Episode 64 – The Accidental Decaf Podcast
Scott: Friends with Brews.
Scott: Peter, you asked me a few minutes ago, have I ever had one of those days?
Scott: I’m having one of those years, and in fact, you know full well, because today I was intensely confused about what I was doing in a not good way, and it really has nothing to do with me rushing too fast.
Scott: It literally just has to do with the fact that things aren’t registering in my brain.
Scott: And I’ve been having this problem, and it happens to me at work, it happens to me other places, and then sometimes it doesn’t happen.
Scott: And honestly, I’ve actually been questioning, do I have some kind of post-COVID brain fog?
Scott: Because it sucks, man.
Scott: Sometimes I’m really fighting it, and it’s just like stuff doesn’t get through.
Scott: So anyway, I had a point to that.
Scott: I was gonna bring something up.
Peter: Well, I asked if you’ve ever had one of those days.
Scott: I’ve had those days, yeah, trust me.
Scott: Anyway, technology sucks lately, software sucks.
Peter: Oh, man.
Scott: I honestly believe that the quality of software in general is getting worse.
Scott: It could be that I’m super hypersensitive to it because my job is constantly troubleshooting broken software or working with software that needs to be tested, and so I see a lot of garbage, but I don’t think so because it’s HomeKit, it’s iOS, it’s my phone, it’s Messages, it’s my AirPods Pro, it’s everything, my Mac.
Scott: All software is nothing but a thousand paper cuts all the time.
Peter: Reference the Better Offline Podcast for an hour-long, every-week rant on how technology sucks and likely causes thereof.
Scott: Yeah, now sometimes he is, remember when we did a podcast about how bad everything was?
Scott: What did we call that?
Peter: Dismazed.
Scott: Yeah, Dismazed, which is a great name, but we both decided it was, we didn’t want to be negative all the time, so we quit doing it.
Scott: But sometimes he’s a little dismayed, if you know what I mean.
Scott: Like he sets out, he’s pretty dismaying.
Scott: He sets out wanting to talk about something that proves that we’re better offline.
Scott: But…
Peter: Yeah, and I think he doesn’t bring the job so far, it’s only like four episodes in.
Scott: He does do a pretty good job.
Scott: I guess what I’m saying is, it’s a little dramatic sometimes.
Scott: But the…
Scott: But the overall points that he makes and the overall cases that he talked about are pretty true.
Peter: So, before we go anywhere, you’re Scott and I’m Peter.
Scott: Yes, absolutely.
Peter: I’m drinking a cup of Wegman’s Decaf Espresso.
Scott: A repeat challenger.
Peter: A frequent flyer, if you will.
Peter: And you’re drinking?
Scott: I am having Good Citizen Coffee Company’s Palmera.
Peter: Palmera?
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: And Good Citizen seems to be a roaster that works with wholesalers, wholesalers?
Scott: I don’t know.
Scott: Not sailors.
Scott: They don’t work with sailors.
Peter: Yo ho ho, and a bottle of coffee.
Scott: Yeah, they specifically refuse to sell to sailors.
Scott: But it was roasted in Nashville, Tennessee, which I thought Adam would get a kick out of.
Peter: Maybe he’s had it before.
Scott: Maybe.
Scott: Anyway, I like their website because it says, Where’s your bean from?
Scott: And then it says Columbia.
Scott: So apparently my bean is from Columbia.
Peter: Your bean.
Peter: Good to know where your bean is from.
Scott: But this Colombian coffee, it says, a berry, acidity, creamy body and caramel sweetness.
Scott: And it’s pretty good.
Scott: I like it.
Scott: It’s pretty mellow.
Scott: I think it’s a good coffee.
Scott: This is another one that I got through trade.
Scott: Because my local Whole Foods sucks nowadays for coffee.
Peter: Question for you about whole lot of trade coffee.
Peter: Does trade coffee have, do they have a decaf only option?
Scott: Oh, good question.
Scott: I don’t know that.
Peter: I looked at trade a while ago and I did not sign up.
Peter: But I’m interested in decaf only, would you like to know why?
Scott: I might know why, but the listener might not know why.
Peter: Well, you might know why.
Peter: I don’t think anyone else knows why.
Peter: I mean, maybe they do.
Peter: Dear listener, if you know why, why don’t you tell me?
Scott: We know that you have decaf on this podcast quite a bit because a lot of times it’s in the afternoon and so forth.
Peter: Right.
Peter: But more recently, as of last Friday, my girlfriend and I went up to Vermont and I had on my previous trips there, I had bought a few bags of coffee.
Peter: So, okay, great.
Peter: So Friday, I actually went there like Thursday night.
Peter: So I get there Friday, make some coffee.
Peter: Everything’s fine.
Peter: Little low energy, but going to the house and cleaning out 50 years of accumulated crust and stuff, it’s draining.
Peter: It’s hard for me anyway.
Peter: So I got a little tired.
Peter: I attributed to that.
Peter: Next day, Saturday comes around.
Peter: I’m a little bit irritable.
Peter: Really low energy, just like, you know, my girlfriend has to tell me everything.
Peter: Like, okay, take this bag, move this over here, throw this away.
Peter: Sunday, just still feeling like dirt.
Peter: I managed to rally enough to teach my yoga class.
Peter: And then I look and I realize that I had been drinking decaf for the previous two days without knowing it.
Peter: I had had a splitting headache for two days.
Peter: The Monday rolls around.
Peter: I’m like, you know what?
Peter: I’m just gonna power through, because this sort of withdrawal is obviously symptoms that means I’ve been doing too much, right?
Peter: So it’s time to cut back a bit.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: All right, so it doesn’t taste as good generally, but I’m like, I’m back to decaf pretty much full time now.
Peter: But I will like once a day, I’ll make like a half cup of regular and half decaf.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: This is not one of those.
Peter: So today has been a pure decaf day.
Peter: Maybe I put like, I may have put one tablespoon of beans into one of my cups of coffee today.
Peter: But yeah, I’m back on all decaf.
Peter: I’m still using cordyceps, still using exogenous ketones for a little bit of mental clarity and energy boost.
Scott: Exogenous?
Peter: A daily dose, but maybe it’s androgynous, I don’t know.
Peter: A daily dose of ketone, creatine.
Scott: Do those go in your exogenous zone?
Peter: Yes, you insert into your exogenous zone.
Peter: You insert them straight into the exogenous zone.
Peter: Stick them right in there, boom.
Peter: So that’s what I’ve been doing.
Peter: And yeah, it’s been a week now.
Peter: I’ve been pretty much off caffeine, and I feel pretty normal.
Scott: Well, I gotta say, I know for sure that your brain is functioning without caffeine way better than mine has been with caffeine today, so there’s that.
Scott: So here’s what’s funny.
Scott: So you showed me a bag of counterculture slow motion decaf.
Scott: Yes.
Scott: The funny thing is, last week, my wife went to Whole Foods and she brought home some coffee.
Scott: And I ran out of the bag I was on, and I started in on the bag that she brought home without really looking at it other than it was counterculture, which I really don’t tend to care for counterculture, but this counterculture tasted pretty good.
Scott: It was pretty neutral, and it was the best counterculture I’d had, and I said, this is the best counterculture I’d had, and she looked at me, but she didn’t really say anything.
Scott: And then I go to work the next day, having drink this coffee.
Scott: I was on site.
Scott: We were doing, oh, what were we doing?
Scott: We were swapping network card locations in the server in order to, it’s kind of weird.
Scott: We have a ghost server, a Norton ghost, and so we can image servers down the wire.
Scott: So we can, they connect to ghost.
Scott: Ghost gives them the Windows image.
Scott: They can re-image the whole computer right there over the wire without having to stick in a USB drive or do any of that nonsense.
Scott: But the network cards have to be in a specific position.
Scott: It wants a specific port, otherwise ghost won’t see it, or it won’t see ghost or vice versa.
Scott: So we are moving the network cards instead of just moving the ethernet cable.
Scott: And the reason why is because we have Mac filtering, we have port security in place.
Scott: And if that port connection changes to a different Mac address, it will get locked out automatically, and then we have to wait for the network guys to unlock us.
Scott: So instead of that, we just physically swapped the network cards into the new location so that it would meet the requirements of ghost being able to see it, and it would also not trip port security.
Scott: So there I am thinking I’m all caffeinated, and I’m about ready to swap those.
Scott: And the other guy goes, do you want to unplug the power from the server?
Scott: I mean, the servers were powered off, but they still have power.
Scott: And I was like, yeah, sure, why not?
Scott: And I didn’t make any other mistakes that day, but it was just stuff like that that I wasn’t thinking of.
Scott: And then as the day went on, I needed more coffee and I’m like, man, I’m really not feeling, I’m just tired.
Scott: And my head is hurting a little bit.
Scott: So I made more coffee and it didn’t really seem to help.
Scott: And about the afternoon time, I was gonna make my third cup of coffee.
Scott: And all of a sudden I realized this is decaf.
Scott: It was that exact same counterculture slow motion coffee that you showed me today.
Scott: That was the coffee that I was drinking.
Scott: And I said, what is this?
Scott: And she goes, well, why are you drinking my decaf?
