Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff Works dot Com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff, coming live to you from
Speaker 1: Studios seven seven b X. My name is Chris paul Ott.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff Works dot Com.
Speaker 1: And sitting next to me as usual, making funny faces
Speaker 1: and laughing under the table is senior writer Jonathan Stricklin. Hey, there,
Speaker 1: guess what what Today marks are one hundredth episode who
Speaker 1: and we have something special for you guys today, something
Speaker 1: that one of our listeners sent in. Hit it. Tyler, Congratulations,
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. You've made it to a hundred episodes. You
Speaker 1: never thought it would get this fubb Man didn't we hope.
Speaker 1: So what's gonna be funny about listen to text stuff
Speaker 1: in a hundred years. It's all the problems that we
Speaker 1: had and we tried to solve it with thy phones
Speaker 1: and text stuff showed us how to access my Tude store,
Speaker 1: showed me how to run inti virus, stuffware in bit,
Speaker 1: toured many more. That's why it's important to listen to
Speaker 1: every text of episode and think John and Chris for
Speaker 1: making it so it's a hundred APIs so a hundred episode? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Wow, that was really cool, wasn't it. That's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. So that was from James Meyer, host of
Speaker 1: The Rare Podcast, who wrote that song just for us
Speaker 1: for this hundredth episode. Awesome. Yeah, fantast We've been immortalized
Speaker 1: in song. That's a little scary. Yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: frightening and it So Chris and I were debating what
Speaker 1: did we want to do for the hundredth episode, you know,
Speaker 1: what would really be special to do the hundredth episode
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff, And ultimately we came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that what would be really special is to do an
Speaker 1: episode that didn't require us to do any research whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and that what you're getting. So we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about kind of kind of ourselves, our
Speaker 1: stories about how we got interested in tech Now, it
Speaker 1: may surprise you to know that that neither Chris nor
Speaker 1: myself really joined How Stuff Works with the intention of
Speaker 1: being technical writers. Correct, Yeah, that's that's true. At the
Speaker 1: time that what we came on board, Um, we didn't
Speaker 1: really specialize in anything in particular. We wrote about anything
Speaker 1: and everything, which was cool and that was that was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But as we started to grow,
Speaker 1: it became apparent that it would really behoove us too
Speaker 1: to specialize in various categories on and we're talking across
Speaker 1: the board, all the different writers and to that way
Speaker 1: kind of build our expertise in these different subjects. And
Speaker 1: it turned out that Chris and I were the two
Speaker 1: who were not afraid of technology speak for yourself, but
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck scared to death of her. You should.
Speaker 1: I mean, Josh he quivers when he turns his power
Speaker 1: button on on his computer. I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a site to behold. But no, seriously, we we
Speaker 1: actually both love technology, and so it was it was
Speaker 1: a pretty good fit. I mean, it was again one
Speaker 1: of those things where for a second, it was intimidating
Speaker 1: because there's a whole lot of tech. Yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: awful lot of tech and it changes all the time. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: just switched on us. So so we were both a
Speaker 1: little uh, you know, we we were excited and a
Speaker 1: little anxious, and it turned out to be a great
Speaker 1: fit actually, because that led to the Tech Stuff podcast,
Speaker 1: which also led to the tech stuff blogs, and here
Speaker 1: we sit getting to talk about some of the coolest
Speaker 1: stuff on the face of the planet as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. All right, so we're gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: of our favorite tech and some stories that about how
Speaker 1: we got involved in technology and and led up to
Speaker 1: our careers. I suppose. Alright, then, so you want to start, Um, sure, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, my dad was a mechanical engineer, and UM,
Speaker 1: you know he was. He's always been a real gadget nut.
Speaker 1: And UM, I think that's sort of carried over, you know,
Speaker 1: osmosis if you will. Um. And uh. I actually got
Speaker 1: my first computer when I was in junior high school,
Speaker 1: which in the school system I was in was ninth grade,
Speaker 1: was in junior high school, and it was unsurprisingly an
Speaker 1: Amiga Amiga one thousand, which was the very first Um.
Speaker 1: And well, you know I would have if I had
Speaker 1: gotten a PC, I would have been using Doss so seriously. UM,
Speaker 1: but we Uh, instead of going with the at R
Speaker 1: E S T or the Mac, we actually went with
Speaker 1: the Amiga. And I was an Amiga user for many years. Um.
Speaker 1: That's the basics on my my tech background. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, there were many many gadgets and gizmos and
Speaker 1: do flag. I'm sure. I'm sure we'll hit some of
Speaker 1: them as we talk. So that was your sort of
Speaker 1: the genesis for you. Yeah, it was my first computer,
Speaker 1: all right. Well for me, my parents are authors. Um,
Speaker 1: my father has been a published author for many many
Speaker 1: years and has written several science fiction novels. So science, gadgets, technology,
Speaker 1: all of that sort of thing held you know, he
Speaker 1: had had a fascination with all of that as well.
Speaker 1: So in our family, we decided that we needed a computer,
Speaker 1: mainly so that my father could write and uh not
Speaker 1: have to type everything out on on paper and you know,
Speaker 1: curse every time there was a a mistake, and and
Speaker 1: you know I had to go and retype an entire
Speaker 1: page as opposed to you know, just hitting a little
Speaker 1: backspace but in a couple of times and typing in
Speaker 1: another key. So our first computer technically was a Texas
Speaker 1: instrument computer. Wow. Yeah, I used to hunt the wumpus.
Speaker 1: But um, the first computer where we actually had what
Speaker 1: I would call a computer computer. And this is not
Speaker 1: to offend you Texas instrument fans out there, please don't
Speaker 1: write to me, was the Apple to E and the
Speaker 1: Apple to Apple two E was really meant for my
Speaker 1: dad to uh to be able to write his books,
Speaker 1: you know. But we also managed to get a few games,
Speaker 1: and that pretty much sold it for me. Once I
Speaker 1: found out that this machine also let you play stuff,
Speaker 1: I was hooked. And so the Apple two E was
Speaker 1: kind of my introduction. Yeah, Jonathan, the the anti Mac guy.
Speaker 1: My first computer was the Apple two e UM and
Speaker 1: I'm not really anti Mac. I We always go on
Speaker 1: about this because a reader once said that I had
Speaker 1: an anti Mac bias, and so I find it very
Speaker 1: funny and I like to bring it up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my intro, was the Apple t E. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking a little bit more about that as well,
Speaker 1: I guess to this conversation. So we're just gonna talk
Speaker 1: about some other kind of tech things, stuff we like,
Speaker 1: stuff that kind of shaped us. So you got anything
Speaker 1: else you want to add before I jump into another
Speaker 1: one of my stories, No, go ahead? Oh you want
Speaker 1: me to go ahead? All right? Okay, Well here we go.
Speaker 1: One of the first games that I got for the
Speaker 1: Apple to E was the was Ultimate too, all right.
Speaker 1: I never had the first Ultimate Game or a Calabath.
Speaker 1: I've never had either of those until much, much, much later.
Speaker 1: But Ultimate Too was an interesting game. First of all,
Speaker 1: I was interested in role playing, so the old Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons games and stuff like that, because I was
Speaker 1: a complete geek even back then. And uh and Ultimate
Speaker 1: two was of course a a computer role playing game.
Speaker 1: It was a single player game, and you went through
Speaker 1: the game as an adventurer trying to kill the bad guy. Um.
Speaker 1: Because my dad writes science fiction, I got to go
Speaker 1: to a convention where Richard Garriott, a k a. Lord British,
Speaker 1: the guy who invented the Ultimate series, was there, and
Speaker 1: we were invited to go to a party. Helped this
Speaker 1: name dropping city right here. We went to a party
Speaker 1: held by Gary Gygax, the founder of one of the
Speaker 1: co creators of Dungeons and Dragons. Richard Garriott was also
Speaker 1: at this party. I talked to him briefly and said,
Speaker 1: I really like this game, Ultimate Too. I had played
Speaker 1: Ultimate four because a friend of mine had it, but
Speaker 1: I only had the second one. Richard Garriot said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I have a copy of the the first build of
Speaker 1: Ultimate five. It's not ready to go to market yet,
Speaker 1: but if you want to play test that you can,
Speaker 1: and that was what sealed the deal, right there, was
Speaker 1: getting to the the idea of getting to play something
Speaker 1: before anyone else. You know, that really appealed to my
Speaker 1: sense of ego. So I really enjoyed that, and uh
Speaker 1: I became an Ultimate fan ever since. So I was
Speaker 1: a big, big Ultimate fanboy. Um. So yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say that the Ultimate Series, especially the way that he
Speaker 1: incorporated the sense of morality in those games, which was
Speaker 1: very different from any games that came before it, where
Speaker 1: where you really were just a hack and slash kind
Speaker 1: of you know, killing machine. Really in those early adventure games,
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Series, where you became the avatar, you actually
Speaker 1: had to make moral choices and if you made the
Speaker 1: wrong ones, you weren't gonna win the game. So it
Speaker 1: was pretty cool, you know. I I admit I've never
Speaker 1: actually played in the Ultimate Series. O you poor deluded food.
Speaker 1: That's amazing that you've gotten through life this this way.
Speaker 1: But I did play Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: well then all right you a moral fool. Um. Well
Speaker 1: that's awesome, awesome text based adventure yep, yep, so I
Speaker 1: I you know, I remember playing some of those games
Speaker 1: back in the day too. I remember playing Zurich and
Speaker 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, those great tech spased games. Yeah, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: But you know, there have been other tech things over
Speaker 1: the course of the years that sort of fell in
Speaker 1: love with. It's us thinking about something a little more recent. Um,
Speaker 1: the hand Spring Visor. Wow. Yeah, actually was one of
Speaker 1: the few Handspring owners. For you, those of you who
Speaker 1: don't have any idea what I'm talking about, that these
Speaker 1: things called p d A s they came out before smartphones.
Speaker 1: I know, it's hard to believe. Um. The the Palm Group,
Speaker 1: actually some of the people who founded it broke off
Speaker 1: because they wanted to do their own thing again. Um.
Speaker 1: They created a company called Handspring and they licensed the
Speaker 1: Palm operating system and the very first one they came
Speaker 1: out with was the Visor UM and it had an
Speaker 1: expansion slot where you could plug in cartridges and other
Speaker 1: uh neat expansions that would help your visor do other things. UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't really have any of that, but it was
Speaker 1: my first p d A and found out how useful
Speaker 1: it is to organize your calendar where you could just
Speaker 1: write stuff down and you know, you got it at home.
Speaker 1: You've got it at work, you can sink your computers.
Speaker 1: Very useful. And then later on they went on to
Speaker 1: build these you know, earliest smartphones called the Trio, and
Speaker 1: then they got gobbled back up by Palm, so that's
Speaker 1: where they are now. But it was my my first
Speaker 1: introduction to the smartphone p D a world uh it
Speaker 1: minded nemophone. But you know the technology to this in
Speaker 1: smartphones now, Chris, I gotta ask you, okay, did you
Speaker 1: before the Worldwide Web? Were you one of the folks
Speaker 1: who would log into bolton boards and things like that. No,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't use bulletin boards, which probably surprises
Speaker 1: you a little bit. It does surprise me a little bit.
Speaker 1: But when I was in college, I did. Uh. I
Speaker 1: did dial into the VAX on our on our college campus.
Speaker 1: So I was logging into the main frame direct. For
Speaker 1: those of you, again who don't know what I'm talking about, UM,
Speaker 1: this was a very large mainframe computer um that digital
Speaker 1: equipment made before they were gobbled up by you know,
Speaker 1: Compact and then HP. UM. You know, I had where
Speaker 1: I used to go to the computer lab. I didn't
Speaker 1: go to the mac lab. I actually went to the
Speaker 1: VAX lab. So you know, basically giant dumb terminals with
Speaker 1: the green light on the black screen. So the time
Speaker 1: sharing model. Yeah, nice, nice. Yeah. I used to log
Speaker 1: into bolden boards to do to play games and things
Speaker 1: like that, various again, mostly role playing games of some sort.
Speaker 1: I remember there's a science fiction based one that I
Speaker 1: enjoyed quite a bit. Uh. Do you remember the first
Speaker 1: time you you discovered the world Wide Web? Um? I
Speaker 1: don't remember the very first time for me. What's easy
Speaker 1: because it was freshman year of college. So see when
Speaker 1: I when I started using the the Internet, I wasn't
Speaker 1: really using the web. I was using mostly chat and email, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was using tel Net quite a bit too,
Speaker 1: to log into chat rooms and things like that. But then, UM,
Speaker 1: I remember being in the computer lab at my college
Speaker 1: and looking over and seeing someone looking at something on
Speaker 1: the computer that had graphics on it, and I was
Speaker 1: wondering what it was, and he said, this is a
Speaker 1: worldwide Web And I said, what's that? Because, of course
Speaker 1: this is back before that was really gotten around quite
Speaker 1: a bit, and uh was pretty young, and and uh,
Speaker 1: I did build a web page. And back in those days,
Speaker 1: of course, the way you built a web page was
Speaker 1: that you had a an editor where you were essentially
Speaker 1: editing things in uh in in text, and then you
Speaker 1: would save it um to wherever the host was, and
Speaker 1: you would then open up your browser and check it
Speaker 1: out and see how it looked, and then realize that
Speaker 1: everything was wrong and quit all of your browser. Open
Speaker 1: your editor again, go back and tweak a few things,
Speaker 1: save it, upload, go back, open up the browser. You
Speaker 1: did this over and over and over again until it
Speaker 1: looked right. And of course, when I say looked right, folks,
Speaker 1: these pages look horrible, all right. You gotta imagine, Okay,
Speaker 1: some some really really crappy tiled background image, some clip
Speaker 1: art type uh images along there a MIDI file playing
Speaker 1: and a loop in the background. The blink tag. Now,
Speaker 1: the blink tag. I think I had a blink tag.
Speaker 1: I did have a minifile playing rule Britan Tanya over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. Yeah. I was one of
Speaker 1: those lame people who made a really really bad web page.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen that web page. You probably have,
Speaker 1: or it was one of the Essentially, if you look
Speaker 1: at any web page that any college student made in
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good indicator of what I built. It
Speaker 1: was hideous. But you know what, it was so interesting
Speaker 1: to be able to create something where not only were
Speaker 1: you able to to publish your work, but essentially millions
Speaker 1: and millions of people had access to it. And suddenly
Speaker 1: that was when I realized, this is an amazing tool
Speaker 1: where a single person can reach a huge audience. When before,
Speaker 1: you know, you had to have a monster kind of
Speaker 1: organization backing you to be able to do that. You
Speaker 1: had to be able to to become a published writer
Speaker 1: or a journalist of some sort in order for that
Speaker 1: many people to get a look at what you had
Speaker 1: to say. The Web suddenly made it possible for everyone
Speaker 1: to be that. Yeah. Now, of course that means that
Speaker 1: you get some incredible writer who otherwise would never be discovered,
Speaker 1: and you also get the crazies who you wish you
Speaker 1: had never discovered. It's you know, catch all. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny because I was I was just out of college,
Speaker 1: and um, they I signed up for a local internet
Speaker 1: service provider and they asked me if I wanted my
Speaker 1: own domain name, and I really didn't understand what that meant. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'd been on a dot etu and
Speaker 1: I figured out while I'm on a dot net now,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't you know, I don't why would I
Speaker 1: want my own domain name? Now, I'm thinking back to
Speaker 1: all of the domain names I could have squatted on. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what what was going on, and no one,
Speaker 1: no one had any There were very few people who
Speaker 1: were able to jump on that very quickly and and say,
Speaker 1: you know, this is gonna be huge. I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: a bunch of companies are gonna get involved in this,
Speaker 1: and therefore I should make sure I get Coca Cola
Speaker 1: dot com. Ye, except at that point, they weren't eight
Speaker 1: for a dot com. They were I don't even know,
Speaker 1: probably hunt of dollars for a domain registration. They would
Speaker 1: have taken six weeks to process in all sorts of
Speaker 1: stem right right, And there's no guarantee that you would
Speaker 1: actually be able to squat on and sell it, you know,
Speaker 1: because some some companies were strong enough to be able
Speaker 1: to muscle them away. So but still, you know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about I was going to ask you what
Speaker 1: your first video game console was. My first video game console, Well,
Speaker 1: if you don't count the the Pong game that we
Speaker 1: had where it had the you know, eight different versions
Speaker 1: of the same pong game. Uh, you would it would
Speaker 1: have to be the a yeah, yeah, which not counting
Speaker 1: my Calico Telstar, which had uh, handball, tennis and I
Speaker 1: think hockey on it. It's very very subtle variations of Pong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was essentially the same thing I had, and I
Speaker 1: just don't remember what the brand was anymore. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes, yes, we have joked about in the past.
Speaker 1: I really did own et. Yeah, and it was terrible.
Speaker 1: I still have all my games. Mine were given away
Speaker 1: to a younger cousin. Ah, I see, and then of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually skipped awhile, I skipped the whole
Speaker 1: Nintendo thing and then went, you know, we got the
Speaker 1: Sega Genesis. It's funny I owned, now that I think
Speaker 1: about it, more consoles as an adult, you know, the
Speaker 1: GameCube and the Wii and the PlayStation two. I still
Speaker 1: like to get a PlayStation three in an Xbox three sixty.
Speaker 1: So let's see, I'll go through mine. I had the
Speaker 1: Attar twenty s after it was already dead. I got
Speaker 1: the Intellivision. Like the Intellivision works, but there were no
Speaker 1: more games coming out. Yeah, I got a big collection
Speaker 1: of games when I got the Intellivision and a big
Speaker 1: collection of the little plastic inserts that you would put
Speaker 1: in the controller. Um, the two did not necessarily match.
Speaker 1: There was some overlap, but there were. It was so
Speaker 1: frustrating because there were I had games where I didn't
Speaker 1: have the insert and I wasn't really sure what buttons
Speaker 1: did what until lots of trial and error, and then
Speaker 1: I had inserts that like they were for a really
Speaker 1: awesome game, but I didn't have the game. So I
Speaker 1: had the twice six hundred, the in television and then
Speaker 1: again skipping quite a bit because I skipped the Nintendo
Speaker 1: era as well. Uh then let's see, Oh, I got
Speaker 1: a PlayStation one, and then I got a Nintendo sixty four,
Speaker 1: and then a GameCube, and then the Xbox and then
Speaker 1: the PS two and then the Dreamcast. I got late,
Speaker 1: but it was awesome and uh, LOUI, So I think
Speaker 1: that's all of them. I don't think I missed any Um,
Speaker 1: I left out the game Boy Boy, had a game
Speaker 1: Boy Advance, and now we have a DS, which very
Speaker 1: well fancy schmancy. Yeah no, I don't have a d
Speaker 1: s um. Yeah, I know what happened for me was
Speaker 1: that I went from the Atari and essentially in television later,
Speaker 1: which I kind of inherited from another cousin my family.
Speaker 1: We give give technology to our younger cousins, I guess, um.
Speaker 1: But I went from the Atari to computer games, and
Speaker 1: then I became a computer game snob because I just
Speaker 1: thought that the games on the computers were so much
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than the console games at the time that
Speaker 1: I did not want to go back to consoles. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until we reached the point where in order to
Speaker 1: play video games you had to upgrade your video card
Speaker 1: every six months or else you couldn't play them anymore.
Speaker 1: That's when I was like, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: back to consoles because you don't have to do that
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah that's true. Yeah, that's true because they
Speaker 1: you know, uh forces them to stay stick to the
Speaker 1: the specs. They don't have a choice. Right. Um. Let's see,
Speaker 1: so any particular software he did, because I was I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the different tools that we've used. I
Speaker 1: mean there's stuff like Microsoft Office, which you know, other
Speaker 1: than maybe power Point, I don't really have a problem with,
Speaker 1: but it's not exciting, and you know, stuff that I
Speaker 1: really like see a lot of the software that I
Speaker 1: like right now or we're talking are like cloud applications
Speaker 1: like Google Docs. I love Google old docs because as
Speaker 1: a writer, I also write outside of my job here.
Speaker 1: I write fiction occasionally, and Google Docs lets me upload
Speaker 1: things and that way I can access it wherever I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have take my computer with me. If if
Speaker 1: there's going to be a computer wherever I go, I
Speaker 1: can access it. And it also allows me to collaborate
Speaker 1: with other writers, which and in a much easier way
Speaker 1: than than the traditional way where you would write and
Speaker 1: write and write and then email it to someone and
Speaker 1: then they would make changes and then email it back,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have to make sure that you
Speaker 1: had the most recent version of the documents so that
Speaker 1: you didn't accidentally change something from an older version and
Speaker 1: skip out on all the changes that have been made
Speaker 1: since then. And Google Docs made it so much easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, writing is one of those funny things because
Speaker 1: really all you need is a pen and paper or
Speaker 1: you know, you could use it. You know, it's your
Speaker 1: simple text program to do that, you know, the one
Speaker 1: that comes to your computer or word or Open office
Speaker 1: or something like that. UM. I like Scrivener for mac
Speaker 1: us ten um for those of you who are interested
Speaker 1: in doing fiction writing, because it actually comes with a
Speaker 1: corkboard kind of thing we can actually make uh you know,
Speaker 1: I guess virtual note cards and sort of plan out
Speaker 1: what you're doing with It's kind of neat. Um. It's
Speaker 1: from a small company called Literature and Latte, which is
Speaker 1: um pretty interesting. UM. Let's see, and you know, I
Speaker 1: sort of picked on Office just a minute ago. But
Speaker 1: there is one segment of the you know, Microsoft productivity
Speaker 1: software that I really like, um, and that's one note
Speaker 1: because it is a really neat notebook program that lets you,
Speaker 1: you know, keep notes and things. And the reason I
Speaker 1: like that, uh compared to other systems is you know,
Speaker 1: you can search stuff in your notes and it's also
Speaker 1: got sort of a tabbed notebook thing. Uh. You can
Speaker 1: put check check boxes next to things if you're taking
Speaker 1: notes in a in a meeting and check stuff off
Speaker 1: as you go through. It's kind of handy to have,
Speaker 1: and um, you know it's it's not an expensive addition.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I think it now comes
Speaker 1: with Office. I'll I haven't bought a copy of Office
Speaker 1: and quite some time. Um well, I was going to
Speaker 1: also mention um a gadget that I simply could not
Speaker 1: live without my iPod. Oh yeah, definitely talking about Apple
Speaker 1: lovers all right now. My iPod is not my first
Speaker 1: MP three player. I used to have a creative zen
Speaker 1: and I had an old one which was felt like
Speaker 1: it was made out of cast iron because it was
Speaker 1: a heavy, heavy lift device, held a lot of songs
Speaker 1: and it was great. Did not have video capability, just
Speaker 1: had a simple, you know, monochromatic screen. But I loved
Speaker 1: it in that I suddenly had the ability to carry
Speaker 1: thousands of songs with me. And then I got an
Speaker 1: iPod Classic with the eighty gig drive, and um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Yeah, I will never I can't imagine filling
Speaker 1: it up. I mean I have a pretty big music collection,
Speaker 1: not as big as I mean. There are people who
Speaker 1: was there like, yeah, I've got twenty five thousand songs
Speaker 1: on this No, no, I've got a fraction of that.
Speaker 1: But the fact that I can carry the entire Ramons
Speaker 1: discography with me is awesome. And also because it's the Ramonest,
Speaker 1: you can listen to their entire discolo graphy in about
Speaker 1: twenty seven minutes three four. But yeah, that I couldn't
Speaker 1: live without it. Actually, uh, it wasn't so long ago. Well,
Speaker 1: actually it's approaching a year now, and I think about it.
Speaker 1: UM upgraded my twenty gig four g iPod too, an
Speaker 1: iPod touch first g Um, you know, the one without
Speaker 1: the physical volume nob anyway, the one before the one
Speaker 1: my wife got right, right, But I still love it,
Speaker 1: um because you can run applications on it too. But
Speaker 1: you know, of course, I had several portable cassette players,
Speaker 1: of one of which my brother ran over with a lawnmower. Um,
Speaker 1: and brothers are wanting to do exactly and uh, disc
Speaker 1: mand or Discmand's I don't know. But my transition to
Speaker 1: the MP three world was not an MP three player
Speaker 1: per se. It was the Sonic Blue Rio Bolt, which
Speaker 1: was a CD player that you could use with regular
Speaker 1: CDs or it would read data CDs with m P
Speaker 1: three's on. So I had my music collection on MP
Speaker 1: three's burned onto c d s, which is actually kind
Speaker 1: of nice because then you didn't have to have you know,
Speaker 1: your whole library with you could you know, boil it
Speaker 1: down to six or eight c s and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as much. Of course, that actually got
Speaker 1: upgraded when somebody broke into my house and stole it
Speaker 1: from me, so I didn't have to worry about you know.
Speaker 1: And then I had to go, well, you know, and
Speaker 1: I need something so well. You know. What was interesting
Speaker 1: was that before I got an iPod, I was not
Speaker 1: the biggest fan of iTunes. I found it difficult to use.
Speaker 1: And then I got an iPod and I said, oh no,
Speaker 1: I get it because it works so well with this hardware.
Speaker 1: And I love iTunes now because I use iPod and
Speaker 1: um and it works pretty well. Uh So I enjoyed
Speaker 1: that quite a bit. And I love to be able
Speaker 1: to listen to other podcasts, um besides you know our
Speaker 1: own example, for example, all the other house stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com podcasts, Yes, those are excellent stuff of genius.
Speaker 1: Is you know what it's the stuff of genius? YEA
Speaker 1: A great one. And it's and it's one of the
Speaker 1: newer ones. Yes it is HTCG one. Okay, get that out.
Speaker 1: That's the other device I couldn't live without, he blurted,
Speaker 1: my HTC G one Android phone, which I love, oh
Speaker 1: so dearly, very nice. Oh it's a fantastic phone. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know there are people who do not like the
Speaker 1: form factor because they think it's a little clunky, it's
Speaker 1: a little too thick, um and that the screen is
Speaker 1: not quite as big as the iPhone screen. And I
Speaker 1: can understand that, I I but for my own part,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't really look for sexy sleek in
Speaker 1: my electronics. I look for function first, and if the
Speaker 1: function is there and it's really strong, I can overlook
Speaker 1: a little clunkiness or or you know, make think it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that's so thick and um. And I also
Speaker 1: love the physical keyboard word. And I've heard that with
Speaker 1: the I the iPhone, that the touchscreen keyboard that a
Speaker 1: lot of people pick up on it eventually, like you
Speaker 1: you hit a plateau for a while, um, as you
Speaker 1: are learning to type on it and get faster and faster,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it's like the light
Speaker 1: comes down from heaven and you are suddenly able to
Speaker 1: type at at full speed. Um. But the nice thing
Speaker 1: about the HDCG one is I was able to type
Speaker 1: poole speed when I opened it. Well that's yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a positive. Yes. So, um, are there any gadgets that
Speaker 1: you wish you could get the Palm Pre Okay, I
Speaker 1: would like the Palm Pre just to get a look
Speaker 1: at the darn thing and get my hands on and
Speaker 1: play around with it. Palm PREA would love to get
Speaker 1: my hands on that. I would love to get my
Speaker 1: hands on the on live game system. Um. I want
Speaker 1: to try that out and see if if this cloud
Speaker 1: gaming model really is all that it's cracked out to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like it's gonna be awesome. I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds like the idea of other computers handing
Speaker 1: all the processing powers of mind doesn't have to I
Speaker 1: love that idea. I still think it's gonna have some
Speaker 1: latency issues. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Two. So
Speaker 1: I really want to try that out. Um, what else?
Speaker 1: Kindle too? Oh yeah, I would love to have a
Speaker 1: Kindle too. I'm actually kind of interested in the larger,
Speaker 1: the Kindle d X. Yeah, I think that might be
Speaker 1: a little well. I mean, the Kindle d X looks
Speaker 1: like could be interesting as well, but uh, for my
Speaker 1: my own purposes, I really just Kindled too would be fine.
Speaker 1: You know. So if if if a listener is just
Speaker 1: thinking this poor guy doesn't have a Kindle too. I
Speaker 1: gotta get him a kindle too. You know what, that's
Speaker 1: very sweet of you. The address is I guess I
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that, right, Um? Yeah, I actually my wish
Speaker 1: list of stuff I'd just like to get my hands on,
Speaker 1: sadly and includes some an HDTV and surrounds him since
Speaker 1: I still don't have the home theater. I have that,
Speaker 1: but I no longer have cable, and I don't have
Speaker 1: and I don't have a GPS of any kind. Oh wow, gosh,
Speaker 1: so they don't have an iPhone. I've got an iPod Touch.
Speaker 1: Also for those listening, Plette has not seen some very
Speaker 1: important movie all right that has nothing to do with tech.
Speaker 1: But he needs those movies to watch on his HDTV
Speaker 1: and surround sound once he gets them, because otherwise I
Speaker 1: make jokes from young Frankenstein and he stares at me
Speaker 1: and wonders what I just said. You think I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: I also would like to get my hands on an
Speaker 1: electronic set of D drums or being a percussionist. Um,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to mess around with a set of
Speaker 1: electronic drums. Um. Yeah, they actually do that, they do um,
Speaker 1: and I just have not alesis also now that you
Speaker 1: mention it. UM just do not have the wherewithal actually
Speaker 1: the the available mad money available to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's there's other stuff I'd love to fool around with,
Speaker 1: some software like that, like Mathematica, you know, just to
Speaker 1: plug stuff in and see what happens, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of a pricey, you know, Illustrator pro tools, just to
Speaker 1: you know, fool around with it. But you know when
Speaker 1: you're doing that. Oh, there is a freeware version of
Speaker 1: something called Inkscape, which works cross platform including Mac and Lennox,
Speaker 1: um end Windows. UM that is very like Illustrator, you know,
Speaker 1: so every once in a while getting there and play around.
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a designer, but I like to
Speaker 1: play one on uh my own version of TV which
Speaker 1: involves no one watching. Uh. TiVo is something else that
Speaker 1: I thought was really cool. And uh XM radio. Those
Speaker 1: are totally gadgety gizmoe things that you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to live without. Once Pandora, Pandora, Pandora Love Pandora. Yep, ye,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm petering out here. Yep, I'm running out of
Speaker 1: stuff I love. And generally when you say that, it
Speaker 1: means that it's time for listener made you know for
Speaker 1: a second I was going to start making up more
Speaker 1: tech stuff just to avoid hearing that sound. Wow, deja do.
Speaker 1: Today's listen email comes from Humble Floyd, who's a truck
Speaker 1: driver and wanted to comment on our CB Radio podcast.
Speaker 1: Do you remember our CB Radio podcast? Chris? I do
Speaker 1: remember our CB Radio podcast. It was a great podcast
Speaker 1: about CB radios, wasn't it. It was? Yeah. The funny
Speaker 1: thing was, we got a lot of comments about this
Speaker 1: particular podcast, which surprised me because it was sort of
Speaker 1: old tech. Yeah. Actually quite a few people wrote in
Speaker 1: and uh, we are planning on doing a podcast about
Speaker 1: HAM Radio in the future because a lot of people
Speaker 1: said that they were interested in him. Are you thinking
Speaker 1: about it? All right? You know, lunch time was you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours ago, Chris, So stick with me here, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: we're through the home stretch. So Humble Floyd had a
Speaker 1: few things to say about our CB Radio podcast, and
Speaker 1: he was very positive and very thankful for it. So
Speaker 1: thank you, Humble Floyd. I love the email. It's a
Speaker 1: long one, so we're just gonna mention a couple of
Speaker 1: points here for one thing. He said that it is
Speaker 1: legal to build your own CB radio or any HAM
Speaker 1: radio to FCCS specifications, So it does have to be
Speaker 1: an UH certificate FCC transmitter according to the FCC. But
Speaker 1: other than that, apparently you can build one. Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess we sit corrected. But um he points out that's
Speaker 1: cheaper to actually buy one, because they range from about
Speaker 1: thirty bucks to three bucks. That that sort of isn't
Speaker 1: unusual I think in the world of tech. And he
Speaker 1: also mentions that that you aren't supposed to boost it,
Speaker 1: but most people end up boosting it too, so that
Speaker 1: the signals go ten to twenty five miles because the
Speaker 1: FCC doesn't actually enforce it, so it is still technically illegal,
Speaker 1: but people do it anyway. And then ums, not unusual
Speaker 1: on the world er tech, Right, Yeah, if you're not
Speaker 1: getting caught for it, people are doing it. So then
Speaker 1: he pointed out a couple of other things about the antenna.
Speaker 1: You mentioned also that um a license was required at
Speaker 1: one time, but no longer. And then he had this
Speaker 1: lovely little message that I wish to share with everyone.
Speaker 1: Break one nine westbound you out a full grown and
Speaker 1: a plain brown wrapper taking pictures from the middle of
Speaker 1: the yardstick too oh one, gator on the zipper on
Speaker 1: the on the chicken coop is locked up, and take
Speaker 1: a look at the seat cover and the white chow.
Speaker 1: You at your front door, Come on, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you leave behind you? I probably put the wrong pauses
Speaker 1: in there and everything. Here's what that means. A break
Speaker 1: is breaking into the transmission. Breaker is only used in
Speaker 1: the movies. As I sit corrected myself. A State trooper
Speaker 1: or d O T cop in an unmarked car is
Speaker 1: in the median with a radar or laser gun at
Speaker 1: mile post two oh one. There's a tire tread on
Speaker 1: the white line at the one nine eight. The State
Speaker 1: scale way station is closed, and there's a woman worth
Speaker 1: looking at just in front of you. Please come back
Speaker 1: with info on the road in front of me. That
Speaker 1: would be a very useful message to receive. Indeed, lovely scenery.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Humble Floyd. That was That was
Speaker 1: fantastic email and we greatly appreciate it. And guys, just
Speaker 1: keep the email coming because it's um. It's really helping
Speaker 1: us out with knowing what you want to hear, and
Speaker 1: we love to hear from our listeners. You can write
Speaker 1: us tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about technical things and gadgets, electronics
Speaker 1: and computers and stuff that Chris and I like at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. We will talk to you
Speaker 1: again another hundred times really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to check out the new tech
Speaker 1: stuff blog now on the how stuff Works homepage. Brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you