Speaker 1: The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Seanda Ward.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 1: I know it's just two of us this week. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'll tell you what. We got a great gas
Speaker 1: lined up, a little an that you were able to
Speaker 1: set us up with, Sean, And it's all because of
Speaker 1: these books we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: If you have kids, you have grandkids, nieces, nephews, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a pretty good subject too.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, so Adie talked about some snap circuits
Speaker 2: by Alenko and he said they were also you know,
Speaker 2: snap circuits. You put the pieces on and make circuits stuff.
Speaker 2: And then after the show, I said, Andy, I know
Speaker 2: you talked about snap circuits, but I'll show you these
Speaker 2: books that I have that I got Max about a
Speaker 2: year ago. And so I pulled up, pulled up these
Speaker 2: two books. They're called Computer Engineering for Babies.
Speaker 1: Right, it's very fitting for me.
Speaker 2: Right, But it's it's these very basic books that you
Speaker 2: flip open and they push buttons. Then you do basic
Speaker 2: logic gates that are computer functions. Here's a wire that
Speaker 2: makes the circuit you know it, and orgates not or
Speaker 2: and orgates, you know, things like that. So and I thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, why don't we reach out to the
Speaker 2: author and get him on the show. So later on
Speaker 2: the show, we're gonna sit down and talk to Chase
Speaker 2: Roberts who created these books, and kind of the journey
Speaker 2: he took to get these books out and published, and
Speaker 2: kind of a little bit about the development of the book.
Speaker 2: So I was just so excited about these books. And
Speaker 2: I know that if you're into technology at all, even
Speaker 2: if you're not not a baby, like these are the
Speaker 2: fun to just flip through. Like it's because he made
Speaker 2: a second one called Computer Engineering for Big Babies, which
Speaker 2: just expands on you know, you start getting into mucks'es
Speaker 2: and decoders and read writes and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2: just an incredible set of books. You can find them
Speaker 2: on his website at computer Engineing Forbabies dot com. Super
Speaker 2: long domain, but you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so we'll talk to him water the show,
Speaker 2: and I'm just I'm so excited for that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting, Sean, because Michelle reached out to
Speaker 1: me and asked me the question about digital books. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a digital book. This is an actual
Speaker 1: physical book that kids can manipulate and read and learn
Speaker 1: from and see bright lights and switches and all this
Speaker 1: fun stuff. But asked about digital books, and I know
Speaker 1: there's people listening that have probably thought, I want to
Speaker 1: write a book. There's people that say, I want to
Speaker 1: write a book about my life, you know, the life project,
Speaker 1: and how you know, how can you do that? It's
Speaker 1: been made more available now for those that want to
Speaker 1: write books, to be able to put together a book
Speaker 1: that a family could read online, a digital book and
Speaker 1: maybe who knows, even get it get it printed out.
Speaker 1: Some people have been going that route too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't think we have any digital
Speaker 2: books for the kids yet. I know that Caitlin has
Speaker 2: her e reader and we have his digital books that way.
Speaker 2: But like we've talked, I've talked specifically about this type
Speaker 2: of book in the past. The hands on, the tactile feeling,
Speaker 2: the sound because you can hear it clicking if you
Speaker 2: can hear that right, right, And there's visual feedback, there's
Speaker 2: tactical feedback like that's so important for the development of
Speaker 2: children and it's so important for people. I just think
Speaker 2: as a whole to have that type of physical relationship
Speaker 2: with books. Yeah, and so I just I know Max
Speaker 2: and Daniel both have played with these books. Daniels is
Speaker 2: still a little bit too young to understand these, but
Speaker 2: Max can manipulate these and he understands and he understands
Speaker 2: that Oh if I push them onon, the lightlights up.
Speaker 2: Oh if I push both these it doesn't light up.
Speaker 2: If I push one or the other it does. So
Speaker 2: it's like just super basic functions that run everyday life
Speaker 2: that are in these books. So just again, super excited
Speaker 2: for this interview coming up.
Speaker 1: All right, cool, there's a lot of tech news that
Speaker 1: has happened this week. We got some listener questions as well.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we kind of touched on
Speaker 1: last week on the show was DJI was going to
Speaker 1: have another announcement, and that announcement has been made. We
Speaker 1: weren't sure exactly what it was, and I know you're
Speaker 1: the DGI guys, but.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the announcement I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2: There's another one.
Speaker 1: Coming, Oh there is. Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So when I texted you the other day saying, hey,
Speaker 2: DGI is going to announce a new product, what do
Speaker 2: you think it is? And we kind of talked about
Speaker 2: it internally and then they announced it. I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: there's still a teaser on their website for another product
Speaker 2: launch that's not this. So this was I call them
Speaker 2: ninja releases or shadow releases, right this one. There was
Speaker 2: no pook like, there was nothing about it. They just
Speaker 2: dropped it.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, I wanted to ask. Okay, So
Speaker 1: for this announcement, it was the Osmo Mobiles seven all right,
Speaker 1: and it's a gimbal arm. But a lot of our
Speaker 1: listeners may not know what a gimbal arm is. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna ask you, Sean, because I think I
Speaker 1: don't know if you have one, but what is a
Speaker 1: gimbal arm and why would you use it?
Speaker 2: So a gimbal arm is it's a handheld device that
Speaker 2: you mount your phone onto and it stabilizes it in
Speaker 2: three accesses, so left, right, forward, backwards, up and down. Okay,
Speaker 2: So that when you are, say you're walking down a
Speaker 2: hiking trail and you have your phone on there, it's
Speaker 2: going to give you buttery smooth footage as you're walking,
Speaker 2: like it's going to take out the bumps and the
Speaker 2: steps it's going to compensate for all that movement, and
Speaker 2: it's going to keep your phone level stable and shooting
Speaker 2: and shooting just crystal clean, stabilized video. They've made this
Speaker 2: product for over a decade, right that the original osmos
Speaker 2: came out. I think back in twenty thirteen, maybe I'd
Speaker 2: have to look. But this one is specifically tied to
Speaker 2: your mobile device, so your phone goes on it, you
Speaker 2: run the app, or you record on your phone. You
Speaker 2: can tie it together with Bluetooth. This one specifically has
Speaker 2: some new features. It's got some functionality that can go back,
Speaker 2: you know, it's got a camera that shoots the other way.
Speaker 2: I have the specs here. It's like it's super light,
Speaker 2: right three axiskim Well, like I said, it's got it's
Speaker 2: got the X, Y and Z axis. It's got the
Speaker 2: compact tripod design so that extends and it retracts super easily.
Speaker 2: The feature that caught me off guard was ten hours
Speaker 2: of battery life.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it is powered and that helps that.
Speaker 2: You just charge it and plug it in. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's powered, so you're gonna feel as you're holding it,
Speaker 2: you're gonna feel it. It's gonna give you a little
Speaker 2: bit of resistance on your wrist as it's actively moving
Speaker 2: magnets around to try and stabilize your stuff. It's got
Speaker 2: you know, Bluetooth connectivity for your phone. Uh, and it's
Speaker 2: it's priced so competitively.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For they made two versions of this one, and I'll
Speaker 2: go over the specs on the pro version, but the
Speaker 2: Aesomo Mobile seven it's only eighty nine bucks.
