649: All Vocation, No Avocation

It's time for episode six hundred and forty-nine of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, March 25th, 2026. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that is on the march. And as we march along, I am Dan Morin and I am joined across the internet by my good friend, my pal, the one, the only Micah Sargent. How you doing today, Micah? Three. One, two. Did you know that my march is also a waltz?

Oh, that's nice. I like that. We gotta get it's we got rhythm. We got music. We got music. Very good. Very good. The show's gonna start off on a great beat, and we're gonna continue that by introducing our two fantastic guests this week. To my left it is Software Visionary PyCaster and my my brother in arms. Guy English. Welcome back, guy. To my left, printing history enthusiast.

It's the wonderful Glenn Fleischmann Hello Glenn. Well, hello. Let me show you my cha cha and some foxtrot on an audio media ghost. Look at the important thing. All right. I'm reeling it in. I'm reeling it in because we got thirty minutes and we got four topics. We gotta cover'em. So here we go. I'm gonna kick things off. I'm curious to know if you have done any technology projects recently that are purely

For yourself. They're not a work thing. They're just something you're like, Hey, I'm gonna do this thing and it's totally self indulgent and a thing that you just wanna do for yourself. Guy, any self directed projects lately? Uh recently I've been noodling around with a language that I've made for myself and doing hypercody kind of stuff. Wow. I mean if if I get it to a point that is actually useful, I'll share it with you guys. But I mean it's just a hobby hacking.

What does writing sort of desk accessories look like? in today's age and could you have AI sort of take care of some of the functionality? I don't know. I'm still noodling with it, but basically like so you're creating a language to like to express that in so people could write uh that kind of stuff In a simpler form, like a hypercardi thing. Exactly, yeah. Like a more simplified kind of thing. This started like years ago when I was trying to learn Swift.

Uh I basically started implementing my own little Swift version. just to sort of learn how it would work, which is a crazy idea, but it's the way it like it you know, taking a party car and putting it back together poorly kind of vibe. Anyway, so it's evolved from that. It's again very hobby project and Dan asked about some things that are just for yourself This is it. It's totally useless, but it it consumes my creative side of my software stuff right now.

Um for me it would be that after fighting with it for too long Uh going as far as to find you had to find a s a proper SD card that was small enough for this. and then do some fancy stuff to flash the card with new firmware to get my uh my aftermarket head unit to work. I decided I'm just going to get a new one. Um, and it's great.

But my memory was a little shoddy because it actually took even longer than the long that it I thought it took, that I thought I remembered it taking. Uh it's a it was a time commitment, but it was well worth it to have this Sony aftermarket head unit I have in now that immediately connects via wireless CarPlay. Anytime I get to do both sort of like software stuff. But also physical stuff like soldering and whatnot is is a good time for me.

Uh Glenn, what about you? I'm all vocation, no avocation, which is to say it's hard for me to find hobbies that don't turn into business or work. So uh twenty seven years ago I started a site called ISBN.nu because that seemed like a good domain for a book price. comparison site and then it actually was kind of a business for several years well people were buying lots of books and people wanted to compare and pr find the price. And then I've kind of let it languish for the last decade because

Bookstores stop running their affiliate programs, things change. Suddenly it's like you need to use OAuth too. And I'm like, I don't have enough time or effort to learn how to implement this myself. So, uh... A few weeks ago, uh I s like, you know, I need to do a project with Claude Code'cause I want to understand this. This is something everyone's talking about. Every programmer I know is excited about it. And so I went through and kind of rebuilt parts of ISBN dot new

with Claude Code and it's I wanna say it's a hobby. It's for fun because it doesn't really make much money. It does return some affiliate revenue. But with Claude I was able to understand my code better fix things and the site now works better than it ever did, which is very rewarding. Um like personally, not monetarily, but it's been

really enjoyable to get this old beat up project that's now it's been running for twenty seven years nonstop. I can't believe I have something on the internet that still works and actually works better than ever. I just had this itch to scratch literally yesterday. Glenn knows about this because I actually it spawned by a conversation I was having. uh with him and our uh fellow Jeopardy alum Jason Snell. Uh I have a when I was practicing last year for it, I bought a USB like

signaling device, a little like the like the buttons they press on Jeopardy. And like it just it plugged into the computer and you press the button and then you can use it on like there's a website where you can sort of test the buzzer timing. And I was playing around with it and uh you know, it's just been sitting there for the last year'cause it's not like I've had another reason to drag it out. Um but we had been joking around about doing like a like a game show version with the three of us.

