00:00:02.06 Mark McCracken There we go. 00:00:02.31 Michael There you go, cheers everyone. 00:00:03.69 Mark McCracken We're we're off to it. What have you got to drink, Michael? 00:00:04.94 Michael um the Number two, what have I got? I've got another wanky craft beer. 00:00:07.48 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:00:10.89 Mark McCracken Very nice. 00:00:11.75 Michael This one's called Trippie Yogurt's. 00:00:11.91 Mark McCracken I've got trippy yogurts. 00:00:15.07 Michael Trippie Yogurt's, okay. 00:00:16.51 Mark McCracken and special Any special flavors? 00:00:17.35 Michael Blueberry blueberryed Raspberry and Strawberry Corner Sour. 00:00:19.88 Mark McCracken Shit. 00:00:21.94 Michael And then I'm go know gonna follow that up with a jubel after that, I think. 00:00:22.07 Mitan Nice. 00:00:22.33 Mark McCracken Very nice. 00:00:25.29 Mark McCracken Very nice. I've got a hip cat, which I feel is in honor of, yeah, because they they only seem to serve hip cat at that place that you were at. 00:00:26.12 Michael Yeah. Oh, I like it. 00:00:32.64 Mark McCracken A lot of people around the corner from you, whoever it's called. 00:00:34.88 Michael They said they they do it at GBK as well. 00:00:36.82 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:00:37.62 Mitan Is it a gluten-free one as well? 00:00:38.70 Mark McCracken And then a gluten-free hip cat. 00:00:43.02 Mitan Is it a gluten-free one? 00:00:43.34 Mark McCracken I have no idea. Do they do gluten-free? 00:00:45.60 Mitan They do, yeah. 00:00:46.87 Michael they they do it They do an alcohol-free one called hep-caf, and that's really good as well. 00:00:46.94 Mark McCracken Don't know, they've got a Simon head of engineer. 00:00:51.27 Mark McCracken Very nice. I don't think it's gluten free, but I i can't be sure. 00:00:52.74 Mitan No, probably not. 00:00:53.83 Mark McCracken I can't be sure. 00:00:54.18 Mitan I think I just banned it. 00:00:55.48 Mark McCracken Fortunately, it's not going to bother me very much. 00:00:57.29 Mitan Yeah. 00:00:58.37 Mark McCracken Meta, what have you got? 00:00:59.52 Mitan i'm I'm on the red wine today, so sorry. 00:01:01.91 Mark McCracken Very nice. 00:01:01.95 Mitan Couldn't be bothered to go out in the freezing cold to go get a beer. 00:01:03.59 Mark McCracken What's. Yeah, well, maybe not now that you've got all this extra time to to know spend, have you been sending in on improving your your wine skills, yeah your wine mastering by now? 00:01:10.15 Mitan yeah uh no i've been cutting down if anything i haven't been written that much it's dangerous yeah it's been a whole afternoon prepping for this 00:01:15.92 Michael Cause you said, you said, you said, you said, you said I'm on the red wine today, not tonight. So is that like just. 00:01:24.50 Mark McCracken Very nice. 00:01:24.72 Michael Hmm. 00:01:25.56 Mark McCracken um Have you been, have you been up to anything exciting Michael? 00:01:25.91 Michael Thanks for coming. 00:01:28.74 Mark McCracken You back to work? 00:01:29.72 Michael I'm back to work. Yeah. I got back yesterday to, uh, about 20 million emails, Slack messages, teams, messages, probably a few accounts have been locked out in the times. 00:01:34.82 Mark McCracken Lovely. 00:01:37.32 Mark McCracken Brilliant. 00:01:39.40 Michael It's been weeks. I've been, um, I was kind of off for half of half term as well. 00:01:44.23 Mark McCracken Ah. 00:01:44.60 Michael So it's been. two and a half weeks. I can't remember the last time I was off. 00:01:48.73 Mark McCracken So I presume, I presume jury duty doesn't stop for a half term. 00:01:53.79 Michael No, no, no, sorry. It was half term and then duty started. 00:01:56.68 Mark McCracken Oh, half German. 00:01:56.87 Michael So, yeah. 00:01:57.24 Mark McCracken the Ah, okay. So you didn't spend some time with the kids. Brilliant. 00:02:01.03 Michael Yeah. So it's been a big, big session, but yeah. 00:02:03.82 Mark McCracken Very nice. Matan, do you have to anything exciting? 00:02:06.40 Mitan ah It surprised me of all the time they have. No, not massively. I think a lot of this has been spent with learning a few new tools and just doing stuff. So the only thing I helped a friend set up here is like, 00:02:21.33 Mitan endurance running kind of web app site, at least the start of it just ah just yesterday and in the afternoon. 00:02:24.18 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:02:27.87 Mitan So it's just another project to to add onto the pile. 00:02:32.50 Mark McCracken You could be right up your street, Michael. 00:02:34.33 Michael Yeah, sounds good. would Tell me, tell us more. 00:02:37.25 Mitan ah well We'll probably go into it later. 00:02:38.66 Michael Okay. Yeah, sure. 00:02:39.21 Mitan thats 00:02:39.36 Mark McCracken but Yeah, we'll get to it. Yeah, i've been I've been away. I was in it was in Northern Ireland for the weekend visiting Grandpa, which was great. And we had an absolute darts bonanza. 00:02:50.96 Mark McCracken There was like a, I don't know, it was player championship, maybe not player championship, Grand Slam of darts. 00:02:51.92 Mitan ah 00:02:56.81 Mark McCracken And on the Sunday, they had both semi-finals and then later in the day, the final. And he was like, we're sorted today. We're sorted today. We got ours and ours of darts. 00:03:07.66 Mark McCracken So yeah, he got into that. 00:03:07.89 Michael How often are you how often you're spinning around and using your dartboarder? 00:03:11.83 Mark McCracken uh if it's a dull meeting maybe you know if it's if it's like really to yeah we we we we're gonna cut that bit out yeah um no uh yeah fair bit i try and make up some games make make up something interesting because i don't have any friends around here that play any darts so i'm just kind of on my lonesome so so i'm basically playing solitary darts uh and ah from all of the people that that i used to play darts with none of them forgot their dartboards up at home which is like criminal they they got these big houses now and they're like cat too busy to play darts i'm like loser 00:03:15.26 Mitan Yeah. 00:03:16.79 Michael three Do we edit that bit out? 00:03:19.16 Mitan Yeah. 00:03:29.78 Michael no 00:03:40.80 Michael They've them got a whole room in their garden like you do. 00:03:43.59 Mark McCracken Yeah, sadly not. Yes. Yeah. No, no, actually Neil does. He does have a whole garden suite. 00:03:50.28 Michael Yeah. 00:03:50.46 Mark McCracken That's pretty, pretty fantastic with a bathroom and everything in a bedroom as as well. And he hasn't put a start up to upward up for whatever reason. 00:03:56.25 Michael ah I did see in the news today that there's lots of life-scored layoffs, so I hope that hasn't affected people you know, or people that have bought massive houses and gone shit. 00:04:00.78 Mark McCracken I also saw that. 00:04:01.39 Mitan I saw that, yeah, I feel alright. 00:04:03.06 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:04:06.73 Mark McCracken Yeah, hopefully not. I did speak to Wade, who has not been laid off, and he's very disappointed. 00:04:08.21 Michael Yeah. 00:04:13.45 Mark McCracken He's like, I thought I was going to get that. 00:04:13.80 Michael another another one's cut out so yeah 00:04:15.51 Mark McCracken I thought that was another 20 years worth of redundancy. I was like, I don't think that's how it works, Wade. Either you're valuable or they're avoiding inference. Anyway. Yeah. 00:04:27.82 Mark McCracken I was on YouTube earlier, and I thought that they had made it insufferable, because when I was watching a video, I was like, I don't want to watch this advert. 00:04:28.36 Michael like 00:04:37.44 Mark McCracken And I hit skip, or what I thought was a skip button. And it just goes back to the previous advert. I was like, what? Or it shows you a different advert. And I was like, what is going on? I just kept clicking skip. But it would just say, still, one out of one. 00:04:47.87 Mark McCracken I'm like, is this some kind of torture? They leave the button there for you to skip. 00:04:51.35 Michael And then did they did they then flash up her, go premium, go premium, go premium. 00:04:51.58 Mark McCracken but um 00:04:54.91 Mark McCracken No, it turns out I was just pressing next video rather than skip advert. 00:04:56.52 Michael I see you're showing your age now, even my kids know where the skip on this. 00:05:00.56 Mark McCracken Because, yeah. Yeah, I just I don't think I've ever clicked the next video button. I don't understand why anybody goes to YouTube to then watch a different video that they didn't come there to watch. 00:05:12.72 Mark McCracken Like when I'm going to YouTube, I just go there, watch one video, like mission accomplished. i've I've completed it and I close the tab and that's me gone. 00:05:19.73 Mitan That's not normal. 00:05:21.02 Mark McCracken But it seems like I'm the only person that does this. Everybody else is like, oh, let's see what they've got next. 00:05:23.77 Mitan Yeah. 00:05:25.19 Mark McCracken I'm like, I've got things i've got like other procrastination to do. 00:05:30.00 Michael Different procrastination. 00:05:30.08 Mitan YouTube's an endless rabbit hole. 00:05:31.50 Mark McCracken I don't think I've ever gone down a YouTube rabbit hole before. 00:05:34.13 Mitan Oh, I don't know how you have the self-control there. That's all I do now. 00:05:36.83 Mark McCracken I just think, well, this isn't what I this isn't what i came for. 00:05:38.63 Mitan That's a good chunk of what I do now. we know 00:05:43.98 Mark McCracken ah Yeah, so we should we should probably intro Mitan. 00:05:46.79 Michael Yeah, i was I was going to take this one. 00:05:49.29 Mark McCracken Go on then, since you know what Mitan said as well, go for it. 00:05:50.00 Michael Yeah, I don't really know. Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember. Maybe you did something to do with data and maybe having a great beard as well. of your beer, it's really good. 00:05:59.03 Mitan There are the two main attributes I have basically. 00:05:59.75 Mark McCracken Still got it. 00:06:01.55 Mitan Yeah, they do some stuff with beer and have a beer. 00:06:03.22 Michael I've got more beer questions later, so but we'll come on first a bit. 00:06:06.31 Mitan No, you've nailed it to be fair. 00:06:09.30 Michael and So how how do you, as as a start and how did you how did you meet Mark? 00:06:11.51 Mitan Yeah. I mean, I guess, where do we start? ah 00:06:19.05 Mitan I, I mean, this is going back away, way back. I think I was thinking about this. I was, I wonder if I was, I was still, um, like a senior data analyst or a BI, BIS, if you remember analyst while Mark came in as a, uh, in data visualization. 00:06:30.77 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:06:34.11 Mitan So like early days, I couldn't remember if it was that or when I started products, but, um, but yeah, it was, it was early days. 00:06:39.51 Mark McCracken It was right around the transition of the two, and I was quite fresh-faced into tech. And I was thinking about this the other day. And I was looking at your screen, and you had a terminal up. And I didn't know what a terminal was at all. 00:06:51.41 Mark McCracken And your terminal, by default, was a black background with the green text. I was like, oh, wow, that looks like the matrix you just ran. Oh, yeah, check this out. I hit cat on the nearest log file. Check this. 00:07:00.07 Michael Yeah. 00:07:01.19 Mitan that That was the only eunuchs I knew at the time. 00:07:01.25 Mark McCracken And I was like, who is this guy? 00:07:04.51 Mitan I was just trying to show off. 00:07:04.80 Mark McCracken Who is this guy? And I was like, wow. 00:07:07.71 Mitan But yeah, I mean, I was five so fairly clueless at that point. still I still am, really. but and But yeah, I met Mark, and Mark proceeded to be a pain in my ass for many years. 00:07:13.18 Mark McCracken I gotta learn. 00:07:18.90 Mitan But I really like a villain he always pushed the the boundaries a lot and asked like really challenging questions which is really annoying especially when you don't know the answer um and you can just ask chat gbt um so yeah there's probably a few years where i tried to pretend like i knew i was talking about with mark and then i just gave up and started to be like mark if you just want to just just go figure it out you can do it yourself um oh 00:07:25.66 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:07:41.14 Michael see So so what what what were you doing on these terminals then? was that just does that Was that just to make you look cool in front of new people? 00:07:44.67 Mitan that was unique yeah how that was it that was way 00:07:47.89 Michael yeah And then then you then you jump back into Excel. 00:07:49.13 Mark McCracken Always keep a terminal up, look busy. 00:07:52.32 Mitan Yeah, exactly. 00:07:52.56 Michael um like and 00:07:53.48 Mitan It's basically Excel. And then no it was Unix. And I mean, effectively, we did we we created all these shell scripts, um and then created this massive load of cron kind of jobs. 00:08:05.28 Mark McCracken yeah 00:08:06.84 Mitan And that was our rudimentary scheduling back then of all of the different jobs and stuff. So but basically, we just create a huge mess. but it got the job done. and So it was really basic Unix. 00:08:18.37 Mitan I think um we probably just learned from copying like Wade's old scripts and then just trying to figure out syntax. and ah So yeah, we've come in with very little kind of coding experience in those kind of roles. 00:08:31.15 Mark McCracken a whole team of people with no coding experience managing managing to make it work. 00:08:31.23 Mitan and Yeah. had to 00:08:34.48 Michael What could go wrong? 00:08:35.40 Mitan Yeah, it was it was a little bit of the blindly and the blind to an extent. But we like I said, we actually got stuff done and and actually created stuff that worked for years. But as Mark knows, she came in, what is this shit? Why are we not doing it like this? And we were just like, we don't know. 00:08:54.54 Mitan But yeah, that was an early part of my career with ah with Mark. And then ah as a PO, um a product owner across the the whole day of warehouse, side I ended up with fairly young. And Mark was one to come to me with loads of questions. And again, I'm like, I don't i don't know. Ask this guy. um And yeah, so it became a bit of a different kind of work in the relationship with Mark as well. And I probably became PO because um he was like a stakeholder. 00:09:22.49 Michael Yeah. 00:09:22.48 Mitan as well. So again. 00:09:24.23 Michael did Did you, did you, was PO like, was it one of those things that was sort of forced upon you because you were senior or did you really like, I like this, like, okay. 00:09:30.72 Mitan I kind of fell into it diagonally, actually. So the previous PO left Will, and he was really good and and set up a lot of the structure. 00:09:33.10 Michael Yeah. 00:09:37.93 Mitan And the concept of product was really fresh in the company at that point. 00:09:41.72 Michael Mm-hmm. 00:09:42.36 Mitan And so and especially in data. So date a data product owner, it wasn't really a thing like or well-known back then. so So yeah, I kind of fell diagonally into it. Just because of my skill set at the time was I I kind of worked closely with the day warehouse team, but also, um, worked with the business quite closely as well. And I could just be that translator a lot of the time between teams. And, um, it kind of fell into that where I can translate those kinds of requirements and things that I needed to, um, technical, um, teams. Uh, so I kind of fell into it, uh, but learned a ton. Uh, but yeah, it was a, it was a little bit of a uphill struggle, uh, initially in kind of a relatively young career. 00:10:25.76 Michael Did you like given, I know we're going to get onto AI a lot, but 00:10:29.00 Mitan Yeah. 00:10:29.40 Michael Did you read all the AI stuff and go, we were doing, we were doing like, you know, like, are you one of those people that goes, this is all machine learning. We were doing this like since back in the day and all that stuff. 00:10:39.54 Mitan No, no, because we weren't. 00:10:40.34 Michael Okay. 00:10:41.30 Mitan my awareness We weren't doing it anywhere close to the the complexity of the scale. 00:10:41.50 Michael Okay. 00:10:43.89 Michael Okay. I kind of assumed you were, but maybe that was the, yeah. 00:10:47.97 Mitan Maybe the ML teams and and and the inside teams did, but no, not to this guy. i'm i'm I'm the opposite. I'm more like, this is fucking amazing. ah Just checking. 00:10:56.43 Michael Yeah. 00:10:57.08 Mitan I could swear on this, right? Yeah. 00:10:58.68 Mark McCracken I sense the name. 00:10:59.30 Michael Yeah, okay. 00:10:59.50 Mitan but 00:11:00.61 Michael I think that's kind of the name of the podcast. 00:11:02.56 Mitan Yeah. Oh yeah. and So yeah, no, no, it's it's the opposite. It's kind of, it's great to see where the roots were and how it's kind of grown as a, as a whole, um, data kind of area and industry compared to 10 years ago or 12 years ago, where we're, you know, we feel the cutting edge was this DB2 warehouse and and writing these SQL scripts over masses of, um, what was considered large tables back then to to what it is now. It's, it's just, um, 00:11:32.50 Mitan hard to fathom really 00:11:34.84 Michael Cool. Um, so I, I did one of my questions was where do you work now? But I understand that's a bit bit of a big segue into, into stuff. 00:11:40.80 Mitan Yeah, yeah. ah So I previously was working at Skyscanner. um I was there for a year and a bit um and I was across the the entire MarTech and Data ah side of things. 00:11:46.19 Michael Okay. 00:11:52.63 Mitan So MarTech is the Martin Tech side and I ended up later te on in my career specializing a little bit closer towards marketing tech and and specifically advertising tech. 00:11:54.09 Michael Yeah. Yep. 00:12:01.64 Mitan um 00:12:01.68 Michael Yep. 00:12:03.29 Mitan But yeah, no, I spent a good year there. I was across three teams, learned a ton of a completely different industry, a great place to work. it was It was really good. I was traveling on quite a lot. I moved up to Manchester. ah But yeah, I decided to take a career break after like 13 years. And we got a bit on that as well. But yeah, so right now I'm on a career break and a self-inflicted one. ah um And Yeah, it's been a really good eye opening time. I don't think I've learned as much as I have in this short period of time, ah compared to the last like X amount of years in industry. 00:12:39.89 Michael how were skyscan like you told skyscan and they were like what yeah okay okay yeah so how so how long ago was this this was okay 00:12:45.06 Mitan Yeah, there were a little bit. Yeah, I was I think I was I was basically in line to get a promotion there as well. It was just my manager was like, Are you sure like why? Why? I That was probably, it was in May when I when i left. So it's been it's been about six months or so. 00:13:00.09 Mark McCracken So you're like you like fully resign, you didn't say kind of sabbatical sort of thing. 00:13:04.75 Mitan Yeah, i don I don't think it would be be of an option at that point. So I was there for a year, but um I think that they probably could have, but I think in my mind, I was like mentally a little bit resigned to that. 00:13:10.82 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:13:17.09 Mitan I was just like, no, I've got i've got an idea um of roughly where I want to focus. I found a little bit of like, more interest in certain things, potentially talk about. And I just had a gut feel. And at that point, I've been working for a long time. I've saved up enough to be able to give myself a little bit of time to go, right, let me just go figure stuff out. And it's the same time that obviously AI was starting to be leveraged a little bit more. And then I got diagnosed with ADHD a month ago. 00:13:48.45 Mitan also. So it actually clicked a little bit and it's something called a neurodivergent burnout, ah which I probably was having at that point where I've just kind of lost a bit of motivation in the corporate environment at that point in time um and I couldn't put my finger on it. 00:14:04.89 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:14:07.64 Mitan and So I was still doing fine, but i was what I was letting things get to like really stressful levels until I actually could do things and then I'd do it well. 00:14:08.26 Michael yeah 00:14:16.37 Mitan and So yeah, I just caught these things early. I was like, right, time to probably take a break and and re kind of evaluate. 00:14:24.08 Michael That's really interesting. you must but't Everyone tells me the market now is terrible. I don't know what it was like in May. You wouldn't worry at all? 00:14:31.92 Mitan probably as as bad as it is now yeah it's probably all right look we'll find out ah talk to me next year if this was a mistake or not but my mind I was fairly convinced but ah yeah you know it probably yeah it's the market is a little bit dull like because I keep an eye out and see if there's any interest in roles still but yeah 00:14:33.45 Michael It's as bad as it is now, okay? Yeah. 00:14:38.29 Michael Yeah. 00:14:51.92 Mark McCracken Have you got to the point where you're like actively looking? 00:14:54.76 Mitan But yeah, no, not really. I keep it, like I said, I keep an eye out, but not like like actively. 00:14:59.31 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:15:00.27 Mitan I'm keeping myself quite busy. 00:15:00.78 Mark McCracken Not spending all day, all day on the LinkedIn, doing outreach. 00:15:03.88 Mitan No, no, I try to avoid that. and But one one of the things is I don't think there's ever a good time. That was the thing I came to my own realizations. Like, yes, the market, there's always a time when the the market is slow for for jobs. 00:15:16.73 Mitan The market's great. There's always, there's never a right time to to do this. But if you do feel like it's something that was like needed and necessary for for me, I did. I just went fuck it. 00:15:27.23 Mitan Like I can, yeah, I can, I can justify it and try. And then like I say, if it fails, if I was, and then I'll figure something out, if you have to back yourself at this point and just go, right, you're capable enough to just, yeah. 00:15:41.07 Mark McCracken So did you do some financial planning? did did you did Did you sit down and say, how many months of salary am I going to need to take a break? 00:15:45.09 Mitan Yeah, yeah says the ADH don't don't ask Priya, my wife, but the ADH didn't have the full planning of of everything. It was more of a gut feel. 00:15:55.09 Mitan But no, i did I did have a rough idea. Yeah, but I didn't want to get into like, there's a psychological impact of you go, right, I've got set amount of time. And and that's all I could do. 00:16:06.56 Mitan I think I didn't really plan it. 00:16:07.61 Mark McCracken Otherwise, you might procrastinate, and you wouldn't be prone to that, would you, Mattann? 00:16:10.92 Mitan No, I wouldn't know. Well, it turns out now I know why. No, it's been interesting. No, it's not been necessarily that well planned, but I'm fine, ah which is good. 00:16:25.18 Michael How's your, how's your health? And she has the. 00:16:27.62 Mitan Um, good. 00:16:27.93 Michael the the 00:16:28.44 Mitan Yeah. Yeah. 00:16:28.97 Michael yeah 00:16:29.00 Mitan I mean, the time's been really good in terms of just like taking that time out and slowing down. So drinking a bit less. Um, but, um, that workouts dog, dog walks, taking that time. 00:16:37.00 Michael Just four or five bottles a day. so Yeah. 00:16:40.42 Mitan Yeah. 00:16:40.59 Michael Yeah. 00:16:41.68 Mitan Um, it's been good. 00:16:42.99 Michael That's good. Yeah. I was, um, did you, was there anything that I'd love to have more chats about the ADHD stuff actually. Um, but was the, 00:16:54.56 Michael Do you think there was like a, was there a signal when you were like, was there a moment, you know, maybe it was a health, maybe it was a, was there an AI moment where you're like, yes, I'm, this is, I'm sold. 00:17:02.50 Mitan Okay. 00:17:04.27 Michael Like it's gotta be AI or we just came first actually. she Was it, was it the AI? And then you're like, I want to career break to do this. Or was it, I want a career break. Oh wait, AI seems to be the thing or okay. 00:17:16.58 Mitan there was a bit of a combination of things. I did one thing that probably triggered all of this and it's a really interesting thing. I was just at a tram stop in Manchester and the next tram was in 12 minutes. 00:17:29.58 Mitan And then normally what happens is like, I would just go, fuck, 12 minutes. I just need to go do something. So I go to a shop, buy something, whatever. 00:17:34.90 Michael Yeah. 00:17:36.94 Mitan And whatever I did in that moment, I just caught myself and just went, no, I'm just gonna, sit with myself for 12 minutes and and then I ended up just starting to so take notes and and journal whatever whatever was my mind. 00:17:43.88 Michael Yeah. 00:17:47.67 Michael Okay. 00:17:49.95 Mitan um And then now I just started to journal and then from that point I just found it really useful. I've never journaled before, I've never really kind of had that introspective side where I've like just been deeper in my thoughts. So I just started to journal and then just over the next couple of days, weeks, I just started to develop my own kind of style of of journaling on ah and a really basic kind of app. But then I started to see the the emergence of AI as well and the way that I was journaling or note-taking. 00:18:16.64 Michael Yeah. 00:18:17.31 Mitan And I started to see a bit of an opportunity here in which like, I think a lot of the time when I'm thinking, if I was writing an email, for instance, I'd be thinking about grammar, I'd be thinking about like, I'd be thinking about so many different things around it. 00:18:30.36 Michael Yeah. 00:18:31.22 Mitan And when I'm writing notes to myself, it's just verbal diarrhea. It's just, ah just a conscious stream of thought kind of ah element. And I just found it really quite free. 00:18:42.45 Mitan And so, I would start to do that but also with plugging that into then AI to then transcribe that and make sense of that. It's been a lot of what I've been focusing on um and I just found it really empowering. So there are the two kind of bits of saying right here are some capabilities of taking and creating a thought progression in a way that I never did before and then I just got really curious with AI and end up having loads of conversations from philosophy, you know, kind of philosophical ones to to loads of interesting things. 00:19:12.24 Michael with With the AOI. 00:19:12.25 Mitan I just found myself learning. 00:19:13.87 Michael With the AOI. 00:19:14.89 Mitan Yeah, with with the AI there. 00:19:15.14 Michael With the AOI, okay. 00:19:16.21 Mitan and And it just it just ended up as like a really rapid period of time where I was learning. um And I just found it was quite empowering. 00:19:21.45 Michael Yeah. 00:19:24.18 Mitan and And I still do it to this day, when I go on dog walks, I, I just ah put my headphones on and i' I've got an app that just records everything. 00:19:28.45 Michael Yeah. 00:19:32.39 Mitan And I just basically talk to myself. 00:19:34.21 Michael Oh well, okay. 00:19:34.39 Mitan It sounds crazy, but actually, I really think it's a something that more people could benefit from. 00:19:35.70 Michael No, no. 00:19:40.01 Mark McCracken Do you listen to it back. 00:19:41.66 Mitan No, I don't. It transcribes everything. 00:19:43.27 Michael hit 00:19:44.06 Mitan I hate to sound at my own voice that this is going to be a hard one. 00:19:44.31 Michael Yeah, it's great. 00:19:46.01 Mark McCracken yeah 00:19:47.80 Mitan But but like once you have a when once you have like a ah whole collection of these things, then then you can transcribe it. 00:19:52.56 Mark McCracken So a transcription, yeah. 00:19:56.40 Mitan and And part of what I'm working on is starting to use some of the advanced kind of technologies to to to do some of this. So we'll get into a little bit later, but like vector databases and semantic kind of semantic ah matching that you can do with embedding models and stuff. So I just found this stuff fascinating. And I thought here's some potential. um And I kind of ran with it. So long story short, I took some notes, got a little happy and then quit my job. But ah again, i think I think for me, it's 00:20:28.13 Mitan It's been ah an interesting few months ah that I would have had. If I, if I'd stayed in my job, I would have been an autopilot, I reckon. um 00:20:37.07 Michael how was um how was that day one how was that monday whatever when you were like you woke up and you're like 00:20:41.77 Mitan Yeah, I think, yeah, the anxiety is pretty, pretty real in those scenarios, especially after 13 years of working, you know, day in, day out, right? 00:20:51.81 Mitan um But I think you just, we have to be, 00:20:56.26 Michael but you'd You said you'd you'd saved, right? You said, like, you did save how many months, like, of doing these 10 million money, but I do, like, a year's worth, or like... 00:20:59.01 Mitan Yeah, yeah. 00:21:02.68 Mitan um Lucky I didn't really calculate. Yeah, I think, yeah, years worth more it depends on the rate I'm spending it. 00:21:08.56 Michael Okay. Okay. 00:21:11.60 Mitan That's the problem. The lifestyle creeps real as well. so 00:21:14.37 Michael did Did you panic? 00:21:14.61 Mitan and and 00:21:15.91 Michael Like, were you panicking on that first day, or were you just like, nah, I'm fine? 00:21:18.20 Mitan No, at that point I was fine. I was i was i still i still am. I'm probably naively fine with it. 00:21:21.93 Michael Yeah. 00:21:23.00 Mitan But and but yeah, no. ah Watching the back balance go down is difficult. um I luckily have some like investments on the side and stuff as well that's doing all right. 00:21:32.52 Michael Mm hmm. 00:21:33.27 Mitan And then I'm really lucky to have a wife who is killing it and doing really well in the dental. ah industry as well so I've got a cushion at least that I've built up over that that year those years moving to Manchester Health I guess a little bit um but yeah it's fine right now again talk to me in a few months and I'll be like going crazy and I don't know what I've messed up but I'm quietly positive 00:22:01.95 Michael What was the, m just came back to she generally was interesting. So I started journaling. 00:22:09.92 Michael I think it was not long after being made redundant or sometime around then. And I'd never done it before. And it was, it was also like a revelation. 00:22:19.36 Mitan Yeah. 00:22:19.93 Michael Like it was like, you know, you'd sit down and you write some stuff and you'd be like, I know why I'm, you know, in a bad mood or I know I'm feeling shit about this or feeling shit. Like it's suddenly like you have these, um, 00:22:32.65 Michael Yeah. Just like moments of realization. I think that I think you get by writing stuff down and so you, you're taking everything out of your head and you look at it as he's going on the paper and you're like, ah, okay. Like that. So you, you knew about something to to plug that into. 00:22:45.68 Michael So it wasn't just transcribing it with what summarize or okay. 00:22:49.06 Mitan Yeah, it would it would summarize and and I'm still working on it. Like it's still not like perfect. 00:22:53.12 Michael So this is, this is your project. 00:22:53.55 Mitan for the like 00:22:54.41 Michael This is your side project. 00:22:55.42 Mitan This is yeah, it's well, this is my version of it. 00:22:56.44 Michael Okay. 00:22:58.18 Mitan Now, since since that realization, and since what I was doing, ah well since I started to look into it a little bit more, and there's basically a whole movement called second brain. um um And you might have seen it now, maybe eight months ago, it was less, ah less known, but there's some leaders in this field at Tiago Forte, and um Thomas Frank, and you got notion and yeah, 00:23:09.53 Michael Yeah. 00:23:18.72 Michael how How different, yeah I was gonna say, because I use Obsidian um and like I've seen it referred to as PKM, Personal Knowledge Management. 00:23:22.84 Mitan yeah, and Sidian, yeah. 00:23:26.82 Mitan Yep. Yes, yes, exactly. 00:23:29.14 Michael Yeah, and then obidi Obsidian has these, I can't recall them, but you can sort of use the the anchor brackets and it will link to, so what you end up getting is a map 00:23:30.03 Mitan Yeah. um 00:23:37.28 Mitan It's called bi-directional linking. 00:23:39.82 Michael I direction of linking of, of, of stuff any stuff, Mike. 00:23:40.60 Mitan Yeah. So I really liked that idea. So I was really sold on that idea. And this is why I'd been building in another thing I use called reflect our app, which is really cool as well, built on the same kind of concept. 00:23:54.64 Mitan um But I found with the ADHD, there's a lot of these systems don't quite work. They're great if you're organized and you want to keep these notes in and and and keep everything up to date and you're an organizer and that's what you you love. 00:24:08.40 Michael Yeah. 00:24:10.16 Mitan But im think I'm seeing there's a gap here and and and really it's about removing the friction where it doesn't matter and really introducing new features where it It helps a mind like mine. um So I'm developing something that's for me, but I believe can help and in communities. One of the projects, i've I've ended up with loads of different projects just because I've been rapidly learning some of the the technologies as well that are changing it every single week. 00:24:39.48 Mitan and So ah for someone like me with very limited technical skills, the capabilities have just increased like crazy over these last six months as well. um And they're not really slowing down massively. So ah again, we've got a lot to talk about, I guess, in the in the rest of this. But um but yeah, that journaling part is I'm glad you found like, use out of it. I just think that PKM concept um You take that and you start applying it to agentic AI and personalization in in new and novel ways that we can't think of. You're basically building up a database of what I consider very valuable data points in the future. 00:25:21.89 Mitan So a lot of what I would encourage is people to just start capturing stuff ah now, even if you can't figure out why it's useful. Just the act of doing it is useful, but in the future you might be able to actually find use out of that in ah in can say um a more interesting way than we what we currently can. 00:25:44.34 Michael Cool. 00:25:47.28 Michael What's your rig at home then for, do you have a beefy AI processing thing or? 00:25:51.75 Mitan Nah. Nah. Well, I had a like naively just before I left for work. I had to get my own laptops and my work laptop. I got a MacBook Air as an M3 MacBook Air. 00:26:06.92 Mitan No, it was it was i like like an idiot. 00:26:08.12 Mark McCracken Great, great thumbs up. 00:26:10.29 Mitan i um I tried to skimp out on some costs and i I didn't think I was going to get as heavy into to this. ah so So I got eight gigabytes of RAM and it was just terrible. 00:26:20.92 Mitan It was so bad. 00:26:21.31 Michael Oh, I'm not, um'm I don't, yeah, AI, 8 gig. 00:26:22.61 Mitan I know, no mistake. i was I was going into a bit where I was like, I'm not going to be earning, I'm going to skimp out 200 pound here. 00:26:30.29 Mark McCracken yeah 00:26:30.34 Mitan completely regretting that. 00:26:31.17 Mark McCracken So. ah 00:26:33.01 Mitan So and I ended up just regretting it and I ended up just buying a second-hand M1 MacBook Pro ah with like 32 gig RAM now and a TeraRite, and that was an expensive mistake to do. 00:26:33.09 Mark McCracken so 00:26:38.37 Mark McCracken It's. 00:26:49.43 Mitan I should have just bought it in the first place. So yeah, 32 gigs was doing me quite well now, so it's all good. And then then there's other stuff I'm doing on The amount of hosted services now ah that are available and easy to set up and relatively cheap or free is um a complete revelation as well. 00:27:08.99 Michael You pay pay as you pay as you using. 00:27:12.01 Mitan Yeah, a lot of them are actually quite free for the for the for the amount of um the amount data I'm talking about for some of these things at the scale I am. Actually, they're free, and so it's not too bad. 00:27:25.78 Mark McCracken So um I'm interested in your career break. You know, working in a job many years, you get like nine to five, you get up, you go to work, you're in the office, yeah. 00:27:33.66 Mitan Yeah. 00:27:33.72 Mark McCracken But what's the structure like for you? If you've got, you know, ADHD and you're getting up every day and you're like, oh, I don't got to go to work today. 00:27:38.76 Mitan Yeah. 00:27:40.38 Mark McCracken and Like I'm going to be dedicated. Or is there like an internal struggle every day? 00:27:42.18 Mitan Our internal struggle. 00:27:43.78 Mark McCracken Like, I wonder am I going to do anything? 00:27:45.66 Mitan Definitely. 00:27:45.81 Mark McCracken um Am I going to do anything today? Am I going to drink this tasty bottle of wine? 00:27:48.03 Mitan Yeah, no, it's it's not been so extreme. ah There's a few interesting kind of things I've noticed. So no, when I first started, when I was journaling stuff, one of the key things I i before I even knew at ADHD, I was like, I need to sort out my, um my structure, my routine, I've never had really like that routine of ah of an approach. 00:28:08.90 Mitan So I knew that 00:28:09.49 Mark McCracken Of course she did, as soon as I joined Wade was like, don't worry, Bittan will be here at 10 o'clock, half an hour late. 00:28:13.67 Mitan This is why I was chronically late. I can blame on the ADHD now. This is why I hated it. This is why I'm here till 8. I'm doing all my work. I'm getting everything done. Fuck you, Wade. 00:28:26.14 Mitan ah and but yeah know um 00:28:28.99 Michael and and i know i know what this podcast episode is going to be cool 00:28:31.50 Mitan yeah 00:28:32.83 Michael but me wait 00:28:33.98 Mitan I've got more than I object. But yeah, um in terms of structure, yeah, it's just, it's just, in some time, a really rigid thing is just making sure this is is' actually something called pattern ah diary kind of management, which is just saying like, Monday mornings are for workouts, afternoons for those large chunks rather than how by our kind of rigid um calendars. 00:28:55.60 Michael I know what this podcast episode is going to be called. 00:28:55.94 Mitan So it works out well, because it leaves some flexibility within those times. um And then no, I actually I haven't I thought I was gonna like, there was a chance of me like binge watching TV or just like, etc. 00:29:06.69 Mark McCracken But you have been quite dedicated. 00:29:06.71 Mitan Turns out, I've stopped watching TV mainly. like I watch YouTube mainly, but it tends to be more educational stuff or or things I'm learning. 00:29:13.51 Mark McCracken these recommend These recommendations are going to be shit aren't they? 00:29:15.39 Mitan and Yeah. my record no no i've got got I've got one. There's one show that I've binge watched and it was while we were on honeymoon, which tells you how exciting that honeymoon was. We got to be five seasons of it. But yeah, no. But I found that was a really good thing because I realized that a lot of the time, because I used to binge watch TV like crazy. I went through all of the TV shows, everything. And it was mainly ah just a reaction to working, obviously nine to five, um and then needing like a stress relief, turn off your mind and just switch off kind of thing. 00:29:47.37 Mitan And I haven't needed that as much. so I just don't really watch so much like TV. So I'm behind in like shows I used to love like The Boys or there's probably a whole host of shows that have come out since that I haven't really caught up with. 00:30:00.94 Mitan So sorry. Yeah. It's gonna be boring. 00:30:01.90 Mark McCracken So you've been reasonably dedicated. So imagining that that that your bank balance goes a smidge lower and you're like, okay, it's time to you know get back into the the working world. 00:30:08.78 Mitan Yeah. 00:30:12.42 Mitan yeah 00:30:12.46 Mark McCracken What are you thinking? Are you thinking like corporate environment, big fine stuff, startup, go solo. 00:30:17.63 Mitan Um, somewhere in between. 00:30:18.51 Mark McCracken Any ideas? 00:30:19.70 Mitan Yeah, no, I, like I say, I'm, I'm, not yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:30:20.88 Mark McCracken Somewhere in between that that wide range. 00:30:24.47 Mitan Um, I'm, um, I've not ruled out anything about the corporate career. I actually, I think there's parts of it now. I really understand why I enjoy it. I miss the people side and I miss like the, the kind of the, the ideas and the culture and, and and kind of mixing with people. 00:30:39.86 Mitan It gets a little boring, uh, at home at times when you can't talk about stuff. Um, but, um, But yeah, I think it's gonna be like kind of a small small to medium-sized company. I don't think ah a large bank, but who knows? Like it really depends on the role um and and kind of the level of interest. So um I have keeping, um ah like I say, open to opportunities. um And I've had a few like interviews here or there, a few that I've turned down and a few that obviously I didn't get, which is fair. 00:31:12.44 Mitan Um, so yeah, we'll see. Uh, I still think I'm fresh in the the product space. Uh, and I think the time off that I've had and the stuff that I've learned is super relevant to the next few years of how corporate, um, you know, how companies are going to approach them. 00:31:25.87 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:31:30.67 Mark McCracken Corporate stuff's going to go. 00:31:32.58 Mitan Yeah. 00:31:32.71 Mark McCracken every every Every corporation and their moms is going to be doing some AI stuff. And here comes Metan with all of his knowledge. 00:31:36.36 Mitan Yeah. It's, it's, it's not just the tagline of AI. It's, it's really unsan and like, the data management in that space as well. 00:31:40.74 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:31:43.47 Michael Did they, and she you said you interviewed a few places, like did they, did you mention the career gap or like, I wondered how they like, I i interviewed someone today at a gap and it was just like, yeah, it's just, it's fine, like people like, yeah. 00:31:48.01 Mitan No, I did. Yeah. It's, it's, it's on my CV. No. 00:31:55.02 Mitan Yeah. No one's, no one's really questioned it or, or dove into it too much actually, which is, which is nice. It depends. I guess how large the gap is after all, but we'll see. Like I'm not, yeah, I was like, 00:32:07.01 Michael I think you've you've got a good story where someone's like, I've spent six months watching YouTube. not quite yeah 00:32:11.11 Mitan Yeah, yeah. ah That is, yeah. 00:32:12.80 Mark McCracken That is Mittenne's story but he's dressed a little bit. 00:32:14.28 Michael um i remember how i started i've just kept clicking next and it's been six months like 00:32:17.95 Mitan I'm the one who hit that next ah the next ah video button. 00:32:18.25 Mark McCracken Michael am I... 00:32:25.49 Mitan Headless loop. 00:32:25.86 Mark McCracken So was Priya like at least he's doing stuff or were you like a burden around the house? 00:32:31.77 Mitan No, well the other thing was actually, I've been even better around the house. i'm I'm the house husband right now, which is was absolutely fine because I cook. 00:32:39.25 Mark McCracken You're loving it. 00:32:39.52 Mitan Anyway, I love 00:32:39.81 Mark McCracken You're never ending this career break. This is just retirement trapped up in a career break. 00:32:41.67 Mitan No, yeah, no, it's dangerous. But no, I cook anyway, I love cooking. So it's given me some time to like, focus on those passions and and and um and spend a little bit more time there. 00:32:50.85 Mark McCracken Really? Sounds amazing. I don't know why everyone doesn't take a career break except for the money. 00:32:56.48 Mitan Cleanly, I know. marva There are alternative ways to earn money other than being in ah corporate. That's why I keep telling myself anyway, I got to find those ways. But ah yeah. 00:33:04.46 Mark McCracken Marry rich. Marry rich. 00:33:06.22 Mitan yeah ah Yeah, 00:33:10.56 Michael only only fans and marry rich 00:33:12.94 Mitan yeah only only fans was my last re resort, basically, but unfortunately, I think that's kind of all. 00:33:16.41 Michael oh i've just i bet um I bet there's some beard fetish stuff going on somewhere in the dark corners of the web. 00:33:20.08 Mitan I'm sure, though, the internet's a big place, and while I'm around it, there's communities with niche interests about anything, so, ah yeah. 00:33:20.22 Mark McCracken yeah 00:33:22.31 Michael so Keep it in the back pocket just in case. 00:33:29.68 Mitan Bit of the internet's just for a moment. 00:33:32.59 Mark McCracken Shall we should we get on to some of our big topics? 00:33:34.64 Mitan Yeah, sure. 00:33:35.17 Mark McCracken so we're good at I'd love to talk about some of your AI tools. So you got a couple, you got cursor dot.com. and and I was texting Matt after we did the first podcast and he was just like, yeah, use this tool and use this tool and you're wasting your time, Mark. 00:33:46.21 Mark McCracken And I was like, oh shit, I hope not. 00:33:47.55 Mitan No, it wasn't so abrupt and rude. like like 00:33:51.41 Mark McCracken It was much more amenable than that. He was like, I want gotta to get on this podcast. It's publicity for the job. 00:33:56.75 Mitan I had so much free time, I ended up listening to your podcast. 00:33:56.88 Mark McCracken um um But he was saying he's used a few tools. Yeah, exactly. 00:34:02.26 Mitan That's what's happened while scouring LinkedIn. 00:34:02.66 Mark McCracken Exactly. 00:34:04.77 Michael um yeah You've done better than me, I haven't listened to the first one yet. 00:34:06.17 Mark McCracken yeah So you you haven't even posted the first one on LinkedIn. let's That's your first bit of homework. 00:34:11.72 Michael i'm gonna 00:34:11.97 Mark McCracken As soon as we finish this one. 00:34:13.17 Michael after we finish this one i get see two one 00:34:14.89 Mark McCracken OK. I don't know if that's how it works, but fine. um Yeah, cursor dot.com and bolt dot.new. Tell us, Mitz, what have you been doing? 00:34:23.16 Mitan Yeah. um So I think originally I'd started to use Claude for and trying to create anything really. He's trying to code. and So again, from a non-coding background SQL, I was reasonably good at for for a while, but I haven't touched it. 00:34:41.00 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:34:42.43 Mitan But in terms of actual code, I've always worked with engineers and understood the code, I could read the code, I could QA and fix the code at times, but never actually really learned. 00:34:55.57 Mitan So Cursor started with its its kind of windowed approach where it could write the code for you and then you copy that and put that into into VS code and you kind of learn how to compile code. Cursor just took it to another level basically. So it's a kind of a reskin or a VS code but has AI agents basically embedded in there. And what it meant is that you can effectively manage your entire code base. So you can start it off by giving it a product brief effectively and it will then start compiling the code and then you can work with it. And the key thing is that it's just iterative. Like it will mess up 00:35:35.63 Mitan and you just continue to trial and error until you basically get the result that you want. Now, there has been frustrating. There's times where it probably hasn't worked how you wanted, ah but I've been able to build or at least start building a whole a host of things from learning how to use React native, React Flutter, to build like web to build ah iOS apps, or web apps now, they're not going to be great at the start, but the the point is going from zero to to that, it's crazy. 00:36:08.82 Mark McCracken It's a provable concept, yeah. 00:36:11.52 Mitan yeah with and then as a true PO, I was trying to pm sort of add scope to it. So it was starting to get a bit more complicated. And then a lot of what I've been doing is also back-end engineering with that. So really interesting with some of the stuff I've done with Python and then I mentioned around um what you can do with affected databases and not just so any database and um and embeddings models and things like that you just go right all right i want to 00:36:47.70 Mark McCracken That does sound interesting. I think we should talk about. 00:36:49.42 Mitan Yeah, you can say, I basically, I'll take it this way. I wrote a Python ah but ah ksorro python script for me that allows me to export all my chat GPT history, which is annoying because they don't have an API or anything. Export that and then take every file and then parse that and transcribe that and clean up the format of that. So it can go into markdown and go into the second brain system that I want to build. And it did that within like two minutes. 00:37:17.79 Michael Oh, well. 00:37:18.04 Mitan Um, and it's good. 00:37:18.30 Mark McCracken yeah 00:37:19.04 Michael And it was good code. I mean, it worked, obviously. 00:37:20.98 Mitan Good code. It works. Yeah. 00:37:21.80 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:37:21.91 Michael Yeah. 00:37:21.94 Mitan Yeah. Um, good, good enough. I guess. And this comes back to the BIS times, right? And the, the, I mean, Marcus around, with we had this schema called like analytics dot. Uh, and it was just filled with, the it's just this whole mishmash of code that it all worked, but it was just like, we used to break the warehouse like every, every other day. 00:37:34.38 Mark McCracken Free fixes with people's names. 00:37:40.42 Mitan Right. And it's, it's that kind of thing where it's just like, it feels like a playground again, where you can take an idea and just like, just run it. And and that product mindset it actually really works well with this because you really are just briefing in requirements and then kind of seeing it and build that out. 00:37:56.38 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:37:56.70 Mitan So Perce has been brilliant at that. It's got issues still, it's still a lot of like how you work with it, how you prompt it. 00:38:00.87 Mark McCracken Yeah. So I tried it out a little bit um and it's it's just a fork of VS code, right? With a couple of commands where you can quickly hit command K and it says type in a chat or type in do something to this selection of code. 00:38:08.08 Mitan Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:38:16.42 Mark McCracken And it was okay. Um, maybe just cause it was new, but I quite liked the, uh, there's a VSCode extension for GitHub co-pilot and you get that. 00:38:18.33 Mitan news. 00:38:23.61 Mark McCracken If you do some open source contributions, you get that free. And that was that that's really good for like, well, the quality of what it'll give you is generally pretty great, but it's doesn't have the, this is the, it doesn't have the knowledge of the entire code base, but I've been, there's not been that many times where I'm like, I really need this to know what the whole code base rather than just this one file. 00:38:43.06 Mitan for someone who doesn't have experience of how a code base should be compiled, where files should go, how like like a source folder and an assets folder and where everything should be. 00:38:43.12 Mark McCracken So to speak. Yeah. 00:38:48.30 Mark McCracken Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 00:38:53.62 Mitan that really This really helps. The other thing is there's another feature to cursor that you might not be using, which is if you use a shift command I. 00:38:55.29 Mark McCracken yeah Yeah. 00:39:02.21 Mitan And you can have multiple composers ah there and have a notepad which briefs in, which gives instructions across all composers. So you actually have multiple agents working on specific parts of your code base. 00:39:09.95 Mark McCracken yeah 00:39:15.03 Mitan So it avoids it kind of getting confused. So you will find there's some creative stuff that you might be able to do with it if you did. 00:39:20.16 Mark McCracken Yeah, so. 00:39:20.80 Mitan But yeah, like fair enough. like i I think this is kind of of the key is there's gonna be people who actually know how to code. This might not massively change and I've seen it. 00:39:28.99 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:39:30.28 Mitan has done, but like it might not. 00:39:31.65 Mark McCracken And so the other thing I tried which open AI release this week was integration for chat GPT with. 00:39:32.65 Mitan But. 00:39:39.46 Mark McCracken your desktop apps, so like your terminal or your VS code. 00:39:41.67 Mitan Yeah. 00:39:43.60 Mark McCracken I tried it out, but it was so much more clunky than something like GitHub Copilot because it's saying, oh yeah, you'll find it on this line on this file. I'm like, you may not have to have these two apps open at once and kind of look look at your instructions for how to wear to copy this over. 00:39:52.44 Mitan Yeah. 00:39:56.00 Mark McCracken That was a bit clunky. 00:39:57.21 Mitan That's. 00:39:57.25 Mark McCracken I still think by far and away the best one of these is Copilot, GitHub Copilot. 00:40:01.10 Mitan I, I, yeah, maybe it's different flavors, right? 00:40:01.16 Mark McCracken And I think it'll continue to the moon. 00:40:03.86 Mitan Like I, like I said, I think copilot's improved since I used it. 00:40:04.30 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:40:07.62 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:40:08.22 Mitan I think early on, six, seven months ago, I used it and it was okay, but it wasn't, um it wasn't. It didn't do the, it didn't do the apply in part, uh, at that point, um, because it does the writes the code and then creates a file or updates file and applies it all in one thing. 00:40:18.01 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:40:26.27 Mitan Uh, and then, yeah, I'd use a chat GPT thing on X code and it was okay. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't have the capabilities to do the action. 00:40:33.65 Mark McCracken Ah, yeah. 00:40:34.42 Mitan So, um, so yeah. 00:40:35.76 Michael it's i i was I've been probably on the like mailing list for IntelliJ, and they've got a new one out this week. 00:40:42.03 Mitan Yeah. 00:40:42.35 Michael Recently, though they've got some inline AI prompts. 00:40:47.50 Michael Sports, Java, Kotlin, Scala, Groovy, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, JSON, and YAML. 00:40:51.77 Mark McCracken Oh wow. 00:40:52.02 Michael And you can pick, there's ah there's basically a dropdown. You can pick what you want. So you've got Yeah, I have to try that out. 00:40:59.92 Mark McCracken So we got AI for your YAML. 00:41:03.16 Mitan yeah 00:41:04.39 Mark McCracken yeah 00:41:05.85 Michael I suppose if you're doing loads of Kubernetes, it might be useful, but and that's that's quite cool. 00:41:08.04 Mark McCracken yeah So I think, I think, one of the other tools which is far more interesting and one of the most amazing technological advances which I thought was awesome is being able to run all of the s code in your browser in stack blitz. 00:41:21.65 Mark McCracken So basically, stack blitz is like the most wicked thing ever. 00:41:21.98 Mitan Yeah. Abilink's wicked, yeah. it's a 00:41:25.46 Mark McCracken You say, cause I think it came out of maybe I'm wrong. I think it came out of like angular applications where you would have your BS code and you would run it. And we say, this is hard to reproduce, but they basically said, well, let's build all of the S code and all the dependencies you could need and build a project. 00:41:39.47 Mark McCracken And then on the right hand side of the price of tab, we'll just run it. And I'm like, how does this work? That's pretty awesome. But you find you've got a new tool here called bolt dot new, which builds a website using Astro. 00:41:48.29 Mitan Yeah, yeah. 00:41:50.51 Mark McCracken And you've got quite a few examples of like, I've made a real thing. 00:41:53.11 Mitan yeah um So yes, I've been using cursor, like I say, and a lot of that I've been trying to do the front end side of things, but I've also been focusing on some back end. 00:41:54.73 Mark McCracken What have you done? 00:42:04.33 Mitan But bolt on new is just kind of revolutionized again, like especially the front end. The management brief it in with the product requirements that you want to build a web app for this type of business or, and I'll go through some of the examples, but it will It will take good practices of existing kind of, um, react and, well, I think it's, it's mainly react. 00:42:28.88 Mitan Uh, so it use libraries, uh, use, so it's huge shared CN for instance, and, and other things to make a pretty swish, um, look in functional, um, web app or website in very little time from a brief. 00:42:42.73 Mark McCracken I was pleasantly surprised. 00:42:42.78 Mitan Um, yeah. 00:42:44.13 Mark McCracken when when i go to when i When I make websites, I'm like, man, this works, but the CSS, I just can't do it. 00:42:49.33 Mitan Yeah. 00:42:50.56 Mark McCracken But yours actually, it looks really good. I was like, shit, that looks pretty great for Midtown. 00:42:54.02 Mitan Yeah, it was. 00:42:54.80 Mark McCracken yeah 00:42:54.97 Mitan And then the biggest thing around that is one of the examples is actually my wife's and, and Priya's built her own website because she's a ended artist and there's a root canal specialist that, well, she's got a diploma. 00:42:55.32 Michael Good night. 00:43:09.30 Mitan um And um but she, I was going to help build it for her. And then she just took the laptop off of me and then just started to talk to bold up new. And then I didn't see her for two nights. 00:43:20.58 Mitan And then then she just i built this. So the key 00:43:22.37 Mark McCracken See, Mita and anyone can do this. There need to be a product owner. 00:43:24.07 Mitan it the the the Yeah, but too she has no interest in tech options. She's been listening to me talk about AI. I'm surprised she married me, to be honest with you. But she's taken it and then she's been able to run with it and just conversationally build ah the yeah the the website that she wants. And and it's it's really good. ah Like, would have cost thousands of pounds probably if we tried to go to like a dental website agency or something like that. And she's done it in two nights. 00:43:50.38 Mitan So we've got a few bits to finish off. We'll just add in some assets, but it's functional and it looks great. um And again, within a few commands, you can change color the whole color scheme. You can change the whole placement. It builds proper components um within that site and structures it well. And it's just, I mean, this that's only about a month old. 00:44:10.61 Mitan Right. And then two months ago, three months ago, cursor came about and it's just the rate of evolution of of these tools is just, um it's something to keep an eye on at least. And and yeah, for for people like me, and I think it's gonna empower a ton of people without coding experience, and that could be a good or a bad thing. And I've seen some bad examples of people like building in or creating businesses with 00:44:38.13 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:44:38.71 Mitan poor data security or like really rudimentary kind of ideas. And sometimes that's fine if you prototype in, but I think there's probably gonna be a some consolidation there, but but um it lowers the barrier to entry for innovation. 