Speaker 1: That's not bad, all right, It's pretty good.
Speaker 2: So if you want if you're an amateur filmmaker, if
Speaker 2: you're just shooting stuff for your for fun with your kids,
Speaker 2: and you want stabilized footage, like this is a no brainer.
Speaker 2: You buy for your phone, You slap your phone on it,
Speaker 2: you get the recording.
Speaker 1: Now, this doesn't this does not have an extension arms,
Speaker 1: so you can't extend it to a higher of this one.
Speaker 1: For the O seven, the regular seven that doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: So that's why it's eighty nine dollars is one that's
Speaker 1: a little more priceier.
Speaker 2: Right. So the also Mobile seven P or seven Pro
Speaker 2: includes a couple extra The module acts as a wireless
Speaker 2: receiver for their DGI mic, so you have if you
Speaker 2: have somebody on their DJI mic, it can be received
Speaker 2: on the device and record to your phone. An eight
Speaker 2: inch telescoping arm. That's a decent sized arm for a tripod.
Speaker 2: And it gesture control, so if you're shooting yourself, you
Speaker 2: can do gesture control. I don't know what they are.
Speaker 2: I haven't read that far into it. But then it
Speaker 2: also has a light built in right, and it has
Speaker 2: a fill light, so turned camera has a camera that
Speaker 2: will face you so you can do vlogging. And also
Speaker 2: and so the battery life is a little decreased on that,
Speaker 2: so you get about four to five hours with that one.
Speaker 2: And this was the priced I still think very competitively
Speaker 2: for what it offers. At one hundred and forty.
Speaker 1: Dollars, that's not too bad. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: friend just give you an idea. I have a friend
Speaker 1: named Larry that the wetlands area that we have here
Speaker 1: in Tucson, which is a lot of brush and there's
Speaker 1: you know, just just an area you could hike and
Speaker 1: it's it's real nice, but it's a terrain is a
Speaker 1: little difficult, and he's gone out there to do videos
Speaker 1: before and he'll hold the camera with his hand and
Speaker 1: it's shaky and it's like you're watching it and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm getting motion sick this year. With something like this
Speaker 1: from Dji, this would make that nice and smooth and
Speaker 1: more watchable almost, I want to say, And Dji you
Speaker 1: know there we call him the drone people almost like
Speaker 1: a drone is following him capturing the action because it's
Speaker 1: so nice and smooth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, I imagine with this extended arm, you
Speaker 2: could get all sorts of creative, be all sorts of
Speaker 2: creative with mounting options and how it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's attached to your backpack, it's attached to your cars.
Speaker 2: But again this is you're using your phone for the
Speaker 2: record of the content to be recorded to so it
Speaker 2: relies on the meo app. I believe it's called the
Speaker 2: memo Mimomo for DGI. We you know, it's just it's
Speaker 2: it's not something that I expected. But again I was
Speaker 2: blown away that I noticed today because I was looking
Speaker 2: I wanted to look up the specs for the show.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the product that I thought they were going
Speaker 2: to release, right, And they still have a teaser on
Speaker 2: their web page for a different device to be released
Speaker 2: on another date in the here in the near future,
Speaker 2: which nobody knows what it is. Well, teaser picture looks
Speaker 2: pretty wild, but there wasn't There was a teaser picture
Speaker 2: for this one, but I thought it was It looked
Speaker 2: like on top of a screen, but then if you
Speaker 2: go back and look at it, it's definitely on top
Speaker 2: of a phone.
Speaker 1: So kind of wonder all right, So you think of
Speaker 1: about the big players in that field, would it comes
Speaker 1: to action cameras, You've got Dji, GoPro is still in
Speaker 1: the in the game, and then Insta three sixty, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny because people are suddenly realizing what
Speaker 1: Into three sixty is all about. You may be driving
Speaker 1: down the road, you'll see a truck or a car
Speaker 1: or maybe a motorcycle and they've got a little stick
Speaker 1: that's just kind of sticking up. Beckon me an Insta
Speaker 1: three sixty, and what that can do is really capture
Speaker 1: a three hundred and sixty degree access of what's going on.
Speaker 1: And people have when they see footage back, they don't
Speaker 1: understand how how is he being filmed? It's usually by
Speaker 1: that Into three sixty. Do you think Dji might be
Speaker 1: going that route and maybe trying to get into some
Speaker 1: of that market space with a three sixty camera.
Speaker 2: I don't maybe, like I've been part of the three
Speaker 2: sixty world since like twenty eleven, right right when they
Speaker 2: first started coming out with the Theta, the Rioc Theta,
Speaker 2: and a couple of the other three sixty cams, And
Speaker 2: it's so hard to find a platform that supports three
Speaker 2: sixty viewing. Now. The ultimate goal for three sixty viewing
Speaker 2: is for the user to experience the angles in whatever
Speaker 2: view they want, right, and YouTube was really the only
Speaker 2: platform that allowed it to happen where the user had control.
Speaker 2: I'll I'll give you a link to my YouTube page
Speaker 2: because I have several videos that I shot in three
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty that you can control. It's a cool experience,
Speaker 2: but it's cumbersome, it's not convenient, and we wanted to
Speaker 2: do so. I don't think DJ is going to get
Speaker 2: in maybe maybe, but they're focused on there. They don't
Speaker 2: they don't need to be in the three sixty market, right,
Speaker 2: But there's just not a viewer base for it. It's
Speaker 2: not easy to view on your phone in three sixty,
Speaker 2: which when I was at Fox, we tease the idea
Speaker 2: of doing, Hey, let's put a three sixty degree camera
Speaker 2: in the middle of the studio so that when they
Speaker 2: switch sets, somebody watching live on YouTube could then pan
Speaker 2: to the other set on their own.
Speaker 1: Wow, have the experience of being in set.
Speaker 2: But then it didn't work on the phone. It was
Speaker 2: a miserable experience. The Facebook experience was miserable. So there
Speaker 2: just wasn't So a lot of the three sixty stuff
Speaker 2: you see is all post process, right, because you can
Speaker 2: have the you then as the creator, have the capability
Speaker 2: of tailoring the experience to your viewership and that Without
Speaker 2: that part of it, it just wasn't a great platform.
Speaker 2: So you saw a huge spike in three sixty cameras
Speaker 2: early on, and then they just kind of dwindled off
Speaker 2: and now basically instant three sixty go Pro Max is
Speaker 2: one of them, but there are several other contenders that
Speaker 2: just didn't do it very well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of GoPro, I noticed that they have put together
Speaker 1: kind of a and I don't think it's the first
Speaker 1: time they've done it, but it's a many kind of
Speaker 1: go Pro reduced price. You know, you're getting be able
Speaker 1: to pick it up a little less, and it's real
Speaker 1: one of smaller footprint camera that they can you know,
Speaker 1: mount because you can buy all kinds of mounts. You
Speaker 1: can mount it on your your head, on your helmet,
Speaker 1: on your chest, you can mount it on a car,
Speaker 1: you can mount it just about anywhere, even on the
Speaker 1: wing of an airplane. But we go Pro so you
Speaker 1: get that action experience with this brand new Go Pro Hero.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to think of the actual model number
Speaker 1: of it, but it's it's something new that the Hero eleven.
