This is That's a Free Bee , now with even more Apple Watch.
This is episode 21 of That's A Free Bee, titled I Just Want To Be A Hippo. On this week's show, I'm going to give you an update on the Apple Watch Challenge, read you a list of 25 cringe worthy phrases, I'll talk a little about my first ever Christmas, and... Some very important Hippo follow up.
As promised, this week is the week where I will be giving you my follow up feedback on the Apple Watch challenge. Now, the challenge, I think, is going to continue going because it's been pretty... Good experience, I think is the best way of describing what's happened. So I've been, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I've been trying to use my Apple Watch more for the things that I don't use it for ordinarily.
And it's been quite difficult because first of all, you need to train your brain. to think differently whenever you receive a notification. One of the things that has been a lot better is sending text messages, believe it or not. Most often than not, it's when I receive a text message and I need to reply.
What I'm in the habit of doing, because I'm not in a position to always pull my phone out and type a reply, what I'm used to doing is putting my phone away and thinking, I'll reply to that text message later. And then of course, I forget because that's. Basically what we all don't win. We're all terrible at texting.
We always say, Oh, I'm really bad at texting you back. And the truth is we're all really bad at texting you back because we're busy. And we don't always have time to reply. That's one of the problems with phones really these days is that you're expected to be available immediately, which I don't think is fair.
We should not be expected to be available immediately. We should be able to reply when we feel it's okay to reply. Unless it's an emergency or you need a reply straight away, there should be a way of indicating that. Suppose there is. You could say, I need a reply straight away. Please reply to my message.
What I found is when I use my Apple watch, because I see the message, I just tap the message and I can speak into my watch and just send that message. And I'd never really considered that before. I knew you could do it. I've just never actually done it that often. And that's the thing that prompted this entire test in the first place.
I wanted to see if I could get into the habit of doing that. I've been doing that a lot more. So it worked really well. I would encourage you to try that. On the flip side of that, phone calls themselves I found pretty difficult. Now that might be a me thing. Obviously the speaker's tiny on an Apple Watch.
The volume isn't as good as you would hope. In a quiet environment, it's not too bad. I've got the problem of, I have hearing aids and my Apple watch doesn't pair to my hearing aids and it just makes it a little bit hard to hear. I don't know if it's the same for everybody or not, but yeah, I find phone calls a little less useful unless I have my AirPods in.
If I've got my AirPods in, I can answer the phone just as normal. And that's been quite useful, but I don't have my AirPods in that often, really. The other thing I use my phone for a lot is listening to podcasts. I use mostly, I've been using a third party app for podcasts called Castro. Castro's basically imploded this week.
It's not worked for the entire week. And I thought it was just me at first. I've tried all kinds of troubleshooting. I've deleted the app. I've reset the database. I've done all kinds of stuff. And as of yesterday, they finally sent out a message saying that there is a quite a major outage of the application and that they're working on fixing it.
That's taken up to now four days. Now, while Castro is a pretty good application, it's always had its problems. It's not that reliable, like you don't get notifications for podcasts and things like that as you, as often as you should. It seems to prioritize more popular shows. As I, I think I've mentioned it before, but this show, it never notifies me that there's a new episode available, so I always have to manually refresh the feed.
I've left it weeks and then refresh the feed, and then four episodes have come back all at once because it's finally noticed. There's new episodes and I've contacted them and they're they always say, oh, it doesn't work like that. And it very clearly does set the video of it and all kinds of things.
Anyway, that's getting off topic, just a little aside. So I basically have not been able to use Castro over the last week whilst testing the week before I found again, it was fairly unreliable. Wasn't syncing to Apple Watch very well. So what I actually did is I moved podcast readers.
Podcast clients, players, whatever you want to call it. I tried two different ones. I tried the Apple one and I tried Overcast. I found Overcast is just better for controlling from your Apple Watch. I did turn the feature on where you get the audio applications auto launching whenever you play something so that I've got quick access to the controls and I, as annoying as I used to find that, it was actually a lot better.
So I decided to stick with it. And the other major thing in my work life, I suppose, that I use my Apple Watch for, sorry, my phone for, was as a calculator, because I have to calculate VAT like every 15 minutes or so for over a day. Usually, I know what it's going to be. I can either work it out in my head or I've seen it so many times that I remember what it is.
