Episode 62 – Sports with Balls

Scott: One, ah, ah, ah, Friends with Brews.

Scott: Peter, you and I were just talking, and by the way, I’m Scott.

Scott: This is Scott of Will.

Scott: This is Peter of Nicolades on the other end.

Scott: Peter of Nicolades, we were just talking, and you said suddenly you got distracted and went down a bat hole.

Peter: So for my birthday, my running buddy gave me a Lego Batman, and he looks lonely.

Peter: So I bought a Lego Joker.

Peter: But I was like, you know, Batman’s really cool, and he’s awesome and stuff, but he kind of needs a Superman too, so I bought a Lego Superman.

Scott: Peter, you’re gonna be able to make a Lego movie by yourself pretty soon here.

Peter: Well, I said it’s not fair that they’re ganging up on the Joker, so I need to get a Lego Lex Luthor.

Peter: And so I got some of these, and I opened up eBay because I was told last night and I’m starting to agree that I kind of need a Lego Robin.

Peter: And just the extent of all of the heroes that are presented this week as opposed to a couple of weeks ago is astounding.

Peter: And there’s so many there and they’re amazing.

Peter: And yes, so I got distracted because there’s a Robin, there’s a couple of Robins, there’s so many, they’re all here.

Peter: And I’m like, if this collection had been here a couple of weeks ago, I would have just bought this whole collection for less than the price of the four individual pieces I got.

Peter: I could have had twice as many of these guys adorning my monitor screen, which you can’t see right now, but it’s still cool.

Scott: Two things come to mind.

Scott: One is that you pretended like you had to think about it for a moment, whether you were going to buy the Robin or not.

Scott: Secondly, you have a lot of concern for the emotional lives of your bricks.

Peter: Yeah, I give a lot of thought to inanimate objects because it’s easier to care about them than it is to care about people.

Scott: That’s true.

Peter: They require less maintenance.

Scott: They never empty your bank account and leave.

Peter: They don’t.

Peter: I have never been robbed by…

Scott: They empty your bank account and they arrive.

Peter: Bingo.

Peter: I’ve never been robbed by a Lego figure before.

Peter: So, yeah.

Scott: Okay, let’s talk drinks, buddy.

Peter: For a repeat performance because of the time of day that we are recording, I have a Wegmans D’Espresso whole bean decaf.

Scott: That looks good.

Scott: It looks like you got some cream or something in there.

Peter: Just a teaspoon, couple, maybe two teaspoons of cream.

Scott: And it’s in a beautiful cup that I enjoy.

Scott: I searched using our incredible search tool written by an incredible person, I’m sure.

Scott: Must be brilliant.

Scott: I searched and I don’t think, I just said it’s the best search tool ever.

Scott: Now I’m qualifying it by saying I don’t think I’ve ever had this on the podcast before.

Scott: So that…

Peter: Well, I mean, it could be the best search tool.

Peter: It’s not the fault of the incredible person who wrote it if you don’t know how to use the search tool.

Scott: Right.

Scott: It’s Cafe Vita Organic Theo Blend, and it’s a medium dark roast.

Scott: They claim notes of dark chocolate, baking spice and dark berries.

Scott: Once again, can you guess as to whether or not my sensitive palate can taste all those things?

Scott: No, it cannot.

Scott: But I can taste the dark chocolate.

Peter: You didn’t even give me a chance to guess.

Scott: No, because I already knew your answer.

Scott: This is a local roaster, and as usual, there will be details in there.

Scott: It’s a good coffee.

Scott: I enjoy it.

Scott: I buy this…

Scott: I don’t know what’s happened to Whole Foods, but their coffee situation has gotten out of control.

Scott: Like it’s not as good as it used to be.

Scott: But this is one that they have now that they didn’t use to have, and it’s a good one.

Scott: And I have some more stuff from Trade on the way, so next time I’ll be able to talk about yet more exquisite things that aren’t necessarily local to me.

Peter: How was your experience with Trade coffee?

Scott: Good.

Scott: It’s been quite good.

Scott: I went up front…

Scott: I went up front…

Scott: It’s weird how humans talk.

Scott: We put all these weird phrases on there.

Scott: When I signed up, apparently I went up front, and then I told them what kinds of coffees I enjoy the most, and they started off with a few suggestions.

Scott: And I think there was one that I nixed right off the bat.

Scott: And other than that, I just let them send them, and I’ve enjoyed every single one.

Scott: Have they all been stellar?

Scott: No, but they’ve all been good.

Scott: And then some have been quite good.

Scott: So yeah, I’m pretty impressed with it.

Scott: It’s a good deal, yeah.

Peter: I’ve been toying with the idea, but I haven’t bitten yet, I should say.

Scott: Two things pushed me over the edge.

Scott: One was the whole food situation changed, and there’s less variety now than there used to be, or at least there is less variety in the assortment of coffees that I actually want to drink, or would think that I would want to drink.

Scott: And then secondly, while pondering this situation and its implications for Friends with Brews, since we are both not necessarily drinking as much beer, I said to myself, hey, what about trade?

