entire National Rail, which again uses an external third-party API, which is the National Rail one. It just then queries and returns it in a nice list. I can then go into details, find out where it's stopping, if it's delayed, things like that. People have created URL shorteners, you can control your music. Basically, anything you could do or access either online via an API or on your own computer, making sure it doesn't sleep or putting night shift mode on, for example, you can control all of that from this one little app.
[00:06:09.09] - Gordon
That's really good. It replaces or is there in addition to Spotlight?
[00:06:15.28] - Taylor
So, you can use them side by side, but there wouldn't be really a need because you can search files and stuff like that that Spotlight can do plus a lot more. It means you don't have to then have two different commands and you have your one single menu bar.
[00:06:33.04] - Gordon
And what's quite nice is because you've got a new machine, now is the time to do this sort of thing because you can start over without migrating all of the test files and applications that you've been looking at and then deleting because you're not using them. You can actually create yourself a system where you've got the brand new app on here, you can have a look at it, you can decide if it's going to be any good for if it's going to work well. And if not, you can effectively wipe the whole computer and start over if you wanted to.
[00:07:07.28] - Taylor
Yeah. So I didn't, with my MacBook, I didn't restore from my current laptop because I had a lot of stuff on there that I didn't want to bring across, and I wanted to only instal the things that I wanted. It also gave me a chance to clean up some stuff. So, there were apps on there that I just never got around to or installed and then never used. So, I was actually adding and installing apps as I need them. So, over the past week or so, I've been using the computer and if I'm like, "Oh, I need that," I either go back to my current laptop and copy over files or I install the new app that I need, which has been really nice. The biggest pain is I had a lot of things like SSH keys and lots of stuff that tie in for security and authentication reasons. They're always stored in back-end folders that are 25 folders deep, and you can't actually find them unless you're using Terminal and all this other stuff. So, that was a bit of a pain to try and make sure I could find them, but also make sure I copied over all of them and didn't miss any, because once I do wipe that computer, I won't be able to access and I'll have to either re-set it up or I'll be in a pickle.
[00:08:25.23] - Gordon
Yeah, and settings files as well. For applications you are going to to use from before. You basically have to go through and there's lots of settings that you've made and you've got it how you want it to be, and then all of a sudden you end up moving to a new computer. You don't have any of those settings, so you've got to start all over again, or find a way to bring those settings files across.
[00:08:50.18] - Taylor
Yeah, so you can restore things like application support folders, and a lot of apps have export files so you can easily export the file and then just copy it over. So yeah, there's a balance. Some have them, some don't. Some you just have both computers open next to each other and you just manually go through the settings panels and update them.
[00:09:14.04] - Gordon
And I think what you just said is the big tip for people who are changing to a new computer is run both computers in parallel for at least two weeks, because that way you'll be able to do, hopefully, most of what you do with your computer, and you'll suddenly go, "Oh, there's a file that I need on the other one," or "there's a setting," or "there's something I set up to have something as a signature on my emails, and I don't have that." It's not like a simple file that you've just copy across your documents folder and you're done. It's normally something that's embedded in some application you're using. And if you were to move everything across, delete everything on the old computer and sell it on, all of a sudden you've lost all of those files that you didn't actually realise you needed. So that's a really good tip. Run them both for two weeks. Have the older one put to the side and just there when you need to get a file or a setting or whatever across. Then once you're happy that you've got everything, then wipe the old one. Yeah, really good. Anything else you want to say on that?
[00:10:30.14] - Taylor
I don't think so. I think if you don't want to be using your mouse as much and you want to be able to access everything from one single place, then check out Raycast. I was always an Alfred fanboy, and I've used Alfred for probably five, six years now, and it was before Raycast even existed. I was always hesitant to move over and try it out because I was like, "Well, no, because Alfred's the original, Alfred's the best." But because Raycast came along and it's a lot newer technology, adding in integrations is just so much easier and you don't need to do as much. A lot of the coding and stuff you had to do in Python and Apple scripts and things like that. Whereas you can just use No.js and modern frameworks and stuff to build extensions now, which is just so much easier.
[00:11:24.28] - Gordon
So, we'll put a link to Raycast in the show notes. Is it a paid for app?
[00:11:30.19] - Taylor
I believe they have a free version.
[00:11:32.22] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:11:33.08] - Taylor
They have a paid version as well, which adds AI and all that other stuff.
[00:11:36.23] - Gordon
Okay, sounds good. So there you go. If that's the thing you would like to look at, have a look in the show notes, do a search for Raycast, you'll find a link. My topic this week is about a similar sort of thing with you, actually, because you upgraded your computer because newer technology, faster, being able to do what you normally do, but in a shorter period of time, that sort of thing, right?
[00:12:01.05] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:01.19] - Gordon
Being more powerful, being able to do things that you weren't able to do before. And that's sort of where I went this week. So Taylor came into the office last week and he said, "When I move house, I'm going to have to think about getting a 3D printer because we've had one in the house now for several years." And you know that it's there and you know that if you want to build something or something breaks and you want to replace it, you know that it's possible because you just have to go and get it and print it. But I've had two 3D printers in my time. I bought the original Artillary Sidewinder X1, and that was, I don't know, £250-ish. It wasn't very much for a 3D printer, and I was really surprised.
[00:13:00.00] - Gordon
I managed to screw that up at some point because I got really into it and I upgraded the print head to a hardened nozzle and a titanium nozzle. It meant that I had to take this machine apart a lot. I got quite used to how you take it apart, but something just wasn't... I was struggling with, I think, a stripped thread or something that needed a new plate to go on to hold the assembly, and I didn't have that. Artillary, to their credit, they sent me a brand new one, which was great, along with a new pully system, which was great, and it needed installing. And I was about to do that when I got an advert on Facebook for the Artillery Sidewinder X2, and I thought, "Let's go and have a look at it." And it had a lot of updates. It was quicker. It was able to print things that I couldn't print before, different materials and things. Not that I ever used that. But it also fixed a few things, like the flex cable that came off the plate that moved was prone to cracking in the first one. And then the second one, they changed it to a rubberised one that didn't crack.
[00:14:23.12] - Gordon
So it's lots of little improvements that happened. And so we've been using the X2 for the last couple of years. We didn't have the 3D printer during lockdown, so I think we got the first one in 2021. So that's four years ago. So we've had a 3D printer for four years. We've had two different ones, and I had both. And the previous one I was going to look at and fix up, but I didn't need to because the new one was working so well. But as with AI, 3D printing has come on an awful lot since then. There's an awful lot of new materials that you can get. You can get things like PETG, which is harder and stronger than PLA, which is the normal and has a higher melting point. One of the problems with PLA, which is the regular everyday material that 3D printers use, is that if you are printing something for outside, it doesn't have very good UV protection. It also has a melting point that you can find; if you put it in a car, you put it outside, the sun could melt it. For things that you're printing for that situation, you obviously don't want them to melt because they'll just become plastic goo and mess everywhere. There's new materials, PETG, and there's TPU, which is more flexible. Then you can have carbon-infused, carbon fibre-infused PETG, that sort of thing, which makes it even more strong. There's lots of things that we just didn't have before, and they need different heads. A head that goes to a higher temperature to melt this material to then print with it. And the technology has come on with bed levelling. So bed levelling was always a nightmare for us because it was a manual process, and it involved putting a bit of paper under the print head and bringing the print head down 'til it nearly touched the bed, and then making sure that you can just move the paper and then turning little bits on the bottom to bring that side of the bed up and down. You had to do it and you had to keep doing it. And your prints were going to be much better if you had a level bed. The X2 did have a way of doing it with a little pin that would come down and just retract every time it hit the bed. So it could work out where the bed was, and then it would figure out in the code, it had to go slightly lower at this point of the bed and slightly higher in this point and so on and so forth, which is great, but it's a bit of a workaround.
