580: Losing the Competition for Birds
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It's time for epson de five hundred and eighty of the clockwise by gas from ray recorded wednesday, november thirteen and two thousand twenty four clockwise, four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes.

Welcome back to clockwise, the podcast where we always check for ticks before we talk, just think about IT. I'm j. snell. You're cocreate or and cohosh merit is sitting in for microarray who's not here today, but i'll do a little singing anyway and across the table for me, my fellow co creator and the host IT, is your regular cohoes nano and high.

And hi Jason, how many times can we say cohoes student one segment, the I think .

times I think it's perfectly feasible if you ask me. Of course, this is a podcast where we talk about tech topics and regimented and strict way. Moving in a clockwise passion. And to my left is our first guest. IT is Emily for lining, who is a senior reporter at PC mag wall.

Back to clockwork wise. Hello, thank you.

And to my left this week, IT is a podcasting and fiber artists.

the lean sims walk cobell an hi, i'll give us our first topic, you know, that mean, about captain packard having eighty different ipads on his desk to show that he was very busy. That's me with kindles. I have lots of kindles with me right now because I am reviewing the new kindles and also have old kindles and cobos for reference. And it's got me thinking about books, but I know that I am a weirdo in some ways, in many ways, including how I read books. And I was curious to get everybody else's thoughts about how they read books.

And I mean, the details like, do you read books or do you prefer paper books or audio books? And if you know what, what device are you are using? Or are you getting your book from a subscription service? Or I don't know, do you really love hard covers? Do you use the library? I just want your details about how you consume books, assuming that from time to time you read a book. Emily books me.

I prefer paper books personally. Um I just does something to me where I just find IT so relaxing to get away from computer advertisement buttons, screens. I just I don't mean to sound a hole yer than now.

I just I really feel that relaxes me. So I go for that even when i'm travelling or just pick a book, I think i'm gna read. And I know that sometimes a cobo or a kindles perfect for travellers because you can bring so many books, but I still just do one book to make my paperwork ook decisions Better. And you know, you're not sunk some big cost.

I do really the preview on amazon and I tried to get a sense of the book and then I often just buy used copies on amazon in their very cheap um and so let's I like to do it's one thing i'd like about physical books because I would really like to leave up outside in random places like train platforms and outside my house, because the serendipity of somebody finding that book and reading IT and discovering something that they didn't expect is like thrying to me. So i'm very um like progess with my books that gud buy them for like five boxes. Amazon a and I I like leave them out and people take them every time.

I mainly use e readers like you. I have multiple eaters. I have both a kindle and a cobo. I really do like paper books. I like the experience of reading paper books, but I no longer have a room in my house for a paper, especially because as an author, I get my publisher sends me like a box with like twenty copies of my own book in IT.

It's like this just takes up all the room so I I can even buy a new books, but I love going to bookstores and I look at the covers. And every time I go to book stores, I cover IT more books. And that's the dangerous part because I like aware what I even put them.

So for me, readers in the library have been like the huge game changer. For me. I've always been a fan of library books, but having the convenience of being able to go online and be like, right, and this book to me, and there IT is is unmatched because I hate there's nothing worse than ny finishing a book in realizing I don't know what i'm going to read next. And so having libby, which I use a lot to keep up the next read is fantastic. Um really in what about you .

I mostly read on my kindle scribe in bed I have what I call the Erica in sign set up um i've got a stand and uh little a blue truth page Turner so I can have my covers or my hands under the covers and be a warm and turn the pages and I do most of my reading.

I get most of my books through libby and I have a kindle unlimited subscription so I do a lot of like the book greeting and um I also read a lot um while i'm kitting i'll be in the living room and I have my thirteen and ipad pro with kindle and um I have a little a macro pad, little tiny forbush keyboard, but I have set up to advances the pager, go back a pager or whatever. So it's really easy for me to hit those buttons um in red while I nit um I also listen to a ton of audio books. We moved four times in six years so I budged a ton of books and I set a rule for myself that I would only buy paper books if they were going like on my trophy shelf of like comfort reads um but at the end of August, we went to portland.

And of course, I had to go to pills. And of course, if I go to pills, I have to buy books. And so I think that i'm just going to have to get used to like selling them back to the used bookstore or or you could .

leave them at between station for outside the house.

You can people take them one hundred percent recovery.

So I I books give them to me, just .

like forms to me. For me, I am one of those people who win. Kindle came out well, not the first kindle I bought IT and it's like, this is too word and I returned IT. But the second kindle, i'm like, all in any books I was reading, like the al Stevens and hard cover, like a thousand beige home.