Speaker 1: I believe that they'll be able to find in the stores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just called the the it is just called
Speaker 2: the Go Pro Hero. Okay, that was right when we
Speaker 2: were talking about the show. Yeah, And I believe I
Speaker 2: believe if I would, if I think back far enough,
Speaker 2: I believe they started doing this with either the eight
Speaker 2: or the nine, right because you if you go back
Speaker 2: way back to two thousand and eight, right right that
Speaker 2: you had the original Go Pro Hero, then you had
Speaker 2: the Hero Plus, then you had the Hero Plus. Then
Speaker 2: you had to Go Pro Hero two, and then the three,
Speaker 2: and then three plus and then with the four they
Speaker 2: started getting into this weird nomenclature was like go Pro
Speaker 2: Hero four, Yeah, go Pro Hero Silver, go Pro Hero
Speaker 2: for white, go Pro Hero for Black.
Speaker 1: I still have the Hero three and I love them. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: I mean we talked about this.
Speaker 2: Something in this canra that I'm filming this segment with
Speaker 2: is a three plus and it's that is my favorite
Speaker 2: go pro, but it's before the four really kind of
Speaker 2: changed the layout a little bit. It kind of changed
Speaker 2: how they deal with picture time lapses and something like that.
Speaker 2: It's like the three plus is my go to. I've
Speaker 2: got about probably a dozen of them now through finding
Speaker 2: them used on eBay, people getting rid of them because
Speaker 2: they don't use it because they they bought the newest
Speaker 2: one and they didn't want it anymore. So I've just
Speaker 2: been collecting them the three plus and I love it.
Speaker 2: I have several of them.
Speaker 1: They're out so you can put them into an A
Speaker 1: to mini, which is it's just.
Speaker 2: It's just a micro hdum I out and you power yeah,
Speaker 2: and I don't even have a battery in it, so
Speaker 2: it's not going to heat up the battery or anything.
Speaker 2: So I use them all the time, and most of
Speaker 2: my time lapses I have posted either are from my
Speaker 2: nikon or a Hero three plus. So GoPros has been
Speaker 2: in the business so long. They just they're doing things right,
Speaker 2: But the nomenclature started changing over the years, right, so
Speaker 2: I don't know when they introduced the session. So there's
Speaker 2: another version of a GoPro that was just this version.
Speaker 2: It's a cube. It's a very small cube, completely sealed,
Speaker 2: so you can't put a skeleton case on anything. Called
Speaker 2: the Hero Session. My parents bought it for their motor
Speaker 2: home because they wanted to just to have it in
Speaker 2: the dash while they were driving, and they loved it
Speaker 2: for a period of time, but it didn't work as
Speaker 2: well because it had to be powered all the time,
Speaker 2: so they just bought a regular Carmen dash cam and
Speaker 2: replaced that. So they just gave me the Session. I've
Speaker 2: used that for time lapses, but there's no way to
Speaker 2: externally power it. So it just was not the greatest.
Speaker 2: It still shoots great video stuff, but it just wasn't
Speaker 2: didn't have the flexibility of the Hero model, the bigger
Speaker 2: Hero models. So then, like I said, I think the
Speaker 2: nine Go Pro Hero nine is when they first started
Speaker 2: doing just the Hero and I think they made a
Speaker 2: base model. I think it just did ten ADP at
Speaker 2: the time because four K still wasn't really a thing
Speaker 2: in the encoding and the battery life and stuff. But
Speaker 2: the new one that is paired with the Hero twelve,
Speaker 2: it's just called the Go Pro Hero. It does offer
Speaker 2: four K video. It's more compact, lightweight, and offers some
Speaker 2: of the yeah stabilization features, but not doesn't give you
Speaker 2: the flexibility of doing four K one four K two forty,
Speaker 2: you know, you lose a lot of the depth of flexibility.
Speaker 2: But for a cheaper price point too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's up two hundred and forty nine bucks with
Speaker 1: that digital stabilization and it's five point three K sixty
Speaker 1: and two point seven K to forty. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's if you're looking for a cheaper solution, but
Speaker 1: I don't know, I probably spend the extra money and
Speaker 1: get with that that you know that maybe regular go
Speaker 1: Pro that could certainly work for you and you get
Speaker 1: to get a little better quality out of it if
Speaker 1: you want to.
Speaker 2: So So I just I just I just chatchypt the question.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: It was first the go Pro Hero was first launched
Speaker 2: alongside the go Pro Hero six, so I was three
Speaker 2: versions off. So it was a little bit further back
Speaker 2: than I thought. March twenty eighteen, Okay, it included a
Speaker 2: lower ten megapixel photo resolution from twelve and a resolution
Speaker 2: of ten eighty P sixty.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So the Hero six could do four K, right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this one only did seven to twenty or
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, ten eightp sixty. So a little bit further back.
Speaker 2: I get stuck on the nine because I think the
Speaker 2: nine was the first version that offered a jump from
Speaker 2: the twelve megapixel still images to the twenty two megapixel right,
Speaker 2: So that's the only reason I would get a newer
Speaker 2: version of the GoPro is to jump from that twelve
Speaker 2: megapixel still image to a twenty two.
Speaker 1: Megapixel Okay, all right, all right, good stuff. Well that's
Speaker 1: what's out there in the action camera market. If you
Speaker 1: were thinking about doing that, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: saw the news about the fifty ninety, were you thinking
Speaker 1: of upgrading your graphics card?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: In your computer? Well, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not playing any like maybe when Max wants to
Speaker 2: get into video games or something like, I'll upgrade, right
Speaker 2: my thirty sixty that I have. Oh yeah, way more
Speaker 2: than enough to play, you know, all the old Doss
Speaker 2: games that I've downloaded and played, Like those games don't
Speaker 2: require anything, right, now, well, you're playing World of Warcraft
Speaker 2: YABO for a couple of things. The only thing I'd
Speaker 2: be concerned about is the new the new Monster Hunter
Speaker 2: Wild's game comes out towards the end of the and
Speaker 2: apparently my friends that are in the beta for that
Speaker 2: are saying that it's eating graphics cards for breakfast. So
Speaker 2: we'll see, we'll see what happens there. But I don't
Speaker 2: anticipate the need for me to upgrade any time in
Speaker 2: the new future.
Speaker 1: Well, you, uh, you do a lot of video editing
Speaker 1: like me. Having a graphics card that can handle it
Speaker 1: though is also important because you're when you're editing video.
Speaker 1: It's also that's also going to be an area where
Speaker 1: you're going to want to have better graphics. But again,
Speaker 1: do you need to go all the way up to
Speaker 1: a fifty ninety and that's you know, the latest one.