I was like, oh well I know Jason has one of these too. I wonder if there's a way for me to like get it to do something else'cause it's just sort of emulating, I think, a space bar press. And so I played around with some of the like the basic USB utilities, but none of them really could see it. And so I went to my good friend Claude and I said, Here, I've got this thing. Can I can I remap it or create a little like tool to remap it?

And within the course of about an hour, not only did it like help me write a Python script that would basically do this. But it also let me package it up into a Mac app that I could then send to somebody. I was like, this is bananas. Uh and and it works. Um and it's, you know, it's super simple, right? It's this really basic one function app, but it's like

Man, like there's no way I would have ever been able to build that before. I don't even know I don't know the first thing about building a Mac app. And yeah. It it you need to jump through all the like hoops for security and privacy stuff, but it's literally a thing I'm just doing for myself and like one other person. But it and like

Yeah, that was a thing I did purely for myself and it was a lot of fun. It's a great experience. I love I love making little things like that that's totally totally bespoke and I don't have you know, Guy's ability to create my own software coding language. That's well beyond me. So Yet. Yes. Yes. All right. That's next. All right. Thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our second topic, which comes from Guy.

Uh yeah, so twenty five years of Mac OS, I guess maybe what's your take on where it is and where do you see it in twenty five years? I know that's such a stretch, but like These past twenty five years, you could have kinda guessed where it is. It is not fundamentally different, right, than it was when it came out in terms of you get Windows, you have the dock, the you know, it It has this sets shares the same bones. What do you think twenty five years from now is gonna look like?

Obviously I have to choose what I hope, right? That's that's that's where where we go with it. And what I hope is honestly, guy, that it doesn't change too terribly much. I love macOS so much and I love the way that it the way that it works and the way that my brain works of are are similar enough that I just I get it. And so I don't really want it to change too much.

Um, I have appreciated some of the changes that have taken place over time. Really love having my beautiful widgets on the desktop. That was one of the best changes for me. Uh the the new design direction doesn't bother me that much. It's almost like you have a I don't know, a a cousin who started dyeing their hair a different color.

And underneath, you know that there's still the person that you know. And that's kind of how I think macOS is right now, where everything's still where I want it and need it to be. And it's just got a a new die job. And so I hope that the die jobs keep changing, but that the person underneath stays the same. Uh Glenn, what are your thoughts?

You know, with the exception of liquid glass and some of the other changes that have come and that are irritating in interface design, I think fundamentally, um I think Mac OS is kind of the best it ever has been. Like I've been using it daily since practically since nineteen eighty five. So it's easy to say we're kind of at the apotheosis. Like what do you need to do to make it

better. Um, and it's more like I just want it to disappear more. I want it to be a thing that I don't have to think about. And I think the current state of the Mac is that There's a lot of things you have to think about to get to work. I I kinda wanna see Mac OS I don't want to see it become like an AI system and I don't want to have the return of Clippy but Mac OS edition. But I I sort of want Mac OS to be cleverer about what I want to do.