But I always double check. I've been slowly but surely getting into the habit of using my watch for that. People do say, oh, it's like you've got a calculator watch from the 80s. I'm like, yeah, it's just like that. Yeah, brilliant. So yeah, I found doing that is a little bit awkward because it looks like you're just messing about with your watch.
But I suppose on the flip side, doing it with your phone, it looks like you're just messing with your phone. So there isn't really an easy win there. I think it's just either one is a little bit awkward in its own ways. I'm slower on the watch when I'm doing the calculations, but I suspect that's something that'll speed up over time.
I did set a separate watch face as well for work and for home, so that when I get to work, it just shows the clock, the calculator, my to do list icon, so I can quickly check that just in case there's something I need to look at for the day. And that's it, really. It's been... Pretty okay. It's not groundbreaking.
I was expecting to come back and say, oh my word, it's changed my life. But the truth is most of the greater functions of the watch I use on a regular basis anyway. And the big thing for me is notifications. Being able to receive those has been great.
During the course of the week, I do like to keep an eye out for content that I could potentially use. In, in, in this week's episode of the podcast, I have a document that I write everything down in just so that I can remember, because honestly, sometimes I pull my phone out to type in the thing that I've just thought of to include in the podcast, and I forget that my memory is that bad.
I forget straight away, but this week I was listening to the radio on the way into work. And they were talking about, what was it, 25 words that we detest the most. And it was interesting, some of the words that they brought up, so I decided that I, what I would do is I would have a look at this list of 25 words, because they only brought up a couple of them.
On the radio. And I thought to myself, I'll actually, I'll read them all out on the podcast and we'll see, is it something that I use or have I used or do I hear people use it? Let's have a deep dive on each word or sayings. I suppose it says words on the list, but it's sayings. And apparently it's titled what millennials say and what they mean.
I do have to apologize. Because this list comes from the Daily Mail, and, not really a fan. But, if it's where the list is, it's where the list is. I did read the article, and, they didn't do the research, it was done by somebody else. However, I can't find any mention of this list of words, other than on the Daily Mail.
So, I'm not even gonna link to it, I don't even wanna give them links. But, we're gonna go through the words, because, they didn't make up the words, so. Let's start at number one. When this phrase first came out, I've got to admit, I did use it, not often, but often enough that it was annoying. And I do find it annoying when people say amazeballs now.
I probably still say it from time to time, but yeah. Don't know. Don't like that one. Number two is probably my most hated phrase. Maybe not my most hated phrase, but it's a phrase I dislike a lot. And I do hear it a lot. Holly bobs. Say holiday. It's quicker to just use the real word. It's easier. Holly bobs.
Oh, it makes me cringe just hearing it. Number three is awesomeness. Fine with that. I use the word awesome quite often. Don't see anything wrong with awesomeness. This next one, I'm ashamed to say, I do say. I originally started saying it ironically, and of course, as is time as is happens over time, I stopped saying it ironically.
Which is ironic, I think. And it's lols. I do still say that. I must say lol rather than lols. If I think something's funny but it's not enough to warrant an actual full on belly laugh, I'll go, haha, lol. Yeah, it probably annoys people. Number five is Bantz. Yeah, not really a fan of that. Same with banter. I understand it has a place and it's something that happens and I probably use it quite often to describe what's going on in some situations like we're just having Bantz.
I wouldn't say Bantz, I'd say banter. But yeah, still, I'm starting to think I'm not going to like any of these on this list as I'm reading forward. I actually didn't pre read them. I just. Find the list and I've, I probably obviously my eyes have looked at the page, but I tried to not pre read them so I had no prior knowledge of what they were.
Nom, number six. Yeah, I don't mind. It's cute, funny, I don't know. Yeah, number seven. I use this one way too often and I hate it. Totes. I probably don't even use it correctly because it's one of those things that I just say it and it doesn't even mean anything. Yeah number eight, I do not like, which is B.
According to this, it says it means you're the best. I don't think that's quite what it means. It I'm sure it's before anyone else. Something like that. Yep, don't like it. I don't mind people using it. I understand why people use it. But yeah, not a fan of it myself. Number nine, dindins.
Something you say to a child. A toddler at that. Not even a grown child, a toddler. You don't say dindins, you say, Got to have something to eat. Stop saying din dins. Number 10, I hate this one as well. Crimbo, hate it. It was really popular several years ago. I can't even remember how many years ago, but it was something that was said all the time, and I remember my dad used to say it a lot, and it just irritated me to no end.
It was just, it was, Yeah, are we, What you doing for crimbo? Just say Christmas. Oy. Number eleven, you can't not like this one. I don't think I'd ever use the phrase, but, it's impossible to not like, like it. It's Hanky Panky. Which means saucy behavior. We'll leave it there. Otherwise I have to put an explicit task tag on it.
Number 12. Don't like this one as well. Wifey. No, don't like that. I think it's quite demeaning to say, to call someone your wifey. Yeah. I don't like it at all. I also hate this one. Sorry. Not sorry. Just say I don't care. It's fine. It doesn't, people use it to end arguments, or, the other one I hate, which is, I've just had a quick look ahead, it's not on, and it's actually the thing I hate the most in sayings, and it's when people say end of.
So that's a bonus one for you there, because there are people who I know who have arguments with people and they'll go, Yeah, that's what I said, so end of. It doesn't mean you're right. Like, people seem to think it means, because I've said end of, I'm right. That's not what it means at all. It just means...
That you don't want to have the conversation anymore because you're clearly losing it. And I feel like sorry, not sorry is in the same camp, really. It's, you do care, you know you're being a bit of an arse, but you're just saying sorry, not sorry. Because you don't want to accept the consequences of the...
massive problem you've just caused. I don't like this one either, but it goes in the same category as hanky panky that you've just got to like it and it's nooky. Yeah, I don't like that word. Next one, happy fri yay. Yeah, don't like it. Don't like it at all. It's friday. Just call it friday. Maybe it's because I work weekends.
Maybe that's why I don't like it. Maybe I'd be a little bit more intuitive. If I actually got to have the weekend off. Hey, so it is right. Next one is, I don't really mind this one too much, but it goes in the same category as did dids and that's drinkies just say drink. Why do we have to make words? So yeah.
And alright. Yes, I understand. Before someone writes in and says it, all words are made up. I do understand that. So when I said, why do we have to make words up? I meant, why do we have to make words up for things that already exist? And when, especially when the words are longer. The word drink is three letters shorter than drinkies.
So why are you saying drinkies? It just makes it sound fun, and it's not. Going for a drink is fun enough. Number 17 No problemo. Don't mind it. Same thing though. It's quicker to say no problem. Maybe I'm just old and grumpy at this point. It's starting to feel that way because I don't like any of these.
This next one, I detest. Furbaby. It sounds gross. It sounds really gross. Why would you say that phrase? I understand that to some people, their pets are their children, if you will. They're not your children, right? They could be part of your family. I don't disagree, but they're not your children. They're a, they're, in those cases, they could be a substitute for children.
I get it. Not everybody can have children. Not everybody wants children. That's fine. Have pets. Love your pets. Love them to bits. But they're not children. They're not fur babies. They're, this is my cat, this is my dog, this is my leopard gecko, this is my monkey, this is my baboon, this is my hippo. Don't get a hippo as a pet.
I've been informed this week that they're very violent. We'll come back to that in a bit. Yeah, don't mind you having pets and I don't mind you seeing those pets as a great, a big part of your family, that's fine. But they're not fur babies. They're cats, they're dogs, they're whatever the animal is. The next one, I do say often.
Coolio. Oh yeah, it was Coolio. Or sometimes I might even say it's Cool and the Gang. Because I am hip like that. I get the feeling if you have to say you're hip, then you're probably not hip. So, I'm not hip. Apparently. Next one, I don't like this one as well. Methinks. Methinks. What's that? The next one is Hot Girl Summer, which apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
It means confident girls, and I'm all for that. Marlon might not like the phrase so much, it gets a pass, and I don't mind it when people say it, because girls need more empowerment. And anything that adds to that, I am cool with. Although, interestingly, I've just spotted one further on down the list that I don't like, that girls use a lot.
And it could also be an empowering phrase. But we'll get to that in a minute. That's, it's number 23, that one. And we're now on number 22, which is, and I hate this, and we probably all say it. I know I've probably said it. No offense, but that means you're about to offend somebody, right? Just be honest.
I'm going to, I'm going to offend you. I'm sorry. I don't want to offend you, but I need to say this because you need to hear it, whatever it is, don't say no offense, but because you're going to say my sister in law says it all the time. And even with things where it doesn't make any sense to say, it's just one of the sayings.
