It does sound like those crap American podcasts that you hear. Yeah. Sorry, I'm a leth. No, I agree. Ask The Hosts Episode 17 I'm Joe. I'm Amalith. I'm Gary. And I'm Graham. Hello, Traps. The idea of this show is very simple. You send in your questions to us, show us the host.com and we answer them. The catch is, there can be about anything except for Linux and open source. Before we start, a quick thank you to everyone who supports us with PayPal and Patreon.
We really appreciate that. And if you support us on Patreon, you get these episodes too excellently. You can learn more at AskTheHost.com slash support. So the first question, Jezra asks, how do you notify your future self of events slash reminders? I'll get my boring answer out of the way. Google Calendar, because we have a Google app subscription as a family and my wife and I just put stuff in there. And it's the lowest
barrier to entry for her. Say, it's a pretty boring answer, but we've just probably about a year's worth of Google Calendar events in there at this point. My partner and I use a next cloud calendar for events, but for reminders, I use whatever to do app I happen to be using at that moment. Which means I have reminders scattered across like 12 different apps over the years. Well, I too use Google Calendar and that reminds me of most things, but then
that's only really events. But to remind myself about general stuff like Open the dishwasher, for example, I just schedule a message on Telegram to myself. I have you scheduled messages often. I'm the same as Gary, I'm afraid Google calendars for the whole family, even my mom, even my friends. I have one for like spare weekends we have if we want to meet up and go biking. It's just I'm sorry Google already knows everything
about me. So knowing that I'm going mountain biking or the weekend, I don't care. Yeah, and I've tried in anger with various to do and note taking apps like I had a brief stint with Obsidian recently where I was trying to use like a to do plug-in so I could say I had a meeting with this client and these are the actions that came out of it and they would all populate into a to do list. But I just don't have enough self control to keep putting
notes in there to be honest with you. I find myself scribbling them in a notebook or I forget my laptop or I don't tick things off for a few days and then it just all becomes this mess of how have I done that? How have I done that? And I just give up. So I find calendar blocking is the
only way to really make sure that I know I'm going to get stuff done. I think the one thing I keep coming back to is little half size index cards and writing to do items on those and I have a little 3d printed stand under my monitor that you can slot the index card into and it gets propped up so I can see it there under my monitor all day every day. That's the one I keep coming back to.
Very low tech. That sounds like a recipe for ad blindness. You just like banner ads back in the day, you would just completely ignore and I would just tune that out if it was stolen at me all day every day. That's why I have my paper calendar to my left. I have to look over there and then I have all the releases for all the episodes and so like once I have edited it and got it all ready for publishing, I cross it out with a Sharpie and then something very satisfying about that crossing it
out and the physical act of that. So yeah, mine is just a mess, a confusing mess of Google Calendar, Telegram notifications and actual paper calendar. Sean asks, what did you enjoy most and least during your time in school? Any year, slash grade. All of it is why I hated school. I don't know. I think there were some things that I enjoyed about school and there were some things
I didn't enjoy so much about school. I hated PE and I will always remember my PE teacher calling me an ungrateful CUNT because I had turned up with a broken hand and no note and he decided that my hand wasn't broken. I just didn't want to do the lesson which was fun. But yeah, I mean, I've many happy memories of doing things that perhaps I shouldn't have been doing at school like finding out the Wi-Fi password or sitting in the computer lab before lessons started and all
that kind of thing was always enjoyable. I just remember like not really getting in trouble but getting a talking to you for like not going to form time because we wanted to sit in the computer lab and play a game of doom or quake or something across the network. Man, me and Graham feel so old
now. The idea of Wi-Fi at school. I mean, this was pretty early and we'd all decided that changing the host name of our laptops to the same style of hostname as the teachers laptops would meant that we were completely indiscoverable on the network which lasted for all five minutes.
So there was a bunch of enjoyable stuff about school. I mean, there was also a bunch of stuff that was just rubbish to be honest and I think I probably did end up learning more and having a bit of a better understanding for the value of learning after I left school to be honest with you. When I was homeschooled, I loved being able to explore almost any academic topic and mom would just say, yeah, okay, go dig into that thing, learn what you can and we'll make it part of your
curriculum. And that was awesome. And for things like PE instead of some sort of structured PE by a teacher in a gym or something, I did martial arts, I did Zumba, I rode my bike around the city, it was awesome. And then when I went into public school, it was kind of a waste. I ended up repeating the same material for years that I had already done when I was homeschooled. So most of my early public school was not fun. Pretty much all of being homeschooled was awesome.
