619: I Lack the Patience For Other People

It's time for episode 619 of the clockwise podcast from relay recorded Wednesday, August 20th, 2025 clockwise for people for tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that always, like a bowling alley, has time to spare. My name is Dan Morin, and I'm joined as always across the internet by my co-host, the one, the only Micah Sargent. Hello, Micah.

Okay, listen, in its original form, it was fine. I ad-libbed on the spot. It made it bad, Dan, and I don't like to say that about puns, because puns I love. It made it so good. That's horrible. Okay, fine. Fine. We'll move right along and pretend it never happened. This is, of course, the show where we invite on two fantastic guests to discuss four tech topics. To my left this week, it is the CEO slash lackey at Rogue Amoeba, Paul Kavasis. Welcome back, Paul. Boo Dan.

Wow. Just right in there. Okay. Well, you know what? Why are you booing me? I'm right. And to my left, podcaster, fiber artist, and so much more. It is the wonderful. Aline Sims. Hello, Aline. You know, I was thinking it's been a minute since I've been on Clockwise and then the next day Dan messaged me. It was really weird. I sensed it. You manifested that. I did. I did. The first time I've manifested anything in my life. It happened. Could you use that power for some good? Because this is good.

And this is good, but there's other things that we could use. Anyways. All right. Let's kick things off for Tech Topics. 30 minutes. Here we go. I want to have you used technology recently to build any habits or learn anything. Paul, what do you got? The real easy answer is just nope. But no, I think when I thought about this, I've been fiddling with.

Duolingo has chess now. So Duolingo, the language app that has taught no one a language ever, as far as I'm aware. They've added chess, which is, I don't know. I don't know how they decided to do that. Like it teaches chess or it's chess and other languages. No, no, it teaches chess. The language of chess. Got it. Yeah, it's it's, you know, some basic moves, certainly the basic rules, which I knew. And I played a long time ago as a kid. I haven't really played as an adult.

And so I poked at it and, you know, learned a little bit of strategy and advancing that way. So I think that's that's the best answer I've got for this one, Dan. Like Paul, I also know I've not really used technology to learn. anything new recently. That said, the way I will answer this question is to say that technology is probably responsible in a way for

me getting into any of the stuff that I do now. While many a kid in high school slash late middle school were out with their friends during the summer. Yours truly was using, at the time, lynda.com videos to learn how to use Premiere at the time. I think it was Premiere back then. to use Dreamweaver, to use Photoshop, to use all these tools and leveraging those skills into what would later become things that I ended up...

doing and making money from. And so I'm certainly an advocate for using technology to learn things. But I do look back and go, wow, Micah back then had no problem sitting and watching a video for, you know, multiple hours learning how to do a thing. And now... I do everything I can to avoid a YouTube tutorial before I go to a YouTube tutorial. I will read a wiki how five times over without getting it. And then on the sixth time, finally get it.

rather than spending what would probably be less time watching a YouTube video. And maybe there's some therapist out there that can tell me why that's the case, but I have absolutely no idea why that's the case. But Aline, I'd love to hear if you've learned anything new with technology or... built any habits. So this is funny because I read very quickly.

I'm a very fast reader. I always have been. And so when I go to a website trying to figure out how to do something and it's like, and here's our video, I get really angry because. I would rather read the steps and do the thing, right? But then I started knitting and now I use YouTube all the time to learn new skills. So I am the Micah and I are on different life trajectories in terms of video.

A year or two ago, Justin and I started watching YouTube videos together using the Apple TV. And so now we watch all sorts of things. I really love restoration videos.

They take old, like, I don't know, candy makers from like the 30s and made out of cast iron and they get all the rust off and they repair the pits and like make hard candy. We watch a lot of Adam Savage's videos, just learning things about like everything from like aircraft carriers to conservation efforts in museums. So I'm kind of always like every day I'm watching. YouTube like I never have before in my life.

which is absolutely bizarre to me. But I'm not necessarily in an era where I'm using technology to specifically learn one new skill, aside from like... I'm doing this knitting thing and I don't really know what this means. But I am kind of, I don't know, building my base level of trivia knowledge about the world, which I kind of love.

You know, I felt shots fired over there from you, Paul, because I had been using Duolingo recently, though not necessarily to learn a language so much as to brush up on a language I knew in high school, which was French. And I... Well, Duolingo is fine. I agree with you because I very quickly, as I sort of tried it, I was like, oh, this isn't going to be enough for me. So I also...

signed up for a newsletter called News in French, which is at newsinfrench.org. It's basically just one dude who writes a newsletter in French. It's kind of fun. And that was much more useful for me to be able to... read articles and actually like, I will say the fact that, you know, all of Apple's devices have built in system level translate these days.

It's just so great because I'll be reading these articles, but I just don't know that word. And so I will highlight it and translate and I'll be like, oh, here you go. And I'm like, oh, that was so much easier than having to find a dictionary or go to Google and look it up. I can just select it and translate it right there.

So I think that for me is kind of the biggest thing that I've been doing with that. I will say... um back earlier this year when i was cramming to be on a game show um i did use uh was sporkle i think it is is the test like quiz site and i was trivia site yeah i was quizzing myself on all the world capitals

And they had a bunch of quizzes where you could do that. And I thought that was really cool. I don't know if I count that as building a habit because I realized when I tried recently a month or two ago, I had lost like 40% of it already. So short-term habit, I guess. And then I'll throw in there too, because apparently this is top of mind. I'm trying to improve myself these days. I don't know.

I did start running again this summer using the Nike Run Club app, which I really like because it offers guided runs with sort of a coach and it offers training plans where you can say like, oh, I want to try the next four weeks. Here's a set of runs you can do. I've fallen off the bandwagon there a little bit due to travel, illness, childcare, all those things. But I am excited to get back into that as the fall comes through. So I have found it very useful recently.

to use some tech as a way of being able to build those habits and not feel totally at sea when it's like, I'd like to start running. Where do I even begin? So I think it's great to have those kinds of tools at one's disposal. But thank you all for your answers to that topic. Let us go to our second topic, which comes from Paul. Well, Dan, I just want to congratulate you on finally, finally trying to improve yourself. I mean, none of us wanted to say anything.

There was nowhere to go but up. No. You lobbed that one in. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. Dan. And everyone else, I assume you all use Wikipedia, in fact, to learn things probably. So that's probably one of the things I should have mentioned is that I use Wikipedia all the time to learn just all sorts of trivia. But my question is, do you edit Wikipedia?

I wish I OK, I have an account and I have found at times some things that I would argue are incorrect, but. I was not told enough as a child that I was a good and smart boy. No, Micah, you are great. Unlike Dan, which we've already discussed, you know things and you should be editing Wikipedia if you see something that's wrong.

Go on. But because I guess I didn't have you, Paul, saying that when I was but a young lad, a very young lad, I... am afraid of the very, very severe editors that are on Wikipedia that say the things that they say and respond the way that they do to corrections that are made. And yeah, I think I just, if only I had stronger armor, then perhaps I would feel more comfortable making changes. So no, I'm very much a consumer of Wikipedia, very much a donator to Wikipedia every time the person...

comes on and says, please, in the arms of me. And I do that, but not the editing part. Aline, what about you? I also do not edit, not because I lack the confidence. I lack the patience for other people. It just seemed like you hear about these wars in the editing comments on Wikipedia, and I'm just like... I don't want to deal with that, even though like it's probably unlikely that I would face that or at least face it frequently. I just know. No, I people too much in other areas of my life.

And I choose not to people in that regard. Yeah, I think you're pointing out the fundamental weakness of Wikipedia, which is other people. It seems great. Welcome to humanity. Yeah, they seem great. That's the weakness of pretty much anything. But you get too close. I have never tried to edit Wikipedia. I have been deleted from Wikipedia at least once, if not twice. So I don't know if that counts for everything. Not because I added me, because someone else added me and I was deemed not.

Not important enough. That's why I'm bettering myself. He knows French. Add him to the Wikipedia now. So, you know, I have friends who are more into the community. And I think that's part of it is that it does have that intimidation aspect of being a sort of, if not a close knit community, at least a community that has a certain set of not only rules.

but culture and things like that, that can be intimidating and off-putting to people who are just trying to dip their toe in. So I have thought about it in the past, but I have never, like both Alina and Micah, I've never quite... gotten up the chutzpah to sit down and be like, no, that's wrong. I'm going to fix this. And so maybe I'm the problem. We're all the problem with Wikipedia is the answer. Paul, are you out there?

I have some very good defacing Wikipedia stories, but they're too long for the show. So I'm I'm an editor of typos and I'm an editor of. poor writing. So sometimes you'll see a page that has something that is presumably at least factually correct, but not well written. So the edits that I make are almost all typos and writing. You're adding typos is what you're saying.

Obviously, just just to mess with, you know, one of the best things humanity has ever done, Wikipedia. No, I think it's something I think it's interesting what you all said that you're all a little bit intimidated by it because I I definitely do not make.

large edits or factual edits very often, occasionally to Apple-related things. The page for macOS Tahoe, the next version of macOS, is getting updated regularly, and every time there's a new... version they put the build number on it and when that's too slow i will put the build number on it so that people know oh yes i did update to the latest because when you update your os it does not say beta 7 which is the current beta it says

a long string of numbers that is very difficult to read and determine if you're actually on the current version so yeah i do edit it i am willing to suffer the slings and arrows of whatever nonsense i don't know i you know when i make an edit i don't actually look back at it I edit it and then I move on with my life and I've hopefully made it a little bit better. And I would encourage you all to do the same if you see something minor that can be improved.

But yeah, it's definitely something where you're right that there is an editing community that I think is protective of certain things or a little intimidating in some way. So the idea of Wikipedia is great and it's turned out pretty well, but I think it's something where... Maybe there's room for improvement when it comes to editing.

All right, it's two topics down, two topics left to go, which of course means it's halftime here at Clockwise. And this week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Steam Clock. Steam Clock software is a design and development studio that ships great mobile apps. They work with growing tech companies to level up their customers. Thank you.

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Our thanks to Steam Clock for their support of this show and all of Relay. All right, halftime is over. Micah, we turn it over to you. Yeah, my question, do you seek out software updates? Or do you just let them come to you in their own time? Aline? So, I very recently turned on automatic app updates on my... iPads and iPhone. And I don't love it because what I'm finding is that I manually update apps more frequently than iPad or iPhone or else will.

when left to its own devices. Like, I don't know. I thought it would be like... a nightly thing like it would be like oh it's midnight it's time for me to go check updates and it doesn't do that it's like i'm looking at 18 updates on my ipad for like three days and i'm like no i can't i can't i can't look at that badge anymore I'm just going to go update you. Also, I use GoodNotes for my knitting. I knit all the time, people. That's what I do. I use GoodNotes.

for my knitting. And if it gets out of sync, if the version numbers get out of sync, it gets really mad. So I'm often making sure that I can go from like my iPad mini to my iPad pro to my phone. in good notes. And I'm like, well, I might as well update everything else while I'm in here. I just... last week updated my computer to sequoia um so there's nothing automatic happening on my mac this is this is all a manual setup over here um but like yeah like

Theoretically, I do. I don't do automatic OS updates just because sometimes things get janky. I know it happens less and less frequently. checks and balances and tools and programmers get better. But I just don't do that. So I save the OS updates for myself. Yeah, I... kind of feel similarly about the app updates, like...

I assume, you know, I do have automatic app updates on. I like to, you know, keep my stuff up to date. But I do find every once in a while on my phone or something that it just won't have gotten around to it. Like you open up your app updates and like Aline said, there's like, oh, 40 apps.

It's gotten better, but it's still tricky. Like the other day, I found there's a new game in the New York Times game app. And I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. I was playing that and I went over to use it on my phone or my iPad. I can't remember which. And it was like, yeah, it's not. No. no we didn't update your app yet i was like well why why not i clearly got updated on this other device over here um

I do appreciate that a lot of Mac apps that use the third-party Sparkle framework, which has been around for quite a few years where you can sort of prompt people to update apps. I do appreciate that, although it also has its own challenges.

because there's nothing like opening an app to do something. It's like, hey, do you want to update? No, I was just trying to do this thing. I don't have time to do this now. But we can all agree that they're better than Discord's app update experience. It was just to show you a little arrow once in a while. Weirdly, sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes once a week.

and then to take forever as it updates things. So I do like to have all my stuff up to date, but it is weirdly hard to do it these days. So I don't know what that says about things. Paul, what about you? Well, Dan, I'm sorry that our apps prompt you to update sometimes. I just need to record a podcast, Paul. Then you can just hit cancel and you can update later. But I want to update. We don't force it on you.

So I mostly hand update things, update myself for my Mac apps. I will let them prompt me with Sparkle or it's mostly Sparkle so that I will get a prompt and I will update. For the app stores, though, I actually I have kept them on manual updates for years because I like reading release notes. I guess that's probably weird, but I like seeing, hey, something's going to change and then actually being able to understand what has changed instead of just having it change out from under me.

But I did realize that on the Apple TV, I have automatic app updates set because that is not something where I'm expecting anything to change for the better or worse. It should just work. For several years, I've had that on automatic and things just work. And that's the way that I want it. But definitely on my phone, on my Mac, I want to have more control over when I'm getting updates and and be aware of when updates are what the updates are going to be. I love reading.

review or app updates and seeing what what new feature might be part of it. So I am a person who regularly goes in and looks and hits the more and reads through everything to see, oh, okay, it's just bug fixes and performance improvements or, oh, they're testing out something new. I am very much a seeker of new updates. And it's sort of like that feeling one might get when you get...

comments or likes or responses on your messages or whatever it happens to be. I get that a little bit whenever there's a new update coming. And so it's sometimes fun to just This is perhaps a little strange, but sometimes I'll just pull out a device, charge it up, and then go, ooh, look at all the updates this thing needs. How fun. I like updates. Michael, were you a Mac update? version tracker user back in the day? I have Mac updater running right now on my machine. Okay.

so i love it version tracker now there's a there's a name i haven't heard in a long time there's a throwback this is before apps could uh prompt for updates themselves there was there were multiple websites for the mac that were just telling you hey There's a new version of X. There's a new version of Y. And it was the only way to figure it out because we didn't have web-based updating. So that would...

That would be your dream, I think, Micah. That would have been my dream because that's even more the case of sort of... It being almost exclusive. It's Christmas morning every morning on version tracker for you. So fun. Thank you all for your answers to that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Aline. So.

Google reader died and killed blogging. Nobody blogged ever again. But somehow suddenly it seems like a lot of my friends are returning to the world of blogging. I guess it's not dead after all. So I'm wondering. Do you have a blog? Do you read blogs? What are your blog recommendations? Just give me the bloggy goodness. Somehow blogs returned.

I, first of all, I've continued using RSS for many, many, many, many, many years. I hated the fact that people equated Google Reader with RSS because you cannot kill RSS. Believe me, they've tried. I do still read some blogs. I do have a blog of my own on my website, but I very rarely use it. I post like half a dozen things to a year tops because it's usually just about general life stuff. I mean, obviously, I write on Six Colors, which is it.

a blog. So I spend more time posting there probably than on my own blog. As far as blogs that I read, aside from the big commercial ones... As it is. I think I recently started... I had read links for many years to Pixel Envy. which is Nick Heer's blog. Nick Heer, yeah. Yeah, and I finally was like, why am I not subscribed to this and subscribed to it? I've been enjoying that. I think he's a very smart writer and it's very fun to read. Again, something with more personality, the personal aspect.

of blogging is one of the things that did I think really make it take off in the first place. Um, and then I'd also add, um, uh, our, our friend, Mike Hurley has started a blog recently, which I have enjoyed reading. And so that's a, I mean, they're not like deep cuts, but like.

Yeah, I don't know. That's the kind of stuff that I end up reading these days. Paul, what about you? Well, Dan, do you have do you have any other friends who have a blog that you might? Someone's got like a water themed one, but I don't know anything about that. I'm not into oceans. Okay. I do have a blog that I've been writing since 2009, which is, I think, before Google Reader got killed, although I don't remember anymore. It is, yeah. Where were you?

Oh, I had nothing to do with it. That is a blog called One Foot Tsunami. It is a humor website that I update once a day, once a weekday. So I've been doing that for 16 years, which. Sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but there it is. I was I was going to mention six colors dot com as a blog that I read every day. Dan might be familiar with that, I think.

Other recommendations beyond that, I'm also a PixelNV reader. Relatively, probably six or 12 months ago, I subscribed to that. I think to me, the thing that I would say is... that if you see an article or a piece somewhere and the person does have a blog, why not subscribe to it in your RSS reader?

It's super easy to add a blog and it's super easy to delete a blog if later you realize, you know what, I don't want to read that. So I don't necessarily have any specific recommendations, but I would say subscribe to more blogs and try them out. And you'll probably find some things that are enjoyable to you. I will say that I am a little busy living my best audio book life to have made.

room for blog reading. I occasionally read different articles that exist and come from blogs, but I am not sort of a tune in every day. See, I'm even using the wrong word there, right? Check every day for a new post to come out person. But, you know, perhaps this conversation could be a little convincing as soon as I can take the... AirPod out of my ear that has an audio book in it. Aline, why don't you round us out here?

So, Micah, to help you feel better, podcasts also use RSS. And I stopped listening to podcasts because I listen to audiobooks instead. I don't know if that helps at all. I have a blog that I update like once a year. I'm working on getting better at that. Part of the issue for me is...

I have created too much friction in my blogging setup. It's like I've got to... write the post i've got to upload it to github github and i think it's netlify got to do their thing together and then my blog gets published and it's it's too many steps for me um

Not too many steps. There are a lot of steps that happen behind the scenes. It's too much waiting. And I find myself just like it's just too much friction for my ADHD brain and I don't love it. So I'm working on solving for that. My husband is actually. writing a blogging engine for me um so yeah yeah um So hopefully I will be writing more frequently when I have to think less about the tools and have more space to think about what I want to write.

As for blogging, blog recommendations, I follow like several of my friends over the last couple of months have just been like, oh. Starting a blog again. And I love that, but I won't recommend them because I don't know if they would appreciate me recommending it to a wide audience. But also the standard like.

Mac Rumor, Six Colors, Mac Stories, 9to5Mac. But I would love to have more like photography focused blogs on my... my roster and I just haven't made the time to go like find blogs both about like here's my pretty picture and also like here's the technique I use to get this shot type blogs. So I need to really make time to search those out and learn more about photography because I miss taking photos all the time. Back to blogs, everybody. We're going to restart the whole cycle all over again.

All right. That's four topics down. We've got just enough time for a bonus topic. Really quick, I want to remind you that if you need some Clockwise swag, what am I saying? You need Clockwise swag. You need a hat. You need a tote bag. You need a shirt. You need a mug. You need stickers. You can go to all of that at clockwise.social.

You'll look great and you'll help support the show. Bonus topic time. If you had to pick a karaoke song or you already have a go-to karaoke song, what is it, Paul? I got to go with Bismarck Keys, Just a Friend. Because if you are singing off key, you are singing it correctly. Yes, that's amazing. It is the perfect karaoke song for anyone who can't sing.

Mine would be Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. It is a hit anywhere, particularly when a very tall guy gets up and starts singing that song. And then everybody's just like, let's all join in. Aline, what about you? I do not karaoke, but I guess like Paramore's Pressure, probably. Oh, heck yeah. I also don't tend to karaoke very much, which is why my song is We Didn't Start the Fire, a song you can basically talk. Oh, terrible. it's a terrible song i love that song so much

It's fine. I memorized all the lyrics to it years ago. Oh, it's just a list of nonsense. It's good. Dan, we started poor. We're ending poor. Well, the good news is at least we're over. But before we go, I want to remind you, we've got a brand new feature for our...

members clockwise unwound it's a short weekly segment after the main show wraps up where mike and i chat about tech topic if you'd like to get that plus ad free episodes just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just seven dollars per month or seven dollars a year and you will help support the show

And with that, we have reached the end of this week's episode. All that remains is to thank our fantastic guest, Paul Kafasis. Thank you so much for being here, even though you were very rude to me. I really wasn't. Dan, I'm sorry. And I got to give you one more. Clockwise Unwound, when does brand new stop applying?

It's brand new. No, it's not. If you haven't listened yet, it's new to you. It's new to you. NBC reruns. Hey, Aline, by the way. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Aline, for being here as well. We appreciate it. Anything mean you want to say to Tim? No, she looks so much better than I do today. She's doing great at me.

All right. Well, we'll be back next week with probably some slightly less sassy guests. But until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.