Scott: Because I was listening to John Gruber and he was talking about trade, and I thought, you know what?

Scott: I wanna go look and see how much that’s gonna cost me, and if I can do it relatively inexpensively.

Scott: Like for the same, is it the same as going to Whole Foods and buying X number of bags?

Scott: It’s a tiny bit more, but I’m also getting a great big variety of coffees that I don’t have access to here.

Scott: So it is not that much more expensive, and it’s well worth it in my opinion.

Scott: And I can kind of control, you can control, like I don’t have coffees just showing up all the time and charging me 20 bucks a shot.

Scott: It’s not happening like that.

Scott: If anything, there’s times where I’m like, you know what?

Scott: I really need a trade coffee right now.

Scott: And so if anything, I could bump up the frequency a tiny bit.

Peter: Okay, all right.

Scott: So yeah, I would encourage you to give it a try.

Scott: There’s no high pressure situation.

Scott: A religious cult isn’t going to come to your door and drag you away and brainwash you if you don’t keep, you know, they’re not going to come looking for you if you don’t continue on with their products.

Peter: Are you sure?

Scott: No, I’m not.

Scott: Actually, now that I mention it, I think they are standing right outside.

Peter: I was going to ask, because I mean, have you canceled yet?

Peter: So that you can because otherwise, how would you know?

Scott: Peter, how would you know if somebody was standing right outside?

Scott: Or are those indoor cameras?

Scott: Both.

Scott: Oh, actually.

Scott: Explain your local owl situation.

Peter: Am I local AI?

Peter: You mean?

Scott: Yes.

Peter: So I messaged you this morning because, oh, my goodness.

Peter: At the place in Vermont, I have Eufy security cameras.

Peter: And I like Eufy because, you know, they allow you to store your data locally.

Peter: You don’t have to pay a monthly subscription, although they do offer a monthly subscription if you want that.

Peter: So I have Eufy.

Peter: Okay, great.

Peter: One of the things they have now is an AI feature, which will determine if there’s a human is detected.

Peter: Or you can say, alert me if any motion is detected.

Peter: Or you can say if animals are detected, like pets or packages, right?

Peter: And I’ve got most of those enabled at home where I can-

Scott: What about pets with packages?

Peter: Well, like if you PS drops a box off on the front desk or front deck or porch or something.

Scott: Can you say specifically if a pet has a package?

Peter: Well, no, I don’t know that you can do a logical and.

Peter: I don’t think you can.

Peter: I think it’s a pet or a package, but not necessarily the combination.

Scott: You don’t know if you’re getting a pet with a package or a pet or a package.

Peter: But maybe you’d get two results.

Peter: So, you know, anyway.

Peter: So this morning, I was just going through because I have a contractor working at the place in Vermont.

Peter: And it was like, oh, motion detected, human detected.

Peter: Like, OK, let me take a look at it.

Peter: It’s a dog.

Peter: It’s very clearly the neighbor’s dog.

Scott: Was it standing on its hind legs, Peter?

Peter: The dog is not doing anything human like at all.

Scott: Was it wearing a suit?

Scott: Was it carrying a briefcase?

Peter: Was it?

Peter: It’s just a dog.

Peter: It’s totally just a dog.

Peter: So I was like, OK, that’s kind of disappointing.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: If I got a notification that I had a dog and then it turned out to be a human, I would be disappointed.

Scott: But if it said there’s a human and then it turned out to be a dog, I would be happy.

Peter: I guess it depends on the dog or the human.

Peter: I don’t know.

Scott: So what you’re saying is you’re disappointed in AIL.

Peter: AIL.

Scott: But tell me about the local AI part.

Scott: You haven’t gone into that yet.

Peter: Well, that was the thing that supposedly determined that it was a dog or it wasn’t a dog, that it was a human.

Scott: So they have a little work to do is what you’re saying.

Peter: So what I’m saying is, yeah, we’re not ready for AI to steal our jobs just yet.

Peter: At least not if your job is to determine whether you are a dog or a human.

Scott: No, but it gets better because think about it.

Scott: The military, as we know, has discussed the possibility of using AI to determine who to kill and who not to kill.

Scott: Okay?

Peter: Mm-hmm.

Scott: They can’t tell a human from a dog, Peter.

Scott: How the hell are they going to tell you apart from somebody that they classify?

Scott: And I’m saying classify as a terrorist.

Scott: I’m not saying is a terrorist.

Scott: I’m saying someone that they classify as a terrorist versus Peter Nikolaidis.

Scott: Who can tell the difference?

Scott: Is it a dog?

Peter: I guess we’ll have to just kill them all.

Scott: Speaking of AI, I have a follow-up from last time.

Scott: We didn’t talk about this on air, but after we did the recording, you noticed that the audio from my end had gone into your mic because it was coming out speakers or something.

Scott: I don’t remember what.

Scott: So I’ve talked about Hush before, the Hush app for Mac, and I’ve used it to-

Peter: I thought you were talking about the Batman novel.

Scott: There you go again.

Scott: I’m sure they make a Lego version of that novel.