Graham, can you remember going to school? There were parts that I enjoyed especially when I was young. When I was like in primary school or infant school, I actually created, I was massively into Sherlock Holmes when I was about seven or eight. And I remember I created our primary school, a detective club that was allowed to run through the breaks or the recess and loads of people joined because they didn't want to be out on the
playground. And that was a lot of fun. But when I was older than that, PE, I hated PE, I also really hated RE, religious education, especially at the school I had had the people that taught where I don't know if it had been called philosophy, even with similar subject matter, I wouldn't have been so bothered about it. But a friend and I nearly got expelled for drawing a penis on my RE book. And later nearly got thrown out for bunking off generally and not finishing
my coursework and that became my kind of general pattern. I probably shouldn't admit all that. But we did do computers even when I was 15 or 16. It was like the first GCSE. And we had it in our secondary school or high school. But then I couldn't study it at a day level. So I really enjoyed computers and then couldn't take them any further into the went university. I quite enjoyed RE, religious education because we studied not just Christianity, it was like all world religions.
And I learned just a little bit about loads of different religions. And I found it really enlightening I suppose. I feel like that was one of the most valuable bits of my education was to learn about loads of different cultures. So that I suppose is my serious answer. What I was going to say is what I hated most was games, which was a bit like PE. And what I loved most was games. Now let me explain. So most of my schooling, games was like you go out and play football or rugby
or cricket or whatever. And I just hated that. I just don't like being outside generally unless I'm drinking. So it was just a nightmare, especially like playing rugby in the freezing cold. And like having to just huddle up with other people, like other smelly boys and stuff. I just didn't like it one bit. But then when I got to the age of I think about 14, one afternoon a week was it Tuesday or Thursday, whatever. The whole afternoon was games and you were expected to just pick the
sport that you were into. And you would just go and do all afternoon that sport. Well, it turns out that there wasn't much checking of that. And so me and the other musician types used to just hang around in the music department all afternoon, just chatting, playing instruments, you know, not like seriously making music or anything, but just hanging out. And it would just be a really chill time where we were just hanging out with each other. And that, I mean, the social aspects of
school, again, a kind of the worst and the best, right? You've got the dickhead bullies. But then you've got the like really cool people who you end up friends with. And yeah, that is my lasting memory from school is hanging around with my friends. And at least one of them, I'm still friends with now all these years later. Yeah, you make a good point. I've got a lot of fond memories of I guess not bunking off of lessons, but finding other things that have educational value that maybe
I should have been doing while the lessons are going on. Me and a group of close friends ended up being the people who did all of the sound and lighting for school productions. And it was always a great excuse to go and spend a couple of days rigging lights and climbing scaffed hours and setting up PA systems and things. Which is, it was always a good laugh. And yeah, there's,
like you say, a lot of good memories from things like that. And arguably, I've learned more tangible skills from that than reading of mice and men for the fifth time in two years or whatever we ended up doing in English literature class. No, that's a good book, bro. I mean, it is, but there's only so many times that I can say that Kelly's wife's dress was red because she was dangerous. So
whatever it is, the GCSE English essays, the Vaseline and the glove. It's funny. I was going to say something very similar being involved with the sound and the kind of behind the scenes production of stuff at school. I got involved with that as well. I used to love being behind the scenes or under the stage when something was going on. That was a good part of it. I'm trying to think of things that, you know, I did enjoy those aspects of it. And I, too, still have friends from back then,
the person that we got caught with the RE book. I'm still very good friends with. Never again, will I ever get a lesson in school where I have to cut in half a Ford Fiesta to be the car from grease-lighting. I went to an early college for high school and we had no music program, no sports, nothing like that. It was all either through the college or through your local high school. And I don't remember why, but for whatever reason, we couldn't really join the local high school
music activities. So I started my own music club and to my knowledge, it's still going, which is really cool, but we actually performed during some school events. And that was awesome. We had a lot of fun doing that stuff. Wow. 18 months later, it's still going on. Been more like five years. I mean, given the variety of instruments that you play, I can't imagine that unlike our school gigs, it didn't turn into a Metallica trippy band or something.
Because I think that there was a certain point where Metallica was banned in our school, because it was just like into the Sandman, and then ride the lightning and then insert other Metallica song here, one after the other, after the other, just terribly before. It was always just Oasis covers at my school. We had good variety. Some folk, because I have a ton of folk background. We did some pop stuff, some jazz, actually. There were a bunch of musicians
that wanted to do music things, and we all just paired up in small groups. That was fun. Mike asks, paint everything in the world, just three colors. Which colors would those be? RGB. Next question. Black, white and gray. That is actually what I would pick. I think black, white and gray. I was going to say magenta, cyan, and yellow. It seems to work fine for printers. More seriously, colors I do enjoy are things like sunlight through trees.