So not that like the system settings is replaced with a prompt or something, but more like Um, you know, I can be like there could be tasks or like I want to do this thing and it's like great, I'm gonna change five settings and here they are or maybe I don't even want to know about the settings, but if I want to it'll show me and things like that, kind of the things that we uh we script

We write Apple Script, we write automations, we do shortcuts. I'd like to see more of that be exposed in a way that would be um useful. So the computer is doing things that computers do well and I'm not doing or or maybe it even notices when I'm doing repetitive tasks. or certain kinds of things. But again, I don't want clippy. I don't want hey, I see you're trying to blah blah blah. I want it to be kinda like

Oh, I've recognized a subtle interaction and here's something I could do. I've written a script for you. Do you want to use it? Things that would just make my life easier and less repetitive. Um, because everything about Mac OS is You know, it's designed to make apps run and I use the apps and I don't need the system accept as a mechanism for that. So I want the remaining parts that are rough to be shaved down.

I think, you know, to agree with a lot of what Glenn and Micah have said too, like I think fundamentally what's the most important thing for me about my Mac is how it lets me get things done. Like Micah, the aesthetic stuff doesn't I don't find it bothers me as much as I know some people are affected by it. I see those comments and I appreciate what people are saying about it and certainly it speaks to an attention to detail and those things that are things we've always loved.

But what I've always loved about the Mac is, you know, not just the design, but also how it works. And I find that I still manage to get most of the stuff done that I want to do. So the the two major things I'd love to see is a better Better tailoring. I think that kind of gets into what some people are talking about with n you know, assistant and and AI integration.

um in terms of helping me do more with my computer or get more of the work that I don't want to spend my time doing done so that I can focus on the stuff that I like doing and that I want to do. And one big part of that for me, at least in the past couple of years, has been shortcuts.

And I'd love to see some improvements along that just in terms of making the integration across Apple's apps even deeper and broader and more powerful so that I can access not just a small sliver of the things that my computer can do, but like everything that my computer can do and allow myself to automate all of these different tasks without having to jump through bizarre hoops. Um

So that's one thing. And then the other thing, I think, you know, when it comes to things like fit and finish, you know, I know the again, a lot of attention's been made to the the design and the aesthetics of the most recent version. But for me a lot of it comes down to like making things work better, like tightening all the screws. There's lots of things in macOS that are buggy or strange or don't work reliably.

And that's the kind of stuff I would like to see a lot of attention devoted to fixing and tuning up in sort of the next twenty five years because If something's not reliable, you can't count on it, and if you can't count on it, you're not gonna use it.

And if you don't use it, it doesn't help you at all. So you can introduce all the splashy features you want, but if they don't work reliably, I'm never going to use them because it's more work for me. I have to check. Not only do I tell the computer to do a thing, then I have to go check. That's twice as much work as well.

Um so you know, uh for me that's where it comes down to is like, yeah, make stuff more powerful and automatable, but also make sure that it's reliable and I can trust it. And I because m more than anything else, I need to be able to trust the stuff my computer can. Guy, you want us to wrap us up here?

Yeah, I totally agree with what you just said. You need to be able to trust the software that you use. Point finale, that's basically the the promise of the operating system, right? That's part of why they go through all of the hoops for the security. It's why the memory protection stuff, that's why a lot of it is the way that it is. I also kind of agree with with Glenn in that uh having the Mac be smarter

and and be able to offer uh a smoother way to accomplish your tasks is I think hopefully where we're gonna go. In terms of the current look. It's transient, right? We're talking twenty five years out. Who knows what it's gonna look like? It won't look like this, I know that. But like you the basic bones are still gonna be there. Um, I do think that with AI, I think we're going to sort of explore again, and I don't know if it's gonna work, but explore again sort of the open dock concept of

a document will contain mixed media, basically. Because you can sort of embed like little views from other apps it and AI can be driving a lot of this. when you are in an AI chatbot, you're seeing like little charts, you're seeing like little images, you have like different mixed media stuff, and I think that notion is gonna grow out and maybe sort of permeate the operating system.

Which will be in support of what Glenn was saying. It's like help me get my job done. Like, do I need to be jumping around from document to document on the Mac, which is very document centric now, or window centric? Like how many tabs do I have in my web browser? I don't know. Like we keep managing windows and tabs when maybe what we could be doing is a better job of managing what it is we're working on in terms of then an addressable conceptual space.