Speaker 1: People are camping outside microcenter, you know, trying to get it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people said it's because well, people were
Speaker 1: you know, scalping them. They buy them at a you know,
Speaker 1: regular price, and then as the market you know starts
Speaker 1: the dwindle, the prices go up and people will be
Speaker 1: willing to spend more money on them, that's not going
Speaker 1: to be the case. Apparently with the fifteen ninety they
Speaker 1: had an influx of materials that are used to career
Speaker 1: ate it and with that that means there it's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot more in the channel, and that
Speaker 1: meets some of the people that did buy them for
Speaker 1: the purpose of scalping and reselling are probably not going
Speaker 1: to get the return they were hoping for on some
Speaker 1: of those graphics cards.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, those people suck, But that's funny,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. So you saw this and we talked we've
Speaker 2: talked about this. I say this a lot, right, We've
Speaker 2: talked about this on the show quite a bit. Is
Speaker 2: the consumerism of going and buying a product and finding
Speaker 2: it's been scalped is very frustrating. Yeah, and you think
Speaker 2: back fifteen ten, fifteen, twenty years. Want to go get
Speaker 2: a product that launched, you had to go physically to
Speaker 2: a brick and mortar store and either hope they had
Speaker 2: it and stock, call ahead and find out they had it,
Speaker 2: or wait in line. Yeah, or go to a midnight release.
Speaker 2: And you saw a trend leading away from that. Oh,
Speaker 2: just pre order online, just buy it online. You don't
Speaker 2: have to wait in line, and then that kind of
Speaker 2: just wane. You didn't see that anymore. Well, then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the scalpers said, well, now I can
Speaker 2: just just do it online. I don't have to go
Speaker 2: to the store to buy ten. I can just write
Speaker 2: a bot that scoops them all up. And the companies
Speaker 2: don't care. They're selling the product, they're making the money.
Speaker 2: But the consumer base does care. And there's been a
Speaker 2: sour attitude towards scalpers for a significant amount of time.
Speaker 2: And you're actually seeing a trend back to stores, brick
Speaker 2: and mortar stores getting an allotment and only selling one
Speaker 2: to each customer. Yeah, and they're not selling them in
Speaker 2: online as much, so you're actually it's getting It's weird
Speaker 2: because you saw this huge flow of only online sales
Speaker 2: and now it's back to in store with a larger stock,
Speaker 2: and now people are camping out again and waiting overnight.
Speaker 2: That never went away, but it was for larger ticket ezes,
Speaker 2: but for the more popular items again, I think you're
Speaker 2: going to start to see more again of the community
Speaker 2: building around going a camping out overnight. Now you won't
Speaker 2: see that for video game releases. And because that's just
Speaker 2: too much money for them to spend on that. But
Speaker 2: it's an interesting trend I think you'll see. Come back
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: All right, we have to take a quick break. We
Speaker 1: come back our special guests on the show. Now, the
Speaker 1: title of these books, if our listeners want to go
Speaker 1: online again, sean.
Speaker 2: Computer Engineering for Babies, Hey, and Computer Engineering for Big Babies.
Speaker 1: All right. Chase Roberts is his name, and you can
Speaker 1: go to the website and get more information about that.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the guy that created these
Speaker 1: two very fun books that are geared at the younger
Speaker 1: set and the older said. We'll have some fun with
Speaker 1: it too. I kind of like that. That's going to
Speaker 1: be coming up on tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor.
Speaker 2: I'm sean to wear it. Follow us on x set
Speaker 2: tech talk Radio.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back now back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 2: So right before the break, we were talking about Computer
Speaker 2: Engineering for Babies, which is a book that I had
Speaker 2: showed Andy a couple couple weeks ago. He's because he
Speaker 2: sent me the Alanko Spy Kit, which Max loves, and
Speaker 2: so I showed him these books. Its Computer Reasuring for Babies, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Computer Injuring for Big Babies by Chase Roberts, who
Speaker 2: we happened to have on the show with us today, the.
Speaker 1: Guy that put it all together. Chase, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It's good to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like really cool.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Sean was showing me these and I thought, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, it's kind of a neat way for children
Speaker 1: to understand technology, and it makes bleaky things go, and
Speaker 1: he could flip switches and everything. What made you decide
Speaker 1: to kind of put this all together?
Speaker 4: Oh man, It was a bunch of different things. Probably
Speaker 4: the main driver was when my wife and I first
Speaker 4: had our baby. He was maybe one at the time,
Speaker 4: and he loved light switches and I would just hold
Speaker 4: him next to a light switch and he would flip
Speaker 4: it and then turn and make sure that like the
Speaker 4: light turned on, and then he would turn back and
Speaker 4: flip it again and turn and he would just he
Speaker 4: would do that for an hour if I could hold
Speaker 4: him that long.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Finally I was like, we got to just move this
Speaker 4: into a sit down experience because my back hurts. So
Speaker 4: that was kind of like the main driver. Another partial
Speaker 4: inspiration was when I was going to university. There was
Speaker 4: a book that I saw floating around on the internet
Speaker 4: called HTML for Babies. Yes, and I got married, I
Speaker 4: had my kid. Somebody bought me that book and I'm
Speaker 4: going through it and it was just garbage. They just
Speaker 4: took random words and put little brackets around it, and
Speaker 4: it was like doll with brackets, and I'm like, that's
Speaker 4: not HTML, that's just word those just baby words with brackets.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So kind of those two experiences came together, and
Speaker 4: I thought, what if we made a book that actually
Speaker 4: delivered on the promise of kind of introducing just like
Speaker 4: these basic concepts. And I studied computer engineering in school,
Speaker 4: and like, you know, I'm learning about these different gates
Speaker 4: or gates and and gates, and I'm like, this stuff
Speaker 4: is simple enough that a baby one or two or
Speaker 4: three years could pick this up and could play with
Speaker 4: it and learn it and like understand what's going on,
Speaker 4: and and gate is not that terribly complicated. So I
Speaker 4: just all of those kind of came together, and five
Speaker 4: years later, I've watched a Kickstarter and it did really well,
Speaker 4: And so I've continued making books and here I am
Speaker 4: what were.
Speaker 2: Some of the big steps you had take to get
Speaker 2: the book out.
Speaker 3: Oh, man, so many.
Speaker 4: I mean, just figuring out how to make something that
Speaker 4: could be produced in a large scale is just so difficult.
Speaker 4: I mean, it doesn't seem like it should be difficult,
Speaker 4: but like if you've never done it before and you're
Speaker 4: figuring it out yourself, there's just so many hurdles that
Speaker 4: you get stuck on that you would never expect. I
Speaker 4: thought I knew how to make a circuit board, and
Speaker 4: so I kind of designed my own board and I
Speaker 4: had originally laid it out with discrete chips for the
Speaker 4: and gate and the ore gate and everything, and I
Speaker 4: had the board made and then I'm trying to populate
Speaker 4: the board and I have no soldering skills because I've
Speaker 4: been working in app development for the.
Speaker 3: Last ten years.
Speaker 4: So I've got my soldering iron out and I'm so
Speaker 4: bad at it populated the whole board, and of course
Speaker 4: it doesn't work. Just that process, you know, you learn like, oh,
Speaker 4: here's where why it's not working, and you figure it out,
Speaker 4: and then you iterate. It took me ten prototypes to
Speaker 4: get something that kind of worked. The prototyping phase was
Speaker 4: just iteration. After iteration, I almost gave up on it
Speaker 4: several times because I don't know about you guys, but
Speaker 4: I get a new idea and I get so excited
Speaker 4: about doing something new. New things are shiny, you know,
Speaker 4: and it's like I love new shiny things. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: it's hard to put energy into older ideas. Finally, my wife, though,
Speaker 4: she was like, look, you're getting distracted with all these
Speaker 4: different things, like that computer engineering for babies idea, that's
Speaker 4: your best one. Like you should just finish that idea
Speaker 4: before you get too distracted on some of these others.
Speaker 3: So she really pushed me to finish the book.
Speaker 4: And in my mind, finishing was just like I got
Speaker 4: to get this to Kickstarter and put it out there.
Speaker 3: My expectation was I'll put.
Speaker 4: It on Kickstarter, friends and family will maybe chip in
Speaker 4: a couple grand and the project will not fund on Kickstarter,
Speaker 4: and I'll end up kicking in ten thousand dollars in
Speaker 4: my own money to do a production run of a
Speaker 4: thousand books, and then I'll hand them out to trig
Speaker 4: or treaters every Heleneen.
Speaker 3: That was what I expected.
Speaker 1: It had a different effect, though, didn't.
Speaker 4: It way surpassed expectations. Just I did that and I
Speaker 4: posted it to a Kickstarter and all my friends and
Speaker 4: family and it raised one thousand or two and then
Speaker 4: I was like, well what next? And I thought, well,
Speaker 4: I should post this to Reddit because I'm a casual
Speaker 4: Reddit user, so there's an Arduino subreddit, and I posted
Speaker 4: it there. I was thinking, like, these are my people.
Speaker 4: If anybody's going to like get it, like, it's the
Speaker 4: Arduino guys, right, And it was made like the first
Speaker 4: versions were made with an Arduino. I got away from
Speaker 4: discrete chips because I needed the analog to digital converters.
Speaker 4: So here's the book, and it uses light sensors to
Speaker 4: know which page you're open to because it's the same
Speaker 4: two buttons on every page, and so their little holes
Speaker 4: cut in the corner of the page and those let
Speaker 4: light in. And there's light sensors in the very back
Speaker 4: flip book. There's a circuit board and there's some photo
Speaker 4: transistors that that we're pulling to see how much light
Speaker 4: is coming into each through each hole. And then based
Speaker 4: on those light readings, were able to figure out okay,
Speaker 4: they're on page.
Speaker 1: Three, got it all right?
Speaker 4: Originally I was trying to just do discrete components. It
Speaker 4: wasn't working to just these light sensors to be a
Speaker 4: boolean on or off. It needed it needed some more
Speaker 4: nuanced than that. So I needed the analog to digital
Speaker 4: converters of a micro controller and to be able to
Speaker 4: write code to say like, Okay, if this one's coming
Speaker 4: in really bright and this one's really dim, then you know,
Speaker 4: this page is probably closed, whereas before, you know, if
Speaker 4: you're in a really bright environment, even if the page
Speaker 4: is closed, it might still it might still get some
Speaker 4: light coming in, you know, if you're outside on a
Speaker 4: bright day, you know. And then how does that differ
Speaker 4: from if you're in a dark room and you're on
Speaker 4: the last page and all the sensors are open, you know.
Speaker 4: So there's just kind of tuning for different light environments.
Speaker 4: I'm using it on Arduino now, and so I thought, okay,
Speaker 4: the Ardueno subreddit, those are my people. They're gonna love this,
Speaker 4: and I kind of posted it, and then my family
Speaker 4: we went camping, and so I'm up in the mountains
Speaker 4: and I'm checking my phone and I'm not even looking
Speaker 4: at the kickstarter anymore. I'm just looking at Reddit because
Speaker 4: I've never had a Reddit post do so well in
Speaker 4: my entire life, Like, it's just so many, It's getting
Speaker 4: so many up votes, and every time I check it,
Speaker 4: it's got another one hundred, one hundred and fifty up votes,
Speaker 4: and I'm just blown away. I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: people love my It was just this stupid video that
Speaker 4: I made of me like holding the book going through
Speaker 4: it anyway, and I was like, people are like, people
Speaker 4: are loving it, and it's getting so many up votes.
Speaker 3: So I was just really exciting.
Speaker 4: And then at the end of the day, I think
Speaker 4: the first day it had raised like twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 4: and my goal was like ten.
Speaker 3: Mind blown that I was able to do this. On
Speaker 3: the first day.
Speaker 2: I found your book via probably that Redd boast. Oh
Speaker 2: really yeah yeah, I mean that's where I found it.
Speaker 2: It came on Reddit, and then I went to your
Speaker 2: kickstarted and I kickstarted it. The power of the Internet. Man,
Speaker 2: it's I'm a big techi, right, And I just saw
Speaker 2: I saw this. I wanted always wanted to build something
Speaker 2: with latches, buttons. I was going to build my own
Speaker 2: so we could have light switches, LEDs all stuff, and
Speaker 2: then I saw this was like, this is it. This
Speaker 2: is what I wanted to build and he built it.
Speaker 2: He built it, so it's incredible. And it's the people
Speaker 2: that I've shown it to they're like, oh, what, what's
Speaker 2: that computer y? And then they flipped through it and
Speaker 2: they go, oh, this makes sense and you can see
Speaker 2: them in their brain the processes are cooking. So it's
Speaker 2: it's really just a cool a unique concept that you
Speaker 2: said took something is very simple and just made an
Speaker 2: awesome product.
Speaker 1: Out of it. Well, everything could be and I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've found this out chased, but everything could
Speaker 1: be a learning experience for a child, especially with if
Speaker 1: this then, because you know it's all causet effect. They
Speaker 1: you know, yesterday my grandson was over and we were like,
Speaker 1: he was playing around with a flashlight. It's an animal
Speaker 1: flashlight and it was having so much fun with it
Speaker 1: because I showed him how it turns off and on,
Speaker 1: and that was what was kind of an experience with him.
Speaker 1: And I think the books kind of help establish that
Speaker 1: if then that you know that cause it effect. Kids
Speaker 1: really like that because then I feel like they're in
Speaker 1: control of it in some ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, for younger kids, it's just about smashing
Speaker 4: buttons and seeing lights turn on. Yeah, but as they
Speaker 4: get a little bit older, you know, and even like
Speaker 4: I've had people report, oh, yeah, my two year old's
Speaker 4: finally figured out the and gate, you know, and it's
Speaker 4: like you got to press both at the same time
Speaker 4: to get it to light up. And like it's just
Speaker 4: kind of fun to see kids, you know, play with it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, originally it's just like hitting the button seeing
Speaker 4: a light turn on. But then like they start to
Speaker 4: learn that, oh, each page is different, Like there's just
Speaker 4: there's some subtleties here, and they start to kind of
Speaker 4: figure those out, and that's and that's fun to be
Speaker 4: a part of.
Speaker 1: Could this turn into Chase even more? I mean we
Speaker 1: have the two now, right, could there be more in
Speaker 1: this in like a series of books or even maybe
Speaker 1: a different type of media.
Speaker 4: I've thought a lot about how to do a third
Speaker 4: computer engineering for babies book. I'd really like to get
Speaker 4: something that goes all the way to like a working
Speaker 4: computer that could run instructions.
Speaker 3: Wow, but I don't. I don't think it's gonna happen
Speaker 3: in a baby book.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's just too many there's too many steps that
Speaker 4: I would want to like hit. It seems unfair to
Speaker 4: be like, Okay, we've done mux's, we've done decoders. Here's
Speaker 4: an adder, here's an ALU, and here's a program counter,
Speaker 4: and now you've got a computer.
Speaker 3: This is like a big leap.
Speaker 2: So take a step back, right. So you published the
Speaker 2: first one through kickstary, it funded, it did really well.
Speaker 2: Then you decided, well, let's make a second book. Talked
Speaker 2: a little bit about that step in deciding, well, here's
Speaker 2: the first one. Let's let's make it a whole other book.
Speaker 3: I did the first one. I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I felt like, hey, we should, we should do a sequel,
Speaker 4: and I got really excited about the idea of having
Speaker 4: switches instead of buttons. I guess I was looking at
Speaker 4: some of the next components that you learn when you're
Speaker 4: taking computer engineering at the university, you know, and it's like, well,
Speaker 4: after you learn about gates, then you learn about multiplexers
Speaker 4: and decoders, and so I was kind of thinking, all right,
Speaker 4: let's do those and you get the switches in and
Speaker 4: there's only two switches in the book. Some of my
Speaker 4: prototypes had like six switches, so that you could really
Speaker 4: control every input signal for the for the book. I
Speaker 4: ended up getting away from that, just to simplify. So
Speaker 4: there's two switches.
Speaker 1: You have to design like each page show you so
Speaker 1: you have the page it flips, so so you had
Speaker 1: to design, Okay, the cutout is going to be here,
Speaker 1: and this is where the switch is going to go,
Speaker 1: and how this is going to apply to that page
Speaker 1: and then the next page. It's it all had to
Speaker 1: flow together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just designing. I mean, because you can't move the
Speaker 4: switches around, so it's like, okay, graphically, we have to
Speaker 4: fit everything into this area, you know, on each page
Speaker 4: because we need room for the switches and the LEDs
Speaker 4: and those can't move because we're reusing them on each page.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of design stuff that goes in
Speaker 4: and my wife's really good at that. She helps me
Speaker 4: figure all that stuff out because I'm just like, get
Speaker 4: something that functions that's made out of cardboard and we're there.
Speaker 4: She's like, no, it's got to be pretty.
Speaker 1: How does the book chase get it it? It sounds
Speaker 1: weird to ask, but how does it get its power?
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a small battery in the back, so
Speaker 4: it's it's battery powered.
Speaker 1: Sean is a big fan of it and from what
Speaker 1: we've seen so far, his kids love it. I think
Speaker 1: other listeners who have kids grandkids like me would love
Speaker 1: it as well. And again it's kind of an introductory
Speaker 1: experience to that POSETI effect if this, then that and
Speaker 1: the kind of a study in engineering which doesn't hurt,
Speaker 1: to introduce them to that stuff and make it fun.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. They seem to have fun with it too.
Speaker 1: Once you had kids, you know, you get married, you
Speaker 1: have kids. Yeah, it doesn't it kind of change your
Speaker 1: world a little because I know for Shana did I've
Speaker 1: known since you know.
Speaker 3: He's had his kids usually changes your world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, yeah, all of a sudden, your your free
Speaker 4: time is next to zero, and like just the things
Speaker 4: that you're concerned, like the problems you have are so
Speaker 4: much different than before you had kids, right yep. Now
Speaker 4: it's like how do I keep my kids silent on
Speaker 4: an airplane for four hours?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Like that's that's my biggest problem. That was actually another
Speaker 4: like inspiration for the book. It was like I don't
Speaker 4: want it to make noise. I don't want there to
Speaker 4: be a speaker on it. I just want it like
Speaker 4: to be as quiet as possible. Like the buttons still
Speaker 4: make a little bit of a clickity clock noise when
Speaker 4: you click them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like this can be used on an airplane.
Speaker 4: That was kind of one of the requirements is like,
Speaker 4: this will not drive anybody too crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: Now that we've talked about the book, where can our
Speaker 2: listeners go pick up a copy of this book or both?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I just sell them primarily on my website
Speaker 4: computer Engineering for Babies dot com. Or if you just
Speaker 4: search computer engineering for Babies, like I think it's the
Speaker 4: first thing that shows up.
Speaker 1: Cool. We'll put a link on our blog and our
Speaker 1: website as well, but computer Engineering for Babies dot com. Well,
Speaker 1: hope our listeners check this out. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for spending the time with us and coming on
Speaker 1: and talking about it some great stuff.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Once again, thank you Chase for coming on tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor.
Speaker 2: I'm shan to Weird.
Speaker 1: You can find us on YouTube he tech talk Radio.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 2: So everybody knows that I love go Bro and DJA,
Speaker 2: and I love action cameras. Yeah, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: rattle off a couple of companies that tried to get
Speaker 2: into the action camp business, and somebodys are still available.
Speaker 2: Well that you that you would not think, why would
Speaker 2: they make an action camp, or maybe they did buy
Speaker 2: an action camp and you own one, Like if you
Speaker 2: own one of these companies action cams, let me know
Speaker 2: because I'd love to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get.
Speaker 2: Nikon.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't know they made one.
Speaker 2: It made a one hundred and seventy degree field of
Speaker 2: view and a three sixty camp called the Key Mission.
Speaker 2: It's a weird it's the it's weird looking, but it's pretty.
Speaker 1: Well all right, Kodak Kodeak really.
Speaker 2: Right, right? I say that you think, Wait, an analog
Speaker 2: company like film Company, you know, they have an action camp.
Speaker 2: It's called the sp one Action Camera. It's still available
Speaker 2: for two or forty nine dollars. Well, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's very good. Yeah, I would have to try one
Speaker 2: or get one to try it. Contour that's a company,
Speaker 2: that's just it's their own company. They made one. It
Speaker 2: was pretty popular.
Speaker 1: Garman Garman made an action camera.
Speaker 2: It's called the verb Vir. Wow, it's no longer available.
Speaker 2: It it was pretty widely popular for you know the
Speaker 2: people that used Garmen pretty exclusively Sony made one wow,
Speaker 2: very very early on right with like very poor not
Speaker 2: poor resolution, but like just basic HD like ten eighty
Speaker 2: p sixty Yeah uh. And then Polaroid.
Speaker 1: Poll on Polaroid. The company will just not go away.
Speaker 1: It just keeps saying, now people want our stuff, and
Speaker 1: then they put it out and people buy their stuff.
Speaker 2: But I think the Polaroid one is just a joke
Speaker 2: because you can get it for nineteen ninety nine apparently.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so Vivitar did one, and I remember Gloria
Speaker 1: was at Big Lots and she saw him for twenty
Speaker 1: bucks twenty five dollars and bought two of them with
Speaker 1: the idea of giving them as gifts, and we never did.
Speaker 1: I still have them wrapped up in the boxes. We
Speaker 1: should give one away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean, it's it's pretty wild just to
Speaker 2: think those companies like made these action cameras that just
Speaker 2: these prominent companies back, you know, film and digital camera
Speaker 2: companies made these huge leaps and trying to be in
Speaker 2: that actually and then it just fell apart. Yes, you
Speaker 2: couldn't compete with GoPro dji into three sixty.
Speaker 1: You just couldn't compete, all right, We have listener questions,
Speaker 1: and this one coming from our old stomping grounds of Lakinta.