Scott: I’ve talked about it before where I use it to clean up noise, but you know what it did when I ran your track through it?

Scott: It took out all of that echo, 100% gone, just gone.

Scott: This is an AI audio edit.

Scott: It’s not really an editor because there’s not really a whole lot of tweaking you can do, but you just run it through this and it gets rid of-

Scott: the other thing it does is it gets rid of echo, a little bit of echo.

Scott: Like if you have a tiny bit of echo on your end, it’ll clean that up too.

Scott: You do have to be careful with it.

Scott: It’s gotten much better.

Scott: And there are times where, like I’ve noticed if suddenly I change the pitch of my voice or something like that, it’ll have weird artifacts, but they’ve gotten way better about that.

Scott: It almost never happens now.

Scott: But I was impressed.

Scott: I was like, okay, I have the echo in Peter’s track.

Scott: I’m going to have to work a little bit with this.

Scott: No, I ran it through Hush and I was done and I was ready and I just threw it in there and edited the podcast.

Scott: That’s it.

Peter: Remind me who publishes Hush?

Scott: Let me click on my link.

Scott: It’s nobody you would know.

Peter: But it’s not like a Robo Amiga and it’s not a…

Scott: No, no, no.

Scott: It’s a indie guy.

Scott: Ian Sampson is his name.

Scott: He has a P in his last name.

Scott: It’s S-A-M-P-S-O-N.

Scott: Yeah, so you don’t have to worry about cutting his hair.

Scott: He’s not going to suddenly die or something like that.

Scott: And then the other AI thing that I wanted to talk about real quick before we talk about Ted Lasso with you.

Scott: The other thing is that BB Edit upgraded.

Scott: It’s got ChatGBT worksheets.

Scott: There are some other apps I have that would use an open API key.

Scott: So even though I do a lot with the Raycast AI, I also thought, you know, I have ChatGBT Plus, but there are times where I would like an API key so I could plug it into an app.

Scott: And so I went ahead and subscribed to the open AI API.

Scott: And so now what that means is instead of me paying $20 a month, and here’s what you get, and that’s it, now I get an API key and it’s pay as you go.

Scott: So I set a $20 a month limit.

Scott: I gave it a $20 balance, and now it’s going to start deducting as I use it, and we’ll see how it compares.

Scott: So right now, for me, the main advantage is it gives me the ability to use apps that need an API key to do things, and then they can do things, and I can choose my model, I can choose the different GPT-4 models, I can choose the different GPT-35 models, and I hope, I would assume, that I can still use all the image and video tools and stuff like that.

Scott: But anyway, so we’ll see how it goes.

Scott: And then at some point in the future, myself or a dog that apparently resembles me will update you on the progress and what I decide to stick with.

Peter: I’m looking forward to the update from your dog that resembles you.

Scott: I don’t even have a dog.

Scott: That’s the amazing thing.

Peter: You might.

Scott: All right, Peter, you are not a perpetual Apple Plus TV service subscriber, but you are one at the moment.

Scott: And this condition of yours, the Apple Plus subscription condition, has allowed you to finish watching Ted Lasso.

Scott: And I really want to hear what your impressions were and what you thought of it.

Peter: It was really good.

Peter: I just finished the final episode last night, and it was great.

Peter: I got a little, I wouldn’t say choked up, but one of my eyes was a little moist.

Scott: Again, it’s just the meniscus.

Peter: Yeah, that was just in my knee.

Peter: I’m like, oh, son of a…

Peter: Anyway, it was really good.

Peter: I definitely enjoy it.

Peter: Highly recommended.

Peter: It’s not like the kind of TV show I would say like, oh, yeah, I want to watch a comedy.

Peter: What’s classified technically?

Scott: I think it’s classified as a comedy, but it definitely goes beyond that.

Peter: Yeah, comedy series about an American…

Scott: More comedy…

Peter: .

Peter: dramedy.

Peter: Is it drama?

Scott: It’s a dramedy with more emphasis on the omidy.

Peter: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

Peter: It’s slightly drama, but not a lot.

Peter: It almost seems unfair to call it that.

Scott: It’s got a positive message overall.

Scott: Overall, they’re trying to show you good, decent people that when you watch season one, you could be forgiven for thinking, man, everyone was way too upbeat.

Scott: This is not realistic.

Scott: And then as it goes along, you realize, no, these people do have problems and they do fight with them and there are things that they struggle with and they’re not always happy.

Scott: In fact, sometimes they’re downright miserable, but the way that they overall try to deal with these things and treat each other in the process is super positive, which is cool.

Scott: And, as you remember, season one came during the midst of the pandemic and it was a welcome relief from the sheer horror that was existence.

Peter: The horror?

Scott: The horror.

Scott: And so I was kind of curious how season three would strike you now, but yeah, good.

Scott: I’m glad you liked it.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: No, it was a lot of fun, highly recommended.

Peter: I don’t care what you like, just watch it, just check it out.

Peter: It’s worth it.

Peter: I don’t think it took a while to get warmed up, right?

Peter: I think it was pretty good right in the first episode, don’t you?

