643: Podcast Stretching Routine

It's time for episode six hundred and forty three of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, February eleventh, two thousand twenty six. Clockwise for Four Tech Topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where time is marching on. And time is still marching on. Uh my name is Dan Morin and I'm joined across the Interamp by my good friend, my pal, and probably somebody who's very confused right now is Micah Sargent. How you doing, Micah?

All of the above, you are correct. Very confused. I had to get my little They Might Be Giants quote in there. I know somebody out there appreciated it. In fact, I know my friend Tony Sindelar is in the uh live stream, so he appreciated it if nobody else did. Well, I'm glad that Tony was there to to hear it and take it in and help us all understand what was going on by saying reference acknowledge.

And now that we've acknowledged that reference, let us acknowledge our fantastic guest this week. To my left, it is a producer and reporter at the Texas Standard, host of the Lions Towers and Shields podcast, and author of iOS Access for All. And I feel like she must be extremely tired because that's a lot. It's Shelley Brisbane. Welcome back, Shelley. Hello, great to be here and hi Tony. Yeah.

To my left, writer at Mac Stories, host of the first, last everything podcast. It's Jonathan Reed. Hello, Jonathan. Hello hi tony as well Tony, the fifth the fifth member of Clockwise, the Pete Best of Clockwh, all right.

Let's jump right in. Uh I am curious as always about automations. Do you have any good automations running on your Mac or your iOS device these days? Uh if so, what is it doing for you? And if not Why not? What's wrong with you? Sh Shelly, we'll start with you. Well, I was going to talk about lights in my office, but because of a busy morning that I've had, I'll talk about file automation instead.

So I'm here in my podcast studio closet uh with my own personal Mac, but I do a lot of podcasting here, but in my office I do a lot of work stuff for the radio show where I work. And uh often when I do audio in the closet I have to direct it to one place or the other. So I use do that with uh Mac OS tags. So if I'm doing my own podcast it's LTS. If I'm doing work, it's work. And if I mean guest, right like right here on clockwise, uh the tag is guest. And uh then uh the wonderful app Hazel

will deliver those files to the places I need them after giving them appropriate file names. Because in uh in the uh radio show, one of our conventions is that if we've we've made audio but we haven't edited yet, it's called raw in all capital. All of my automations have a date on them, so I won't forget which time I was on clockwise that this file is related to. And uh in the case of my work files, it's sent to another public server, uh public folder place.

on a computer that I use when I'm doing the radio show. So it those aren't particularly new automations, but they're really great ways to make sure the audio goes where I need it to go. Uh I too use Hazel for automations on my Mac.

So I got some notifications on my Mac saying, hey, I'm trying to move these full hey, I'm trying to move these, hey, hey, I'm trying to move these files, but I can't because I can't connect to the network attached. Anyway, uh got reconnected. What mine does is it takes files that are older than X amount of time from my downloads folder. and puts them away. Uh, it also is a clockwise archive tool uh for audio related to the show that is older than uh specific amount of time.

I will take those files and put them onto my network attached storage to uh kind of clear up my local stuff. Uh the bulk of the automation work that I do. I know uh Dan, I'm I'm loving the idea of him having to sort of, oh, it's my is it my turn yet? Because I don't even excited to talk about what you have. But Jonathan, you're first. Tell us about the automations you have on your Mac or IO.

Oh I'll I'll be quick, Dan, since you are so excited. I have several uh automations. My favourite one is actually one that uh I actually have totally forgotten that I have because I think it works so well. So I have a shortcut which turns off my use listening history when I am playing some music for my daughter and you know, as much as Much as a loving canto, I don't really want it uh clogging up my end of year list on uh Apple Music.

So that turns off my listening uh history and so at the end of the day I have a a two part automation which Around nine PM, sorry, nobody, it uh turns my listening history back on, in case I've forgotten to turn it back on. And it also restores all the home pods in our house to a an appropriate level. So if we've spend the evening after dinner having a little a little dance party with my with my daughter and the volume's a bit high

It means that it's not gonna blow my uh blow my eardrums out when I turn on the radio through the home pod uh at seven AM in the morning. So uh it's a nice little automation duck just Just resets everything audio wise on my phone and on all our home pods.

