Daniel (00:10) And we're back after this short message from our sponsor, Do Not Touch the Microphone Cable. With Do Not Touch the Microphone Cable, you can enjoy podcast recordings without having interruptions. So yeah, please do not touch the microphone cable today. I will very much try to keep my fingers away from all the cables. Apparently, one of them is kind of fiddly. So apologies for the interruption. Dave (00:15) Indeed. you That's normally my trick. Disconnections used to be my forte on this show. Daniel (00:41) Yeah, what happened? I was always being so superior. Dave (00:44) Yeah, yeah, I know. I like to think maybe this was active cat in the background on your side, actually, Daniel, this disconnection. But if I've got my editing skills down well, we'll see. Then maybe it's just a little blip and nobody really noticed anything. So people are going to wonder, what are we even talking about? And on that note, what are we even talking about? I showed off my keyboard, you got disconnected, but if for the intro you left everybody on a cliffhanger you've got news Daniel (01:20) I got news, yes. I wanted to wait a little bit until this is all like basically like smoothing along and like all cleared up and everything. But I'm moving cities. I am like right now I'm in the very south of Germany in Augsburg and I'm going to move to the very north to Hamburg. So still a Berg, but a different one. They speak slightly different there. They eat more fish than here in the South. They have significantly less hills and mountains. But yeah, they have a very fun city. So I'm moving. Dave (01:50) Okay. Okay. a fun, vibrant, think bigger city than where you are at the moment. Daniel (02:09) way bigger. Like Hamburg is the third biggest city in Germany, I think might be the second biggest, it might be the third. I think it's the third. And Augsburg is the 17th. Dave (02:11) Yeah. Do you get that? Are you going to get there by train? You could be moving by train as you go up the country. Yeah. Yeah. I might. Daniel (02:28) I not a move. Dave (02:36) I might have to splice some Journey Don't Stop Believing into the show Daniel, because you're just a small time boy. Daniel (02:40) I am just a small-time boy. I'm taking the Midnight Train going to Hamburg, but no, have like, you don't see this, like my background looks kind of normal, but just off the camera, and I'm not touching the laptop and moving the camera right now because otherwise the microphone will disconnect or whatever, but just off camera there's a stack that is like chest high of still folded moving curtains. It is huge. It's like we have like 120 boxes. And so we are actually gonna rent a lorry. As they say, I'm sending you this picture now and I'm gonna post it later on the mastodons and then our fans can appreciate like the amount of packing. Like I already packed three of those, but like, so it's like 170 to. Dave (03:34) That's quite a bit of packing. Daniel (03:35) Also, there's a bit of overhead. It's probably going to be more like 80 or something, but there was a bundle deal, so I bought them all in one package, on one pallet even. Dave (03:44) better to have better to have too many things get halfway through packing and have too few so yeah Daniel (03:53) And this way I can also pack them a little bit more by topic. I'm going to number them and then actually write down the contents on the side, also have a database, but there's going to be like an Apple Note or something that just says, number 17 contains Lego and lamps. Dave (04:00) Mm-hmm. Ooh, see, you're going to have like a manifest as it were. When we emigrated UK to New Zealand, that was the best house move ever for packing stuff because we had a removals company that specialized in overseas transportation of all your stuff and all of that. And the reason it was the best was because they Daniel (04:19) Yes. Manifest, that's such a word. Yes, exactly. Dave (04:43) They came in as a team and within three and a half, four hours or so, they'd done the entire house. They just went through and it was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. And, know, we sort of sat there like, hey, do you need a hand? Can we help? And they're like, this is literally our job. Get the F out of the way pretty much. Daniel (04:50) Ha That's awesome. Nice. Yeah, we are getting a moving company, it's like we're getting the offer where we pack everything and they like carry everything and drive the lorry. But they do, they do, but they will disassemble, I think very like a very big cupboards. But other than that, yeah, like, they, will, they were kind of like, they will, huh, what's it called? They will wrap them like they will wrap the bikes and stuff like that in cellophane or whatever. But Dave (05:10) Mm-hmm. Yep. Nice. Wait. Yep. Daniel (05:32) the dealers, we pack the stuff into the boxes, which is fine by me. Like I have the manifest and everything. And so, but also I need to get rid of a lot of stuff because the new apartment is going to be one room less. So that's the other thing. Like I can't just like get a company to like to just pack everything and unpack everything in the new apartment because like apartment prices or rentals, rental prices are quite a bit higher in Hamburg than they are in Oxford. So we are getting one desk room. Dave (05:37) Yeah, that's not a bad deal. Yeah. Ooooo Got it. Yep. Daniel (06:03) And so like there's gonna be a bit of a reduction like in books and stuff like that and also like just today I actually sold a few old a bit of a few pieces of old hardware like someone actually bought my PlayStation VR For not a lot of money, but like it's way better than throwing it away Dave (06:22) Yeah, absolutely. And I kind of like the effect that a house move can do for sort of making you have to kind of think through like, you end up having to ask the ultimate question, like instead of just going, I can hang onto this and put this in this cupboard or whatever. The question then ends up being, am I taking this with me? And that forces that one, right? You either sell it, you junk it, you take it with you. So yeah, life, life tip. Daniel (06:48) But that's also why I've got to start this process now because having those decisions takes a bit of time. also, if I decide, hey, I don't want to keep this, I don't want to throw things away that might have value for people. then I have to, I don't know. In the end, if I'm getting too tired of it, I might do it. But I'm going to try my best to find good homes for things. There used to be this collection place for people like Dave (06:52) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Daniel (07:17) where people just like dumped their like still valuable stuff, but they didn't want to sell just give away, but they closed down, which is kind of sad because I, that would be so cool. But yeah, I'm sending like, I'm sending people like, or gifting, gifting some things and putting some things on eBay or the local variation of Craigslist. So, yeah. Dave (07:40) Doing the thing, doing the big move. That's going to be interesting. So telemetry deck is going to be based half out of Hamburg now with you being there, Daniel (07:51) I yeah, like, so the official company address is gonna stay in Augsburg, just as it was always. But I'm gonna be a 99 % remote worker. I'm still gonna be in Augsburg every now and then, like the train ride is not too horrible. And there's like, there's other Augsburgian friends that I wanna still continue meeting. like, I'm gonna be here every now and then. But yeah, I'm gonna be fully remote again. Dave (07:56) Mm-hmm. Yep. Daniel (08:20) Luckily the new apartment does have a Daniel's office. So that is possible. And then yeah, let's see how it goes. Dave (08:27) Nice, nice. I was going to ask about that because yeah, slightly biased or whatever, but I wanted to make sure you still had your podcasting zone in the downsizing. Daniel (08:38) There is, yeah. So yeah, we have like, the layout is kind of cool. Like it's like one very huge room that is very like, I don't know, very long and not very, and a bit narrow. And that's kind of living room and kitchen and eating dining area. And there's of course a bedroom and then there's my small office. so, yeah, that's kind of cool. Or even though it turns out that Alex is gonna be working from home every now and then as well. we, like she might work from the kitchen table or something. Dave (09:09) Right. I'm sure you'll, you'll figure it all out and you'll have, ⁓ I guess eventually you'll figure out things like co-working spaces and stuff like that as well to maybe give yourself a bit of thing. Yeah. Daniel (09:18) That is the other thing. Like, have you heard about the Chaos Computer Club? It's this thing where like weird people and nerds and left-leaning computer people and security computer people and queer computer people, I don't know, they all mingle. And that was founded in Hamburg. It's very chaotic. That was founded in Hamburg and there's like a lot of like representation in Hamburg. So... Dave (09:23) Yes, yes I have. It sounds like chaos. Daniel (09:46) I'm so gonna try and connect to people there. Also there's various other co-working spaces, startup hubs, that kind of thing. So I'm gonna have to explore that all. I have a list of things to check out and a few people to already talk to, but I think it's gonna take some time. Dave (09:46) Nice. I've got a suggestion for you. That's, it's very much a me thing, a bias thing, but if you're, if you're going to new coffee shops, you should keep a tally and assess them and do like a coffee crawl of all the best coffee shops in Hamburg. As you're in this discovery phase, and post about it, like post a photograph of yourself. Daniel (10:25) love the idea, but my friend, I'm going to, I'm moving. Like my bank account is going to be so empty. It's only going to be like home coffee for me for a long while. But no, I might actually do that. Like what, I might take notes and then post them on the socials. Just like, okay, this coffee shop, 405. Dave (10:36) Ha ha ha. We'll have to set up a little buy Daniel a coffee thing and then maybe we can send you on a mission. Daniel (10:56) Every time it ticks over 5 euros, will be okay, I gotta take the laptop, go out. Dave (11:02) I'm gonna do it now. Yep. You're on the move. I've been on the move in the last week. Not moving anywhere, but I've been, yeah, been overseas. Daniel (11:03) Yeah, gotta do it now. Yes, you've been on an aeroplane. Dave (11:18) I have indeed. So some listeners to the show might be aware, but I haven't traveled very much in recent years. I've had a lot of reasons not to. Health issues and various bits and bobs. But last week I traveled for the first time overseas since we emigrated to New Zealand. I went to Australia. ⁓ it's my first time going to Australia, first time visiting Melbourne and actually the first time meeting, ⁓ most of my team from my quote unquote day job. So that was, that was the purpose. was the reason. ⁓ Melbourne was very warm. ⁓ it was very cool. I really enjoyed, ⁓ they've got a, a really cool, ⁓ tram system that sort of crosses over the, over the city. So you can, the thing that was really cool for me was that in the the center of the city, the trams are free. So you've got a free tram zone and you can just hop on, hop off and kind of zip around the city. Yeah. So I loved that. Loved getting to see a lot of people that I think very highly of and care quite a bit about. It