Some people have sayings that they use often that don't make any sense whatsoever. And that is one of them that my sister in law uses. So yeah, number 23, the one that I'm understanding of. It's not the phrase I want to use, but I have to, and it's bossing it. Bossing it, right? When you're doing something good, you're in control.
I, I understand it, right? And it's, I suppose it is a pretty decent phrase to describe what you're doing. I'm currently in the tasks I'm doing. I'm bossing it. Yeah, fine. But it's used a lot of the time as a phrase by multi level marketers or whatever they're called MLMs. Yeah, it is multi level marketing.
It's used as a, as like a hashtag on social media for them. Like you'll get messages that'll say, it's funny actually, because I run a business that for some reason, everybody thinks that the business that I run, I must be a girl because of the type of business it is. It's family orientated. Let's go that far.
And. I get messages all the time and they will literally say, Hey girl, how, what are you doing? Do you remember me? I never remember them because they're not people I've ever met. They're just trying to pretend. And they'll say, I could get you some great discounts on this skin cream. Us girls have got to stick together.
Bossing it, girl boss, go, babe, go. And things like that. And I get a lot sent to the email address of the business or on social media. And I think that's why it irritates me so much. You're not being a girl boss, you're being manipulated into selling products to make somebody else richer, and all you're doing is buying the product and selling it for the same price you bought it as.
If you can shift it, stop falling for MLM scams. Number 24, don't mind this one so much, but same thing, it's just normalizing bad behavior, but at the same time could understand the bad behavior. Because we live in a pretty crappy world at the moment. And it's number 24 is wine o'clock. Time to crack open that bottle of wine.
Many moons ago, I drank a lot of wine. Too much wine. I probably had a problem. I was very lucky that I naturally fell out of that problem. And hearing phrases like wine o'clock make me worried that people are drinking too much. I don't drink anymore. Not often. I don't actively avoid drinking, but I don't drink unless I'm in a situation where, say, I've gone out to a Christmas party or something like that, and even then I'll only have one, maybe two at the most.
I always make sure I'm driving or or that I'm just in a situation where I can't drink too much, because I don't like it, I don't like the feeling of not being in control. So Wine O'Clock gets a downvote purely because it promotes... Binge drinking probably doesn't, but it's just the connotations in my head is that's what it promotes.
And number 25, the thing that the thing, the term that I have definitely used, and I don't have a problem with it, but it does have its own problems. And that is my bad. It's a great way of admitting you've made an error. You've caused a problem, whatever you've done. Without having to apologize for it. So I don't mind if people say, Oh, that's my bad.
I made that mistake. I'm very sorry. Let's resolve the problem. But if people do something, they just go my bad and then walk off. Then I don't like it. So it has a different effect dependent on what it's followed up with.
I gained a new listener this week. I know I gained a new listener because they sent me feedback. So first of all. Thank you to that person for sending me feedback. And then second of all, your feedback is completely invalid and I don't care what you say. Ah, that person knows who we are because I do happen to know this person in real life.
I've already given my feedback on their feedback. But if you remember a little while back, one of the AI questions of the week was about becoming an animal. And I chose a hippo because I said, I'd love to just be a hippo and wallow around in the mud all day because they seem pretty chill. Yeah, the feedback I got was in the form of two messages that said, Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa.
They kill more people than any other animal. I never said that hippos aren't dangerous. I said they seem pretty chill, and they wallow around in the mud. Every time I've seen a hippo, and I've seen a lot of hippos, they have just been sat around, soaking in the mud. With their little noses sticking up out in the mud.
And they've been chill. If you search for hippos on Google, you get hippos in the mud chilling, right? I didn't say they can't be violent, I just said, I'd like to be a chill hippo. So, I'm glad we cleared that up.
People seem to like it on podcasts when you share something that you did that was a bit dumb. So I'm going to share the stupid thing that I did this morning. This is not becoming a weekly segment, by the way, because I don't do stupid things every morning. Only most mornings, and this morning was one of them.
Went outside to defrost the car. Spent, whatever, 20 minutes defrosting the car. Just started the engine and left it, basically. I stood at the door drinking my coffee watching it defrost. That's all great. Came time to leave the house to go and drop the kids off at school. And we I'd obviously defrosted the front window and the back glass and my door I was able to get into.
But my door was a bit frozen when I went to get in it. So I had to really pull it to get in. So we got to the car, we couldn't open the kids doors. No matter what we did, they were frozen solid. I was yanking on the doors, the handle was twisting, I was like, Ooh, I'm probably gonna pull the handle off here, I need to stop.
So I thought to myself, what I'll do, I'll nip inside, and I'll get some lukewarm water, I'll pour it over the door lock, and hopefully it'll free it off, because it won't be frozen. So I did, I went inside, got some lukewarm water. Come outside, poured it over the two back door locks, went to open the car, could not get the car door to open.
Spent ages trying to work out what it was. I then got more water, poured it into the crack of the door, thinking that maybe it hasn't actually quite gotten into the door mechanism. And yeah, it turned out I'd not unlocked the car. So one of the kids said, Dad, have you actually unlocked it? Yes. And then pressing a lock button, and I was like, try it now!
And yeah, sure enough, the door opened. Yep. Stupid thing I did this morning.
I thought, as we are getting closer to Christmas, that I would start a new segment that is only going to run for three or four weeks. I actually can't remember how many weeks there are until Christmas now, and I could probably look it up right now, but I don't care much. You can probably look it up yourself.
I'm going to run a new segment where I'm going to talk about Christmas toys that I got growing up, or tell you a Christmas tale, or whatever it is. I've actually got four of them I think lined up in my head that I'm going to talk about, and I will... I'll talk about one each week. I am, it's worth pointing out now, actually, whilst I remember to mention it, I am going to have a break for Christmas.
I haven't quite decided yet what that break is going to be. It's definitely going to be at least one week and probably it will be the Christmas week that I don't produce an episode. The main reason being, to be honest, is it's going to be hard to record because actually the podcast is anonymous. My, my family don't know I make it so my wife will be at home over Christmas because she's not going to be at work.
So it's going to be really hard to secretly record an editor podcast whilst she's here and whilst there are two children here as well. Previously in the past during the school holidays, I've just got the stuff out recorded and they've been playing and not even noticed because they've been playing in the rooms or they've been playing outside, whatever they've been doing.
So it's worked out well previously, but I ain't going to be able to. Get that one past my wife without her wondering why on earth I'm recording a podcast that she knows nothing about. And I still want it to remain anonymous, even for, obviously there are people that know who I am and there are listeners out there that I see on a daily basis, but one of them is not my wife.
And I want to keep it that way because I don't want my family to know about the podcast purely because. I think it's fun having something out there that the majority of people don't know about. If my family found out about it, everyone will find out about it, because we all know what families are like.
I'm definitely going to have a break. I will be doing at least one week where I don't make an episode. It might even stretch to three weeks. However, I think I've managed to work it so that the week before I'll be able to do an episode. I've already got it scheduled and a little bit of a plan in place for it.
And I do also think the week after I might be able to produce one, it might just end up being published on the Friday instead of the Thursday. It's difficult to say at the moment, but I will do my best. I'd like to produce an episode. I don't want that much of a break if I can help it, but if I have to have a break, I have to have a break.
What a shame, I've got to have a break. That brings me now to the first Christmas. Toy, this one. They're all toys. Some of them are stories about how I got that toy. The very first, it's not the very first Christmas present I ever got, but it's certainly, I got it for my first Christmas. And, I've got a little stuffed cat, and it's called Kitty Cat.
Well, that's what I named it growing up, and I'm going to post some pictures of it in the, on the website, and I'll probably put them on Instagram, and I'll link to them in the show notes, so you can have a look at this cat. Now, Kitty Cat was given to me by my aunt, and it was my first Christmas. I don't remember it, I just, I've been told this growing up.
Obviously, I don't remember my first Christmas, that'd be bonkers, wouldn't it? And it's basically just a little grey cat that has been by my side my entire life. Until I moved house the last time. When we moved into the house that we are currently in, I lost Kitty Cat and I was devastated. I couldn't believe that I'd misplaced Kitty Cat.
Kitty Cat always was... On a, on display somewhere, like all the time and it just vanished. And I was a bit gutted. And then of course, over time, I forgot about it. And then five years after moving in, we finally decided to start clearing out the garage because we moved from a bigger house to a smaller house.
And so a lot of our stuff had to go into a garage. Our garage. We didn't have a garage actually in the previous house, weirdly. So we put all the stuff in the garage and we had to get a skip to just throw out a load of rubbish. Cause we, we just, we had to go through it. Most of it was rubbish, but at the time we had to move quickly because our landlord just randomly decided to sell the house and gave us a month to move out.
