James: 00:09 Frank happy James: 00:10 the new year. We made it another year. We did it. Frank: 00:12 Happy new years, James. In fact, I was saying that as out with some friends on new year's and I was like, well it's 8:00 PM I'm going to wish everyone happy new years even though technically we haven't made it yet, but I'm going to assume that we all make it home safe tonight. And we did James and so did you obviously. So happy 2020 James: 00:31 yes. Happy 2020 yes. I made it home safe. I went to Zeke's pizza, which is a local pizza establishment. Not big Mario's. I know, you know Frank where you're saying it's not big Marez trader. We were, we were back and forth in between big Mario's and Zeke's pizza Zeke's by the way, they're all spread out all over the city, so we have tons of geeks everywhere. So I was hanging out and I was going to stop and picked up some Zeke's pizza and we ate it and the lady, old lady at trader Joe's like, what are you doing? And I was like going to sleep. And it was fine because they, it was so windy, the space needle couldn't do the fireworks. Frank: 01:07 Yeah. It turns out, uh, we were all wondering if they were going to do a show or not, and never even occurred to me that the wind would be an issue. But of course it makes sense. We launched fireworks in a densely populated part of town. Go figure. You have to be careful of the weather. But I didn't find out until the next morning because I managed to fall asleep around 11:00 PM. Look at me nailing the new year perfectly every time James: 01:33 as perfect. We, uh, we ended up staying up. We weren't going to, but we ended up staying and streaming the countdown to the light show. So we did that and we cheers with some, um, some Martin Martin and Martin alleys, um, you know, cider and that was fun. And then went to bed right after, which was good. And they were like, Oh, maybe we'll fire them off later. And, uh, they didn't. And I was at work and we were, we went on a hike, went to rattlesnake ledge, the on new year's day, and we were debating like, what are they going to do with these fireworks? And maybe, you know, because you're an electrical engineer and I feel like the, I feel like fireworks are up your alley. I feel like you know everything about anything. So can those, can those fireworks stay there? Like how long can they stay there for? And like are they gonna repack them? Like what's the shelf life of a firework? Frank: 02:25 Oh, uh, okay. So I really don't know much about fireworks, so, um, but my assumption is it's a chemical thing, therefore chemical things deteriorate quickly, especially in Seattle rain. So I'm assuming that, uh, they had to tear it all down and very carefully inspect every little piece of it because I know they announced that they're not going to have a redo show. I don't know what the idea is behind that, but, uh, they decided not to. That's sad. Yeah. Sorry. I don't know. Chemical stuff though, that stuff always goes bad fast. I made it to the New York fireworks though and that's kind of like my signal. The new year, new year wants to New York city has crossed the new year. I'm like, good enough. I made it. So that was my clue. And then at 3:00 AM my neighbors woke me up launching fireworks. I got to see a 3:00 AM show. James: 03:18 Yeah, I did not like, now let me ask you a question. We're going to get to real content at some point maybe on this podcast, but we may not actually. Um, we do have a topic in mind, but I am going all over now. Did you see the Shanghai new year's Eve drone spectacular? Oh no. Did I miss this? Oh my goodness. Okay. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to put this inner Zencaster and I'm going to describe it to you while you watch this very short YouTube video that's going to start by saying, I have a general idea. China has been very impressive with these demonstrations they've been putting on, and I have this kind of sneaking suspicion that drone fireworks are going to be future fireworks. So whatever you show me here, I'm sure it's going to be super impressive and I'm totally going to hipster it and being like whatever. James: 04:12 So as you're watching it, so I sent you a link. There's a YouTube video, it's quite short and you can watch it here. It's 54 seconds and I will describe to everybody what's happening. I'll put it in the show notes, don't you worry. So in Shanghai to welcome in the new year, they flew 2000 drones in a firework, spectacular spelling out words, spelling out numbers, doing fireworks. They did a running a man, which signifiers different things in Chinese culture. They, they did all sorts of just mind boggling things. It's absolutely kind of amazing. I mean, I don't know how they, I mean I know how they did, but it's really, really cool. Frank: 05:00 Yeah. And it's a lot safer than explosives going off over populated areas, having a little 250 ounce or gram thing flying around. I'm so in favor of this. This is the kind of stuff I wish I could do. If only I could afford 5,000 drones and the time to program a mall, it turns out it requires a very large government to pull things off like that. But you know, maybe Microsoft will get into it some year. Maybe Microsoft, I'll put on a show for us. James: 05:28 Microsoft. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, the company I worked for, um, I don't know if I have any pool there, but I'll see what I can do for you Frank. How's that? That'd be good. PR. Yeah, little national competition. Always good. This thing is cool. I'm, I'm super impressed by it and yeah, I'm definitely into it and you know, it makes me, it makes me think about, yeah, just where some of this technology that we sort of think of as, you know, there's the commercial side, but the side is like, you know, it's a hobby and now it's putting on this huge crazy show, which is, which is ridiculous. So Frank: 06:05 yeah, for me, drones have always been very much just a hobby thing. I haven't found any real practical use for them. I'm really trying desperately to find a practical use. For my drone, but it's been just a hobby thing. And so this, uh, one thing that I've noticed with it that was people doing like photogrammetry where you're doing mapping with your drone and I would get that software and all of a sudden I'd realize that farmers are using this to uh, track crops and make sure that crops are being irrigated properly, that there aren't infestations and things like that. And it just kind of, I had to take a step back and be like, Oh, people are doing real things with these drones and not just flying around and haphazard fashion taking stupid photographs. And so this, this demonstration China's doing is spectacular in every form of the word, but I think it's even cooler that this technology has grown beyond just being a hobby and it's becoming integral to things. And I love the fact that it's replacing fireworks of all things. James: 07:07 Yeah. You know, I think with this type of technology you need to ease consumers in mass consumer into any technology. If so, when we think of the augmented reality glasses or we think of VR or mixed reality glasses or like the Google glass, there's a long transition. And with drones, like people have seen drones, but you and I were talking, um, we were out before the new years and we were just talking about, about drones and we were talking about how you fly a drone a lot. It's a very solitary sport where people are a little bit off put. When I see a drone, in fact, I, when I see someone flying a drone, I'm like, don't, don't videotape me. Like, what are you doing? You idiot. Right? But now I own a drone too. And you own drones and you built drones. And um, it's, it's a technology that people are kind of like not comfortable with. James: 08:00 And, and that was very similar when we saw the Google glass occur. It was this new technology that was, um, out there, but had the ability to kind of see you. Right? It had the ability to like record things onto what drones, they have cameras on them. So, of course people are gonna be a little bit off put by them in that way. But you need to ease people into this sort of technology. So when we think of Amazon or other companies thinking about like drone package delivery, which would be like spectacular in some areas, I would think it would be really, really cool. That's never going to go off smoothly unless you ease the greater population into a new technology. And when I see things like what the Shanghai um, celebration did for the new years, that is like something that people are like, wow, like that's really, really cool. And you can start to accept things a little bit slower or a little bit more, I should say, from that slower pace when something at the scale occurs, Frank: 09:00 maybe you will, but I'm still going to try to shoot him out of the sky. I'm just kidding. Um, yeah. Uh, totally. I think we all have to, it's not just the greater, it's all of us. Even the technologists. I love my little hobby drone, but am I okay with the CIA and all them and whatever, you know, government, tinfoil hat stuff, all those people flying drones around me. No, I don't really want that either. You know, I don't want the 1984 world either. It's a balancing act to be found, and I'm sure it will make tons of mistakes along the way. But the funny thing that you learn, um, at least as a hobbyist drone pilot is that people are the absolute least interesting thing to look at and record on the ground. It's just who cares what the people are doing. Those are terrestrial beings. They are stuck to the confines of their gravity. Well, I am not, I am a little flying object up in the sky. And so like, as hobbyist as people just having fun, we don't do any spying, but it is technology that does enable all of that. So good, good cyberpunk future to look forward to. James: 10:03 That's kinda what that reminds me of like of the Shanghai video reminded me of like blade runner as you know, for real. Those pretty cool. Yeah. Uh, all right, what, 10 minutes into this, and we haven't even talked about anything. What do you want to talk about today, Frank? Frank: 10:15 But talking about drones, are we going there? No, I think we tried that once and completely failed. So maybe we should try something else or should we just keep going with the drones? James: 10:24 Well, I think what we should do at this point is make sure that everyone had an amazing new year and welcome to 2020 and to merge conflict. And I also want to say if you're brand new to the podcast, we usually don't talk about drones. Frank and I are really good friends and we code all the day, all day, all the day long. And Frank and I are mobile developers mostly, but C sharp, F sharp.net developers. And that's what we talk about in this show, whatever we're up to. And Kaizen point, we talked about drones for 10 minutes because Frank and I have recently been talking about drones and we'll talk about them more in the future. I don't want to get into my drone shenanigans. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not gonna talk about it right now still on my face. So, um, we will get into later, but that's what we talk about in this podcast. Some people have asked me, Frank, they said, how do you, like how do you and Frank do this podcast, 183 episodes into this thing? How do you do it? And do you want to try to explain how from your point of view, how you do this podcast rank? Frank: 11:29 Oh Lordy. I don't know how I do this podcast, James, if I'm thoroughly honest with everyone. I'm like anything you do at first it's scary and then it's less scary and then you think you know what you're doing and then you realize you're bad at it. It's a long real, it's a real up and down roller coaster of a rough edge. We talk about that. James: 11:50 I think so. I think it'd be fun just to kind of reboot. We D we Frank: 11:54 did actually have a topic and that'll be next week. I think now, um, that, that what I spend about everyone, it's a holiday special. Hello. James: 12:02 And this rarely happens by the way. So this is pretty outside of our comfort zone of we've, we've started to record a podcast and we switched the entire topic. Um, immediately. That has never, I don't think so. Frank: 12:15 Ravenport has a Frank while when we do our cool Patrion little short shows, we are all over the place. I think we stay on topic for upwards of two minutes. So yes we have, but in short format, I don't think we've ever actually tried to entertain anyone for 30 minutes going off into the wild wild bushes. But we can definitely try. James: 12:34 So what we do on the podcast is we have a formula down and Frank opened up a Google spreadsheet and what did you see today? Frank Frank: 12:45 blank, James blank, my great fear. So I read this book once. Oh boy. I should really remember the name of the book before I say I read this book once, but it was a one of those improv books, you know, like how to improv and the philosophy, one of the, one of my big takeaways from it was how to do brainstorming correctly and the big ideas there were absolutely all ideas are allowed. Otherwise you really do put a hamper on someone. So absolutely no judgment of an idea when it's first coming out. And number two, make the list a lot longer than you think. If you're trying to figure out one thing, make a list of 30 things because sometimes that's how long it takes to get there. And so when we started the show, I knew, um, I kind of wanted a topic for every episode and thankfully you are, you were, uh, happy to go along with that and just thought it would be a good way to route episodes. But I didn't really know how to go about picking topics. And so you and I came up with this spreadsheet where we just list everything on our minds, what we've been doing that week. And we try to find a topic from it. Yeah. And we start off blank with the 2020 we have 2017 2018 2019 has gone missing. 2018 2019 merged into one mega, one mega tab. And it was a tough year. We needed support from 2018 ideas. So James: 14:14 we, I started a new one last week and I said, I want to start a fresh because some point it just becomes so unruly that I got to scroll all the way down. And you're right. I think with this podcast, having a specific topic has always been really beneficial because you and I go in and we write down three to six topics and we have little subtopics. So there's a main topic. And then we, once we pick it, one of those topics we'll say, or sometimes we just go in and say, this is an interesting topic. What would that show look like? What's what section a two, three, a three, one, two, three and four. What are the four points of this podcast and a sponsor read in between and that's uh, can actually make or break if we're going to do that show. Cause sometimes we're like, this is a great topic and then we've only found two sections and we're like, okay, maybe that's a lightening topic, you know, but we leave it there. We don't delete anything ever. Nothing is ever deleted from this topic list, which I love to go back at two years or are we talking about shenanigans? Frank: 15:17 Oh, you just made me realize we should release this list at some point is some kind of Memorial book. No, that'd be wrong. That meeting heroin. That's something it'd be cute. Uh, yeah. Uh, it coming up with those, uh, subtopics has been a great distiller for us cause we definitely bounce around there. Um, I always find it's not even some how many of those topics. Like I don't even feel like we have to find five. What I'm thinking is can we entertain people for 30 minutes and keep the show moving because sure. We could make fun of, uh, inversion of control, ILC containers all day long. But it's just not interesting to hear people ramble on for 30 minutes on the same topic. So I'm looking for, um, definitely some entertainment value to these things. We're, we're not, we're not the best describers I think we have to keep it entertaining. Frank: 16:09 You're not always going to learn something, so it has to be something good. But James, uh, the real trick I find with all these lists is exactly what you said about how long they get. And the original idea was that we'd go back to the old list and look for different things and we stopped doing that. But that became what we did for the lightning rounds a lot. So if, uh, a topic we never quite got to because we could never make the whole sub list of sub topics, then we tend to throw that into a lightning talk. But even that's changed now that I say that because a lot of our lightning talk ideas come from the people, all of our listeners. So thank you all for that. James: 16:52 That's very true. We have so many topics that half the time, yeah, we don't even get to go back to them anymore because all of you, all of your listeners as the podcast has grown, give us all your feedback and, and, and we get to take this up. The you want to hear