was great to see my teams, people that I've managed and people that I work with around them. And really it was a working trip. Daniel (12:26) That's amazing. Dave (12:46) And all honesty, like I couldn't tell you much about like, this place is really cool in Melbourne. Cause I was mostly dealing with just being in the office and the stunt and the other, but yeah, big trip for me. And, I'm definitely going to go back at some point, like the plan, a better plan for me, rather than just going and doing a few days of work would actually be to go one side of the weekend and spend some time actually as a tourist, ⁓ looking around Melbourne or something. Daniel (13:13) yeah, like Melbourne has a racetrack. Dave (13:15) Yeah, yeah, it does. It's got a lot of things and yeah, similar to yourself though, it's a situation of it is much bigger than where I currently live. And that was actually quite fun. It's probably five or six times at least bigger than Welly in a lot of ways. Yeah. Daniel (13:39) Oh, wow, I didn't know that. But yeah, you allowed me, you graciously gave me your flight numbers so I could follow along. You were on an Airbus A320, I believe. I think it was the A320neo, but I can't tell you the exact number, I forgot it. You kind of sent me a picture of the airplane wing and I was like, oh, oh, of course. And so, yeah, it was kind of fun to watch along while you were flying. Dave (13:45) Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty standard issue here. Yeah. I'm gonna have to look it up. Yeah. Yeah. I quite enjoy air travel to be honest. mean, put mentally to one side, the impact on the environment and everything else about it. like takeoff and landings, I find really fun. I like being able to look down on everything from up there. And you know, after some of those moments though, it is kind of just travel. You're just sat there waiting. So there is that too. Daniel (14:31) but also like the sheer technology of it, you know, like, yeah, you have this, you have this human made device that weighs like a hundred tons and it just flies. That's just like amazing. Like, I wish it wasn't so bad for the environment and I it wasn't so horrible being squeezed into these economy class seats. Dave (14:35) Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Dragging us through the air. Yep, yep for sure. I'm certainly getting leaning more towards seat upgrades and things in my older age now I felt the economy class crammed in this. Daniel (15:05) So how did your days, like how many days did you go? Like three or something, right? Dave (15:10) ⁓ yeah, traveled out Monday afternoon, ⁓ had an evening there just to myself. ⁓ got checked into hotel and all of that. And then had two, two days with my teams in the office, catching up with people, doing that sort of stuff. went out with some friends on the Tuesday evening. ⁓ and then, yeah, Wednesday evening, I just caught up with a friend. and we just had takeout and sat on the waterfront. that's nearby in the Docklands area. And then Thursday morning, I was straight back home. It was very much a flying visit, as it were. Daniel (15:48) Fantastic. yeah, and you met a friend of the show Jelly, right? Dave (15:51) I did indeed. Yes. Yes. So was awesome to finally meet Jelly in real life. I've worked with him, like I say, for the last two and a half years. So he's a brilliant fella. yeah, we got to have breakfast together on the Wednesday. Him, me and some of us in the team. So that was fantastic as well. yeah, so that was my trip to Straya or Ozzy. Daniel (16:20) Fantastic. I'm so happy for you that like because I know that's like, like there was a first time out of the country and like after the initial hit of COVID and everything and so like it's really awesome that you had such a pleasant or good experience most of the time. Dave (16:21) in the New Zealand vernacular. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. yeah, took a bit of doing. I mean, we're still pretty COVID conscious at home as well for various health reasons. so for me, the trip didn't end when I got back on the first day. Like I had to isolate someone at home for a few days. So it ended up being another Daniel (17:00) Yeah, fair. Dave (17:04) Yeah, was Monday after the Thursday before I came out of home ISO. So it was a bigger trip than just those days. But worth it to see people, worth it to have the experience. And yeah, probably not going to repeat the experience any time immediately, but certainly within the next year or so that it would be nice to do again. Like I say, see more of Melbourne. Yep. Daniel (17:26) Awesome. I also self isolated kinda because last weekend was our going away party. We invited a few people and told everyone they are not allowed to come in unless they are dressed up. So we were all dressed up. It was really fun. had an octopus onesie. Dave (17:35) Mm-hmm. You sent me some photos, but I definitely want to link anything if you've posted anywhere linkable. Daniel (17:55) It's not for the for the Internet sent me a DM sent me a DM if you want if you want to pictures good pictures of the octopus onesie Speaking off speaking off like this leads me to my next task because I Am now like remember few episodes ago when we were talking about the fact that Lisa Dave (17:58) Buy you a drink first eh? Mm-hmm. Daniel (18:21) actually listen like my coworker and co founder of the telemetry deck actually listens to this show. And so we gave her a task to say like Lisa post a unicorn emoji or sent me a send me a unicorn emoji via signal I think and then we'll know if she's listening. And so now I want to give another task but I haven't really figured out what task I want to give. I'm just like so I'm just like so so thrilled by the amount of