And I was going to hawaii for a vacation on page eight hundred and what am I doing so I just fully converted and i'm almost entirely e books now and um I use a cobo most of the time of labor two which is my favorite era of the moment um although the all this continued amazon a kindle, a wasis was also pretty great. But uh anyway i'm i'm boring. I'm just all e books and I I just want to throw win plot for the library.

The books are available with library e books. The libya p is spectacularly good and h lets you put up a wish list and they come do and you can extend them or send them to your device. And it's really great.

So thank you all for answering my slide off topic topic. But you know this is clock's wise. We contain multiple only. What topic do you have for us?

So I just adopted a cat last month and is my first pet and so I wanted to know what people use for pet tech like automatic feature cameras. We ended up getting um like self cleaning litter box, which is really awesome. So for anyone who has pets or dana sounds like two year odds anyone wants to contribute um what pet tech are used like .

uh yeah that's for two year old in tech. I will say um my two year old has started mending when he comes in and he sees either me or my wife working our laptops that he also wants to do work and would like his computer, which is an old ipad. So the old ipad has been like critical for that because if you know basically he uses IT to watch trains and occasionally play virtual drums, that's about he's a busy he's a busy man and should .

get like a robotic, that is tech atomic goji.

I will say the only thing that has ever really, i've seen terrify him as we saw a halloween decoration of a big cat. And then the cat head suddenly moves and i've never seen him visiter's physically terrified before so it's at the point that he said, don't want to see cat basically every time we love the house ah so probably not the roby cat yet, but maybe in the future. Uh, anyway, yeah, I pets for kids. I don't buy pets, but I know in has at least one, if not several, cats at any given more so well, in one of you take this.

we have two cats and I don't know. We're home pretty much constantly. My husband and I both worked from home, so we don't have any like monitoring tech. We d are fortunate enough to not have to use readers with them.

Although there was one point where we had a cat who is losing weight and another cat who really liked to eat, we thought that we were going to have to like kid of feeder that was keyed to their microchips so that um so that one cat would be able to get to the food and the other one wouldn't like IT was a whole thing that eventually like worked out and we didn't have to do for as tech involved as we are. Where kind of let its they don't go outside. There are indoor only. I'd consider like an air tag for a color if we let them outside. But we are just kind hear with them constantly, always.

So i'm going to say this is really boring, but um we bought our dog a light up collar and L E D light up collar that charges via U S B, which is so great because there are other light of collars that you can get and they're cheap and they have um maybe some watch batteries and maybe you can find them and replace them later. But IT is so nice to be able to just plug something in to a USB outlet.

And the next time we go out in the dark to walk the dog, the the the color is ready to go and you put in around neck and, you know, pinch on a little button, and then the whole thing lights up with a big Green globe thing, and you can see you in the dark. It's great. So that's my number one tech item, I thing for pets, but my other little quick tech thing that I mention that they're not pets.

But I bought a bird buddy, which is like a bird house or is a bird feeder that has A U. S. B. IT, has a camera in IT and a little solar panel on IT. And IT hasn't gotten as many birds as I would would like.

But this is very fun to get a push notification on my film that says a new bird has been no analyzed. And it's like here you've got a house fit. You ates some bird sea at your house.

and. It's a fun little thing, but I got A, I got up my game on getting the birds to come to the bird feeder because army neighbor has these crazy bird readers out there. And I I think I just am losing the competition for birds and so i'm missing out on bird pictures from the yes.

lagger said I just got my first pet but yes, we did take the plunge on this up cleaning little rock. So I will plug that for people like you. It's amazing and it's just we don't even have to clean out you the poor by step.

Can we say those words that IT collects and IT just you know like every two or three weeks you have to take out from the bottom of positing the cat adjusted IT instantly um it's just lovely is worked so well we have IT in the same spot as know of rudimentary litter box where IT used to be. So it's great. I think there are probably a lot of black friday sales on all this stuff, including these blitz boxes, which tend to be like over hundred dollars. So I don't know. I think check IT out could .

could be a game changer, right? That is two topics down, two topics left to go on. The usage, of course, means its half time. And this week, epsom clockwise brought you by ni pizza of an only. Is the world's number one pizza an company letting you make restaurant quality pizza, your own home uni pizz vans can reach up to nine hundred fifty user and night and cook pizza in as little as sixty seconds as high temperatures.