I had previously used a Hazel to do some organizing of files, very similar to uh some of what Mica described, where older files are archived. I have a big folder of all the podcasts I record and you know, I don't want that clogging up my main drive, so after Two weeks it archives stuff to my network attached storage device.

However, I wanted to sort of experiment more with moving automation stuff over to uh shortcuts. So I did set up I sort of after a long time was able to duplicate what I'd done in Hazel now that there are automations on the Mac. Uh and I had that as something that I, you know, was like, Oh, I wanted to uh to to see if I could do all the same things and

It works though. I will give a an asterisk on this, which is that the past couple of days I I I have it run overnight and I get up and I look at my n notifications and I today and yesterday I had a lovely one that said At three AM daily encountered an error. Podcast Archive took too long to run. So uh I don't know why it didn't run, but there you go. Uh thanks, Apple, for not making things very clear when it comes to debugging shortcut.

Um I've had a little more success with the one that I have right now that sorts all my podcast stuff into the appropriate folders on my hard drive. So as I'm recording this show, for example, it knows these are clockwise files. And at the end, not only will it uh move those into a folder for this particular date, but it will also upload my files to our editor automatically, which is great, because I then I don't forget to do that.

Um and then I've got a couple I've been working with on on my phone, one of which is annoying me because again, similar problems where I can't debug it easily. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I want to put my AirPods in and listen to some white noise. And I tried to create an automation that's just like, Hey, if it's after this time When I put my when I connect my airpods

just open that app and start playing my chosen noise. It never works. I've no idea why. Um so be great, Apple if you could add a little more useful debugging tools for that kind of thing. But I do love automations and I love to hear all of yours, so Thank you for that. And let's go to our second topic, which comes from Shelley.

Well, apparently this is the day I talk about my work life because I'm about to go on a Trip for work, so it's important that I track my expenses when I have go on other trips, it's they're not quite as long and they don't have as many expense complications. And so I'm looking for an app or a workflow that can help me uh c do that. And I'm I'm wondering if you find people uh have any particular apps or expense tracking workflows that you like. Micah, help me. It has been so long.

Since I have done anything that involves uh that level of expense tracking. And so what ends up happening for me is that once in a blue moon, I will have some sort of like work trip or uh some other trip where I need to be able to do my expense tracking. And at that time I scramble for solutions. And what usually ends up happening for me, I'm so sorry to say, um, there are these beautiful little um mesh.

zipper bags that you can buy and they come in multiple sizes. And one of those sizes, they're they're size based on their color. One of those sizes is a small little yellow bag. And that little yellow bag fits perfectly in my larger bag. And into that yellow bag I put all of my receipts anytime I am doing one of these travel trips. And then at the end of the trip, I will take photos with my phone, uh, to scan them into a document that I can then send to the uh I

I can't remember what her title is at this point, Comp Troller, I believe, um, to handle any reimbursements. So I'm not using any special fancy tools. Uh, unfortunately, uh especially, you know, the mileage and the transportation. I'm glad that that's not something that you need because I dunno I've never, never done that. Uh, but I'm curious to hear, Jonathan, if you have a better solution than a zipper bag and some photos.

My god, I I uh I wish I w uh was uh good with my expenses, but uh I'm really, really not. I don't use an expense tracker. I did look, um did a bit of digging and I found an app called Collections. which uh comes uh recommended from a uh my colleague Devin Dundee at Max Stories. He used it to track and he thing he still does uses it to track his personal expenses.

And uh so the caveat is I haven't used it, but Devin uh has sung its praises before and uh he's really hot on his personal finance, I do know that, so I consider that high praise. So I would recommend collections. It's it's kind of a personal database app you can you can store or log anything from like books and T V shows to contacts and notes and things like that. But they do have a section on expenses. So uh

I'd recommend giving that a try. Uh so I have been freelancing for more than a decade now. This is actually my second stint the first time around. I did not do any of this and I ended up Having some uh challenges at the tax time.

Uh so when I became a freelancer again, I was like this time I will be very good about it and I have kept I've created a numbers spreadsheet that I've been using for many years where I have a template for each year and basically uh you know, at the beginning of the year I start up a new fresh one. Uh and it tracks both my income and expenses.

Um and so basically I log my expenses there. Um and I previously did this mostly manually and I still do parts of it manually because sometimes things I don't have like a convenient receipt or something for th something. But I also created an automation um where I can drop a PDF receipt into my folder and using uh shortcuts automation and its new use model uh action that lets you access private cloud compute.

It can look at a PDF and be like, hey, I can find how much this was and I can add a line for it into your spreadsheet with the relevant details. Um so I use that now for ninety percent of what I'm doing. And because it runs on my Mac, I can even do it from my iPhone. So I can make a PDF or drop a PDF thing into this folder on iCloud Drive.

And it sorts it and it adds that line to my to my spreadsheet. So that is become my process and I try to be very diligent, you know, about that. I don't have to do mileage tracking or anything like that because I don't have to travel um for my job very much.

But, you know, I do get a ton of receipts and email or whatever that. Uh if I have to scan stuff, I can even do like scans using just my iPhone and drop it into that same folder and it will automatically categorize it. And then I usually file away the you know, like I have a folder for like twenty twenty five. Here's all the, you know, non-digital receipts I have.

So yeah, that's uh my system is uh a complicated numbers template. Uh I've I've linked it on Six Colors a couple times in the past because I've made updates over the years. I don't I think it's been a few years since my last post. So maybe maybe it's time to update that at last. Why don't you wrap us up here? So to riff on what you've said, Dan and what what Micah said, I I've realized first of all that expense tracking is really about habits.

more than apps. As much as I would like to rely on an app to magically know how much that hamburger cost and that it's work uh expensable, it's basically about habits. And as Micah said, I have there's a place in my laptop bag where receipts go and I'm pretty good about putting them in there.

Uh the m the thing is to next scan them and then to apply them to the expense report that I have to fill out. I still have to show my receipts, but I've got a per diem limit and so I need to count that up and say, well, you know that those potato chips you had, those aren't under your per diem because you've gone over your or limit. Um and so it it really is for me about about habit.

And I I th I like the spreadsheet approach as opposed to the app approach because I feel like it would be infinitely flexible not only for automation, but just for I I'm only gonna track certain things. As as I failed to mention in my intro, I don't need to track mileage, although I I I'm gonna talk in a second about an app that I've surprisingly found is great for tracking mileage.

Uh so so most of what I'm trying to do is track meals and lodging and incidental expenses and, you know, random thumb drives I have to buy when I'm in Anaheim, California. Uh so so that stuff is is fairly straightforward. But as far as this app, uh I uh my husband and I have an electric vehicle and we got an app called ABRP. It's now owned by Rivian, but it is uh designed to help you plot your routes when you're using an electric vehicle and find charging

places and all that sort of thing. But also it has a side benefit of being able to track your mileage. So it it of course it'll it'll tell you how many miles you've gone, but you can say plan a trip and you can say I'm going from Austin to Chicago or wherever it is and it will track your mileage and and export it out to you in such a way that you can use it for mileage reporting. So were I driving, that's what I would recommend because it's an app I'm already using.

All right. That's two topics down, two topics go, which of course means it is halftime here clockwise. Next week's episode is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark. Go to Surfshark.com slash clockwise for four extra months of Surfshark. Internet security is more crucial than ever, so why not protect your online life with military grade encryption and enjoy a secure, unrestricted internet experience?