So that's why everything was such a rush. So we got in a new house, blah, blah, blah, set everything up as you do. And there's a lot of stuff dumped in the garage. So we got a skip and we're emptying all the stuff into this skip. And I'm just about to throw something into the scape. I turned around and what do I see?
Poking out of all the garbage that we've just thrown in the scape? Kitty cat. Just an ear sticking up and I recognized it instantly. And I was like, Stop! Everybody stop! What are you doing? I went over and I pulled it out and it was Mangy, right? Stank. It was wet, it was gross, and it was awful. So the first thing I did was go and run it under a tap, just to get all the cobwebs off it and everything.
I give it a soak in hot soapy water, then I went out and got, it was really sad actually, I went out and got some soft brushes, and I was brushing at the fur to get all the, like, staining out of it and everything. And basically, Kitty Cat went through a deep clean. And kitty cat now looks probably like a really mangy cat, but looks just as I remember kitty cat growing up.
Now, over the years, lost a bit of stuff in, it's head fell off at one point, I remember my mum sewing it's head back on. You can't tell, she did a great job, but she sewed it's head back on, it lost an eye, I don't know how it lost an eye, but the kitty cat lost an eye. So that was actually even before kitty cat ended up in the skip.
But now, kitty cat stays with me all the time. Not all the time but in the house on display as you walk up the stairs there is a big bookshelf and kitty cat sits on the bookshelf watching over us and I will never ever lose kitty cat again.
According to my recorder we are 35 minutes into the recording and I still haven't moved on to the next section. So guess what's coming up. Yep. The next section, this is the AI question of the week. And this week's question is, what do you think the world will be like in 50 years in terms of technology, society and environment?
Which current technological trend do you believe will have the most significant impact? I think in order to answer that question correctly, I'm going to have to answer it backwards. So let's start with the bit where it says, which current technology or trend do you believe will have the most significant impact?
I think I'd be stupid to not say AI at this point, and there are others, but which we'll come on to in a minute. I think AI is going to have a massive impact on the world, the future. I'm In ways we probably haven't yet worked out the AI has the ability to be a great assistant to everything that we're doing.
It helps drive creativity as evidenced purely by the fact that I was able to ask this question without thinking of it myself. It has the ability to make tasks that nobody wants to do quicker, easier, and more fun in some cases. And like developing the artwork for this show, I could do it using other tools that are not automated, but I wouldn't enjoy it.
And I wouldn't do as much of it. I would probably do one per episode. Having an AI tool that could do it for me makes me far more creative, makes me produce more. And it's just a much more enjoyable a much more enjoyable workflow. And yeah, so AI and R, which is augmented reality, I think they are the two things that are going to probably be more impactful than we realize at the moment.
I know a lot of people think virtual reality. I don't think, I could be completely wrong here, but I don't think virtual reality will take off quite in the way we expect. I've expected it to in the past when people look towards the future. I think it will be more augmented reality. I could be wrong.
Obviously I can't see the future because if I could, things would be very different. But I think I'd be more comfortable with augmented reality. And I think that's where technology will move in the future. It could be both good and bad. We've all seen the dystopian futures in films where technology is taken over and we've just become a race of people that are wasting away, rotting our minds, always jacked into the internet, that kind of thing.
You know, I don't think it's going to be like that. I think that would require a lot of things to change in a short period of time and I don't think that's going to happen. As evidenced with all technology that's come and gone over the years, it takes a long time for people to adapt to that technology.
Just look at removing headphone jacks from phones. It took years before people accepted that was actually a useful thing to do. And there are still people that don't believe that it's, it was a good idea. And it's been a very long time. I don't even know how long. So, no, I don't think there's going to be a huge change in the way that The world is structured necessarily, but I think there'll be changes in the way we look at work and the way that we look at the world around us.
I think the biggest thing that will probably change is entertainment, because that kind of leads everything really. Everything's about entertainment these days in some way, shape, or form. And I think that's where we'll see the differences. I probably won't get to see what the world's like in 50 years, so I'll not be able to confirm if I was correct or not.
But, I'd like to think I've got enough time left to see which way it's going. I guess only time will tell. Whoa.