It's hard to find a word or a hex value to describe that, but that and moss and dirt. You've caught me nostalgic for my school days now, so I was a huge prince fun. So it would have to be purple or his later stage of peach and black. I think it would be a kind of sunset, orangey red, green, and maybe a browny, earthy color. Yeah, quite like the idea of earthy tones to repaint the world in. There's something calming and relaxing about that. The problem with sunsets
is that it's not one color. The whole point is it's a massive spectrum of colors. I don't think you could capture that in just one color, could you? Well, I didn't say we didn't get a blend of three colors, right? Say, by that notion, you could just do the three primary colors, and then you effectively have every color, but I feel a bit like cheating. Well, that's why I said to Argy. Yeah. I'll know. It'd be yellow. I don't know my primary color,
do I? Yellow, blue and red? Yeah, that's what we need. That's the answer. Mark asks, which country has the best food? There is one very, very clear answer to this, but I'm going to let you answer first. I don't know if it's the best food, but I really,
really like the food from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, those kind of countries. Just that really stodgy, filling, meat-based food just appeals to me in some way, maybe in the same way that the food I cook is always quite boring, stew or some kind of other meat-based dinner, but it's just that, but a bit different, isn't it? So I'm going to go with that Czech Republic
or any surrounding country that has kind of stew and those kind of feeds. I've thought about this a bit because I've had some amazing food and I've been lucky enough to have some amazing food in some great countries, and the country I'm going to choose is not the place that I've probably had the best meal and it's predictably the place where I feel like you can stop somewhere randomly and real people have cared about the ingredients and put something together and it's France.
Yep, that's the correct answer, Graham, well done. Yeah, don't judge a country by its best food, judge it by its worst food, judge it by the motorway services. You go to a motorway services in France, right? And you get something basic like chicken and chips, that's fries for you, I'm going to have a dinner and it's actually nice, it's not horrible. I mean, it's not amazing, but it's fine, whereas most other countries, you stop on a major road and the food is just terrible.
What do you mean? There's nothing wrong with it. WH Smith sandwich has been sat in a fridge for like four days. Perfect, you find. Especially if you get the meal, though. Exactly. It's like a fiber. What, what would you want? Gas station hot dogs that have been turning there for 10 hours. Yeah, exactly. Whereas French people just won't put up with that shit, man, they just won't deal with that. They're like, no, it's going to be made of actual ingredients and it'll be basic, but it'll
be nice. Oh, Amalith, you just get me an awful flashback to getting some nachos from a gas station. Oh, no, it renews somewhere. Instant regret. I do, I was going to peel, but I was that hungry, that I just had to do anyway. I don't think I've ever bought any of the fresh, quote unquote, food at gas stations. I mean, this was guy in rural Nevada. Why would he lie?
I don't want to pick on the UK, particularly. I've had some, there are some places where you get incredible food here in the UK and maybe I've had one of my best meals over here, but the difference between here and France is that you can drop into some random bar and the people in the kitchen, they're not going through a load of instructions while they put stuff in the microwave and get it
out of the right time, just dish it on a plate without any kind of care or attention. Unfortunately, in the UK, if you just randomly stop at a pub somewhere, that's probably what you're going to get. And I don't understand the cultural difference, I suppose, in the kitchens or in wanting to serve people food. It's just different and I like it in France. Well, I think that in the UK, we're brought up eating like fish fingers and stuff like that, whereas French people just won't stand
for that. They just have a different culture, as you say, that involves cooking. And it might not necessarily be super healthy, because I think they use quite a lot of oil and stuff like that, but it's just a different culture of cooking. I think Italy, to some extent, is similar, but I just don't happen to really enjoy much Italian food apart from pizza, which is not even really Italian. I like American style pizza. So yeah, France is just the best. I'm going to say you're going to
try and defend America. No, good. No, I'm bored of American food. I grew up eating. I love Indian and Thai food the most, I think, especially when extremely spicy, but as long as there is is still strong flavor underneath the spice. Cohen asks, do you feel bad after swathing a mosquito? No, I hate mosquitoes killing with fire. I think it depends on your intent, right? If it's this was a really annoying
and it's going to bite me, I'd like to get rid of it before it does, and that's fine. If it's a murderous rampage of, I'm going to kill this because it's the first thing inside the smaller than me. Maybe that's not so okay. I hate them because anytime they're around, I end up covered in bug bites everywhere. I think if you swat it on some white linen and it's full of blood, that's, I feel bad about that. I wish I'd taken it somewhere else and murdered it otherwise. No. Yeah, I kind of
used to feel bad when I was a bit more of a hippie, I think. But then more recently, I've started to get a lot of bites in the summer and they get really angry as doctors would say, like I scratch them loads and they'd really swollen up and I have to put cream on them and I just find it to be a real nightmare. So now, no, not at all. And honestly, flies as well. I mean, I really shouldn't admit this, but when it was really hot, our bin and our recycling bin got full of maggots this year.
And when you see like 500 maggots squiggle in around, the first thing I did was get my Amazon bi-bugs apper and plugged it in and yeah, you just sit in there and then just like, this is crack, crack, crack, like, yeah, got one, got one. I think there's a difference between those really annoying flying bugs and something that you can just move outside gently. They, if it's a lady bird or a spider or something that you can just pick up on a piece of paper and
move it outside, that's fine. But you've got no chance of doing that with a flyer or a mosquito or something. They're just annoying. So it seems that none of us have put us then. I do like the idea. I wish I felt bad about killing mosquitoes, but I don't. I like the Google Calendar of Buddhism.