00:44:52.32 Mark McCracken i um I'm interested how long you spent on that barber website because that's pretty like it's a landing page it's just a landing page that says here's our Instagram here's where to book and those go to somewhere else like that goes to Microsoft Bookings and it goes to Instagram and it just says here's a picture of well it's a barber shop what more do you want ah how long did it take you to make that website 00:44:59.71 Mitan Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 00:45:08.08 Mitan the Yeah. That one took ah a tiny bit longer cause that was early cause I built that in like June or something like that. Um, I was in the barbers and I don't have a site and I was just, again, it gives me reason to learn. So I was just like, Oh, I'll just put just how I'm using this tool. Let me go figure it out. 00:45:27.01 Mitan um And I built that on React, not knowing anything about React at that point in time. um And then, yeah, I wanted to keep it simple because how much info do you really need? ah The barbers um and it's quite swish. 00:45:39.40 Mitan And and the main thing is that when it goes to mobile web, it has a video kind of in the background and it's a really clean like swish video. And then when it's on desktop, it's the picture of the thing. 00:45:50.16 Mitan But I wanted to just go simple, not add too many features, not add any extra pages or about me. 00:45:54.58 Mark McCracken It's great because, the well, it's the assets that make this website great. But like on the on the mobile web view, it just just just looks like a standard image and then a car just drives past you like, what? 00:45:58.60 Mitan Yeah. 00:46:03.83 Mitan And then it comes slowly through. Yeah, exactly. 00:46:05.92 Mark McCracken One, two, one. 00:46:06.85 Mitan Yeah. So yeah, I did take the video, but like, I've been kind of getting them to get them to do that. 00:46:07.54 Mark McCracken It's really working. 00:46:13.05 Mitan And yeah, I was really proud of that. I was just like, I still need to get life on this GoDaddy login, but but the whole the whole 00:46:19.86 Mark McCracken Oh, you need to see there, but it's done. 00:46:21.98 Mitan Yeah, the whole point is you can you can take like creativity. Like I said, look, take a video of the shop and go outwards when it's a sunny day and just give me like ah a minute video and then I'll chop it so that it has like a perfect loop. 00:46:26.97 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:46:33.81 Michael Was this was this or of is this on your career break? 00:46:33.89 Mitan And let's just see where it is. 00:46:36.01 Michael was this 00:46:36.63 Mitan Yeah, yeah, this is just a in June. 00:46:37.81 Michael to so do you think do you think if you if you were let's Let's say you didn't take that career break and you changed your mind and how far do you think you would have got with the stuff? 00:46:46.49 Mitan Hmm. 00:46:49.54 Michael Do you think you you wouldn't have got anywhere? Do you think you would have been? 00:46:52.71 Mitan I think so. um to To an extent, but I would have found compartmentalizing difficult, especially with the the onset of that kind of burnout period. I was basically work and then soon as work would be finished, I would be switched off. 00:47:07.96 Mitan So that's where I binge went watch like TV or or find distractions in ways that would like just um yeah counteract that. 00:47:08.73 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:47:17.80 Mark McCracken yeah 00:47:18.95 Mitan um And without that, it's actually allowed me to be more creative and then have that time to like spot these these. These are just examples of some opportunities, but I think the biggest thing over the last few months is just the ability to 00:47:32.33 Michael Mm hmm. 00:47:33.14 Mitan calm the mind down to see opportunity where I wouldn't have before and and a lot with serendipity as well of just kind of being more aware of and not just your surroundings but things that are going on and you can connect dots in ways that you wouldn't have done and they there's a ton of opportunity. I think I have a mindset of abundance with with the world right now is that there is tons of opportunities out there to monetize or not, and but to build and just be creative a little bit. And it's kind of a creative outlet. And then off of that, something might come of it. ah 00:48:06.35 Mitan ah I'm more interested in the process of of that rather than um having a one idea. 00:48:09.91 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:48:13.20 Mitan It's not really, for me, it's not about having one idea and then putting all my and chips on that one idea that's gonna make it, it's not how my mind works at the minute. So I'm a bit distracted, I guess. 00:48:24.53 Michael ah the europe but But having said that, you you you yeah the second this second brain idea is kind of your, that sounds like your your your baby. 00:48:31.71 Mitan That's my key one. It's quite a meta one because if i I have that, I also can refine my ideas at a faster rate and it ends up 00:48:35.23 Michael Okay. 00:48:40.05 Michael Yeah. You can put your ideas into the second brain and brain matter. 00:48:43.53 Mitan Yeah, exactly. and And part of the demo that um ah Mark, if you've got it on your desktop, now you can probably see a little bit of my ideas with this is um you can start using that personal knowledge base in a vector database or whatever back end I choose. 00:48:46.14 Michael Yeah. 00:48:49.96 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:49:01.95 Mitan But it's going to feed AI agents that are going to have like a creative writing an assistant. So if I want to create content off of like the thoughts I've had on a random walk, and turn that into um a more structured article than I can, or I can create a podcast with Notebook LM or Notebook Llama. 00:49:19.23 Mitan So for me, that novelty is really how my brain remembers things, not reading like my own notes or organizing them. 00:49:24.72 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:49:28.32 Mitan It's like, oh yeah, here's a cool novel way played back to me in ways that's automated rather than me going through my notes. 00:49:33.34 Mark McCracken Yeah, I guess if you if she like, if you're at your dog walks and you have five dog walks a week and that's five hours worth of bullshit and you you know turn that into transcripts and you turn that into summaries and you stick it into notebook early on with a lot of the five other things you're interested in and you've got to have on our podcast, there's your Saturday walks ordered to be like, bam, here's a summary of all of the stuff that I've been doing. 00:49:47.29 Mitan Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's, ah it's ah it's a retrospective, right? Every your week. I can't remember why. 00:49:53.79 Mark McCracken Retrospective of my week's worth of dog walks. 00:49:54.74 Michael With yourself. 00:49:55.16 Mitan No, no, no. 00:49:55.66 Michael but 00:49:55.90 Mitan I mean, you kind of joke about it, but it's kind of like the agile kind of principles, but it is like a retro, right? 00:49:58.55 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:50:00.62 Mitan I can't remember why I talked about my notes or whatever yesterday or last week, for instance. 00:50:05.23 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:50:06.24 Mitan But with this, it kind of helps cement the kind of neural pathways with with that memory, whether it's bullshit, like it could be talking absolute crap. 00:50:11.54 Mark McCracken yeah 00:50:14.28 Mitan And that's absolutely fine. 00:50:14.90 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:50:15.82 Mitan There will be some nuggets of gold where I've just kind of had realizations on that walk or whatever. 00:50:20.78 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:50:20.90 Mitan And 00:50:20.94 Michael Did you get some weird looks from passers-by? 00:50:23.49 Mitan Well, that's beautiful. 00:50:23.57 Michael So you're mumbling to yourself and they're like, everyone just walking across the street away from you. 00:50:24.91 Mark McCracken This is saying that you're on the phone. 00:50:25.87 Mitan I was a little bit like self-conscious around it, but actually just because I've got headphones on, it just looks like I'm on a phone call. 00:50:30.65 Michael Fair enough. 00:50:32.03 Mitan So it it actually is the most normal thing ah from an outside point of view now. 00:50:34.89 Mark McCracken Say very patient listener here. Yeah. 00:50:38.28 Mitan But yeah, I was a bit self-conscious. I was quieting down when people were walking by or like I'm talking about some next level thing I've kind of gone into a rabbit hole with. 00:50:40.25 Mark McCracken the Yeah. 00:50:46.93 Mitan ah i But yeah, no, I i think it all kind of 00:50:51.31 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:50:54.54 Mitan Yeah, i think I think it's kind of gonna be helpful. to develop that thing to then go and develop other things or it might be the thing that actually ends up helping. 00:51:02.77 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:51:05.74 Mitan um my um The reason why I did this podcast is I've never done a podcast before and obviously I can talk a bit, but I also want to reach out to like the ADHD community and say, right, if this tool's helping me, is this something that can also help you and then see if there's an actual product market fit there that they're not getting from some of these other second brain solutions. 00:51:18.42 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:51:26.31 Mitan the The world's getting into really interesting spaces with community building and there's concepts like school dot.com and and other things where I've seen that creators and content creators start to um so to kind of monetize lessons and and and and how to guides and things like that instead of actually building apps now themselves. 00:51:45.10 Mitan um So yeah, who knows? 00:51:46.50 Mark McCracken Yeah. Should we get onto to our news Michael? we We got plenty of news. 00:51:50.68 Michael Yeah, I feel really bad now, because I feel like all of my news is people like ragging on AI. And I've just done this really good, really great thing about AI. 00:51:55.36 Mitan Oh no, by the way, I'm i'm not super sensitive. 00:51:57.28 Michael And I'm like, wow, I feel like I'm sold on AI. 00:51:58.28 Mitan i There's some yeah that's interesting stuff with 00:51:58.81 Mark McCracken Yep. 00:52:02.24 Mark McCracken So we've got our O2 unveils Daisy, our AI granny, which is wasting scammers' time. They did quote. They said that they worked with this guy Jim. I think his name is Jim Browning. He's done a really good podcast that I'll find on Darknet Diaries. I don't know if you've ever listened to Darknet Diaries. It's just this guy that tells you all about the basically criminal underworld of the web. 00:52:20.13 Mark McCracken And it's great. And this guy, Jim Browning, has got a whole suite of pop like YouTube channel. And he just scams scammers. people He just wastes their time, or mostly just hacks into the scammers environment. 00:52:31.65 Michael Uh-huh. 00:52:33.21 Mark McCracken But they work with him to help create this AI granny that just wastes scammers' time. I don't know why there isn't a better solution to this than just blocking the numbers that are obviously scams. But, uh, yeah, they've made an AI granny, which seems pretty, pretty convincing. 00:52:46.82 Mark McCracken It sounds like my granny, when you talk there, just repeats the same shit over and over and over again. Have you had a cup of tea yet? 00:52:52.34 Mitan It was so good. Honestly, I wish like, yeah, exactly. 00:52:55.24 Mark McCracken Yeah. 00:52:56.97 Mitan If I could just have my own, I get this one phone call from this one fucking oh eight, four, three number every day. 00:53:03.81 Mark McCracken Oh, really? Yeah, fair. 00:53:03.84 Mitan And it's not even on the, yeah. And I can't, I've got the blocking apps. I mean, it doesn't block it because so I did an AI granny ah on my side there. I don't know how I think. 00:53:12.23 Michael like Is it really stupid questions? Like they don't yeah know anything about you. I had one the other day. It's like, I'm from your mobile provider. And I was like, which one was that? And they're like, uh, come on. 00:53:22.15 Mark McCracken and one that's providing your mobile service. 00:53:23.50 Mitan ay 00:53:23.85 Michael Yeah. 00:53:23.90 Mitan so 00:53:24.13 Michael And then they went, um, three, they actually said three G. 00:53:24.82 Mark McCracken It's just like phone jacker in real life. 00:53:28.69 Mark McCracken Three, two. 00:53:29.31 Michael They said three G and so that's not even a company. 00:53:34.26 Michael So poor. 00:53:35.58 Mark McCracken Yeah, ah but that's only going to get better. But ah that was quite interesting. 00:53:38.73 Michael Drew. 00:53:39.89 Mark McCracken The other one, which I find and I tested out today, is cheating your GitHub Graph activity. So um I don't know if you've been putting your your projects, and metta Mitan, on on GitHub, which is a hard thing to do. 00:53:49.93 Mitan Yeah, I have yeah 00:53:52.67 Mark McCracken I've heard and in the past that some people check your GitHub activity whether or not you actually do any stuff on GitHub. But here, this person has said, cheating is bad. You shouldn't be cheating. But if somebody is going to judge your suitability for a job based on your GitHub graph, they should be rewarded with a nice full-looking graph. So you download this script, you run it on your computer, it creates a Git repo. mix however You can specify how many commits and how often you want, and it fills up your GitHub graph. And my GitHub graph is now filled up. And I kind of feel like this is, but I was proud of my GitHub graph before, although and for the last six months I've been you know very private repo, so I've not done anything, but now it just looks like I've been doing loads of stuff. 00:54:32.86 Michael But it can't, it can't go back in time though, right? 00:54:33.35 Mark McCracken Loads of contributions. Yeah, it can. Yeah. 00:54:36.32 Michael It can't. Oh, well, okay. 00:54:36.89 Mark McCracken Yeah. It has filled up the last, I wanted to see it, so I only did the last six months. 00:54:37.82 Michael All right. 