So I've got a bit of a gripe this week. The gripe isn't necessarily something that happens often that, like, like usual gripes, that people could... Maybe relate to, but it is a, it's a, it's more of a situation that happened to me this week, and I didn't like it one bit, and I wanted to complain, and then I was just like, you know what?
Just don't be that guy who complains about something. Probably blew it out of proportion, but let's, I'll tell you the story. So I, we've recently moved our living room around for several reasons. We'd recently moved it around the first time, and I pointed out that there's no room at all because everything just moved closer to one another.
It was nice. It was cozy. There wasn't enough room. The kids have big beanbags that they sit on. If they sat on the big beanbags, they're in front of the sofa, but we're standing on the kids when we were getting up, which is obviously not great. And it also meant that there wouldn't be anywhere for the Christmas tree to go, all of that kind of stuff.
We decided to move the living room around. We've even, for the first time, we've moved where the Leopard Gecko vivarium is, and I was very nervous about doing that. I didn't, I, we, So much so that we slid it to where it's going. I didn't want to pick it up in case it all fell apart and I didn't want to scare the leopard gecko to death.
But he's fine. He seems really happy where he is. That is also great. He does get a bit more sunlight coming through as well now. I just hope that in the summer there's not so much sunlight that it's getting too hot in there. So that's something we'll have to wait and see. But there's a blind I can always pull down that'll protect him from that if necessary.
Anyway, that's not the gripe. The gripe is, because we moved the TV, we, the aerial lead doesn't lead to the TV. So I can't get any of the, like the free view channels and things like that. No, I don't care about that. I don't watch any of them whatsoever. I'm purely watch stuff on streaming services. And nine times out of 10, I don't even watch the TV.
I'll watch it on my phone because it pairs to my hearing aids. And I can hear it. I've probably mentioned this many times before, but my wife does watch Freeview TV. She's more of a, she likes to flick through the TV channels. Now, if it's not there, she's fine. She'll use streaming services. She just then finds that all she does is watch the same things over and over again.
It's usually Star Trek Voyager, which is fine. Don't mind watching Star Trek Voyager. I love Star Trek. But watching Star Trek Voyager from start to finish, and then just starting it again is a little bit tedious. And, but that's basically what she'll do, she'll just put that on because it's something she knows, and it's just on.
And then, we'll just watch the same episodes of Star Trek over and over. Which is not good for anybody, I don't care what anyone says, that's not good for your mind. Now, initially, I thought, I'll extend the wire, I'll go get all the bits to extend the wire, blah de blah. I started looking into doing that, I was like, you know what, that's a lot of effort.
I might just buy an aerial and see how that works. So I went to Asda, bought a TV aerial, and the story of how I got there really doesn't matter, but I just felt the need to tell you it. This situation is all about Asda, right? So I'm in Asda, I get to the till, I scan the aerial, and I had a few other things, I scanned them, paid for them, and they're covered in the little plastic alarms that they have on them.
There's a boat. Five of them that I could count, and then there was a big tag alarm on the top of it as well. Obviously, I needed the alarms removed before I could leave. And I saw the guy, I was on the self pay tills, because they're the only ones that are ever open in, in the Austin areas.
And they, I saw the guy walking towards me. So I stood there and waited patiently, and then he turned around and did something else. And I thought, you know what? He knows I'm here. I'm on my way down. I was clearly waiting for him. The light was flashing because I'd scanned something that was, that had an alarm, so the light flashes to get the attendant over to...
attendant? Is that the right word? I don't even know. To get the employee over to take the alarms off, or run the thing over them so that it disables them. So, I'm stood waiting and I waited about two or three minutes, which I think is quite a long time to wait, especially when there was nobody else. I was the only person at these tills.
It was first thing in the morning. It wasn't busy. A couple of other people came and went, but I was the only person stood there waiting and I saw him look at me several times. And he just kept turning away and dealing with the other cells. But there's a lot of them, so he's quite a distance away. He's about, I don't know, a good 10 second walk down the aisle away.
So in the end, I thought, you know what, I'll just go and ask him. Maybe he hasn't realized exactly what I'm waiting for. So I walked over to him and I said, Hello, is there any chance I can get the alarms disabled on these so I can leave? And he looked me right in the eye and he went, He said, and in this way as well, I'm going to say exactly as he said it.