[00:17:14.05] - Gordon
So I was looking at new printers, and I've always liked the look of the Bambu ones. They've been running three years now, Bambu. And what they did is they basically created a load print model where you just loaded up the model. It had all the settings that you needed already put into it, and you could just press print, and it would send it to the printer and start printing it. You didn't have to worry about how many walls there were or how much infill you needed. It's all part of the model, and the people who create the models have added in all these profiles for different printers. And you can still do all that. You can still do it manually, but it made it a a lot easier for people to get going with 3D printing. And it's got things like it's in a case, in an enclosed case, which means that it will stop any wind or breeze that comes through your room from affecting your print because it will cool it down too quick, that sort of thing. And then there's multi-colour printing, where you can have multiple filaments and print one model where it will change the filament mid-print, bring in the new filament, and continue printing with a different colour.
[00:18:34.14] - Gordon
So all of a sudden it opens up a huge pool of models that you can make, and it makes things a lot quicker if you've got two parts to a model and they're both in different colours. Originally, you'd print one, you'd take that off, you'd change the filament manually, you'd then print the second one, take that off and you've got it. But it meant that you would have to be there to manually take the filament, change it and make sure the bed was clear and everything else, re-level if you had to. Whereas now, you can automate a lot of that, and we like automation, don't we?
[00:19:11.13] - Taylor
We do.
[00:19:12.04] - Gordon
So I have just purchased myself a a Bambu X1 carbon with an AMS2 Pro, which is the bit with the multiple filaments in. And it's pretty much been printing nonstop since I've got it, and I've only had one failed print, and that was the one time I decided not to get it to level the bed, which it now does automatically every time it prints. And the prints are very similar. They're a little bit better, just tiny bit better, but it allows for different materials. It's got a plate where it prints on that you can actually pick up and take out and change to a different plate, and you can flex it to help get the models released from it. Whereas before it was a glass plate and you had to scrape away at it. If your nozzle was going down too far, it would then scratch the whole of your glass plate and then that is on your plate. Every time you print on it, it's going to have an imperfection where that bit of glass is missing, and so on and so forth. There's so many differences. Now, I spent a reasonable amount on it.
[00:20:29.03] - Gordon
It's over £1,000. But, I do enjoy 3D printing, and it's the sort of thing that I can look at and go, "Oh, I really wish I had one of these," or I love puzzles, and printing puzzles on a 3D printer is perfect because you get such good resolution on them. So, now I can also use the new materials as well and print something with a higher tolerance to heat. And so I'm playing with it at the minute, but at the moment, I'm really enjoying it. The two previous printers that I had, I've actually given away. I didn't sell them. They're two, three years old, and as we said earlier, technology has moved on. But I've given them to... I posted on Facebook and said, "Who wants them? This one's working fine. This one needs a bit of work." And one of my friends came back to me, someone from the Magic Circle, and he said, "Yeah, I'll have it." And he actually collected it during the week and was surprised at how big they were. Had to make a bit more space in his car. But he's now got a 3D printer that he can just plug in and use.
[00:21:40.00] - Gordon
Bed levelling is all that's needed. And hopefully, he'll be someone I can then talk to about 3D printing, and we can discuss different ideas and making models and swapping models. And I've just given it to him so he can start his journey in 3D printing. So that is where we are with 3D printing. And I've moved on in technology. I've got a newer model. It's a huge upgrade, isn't it?
[00:22:12.28] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:22:13.11] - Gordon
From what we had, it's a huge upgrade, and I'm loving it. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. They are currently running a sale. So the printer that I bought is cheaper currently, and they very kindly gave me a gift card for the difference because I purchased it like two days before the sale started. So, I've got a bit of credit with their store now that I can use to buy things in their sale, like new filaments. So, I'll put a link in the show notes, so make sure if you're listening to this before, I think it finishes on the 15th of July. So, if you're listening to it now, look in the show notes for the link and go and have a look.
[00:22:53.11] - Gordon
Bambu Lab is the make that I've gone for, and they're the people having a sale. That's everything from me today.
[00:23:00.14] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:23:01.11] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, if you're on YouTube, please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:23:07.18] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:23:12.26] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us as a podcast, we're on all the major platforms. Just search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," and we're even on your smart speakers. Just say, "play This Week With Taylor and Gordon," it will play the latest episode. We'll be back with you Friday next week at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:23:37.07] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:23:39.28] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:23:40.12] - Taylor
Bye.