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Honey was nice enough to send me A A gas fired of in which I ve used several times to make pizza. I have to say IT is under ably the best piece I ve ever made. I like to get those cross nicer, crisp e and you just can't do IT in mental and they just don't get hard enough.

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So go to O N I dcom and use the code clockwise. Twenty twenty four for ten percent off are thanks to you need piece of and for the support of this show, all right, half time is over, which means it's my term. Bloomberg is reporting that apple's home pop with the screen, which is uncalled because we don't know what also is called, could arrive as early as march with a face time camera to screen voice control.

I would know if you have any smart speakers with displays in your house right now. And if not, what would make something like this succeed where competitors haven't for you? Alan, what with you?

I do not have a use case for a hot pot with a screen. I've got screen on my risk, a screen on my pocket. I'm in front of the computers all the time.

When i'm on in front my computer monitor, i'm in front of an ipad and even in the car, i'm reading and the kindle up on my phone or my ipad like I just i'm not one of those people who's going to have a face time pod screen pot, I don't know, in my kitchen and cook while chatting with someone on face time. It's not something that fits into my life. Um I think it's interesting tech.

I think I could be an interesting like status board potentially like panic cads, the status s APP many years ago and you could can figure widget to have um weather forecast, air quality calendar for the day, upcoming appointments, whatever. I think that that could be interesting. And possibly for like a family like touchdown zone or organization zone. But for me in my life, it's not a product that I envision purchasing.

I for one welcome our household overlords um I used to have an echo show. I have a google nest home pro mini light ultra. They are whatever they call IT.

Now I don't even know, but the google one because I was started to amazon trying to sell me things endlessly um it's fine, but it's not great. IT does the job, but it's really not very good. So I want this desperately.

And one of the reasons why, because I mean the apple ecosystem and I can't like to have Better immigration with my home pods and other airport speakers and my smart home stuff and report, is that you'll be able to mount this on a wall like a like a home controller or put IT on us like a speaker duck and and then it's a home pod with a screen. Um I I like the flexibility of that. I think that's really interesting because I the more I thought about, the more I thought, if you already have home podds, you don't need speakers on this thing.

You just want to use this to control the home pod speakers. I just bring on that integration. I really like stand by on on the apple, on the iphone, uh and and the between the iphone standby mode and the apple watch.

I feel like they've got a lot of the pieces here to make something with a really nice kind of ambient interface that you know something between an apple watch or an apple TV and an ipad like they just have to put IT together. And I felt that for years. So i'm really excited about the fact that they they have put some of that stuff at least together in a product.

I I can't wait to try IT out um because I think that I would probably fit into our lives in this house Better than the amazon and google stuff that we've been trying. I love having a of ambient screen voice assistant thingy in my kitchen, but um it's never it's been a while since i've really enjoyed IT. It's more like I wouldn't want to give IT up, but I don't think it's good enough. So I hope this would be Better. As you has .

have been talking. I trying to think of the root of attack, which is a screen that's in one place, and like, I feel like I like my screens to move around, and I can pretty much do anything on my computer, in my phone.

So why would I want one screen in one place that is not A T, V, which kind of has to be in one place because the couch is there but if it's like to do list or um no even photos, I might want to move stuff around if it's the weather like I I want to see that whatever I want to see that I don't want to have to go to the kitchen another case I thought I was maybe um when are playing guitar IT could be nice to have uh, a screen. They cannot display the music. But again, if I wanted go to a different room, I just want to go to a different room where I want to unplug something like that. So i'm struggling to see this really taking off for me percent. It's not something that I have have bought you know today, so I think might be kind out on .

IT yeah I I have I had nc show in the past. I'd like Jason, have a nest, whatever pub commands and thing. Uh it's basically SAT on a uh, table next to my desk in my office and is doing nothing but showing photo who's at this point it's not even really a smart displays more of a smart picture frame.

But I do like something like this. And for a lot of reasons they described, I mean, the apple ecosystem. The problem with the google and amazon products were always that they didn't have access to all my stuff and all my data.

And that was an issue. And so even for this with the google nesta by head, like specifically go and upload pictures to google drive so they could go through those pictures because my photos do not live in google drive usually. Um for me, having IT in one places is not necessarily a downside.

I use right now a home pod of my kitchen, and occasionally I will kick stand charger mag safe charger there that I sometimes put my phone on and stand by mode, and it's fine, but the phone is really not designed to be used that way. And I find one of the issues there is that IT really screws with having a homepage there because even if i'm playing like a podcast on my phone to my hometown d both of them will try to respond to requests. Uh, both of sometimes they won't quite think up right.