You get the alarms removed when you pay for them. And I went, I have paid for it. And he went, no, you've not. I have. He went, I've just watched you walk in, walk round past all the tills and then walk up to me. No, you haven't. I've been stood at that till for two or three minutes waiting for you to come over.
Because I could see that you were busy. He clearly wasn't busy, he was just shuffling bags around. But anyway, maybe he needed to do that. And he said, You haven't paid for it. Don't try and get away with it. I'm sick of you lot. And I was like, What do you mean you lot? What's what? I don't understand what that means.
And he said, People coming in here, trying to get past the tills, not paying for stuff, pretending they've scanned it, and just sticking it in the bag. And I was like, I didn't do that. Like, why do you think I did that? And then by this point another employee came over and was just stood at the side of him almost as backup, you could tell they'd come over because they thought I was being awkward.
So I just looked at him. I said, is there any chance you can help? And she said, if whatever he's in charge of these tills, so whatever he said is probably right. So what he's saying is I haven't paid for this and I held it up and I went, but here's the receipt. And he looked at it and he went, Oh, I am sorry, mate.
I didn't realize. So I was like, No, it's not that you didn't realize you flat out lied. Cause you just said to me that you watch me walk in or pass the tills and walk up to you and pay and ask for the things to be moved. And then you said I hadn't paid, which isn't true. I walked in paid, stood there for three or four minutes, got fed up of waiting for you and walked over.
And he went, Oh, I am sorry. And I was just about to say, can I talk to your manager? And as I heard the words forming in my head, I was like, oh god no, I am not that person. So I just said, maybe next time, you'll think about looking before you start speaking, because my receipt was clearly on top of the box.
I was holding it so you could see it. And he went, yeah, or he was clearly worried about getting in trouble then at that point. Anyway, I let him disable the alarms and I just left. But yeah, I find that very annoying. I don't, I wouldn't have minded if I'd have gone over and he'd have said, have you paid for it yet?
And I could show him my receipt because I knew he'd need to see my receipt. I had it held out waiting for him. It was clearly in front of him. He just didn't look. Yeah, I find it a bit annoying.
As a pick this week, I've decided to go with a piece of software that I use quite often. I have used more often in the past than I do now. But I never upgraded it to the next version. That is Affinity Photo. It's a, I hate to say Photoshop alternative because it's not at this point. It is its own product.
It's an image editing product. What I like most about it is that it does batch editing. So for example, I can generate the artwork for the show. I can dump them all into Affinity Photo and I can enlarge them all so that they're the right sizes for uploading as a podcast artwork because there are limitations to it.
I use it a lot for that. It's quite a lot of money to spend on a product if it's just to do that with. I do, in the past, I did a lot of photo editing. I was a semi professional photographer at one point. I would never go as far as saying I was a proper professional photographer, but I did it for money, which I suppose is all you need to.
Count as for to be classed as professional. Anyway I never upgraded to Affinity Photo 2 purely because I didn't need to. I didn't need to spend that money on it. And I noticed that they had a Black Friday slash Cyber Monday sale on, I hate those phrases, by the way, where it's 40 percent off. So I thought, you know what, now's a good time to just upgrade to it.
At time of recording, I double checked just as I pressed the record button. On here, the sale is still on. So I would assume it's on the whole week or as close as if you're listening to this on Thursday, when it's released, I'm sorry if the offer isn't still on, but have a look, it's worth getting. It's down to, I think it's like 40 pounds.
If you need a image editor that you don't want to pay monthly for. Affinity 4. 2 is the way to go. The original version of it was around for years before they upgraded it, and it was still fine even when the upgraded version came out. Like I said, I've still been using it, but I thought it was a good time to update.
All right, I've kept you long enough now. According to my recording, we're just coming up to the 50 minute mark. This is another long one. I am sorry. One last story, as always I... It's a short story, so you'll be glad to hear. I went the other day. I've been in need of some new pants. I've been doing the whole trying to lose weight thing, and I have been losing weight, which obviously there will be an update on a bit closer to the end.
Actually, next week. It'll be next week. I'll be giving you an update on that because tomorrow is weigh day, and we'll see what it is as of tomorrow. So I'll record, I'll share that on next week's episode. But I have, spoiler alert, I have lost a bit of weight, so I've had to go and buy some because my pants keep falling down, which is a bit of a nightmare.
Even with a belt on, they're just not going small enough. And I was after some like camouflage type pants, but no matter where I looked, I just couldn't see any.