about, which I think is the best. And what I love about the podcast is we also get to pick our sponsors like our amazing sponsor this week. Seeing fusion. Yes, you noticing fusion, you love seeing fusion. In fact, as part of my holiday hacks, I used a bunch of sing fusion stuff in my Xamarin app. St fusion has been around for a long time. They have great charts, graphs, all sorts of UI controls that you could possibly want. Dashboards, you know, enhance images and UI kits and controls and all sorts of shenanigans. James: 17:33 I was recently using, um, their progress bar, countdown timer control popped it in. Boom, done. I love their new effect views. You can add little shimmers and little little animations here in an application. They have everything you could possibly want. Schedulers, calendars, file format, support for Excel, PDF word and they support all sorts of different frameworks. Whether you're building a Xamarin app, a UWP app, asp.net core blazer, angular, react view. They got your covered. So check them out. Go to sync fusion.com/merge conflict to learn more and check out there for you. Free community a license as well. That's what I'm using and it's awesome. So head over to st fusion.com/merge conflicts. Thanks to the sync fusion for sponsoring this week's pod. Frank: 18:16 Thanks. Think fusion. James: 18:18 Yeah. Oh they just re they redid their website to it. It looks really, really good. Um, for the, for the Xamarin stuff, they meet some really pretty stuff. I'm really, cause I love, I just love going to all, I let go into all the different, you know, sponsors that we have, love, all of them equally obviously. And I love when I love when, you know, we, they sponsor us through the year and then sometimes I'll give them feedback, Hey, what if you did this or what if you did that? Or like, how can we make something, you know this and then they do it. Wow. Great. Someone listened to me. That never happens. Frank: 18:48 Yeah, and I was just looking at your app. You had this cool little circle control and I was like, that's a cool little circle control and you're like, sync fusion baby. It's like, yeah, bam did it. I'm like, there's no way you did custom drawing for that. I know you James, just messing around just so I should, James: 19:04 I mean, well that's the thing, right, is we can make this show because all of you, all of our listeners help us and give us feedback on the show and we're also able to do it because we live and breathe this every single day. The topic we were gonna do, which we'll do next week, was literally what Frank showed me on Monday when I went over to his office. He helped me solder my headers on my meadow board, which is cool. I didn't, I let him do all of it, but he showed me this really cool fancy app that he was working on. I was like, wow. I, I said, what are you using? He was like, this is what I'm using. And, and sure enough, like literally in our topic sheet we have the four sections and I think you're right. It's, I think it's not only what we think we can create a 30 40 minute show out of key people entertained, but what also are we interested in and what will entertain us because we have to talk about it for 40 or 45 minutes. Frank: 19:57 Yeah. I don't, I don't want to do a CS lecture every week. Like this week. Let's discuss different encodings of strings. Okay. Take that back. We might do that episode someday, but because it is kind of interesting, but it would be kind of terrible if we were just doing a textbook read through or something like that. It's definitely more fun for us to talk about things that we're actively working on. Cause it's at the top of our mind. We know all about it. But I think it's also interesting for others because uh, we're more enthusiastic about it and all of that on a process. James, I want to admit to something, it's 2020. I want to clear the slates and admit I've been using a little extra trick to help me through with these podcasts and that is somewhere around maybe halfway through the show I had to start taking my own notes during the show because you and I would just talk about so many things. Frank: 20:51 Or, uh, you had mentioned six different things and I would want to get back to every single one of them. And for, I would say like maybe the first thousand episodes where we recorded, I kept forgetting things and it was getting ridiculous and I was like, I'm not doing my job as a host because I'm not able to follow up on things and all that. So I found very useful for myself is while you're talking, I'm making a list of things that you're saying, things that I want to comment on. And then while we're going through the whole episode, I kind of check things off the list, uh, throw things away if it's not relevant anymore. Or maybe you said it, something like that. But I think that's really helped me as a podcaster to also just be more comfortable during an episode. I don't have to worry about constantly remembering everything you said. I can actually pay attention to you in the moment because I have a note sheet if I want to go back to what you said and I'm not a good note taker. These are just little hints to myself, but that's been really helpful for me as a podcaster to do my job well, I guess. James: 21:57 Yeah, and I think a lot of people have come in and asked me and you over the time we were, we were at Rubin's drinking a beer and the guy next to us like, Oh, you have a podcast. I don't really tell people about got a podcast, but he was like, Oh, is it hard to get into it? Is it easy to get into it? This and that, and it's definitely easy to get into. And there's some great podcasts that I've listened to on a podcast, a method with an Benjamin. He did a whole whole series on, there's a bunch of good podcasts, like how to get started, how to do this. And I think the hardest, hardest thing I've had is, is what you just have strived, which is sitting here for 45 minutes and attempting to, I mean I think it's okay to make mistakes and not be 100% correct because I have you to correct me and have this conversation, but also in this era where a lot of things are always trying to grab attention and your date, my day job, I'm shifting my attention every five seconds to something else and I'm zooming around, you know, to sit here, take a step back and really focus in on you. James: 22:53 And I go through and listen to the podcast and I can tell when I'm not being attentive and when I do that I kind of slap myself on the risks. Does a bad James. Right. And, and, and that's not fair to you. So I try to end to our listeners to be honest with you. So one thing I've really tried to do through the years that we've been podcasting is really try to give you my full attention. So the first thing I do is I close all my tabs that aren't relevant to our conversation. Um, I also believe that this clickity keyboard that I bought has been a huge help for me paying attention. Because if I, if I'm typing right, if I sit here and I go, Hmm, Hmm, hard to cover it up, hard to cover that up, uh, now if I say I'm going to, I'm going to Google that thing, or now duck, duck, go it. James: 23:42 That's my new default search engine. By the way, I'm, there's an episode, uh, if I'm doing that, you can hear it. And that's one thing that I've realized over the past six months has helped me stay focused because you'll know when I am typing or I am doing something. So I flip my phone over, I close all the tabs, I close all my applications and I really try to focus in on you and what we're talking about. And that's, that's been, I think it's kind of what you're doing, but you're writing it down so you're, you're doing that. And that's my next step I think is probably to get there. So I don't say something that you just said. Frank: 24:18 Yeah, see that's where I love having a silent keyboard because hopefully no one can hear me quickly pecking away notes so I don't forget something. But, um, you know, also it works both ways. You're clickety clickety keyboard can be a reassurance to me if I'm like saying something and I'm trying to remember a word and I hear you start clickety clacking, I'm like, Oh, thank God James is looking it up for me. So that's helpful having a podcast host. James: 24:44 Yeah. And, and I think one thing that's been really nice about the podcast that's helped me is, is kind of take that step back and talk about the stuff that I'm doing and help others. I mean, I think that's why we do the podcast is we're good friends. We like to converse. At the same time, I want to make sure that the content that we're creating is actually valuable content for all of our listeners. And all of you that are listening right now and it's really hard as a podcast or the hardest part of, of being a podcaster is not coming up with the topics, not recording for 45 minutes, not editing it, not uploading with the show notes. It's to me, and I'll let you kind of chime in here is to me it's the one way communication. It is. We are piping 40, 30 to 40 minutes of audio into thousands of people's eardrums and we don't get to, we don't get to hear from them really. We don't get that feedback from them. It's not, you know, it's a one way, uh, often not always, but often that that to me is the hardest part because, I don't know, it's almost like a void sometimes. Frank: 25:48 I, I a shout out to everyone on Twitter who sends us little notes about the episodes. I really look forward to those in the beginning of the week that are kinda a little highlight of the week. It's kind of like releasing an app every week. I wish I could release an app every week, but I can't. So this is much easier to release and it's good to get that um, feed back and I totally get, not everyone sends it. It's fine. I listened to 8,000 podcasts and I don't say anything about it online. That's fine. But um, you know, when we first started out I thought we'll be lucky to have, you know, a few hundred listeners. That would be nice. But we grew pretty quickly and with that I felt came a bit of responsibility. All of a sudden the numbers started having meaning in my head, you know, multiple thousands of people listening to us 30 minutes. Frank: 26:44 That's a lot of time. I shouldn't just be here making Oh wow. I would never do that. I promise. Making stuff up, you know, or like talking off the top of my head, I had a real big feeling of responsibility to speak and clearly about topics and saying what I know and don't know and being fully honest about all of our limitations. Like you said, you and I live and breathe this stuff, but doing a podcast, you realize how many details you allied that you just skip over because they don't affect you day to day. But then you start describing it over air and you're like, Hmm, I don't know about as much about this as I thought I did. James: 27:25 It's not a bad feeling, but it happens. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. And, and, and you're right, there's a few things that I want to improve in 20, 20. Uh, and so your point, right, which is, there's a lot of people that are talking to us via Twitter, VR, discord and I, I try to be a good citizen in those areas, but then I'm not at the same time. And we have them as these mediums for people to talk to us. And then I don't necessarily take advantage of them. And I think that's the hardest part of doing a podcast where it's not your full time job where we both live in the constraints where we have full time, day jobs and then, and then we do this. And, um, I really wish that there was a way that I could spend even more time, um, promoting and communicating where, um, it was there. James: 28:18 Unless I've shared number of quitting my job, which I'm not going to do. Um, I, I don't really quite have that ability. So that's probably one thing that, you know, we'll talk about in the new year. How can we be better at that? And if any of you, our listeners have ideas too, I would love to, to hear, um, what's worked well, like is discord a good channel is and not a good channel. Like if we were there all the time, would it be good? You know, I think that would be, um, that'd be beneficial. And maybe Twitter's the best place. Frank: 28:43 No, no, no. [inaudible] [inaudible] yeah, it's tough. Um, you know what they say? Like if I, I don't know how to describe it. I don't communicate that I like something people communicate their displeasure, usually not their pleasure. So, uh, and I'm definitely, that's me 100%. I never say anything nice about the podcast. I love online. I always wait until I get angry and then say something bad. It's such a bad human nature thing and work your whole life did stop doing that. But you know, it still comes up from time to time. But on a lighter note, James, if we're doing a little bit of a retrospective here, we did do one thing this year that I really enjoyed and that was have smaller ad sponsorships from community members promoting their apps and tools and libraries and whatnot. And I really love that because you and I both got into this kind of for the community. Um, I don't have a really real job, even though you said I a nice, a real job, that was nice of you to say, but I don't have coworkers to talk to. And so all of my water fountain drinking, I don't know what that is. Whatever, you know, uh, climbing ladders, rat racing, I have to do all that on Twitter. And so it's, it's um, it's nice to have, um, the community there, uh, to talk to and you and this podcast. James: 30:09 Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a really nice thing. I did enjoy doing that and we should, and we should do that again. Um, so if anyone's not aware, we'll open it up since it is 2020. We did these, uh, Indi, um, or solo developer or business, um, sponsorship reads. So we did them sort of towards the end ish of the podcast, sort of like classified reads. I took this from Brian McCauley who does the tech meme ride home, which huge fan of, um, and we've, we've, um, um, done some spas, POS, sponsorship, classified swaps with, with them as well, which kind of encouraged me to do this. So what we did was, um, $50 is what it, what it costs and you just hit us up on our contact form on merge conflict out FM. If you're a small or indie developer or business, um, you send us an email what it is, which you'd want us to do. James: 31:01 And it's, we, you get your own little slot $50. Right. And if I was a small business and I were, technically, this podcast is a small business and, and we do that, right? I, I put out ads on overcast, uh, the podcast application for this app when it's cheap enough that I can afford it and our budget and sometimes it take out other ads here and there. So if you're up for it, um, send us an email, we'd love to hear from you and we'll roll that out and people have done it. Been fun because we've, we've, we've been Frank: 31:30 [inaudible] their, their stuff, uh, off off the podcast too. We didn't, we just literally did it for a voice in a canned recently. We're showing that off to a bunch of people. Alcohol is, is right. So yeah, I showed that one off to my whole family. Look, I can unlock my house from 2000 miles away. Look at that. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. And you know, as app developers, um, I don't always, maybe I should have a larger marketing budget, but I always give myself a very small marketing budget. So I really appreciate, um, small, simple ad platforms and I'm glad that we can be one for some people. Uh, yeah, they're just the best. Go by a simple ad and get it done with, sorry, I didn't mean to turn that into a commercial, but I really was happy that we did that this year. Very happy. Yeah, James: 32:15 I was happy to. And I think that, um, I wanted to just mention it because [inaudible] was a platform is I think it's something that, that it was really fun to, to do. It was fun to, to be able to offer that we're in a position that we can, we can offer that that up. Um, and the feedback from, from people is really good that, that, that took out the ad. So, you know, and, and sometimes people may listen here and there and maybe not even know that we offer ads. Like we, I had people like, Oh guy, you know, I don't know how to, you know, I want to do a normal ad, yo, you know, with merge conflict, how to do it, send us an email. That's all I gotta do. Like, I'll figure it out. Right. Um, but yeah, I think the highlight for me of one thing that we changed this year is, uh, I don't know if we did it this year, but I feel like it was this year or we finally got matching equipment. James: 33:05 Like we got matching arms, we got matching. Um, everything, it took us a while. But over the years we've slowly been building out our different podcasting equipment. So we have the same travel microphone, we have the same, you know, inputs for our computers. We have the same microphones themselves here, the same setup. And, and