Peter: There were definitely times, there were definitely a couple of episodes when I was not riveted to the screen, but it wasn’t like, oh, there was that lull of, oh, that season wasn’t so good or a string of episodes weren’t so good.

Peter: There are definitely episodes that were just like, wow, that was amazing.

Peter: I would text you a few things about, oh man, I don’t remember the specific one, but there was one in season two, I think it was when Coach Beard is out on his own for a night.

Peter: I texted you about that one and the night when the whole team is off on their own in Amsterdam and just the final scene with Rebecca.

Peter: No spoilers, but that final, I was just like, oh my god, that got to me.

Peter: So it’s just really good.

Peter: A lot of character development, character arcs, a lot of people who are like a scumbag getting his due, and then others who are really just hurt and trying to get over their pasts.

Peter: All the feels, really good, really good show, highly recommended.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: There was a point where after Jamie Tartt came back to the team, I was a little worried about the way they were handling him, because all of a sudden he seemed too compliant, too docile.

Scott: He lost his spirit of what made him Jamie.

Scott: But they didn’t keep it that way.

Scott: He got it back.

Scott: And then they did develop him in a totally satisfying way as the show went on.

Scott: And I really enjoyed that because he was a guy that at first you could not stand.

Scott: You thought he was the biggest bunghole in the universe.

Scott: And then the way they developed their characters was really good.

Scott: They don’t give you stuff that never pays off, I don’t feel like.

Scott: I feel like everything that comes up is going to pay off eventually in a good way.

Scott: And so that’s just one example of a character, but they all paid off pretty well.

Scott: I will admit there were times where with Coach Beard and Jane situation, I was like, dude, what are you doing?

Scott: Pull your head out.

Scott: Because this is the guy that seems so together in so many ways, but then just total chaos when it comes to Jane.

Scott: And I was just like, that’s not to say that it’s not believable and that it’s not a good storyline.

Scott: It is.

Scott: And the fact that I was annoyed by it proves that it was doing probably exactly what they intended for it to do, was make you wonder, how can, wait, I don’t, how can this guy, doesn’t he understand?

Scott: You know?

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: No, it was good.

Peter: It was good.

Peter: Highly recommended.

Peter: All of those things.

Peter: Like it just, just so many, you know, and, and the watching the, the soccer games, you know, like almost every episode, I think every episode, almost every episode, there’s a soccer game.

Peter: And, you know, like I’m watching as if I was watching a real soccer game, like what’s going to happen?

Peter: You know?

Scott: So it was, but the good news is for those who don’t like sports, don’t like sports with balls, even if you don’t have balls and you don’t like sports, it’s not overpowering.

Scott: It’s not the point of the story.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: They are a soccer team or a football team and yeah, they have a coach and yeah, blah blah blah.

Scott: But that’s not the point of it.

Scott: And you don’t have to care about those things in order to get invested.

Scott: Of course they have situations where the team is trying to win.

Scott: Of course, blah, blah, blah.

Scott: But it’s more about how are these people achieving their goals?

Scott: How are they working together?

Scott: How are they actually becoming a cohesive team?

Scott: It could be any team.

Scott: It could be doing anything.

Scott: Watching football is a little better than watching a team of ditch diggers.

Scott: I’m sorry to ditch diggers out there.

Scott: So they chose something, right?

Scott: They chose something.

Scott: But it’s not about that, per se.

Scott: So if you’re a person who thinks, oh, the sports ball, don’t.

Scott: Just put that out of your mind.

Scott: Have an open mind for a moment.

Peter: It’s not about soccer.

Peter: It’s about the people who happen to be related to soccer.

Peter: So yeah, that was good.

Peter: That was good.

Peter: Highly recommend it.

Scott: Good.

Peter: I even told my girlfriend, you know, I was watching it.

Peter: She’s like, I think I should watch it.

Peter: Like, we should watch it together.

Peter: I will go back and start over at episode one and go through it again.

Scott: Absolutely.

Scott: I didn’t watch all of it with my wife, but when she started watching it, I did.

Scott: I went back.

Scott: I watched with her as often as I could.

Scott: So even though it was episodes that I had already seen, I’m like, I want to do this.

Scott: This is way more fun watching it with a person, getting their reactions.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: Ted Lasso.

Scott: Hey.

Peter: Hey.

Scott: You and I have the eternal, eternal subject.

Scott: It doesn’t matter.

Scott: This topic has spanned multiple podcasts in multiple eras of Peter and Scott.

Scott: Scott.

Peter: Not just multiple episodes of a podcast.

Scott: No, no, no.

Scott: Multiple podcasts, multiple-

Peter: Podcasts.

Scott: Years, decades, the decades of searching in the wilderness for a notes app that meets a specific need.

Scott: Now I have notes apps that meet all my personal needs.

Peter: I want to say like, wait, did we not have a podcast dedicated just towards note taking?

Scott: We did.

Scott: So, the use case that I want for this specific thing is only for, I guess you would call it professional use.