00:54:41.23 Mark McCracken And it looks like I've been pretty busy on GitHub, even on weekends. 00:54:43.50 Michael So how does it, how does it, how does it go back in time? 00:54:45.45 Mark McCracken It's just a script. It's just a script that says, I don't know, when you do a commit, it reads the commit from the commit log. 00:54:50.76 Michael ah Use the, okay. 00:54:52.21 Mark McCracken Yeah, and it just says, commit on this date. 00:54:52.30 Michael and Okay. Yeah. 00:54:54.35 Mark McCracken And it'll say, how many, what's the maximum number of commits you want in one day? 100. What percentage of days do you want it to be done? 00:55:00.96 Mitan yeah 00:55:01.97 Mark McCracken Do you want to include weekends or not? That's why I'm looking at this and thinking, I can't be right. Maybe I actually did do some commits on a Sunday, which sounds fair, because I don't do any commits. 00:55:09.87 Michael um um what' and And what does this stuff look like if anyone actually she goes looking? 00:55:12.07 Mark McCracken it If somebody actually goes it looks at the thing, that's the beauty of it. 00:55:14.58 Michael It's all just, yeah. 00:55:15.71 Mark McCracken You can keep it private now because GitHub allows you to show private commits. 00:55:17.24 Michael and Yeah, it's true, yeah. 00:55:19.86 Mark McCracken um But it just looks like a readme that says commit on this data. 00:55:20.15 Michael Yep. 00:55:23.05 Michael Oh, i 00:55:23.96 Mark McCracken It's just just a single readme with a single file that appends extra stuff at the end. 00:55:28.97 Michael Excellent. 00:55:29.64 Mark McCracken um 00:55:29.93 Mitan from From a non-developer, like Do people really go into your GitHub and look at the projects and stuff that you've you've done? Is it like quite tied to you as a person almost now? 00:55:39.73 Mark McCracken and 00:55:42.37 Mark McCracken Only if you're doing performance management of somebody that works at the same companies, you're like, what what of you yeah what have you actually done? 00:55:46.42 Mitan Right. good yeah 00:55:49.86 Mark McCracken And then it becomes a bit insidious, so you start to do comp comparisons between people, and it's it's not it's not very nice. 00:55:54.68 Mitan everyone Everyone's got the same graph. 00:55:54.74 Mark McCracken But um my goodness, it is effective for a quantitative analysis. 00:55:54.91 Michael i yeah I don't think I could i cant i don't sure i could do it for some of those interviews. 00:55:55.80 Mitan ah 00:56:04.03 Mark McCracken Oh, no, no. What a waste of time. 00:56:06.18 Michael We talked to Jess last week, and she was like, yeah I just want to get home from work and not even open a computer. 00:56:08.66 Mark McCracken Side projects can do one. Yeah. 00:56:11.01 Mitan Hmm. 00:56:13.23 Mitan Yeah. 00:56:13.25 Michael It's like, yeah, we might have kids who just not want to be on a computer, and it's like, we're alive. 00:56:16.94 Mark McCracken a life. Yeah. 00:56:19.33 Michael So yeah, I wouldn't look at it personally. 00:56:21.66 Mark McCracken yeah So I thought that was interesting. um Elon Musk is in trouble. and Not that I love talking about Elon Musk, but he was doing a Million Pine giveaway every day where he was saying come and register to vote, but obviously, with the hope that people are going to register and vote for Trump. 00:56:37.55 Mark McCracken And he's giving away a million pounds every day in ah in ah and a random draw. And he clearly said that it was random. And they said, no, no, no, it wasn't a lottery because it wasn't random. And they said this in court does it because lawyers have said, it's not a lottery. 00:56:49.16 Mark McCracken It doesn't count as an illegal lottery because it wasn't random. We chose people based on how likely they were to be good ambassadors. 00:56:53.54 Michael How they vote. 00:56:54.89 Mark McCracken And I was like, what the fuck? You can't just pick and choose people you want to give a million quid to. 00:57:00.83 Mitan I don't know, Mark, I don't know if you were around when we used to do prize draws and we used to write scripts for them. 00:57:01.30 Mark McCracken but apparently you can. Oh, yeah. 00:57:06.21 Mitan I mean, it was a random number generator just to make sure that it was clear, but I'm pretty sure there might have been a time where we didn't have, we weren't that advanced and we had to like and randomly pick on an Excel sheet. 00:57:09.01 Mark McCracken It was, yeah. 00:57:12.32 Mark McCracken I'm not doing random numbers. 00:57:17.60 Mitan ah which 00:57:17.95 Mark McCracken ah did yeah i did i did I did hear at one point that it it was random and it was supposed to be random, but because it was running on a shell script, And because it was running at the same time every day on a cron, and because it was using a random function that depended on what time of the day it was, and where multiple prize draws were the same when it was chosen because of the randomness. 00:57:33.76 Mitan Yeah, remember that? 00:57:40.17 Mark McCracken So if like, I don't know, just I don't know how it worked, but um it didn't, it didn't sound good. That that that was that was promptly fixed, so I believe. 00:57:47.18 Michael you think Do you think Musk is going to be worried in any way? 00:57:50.17 Mark McCracken ah No. not not wass was What's going to happen? 00:57:51.63 Mitan no 00:57:52.63 Michael Yeah. yeah 00:57:54.23 Mark McCracken He's going to run the Department of Efficiency. He says, we no longer need a legal department. Off you go. 00:57:57.85 Michael yeah 00:57:58.91 Mark McCracken This is not efficient to waste your time taxing me. 00:58:05.06 Mark McCracken Okay. You've got one, Michael. What is Webkin's? 00:58:07.03 Michael i i had a few I had a few. I ended up going down like it. 00:58:08.63 Mark McCracken You've done some homework. Go on then. 00:58:10.16 Michael Thank you. I ended up. 00:58:11.25 Mark McCracken yeah 00:58:12.26 Michael I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole. I think I think one thing got sent to me and I kind of followed it and for those. So um reading this back now, it doesn't sound massively different to what you've been talking about. 00:58:22.79 Michael mit um This was this was I'm like, this is really this is a friend dot.com. 00:58:23.61 Mitan Yeah, it sounds like I'm basically unknown. 00:58:30.16 Michael Says there's ah there's a I mean, I've never used friend dot.com, but um they're going to they're bringing out pendant hardware. So it looks like a little pendant that goes around your neck. and it's gonna it's goingnna record your, and so so to the the web platform itself, you people can talk to random examples of AI characters. So if you're feeling lonely or if you wanna let some steam off, you can talk to AI characters during the day. but the So there's gonna be a wearable now. ah So the wearable is gonna, it's pitched as hardware as a device that can hear what you're doing and saying in common in friendly text messages. 00:59:11.05 Mark McCracken That is like really 1984 style this. 00:59:11.72 Michael Presumably all the time, but, uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. 00:59:17.74 Mark McCracken You will buy it willingly. 00:59:19.39 Mitan he 00:59:19.81 Michael Yeah. So when the, when the hardware launches, you'll be able to carry around your dramatic pal in a necklace. 00:59:20.27 Mitan yeah 00:59:24.78 Michael The AI will be listening and coming up with ways to respond to whatever happens in your day. You'll affect it. So this is a quote from, from Schiffman. I think so you'll effectively move in together like a real companion. 00:59:37.57 Michael We're basically building webkins plus Sims plus Tamagotchi. 00:59:41.10 Mitan Yeah. 00:59:42.36 Mark McCracken Don't know, don't know, yep, little bit, little bit too far. 00:59:42.41 Mitan Too far. Too far. 00:59:43.02 Michael you don't you't look sold missus yeah it's not i do we do we want to talk about ai jesus okay where is that that yeah we'll get to it yes i that that's one of the links that i've gone miss and you're gonna jump in or 00:59:46.34 Mitan and 00:59:46.44 Mark McCracken I'm not sure that I love it. 00:59:51.89 Mark McCracken Well, yeah, yeah, we're going to get to it. 00:59:51.98 Mitan ah yeah yeah 00:59:54.53 Mark McCracken But that that, that, that, that time I got, you well, that, that one you just sent that friend dot.com. 00:59:55.40 Mitan just just 00:59:58.41 Mark McCracken It looks really similar to something I've done with it this morning called social AI. And it's basically, you tried it. 01:00:03.55 Mitan All right. Okay. There's this. 01:00:05.74 Mark McCracken All right. 01:00:07.04 Mitan No, there's another, there's another one I've seen. There's a bit of trends called character. I think it's called character.ai where especially with the younger generation, like it is a thing where they they are just that having full conversations with made up characters like anime characters or this that the other that given a personality. 01:00:23.52 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:00:25.30 Mitan um And they're fully engaging with that. And that's kind of becoming a ah ah trend. We see the engagement rates in these things. um And similar 01:00:34.55 Michael That sounds like yeah so social AI is is a is a social platform, but everyone is an AI chatbot apart from you, right? 01:00:41.35 Mark McCracken They're all follow. It's just, the it's the weirdest thing I tried it out. It looks exact, like exactly like Twitter. 01:00:47.22 Michael OK. 01:00:47.41 Mark McCracken And you go on and say, what do you want to talk about? And you post and say, what kind of followers did you choose? What kind of followers you want? And there are millions of them. 01:00:54.11 Mitan Maybe that's all I need. 01:00:54.19 Michael but And it's all self, is it all like... 01:00:54.66 Mark McCracken Um, yeah, you, you post something and all of these different AI personalities respond. And it's like the biggest echo chamber you've ever seen. You're like, whoa, wow, this is kind of weird. 01:01:03.99 Mitan Brilliant, that could be an attachment. 01:01:04.46 Michael And and they all like it all, all all. 01:01:04.91 Mark McCracken Some of them are. I don't know, it depends what you want. I suppose you can choose just give me all of the friendly personalities. 01:01:08.70 Michael Okay. 01:01:11.48 Mark McCracken And it was like, oh yeah, I've got this script. 01:01:11.51 Michael Yeah, all the trolls and... 01:01:12.87 Mitan It tells you basically real life, Elon Musk situation, right? 01:01:14.16 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:01:16.42 Mark McCracken Yeah, pretty much. 01:01:16.53 Mitan ah 01:01:17.64 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:01:18.44 Mitan and 01:01:18.92 Mark McCracken Elon Musk on a smaller scale. 01:01:19.28 Mitan could we wrote elop ah and But that could be an outlet for the thing I was talking about, like I write an article of my nonsense and then post it to this platform, get fake phrase. 01:01:29.80 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:01:32.53 Mitan It 01:01:32.62 Mark McCracken ah You've got another one, Michael, on Google. Well, the Jesus one was pretty funny, although I have to paste it in here for some reason. 01:01:35.39 Michael Uh, yeah, I had, I mean, I'll go to, yeah, the, uh, what did I have? I had to Google, Gemini is telling a grad student, please die. 01:01:42.75 Mitan Oh 01:01:45.67 Michael Uh, I just, I just, I liked the, um, I mean, it's not very nice for the person, but this is the, this is the quote. 01:01:46.28 Mitan yeah. 01:01:49.46 Mark McCracken serious. 01:01:52.64 Michael This is for you human, you and only you Gemini told the user, you are not special. Sounds like a fight club at this point. You're not special. You are not important and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. 01:02:04.58 Michael You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You're a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die, the AI added. Please. That's really dark, isn't it? 01:02:16.32 Mark McCracken so 01:02:16.86 Michael What's not clear is that when you read the article, it's not clear whether the people that have been talking have been trying to... 01:02:23.01 Mark McCracken So... I assume so. 01:02:23.76 Michael I imagine there must be a whole bunch of people who are trying to get stuff out of the bot and then they can post, they can go, look at what Google, demonize it to me. 01:02:26.62 Mitan Yeah, yeah. 01:02:28.65 Mark McCracken i didn't know how much of it i didn't I don't know how much believing whatever the Clickbait headline title of that is. 01:02:35.36 Mitan Yeah, yeah. 01:02:35.89 Mark McCracken I'm not sure I believe it. 01:02:37.39 Mitan And and if it was real, maybe. 01:02:37.81 Michael i believe I believe that this came out. but And I think even Google even google said you know that that has come out. 01:02:40.47 Mark McCracken I believe it said that, yeah. 01:02:43.77 Michael But the the ways that in which it's been prompted to do that. 01:02:47.53 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:02:49.72 Michael Yep. 01:02:51.95 Mark McCracken um I saw that Russia has been cutting some undersea cables. um And I did read this. I went through the whole thing because I'm diligent. but And I was like, oh, that sounds terrible, undersea cables. 01:03:03.58 Mark McCracken That sounds like a massive endeavor to overlay those and really expensive and you know take forever to fix. Apparently it takes them five to 15 days to fix an undersea cable. And I was like, that's pretty amazing. 01:03:13.20 Mitan That's pretty impressive. 01:03:14.05 Michael So that that's Ben. So I had an IT related story in this one. So we we we we switched over, at my last company, we switched over at one point, and we switched between two artifact registries, right? We switched over Harbor to JFrog. 01:03:30.06 Mark McCracken Jay Frog, the worst, in my opinion. 01:03:31.67 Michael like So to the the difference between them is, so and this was this was a this was in Taiwan. So there's a data center in Taiwan that's using Harbor, self-hosted. 01:03:43.69 Michael or co-located, and then it switches over to using JFrog, which is on the cloud in in Singapore. And and and the cut over happens, all the testing has been done, the cut over happens and the the to the latency is terrible. The latency is like really, really, really, really bad and between with with Taiwan talking about Singapore. And and what ended up happening is Basically this, that there's, there's undersea cables that link Taiwan to, you know, mainland Asia and they get cut on a semi-regular basis. 01:04:15.82 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:04:20.95 Michael and And maybe there's some, you know, some people have sort of said, you know, it might be a major superpower in the area, essentially. 