With Surfshark VPN you can shield your data on public Wi Fi and avoid identity thre theft and fraud. It keeps you safe even in the most insecure online environments. As somebody who does work at home predominantly, I go out to a lot of coffee shops, I do some work there and you know, coffee shop Wi Fi I'm sure it's good in most places, but sometimes you need a little extra peace of mind. So having Surfshark set up where I can automatically secure my connections whenever I'm uh out of the house.

is great. Uh it's very easy to set up. It's got apps for Mac OS and iOS as well as a bunch of other platforms. So if you use Linux or you use Android, you can get one there too. Um and it makes sure that you just have peace of mind. Like i i it's once it's running, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to think about it. It's great.

Uh in particular, one of the features I do really like is this ability to also uh shift your location as well. So if you've run into things where uh it wants to get you based on what where you're located, uh SurfTruk can help you with that too. Never worry about who's spying on your data again. Surfshark's got you covered. And geo restrictions are a thing of the past. With Surfshark you can break through online barriers and access content from all over the world.

And it can save you money on flights and hotel bookings by eliminating location based price differences. That's a secret travel hack that's always in your back pocket. It's time to take control of your online security, try Surfshark today and enjoy their thirty day money back guarantee.

Go to surfshark.com slash clockwise or use code clockwise to check out to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. Secure your digital world now and start surfing securely. Our thanks to Surfshark for their support of this show and all of Relax.

All right, halftime is over. Micah, over to you. Well, online age verification, folks. Uh, we've been hearing a lot about it. The latest is uh Discord and age gating content. And uh it just kind of is is sweeping the web as we know it. So I wanted to hear your thoughts. on age verification, uh, what's required as far as scanning and everything in between. How are we feeling? Jonathan, we'll start with you. Uh I very mixed on it. Um I I mean we can all agree that

sh uh you know, age verification to protect children online is, you know, it's a good thing and it's hard to argue against that. But the thing that I I'm not an expert, I will clarify, but Things that do worry me is um uh certain services and other things being restricted. from certain people. Uh we had something in the UK a few years ago where the government decided to uh instantly make ISPs block all adult content, shall we say?

Uh, unless you had to verify yourselves and instantly it failed because uh they were blocking things like um sexual education uh websites and uh you know, websites uh to talking about uh LGBTQ issues and the thing that worries me is that I'm worried about how uh good these uh verifications can be and how closed off some areas of the internet are going to be for vulnerable people.

And yet, uh, like I said, it's hard to argue against protecting children online, so uh I don't I have a very mixed opinion on this, uh and I think it's something I need to uh read up about more to uh understand. But uh yeah, very mixed on the subject.

Yeah, I mean I I agree with Jonathan on this one. It it is complex and it's a part of the the issue here is that the age gating uh systems feel very m you know, they're like a sledgehammer, right? Like it is a very all or nothing proposition where it's like we gotta gate all this stuff. And the problem is this is not like, you know, cigarettes, right? Which is something where

Then there are not really documented benefits to cigarettes. There are a lot of downsides. We can all agree that having kids not have access to cigarettes is a good thing. But when it comes to the internet, part of the problem is that it is not so cut and dried. There are a lot of resources that some people might say are inappropriate for for kids, and there are others who would disagree with that.

And compounding that problem is that, you know, of course, these decisions are made by legislators in most cases who themselves have uh not only complicated views on those issues, but also in many cases lack the technical expertise to not say Well why don't you just not let the kids see the stuff they're not supposed to see? Like it's That easy.

You know, I think Discord, you know, got a lot of blowback for this. I think part of that was their messaging rather than the actual things they're doing, in part because they are complying with laws that are been passed. This is not them just arbitrarily deciding to enforce this, but You know, they are being essentially required to do it.

And part of it was messaging around how that would actually work. People jumped to the worst case scenarios, people jumped to some, you know, really bad uh feeling parts of it that weren't necessarily a hundred percent true. And there are other challenges r linked to that as well. A an age verification firm linked to Discord last year.

wa had like seventy thousand documents leak about age verification. So part of this is also that we don't have a good standard um for dealing with that and making sure that information is secure and is not stored and is minimally privacy invasive. So

You know, there are a lot of aspects of this that make it a very complicated thing to do uh and it may be useful in some cases, it may be valuable in some cases, but the system's gonna need to work a lot better before you can just start slapping these blanket bands on stuff. Shelley, I suspect you might have some some interesting insight here.

A few thoughts. So I am in Texas where one of the early state age verification laws was passed and then it went through the court system and was on and off again and then finally the Supreme Court said yes, Texas could in fact create an age verification rule. It was uh colloquially known as the Pornhub Law, which is what's interesting about it because I think even a lot of people who have fairly

uh uh progressive views about access to the internet for young people might say, well Pornhub is not something that we want our kids to have access to. But now Discord is one of the the the major players in this because Discord is a general purpose environment that also has a lot of things on it based on the communities that are created by Discord members.

that minors shouldn't have access to. So the two issues are how do we make sure that age verification is both accurate and doesn't uh impinge on people's privacy if you're asking them to send their government identity documents. And also are age verification rules going to make it easy enough for people who are adults and who have a ra access to who have rights to access to this kind of content, whatever that content might be.

To to get to it? And are the restrictions going to be so broad that minors will not have access to things they ha sh have the right to have access to, whether it be of a sexual nature or whether it just be forums where potentially adult content

uh might occur. And so I think what we're seeing with Discord, and there's been a lot of bac backlash online, is because people who either don't participate in sites like Pornhub or who don't really think about age verification in terms of general purpose sites are now having to

face it and so is Discord and so are these third party vendors that have have data breaches. And so I think it's It's gonna be a lot less simple now that we have general purpose sites that are coming under age verification restrictions that were theoretically intended for pornography in adult specific sites. The biggest issue that I see with all of the age verification stuff is the lack of any sort of standard or agreement on how things should be done.

It's very frustrating uh to see all of these companies getting to just kind of swoop into this space and we don't know who they are. But because a company that is, you know, their main purpose is not age verification, uh, needing to have age verification to protect themselves, then you have random companies swooping in and saying, We can do that. And then those companies aren't uh tried, tested, and true, and then your information gets leaked. So it's just a mess.

And as Jonathan said, you don't ever want to argue, nor would you argue against protecting kids online. And that's part of the thing here that makes this so difficult. uh to uh find any nuance. Uh so thank you all for your thoughts on online age verification. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Jonathan.

Uh my topic is um what's the one health or fitness app or device That's really made a difference uh for you recently. Um, last summer I uh finally got back into running. Well the weather was nice here. Now there's a foot and half of snow on the ground and I I don't don't want to go running.

Uh wa uh so I use the Nike Run Club app to start a uh basic running program. They have a very good program for like here, let's get you into running and let's start like really basic and then kinda work your way up. Um, and so I did that pretty regularly and I I really was impressed with how good not only was the app, but uh like I loved that it had an Apple Watch app. And that you could download the runs offline because um the runs Uh featured uh audio

So there's they have like coaches who talk to you during the run and their prime coach, Coach Bennett, is great, I have to say. I I highly recommend uh that program if you're looking to get into running'cause he's just a very funny and uh chill guy and it was exactly kinda the vibe I wanted and it it made a difference. Like I stuck with it. Like I I ran all summer. I ran a five K last fall.

Um, and I felt like that made a huge difference for me. So I was I was very big on that. More recently I've also guessed tried to get back a bit into Apple Fitness Plus. They had a uh series of workouts for the beginning of the year that are kinda like there to help you get back into the groove.

And again, as I stopped running when it got too cold, I felt like that might be a good option for me. And so I've done uh the vast majority of those workouts too, which I think is really nice. So I appreciate having all these options available with good integration with the Apple Watch, which makes a big difference as well, because then You know, it doesn't count unless I get my rings closed, right? Like I gotta

I need I need to count. Otherwise why? Why even get in shape if it doesn't close my rings? Uh anyway, Shelly, what about you? Well I have slightly elevated blood pressure and I have been using the Apple uh health hypertension notifications primarily as a reminder to take my blood pressure regularly. I mean I I have a

blood pressure machine dev device on my nightstand, which should remind me, but it doesn't remind me as well as the Apple notification. And those hypertension notifications, which I've I I say to myself, don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out. It just means

that you're being told what you already know is that you have some elevated blood pressure and you should probably take readings for a week and you can of course write those down in the health app so that's data that you can provide to your doctor, you can have for yourself. So it's it's a s fairly small thing in terms of uh the technology, but it's been pretty useful for my health. I'm gonna say my aura ring. I wasn't sold on it at first.

Uh, but over time I've been using it, and now it has done the thing that I had been waiting to see it do, which was. to give me the ability to catch getting sick before it happened. And so I I felt more prepared than I would have otherwise been because I got this little, you know, beep, not beep, but little notification that said, Hey, um, your body is showing signs of stress.

That are, you know, not typical for you. You might want to keep an eye on that and you might want to rest more. Yeah, I really like this idea of. You know, we've been collecting data for so long. Let's actually look for some trends in it and use that to help inform what actions to take. Uh it's been pretty cool. Uh Jonathan, why don't you round us out? Yeah, so lots of uh different apps.

Uh I'm really enjoying Fitness Plus at the minute since the new year to try and uh get back into shape. But my favourite app from probably the last year or so has been an app called Bend, which is a wonderful little app that has lots of different uh stretching uh routines like uh ones to do in the in the morning, ones to do before you go to bed, ones that focus on

like your shoulders and and so forth. And you can also create your own routines out of that. And one really smart feature that I I really like is that it has a kind of AI integration where you can describe your issue or your situation, like, oh, I've you know, I've been sat at my desk all day. What's some good stretches to, you know, uh help me uh, you know, get ready for uh the rest of the day.

And it will come up with a routine based on your uh prompt. And what I found is it's actually really good at coming up with good routines and uh Before I came on the podcast, I went with my desk routine, which I'd created with the Bend AI uh feature, and uh it works really well. So yeah, I can highly recommend that if you're wanting to uh stretch and uh feel a bit more

supple after sitting at your desk all day. Like the the podcast stretching routine. Everybody should slimber up before we uh before we do the show.

Uh, well that is the last of our topics. We have just enough time for a bonus topic. I wanna know quickly what's a place or thing, a landmark tourist attraction, etc., that you want to go see, Shelley. If you are going to climb Mount Everest, which I will never do, but one of the things you have to do to get there after you get off the last plane is you have to take the Everest Base Camp Track, which is forty miles up into the foothills.

to get you to the bottom of Everest. And it's it's quite a lot of elevation as well. And and people do this. It takes them almost a a week and a half sometimes. But uh I've been watching a lot of YouTube and I think the Everest Basecamp track sounds awesome. Wow. Um I've actually never seen the Grand Canyon, so I wanna go see the Grand Canyon. Jonathan, what about you? Uh for a long time, but ever since especially watching Shogun, I've been become become a bit obsessed with going to Japan.

So I uh one of the ones on my list uh is some is a place called the uh Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is uh a series of Thousands of red Torrey gates that kind of line this path up to Mount Inari, which uh you know, Google that, it looks incredible, uh but anywhere in Japan ready for me.

I it's a natural phenomenon, but you know, I've I've wanted to see the Aurora Borealis many times. I was in Iceland, which I feel like was my best chance, but it was cloudy like every time I every night I was there. Uh it's gotten down as close as Boston, but it's really hard to see where I live in the city. Um but yeah, that's that's high on my list of things. You know, I have to go to Norway or Sweden or something and really really try to get it there. But

Uh, thank you all for that. Hey, if you would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week, you can become a member of Clockwise, just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just seven dollars per month or seventy dollars a year and you'll help support the show. Um with that we have reached the end of this week's episode. All that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guest, Shelley Brisbane. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. And of course, Jonathan Reed, thank you so much for joining us. Goodbye, Tony. Very good. Very good. And Micah, we'll be back next week, but until then we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say and keep watching that, Tony. Bye, Donnie.