Scott: It’s for things documenting information that I need to keep track of, projects, how-to’s, things that have been done in the past, configurations, that kind of stuff.

Scott: This is where I have taken to using Obsidian.

Scott: And Obsidian is great because it’s got a billion plugins.

Scott: Everybody in the universe uses it, loves it.

Scott: It’s a mini religion.

Scott: They will absolutely come to your house and drag you back to brainwash you if you stop using it.

Peter: I’m sure they are at your house right now listening to what you’re saying.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: However, by the way, you should check out a podcast called Hemispheric Views.

Scott: It’s a guy named Jason from Portland and it’s two Australians named Martin and Andrew.

Scott: They’re hilarious together because they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, I guess you could say.

Scott: And they definitely attack those.

Scott: Let’s put it that way.

Peter: I tried it.

Peter: I couldn’t quite get into it.

Scott: You might have to listen to…

Scott: Try a couple different random episodes.

Scott: I’ll try to find one.

Scott: I’ll try to find one that I liked.

Scott: And if it’s not for you, that’s fine.

Scott: No big deal.

Scott: Anyway, the point is Jason from that podcast made a comment that I fully agree with and his comment was, I’m kind of getting tired of Markdown for everything.

Scott: Because when I’m just writing a document or a note, I don’t want Markdown.

Scott: I don’t want it in my face.

Scott: I don’t want it in the way.

Scott: And that is 100% true.

Scott: Now it’s great for things like my static website generator, my blog posts go into Markdown and then that allows the site to compile that text into HTML easily.

Scott: They work great for things like that.

Scott: But when I’m taking notes, when I’m doing documentation, I don’t want the hashes for the title.

Scott: I don’t want to have to remember it.

Scott: When I click on a line, all of a sudden it jumps three feet because it widens out to show you all the, I don’t want that.

Scott: I don’t want that.

Scott: And that is my biggest annoyance with Obsidian.

Scott: So I would like to find out, because I noticed from a link that you pasted in a Slack today that you’re still experimenting or maybe not experimenting with Notion.

Scott: And I wanted to see, I hear you dinging over there.

Peter: That’s my AirPods Pro 2 case sitting on a Qi charger and deciding that it’s had enough.

Scott: Oh, see, I don’t think I’ve ever heard mine say it’s had enough.

Peter: I don’t think it’s had enough.

Peter: It’s just had enough that it starts dinging.

Peter: It’s like, I’m charging, I’m not charging anymore.

Peter: I’m charging, I’m not charging anymore.

Peter: And what it’s saying is, I, Peter, have had enough of listening to its incessant dinging, and I must now remove it from the charging stand.

Scott: So what about Notion?

Scott: What is your relationship to Notion, AKA, are you still in the experimental phase?

Peter: I think I’ve committed to Notion because I’m using it now.

Peter: And I did set my Evernote to not renew.

Peter: Actually, they messaged me and they said, oh, here’s your invoice for Evernote.

Peter: We’re going to bill you again.

Peter: I was like, wait, what?

Peter: And then I realized that they have a credit card that expired last year on file.

Peter: So I don’t think they’re going to.

Scott: They can try.

Peter: They can try.

Peter: I think it’ll fail.

Peter: I hope it fails.

Peter: So I’m using Notion as my primary note-taking app.

Peter: In all honesty, I miss Evernote.

Peter: I miss the functionality of Evernote and the way Evernote works.

Peter: But I just, I’m at the, you know, no confidence in them, you know?

Peter: It’s just, it’s like every day, something seems to be coming out with Evernote and, you know, like something’s going wrong or different.

Peter: And now it’s owned by an Italian company that I had never heard of.

Scott: Right.

Scott: That does nothing at all that would make you think they would want to buy Evernote.

Peter: Right.

Peter: And I was going to say I haven’t heard anything about Evernote changing since they’ve bought it, you know?

Peter: Like, I don’t know improvements.

Scott: There haven’t been any new features, but I will tell you that their pricing strategy keeps changing on what seems like a daily basis and it’s annoying as hell.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: All I know is it went up 10 bucks a month or 10 bucks a year from when I last bought it.

Peter: That’s all I can tell you.

Scott: And the freebie plan all of a sudden they’re kneecapping you, which is great.

Scott: Look, I get the point of view.

Scott: Look, okay, I don’t blame them for not wanting to be so generous with the free plan, but it’s a little late in the product’s life cycle to get people excited about that change.

Peter: I am not excited about that change.

Peter: I will tell you that, yeah.

Scott: And the worst part of it is when you open something in Evernote, it always pops up now and says, hey, have you heard the good news about our super expensive plans?

Scott: Would you like to do that?

Scott: No, I really just want to see this note that this guy shared with me.

Scott: Can we do that?

Scott: How about that?

Peter: And Evernote did that to me a couple of years ago before they changed ownership.

Peter: Like every time I would open it up on iOS, I would have this giant banner of just like, you know, upgrade to this plan.

Peter: And they were trying to, like I was on some kind of legacy plan and I forget what it was, but I was perfectly happy with the one that I was on and I had to endure these pop-ups for like a month or something or three weeks until the offer or the time period just finally went away and they stopped badgering me about it.