01:04:26.91 Mark McCracken China thing. 01:04:28.59 Michael Yeah. Um, but that was taking like over a month to, over a month to do it. 01:04:35.06 Mark McCracken I imagine they're very expensive to lay, but yeah. 01:04:36.97 Michael Yeah. did is I wonder if it's a big part of it. If you were Elon Musk, is this is this great Starlink promo? 01:04:46.11 Mark McCracken Possibly. I mean, does he go around cutting all of the undersea cables and be like, look, this is the most reliable thing ever. 01:04:46.51 Mitan Yeah, yeah, probably. 01:04:50.88 Michael I can imagine that happening. 01:04:54.91 Mark McCracken So this one this next one I find quite interesting. Northern Ireland. I didn't pick it because it's Northern Ireland, but because it's interesting. and Council's an IT contact with Fujitsu for schools worth £485 million. pos So just a week before the whole Postmaster thing came out, and I was like, this is terrible, this was awarded to Fujitsu. 01:05:10.52 Michael Mm hmm. 01:05:14.14 Mark McCracken And so three different companies bid for this contract, which is to provide basically any kind of IT software service whatsoever. that a school could ever possibly need from preschool all the way up to the end of secondary school and apparently there were three three or four different companies in Capita and TCS was pulled out leaving Fujitsu as the only provider left with a bid of 485 million which was accepted and I was like That is so much money. 01:05:42.65 Mark McCracken That is so, so, so much money. like how How can it cost that much? And can I win this contract and build it from scratch? Because that sign's like not unreasonable. 01:05:53.70 Mark McCracken I'm sure with half a billion pounds I could spin up some company and hire some people and get this done. if What can you possibly build for $485 million that you can't build for $385 million? 01:06:03.44 Michael maybe maybe this is Maybe this is your calling. 01:06:06.25 Mark McCracken and pocket Exactly, and pocket myself a million quid. 01:06:08.07 Michael Career break. 01:06:08.94 Mitan Yeah, correct, correct, correct. 01:06:09.68 Mark McCracken Career bridge. 01:06:09.75 Michael Do it. 01:06:10.79 Mitan Get on cursor, here you go. 01:06:10.98 Mark McCracken Gotta learn everything there is to know about school software. 01:06:12.26 Michael Young cursor. 01:06:12.83 Mitan That's all you need, you a cur and 485 million pounds, that's all you need. 01:06:14.70 Michael Dear cursor, can I have a school? Can I have a school? 01:06:16.84 Mark McCracken yeah 01:06:17.22 Michael Yeah, can I have a school? Yeah. 01:06:19.43 Mark McCracken It sounds great. 01:06:19.99 Mitan ah you 01:06:20.36 Mark McCracken ah but that that they can So they cancelled the contract. The contract was already started. And 11 months later, and by mutual agreement, they both just said, we're going to stop now. 01:06:25.72 Michael ah again Okay. Okay. 01:06:30.72 Mark McCracken So they've got no contract at all. So now they've got nobody to do this stuff. Some of the top comments on there were great. 01:06:34.93 Michael you. 01:06:36.06 Mark McCracken They're like, yeah, well, maybe it's a good thing. They're not going to spend $485 million seeing as We taught people before we had computers, so just yeah just don't spend the money. 01:06:44.13 Mitan she 01:06:47.24 Mark McCracken Seems like a sensible way to go. ah Now, this one I'm really keen on. Microsoft ah has had a night in the last few days, and there's a really, really lengthy process to sign up for that, which I regret wasting five minutes doing. But they have announced they've got a new, 01:07:07.33 Mark McCracken computer and Microsoft Link 365. It doesn't do anything other than connect to Windows 365. So rather than Windows on your desktop, it's just a wrapper for a remote desktop to Windows 365. 01:07:19.64 Michael But isn't, isn't that, isn't that a thing client and then having those things existed for, yeah. 01:07:23.10 Mark McCracken It is exactly that. Have those things existed for many, many years? 01:07:26.56 Michael but Yeah. They used to, I remember working in companies and it used to just be a little, I mean, actually to be honest, you can get like an internal, like ah a knock these days that probably is the same size, but they would just sit there and and connect to something, right? 01:07:28.08 Mark McCracken Just a thin client? 01:07:31.20 Mark McCracken Like a Chromebook, but different? 01:07:36.39 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:07:38.76 Michael And give you a desktop and maybe they're coming, coming back into fashion. 01:07:41.30 Mark McCracken Sounds great. $350, which I thought was a little bit of expensive for what is effectively worse than a MacBook mini. 01:07:45.46 Michael That's quite okay. 01:07:48.54 Mitan Thank you. 01:07:52.13 Mark McCracken It's just a little tiny nothing that connects to the internet and you got to provide your own screen and everything. 01:07:56.51 Michael And you've got a buyer subscription as well to know. 01:07:57.96 Mark McCracken Oh yeah, you've got to buy a subscription. So maybe it's $349. 01:08:00.03 Michael £350. 01:08:02.28 Mark McCracken I was like, maybe that's a little expensive. 01:08:03.65 Michael That's glomly. 01:08:04.68 Mark McCracken Don't get me wrong. I love the idea. I would buy one for like $99. I don't think that I would. It seems a little expensive. But if you're a massive corporate organization, it seems like a great way to waste some more Microsoft dollars. 01:08:15.95 Michael But Mac Minis are like, Mac Minis are so cheap. 01:08:18.93 Mark McCracken yeah Actually, I've heard reviews for the last one and it's like astounding. They're like £600 for an M4 chip and it does loads of stuff really well. 01:08:25.01 Michael Yeah. 16 giga if I'm sticking out 01:08:26.52 Mark McCracken It's just like a Mac Studio, my trusty Mac Studio, but smaller and a lot cheaper. And now I'm looking at my Mac Studio thinking, why can't you be smaller and cheaper? 01:08:37.87 Mark McCracken um GitHub are giving away $1.25 million, $10,000 at a time, for open source peeps to stay secure. They've got a fund that says, if you're running some kind of important project, we will give you money to keep doing security stuff, which seemed pretty generous. That was quite tough with that. 01:08:56.67 Michael ah e Do you really contribute to open source? 01:09:00.56 Mark McCracken Only if it's my own repository and I feel like, oh, well, it's not sensitive, then I would default to putting it open source. 01:09:09.25 Mitan Yeah, and I have nothing of value to contribute to open source. 01:09:12.51 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:09:15.10 Mitan Although it's some of the framework I have in mind for that personal data data kind of ah platform in the future and how that evolves, open source is definitely an area. 01:09:25.29 Mark McCracken So. 01:09:26.19 Michael you You will. You think you will open source it or you may have. 01:09:28.29 Mitan ah go Well, no not this. I think it's a broader broader concept of of how people manage their personal data um on their own infrastructure. 01:09:30.38 Michael Okay. 01:09:35.19 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:09:36.41 Mitan And I think that's something that could be open source and in a yeah and of a different way. 01:09:40.30 Mark McCracken So on on the topic of open source, obviously the the best way to rack up a whole bunch of open source stuff is at work, but what is your workplace stance? So Michael, does your workplace do a lot of open sourcing of stuff? 01:09:52.89 Michael Uh, so, uh, good question. 01:09:53.03 Mark McCracken And is it difficult? 01:09:56.44 Michael for So I'm, I'm working in public sector at the moment and they have, they have, they have a whole bunch of private stuff, but you can also link your, they also have a bunch of stuff that's, that's, that's public. 01:10:10.37 Michael So they've, they've got an organization on GitHub. 01:10:10.48 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:10:11.93 Michael but Um, your part of the onboarding is you link your GitHub profile to their organization and then you can contribute stuff to there and you can sort of see it and It's quite, I mean, I haven't got a lot on there, but it's, uh, this is pretty cool. 01:10:26.64 Mark McCracken Yeah, well, they've got 1,600 repos in the government digital service GitHub. So fair. 01:10:30.33 Michael Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. So 01:10:32.53 Mark McCracken I don't think that my current employer is it's very big on it. But at the Guardian, they they've got like thousands of repositories that are open source, ah which sounds great. Mostly it's just people saying, well, I've done this thing and there's no reason it shouldn't be open source. 01:10:43.95 Mark McCracken But there are quite a few projects where they've made something that is really quite good and ubiquitous within the Guardian. They said, well, this is open source, so we'll give it away. And there's been a reasonable amount of uptake from other you know, competitors, so to speak, but they're like, well, we're not competing on who's got the best tools or competing on who can do the best news. 01:11:00.65 Mark McCracken So they were quite happy to release a bunch of their tools and really encouraged adoption. So that was quite nice. 01:11:05.06 Michael pretty 01:11:05.73 Mark McCracken Yeah. Um, I've lost. Hold up. Hold up. Christmas scams. They cost over 11 million pounds. And somebody is spending money telling people don't fall for the Christmas scams, but that's about it. 01:11:16.71 Mark McCracken I had one other, I had one other one. 01:11:17.75 Michael There's a there's black black Friday scams as well I'm getting emails about game us from banks saying because it's I'm getting emails saying something go live tonight. 01:11:18.91 Mark McCracken Oh yeah. 01:11:25.31 Michael So So anyone buying stuff for black Friday? 01:11:29.65 Mitan No, I've got no money, mate. 01:11:29.68 Mark McCracken ah 01:11:31.09 Michael Okay, sorry don't mean to rub it in miss 01:11:31.61 Mitan I've got to survive a few more months. so but I'm to buy stuff for the kitchen so I can create some cooking content. 01:11:34.79 Mark McCracken Simultaneously spent all the money and bought everything i'm I reasonably need. 01:11:37.73 Michael Yeah. 01:11:40.25 Mark McCracken They're just once now. 01:11:43.33 Mitan that was my 01:11:44.60 Mark McCracken Two air fryers. Or have you seen a theory about having a two dishwashers? 01:11:51.39 Michael No. 01:11:51.75 Mitan No. 01:11:51.97 Mark McCracken Have two dishwashers, never put any dishes away, simply open the dishwasher that is clean, take dishes out of there, and then the other dishwasher, put them in there, and then, repeat. 01:12:02.87 Mitan dont give me the idea that 01:12:04.16 Mark McCracken You don't need storage for any, seems uncovered space, you don't need storage for any glasses, please, glass storage. 01:12:04.25 Michael To save so saves saves some cupboard space. 01:12:05.00 Mitan of brilliant 01:12:06.62 Michael and 01:12:09.85 Mitan achieve 01:12:13.03 Mark McCracken You're just perpetually taking out and putting into the disruption. Anyway, I have one other weird anecdote on on the darker side of AI. So I was speaking to somebody this week that said they have a young child, a prepubescent boy, who is just getting into, well, he's getting into boy things, so he said, he's exploring himself. 01:12:32.47 Mark McCracken And obviously, they've 01:12:33.53 Michael does Does that mean what you think it means? Well, I think it means, okay, yeah, all right, yeah. 01:12:35.24 Mark McCracken Yeah, for probably, something like that. um And as parents, you know they've've they've they've done the good stuff. They've put up firewalls and whatnot. But a firewall, there's nothing in the day of AI where you can run your own AI models and get it to predict things. 01:12:46.44 Mark McCracken Anyway, point being, he's he's eventually got his hands on an image, right and um an image of ah at least a topless woman. 01:12:51.37 Michael Okay. 01:12:54.35 Michael Okay. 01:12:54.50 Mark McCracken And he said, this isn't this is this isn't quite good enough. What can I do with AI on this? And obviously, he hasn't got any Photoshop skills. So he goes to AI. 01:13:03.13 Michael okay 01:13:03.83 Mark McCracken and this This person told me what he decided to do with this image was Photoshop his own face onto the movies. 01:13:14.60 Mark McCracken And I was just like, what sort of logic is this? What is this? So yeah, that that was my other curious anecdote. 01:13:22.41 Michael Okay. 01:13:26.40 Michael How did his, how did his parents find Okay, he's looking in his like, web logs and there you go. 01:13:28.88 Mark McCracken Oh, they were, they were quite keen on like locking it down. And they're like, okay, but was, yeah, it's one of those separated families. And then, you know, the other parent has bought an iPhone, you'll never have this problem, Michael, as long as you stick to the pact. 01:13:37.49 Michael Okay. 01:13:41.44 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:13:42.03 Michael Okay. 01:13:43.68 Mark McCracken And ah the other other parent has bought an iPhone, he's got an iPhone, they're like, okay, well, we'll at least check that you're behaving well. And they've checked it and be like, I can't imagine the face opening up the photos. 01:13:53.62 Michael I don't even know what you'd say. Like, where does that conversation go? 01:13:54.99 Mark McCracken Opening up the photos app would be like, yeah, it looks like, I don't know, Meghan Markle or whoever, but why is this face on there? Anyway, um yeah, but very odd. 01:14:08.96 Mark McCracken and We're near the end. We're getting into recommendations. So we've got some recommendations. I've got a couple. I tried Jess's recommendation from last week, sleep token. 01:14:17.97 Michael Okay. 01:14:18.43 Mark McCracken That band is very badly named. 01:14:20.66 Michael Did you just settle in for a nice sleep? 01:14:20.95 Mark McCracken I thought it was going to be quite relaxing. It was nothing like that at all. It was kind of one one of only two genres of music that I don't like metal. And I was like, oh, I don't think this is really for me. 01:14:31.70 Mitan You know, I miss him. I love my own. 01:14:33.14 Mark McCracken And I'm not really that into metal now. And I also tried your recommendation, Michael, and I think I've heard better than you did. I think you recommended Deep Work by Kyle Newport. 01:14:42.03 Michael Okay. yep Yeah. 01:14:42.98 Mark McCracken One for the audiobook, because that means I can do something else at the same time, so I don't have to you know pay attention. 