that's been really, really helpful. I think for the audio quality for the, uh, streaming quality has been really good. And, um, I think the other thing that I really enjoyed doing this year is just is just, I dunno, I feel like the topics are just really fun. I think the topics were fun and more importantly, the best part that I think that we really changed was really, really, really asking our listeners for those lightening topics and for feedbacks on the show. And they gave and test and then following up by doing them. I think that was important. I think that's one of the most important things. If I looked back at all of our lightning talks, it started with almost all our topics and now they're all, we mentioned this earlier, almost all listener topics and that is probably the one biggest change that I saw from the previous years into this year that I really liked doing. Cause we only get to do those five times a year. Frank: 34:17 You know what I mean? Yeah. When you put it that way. Um, I always, for some reason that they always feel like they're coming up. I always have my eye out for them cause I'm a little suspicious of them. I see them on the horizon. But it has definitely been a good change because people have topics that honestly, sometimes we'll read it the first time and we'll be like, Oh no way. We're touching that one with a nine foot ball and then we'll, we'll talk about some other things, talk about it and be like, Hey, you know that one. And then we'll start talking about it for 10 minutes and realize we should just start recording. So it's fun. I love, I love the, uh, ideas come up that literally we just wouldn't have. So thank you all for that. It's definitely helpful. This has been a fun retrospective, you know, um, I was recently on Carrie low thrips podcast, um, dev talk. Have you heard of that one? James: 35:08 I have heard of it. And I retweeted your, the podcast you were on. Um, I haven't listened to it yet, so I need to go listen to it. I just wanna listen to you talk. Frank: 35:18 Aw. Oh, I love listening to myself. No. Um, I recorded, uh, over the holiday break and it was super fun. We just went, um, we did a deep dive into we, and so I got to talk about some of the things that I don't think get highlighted enough in this whole web assembly feature. Anyway, that's not the point. But it was fun because Carrie just started this podcast. He's up to episode number 27, and we had a lot of offline comments. He was picking my brain about how podcasting works and how we do it and how all of this stuff. And I realized, jeepers, I guess we are 180 episodes and I guess I can give a little bit of advice here and there about how to do things. But you know, a lot of this still feels fresh to me. Honestly. James, I was thinking about like just today, um, we decided when we're going to record it in the morning and I was like, Oh God, I come up with a topic and it just feels like every week got to come up with the topic and so it doesn't get old. Um, so on the one hand, um, we're becoming old enough that people are asking for advice. On the other hand, I still feel like I'm winging it and still trying to come up with a decent topic before we record. James: 36:29 Yeah. I, I, um, have, like I said earlier, been asked a few times on podcasting and talking to other people how they do their podcasts and I'm also have been guests on other podcasts like you and our podcast is so different, um, from other podcasts only because we do something that I call live to tape. So a little bit of inside baseball if you will, of of live to tape, which is Frank Frank and I come up with a topic. Um, we do about, I would say 50, 50. I think we do a really good job of picking each other's topics and going back and forth. So it's not always um, lopsided to one person's preference, but sometimes we're just both working on the same thing, which is funnily enough. And we do something called live to tape. And what that means is I go into Zencaster, which is our, uh, platform that we do voice over IP and a recording on and I hit record and for the next 30 to 45 minutes we record the podcast and we try to make no mistakes, uh, pretty much so whatever, whatever you hear is in the podcast. James: 37:42 And that is one are kind of hard to do. It takes time and energy to get there. And the reason we do it that way is because I don't want to spend a lot of time editing it. I've seen other podcasts and podcast ERs where they do interview type shows and they have people on that maybe never podcast before and they're just a guest on and they have different setup and you need to edit their vocal, you know, cues and mistakes and gaps in silence and all this stuff. And it's very, very time consuming and, and make you have to, if you want to make a great, if you want to make a great podcast, we've been doing this so long that hopefully we can do one boom all read all the way through and do very minimal edits and bam, get it out the door. James: 38:28 Um, and we're able to do that because the software Zencaster does some auto postproduction, it'll remove some background noises. It levelize is our audio tracks when we pay for that extra service. So that's super duper helpful. So I like the live to tape concept because it's not an interview show. Um, we, we are here. When I, when I did interview show with Mads, I did some editing on it and I very rarely edit anything you or I say out of it because it's just good content that I want to and that's the type of vibe I want to have from the podcast itself. Not to say it always goes that way. There's definitely been times where I've had added a whole bunch