Scott: Listen, Evernote, we agreed to put up at the elephant trunk going into our pocket looking for peanuts.

Scott: God, I quit asking us to give you more money every two seconds.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So yeah, that was fun.

Scott: Okay, so how are you using Notion?

Scott: What features do you like about Notion and what are you missing?

Scott: Besides, I know that one of them is the PDF search, but what else are you missing?

Peter: That’s the feature I’m missing.

Peter: The other thing too is I have not completely migrated over because I have tried on a couple of occasions to migrate my Evernote notes, and it does not even come close to importing everything from Notion.

Peter: And as far as I know, other than a manual process, migrating from Evernote to Notion is a one-way street.

Peter: I have not seen any Notion to Evernote migration paths, right?

Scott: Yeah, but Notion is Markdown behind the scenes, right?

Peter: Yes, I believe it is.

Peter: Well, you can use Markdown right within Notion when you’re writing notes and stuff.

Scott: Right, but I guess what I’m getting at is my suspicion.

Scott: But there’s no rich text, right?

Scott: Like it doesn’t embed characters and crap in there to do rich text.

Scott: It’s either Markdown.

Scott: I guess what I’m getting at is one benefit of these apps that do use Markdown is it’s basically plain text with some formatting brought to you by Markdown.

Peter: Right, but there are also attachments, too, like built right in.

Peter: You can insert files right into a note, for example.

Scott: You can, but it’s really just a Markdown link to here’s where we store it locally.

Peter: Sure.

Scott: What I’m getting at is it’s portable.

Scott: And so they’re probably figuring, well, there’s your portability, mister.

Scott: You got a plain text file.

Scott: What more do you want?

Scott: That’s probably how Notion sees it.

Peter: Probably, I’ll go with that.

Peter: But I’m a little disappointed that they have API hooks into Evernote and it cannot finish an actual import.

Peter: So that’s disappointing.

Scott: But that could be on the elephant’s end, too.

Peter: It could be, for all I know.

Peter: But all I know is one of the reasons I was looking at Notion was because they’re like, yeah, easy, import into Evernote.

Peter: So I don’t know, I’m not 100%, but for right now, I’m still keeping Evernote around as an archive.

Peter: And as long as I don’t need to add anything into it, then I guess I’m fine.

Peter: But yeah, the biggest thing, it structures things a little differently.

Peter: I have to work a little to make sure that I put things in the right locations.

Peter: And then once I do that, it’s fine.

Peter: But essentially, I have a few classifications.

Peter: I have a personal, I have work, and stuff for automation.

Peter: So I still have IFTTT.

Peter: Also, by the way, that went up a buck a month last month.

Scott: Yeah, man, I quit just now.

Scott: I think we talked about this in the past.

Scott: I don’t even use it at all anymore.

Peter: I use it for just a couple of things.

Peter: There’s just a few automations that I have to like, which I’m probably at this point, I could probably get away with it and save 36 bucks a year, but I keep it going.

Peter: But overall, as far as taking notes and stuff, I embed files into Notion.

Peter: Occasionally, I’ll share a document with you.

Peter: I like that.

Peter: It’s very similar features, similar use case to Evernote.

Peter: Not being able to automatically search into PDFs is a hassle.

Peter: I have definitely found getting ready for this year’s taxes, being able to search in PDFs came in handy.

Peter: So I just need to know whenever I save anything now, I have to tag it.

Peter: I have to give it a descriptive subject line because I can’t count on Notion to be able to search into my attachment down the road.

Peter: So it’s a bit of a manual process.

Peter: So all in all, I don’t know.

Peter: I’m not going out of my way to say, oh my God, Notion is so much better than Evernote.

Peter: Why didn’t I change?

Peter: If anything, I’m like, yeah, I could go back to Evernote.

Scott: Yeah, but I can see from the Notion website that Pixar, Uber, Figma, Amazon, Toyota and somebody called Snowflake all use it.

Scott: And Peter, if those companies use it, I don’t know what your problem is.

Scott: I guess what I’m going to ask you is, is the free…

Scott: Do you see any reason that the free thing would not be good enough for you?

Scott: If let’s say, this is a totally made up scenario, okay, but I just want you to think about this.

Scott: Let’s say you had a small business and you wanted to collaborate with a team.

Scott: Is there anything that would make you upgrade to the $8 per month?

Peter: Well, yeah, you have…

Peter: Number one, you have to, to collaborate.

Scott: Well, no, because the free one says collaborative workspace, and it also says invite 10 guests.

Peter: I think there are limitations on that.

Peter: I forget what those are.

Peter: I tried to share something with you at one point, and I think it was…

Peter: I don’t remember if I was a paid version, a paid customer at that point or not, but essentially, I wanted to share either a workspace or something with you.

Scott: I remember that.

Peter: And it wanted me to…

Peter: It was like, okay, great, we’ll just add Scott to your plan and you’ll be paying twice as much a month.

Peter: And I was like, I just wanted to share a document.

Peter: That’s not what I was doing.

Scott: But I pay zero.

Scott: How can I pay twice as much?

Scott: I did just notice that if you add Notion AI, you have to have one of the paid plans and it doubles…

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Well, it doubles the price of the $8 a month one and adds, goes from 15 to 23 on the business plan.

Peter: What I did do is I just shared a public link of this to-do list that I put together with you today.

Peter: And that let me share with anybody.

Peter: But it’s like anybody who has the link can then access it.

Peter: So there’s no privacy there, right?

Peter: I mean, other than anonymity.

Peter: So, you know, overall, it’s okay.

Peter: I mean, you know, pricing is comparable to Evernote.

Peter: They’re all in comparable prices, unless you’re Obsidian and hosting your own.

Scott: Hosting your own, which is what I…

Peter: But I’m just so done with that, you know?

Peter: I used to run my own servers on all kinds of things.

Scott: I don’t know, but Obsidian, when they say hosting your own, you don’t actually have to do anything.

Scott: You just have to stick your file somewhere.

Peter: Right, I know, I know.

Scott: So I stick it in iCloud.

Scott: And to be honest, I only use it on my Mac, so who cares?

Scott: But it’s in iCloud, so if I wanted to open Obsidian on my iPhone, I can.

Scott: But I understand what you’re saying.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: In Obsidian’s case, it’s not something where hosting it really means anything, but there are some that are.

Peter: So my take on Obsidian was that it seems just a little more hacker-friendly than Notion, right?

Peter: It’s a little more lets you get under the hood.

Scott: Yeah, you mean the good hackers.

Scott: You mean customizable…

Scott: People definitely…

Scott: Oh, and that’s one thing I wanted to ask you about was, yeah, because Obsidian has a rich plugin, not economy, economy is the wrong word, but community.

Scott: And there are so many plugins for basically any way you want to extend that thing.

Scott: It’s a little overwhelming, it can be.

Scott: So my question to you is, is Notion able to be customized, modified?

Scott: Does it have a concept of a plugin, or do you just get what you get and you’ll like it?

Peter: I think there are Notion plugins because that was how you can do the PDF searching.

Peter: There’s a plugin you can add on, but you have to do a tag, so you have to remember to tag a note with this plugin.

Scott: It can’t tell that there’s a.pd, it doesn’t, what?

Peter: That’s the one thing, I looked into this a few months ago, and I found one thing that will allow you to search into PDF files.

Peter: And it was like, yeah, you have to do this and you have to tag all of your things.

Peter: So, again, if I know moving forward that I’m gonna do it, I would just like, you know, like hashtag PDF or something like that.

Scott: Right, right, but now you have to go back.

Peter: But I’m not gonna go back through decades of PDFs and tag them all.

Scott: But here’s the thing though, because, oh, how do you get to the raw files themselves?

Scott: Like in Obsidian, I could just write a script on my Mac that would do it all for me because I have access to the raw files.

Peter: Because your attachments are all in a specific place or something?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Yeah, I have no idea.

Scott: Well, what I’m saying is just to tag the documents.

Scott: Like I could use the script either for tagging them with the slash PDF, or I could just search the PDF.

Scott: So I guess what I’m getting at is where are the documents stored with Notion?

Scott: Obviously you’re paying for them.

Scott: Are these documents on their server somewhere?

Peter: Yeah, it’s hosted.

Peter: It’s a hosted service, so.

Scott: Okay, so even though you’re basically writing what are plain text files with Markdown, in essence, you don’t have the raw files that you can look in, that you can open outside of Notion.

Peter: I mean, I’m assuming there’s a, that there’s a repository somewhere on my local hard drive.

Peter: Like I’m looking into right now, library, application support, Notion, databases.

Peter: There’s a data, there’s Blob storage folder.

Scott: You’re going Blob.

Peter: And I’m wondering if that’s gonna be huge.

Scott: Okay, so it says your Notion data will always be backed up in the cloud, but you can also export all of it should you need local copies for safekeeping.

Scott: Okay, so I think the answer is it’s in the cloud and you have to manually export if you want.

Peter: Yeah, I looked into this last year and I was like, okay, I can find my data, that’s fine.

Peter: And I forget where it is.

Peter: I’d have to look at it again.

Peter: Yeah, I mean, you know, so there’s your stuff.

Peter: I mean, if I poke around that folder, I’m sure I’ll find tons and tons of files.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: But I guess the point is you don’t know if you’re acting on copies that are the same as what’s in the cloud necessarily.

Scott: So you can’t really write a local script against those files, or at least you wouldn’t trust it.

Scott: So it’s not obsidian-like in that way.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: I think that you can do all these kinds of things that you’re describing, because I’ve seen lots of stuff built on Notion.

Peter: I just have not dug in.

Peter: Like again, I was not looking to roll my own solution here.

Peter: I wanted something that just like, just give me something that works.

Peter: And that, yeah, if I want to dig in under the hood, I can.

Scott: Right, right, right.

Scott: But there’s a distinction.

Scott: Like if somebody writes a plugin, let’s say, and it can search PDFs, you’re giving that plugin access to your Notion database, which is in the cloud.