01:14:46.45 Michael is exactly what the book says. 01:14:48.52 Mark McCracken Yeah, exactly that. 01:14:48.54 Michael yeah okay 01:14:49.20 Mark McCracken so so So I was playing a game at the same time. I was on the airplane. And it's not bad. 01:14:54.37 Michael If he listens, if he listens to this, he's going to be upset. 01:14:54.41 Mark McCracken It's OK. Yeah, if if I listen to this, it's going to go amazingly well. Yeah, so so those are two recommendations that I tried out, and my reviews of those. 01:14:59.73 Michael Okay. 01:15:03.02 Michael Okay. Cool. 01:15:04.35 Mark McCracken ah Have you got any recommendations, Michael? 01:15:07.18 Michael Uh, I am, so I've been listening to, so I was on jury service with a friend of mine, which is quite cool. And, uh, He recommended someone called Father John Misty. 01:15:20.04 Michael I don't know if he rings a bell to me, so I've been listening to some of their music and it's really good. 01:15:21.90 Mark McCracken Nope. 01:15:25.88 Michael I don't know how to describe it. It's got this kind of, his voice sounds a bit like Elton John, but he's got an album that's called, is it called Pure Comedy? 01:15:37.30 Michael It's all about kind of like a dystopian future, like the lyrics are very dystopian future. It's really good, so I did that. and I realised after last week that I didn't like read any books that weren't tech books. 01:15:53.05 Michael Yesterday I deliberately went on The Kindle Store, an important £1 book, just to read something. So I'm reading, I really like Stephen King. 01:16:01.03 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:16:01.87 Michael ah read i yeah I find like I read a Stephen King book and hairs are coming off my arm. So he had a book, he's got a book about a dog, a massive Saint Bernard dog, who ends up quite early on in the book, 01:16:12.49 Mark McCracken Oh, 01:16:16.32 Michael kind of getting his head stuck into a mini cave and getting bitten by rabid bats and then and then for the rest of the book he turns into a and killing like monster yeah as as the rabies takes over him and so yes i'm enjoying that so that's been good but yeah i haven't been watching your tv can't really uh trying to get back into the work in working working mindset so 01:16:20.50 Mitan Okay, thank you. 01:16:21.77 Mark McCracken dear. 01:16:27.39 Mark McCracken Yeah, the Jekyll and Hyde of dogs. Sounds like that's what that is. 01:16:34.73 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:16:38.68 Mark McCracken um 01:16:41.60 Mark McCracken Lovely. I discovered NASA. So I read a really interesting article about NASA, about managing IT in the final frontier, from which I took away from that. Oh my god, NASA got a streaming TV service. They got an Apple TV app where you could just stream it. You don't even have to log in. It's great. And you can stream shows about NASA stuff. And it's great. So if you want to try that out, give it a whiz. The other one I had was some music. I listened to Girly by Alexander Safier, which is pretty great. 01:17:09.97 Mark McCracken stuff with that they had a really interesting song actually that seamlessly transitions from 5-4 timing back to 4-4 timing and back again multiple times and i was like what is this no one does this except for obviously 5-4 by Gorillaz but that stays in 5-4 this kind of seamlessly switches and i was like that's pretty weird no i've heard of two i've listened to them once or twice but it's sort of the sort of thing that's you know slightly metaly that's what i would avoid 01:17:29.23 Michael Did you listen do you listen to the tool, or? It seems like the kind of thing tool would do, and like, yeah. 01:17:37.46 Michael It's like too metal for your head to be saying. 01:17:37.89 Mitan Yeah, I could do that more of that. 01:17:39.45 Mark McCracken Yeah, there we are. 01:17:39.89 Mitan i will put to 01:17:41.62 Mark McCracken Mitten, you've neglected to write down anything, but have you got anything off the cuff? 01:17:44.78 Mitan I'm sorry, I didn't... I'm terrible with prep, apologies. 01:17:47.29 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:17:49.30 Mitan But I'll tell you anyway, so I've got two. So one, when I'm working, I've been listening to more like things like orbital, which is more like, I don't know how to describe it, it's like EDM-y, but it's kind of that kind of tempo that's quite good for like focus stuff. 01:17:56.78 Michael Mm-hmm. 01:17:59.40 Michael electronic. 01:18:05.10 Mitan ah So they're pretty cool. And then um more on old school. So I keep up to date with like new music, but old school ah recently you just been re-listened a lot to A Tribe Called Quest and The Low End Theory. 01:18:19.01 Mitan It's just one of the best albums. 01:18:19.66 Mark McCracken Solid. 01:18:20.64 Mitan It's just a, it's a bit of an oldie. 01:18:22.19 Mark McCracken solid. 01:18:23.28 Mitan And then... 01:18:23.68 Mark McCracken I did actually find some really good inspiration. Apple Music did a thing a while ago in the 100 greatest albums of all time. And I thought, maybe I'll just go through these. 01:18:30.87 Michael I saw that, yeah. 01:18:32.14 Mark McCracken And then I just got stuck on the first one. I was like, la the miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which is absolutely fantastic. 01:18:36.77 Mitan so 01:18:37.25 Mark McCracken um But they've actually got a podcast series as well, going through some of the makings of it. So they're like, pair the podcast series with things. And I'm like, oh, well, I listen to this album, first of all, and not really get any of it. And then I listen to the podcast where they explain it. 01:18:48.06 Mark McCracken all I'll be like, oh, yeah, no, I'm educated, or miseducated, so to speak. um But yeah, that that was pretty good, so so I would recommend that. 01:18:55.85 Mitan and then yeah ah TV is, as I mentioned, like well we're on honeymoon, we're in New Zealand and um does not that much that happens basically after ah after dark or like a big chunks while we're saying places is like awesome but we ended up watching a show called monk and I don't know if you've ever watched it before is it on the in on the thing was the 90s yeah yeah it's like a 90s like detective kind of show 01:19:20.48 Michael Oh, the strings will. 01:19:22.21 Mark McCracken The really old one? 01:19:27.98 Mitan um 01:19:28.79 Michael What made you settle on that? like 01:19:30.67 Mitan I had prayers and cousins have been like obsessed with it since like childhood and they and it just recently came on Netflix so ah we ended up just like giving it a go and then genuinely we finished eight seasons in ah a few weeks but we got for about five seasons in a three week early moon so um and it's just it's been stand out like the one of the best like 01:19:31.18 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:19:31.27 Michael and 01:19:52.73 Mark McCracken That's a lot. You mustn't have had much time to do basically anything else at all. 01:19:55.59 Mitan but this was This is why I wasn't like ah at home and working at least. so and 01:20:01.52 Michael New Zealand's so lovely. 01:20:01.57 Mark McCracken Oh, I didn't say anything. 01:20:03.37 Michael It's so nice to see New Zealand coming. 01:20:03.90 Mitan ah 01:20:06.03 Michael No, I mean, I'm not talking about that stuff. 01:20:06.07 Mitan Oh, no, no, no. That's it. 01:20:07.43 Michael I'm just saying, like, the... 01:20:07.60 Mitan We were out for like three weeks. We had a lot, we had a lot of time. 01:20:09.66 Michael Yeah. 01:20:10.48 Mitan So, um, so yeah, I mean, probably a little excessive on the, on the mug, but I think on one of the flights, cause it's like a 27 hour flight, one of the flights was 18 hours. 01:20:10.94 Michael Yeah. 01:20:20.47 Mitan We watched nine episodes on that flight. So it's like nine hours worth to kill the time. 01:20:23.53 Michael Oh, well. 01:20:26.71 Mitan So yeah, I got a little bit, uh, uh, addicted to that. And then the other one is, um, the solar system one with, uh, Brian Cox. uh recently that's come out was absolutely brilliant like we're watching that um so uh check that out if you can um and then books wise i i said to use blinkus now more than than anything which is like 20 minute like deal deals with my short attention span clearly yeah 01:20:35.30 Mark McCracken Ah. 01:20:47.50 Michael I had that for a while. yeah 01:20:51.54 Mark McCracken The total antithesis of deep work, yes. 01:20:55.44 Michael i i never I had it because i i so I did one of those trials and I forgot to I forgot to cancel it. 01:21:02.40 Mitan ah 01:21:03.75 Michael And I got this bill for like 80 quid and I was like, what is this? And it's like a whole year of Blinkist. And I just, ah I tried it. I thought I want to get my 80 quid's worth, but didn't. 01:21:12.70 Mark McCracken It's gone down the shit. 01:21:12.88 Mitan Yeah, no, but but it works for me, especially like on a walk or or something like that. 01:21:14.35 Mark McCracken Get it back. 01:21:14.72 Michael Yeah. 01:21:19.02 Mitan can It can just 20 minutes really kind of gets to the gist of it. 01:21:21.96 Michael Condenses the ideas, the knit of the book into. 01:21:23.09 Mitan And if if it's something that I have found interesting interesting, I'll probably go and actually get the book or or go into a bit more deeper, but it allows me to like flick through. 01:21:27.42 Michael Yeah. 01:21:31.78 Mitan It's like a a bit more than just like reading the back of a book now kind of thing. 01:21:36.80 Michael View. 01:21:37.15 Mitan and 01:21:37.31 Mark McCracken It goes through Mitten's mental metabolism very quickly and out to the mental diarrhea and all into the all into the summary. 01:21:42.10 Mitan Yeah, exactly. Short attention spans and verbal diary, mental diary, a lot love diary oh Yeah, so they're the major major like a things I think are probably... 01:21:55.81 Mark McCracken Working. Anything else to recommend over at the end? 01:21:58.92 Michael um I'm going to I'm going to put one in because you because you mentioned a like electronic. 01:22:00.77 Mark McCracken Go on then. 01:22:03.44 Michael So there's a there's an artist I can't listen to metal when I code or work. 01:22:10.38 Mark McCracken fire 01:22:10.40 Michael ah can I can when I run, but I can't. So I listen to electronic and ambient. And there's an artist called Worried About Satan, which sounds like he's going to be really metal, and but but he's not. 01:22:24.42 Michael And he just makes really awesome electronic music. And he's quite prolific. And he's quite a nice guy as well. like he's he's he's just 01:22:31.70 Mark McCracken Nice guy. 01:22:33.55 Michael You know, just, just, uh, he's, you know, just does a normal job and, and tries to do the stuff in his spare time and I'm on his patron. 01:22:34.78 Mark McCracken He's just... 01:22:41.62 Michael And then he's yeah just pretty chatty and he's just, you know, like, he makes playlists for people and stuff like that. So, uh, if he's got loads of, loads of good albums, so check out, it's really good to work to the kind of thing you can mostly know lyrics and. 01:22:52.02 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:22:52.66 Mitan Cool. 01:22:54.44 Mark McCracken I got one other last one. There's a guy on Instagram, something called Somewhere Soulful, and he just posts videos of, here's a new album that came out that's really soul-y, really jazzy. 01:23:05.32 Mark McCracken Some of those are pretty great, and I listened to one called Cinema 3000 this week, so I'll stick that in the show notes. 01:23:05.37 Michael Okay. 01:23:09.30 Michael Okay. 01:23:10.82 Mitan I mean, just just just on that as we we finish go in terms of music, like, do any of you actually watch like YouTube, ah like react videos or anything like that? 01:23:11.61 Michael Cool. 01:23:12.06 Mark McCracken Wicked! Go on then. 01:23:21.72 Michael So I've been sent somebody, my mate was like, you've got to watch this stuff. 01:23:23.40 Mitan Right. 01:23:25.15 Michael And I was like, he's really into react videos. 01:23:28.50 Mitan Yeah, I know I could see the judgment right now. I like i was the same. I i was the same. like and I was just like, oh, this is weird. like why Why would you do this? But in terms of keeping up with new music and and and basically new albums and things like that, they're actually really good formats in which you can basically see like like ah like a new album or or find new music and you kind of work 01:23:49.99 Mark McCracken Are you telling me that during the React tutorials, people are recommending new music and you're like, this is great. 01:23:55.69 Mitan right 01:23:56.90 Mark McCracken This is what I came for. 01:23:57.76 Mitan my My YouTube algo is just absolutely fucked. now it does so it this in terms of If you want to try and find like new music or or find what's trending or or whatever and and not have to go think about it too much, go find some of these react videos. 01:24:13.38 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:24:14.13 Michael if If you're the person on that podcast, you have to like, people are looking for your reactions. What do you it's what you what you do? like how she like 01:24:23.75 Mitan but 01:24:24.06 Michael It's a reaction video, right? It's people going like, I always say it'd be like, someone reacts to a great vocal line. 01:24:25.54 Mitan Yes, I'm going to use a video of them lifting in and then dissecting the reaction, reaction, not react not video reaction. 01:24:26.97 Mark McCracken Oh, you mean, hang on, you mean reaction video. 01:24:30.34 Michael They go, reaction video. 01:24:31.72 Mark McCracken You don't mean like, Oh, I thought you were talking about reaction to it. 01:24:32.90 Michael No, no, no, no, react. okay 01:24:36.52 Mitan yeah 01:24:37.95 Michael No. 01:24:39.21 Mark McCracken All right. 01:24:39.25 Mitan e 01:24:39.84 Mark McCracken We'll just edit that whole bit out. 01:24:40.88 Mitan that's yeah That's completely the whole idea. 01:24:40.92 Mark McCracken Right. 01:24:41.06 Michael It'd be like, it's it's normally something like vocal coach reacts to Freddie Mercury, you know, like solo or high note or. 01:24:41.12 Mark McCracken Fine. 01:24:42.48 Mitan Yeah. 01:24:46.70 Mitan yeah 01:24:50.11 Mitan There's two guys put like 10 in the tables that are pretty good. It's like a father and son kind of one. 01:24:53.34 Mark McCracken Yeah. 01:24:54.75 Mitan And they just go through like albums, even old albums and stuff like that. And I don't know why, but it's just one of those things that ends up being quite addictive in terms of its format. 01:25:04.75 Mark McCracken like All right. 01:25:05.53 Mitan So yeah, let me do it from outside. 01:25:06.83 Mark McCracken I think we're done. I think we're done. We'll call it here. 01:25:08.56 Michael Cool. Yeah. 01:25:09.87 Mitan Yeah, draw. 01:25:10.23 Mark McCracken All right. The end. 01:25:10.80 Michael All right.