Uh, I don't want to interact with my phone if possible when i'm cooking because I often have stuff on my so having a standalone display that doesn't move and can help me with some of those tasks, even just showing me timers, Frankly, because sometimes I said a bunch of timers and you can get them on your phone, but it's like, okay, clean my hands off, go to my phone, open the home map and it's laborin thing to get delt way down to where all your timers are. So I feel like there is an opportunity there for having a static display that's more of an ancilla to all the other of smart devices that we Carry around all the time because sometimes there is information. I do want to be glencore.

I wanted know what the weather is in the morning. And yes, I can ask syria, I can ask my phone, or I can look at my watch sometimes, but sometimes it's just easier to be able to gLance and say, like out as it's forty degrees out and Sunny right now. So that tells me how I should get dressed for the day.

Um I don't know that yeah I I agree I think those reasons why is a chAllenging and why it's not everybody, but I do think I am in the um the category that wants something like this, but we will see what IT end up looking like. Thank you all for your thoughts. Go to our fourth and final topic, which comes from alan right.

so many of my friends and well me too and we've been charmed by the new small, cute, just little back mini. And i'm wondering, what small, cute tech items have you lived in your life?

I know I love the original tivo remote, which was this little, tiny peanut shaped remote IT fit in your hand really well. It's the best remote d i've ever used, and I miss IT even now. And they made they made a different one that was like longer and they didn't fit in the hand as well, and they didn't like IT as much, but that original one was just perfect.

And then the other thing that I thought of her tiny things is, is I took a little walk about down memory lane, about, like ipods I have known specifically the second generation ipod. Shufu was just a little tiny thing. And I used to, all the time, clipped to my shirt or my backpack, and my music came with me.

And I was really just amazing that I was so small and yet so functional, i'll do to shut out to A A forgotten ipod accessory, which was the ipod wired remote in the early days of the ipod, at a backpack that had a little ipod thing in IT, uh, a little ipod pocket. And then there was there was a place that you were supposed be able to run your head phones out of IT. But you could, the apple made a remote thing that looked a lot like the ipad shufu into that making.

You could clip to the outside of the backpack and play pause volume control right there. And then you plug your headphones into IT. And I love that thing. I, I, I think I wore IT out.

I think I had to buy a replacement for IT because I was so good, and I used IT every single day, and I think that I freed the cable and I had to update IT. That was a great little tiny gadget. And I love a little gadget. So those are my, those are my little tiny gadget memories.

It's funny, that little gadgets to me are almost nostalgic. Like you mention that I pond shufu because I feel like back then I was technically impressive to be able to make a small piece of technology. Because your computer started, they took up the whole room and know how impressed of that. There is so small now.

And IT was thought, you know, you could have this computing power in this small little package and over with the whole push with cell ones to make them smaller, smaller, smaller and smaller now, now they're bigger than they were, you know, those tiny little flip ones that came out ten, fifteen years ago. So we've had such a weird relationship to san install gia today. When you were talking, I thought about hit clips, a guy I was obsessed in an elementary school.

Basically, IT was a tiny little music player that was maybe the size of you put your two bumps togethers of, they like a very small little package, and you would insert a Carter was one song, yeah. So I would put in my clubs song in there, and I could listen in this site, tiny little device, one song at a time. And, you know, I think I receive walkman.

We're out at the time, which were much bigger. But this was a specifically tiny little gadget for tiny little on files. And IT was the call thing ever try?

Think of what other, like classic things I was seeking your day. You know, when Emily, I was talking about the minions ing stuff, I thought all like I was blown away just a year ago. So when I bought like a like A U S B C flash drive that had some ridiculous like a hundred and twenty eight X A storage or something, I don't know, some ridiculous amount storage on IT.

Uh, and then I thought I actually know the way is I think I lost IT too small. Uh, I thought back to also to the original, the intendo D S, uh, which I thought was a pretty fantastic, adorable little device, is one of the future, I think is the only portable game council, not including the switch which I ve bought. And like, I could play mario card anywhere.

That was incredible. And IT had like two displays and I had like a styles and a weird little like sensor of microphone you get like below on IT. Sometimes that we do things in the game like IT was as so many intendo things are. I was just adorable ah and I really love to that even though I only played a handful of games on IT, I actually think it's over there on on my dresser um yeah I think that's probably the best uh I get for like really small cute adorable devices only want to help us up so .

when my husband never brain storming questions and this is what I landed on, my first thought was my third generation ipod. Ano is just like this little short cute guy. And I was my first apple device.