Scott: It’s not that it has access to anything local necessarily.

Scott: It’s just using whatever Notion shows it as its data source, and then it’s searching from there.

Scott: So.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: Well, that’s good to know.

Scott: So what do you think?

Scott: What’s going to happen here?

Scott: What are Peter’s predictions for?

Scott: I told you that I’m going to update us.

Scott: I’m going to come on as a dog and update us on my open API versus ChadGBT+.

Scott: When you come on as some lovable furry animal, what are you going to tell us about Notion?

Peter: Probably that I’m still working with it, and hopefully that I have successfully migrated off of Evernote to it.

Peter: Hopefully.

Peter: So, you know, there you go.

Peter: But, yeah, I found a…

Peter: Here’s a thread three years ago on Reddit.

Peter: I got a table, yada, yada, where I searched the first line I wrote, embedded.

Peter: My current method is with an external PDF reader.

Scott: Mm-hmm.

Peter: Finally, I would love to annotate using the Apple Pencil.

Peter: How can you do that?

Peter: That’s another thing, too.

Peter: It doesn’t have Apple Pencil support, so…

Peter: Anyway, yeah, I don’t know.

Peter: There’s, yeah, so there’s something called OCR Vision, which can watch a folder and convert scans into PDF.

Peter: Yeah, I don’t know.

Scott: I just found an article about how to search in Notion, including PDF.

Scott: Can I…

Scott: Oh, PDFs cannot be searched directly within Notion.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: If you want to find and edit the contents of a PDF in Notion, there is a way.

Scott: Open the PDF in Word first and then import it into Notion.

Scott: What?

Scott: Oh, it’s a Word…

Scott: You convert it to a Word file.

Peter: Oh.

Scott: Interesting.

Scott: That’s not a solution.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: No.

Scott: That’s not a solution.

Scott: I’m sorry, Thimo, you’re a good guy, but up yours with your Word.

Peter: So I found it.

Peter: On GitHub, there’s a project called Notion-OCR.

Peter: And that will…

Peter: It says make your images searchable in Notion.

Scott: Is this Yannick?

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: Yannick CW?

Scott: Okay.

Peter: But you need to install prerequisites.

Peter: Like, there’s this package in Brew called Tesseract that you install and then Tesseract-

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: That’s fine.

Peter: Tesseract-OCR and yada, yada, yada, and then you download a bunch of things.

Peter: And I think this is the one then where you then have to tag all your stuff, if I recall.

Scott: You can even do it on Linus.

Peter: Anyway, maybe it doesn’t.

Peter: Now, this one, I don’t see anything about requiring a tag.

Peter: So maybe this is new.

Peter: Maybe I haven’t seen this one.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: So maybe I have to play with this.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: Okay, I’ll put that link in our show links.

Peter: So maybe when I come back as a dog, I will have an update on that.

Scott: Well, look, I’m going to be the dog, even though…

Scott: Well, I could be a cat, I guess, since I have two cats.

Scott: You go ahead and be a dog.

Scott: Whatever.

Peter: Okay, I’ll be a dog.

Peter: On that note, I think we should put a pin in this.

Scott: We should end this dog of a podcast.

Peter: How can people find this dog of a podcast if they haven’t already?

Scott: They can go to friendswithbrews.com.

Scott: B-R-E-W-S is the way that the Brews is written in this situation.

Scott: And in all friendly situations.

Scott: You can find Peter on nikolaidis.com if you can understand how to spell his name.

Scott: You can find me on scottwillsey.com if you can understand how to spell my name.

Scott: Or the socials, Peter, please say you’re social.

Peter: I’m social.

Scott: Please say the address of your social.

Peter: The address of your social?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Something infoexchange.ru.

Peter: I’m Nikolaidis.

Peter: I’m atnikolaidisatinfosec.exchange.

Peter: Yes.

Scott: Nikolaidis.northkorea.

Peter: I just realized, though, looking at this tool for adding searching, it appears that all it does is it runs OCR against your attachment, and then inserts that text into the Notion note.

Scott: Oh, my God.

Scott: So, like, if you have an 80-page PDF that you really want searched.

Peter: Sounds like you’re going to have an 80-page note as well.

Scott: Sounds great.

Scott: Love it.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Not great.

Peter: And this is the one.

Peter: So, you just you add the words add underscore OCR below any image.

Peter: And Notion will then try to do the text.

Peter: So, this is the one that I found earlier.

Scott: That gives me a headache.

Peter: Not great.

Peter: So, Notion people, I mean, come on, get on the stick.

Peter: Search those things.

Peter: And also, fix the Evernote import.

Scott: Thanks.

Peter: Bye.

Scott: You know what I say to all that?

Scott: I say, lol, because my social address is ScottWillsey, one word, at social.lol.

Peter: Social.lol.

Scott: The lol came in handy.

Peter: Is it time to hit the big red button?

Scott: It’s time to hit the rig, rig bed, oh my god.

Peter: Rig red button.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Tell your friends.

Scott: Friends.