and, and, and it just sorta happened, you know. Uh, but that is sort of how our podcast works behind the scenes and every podcast is a little bit different and that still is always a learning process for me. James: 39:22 And I never know when Zencaster has done processing and what's going to pop out the end. And is it going to be bad? Is it going to be good? Hopefully it's good. It's gotten really, really good. Reza recent and then I go to town and, and it all happens and, and um, I still love, I love the post production. I love listening back to what we wrote or listened, wrote and recorded and then listening to it again when it's all done for me. It's like a special feeling to wake up Monday morning and I get a little alert on my phone that says there's a new merge conflict. And I'm like, I scheduled it correctly. And that's like my ah, moment, you know, cause I listened to it like four times before I put it out and then I listened to it again cause I'm ridiculous. Frank: 40:03 They're fun to listen to. I think so at least. Yup. Um, I honestly, I'm the live to tape method is the superior method. Whenever I go onto a podcast that actually does editing, the first thing I think is, well look at you fancy people in your editing, aren't you lucky? But the truth is I love the, um, the spontaneity, the requirement of actually having to pay attention to your host and actually listen for good pauses, not just fake breathing pauses and things like that. I know definitely I am the culprit of almost all crosstalk in the podcast. That's just cause I like interrupting James. It's not cause I don't know what I'm doing. I just really had joy or knowing him. But, um, I've been trying to get better at that over the years of not annoying you as much, but also, um, I think running for office this year was actually really helpful for me in speaking quite often, as in pretty much always people give you one minute and one minute only to speak. You have to be entertaining, interesting on point, answer the question, avoid the question depending on the question. And that this podcast prepared me a lot for that and then I was able to tune it up while doing all that public speaking. And so I really appreciate this podcast. A forgetting me going and B for, uh, giving me more area to practice and for everyone to suffer through me over talking and cross-docking with James. James: 41:38 Well that is the, I'll kind of wrap up on a, a note here is that's sort of the fun part of doing a podcast or anything new. So if you ever been interested in, in, in, in podcasting as a, you just give it a go, right and you don't need a lot of money and have a blog post. I'll link to of just, you know, stuff that you can buy really cheap to get started. And it's fun because you learn a lot of things. Like you were saying, you, you, it kind of helped you do more public speaking cause you're literally talking to me and, and having to have a conversation all the time and, and, and that can kind of help in different instances. For me it helps in audio editing and promotion. And that's why I do YouTube videos and that's why I do Twitch streaming cause I get to experience something new and kind of add that to my little toolkit. Uh, you know, uh, you know, and something that I've got to do and I've, I can say that I've done audio editing and I maybe not be a master of it, but I've done it and I think that's really fun. I think it's cool. Frank: 42:31 Yeah. Oh man. And I actually, I love audio editing. There's nothing more wonderful than going through your own track and removing every arm and arm and like nailing the punchline of every one of your jokes. Maybe even substituting in a line here or there if he didn't nail it the first time. You can just have so much fun with editing. That's something I never knew that I would actually enjoy that it seemed like the most tedious, ridiculous thing. But there is a bit of a craft to it, a bit of an art to it. The problem is it's just a ridiculous time sink. So the way we're doing it is right. Minimal editing and we just try to nail it the first time and thank you James for forcing me to up my game and get to that point. So appreciate it bud. James: 43:17 Well thanks for putting up with me for 183 episodes and I think almost 140 hours of con Oh Lord, don't, don't do that. It's a, it's quite a lot. It's in our, it's in our fireside, uh, output. It's kinda ridiculous. But honestly, thanks for everyone that's maybe been been with us since day one. Maybe you're tuning in and now it's a new year. You find yourself a new podcast and also be a great time to tell your friends about the podcast. Say a, you know, check out this podcast, merge conflict, tell them what it's about, share it. That's the best way that we can grow. I can spend all of our sponsorship money on ads and do a bunch of other stuff and that it can help it grow a little bit, but you telling people that you think will be interested in this podcast about the podcast is honestly the best way to do it. But of course you can do that by going, telling them to go to merge conflict IFM or follow us on Twitter at merge conflict of fam or, or any of the other ways. Just go, go help out. We super duper appreciate that and hope everyone has a great new year. Frank, have a great new year. I'll be here Frank: 44:16 all year with you. So thank you. Thank you James very much. You have a happy new year also and everyone have a happy new year. James: 44:27 Yes. So that's going to do it for this week's merge conflicts. So until time, I'm James mountain Magno and I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening. James: 44:37 Peace.