What that looks like, I don't know, but I do think we're in for some interesting stuff. What I'm confident of is we will still have the bones,'cause they're good solid bones, like we said, all the way back to eighty five, and everybody in the industry is more or less AP. What Apple has done, and uh You know, more power to it. I'm excited to see what happens. Great, so that's two topics down, two topics to go, which of course means it's half time here at clockwise.

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Yeah. Um I was just curious uh about your home networking setup. Do you use Huh uh mesh Wi-Fi, do you use uh power line networking? Are you using Mocha adapters? Uh any special equipment that you have as part of the setup? Uh just tell us sort of how things have changed over time or not changed. Uh, based on the hardware that you've got running. Glenn, yes. We'll start with you. Oh, well, um I've been writing books about Wi-Fi for over twenty years, and I will

make a public confession is that my home's Wi Fi is not uh as good as it maybe should be. We had some Ethernet put in when we had uh some basement renovation work done which was hugely important, but I use uh power line networking. I've got I think three power line networking adapters. I've got range extenders. It's just parts our house appears to be someone built it like a Faraday cage for some reason. So parts of the house won't receive signals.

Uh, unless you do weird things. And um I had some major surgery last year that I'm fully recovered from and just before I had the surgery I was like, God damn it and I got it a big drill. and went into the garage and drilled a big hole so I could pull some Ethernet and discovered that there are multiple layers of wood that I can't drill through to get to the park where I could put the

So I need to get a friend with a bigger drill, uh, who knows how to do household things to finish that project. But Uh uh Mesh Wi Fi, a lot of people really love it. I thought it was too expensive when it came out, so I just kept buying cheap Wi-Fi routers and and that's where I'm at now. I've had a couple different setups over time. I used to have some Euros, um, and I had a little bit of a mesh setup, but when I

I got frustrated with them and I found that when we moved into our new house, it's not so large that I really need a mesh system. The Wi-Fi the single Wi-Fi router I have covers pretty much the entire house. fairly well. There's a couple like places in my office where stuff that has like lower power Wi-Fi chips I feel like don't do as well. But in my office I have also made the smart decision when we were redoing a bunch of our house.

to have an Ethernet run put from the uh behind our TV in our living room up to my office and up to my wife's office as well. So we have Ethernet running there. I have a little switch in my office that connects. Stuff that needs to be wired, and then I have my router downstairs, which is a uh unify dream router. Oh yeah. And I found it great. It is

been largely, you know, bulletproof. Um, I really haven't run into major problems with it. Everything seems to run pretty well and most of all, I don't have to think about it. Guy, what about you?

Kind of a very simple setup. We have like one router where the internet comes in. I'm kind of currently looking at fixing that up because I'd uh I've recently moved here and like a I used to have a Synology that was on the Wi Fi network, but now it's not because that thing chunks away and having it right next to the the T V in the living room is basically not tenable.

So it's downstairs kinda where I have my little office area in the garage, which I don't love, but it's better than having the whole family be driven crazy. Just me. Uh so now I need to get a router to connect that. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I would like to do. Right now it's very basic and kind of annoying in that like I just bought some smart home lights and they can't. connect to anything. All my other ones do.

These ones don't. I don't know why. Maybe the Apple T V is not. I know why. I'll tell you later. You know what? I'm not I'm not even joking. When I couldn't get them working, I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna ask Glenn. I'm n I I swear to God, I was not I'm not joking. It was my plan and like here you are today. So yeah, we'll we'll talk after the show. I have I have Eero as my home setup network.

It's fine. Um, I've thought about switching over to Unify. Uh there are a couple of times where I don't feel like I have as much control over the setup as I would like to have. Uh, due to i it's almost like the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Pro is the hero to literally any other brand comparison. It's great and for the most part work. But there are times where I want to get in and, you know, mess around with things and Eero just doesn't allow for that.