Speaker 1: This is from Martha. And you know, honestly, you may
Speaker 1: run into the same thing. You may have been told
Speaker 1: something when it comes to technology, and you may have
Speaker 1: not understood what the rampifications or implications were. But here's
Speaker 1: the question. Hey guys, I have a bunch of old
Speaker 1: games on an old Windows XP computer, okay, and I
Speaker 1: really like playing them. I remember my mom used to
Speaker 1: play a slot machine game on hers and she loved it.
Speaker 1: And the email goes on and says, my friend told
Speaker 1: me just having it, which would be Windows XP on,
Speaker 1: could just having the computer on could get it infected
Speaker 1: with a virus because it sold. Is that true? I
Speaker 1: don't think the old games are infected with viruses. Would
Speaker 1: love to know. Again, that's Martha and Lakinta. There have
Speaker 1: been people who've been told don't plug, don't turn on
Speaker 1: your Windows XP computer because it could get you a virus.
Speaker 1: And you may be thinking, well, how could I get
Speaker 1: a virus? There are some things to think about though.
Speaker 1: If you have a Windows XP computer and you want
Speaker 1: to use it, and you do have those old games
Speaker 1: like my mom's slot machine game or maybe you have
Speaker 1: you know a tomb Raider or we've talked about that
Speaker 1: was a fun game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing that game
Speaker 2: on the PlayStation. I have one very vivid memory of
Speaker 2: that game. Do you It's so you when you're in
Speaker 2: a game and you know you're coming up against a
Speaker 2: boss or yeah, you don't save now because it's all
Speaker 2: cloud save rubber, but you always had to save.
Speaker 1: Your game right back then.
Speaker 2: And I was deep into I was several hours in game,
Speaker 2: right and I ended up like leaping out of a
Speaker 2: window on accident and I panic saved.
Speaker 1: Oh no, mid air, So what happened every time the game?
Speaker 2: I just hit the ground and died. But there was
Speaker 2: no you know, I hadn't.
Speaker 1: Saved other than that, so there was no going back.
Speaker 2: So Turm Raader, that's my Turm Rader.
Speaker 1: Sorry, but I love it.
Speaker 2: I mean, the old games are are fun. They're nostalgic, right,
Speaker 2: but yeah, always hold up right.
Speaker 1: Well, we've we've talked about you know, we've talked about
Speaker 1: Good Old Games, which is a great website you find
Speaker 1: some of the older games that will run on your
Speaker 1: your equipment now and it's funny though I've done this before.
Speaker 1: I think Castle Wolfenstein or Wolfenstein is one of those
Speaker 1: where I went back to play in it and I
Speaker 1: forgot back then the graphics were amazing. But you take
Speaker 1: a look at it now and it's like, whoa, I
Speaker 1: actually played this and liked it because there are a
Speaker 1: lot different.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's take it. Let's take a time machine
Speaker 2: and go back two decades, go back twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: I know that's weird to say this, twenty over twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. PC magazine, pc Gamer, all these games they
Speaker 2: came with demo CDs.
Speaker 1: Yep, they used to come on the show all the time.
Speaker 1: PC Gamer used to come on tech Talk. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I had a disc for Apergy Games.
Speaker 1: Oh, I remember that.
Speaker 2: I had a list, had just had a handful of
Speaker 2: games from Apage Games. And I played the ever living
Speaker 2: crap out of those games on the app, just the demos.
Speaker 2: And you know they always said here, it's not share where,
Speaker 2: don't sell it, it's not free. But it never bought
Speaker 2: the full versions.
Speaker 1: He had playing the games. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, About five or six years ago, I started came
Speaker 2: stumbled across good old games and I just started looking
Speaker 2: up these games, and I used to play Blake Stone,
Speaker 2: Aliens of Goal, Focus, Pocus Hexin. All these are much
Speaker 2: time I've sunk into these old games again because it's
Speaker 2: so nostalgic for me.
Speaker 1: Do you remember do you remember Nocturnal? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good one as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So I mean, yes, there are ways to
Speaker 2: play old games now. In reference to the XP computer,
Speaker 2: don't connect it to the internet, all right, so you
Speaker 2: can turn.
Speaker 1: It on, just don't have it connected to the internet.
Speaker 2: There's actually a lot of people of the current generation
Speaker 2: want XP machines to run XP because of the Pinball game,
Speaker 2: a couple of the solitaire games, Mind Sleep, et cetera
Speaker 2: that you can't get now that are don't come with
Speaker 2: Windows anymore. So there are some nostalgia games on there
Speaker 2: that you can keep. But if you have the hardware
Speaker 2: and it's running like you can keep it and keep
Speaker 2: playing those games. But there are there are alternatives to
Speaker 2: getting some of those games, maybe as digital remakes or remasters.
Speaker 2: I know that Blizzard Activision remade a handful of the
Speaker 2: World of Warcraft games as new capable Windows eleven capable
Speaker 2: versions of Warcraft one ORCS and Humans Workcraft three, Warkcraft two,
Speaker 2: a couple of those older games that are you know,
Speaker 2: capable of running on newer systems versus running on XP
Speaker 2: or older systems.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if I was to go back and play
Speaker 1: like one game, one game that I used to play
Speaker 1: a lot, it got a lot of my time, was
Speaker 1: from a company of Nova Logic if you remember them,
Speaker 1: and they put out a game called Joint Ops and
Speaker 1: it was like a military shooter. You know, I want
Speaker 1: to say it's not first person. I want to say,
Speaker 1: it was like a third person shooter game, you know,
Speaker 1: from behind, and it was just I spent so much
Speaker 1: time playing that. And again that's one of those games
Speaker 1: where I saw it, you know recently. Wow, that was
Speaker 1: really the graphics that were just not that great, but
Speaker 1: they held they held my attention back then. Fun game.
Speaker 3: What about you?
Speaker 1: One game if you go back to and play then,
Speaker 1: which one? Diablo two?
Speaker 2: Yeah, hands down, hands down the game I've spent at
Speaker 2: the most time in my life playing is day Able two.
Speaker 2: Played it when it was new in two thousand and
Speaker 2: one or two thousand and two, whenever it came out.
Speaker 2: The expansion for Diabloto, Lord of Destruction came out, when
Speaker 2: I was a senior in high school, and this was
Speaker 2: really my first foray into trying figuring out how to
Speaker 2: connect multiple computers together to play.
Speaker 1: Games right right, PC games, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And trying to play on a forty four K dial
Speaker 2: up modive man, because that's all we had in my
Speaker 2: house growing up. It was forty four were we were
Speaker 2: good lucky if we got forty four K on a
Speaker 2: good day. But being able to this is fun. This
Speaker 2: is a fun computer story. My friend Karl and I
Speaker 2: loved playing and we always wanted to play online together
Speaker 2: because he would always be at my house. He spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time on my house growing up, but
Speaker 2: his cousin lived in Scatville and we would always wanted
Speaker 2: to play together. So we figured out how to take
Speaker 2: my parents' computer at the desktop and use the dial
Speaker 2: up modem. But then we bridged the one hundred meg
Speaker 2: network Nick and did a crossover cable to a laptop,
Speaker 2: so shared the Internet across the internal on board. Nick.
Speaker 1: That's how you had a land party, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 2: Both competing so that both computers could be on the
Speaker 2: Internet at the same time. Now, Diablo two is not
Speaker 2: an intrue very intensive game, so we were successfully did
Speaker 2: this for a lot a long time where he would
Speaker 2: be playing on the laptop and I'd be playing on
Speaker 2: the desktop, and we had a great experience online, which
Speaker 2: was weird to say, but it's it. That's kind of
Speaker 2: my first real like computer networking story that I have
Speaker 2: thinking back on how I connected to play Diabo two
Speaker 2: unbettled in.
Speaker 1: So Okay, So for for Martha, honestly, you have a
Speaker 1: Windows xpeak computer, you want to use it, maybe your
Speaker 1: programs are on there, you know, your photos. Just the
Speaker 1: good safety tip would be just don't connect it to
Speaker 1: the internet. Just turning it on is not gonna get
Speaker 1: you infected unless it's already infected, you know. So again
Speaker 1: you should be okay to to go ahead and do that,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to the internet. I recently talked with
Speaker 1: a friend of mine named Chad who is is not
Speaker 1: very unhappy. He lives in cebody to He's very unhappy
Speaker 1: with the internet service he's been getting. So he asked me,
Speaker 1: he said, uh, what do I think about starlink because
Speaker 1: his options are limited? And you know, I said, I
Speaker 1: really don't know too much about it. Uh, And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any listeners that have starlink
Speaker 1: that are in sebody. I would love to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts of how this has worked for you, and it's
Speaker 1: very just try me aligned h. Tech guys at tech
Speaker 1: talk radio dot com. Have you heard anything, Sean. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you're in Indiana. Are people using it there?
Speaker 1: If there, if you've heard any reviews on it at all.
Speaker 2: So my experience with starlink is very limited. In the
Speaker 2: broadcast industry, it's actually widely used as a I don't
Speaker 2: want to say a tertiary backup, but like, so, you
Speaker 2: have an uplink truck, so you go to do an event,
Speaker 2: and you have an uplink truck that is connected to
Speaker 2: the Internet. So that's their main transmission path, right the Internet,
Speaker 2: public and public Internet or connectic Ata fiber. Okay, So
Speaker 2: if that connection goes down or it gets overloaded in
Speaker 2: the bandwidth stinks, you go to what they call terrestrial backup,
Speaker 2: which is just a satellite uplink truck that has a
Speaker 2: big satellite dish on it and uses it actually hits
Speaker 2: a transponder on a satellite and the up transmits and
Speaker 2: decodes the single A lot of places are skipping that
Speaker 2: second step of a bringing an UPLATEK truck and just
Speaker 2: relying on one, two or three Starlink modules bonded together. Okay,
Speaker 2: so then they use that as their Internet backup, so
Speaker 2: they have their primary video transmission path, using up whatever
Speaker 2: their bandwidth is on that. But then they offload all
Speaker 2: of their you know internet you know the up you
Speaker 2: know for downloaded files or just using the internet off
Speaker 2: to starlink, but keeping that as their backup path for
Speaker 2: their transmission if needed. And that seems to be the
Speaker 2: going thing now is these remote productions when you can't
Speaker 2: get a satellite truck it's too expensive. They're just relying
Speaker 2: on starlink but bonding multiple units together and then on
Speaker 2: you know, getting it, receiving it on the other end.
Speaker 2: So that's my only experience with starlink. I know that
Speaker 2: my parents have looked at it for Internet at their
Speaker 2: house because they still can't get They live out in
Speaker 2: the boonies in northern Michigan, and no very rule, no
Speaker 2: company's gonna run four thousand feet of cable to my
Speaker 2: parents' house to service one address. Right, It's like it
Speaker 2: doesn't maybe.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, So so here's here's a good good thing.
Speaker 1: To think about. From what I understood, starlink does a
Speaker 1: thirty day trial. As far as you know, you can
Speaker 1: get the equipment, test it out, see if it works
Speaker 1: for you. If it doesn't work for you, you should
Speaker 1: be able to And again it's going to depend on
Speaker 1: where you're buying it from. You might want a check.
Speaker 1: You should be able to take it back and then
Speaker 1: be able to say it just didn't work for you.
Speaker 1: So again that's something to think about.
Speaker 2: The key the key thing about starlink though, is too
Speaker 2: is if you want to it's you can get stuck
Speaker 2: because you can. I don't know if they bundled it
Speaker 2: all together now, but it's there's a residential module and
Speaker 2: then there's the mobile module, right, so there's two different
Speaker 2: modules that they sell. One is for you always keep
Speaker 2: it at your house, and then the other one you
Speaker 2: pay a higher premium for it, but you can go
Speaker 2: on top of your RV and you can use it
Speaker 2: while traveling. So just keep in mind if you're looking
Speaker 2: for that, if you plan on traveling. I know Arizona
Speaker 2: is a big destination for r V ers. You're looking
Speaker 2: at it for traveling, you might need to just do
Speaker 2: a little bit more research on what it's going to
Speaker 2: cost you to be mobile and have access in places
Speaker 2: that you're gonna be traveling.
Speaker 1: All right, we gotta take another quick break. We come
Speaker 1: back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Seanda Weird.
Speaker 2: Find us on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be back and now fact to tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: Want to thank our guest again coming on earlier today
Speaker 1: with us, Chase Roberts, who's got these two really great
Speaker 1: books that John you found and told us about you
Speaker 1: found through a kickstarter, which was pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, in the interview, right, he talks about how
Speaker 2: he posted on Reddit, and that's I'm pretty fairly certain
Speaker 2: that's how I found out about these books. Was just
Speaker 2: browsing on Reddit and came across it and they just
Speaker 2: went and bottom because I was like these you'll hear
Speaker 2: in the you know, you heard in the interview, like
Speaker 2: I talked about how I wanted to build something like
Speaker 2: this for Max and then he did it, and I
Speaker 2: was like, this is great. So just we're gonna push
Speaker 2: his website.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it? Website?
Speaker 2: Computer Engineering for Babies dot com?
Speaker 1: Computer Engineering for Babies dot Is that b A B
Speaker 1: I E S.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do com Yeah, restrating for babies dot com. Just
Speaker 2: I highly encourage you if you have kids in the
Speaker 2: two to three to four year old range. My kids
Speaker 2: love these books. You could tell. I showed him in
Speaker 2: the interview. They're beat up, they've got teethmarks on him.
Speaker 2: Max tripped out one of the Max up the paper
Speaker 2: off one of the pages. But it's so much fun
Speaker 2: to watch them figure out how the buttons work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will say it's cool. We will say he
Speaker 1: is working on something else that he told us biting.
Speaker 2: On a new book that I'm so excited for. And
Speaker 2: I hope when he listens to this he will send
Speaker 2: me a prototype because I would low to play that.
Speaker 1: We'll keep you posted on that again. Make sure you
Speaker 1: follow him on the website and then you could order
Speaker 1: the books there. They'll all all the information you'd be
Speaker 1: able to find. What to thank him again for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Hopefully next week everybody will be back
Speaker 1: feeling a little better. I know that Justin was been
Speaker 1: on the weather and Matt's got some stuff going on,
Speaker 1: So we'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio
Speaker 1: next week as well. I'm Andy Taylor.
Speaker 2: I'm Seanda Wird. You can follow us on the world
Speaker 2: wide Web. Talk radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Have a great way, m HM.