So we've got a lot of an installed for IT um something that I have this new tech that kind of cute is of a little speaker on my desk that looks like kind of a retroactive ture like meditation modern imagining of a computer workstation. It's called the devon d to pro and it's got a little screen on IT and you can get like little put little pixel art on IT seriously like sixteen by sixteen pixel. I had like a little nine cat on their last night while I was cleaning my desk off.

You can obviously speaker play songs is actually pretty good little speaker, you can set timer on IT. You can have use IT as a clock and it's just like this cute little cool thing. And it's also got a mechanical keyboard switches in IT as the controls. So when I want to move things around and get my nice little cookie, mechanical cookie boards sound, which make me very happy.

all right, there's four topics down. We've just this time for a bonus topic. But before we get there, I want to remind you all that you can pick up all clockwise.

You need shirts, hats, two bags, phone cases at clockwork social. You can find links to all of our stores there. And when you buy our lovely merchandise, you help support the show, which might can I really appreciate? Alright, Jason gives a bone topic.

all right? Uh, quick, recommend a book, Emily.

I to recommend river of the gods by Candice Miller. I think that is, I picked this up at an airport, and it's an absolutely insane story. Three of these two british guys in the eighteen hundred finding the source of the nile river, which I guess had been mystery for thousands of years back to the greek thinking about IT and IT is this incredible tale that, you know, good arrow shot through one cheek and and out the other. They know can't hear for periods of time because parasite, and there is just like crazy stuff happens to them on this journey. So if you're into storage accounts that are really brought to life, if I think it's, it's Better, Better than like a game of thrones about that, anything I wash on .

t so river .

of the .

god check .

IT out I kept. If I don't really love IT, that's my cut off. And I have to want to to Carry IT with me for life. But this book is epic river of the gods. Check IT out.

I'm going to recommend a mystery book called fortune favors the dead by Stephen spotswood which is a period mystery about a detective in ninety postwar new york city and her, uh, new apprentice who a former circus worker it's fun. It's interesting. It's got some great period pieces. It's a whole series um there just good classic media mysteries and I feel like .

masteries check out i've got not need to Jason but the adventures of a mina elsa opi by a shenton choker body it's about middle aged woman pirates is lightly disabled taking on see creatures in the indian ocean and gene and all sorts of magical beings um it's I loved IT IT delighted me so much. The audio book version is really good. The print version is really good. You can go wrong. It's so, so good.

I'm going to recommend book one of the series too. It's called some danger involved by William as this is the first in the barker and lewin mystery series and they're all stand alone. You don't need you should see them in order, but it's not like the story doesn't end. Everyone has a mystery that is solved adventure that has done.

And why I would describe IT as well, Thomas is a modern writer who's currently writing the series is I think there's like twelve or thirteen of them now um but it's set in the time that you would think of as this should lock holmes era and IT is uh pair of detectives who are not just legally distinct they're actually distinct from holmes and Watson but they are reminiscent of IT. IT is a similar dynamic where there is a very brilliant and somewhat mysterious inquiry agent who solves various crimes that the police for various reasons can solve. And he is Young, a strong and but learning and sort of trouble past to partner .

who had teaching don't leave kind .

of job .

and he is and well and he's yeah so what I say he's welsh. But now I can't because that would implore his dobe because he's well and that's not he's just anyway, but you have to be a little bit just like water and don't understand what doing here anyway if you want to show up homes vive, but written by a modern writer. And it's not just trying to do sherlock homes.

It's trying to do something kind of like IT. It's a great series i've read like six or seven of them now. They they never failed to disappoint. So some danger involved by William as.

hey, if you'd like to get actually episode an extra overtime topic every week you become a member of clockwise, just go to reate FM slash close wise and sign up for just seven dollars per month or seven dollars per year and helps support the show in this week. Overtime topics, we discuss up subscriptions. And with that, we reach the end of this week's episode. And all that remains is to think. Our guess only sims, thank you so much for being here.

Always loving on clock. Thank you.

believe, for leaving. Thank you so much for being here and for leading books for people to find.

I hope what of them end up in your session? A blessing .

oracle depending on you yeah thread or promise?

I don't know. I love IT. I love IT. All right. And that brings us to the end of this episode of clockwise. I hope Michael will be back next week, but it's been a pleasure to drop in then. As always, I guess we say goodbye, and that means.

what would you say and keep watching the clock by everybody.