And that's a little frustrating. But As far as signal goes, great signal throughout the house. I have the main Eero with uh Wi-Fi 7, I think, is in uh the basement where I am for both my office and uh my partner's office. And then on the main floor, another Eero base station uh that serves Wi-Fi to that floor and the upper floor.

And then near our garage, it's a detached garage. So as close to the detached garage as we can get while still being in the house, I have a little Eero beacon to provide Wi-Fi to the garage for the uh camera that we have. We also have weird things in the walls. This is a very, very, very old home. And so you can quite literally walk out of one room and into another. And before I had the mesh networking setup.

uh the signal would degrade. It's like a Faraday cage here as well. So definitely needed to have that all arranged. Um and then also had Ethernet run from the fiber point that's in the house down into the basement so that we would have that connection. Thank you all for your answers on the home networking setup. I have all of that mapped in my head now for whenever I come steal everything. Let's move along to our next topic, which comes from Glenn.

Well, so I was um very fortunate to fly uh I threaded the needle to visit Dan Morin, among other people, in uh Boston a couple of weeks ago, and I managed to have very short lines at CTAC, like a zero weight. And like a five minute wait in Boston Logan on the way back. I understand I was very fortunate compared to nearly everyone

flying and I of course went to consult the TSA line trackers, which are now let most airports have them. I think some of them are run by the government, some are run by local airport authorities. There's c sometimes cameras. And I was like, Oh no, they're not working because between

the um uh homeland security uh lack of funding and uh whatever else is going on to monkey around with it. And I thought, how do I know what the line weight is?'Cause I don't really want to get to the airport five hours early if I don't have to. And I found Reddit of all things. People are posting their line wait times on Reddit and sometimes within like an hour or two of when I was leaving. So

Um the like the specific question is like if you're flying, like i what do you do if you can't figure out how to get there? Is Reddit your source of truth now? But I think even more generally, have you found that there are ways in which you can use sort of real time reporting on Reddit or Blue Sky or other things where people are posting actively that help you bypass a lack of knowledge, like an empty area that you really need to know something about.

Yeah, I mean I think that Reddit is a place that I end up turning to a surprise about my wife was w noting this the other day too. We were I can't even remember what we were looking up, but something and she's like, I'm gonna check I'm just gonna check Reddit.

Um and this was after rejecting, you know, Google's AI overview or whatever, which is kind of the opposite issue of like let me tell you some information that's almost certainly not correct or what you're looking for. I feel like there was a time N many years ago, where I would often turn to Twitter for this kind of information and feel like there was a good resource there. I think one of the great opportun the great examples for me is

Sometimes there will be helicopters flying overhead or hovering over where I live and I'm like, Why is what's going on? And uh Twitter used to be great for that. Now, obviously it is garbage for that and many other reasons. Um

And I have found that there are some more specific sources of like local news and stuff that are good for that kind of information. But I do think that Reddit has a passionate group of people and it especially because of all the subreddits with their specific like hyper focuses, like literally Just before we were recording I was looking at the the wire like the the red subreddit for not only like my car, but like

the aftermarket head unit I put in my car. There's a subreddit just for that. You know, like and it's very I love that there are it's like it's like distilled nurdery, right? With like this such a such a hyper focus. on this like one little area and the people there know everything about that topic. So It does not surprise me at all that it's proved more reliable than some other sources.

Um, you know, especially those sources which may be curated or provided by organizations or institutions that have a vested interest in making it look one way, whereas the people uh who are the enthusiasts about it will often give you the unvarnished like Yeah, they say that's how it's going, but this is what's actually happening there. So it is a it is a valuable resource for sure. Guy? Uh specifically for the TSA stuff, I mean I don't know.