power Dave (18:50) I have a test. Daniel (18:52) Like that can make people send me things. So yeah, go ahead. Dave (18:55) Well, I have a test wherever you are, Lisa, if you are listening to the show, take a selfie, post it somewhere and send Daniel the link. All right, so in the moment where you are, grab yourself on the selfie. Yeah, and honestly, if listeners are listening to this, like, what the hell? Okay, what's going on here? Like, feel free to join in. If you're listening to this, if you're still with us at this point, listening to everything we've talked about randomly so far, take a selfie, post it to the internet, drop us a link. You can email us very easily at contactatwaitingforeview.com. Daniel (19:09) I like that. I like that. It's kind of like be real. Yeah, I was just gonna say. Yeah, like right now. Ha Dave (19:39) And when we wrap up the show, we'll link our socials, but they're always in the show notes as well. Daniel (19:45) hashtag waiting for a selfie. Dave (19:48) Yes. Daniel (19:51) All right, is that your nudge to actually talk about some nerd topics maybe? Some tech, okay. I have a short one and then I want to know about your adventures. So what I did is, call, like what I'm basically doing all day, every day these days is either I'm like way deep into the implementation of Dave (19:51) ⁓ Some tech, maybe, yes, some tech. Go for it. Daniel (20:20) open ID, which gives me nightmares, or I'm causing our query servers to run out of memory. And so I have two things that are currently troubling the query servers, which one of them is the fact that we have thorny data. And the thorny data for as a recap is sometimes a specific day in the telemetry data set gets thorny in a way that any query that touches that specific day will suddenly fail. And we have some indication of what causes this, but we still haven't found out conclusively. So for example, if, I don't know, April 1st is thorny, then any query that's from March 15th to April 15th or whatever, Dave (21:03) Mm-hmm. Daniel (21:19) that will touch April 1st will then fail with a weird error message. And that's kind of frustrating. And this hasn't happened for a while because one of the things that causes the thorny data apparently is compaction, which is a performance improvement technique that we still have disabled. But I really want to enable that because I would make our queries way faster and use less CPU and stuff like that. And so, unbeknownst to everyone, I have been running all these experiments with my coworker on the server side, just trying to find out what causes this. And one thing that causes this, we already know that, is commas in keys. And so if you send a parameter to telemetry deck that's something like A comma B equals one, then that will cause the segment to be thorny, so we're filtering out commas. Dave (22:06) Mm-hmm. Daniel (22:17) And in fact, we are now listing characters now. So we have all the letters of the English alphabet. We have underscores and dots and a few more. And those are all the allowed characters. And everything else will be replaced by underscores. still, is a few, there's still some segments that I know if I enable compaction for them, will become thorny. And so we're running a few more tests now. to find out, these tests take ages. But yeah, that's like stressing the server away a lot. The other thing is that we are, like we have different databases on the servers, but we have one database where all the data is in there. Like we run stuff like global queries about like how's the state of the iOS ecosystem, how's the state of the Android ecosystem, that kind of stuff. turns out if every one of our customers is sending different parameters with their events to us, like for example, one person would send like, the pizza oven is done and it was at 300 degrees. And then someone else will be sending like, hey, my user is onboarding and the user selected color is green. Then we get all these new fields in the database and that should be able to handle that. But it turns out we've kind of went over a threshold of some sort. Dave (23:45) Ha ha ha. Daniel (23:46) And now that is also starting to cause problems. So what I'm doing is, like it's not causing problems as in like things are completely failing, but like some queries are suddenly very slow. Some queries are also running out of memory. So I have to better bump up the size of the machines, which is expensive and frustrating, but now it works again. But also this kind of helps me decide that I'm accelerating. Dave (23:50) Okay. Daniel (24:12) the namespaces feature, which is a hidden secret feature that some of Telemetry Dex customers have already enabled, which is you get your own database, like completely separated from everything else. That means that that is good because then queries go way faster because the server only has to look at your segments and your database. It also means that if you send like broken data, that's your problem. So that's kind of cool. Dave (24:24) kind of what I was thinking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the thorns are in your data. Daniel (24:43) And also it means we can very gently selectively enable Compacton for individual customers. But I'm kind of wary of that still, because if that breaks, then I have to read out all of the data. The downside right now is that we have one huge message queue where all the data comes in. And so for each of these databases, we call them namespaces, because that's like, hang on. For each of those namespaces, I'll explain in a second. We kind of have to have a separate thread or separate task running that kind of filters out just this organization's data and then puts it into the separate namespace slash database. And that, like I have like, I think 10-ish of these running right now. Like one is. Dave (25:15) I can roll with no spaces. It kind of makes sense. Yeah. Daniel (25:38) for just like telemetry infrastructure, which is an organization that I've created that just contains data about telemetry infrastructure. And then a few large-ish customers who kind of wrote in and said, hey, these very complicated queries that I'm running are kind of slow. Can we do something about it? And then I was like, I'm actually like, have this feature half finished. Do you want to try it? And so for them, it works fantastically. But the problem is, I I'm running into a scaling problem, or I'm gonna run into a scaling problem if I enable that thing for 20 more big customers. So I'm kind of like trying to think through what can be done here. And there's a few options, but we can go into those I think in later shows. But that's what I've been doing these days. Lots of server stuff. Dave (26:27) Nice. I mean, I'm, I get lots of little ideas off the cuff, just sort of listening to you playing it back, but I'm sure these are all things you've probably explored in one way or another. Yeah. Daniel (26:34) Mm-hmm. Most of them are kind of cost issues. Like for example, I could spit up namespaces on the ingest API and put them in different message queues. That is a very possible thing to do, but message queues cost, like a single message queue costs a lot of money. like compared to the data that goes through and also backing the data up then suddenly gets way harder because right now backups is just like, get the data off the message queue and write it into files. But if I have... multiple message queues that gets dynamically allocated, then I need to have a process that creates the message queues but also creates a backup process for them and also creates the tasks that then pull the data off the message queue. But this gets kind of expensive. The other thing is like the task that pulls the message of the message queue is, I can run like, I don't know, 20 of them on one server and probably more, but I haven't tried it out. Like so, like 20ish should be okay. 40ish would probably also be but like 1000ish? No. Dave (27:43) Yeah. Daniel (27:46) I also could make it a paid feature, but then I would like like if you are worried about that that that would mean is as a free customer you will never get to experience the full power of an operational telemetry deck which means that like you don't really know like how much cool stuff you can do you know and there's also yeah Dave (28:06) Yeah. It's like, for me, this reminds me of recently I've just bought a new VPS. So the server that I'm using to host my websites and any other projects and bits and bobs, I'm moving it from Linode over to a local provider in New Zealand. So I'm starting that process. And it reminds me of that. And as much as you choose, private server that is either a shared CPU scenario or you can choose a dedicated and your name spacing reminds me of the division between shared and dedicated, right? It's like, and shared still works. It's just not going to be quite as performance as a, as some hosting that is carved out on dedicated separated hardware. I know it's not literally that, but like the difference in functionality reminds me of that. from on a customer level, that sort of choice. Yeah. Daniel (29:07) It is, yeah. think it's just like I need to take one more step back, think about how I want the architecture to look like. Before that, I had to think about the databases on the cluster, but now I have to think one more thing and all the interaction between all those things. these processes need to be updated if the customer changes things or adds another app or whatever. So yeah, I think there's a few problems I need to think through. Dave (29:12) Mm-hmm. Daniel (29:36) And also like I don't want to have I don't want to be locked into AWS like everything I do right now is very much agnostic of AWS like as much as possible at least like a few things like the message queues Amazon kinesis. Okay, but I can replace that with Kafka but if I like build this Too big then it's becoming like that becomes very hard to move to another provider or like mixed providers or something So that's the other thing. So yeah, I'm I'm in the process, if you are an expert at these things, I wanna talk about it, like hit me up on the Mastodon. If you are an amateur and just wanna talk, maybe also hit me up, but like I might not have so much time because I'm kinda busy. But you were talking about your VPS and about Linux, or I was thinking, VPS that runs Linux obviously. And that reminds me, you ordered something. Dave (30:18) Fair. ⁓ yes. Yeah. ⁓ so I've been kind of leading up to this for a while and people who've listened to some of the previous shows and read my master on feed or whatever, probably been able to pick up on this, but yeah, I'm buying, ⁓ I've bought a PC laptop. I'm going to immediately install Linux over the top of the windows installation on it. ⁓ and this is going to be my new main. dev machine. And it marks a transition for me all the way over into playing with Android Studio and Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform. And yeah, I've got mixed feelings. It's like I'm looking forward to playing with the new hardware. I'm kind of looking forward to setting up the rig and all of that. It's also a departure for me off of using Apple services sort of throughout because I've really embedded with everything in the Apple ecosystem now for probably easily since 2009, 2010. So that's what 15, 16 years. But essentially I realized that I was starting to sort of like, I was half assing things and I want to whole ass things Daniel with all of this. Daniel (31:56) You gotta haul ass. Dave (31:59) Yeah. ⁓ and some of this has also been born out of, tried running, ⁓ Linux on my MacBook Air. That was successful because the Sahi Linux is actually pretty good. But then I was immediately running into issues in terms of like, okay, ⁓ to get Android studio working, you kind of end up needing to add a new version of Java into its local folder. You need to mess around trying to get, ⁓ some of the Chromebook based. SDKs if you want to run simulators and things and all of it seemed possible, but I kept running into these walls and I'm like. Daniel (32:39) It's a lot of fiddling. Dave (32:41) It's a lot of fiddling and not a lot of coding and. Daniel (32:44) And you just want to use Linux, which just works famously. Dave (32:48) Well, this is the thing, right? They'll still be more fiddling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe, but I've got to be honest with you. When I've installed Linux in the last year, testing on things, a lot of stuff does just work these days. If you pick the right distribution, if you've got it matched to the hardware that you've got, yeah. Daniel (32:50) I think I made that joke yesterday. last time already, yeah, good question. Tell our listeners what distribution are you using so they can tell you that it's the wrong one. Dave (33:21) yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm planning to use Fedora and I'm planning to use the KDE windowing environment because it's nice and snappy. Yeah. Daniel (33:34) What, like, like what's the, is there like a decision behind Fedora or is it just like the one that you know? Dave (33:41) yeah, there's a couple of decisions. One is that it tends to have relatively up-to-date software compared to some of the other distributions. because you've got that dynamic, some of the distributions are very considered in when they bring new software in. And so you can be waiting a while for the latest version of things. And so that's all the way to one end of the dynamic, unless you want to be rolling on an unstable. version of the OS. And then to the other end of the dynamic, you've got distributions like famously Arch Linux, where it's a rolling release and you've got the latest of everything each time, come what may. And then Fedora seems to be somewhere back from that in the middle. So again, people who know all of this a lot better than I do may well want to dispute. my opinion, feel free. But that's how it looks to me. So I'm like, yeah, that feels like the sweet spot. So yeah, that's largely the reasoning. The other is that Asahi Linux is based on Fedora. And so as I've been messing around, I've been quite, Yeah. I was going say, be clear, though, Daniel, I've ran Linux in the past prior to using Mac OS. Daniel (34:41) Cool. So you got some previous experience, basically. Of course, of course, yeah. Dave (35:08) So sort of it's new again, but also going backwards slightly for me in some ways. Daniel (35:18) I've been using Gentoo for ages, which is a horrible user experience, but it's really fun because you get to really learn how the Linux works because you're not doing anything but maintaining it. I've been using Ubuntu on the servers because it of just works. My first Linux was SUSE, I think. Dave (35:24) Mm-hmm. Yes. watching it compile. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, I remember that, which I think I'm trying to remember my lineages. don't know whether Fedora was related to that in some angle or what. Again, I've been out of the loop for 15, 16 years. Daniel (35:46) yeah. Might be, yeah. And then also for the longest time, I used Slackware Linux. Dave (36:04) Yes. Yes. I remember that name. Daniel (36:05) because that was the best because I actually like Slack, the name comes from this weird little pseudo religion. what's the official name? Not the church, ⁓ the church of the subgenius where they pray to Bob and Bob is this guy with a pipe in his mouth, like smoking a pipe. Dave (36:23) Ha ha ha! This sounds very Chaos Computing Club adjacent. Okay. Daniel (36:34) And that Bob is the subgenius and the most important principle of the church of the subgenius is slack. You just got to slack around. And I am like actually an actual like ordained minister of that church. Like I have thing and everything. Dave (36:44) Okay. Would it be against the religion for you to bless my laptop when it arrives, Daniel? That sounds like something we could do. Daniel (36:57) I will gladly bless your laptop remotely or in person. Dave (37:03) In person would be awesome. But no, coming back to the reason for this season for me, if you like, I wanted to see and I realized that sort of fighting against trying to make stuff work on my air was not a good thing. And broader than this, why am I even bothering? Wasn't I a Mac developer, an iOS developer? What am I doing? Like, well, I decided, and it's been a decision that's been coming for a while, but I think about a month or so ago, things started to click that I really, really wanted to start getting my apps on different platforms. So I'm not getting rid of all my Macs. Just to be clear about that, I've got a lovely Mac Studio on this desk. It will still be available to me to use however I want to use it. But for at least a few months, it will be relegated to be in a build build only device. So I'm going to be taking iMessage, all the personal stuff off of it and just turning into something that I use to compile code. And that will then let me lean into the Southern environment full time and find out, do I love it? Do I hate it? Where are the edges? What's working? What's not? So that's what I mean by sort of whole assing it, right? Like I'm going to be all in at least for a while to see, okay, how does this feel? How is this working? And on the flip side of this, it's going to be part of my effort to try and get the app running on first on Android, secondarily on Linux, on the desktop on Linux. And obviously, I'm also building in parallel with this is the iOS version that should be there as well being built in this new project. We'll see how it goes. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. There is an outcome I'm driving to though, and that is rebuild of the app that is working on iOS and Android. Being able to also have the app work on desktop environments, including Raspberry Pi Linux. And that last one is the one that I think I'm going to have the most nerd fun. Yes. Daniel (39:26) Wait, Raspberry Pi? Like, will that have enough power? Dave (39:31) should do. Yeah certainly certainly with the pi 4 or 5. so one second. Yeah I probably need to explain that one a bit. if Daniel (39:32) Yeah? Wow. So using all these shader effects and everything. And last that I checked, Raspberry Pi didn't have a graphics chip. Dave (39:50) It's got a GPU that will run basic shaders. Providing you're not stacking up loads of them, you can get it to do some fun stuff. So that's the point, right? If I've got this, I'll have inside of this project, effectively, there'll be a library just like I have for Swift packages today. I'll have a module that is the video effects engine. That has got to be as cross platform as I can get it to be. There'll be bits around the edges of it that are local. So for example, on iOS, I'll still be using AV Foundation to play the videos back and send textures through into the shader stack. There'll be something else on Android. There'll be something else on desktop that will probably be one of the FFmpeg libraries or VLC or something. But the point of all of this for me is to then land on a situation where yes, if I want to run something on a Raspberry Pi, for example, I could. And I guess my long-term dream here, Daniel, drum roll, because this is the bigger idea, if you like. Outside of having all the apps everywhere all at once is that I want to actually make some video hardware that is essentially a dedicated Raspberry Pi running my Daniel (40:59) Okay, I'm excited. Dave (41:16) my software, but then housed in some sort of chassis, 3D printed knobs and buttons and things to control things. I'll probably have to get something made with somewhere like PCB way or something like that to sort of prefab all of it. I well, literally I have a teenage 3D designer in my house. Daniel (41:35) Designed by Teenage Engineering. right Dave (41:44) Right. My oldest son specializes in this stuff. So I'm hoping we can collaborate a little bit, but the plan is to make these dedicated pieces of video hardware, ultimately. Daniel (41:56) love that, it's GovjGo. Dave (41:59) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's everything all at once and it's a lot of different ideas. And of course, you know, this is classic, like even my projects have projects kind of paralysis if I'm not careful. But I've realized a few things in the last few months. Like I've stopped caring about native apps in the way that I might have done a few years ago. what I've realized is that What I really enjoy is actually the thing that got me into app development in the first place, which is making this specific type of app. If I put all that together, and I've said this a couple of times on the show before, but like the UI is a control interface. It's a, if you play with audio, it's the same as a VST, right? You need some knobs, some dials, some things to tap. And then setting screens or whatever, the fact that they're currently native and done in SwiftUI and use navigation stacks and stuff, like that's just a delivery mechanism to letting people select settings. Daniel (43:04) How many knobs do you need? Dave (43:09) Daniel. For listeners of the show, the expression on Daniel's face told me exactly where he was heading just before. Daniel (43:23) Apologies. But I love the idea because it's kind of like a DJ table but for VJs kind of. And it's kind of like this interface. Like you told me about that you heard about VJs who have an iPad built into their stack with your application, which is kind of lovely. But if you have a thing that you can actually screw in one of those racks, like, yeah, like that is the thing. Dave (43:33) Yeah. Yes. Daniel (43:54) You're the person who builds these things. That's awesome. Dave (43:57) Yes, 3D design isn't necessarily my immediate wheelhouse of everything, but I've got somebody like I say, in house in my family who will be quite happy to help steer me through some of these bits. I think the thing to unwind back to from all of this for me is like, well, why did I even start playing in this area in the first place when I first made my app back in 2015? At that time, it was the potential of the iPad actually that pulled me in into iOS development in the first place. Here is this slab of interface that I can craft anything I want onto for doing this sort of project. And that's what actually pulled me into this type of development and mobile development in the first place. So some of this is, I'm trying to recapture some of that feeling, if you like, that I feel like I've lost in recent years. And the other side of it is, is I can see a route here where, rather than, okay, I'm going to specifically only support whatever Apple is up to. Yes, I'll still support that. I'll still have my apps out there in the app store. I'm hoping to be in the play store as well. That's all on the go. But to the side of all that, there's this world where it's actually my own thing in its totality, if I want it to be. And the idea of having all these little dedicated hardware boxes that maybe go out into the world doing their thing under my own banner is really compelling. So that's the dream. Yeah. We shall see. Many ideas, not a lot of time. But that's part of the aim right now. Daniel (45:35) Yeah, that is kinda neat. Awesome, yeah I love that. I love it. We had another topic, but I kind of want to skip it because it's just a downer. It's just a downer. Dave (46:01) Let's stay in the hopeful, gonna make shit kind of zone that I think I got to. Daniel (46:08) Right, but I think I'm gonna ask you this next time. So this is a teaser, which is given that many companies and many governments are working together to kind of weaken encryption and security in our personal private data. Like for example, the UK kind of forced Apple to like reduce encryption of iCloud, stuff like that. So what I wanna explore with you, Dave (46:31) Yes. Daniel (46:36) is I think like what are the alternatives? Like where can we have our data? Like do we need to self-host? we need to like other services we can trust, other like configurations that we can do? And I think that's a topic that fits very well with your Linux exploration as well. So yeah, maybe that can be the topic of like the next few things. Like for example, we're like you and I, we're mostly talking on signal these days because not only is it very safe and secure, like full support for signal. I'm actually, bought a signal t-shirt the other day. Dave (46:42) Noooo It's gonna. Yeah. Yes. Daniel (47:06) I'm not wearing it though. But it's also very cross-platform. It works awesome on each and every platform, which is not the case. Well, iMessage does work on Mac and iPhone, but I don't think there's a good Android and or Linux desktop client, for example. Dave (47:06) Hey. Yes. Not really not not not something I'd be happy to to use. Yeah. Daniel (47:30) And so, yeah. And I'm wondering what are the cool things and also the combinations of things. Like for example, Lisa used to work for a company called Boxcryptor, which ran on your computer, it's a little app that will encrypt the files in your Dropbox before they are being uploaded to Dropbox. They kind of got bored by Dropbox actually. And so now they're... The end-to-end encryption is kind built into Dropbox, but because it is not something that you directly control, it's of course harder to trust. It's probably fine, but you know what I mean. But something like that right now, I would love to have something like that, to have my own, to be able to control my own encryption and stuff like Dave (48:05) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you mean. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about it. Ask me, we'll see whether I'm in a place to talk about it on the next show. It might be one we have to punt a little way down the line. So I'm thinking, ask me when I've used this laptop for a month and I've actually encountered some of these, I don't have my iCloud Drive moments. I will no doubt have been forced to find my own solutions. So. Daniel (48:41) I'm actually trying a file sharing thing that is not iCloud right now. I'm trying it for the company because so far we've used shared iCloud, but as we get more people and you want a bit more, you want to just decouple the company owned files a bit more from my private iCloud account, I started using Jotaclouds. Dave (48:46) Mm-hmm. Yep. I do not know how to spell that. You're gonna... Daniel (49:07) Which is a Scandinavian company. I'm going to try and type it in, very like I cannot. I am not allowed to touch the cables, you know. Dave (49:20) No, think, Daniel, I think we need to wrap the show before you disconnect the show. Daniel (49:25) Yes. So not a sponsor, but yeah, Yota Cloud, please do check us out. And if you want to sponsor it, I wouldn't be opposed. Basically, FileSync. has Finder integration, and it has rudimentary rights management, which is like, OK, this person can see this folder, and that person can see that folder. And it seems to work quite nicely. Dave (49:44) Mm-hmm. Daniel (49:48) I haven't discovered end-to-end encryption yet, and I'm still wondering if that's something that I want to enforce. So not a 100 % recommendation yet, but it seems to work fine. It is cross-platform. It has fantastic Finder integration, which was something that was important for me. And it's Scandinavian, so whenever I see the... Dave (49:57) Yes. That's good. Yeah. Daniel (50:14) Whenever I see the icon on my desktop, try to pronounce it as Scandinavian as possible. Jotterklaut. Which is kind of fun for me because I'm just that way. So thanks everyone for listening. Please write us on iTunes and like us on YouTube and also subscribe and hit the bell and also post a selfie and also post a little comment how you're feeling. Also do your chores. think about like when did you last like wash your bed sheets. Like if that's longer than three, four weeks, maybe that's a good chore for after the show. Send us emails. at contact at waitingforreview.com and also join our Discord. The link is in the show notes. And Dave, where can people find you? Nowhere. People cannot find you. Because you're muted. And so you are invisible. But you're inaudible to our listeners. Dave (51:19) God damn, God damn, one second. No, no, don't do this to me. You can find me on the Mastodons at Dave at social.lightbeamapps.com. Awesome. How about yourself, Daniel? Daniel (51:37) Find me and the mastodons at daniel at social dot telemetry deck.com or Wherever telemetry deck is sold which is on telemetry deck.com All right, have a fantastic day See you soon, and I hope your your laptop arrives soon, and it will give you lots of pleasure and fun Dave (51:57) Thank you, mate. Catch you later. Daniel (52:00) Bye!