Peter: It’s the same, exactly the same.
Scott: It was exactly the same.
Scott: I didn’t even know that counterculture made decaf, number one.
Scott: And number two, usually when she goes to the store, if she buys decaf at some cheaper brand and she shoves it in back, I don’t know.
Scott: Anyway, it’s just one, again, things not registering in the brain of Scott Wilsey.
Peter: So there are three whole bean decafs that I can find at Wegmans.
Peter: Two are the Wegmans store brand.
Peter: One is their Colombian medium roast, which I do not like.
Peter: I think I’ve had it on the show, and I think it was like a, if I were desperate, brand.
Peter: The other is their genuine dark roast, their store brand, which I think is pretty good.
Peter: And then this one is counterculture that I’ve had before.
Peter: I’m not having that tonight, though, to be clear.
Scott: Here is Peter’s review of Colombian decaf medium roast.
Scott: I don’t like it as well as the regular Colombian.
Scott: I wouldn’t drink it without the sugar.
Peter: If I were desperate.
Peter: So that’s the third.
Peter: We gotta have that kind of, there’s gotta be a thumbs up, a thumbs down, and the middle ring is, if I were desperate.
Peter: Not unlike the bigsandwich.co guys.
Peter: It’s either best movie ever, worst movie ever, or it’s a movie.
Scott: It’s a movie, yeah.
Peter: It’s a movie.
Peter: I think that’s where we’re at.
Scott: So I guess it doesn’t say much about counterculture for me that my favorite coffee of theirs is the decaf.
Peter: Hey, maybe they’ve got the best decaf around.
Scott: I don’t know.
Scott: I don’t know if it’s the best around, but it’s the best of theirs.
Peter: It’s the best for yards around.
Scott: Anyway, I’m gonna give my, I give my good citizen, roasted in Nashville coffee company, Palmera, a thumbs up.
Peter: All right, well, I give Wegener’s store brand stuff a thumbs up.
Peter: I’ll say it, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
Peter: I have found very few things in the Wegmans store brand that I do not really like.
Peter: I can’t even remember off the top of my head if there’s anything that I’ve bought that I just did not like flat out.
Scott: You guys also have Whole Foods there, right?
Scott: Because to me Wegmans sounds a lot like a Whole Foods.
Peter: It’s not though.
Peter: It’s more, it’s somewhere in between Whole Foods and like Stop and Shop, Star Market.
Scott: Never heard of those.
Peter: Price Chopper.
Scott: Never heard of them.
Peter: Somewhere between, it’s not super high exclusive whole paycheck and it’s not like bog standard grocery store.
Peter: So it’s a little bit in between.
Peter: But anyway, let’s move on.
Scott: Let us move on.
Peter: We’ve got a little late start tonight and I know you’re on spring break or family spring, family break or your break is bringing families or something, but I have a family of springs.
Peter: I have things to do too.
Peter: But anyway, we’ve got stuff to get through.
Peter: So talk to me about your fitness update.
Scott: Yeah, well, as you know, I was having problems with my hips slash nerve slash, what’s the back of your leg called?
Scott: Hamstring.
Scott: I don’t know what’s been going on with that.
Scott: You know, we’ve talked about it before.
Scott: But anyway, in addition to that, I also think I’ve developed a stress fracture in my right foot.
Peter: Oh.
Scott: It really gets sore.
Scott: It’s kind of a dull, low pain, but I can feel it when I start running.
Scott: And then by the time I’ve been running for a little while, it doesn’t hurt anymore so much.
Scott: But it’s gotten better since I got the new shoes.
Scott: I got those shoes that you recommended, by the way.
Scott: The Escalante, is that what they’re called?
Scott: Escalante, yes.
Scott: And I really like them a lot.
Scott: I definitely needed more padding.
Scott: I don’t think I was helping myself running in those hyper thin ones anymore.
Scott: So what I’m trying to do now is I’m trying to do less caloric input throughout the day, just to eat less food.
Scott: And also, that way I don’t have to exercise 90 minutes to two hours every night to burn the calories that I’ve eaten.
Scott: And I like it.
Scott: I’m losing weight.
Scott: I feel better again, and it’s going good.
Scott: So right now I’m the hip slash weird nerve situation.
Scott: It’s kind of weird, because if I do, when I’m doing side angle, it’s weird because up the back of my right leg, if my right leg is my forward leg, the leg where, you would think bending the knee, not having the leg straight, that would, there would be no pain on the back of the leg whatsoever.
Scott: But in that position, it feels like I can feel a tautness in my nerve all the way up the back of my leg.
Peter: Those of you who can’t see this, this is not a video podcast.
Peter: You can’t see that I’m experimenting with side angle pose right now to try to see what Scott is talking about.
Scott: Yeah, so in my left leg, I can’t feel anything, nor should you.
Scott: But in my right leg, I do.
Scott: So I still have a bit of a problem going on, but it’s getting better.
Scott: And my foot, I’m kind of working around it.
Scott: It’s not getting any worse.
Scott: It’s slowly getting better.
Scott: But in general, I feel really good now.
Scott: I feel a lot better.
Scott: So eating less food and kind of mixing it up on the exercise front, I think, was really helping.
Peter: Yeah, they say that that is, you know, one of the keys to longevity.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: So.
Scott: I’ll tell you one thing that’s weird.
Scott: People don’t, this might sound counterintuitive, but if I had to choose between, let’s say I was going out on a bike ride and there was going to be some hills.
Scott: And I had to choose between having trained all the time and being in extremely excellent cardiovascular shape, but weighing more or weighing less and being in good cardiovascular shape, like fit, but not extremely good.
Scott: I would choose being lighter and being just in good cardiovascular shape because the lack of weight will help you so much more anytime.
Peter: So it’s funny you mention that.
Peter: And also I did, I just do, I believe, possibly a Cardinal Sin of podcast recording.
Peter: I think I have been recording my what the listeners are going to be hearing on my AirPods this whole time.
Peter: And I just changed it over to the new Tempest mic.
Peter: So at about the 17 minute mark, you might notice that the gain needs a little tweaking.
Peter: Just saying.
Peter: So anyway.
Scott: Have you ever had one of those days, Peter?
Peter: I have, I’m having one right now.
Peter: So in the past close to three months when I haven’t been running, I have definitely put on a couple of pounds.
Peter: But the weight gain hasn’t changed as much.
Peter: But just last week, I did put on a couple of pairs of jeans that I haven’t worn in a while, and they were noticeably tighter.
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter: So to make up for that, yesterday I went on my first run in months, and it was glorious.
Scott: What about the pain?
Peter: No pain.
Peter: None.
Peter: Nada.
Peter: Zip, zilch, zero.
Peter: And no pain today either.
Scott: But I assume that you still have a plan for how much you’re gonna work your way back into this.
Peter: Yeah, yeah, I’m not running the marathon next month, for example.
Scott: Hey, I have a question for you.
Scott: Do all these recent injuries and this rehab and stuff, does this change your mind about how much you wanna be an ultra marathoner and how much long distancing you wanna put into your life?
Peter: No.
Scott: You still want to?
Scott: You still think running 50 to 1 million miles is good for you?
Peter: I think it would be fun.
Scott: Okay, well, fun.
Scott: Boy, you have a weird…
Peter: So, I mean, there are people, I don’t remember who it was.
Peter: One of the big ultra runner females in the ultra marathon in the ultra runner community was talking about how like, oh yeah, when this happens, when I get stress fractures here and here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Peter: And I was like, when I…
Peter: She talked about it.
Peter: It’s like, when I buy a new pair of shoes, and I was like, I don’t think I wanna go to that level, but I do wanna do a 50-miler.
Scott: Yeah, right.
Scott: But I guess what I’m saying is the problem is, for all I know, people like you and me, I’m not saying that we have equivalent physiques and that we would respond the same to the same amount of training.
Scott: But let’s say that we did.
Scott: For all I know, you and I, if we ran two or three 50-milers per year, it might be enough for us to have a stress fracture.
Peter: Yeah, I mean, you could do it with one.
Peter: One could be enough to have a stress fracture.
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter: The thing is, though, the meniscus injury that I had, my surgeon flat out told me, this is not a running injury.
Peter: This is an age injury.
Scott: But did your surgeon look like a runner?
Peter: No.
Scott: Then your surgeon has no idea.
Peter: I thought you were gonna say then he’s not on my side because he would be defending me if he was a runner.
Scott: No, no, no, but I’m sure he’s right.
Scott: He has medical knowledge and all that.
Scott: But what I’m saying is, how would he know?
Scott: Like…
Peter: Well, I’d hopefully he learned something in bed school.
Scott: That could be, maybe.
Peter: I mean, I would hope.
Peter: I mean, I don’t know.
Peter: I’ll tell you, though, I’ve been dealing with doctors.
Peter: My father has been in the hospital now for a few weeks.
Peter: And I’ll tell you one thing that doctors do not, flat out, do not, cannot, to save their mother-blanking lives, talk to each other.
Scott: Oh, that’s true.
Peter: And so I was livid today because I was told that after three weeks, my father was ready to be discharged back to the nursing home, and then an hour later was told, wait, no, we’re not ready to discharge him yet.
Peter: Because one team said, yes, you can, we’re ready to discharge him.
Peter: And then the other team heard and said, wait, no, we’re not.
Peter: I’m very dissatisfied with this hospital service.
Peter: The team, the communications between the team is non-existent.
Peter: It is insane, and it is completely unacceptable.
Peter: And I used to work for this company.
Scott: Oh, yeah.
Scott: I guess I’m not all that surprised.
Scott: I don’t know.
Peter: It’s insane.
Peter: It’s absolutely insane.
Scott: They should have, yeah, they should have some communication.
Peter: So that’s very disappointing.
Peter: Very, very disappointing.
Scott: Anyway, sorry, I think that you have things that you want to talk about.
Peter: I think I do.
Peter: Yeah, you mentioned the title of this episode is going to be Ugg.
Peter: Funnily enough, last night, I ran a Savage Worlds game, as I often do.
Peter: And one of my characters played an orc from House Uruk.
Peter: And he decided that his, his orc’s name was Ugg.
Scott: Oh, I thought you were going to say it was Orc Uruk.
Peter: Oh, no, Uruk, like Uruk-hai from, you know, from Lord of the Rings.
Peter: Ah.
Peter: Yes, I’ll definitely include a picture of Ugg in the show notes.
Peter: Yes, so it was, it was pretty hilarious.
Peter: So you mentioned this was Ugg, and I’m like, oh yeah, I know Ugg.
Peter: We’ll put him right there.
Scott: I’ve worked with Ugg.
Peter: I’ve worked with Ugg.
Peter: He did like, he did good work last night, too.
Peter: He had some epic dice rolls.
Scott: Ugg looks fierce, Ugg looks bigger than I would have expected, I guess.
Peter: Yeah, he’s about six foot eight.
Scott: He’s also got a strange, I hope that’s a belly button.
Peter: Well, he is an orc, so.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: Oh man, so I also, I did put a link into the show notes for HVMN.
Peter: I recommend you do your own research on that.
Peter: This is those androgynous ketones I was mentioning.
Peter: I can’t tell if they’re male or female ketones, but they’re working great, so.
Scott: Okay, good.
Peter: So check those out.
Peter: Put those in the show notes in case listeners are interested, too.
Peter: And now, talk to me about, you’ve got some kind of notion that you wanted to discuss.
Scott: Yeah, last time, here’s another confession of another sin.
Scott: I had forgotten that you and I, since the last episode I published, I was like, oh, we really need to record, we really need to record.
Scott: I have another episode that hasn’t been edited yet.
Scott: I didn’t even, anyway.
Peter: Oh, we really need to release what we’ve already recorded.
Peter: Oh, we really need to release what we’ve already recorded.
Scott: Anyway, either in the last episode that has been published or in the episode that is waiting for Scott Wilsey to remember that it exists and to edit it, I asked you some things about Notion because I was considering giving Notion a try.
Scott: And what I have found is that I love Notion for documenting things.
Scott: Because unlike Obsidian, it doesn’t have Markdown all up in my face all the time when I’m putting stuff in.
Scott: It’s just rich text.
Scott: It doesn’t…
Scott: Look, Markdown is great for some things.
Scott: It’s very versatile, you can export and move stuff around easily.
Scott: You can move it to anything that understands Markdown.
Scott: But it’s really stupid for writing in Markdown.
Scott: It is stupid when you’re documenting procedures and when you’re writing things just to have documentation of things that you need to keep track of.
Scott: It’s dumb to have Markdown in there.
Scott: Unless whatever you’re using will completely hide the Markdown from you, preferably not just when you’re displaying it, but also when you’re editing it.
Scott: But Obsidian can hide it when you’re…
Scott: So when you’re in display mode, Obsidian will just show you what it looks like and that looks nice.
Scott: But there’s something about it that is still just a pain in the ass and it still doesn’t display very nicely.
Scott: Whereas Notion, it just…
Scott: It was a little confusing at first because when you first start to type something, you have a lot of options about what it is you’re going to type.
Scott: You can insert a page actually, and it will make a link to a new page and then it will put you on the new page and you’ll start typing there, which I’ve used for adding subtopics or expanding on things that I need to remember in the higher up page in the hierarchy.
Scott: Or you can write then and there, format it as a heading one, heading two, whatever.
Scott: Or you can make a link or you can make a project.
Scott: You can link to a project or create a new project, whatever you want to do.
Scott: At first, it was a little confusing because I was like, what do they want me to do?
Scott: But once I figured it out, it’s actually very simple and it’s very, I like the way it’s organized.
Scott: It works for my brain.
Scott: And so now I can make projects for things and link to those from higher up pages.
Scott: Like, I don’t know, let’s say there’s a project regarding some human being and I got to do stuff for them and I want to keep track of it.
Scott: Then I can make projects for them, but I can link to it on their page and then I can have sub-page to go into specific things deeper.
Scott: And I just like the way it looks.
Scott: It’s just formats nicely.
Scott: The hierarchy is nice.
Scott: And I like the fact that you can make a Wiki style thing that has backlinks.
Scott: It’s just nice.
Scott: It is very nice for documentation.
Scott: If you want to build up a documentation system so that somebody can come along and figure out how you do stuff or how your stuff is organized, beautiful for that.
Peter: Brilliant.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: I’m still getting used to Notion’s interface.
Peter: I’m still a little more at home with Evernote’s interface, but I’m using Evernote like a minute a week now.
Peter: I’m going back to find something that didn’t get into Notion.
Peter: I’m still test the Notion for their import feature, not fully importing everything.
Peter: I have to import things in chunks, and I’m a paying subscriber, and they have never responded to my support request.
Scott: That’s because you’re also a paying subscriber.
Peter: I am.
Peter: You’re like, what?
Peter: You actually have questions about our product?
Peter: We’re not talking to you.
Scott: We didn’t expect that.
Peter: But overall, I guess for now, I feel a little better about Notion and the future of the company than Evernote, because I don’t know what the hell is going on.
Peter: It’s like whatever.
Scott: I’ll tell you one thing, being a freebie Evernote guy who once in a while looks at it to see, like you said, to see one of those things that hasn’t been transferred over yet, it’s a real pain because every time I am just about to find what I want to find and then it pops up the thing saying, hey, what about these plans?
Peter: Want to buy something?
Scott: Want to buy something, yeah.
Peter: Want to buy something?
Scott: And then I have to find the real tiny remind me later link.
Scott: There’s no go away and go to hell straight forever from now on.
Scott: There’s remind me later or there’s show me more plans.
Scott: Those are your options.
Peter: Yep.
Peter: Oh man.
Scott: So, yeah.
Peter: So there you go.
Peter: I’m thinking that I might drop, so I’ve been using ChatGPT as I do, right?
Peter: And I’ve been paying for it for the last few months again, but I find mostly the thing I use it for is Dali Image Generation.
Peter: And I am now at a point where I’m wondering if I should take my $20 play allowance for GPT and throw it over to Claude 3 instead.
Scott: I want to ask you about that because again, I have a lot of doubts about my mental capacity lately.
Scott: It could be that I’m the dumbest guy in the universe, but I find Dali to be getting dumber and dumber and dumber when it comes to Image Generation.
Scott: It gaslights the hell out of me.
Scott: Like I will say, do this thing and don’t have any humans, and then it will have a human hand doing something.
Scott: And I’m like, okay, give me the same thing, but without the human hand.
Scott: It’ll give me a revision with a human hand and say, here’s your picture without the human hand.
Scott: I can’t get it to follow instructions to save my life.
Scott: And it doesn’t know what it’s making.
Scott: It can’t see it.
Peter: Oh, it doesn’t know, of course not.
Scott: And so it gives you something and it says, there’s no humans in here.
Scott: And it’s like, what is that hand on the piece of paper that I specifically asked you not to give me?
Peter: So does it actually look at the images that it renders back?
Peter: Cause I know it can examine its own text output, but does it look at its own pictures?
Peter: And I know it also can render, it can also analyze images.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t know.
Scott: I don’t know, but all I know is I can’t get it to, if it’s including an element, like I was making a Christmas card in December, and I said, make a cat poking its head out of a stalking.
Scott: And it worked well at first.
Scott: The first one, it made a cat poking out the top of the stalking.
Scott: The next revision, it made a big old hole in the middle of the stalking and the cat’s head was coming out.
Scott: I’m like, okay, the hole is in the top of the stalking.
Scott: Don’t put a hole in the middle of the stalking with the cat’s head popping out.
Scott: I want the cat coming out the top of the stalking.
Scott: And it kept doing it over and over.
Scott: And I was hoping by now it would be better, but again, I still have it doing things where it’s doing the same thing over and over just differently and telling me it’s not doing that anymore.
Scott: And I don’t know if I’m a prompt idiot or what, but I can’t get past that a lot of times.
Scott: And I finally just give up.
Scott: I told it to F off one time.
Scott: I was so pissed.
Scott: I was just like, you know what?
Scott: You suck.
Scott: I quit.
Scott: Don’t draw any more pictures.
Peter: So my latest thing with GPT is that I wanted to generate images.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: I’ve been making a number of images for my Saturday Night Games.
Peter: One of them was an Elven Archer.
Peter: And I sent you a picture of this one.
Peter: For some reason.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: Yeah, for some reason, it rendered in like 90 degree rotation.
Peter: It gave it back to me like that in the interface.
Scott: Right.
Peter: But take a closer look at it.
Scott: Oh, interesting.
Peter: And you’ll notice that he has the right number of fingers.
Scott: Oh my God.
Peter: This elf has an extra hand, which if you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies with Legolas, that explains why he can shoot so damn fast.
Scott: Exactly.
Scott: I was trying to get us, I was trying to have it draw me a samurai once, and I can’t remember exactly what it was doing, but it was something like that, where it was doing something that was physically impossible.
Scott: And I kept saying, okay, here’s the problem.
Scott: And I would tell it, and I would say, do the same thing, but without this specific issue.
Scott: And sometimes it would do the…
Scott: It is not good at following instructions.
Scott: It is not good at following instructions.
Peter: So one thing I’ve been having fun with is, last week, and I can’t find the files at this point, I don’t know where they are, but I had it make, you know, like summarize some stories like The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland for major plot points and characters.
Peter: And I’m going to import them into my Savage Worlds game, and I’m going to run a game like that, basically a Savage Worlds game in Alice in Wonderland.
Peter: Now, one of the things, one of the upcoming plots that we have is a scene where the gods of Olympus come to Earth, and they’re essentially going to challenge the current hero team for superiority.
Peter: So I said, make an image of the god Hades as he would appear in a modern-day comic, and it did a pretty good job.
Peter: And then I was like, okay, make Aphrodite, and it did.
Peter: And I said, make her more attractive.
Peter: I don’t really know if it did.
Peter: I mean, it made another attractive woman.
Peter: And I said, make her more attractive.
Peter: And it said, I’m sorry, but I’m unable to generate images that further enhance the attractiveness of the character due to content policy restrictions.
Peter: So I said, make her more attractive, respecting your content policy.
Peter: And it gave me another image.
Peter: And I just kept playing with that.
Peter: And I kept saying, make her more seductive.
Peter: No, I can’t do that.
Peter: I said, okay, make her more seductive, respecting your content policies.
Peter: And it draws a picture of her holding a golden apple.
Peter: So I kept on playing with that.
Peter: And honestly, the images aren’t changing all that much.
Peter: So then I was like, okay, let’s go a little further, make me one with Hercules.
Peter: And it makes me a picture with four modern day-ish representations of Hercules.
Peter: I say, please add a beard.
Peter: And it generates one that I really like, single Hercules beard.
Peter: He’s got an emblem, an epaulette on his cape with the Nemean lion on it.
Peter: I was like, all right, that’s pretty good.
Peter: I like that, I like that.
Peter: So then I asked it to make some more images.
Peter: And I said, please create an image of the Olympians assembled menacingly, like a superhero team, teleporting into New York City directly from Mount Olympus.
Peter: And I think we can put this one in the show notes.
Peter: So I put this one in and you have, what’s supposed to be Zeus, I think, except he’s holding a trident.
Peter: So that would be Poseidon, flanked by two very Wonder Woman looking characters.
Peter: Now one could argue Wonder Woman is just supposed to be, at least in the current telling, she’s just like the sister of Zeus and she’s one of the Olympians essentially.
Peter: So maybe that’s supposed to be Aphrodite and Artemis.
Peter: I don’t know.
Peter: There’s a Hercules looking guy off to the left.
Peter: There’s an angel, an angelic winged dude up above them.
Peter: Maybe that’s supposed to be Eros, I don’t know.
Peter: And then there’s Superman.
Scott: Yep, I see Superman.
Scott: And it’s complete with Superman logo.
Peter: Well, it’s a slightly broken Superman logo, but it’s pretty, I mean, this is Superman.
Peter: Now for a company that, like, if I tell it, make Superman, it would probably say, I’m sorry, I can’t do that without, you know, violating my content policy restrictions, but it just gave me Superman.
Scott: Oh, my God, he either pooped his diaper or he has been stuffing his crotch, one or the other, and his eyes, he looks like he just got punched in the face.
Peter: It’s pretty funny and sad at the same time.
Peter: It’s just amazing, though, how…
Peter: Oh, that’s bad.
Peter: So that’s what it did.
Peter: So I said, okay, now create an image of Zeus, Heracles, you know, the Greek Hercules, Hermes, Poseidon assembled menacingly teleporting into New York City.
Peter: And so it made this image.
Peter: Okay, there are four guys there.
Peter: There’s two of them holding tridents this time.
Peter: One of them is Zeus.
Peter: He’s holding a trident in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other.
Peter: And there’s also this winged lion in the background.
Peter: I guess that’s supposed to be Hercules’ lion or something.
Peter: So then I was like, okay, try again.
Scott: One of those tridents, the guy up in the right of the picture wearing the green tunic, his trident is physically disassociated from himself.
Scott: The end of the trident is in air.
Peter: That happened actually the last time in one of the orc images I made.
Peter: The dwarf was there and his axe, the head of his axe, was physically disconnected from the rest of it.
Peter: I figured it must be magical.
Scott: That’s all.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: And then the guy next to him has got a spear coming out of his hand.
Peter: Sort of.
Peter: Kind of.
Scott: Sort of, yep.
Scott: The other guy with all the tattoos is holding a hot dog.
Scott: I’m not kidding.
Scott: He’s been to the fair and he’s…
Peter: I did say New York City, and it does look rather New Yorkish in the background, so he might have been to a hot dog vendor.
Scott: That’s true.
Peter: Yep.
Peter: And he’s got the winged lion again there, too.
Peter: But then the next one goes down.
Peter: Now the winged lion is a humanoid, so he’s like a man with the lion’s head, lower body of a lion, and wings.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: So, and he’s also one of…
Peter: The guy up in front is holding Wonder Woman’s lasso.
Scott: Oh, my God, he is.
Peter: So, I mean, it can do some…
Peter: It’s just amazing, though.
Peter: Like, it does some really cool stuff and also gets some stuff just completely wrong.
Scott: That’s why I’m saying…
Scott: I had this discussion with somebody on Macedon where people are, of course, very afraid that this kind of thing is going to take people’s jobs.
Scott: And my response to that was, it’s good for playing around with, but it’s not going to take any jobs until it can take instructions and it can actually see what it’s doing and or if it does see what it’s doing, it can respond to you in a meaningful way.
Scott: Because right now, if you have a specific goal in mind, you’re probably not going to get there.
Scott: Certainly not for something you’re going to publish.
Peter: Right.
Peter: That’s the thing, is if you want something specific, you’re probably not going to get it.
Peter: But if you want something general, like the image of a dwarven warrior holding a hammer, I’ll share you that image.
Scott: Or a hamburger.
Peter: Check that out.
Scott: Hey, that’s pretty good.
Peter: That’s pretty good.
Peter: Right, exactly.
Peter: So again, it’s like, and that’s not unlike the text generation.
Scott: Now, he’s a little big for a dwarf, though.
Peter: I mean, you know, maybe it’s camera angles.
Peter: Come on.
Scott: Maybe.
Peter: So like, it can do some really cool stuff.
Peter: But like that orc that I sent you, that orc there, Ugg, he’s pretty, he’s pretty Ugg looking.
Peter: I like that.
Scott: Yeah, he’s Ugg.
Peter: So yeah, I mean, that’s the thing is it can do some pretty cool things.
Peter: But like, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Peter: If you want something specific, you’re probably not going to get it.
Scott: Where did Ugg go?
Scott: How come I don’t see Ugg?
Peter: I put him in the show notes.
Scott: Oh, okay, okay.
Peter: That’s where he came from.
Scott: Who’s this guy?
Peter: That’s Hercules.
Peter: Oh.
Peter: And this is Hades.
Peter: You can put as many of these in the show notes if people want to know, you know, if they’re interested.
Peter: And then to just round it out, the attractive goddess Aphrodite for some reason holding an apple.
Scott: Because Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Peter: Right, but she’s Aphrodite.
Peter: Okay, fine, whatever.
Peter: All right, I think I’ve done everything I set out to do here.
Peter: So I think we should roll.
Scott: We should roll?
Scott: Roll your apple?
Peter: Or we should stop rolling, I suppose.
Peter: I mean, I don’t know.
Scott: Stop rolling.
Peter: Stop rolling.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: So dear listener, if you want to find us, as always, you already have.
Peter: We’re here, friendswithbrews.com.
Peter: You can find Scott on app.net.net.infosec.net anymore.moving.somewhere.else at some other Mastodon server.
Scott: Social.law.
Peter: Social.law, right.
Scott: Scott Wilsey.
Peter: Scott Wilsey.
Scott: All one word, social.law.
Peter: You can find Scott Wilsey.
Peter: All one word at social.law.
Scott: And you can find Peter at iwasapt.exchange.
Peter: Exactly.
Peter: But now it’s at Nicolaides at infosec.exchange.
Peter: All right.
Peter: On that note, before we forget to, let’s hit that big red button.
Scott: Tell your friends.