Because I guess I am going to where I'm trying to go and I just try to be Zen about it. Like I I know that's not helpful, but like that's kind of just like if I'm stuck in a long line I just try to meditate my way through it and not Stress too much about the plant'cause

You're helpless, right? You you're gonna be in that line and you you're kinda stuck. You can't really do anything about it, so I try not to, you know, get my steam whistle going too much. That said, beforehand, if you're like how how many hours should I show up your you know, before I am new to checking Reddit. My wife does it all the time. She's a Reddithead. Is that what they call them? Reddit heads? Pretty sure that's Redheads. Anyway, long story short.

Uh yeah, there's phenomenally great information there. I f cannot wrap my head around Reddit. It feels like, you know, a new version of the ultimate bulletin board kind of stuff with like indented comments and it it hurts my old head. And I'm not even that old. I just for whatever reason I cannot get into Reddit. Twitter used to be good.

But uh Mastodon is of a different nature. I don't follow half as many people and a lot of them tend to be in the technical, like tech world kind of thing. And they're not necessarily posting about the length of TSA lines. So I suppose I don't really have a satisfying answer other than I try to Not to let it drive me crazy. Guy, I want you to know that your answer is very important because you have helped to reduce my imposter syndrome.

Because you said that you and Reddit just don't really get each other. And I've always felt that way, but I was afraid to say it because I feel like Reddit love Reddit. This is a safe place to discuss. And now I do. I feel safe and I'm so glad. Look, I will say Reddit does have good answers, and I have come across good answers there, but

I try not to go there if I can help it. Uh and then sometimes I just sort of have to smugly I have to accept the smug smile on Reddit's face, whatever it does give me the answer that I'm looking for uh on those occasions. But I honestly, Glenn, didn't realize that there were TSA line trackers. Didn't know that people were posting about them. I don't travel nearly enough.

to have been aware of this. But now that I am, uh, perhaps this is a tool I will use because it seems like every time I do arrive at the Portland airport, It just so happens to be the time that all of the other TSA pre check people want to arrive as well. And so then we're all in a line three times longer than the non-TSA pre-check line.

Um so thank you for telling me about these line trackers. Uh go ahead and round us out. Well, I think my story is just that uh uh I got TSA pre years ago when I was traveling more regularly. This is my first flight really in two years, or first cross country flight. And so I was a little like I don't wanna miss it. I don't wanna miss it'cause I was going to visit my older child. Uh but I was actually surprised I am not a Redditor either or red headder and I um

Uh, I was surprised how useful it was. I don't use Reddit very often. Um some people I know are on there all the time. I'm kind of a blue sky person for things and blue sky is not Twitter for up to date information like um something going wrong. Like the helicopter scenario is great. Like why is there why are there like seven hundred emergency vehicles that I can see on the highway outside my kitchen window? Nobody knows. We'll never know. There's no way to find out anymore until the newspaper

The local newspaper that's laid off most of its reporters covers it a day or two later. Uh so yeah, I I um I love the fact that there are vernacular ways that cre that uh crop up to help us when official sources fail. So maybe that's my my take.

All right. That is four topics down. We got just enough time for a bonus topic, so let me ask you, what's your favorite fruit, guy? Saxuma? Or Clementine, Mandarin? I don't I don't know if we know or are those all the same thing? Sort of. I have no idea. Pineapple is mine. It's trying to eat me as much as I'm trying to eat it, and I have to respect it. The sumo the sumo. The king uh queen of all citrus fruit.

I think I always was a kid, bananas were my favorite and I still really like a uh you know, a nice perfectly ripe banana, but uh yeah, oranges and pineapple are also really great. Fruit is good. Hey, if you would like to get added free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week, you can become a member of Clockwise. Just go to relay. Sign up for just seven dollars per month or seventy dollars per year and you'll help support the show.

With that we have reached the end of this week's episode and all that remains is for us to thank our Really appreciate you being here. It's really fun hanging out. I d I always enjoyed doing this show and it's great to talk to Glenn again. It's been it's been ages. Yeah, speaking of that printing history enthusiast, Glenn Fleischmann, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for letting me watch the clock with you.

And Micah will be back next week, but until then we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody.