Episode 31 – Ironic Hot Cold Brew
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Friends with Brews.
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Bart Busschots, you are…
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I wish you were the first guest on Friends with Brews without Peter here,
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but you’re not, but you’re still a very rare guest on Friends with Brews without Peter here.
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So welcome.
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I feel honored.
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That is so cool.
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I don’t know if you should feel honored or not.
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That’s something you may have to change your mind about that later, but we’ll see.
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So the premise of the podcast is we like
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brewed things, whether they be beer, coffee or tea.
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And because it’s 10 30 a.m.
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my time, I’ve gone the tea route.
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You look like you have a warm beverage as well.
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What do you have?
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I have a warm beverage.
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I have an ironic warm beverage.
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I have a warm cold brew coffee.
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So it was warm, you made it cold and then it warmed up again.
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No, the other way around, it was cold and I made it warm.
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So cold brew coffee is basically, it takes about 24 hours,
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but you basically make the coffee without applying heat.
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And then you end up with very concentrated coffee that keeps for days.
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And then when you want a cup, you basically, like it was a cordial drink,
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you just basically put a bit in the bottom of your cup and then top it up with
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boiling water and you have, well, it’s not just that it’s convenient.
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There’s also very different in taste
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because none of the bitter notes comes through with the cold brew.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So the same bean is way sweeter when you cold brew it than when you regular brew it.
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So, yeah, my better half has gone completely nuts on cold brew.
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I went nuts on every other kind of coffee.
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But my darling beloved went nuts on cold brew and I let him at it.
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And he was kind enough to have a batch
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ready for today and I thought, well, that’s perfect.
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Yeah, that is perfect. That’s pretty awesome.
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I have to admit, I have had a lot of cold
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brew but I’ve never warmed it back up again so that’s an interesting tip.
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Yeah I use it as if it was a shot of espresso. Interesting I like that I’ll have to
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give that a try. My wife’s got some kind of creamer that she puts in and normally
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I just drink my coffee black I don’t put anything in coffee. Me too. But she’s got
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some creamer that when she mixes it in just the right quantity of cold brew oh
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it’s amazing you I just my problem is I would go through gallons of it if I
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drink that so I have to refrain. Okay interesting all right well we learned
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something here today, which is more than we can usually say.
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Well, the only thing I ever
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put in coffee is a little bit of syrup sometimes.
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So at the moment I have a bottle of, it’s one called skinny something,
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and it’s 11 calories for a tablespoon, and it’s this delicious, rich toffee flavor.
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Now, I don’t have it in the cold brew because that’ll be a waste of.
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But on a weekend, I like to give myself
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something a little bit special in my coffee.
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Boy, you’re just full of good ideas today of things I’m going to have to try.
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There you go. When I do, I’ll label them the Bart special.
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OK, so here’s what I have.
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I have got myself a green tea.
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This is not a very fancy green tea, Bart.
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What I’m saying is this is not loose leaf tea.
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This is… No.
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Is my picture backwards to you or forward?
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No, no, it’s for… I’m intrigued by the word rice on the front of it.
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Yeah, they like to put rice.
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They put toasted rice in with the green
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tea and usually they call it genmaicha when they do that.
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don’t this just says matcha toasted rice because they also threw some matcha in which is the
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powdered green tea and huh wait hang on so it has leaf it has leaf as well as powdered as well as
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rice correct so how do you make that so that’s the interesting part of it this is just in tea bags
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which is not how i normally have my tea i normally have little leaves that are crushed up
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But yeah, it just comes in little bags.
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Ha! That is a very unusual cup.
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Yeah, it is very unusual. It’s not bad. I kind of like it.
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Is it the world’s most exquisite green tea?
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No. Could you get better green tea? Yes.
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Do I like this? Yes, I do.
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And it’s so easy to make. So I’m good with this tea for today.
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So the powdered green tea, does that make the tea a more…
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What does that do to the flavour to have some powdered mixed in with the leaf?
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It’s usually a better quality of tea.
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I don’t know if they used it here, but it’s usually a better quality of tea.
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And my guess is it also dissolves into the water a little bit differently, too.
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But yeah, if you’ve ever had matcha powder.
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Well, I’ve never had powdered tea, so that’s what I’m intrigued by.
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Yeah, matcha powder tea can be very strong.
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And if you’re drinking it as tea, it needs to be prepared pretty carefully.
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I’ve made straight matcha tea and my results were not good.
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I haven’t practiced enough, but it’s but matcha powder is great for things like
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dumping on vanilla ice cream.
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Hmm. Who knew? It’s just it’s pretty amazing.
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Yeah. Yeah. That’s something that I discovered in a local ice cream shop.
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I walked in there and there was a matcha matcha soft serve.
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So I I ordered that and it was
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matcha powder dumped on vanilla ice cream and it was really good.
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So like you do with powdered sugar, just a little sip and just tip, tip, tip
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and just sprinkle it over the top? Yeah.
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Ha!
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And it’d be green.
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And it was green. Yeah.
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Green and white. And it was great.
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I need to find something orange to go with it
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and then call it a St. Patrick’s Day special or something.
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Oh, there you go.
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Yeah. A very humble tea here, but good.
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I like it.
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I’ll definitely buy more of this stuff because it’s so easy to prepare.
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It’s a nice, you know, be warm in the evening,
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but not necessarily drink coffee type of brew.
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And because it’s green tea, I’m guessing it’s not going to keep you awake.
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Yeah, this now this says medium caffeine, which is interesting.
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I normally I would think that green tea would be low to medium.
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But yeah, you’re right.
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It’s definitely lower caffeine than coffee for sure.
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For sure.
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That’s a pretty low bar.
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It is a low bar. Yeah.
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But yeah, that’s that’s that’s me today.
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Excellent. Cool.
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Hmm. So I have some questions for you, Bart.
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OK. I don’t remember if we’ve talked about your Mac setup before. What are you currently using?
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Right now this second I am on my home podcasting rig, which I recently refreshed. So this is all
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extremely shiny at the moment. So it is a Mac Studio with a studio display on a boom arm with a
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I don’t have a new mic because I really love my mic, but I got a new boom arm that fits perfectly.
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I have a Wave XLR audio unit, which is exactly the same size as a Stream Deck
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and by the same company. And they’re designed to just pair next to each other.
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So it’s like this little perfect panel of goodness.
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And then the big, big, big because I believe in number pads,
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the big wireless Apple keyboard in black with the magic trackpad.
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Interesting. Oh, my God, what a nice computer.
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I’m using a Ergo arm or a boom arm for them for my monitor as well.
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I have an Apple Studio display.
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And then I have a 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro right now.
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Boy, do I love that computer.
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Before that, I had a 2015 iMac 5K.
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The thing that I love about this, besides the obvious performance enhancement,
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is the M series chips just revolutionized laptops for me
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because I used to hate laptops.
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Noisy, compromised.
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Yeah, and they’re not warm.
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Right. They last like an iPad in terms of battery.
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It is kind of magical.
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It is very much.
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We’ve come so far from the days of the Intel transition.
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I presume many Intel apps I’m running are being in the wild translated on the go.
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Yeah.
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I don’t notice.
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You can’t tell. Yeah, I was playing some, I don’t remember, some 3D game that does not run native.
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It’s being translated and I’m getting 60 frames per second. It’s like crazy.
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That’s all you want
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Yeah.
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You know, so it does an amazing job.
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And by the way, speaking of Wave XLR, I’d heard of Wave XLR before,
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but you are the person that actually inspired me to run out and purchase one
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because I heard you talking about it with Allison, I think.
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Well, Allison got me onto it.
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OK.
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So I think that there’s a couple of things I love about it.
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It’s supremely simple.
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Because I don’t want big knobs and things.
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So it has one giant big knob in the middle, that’s the volume knob.
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And it has just one input at the back.
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And I think the best thing is, you know, like an old fashioned alarm clock,
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where you have the capacitive snooze, that is your software mute.
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And because it’s a software mute, it doesn’t give a click.
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It’s a perfectly silent mute.
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And it’s just you tap it in software.
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And then all the lights on the front of the device go red.
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So it’s like, aooga, aooga, you’re on mute, you’re on mute, which is what I want.
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Yeah, it’s beautiful.
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I love it so much compared to what I was using.
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I don’t remember off the top of my head.
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I’d have to look it up what I was using, but it was a standard little USB interface with
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two XLR inputs and all the normal knobs that you would expect. And it was okay. And it
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could certainly like, for example, if I ever had multiple people recording locally, which
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I never do, that would be a better solution, but I don’t have that need. And this is so
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much better for all for podcasting for one person, for all the reasons that you just
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stated. It’s so nice. Yeah. I’ll never go back.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I’m delighted Allison put me onto it because for years I was still using USB interfaces,
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but just nicer to have.
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Because actually I have one of the few mics that has two holes in the bottom, a USB hole
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and an XLR hole.
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So I’ve actually been able to upgrade without changing my mic.
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What are you?
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Yeah.
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It’s an ATR or something or other.
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Audio-Technica ATR.
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I think it’s a 221.
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I think that’s the difference between the 20 and the 21 is that it does the USB and
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the XLR.
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What do I have?
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Oh, mine’s a Shure Beta 87A.
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I’ve had an ATR in the past and I don’t know why I don’t have it now.
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But I noticed that your mic is pretty good at capturing your voice in all its rich entirety,
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even though you don’t have your mic close.
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I tend to have a volume problem anyway, and with this mic it’s got severe drop off, so
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I’ve got to get my face right up on it.
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Yeah, I find I pop my p’s too much of them in too close.
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Now, I do also have it going through, so I use Audio Hijack.
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And so the raw mic goes into Audio Hijack, and then it goes through an AU Dynamics
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block where I actually have a bunch of tweaking done to it.
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And then it goes from there out to Loopback to become a pretend audio device,
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which Skype thinks is a real mic.
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Right. Same here.
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Yeah. That’s how I mix the Farrago soundboard with my mic using Loopback.
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Nice. Great app.
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It is a great app.
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And by the way, one of the other features of the Wave XLR that we should talk about,
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Speaking of software adjustments is that you can have a,
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I don’t remember what it’s called,
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if it’s called peak limiter or what, but anyway,
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there’s a software peak limiter in there
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and it works pretty well.
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I tested it and you can do some pretty good yelling
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and it’ll keep you from clipping.
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So just having that built into your mic interface,
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super nice.
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And it’s kind of where it belongs, right?
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If you think about it logically, surely the goodness
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that is what audio processing units should be doing.
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Absolutely, yeah.
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You shouldn’t plug in a mic, hook it up
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and then have to run around adjusting a bunch of different software in order to not ruin the sound of your audio.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah, make the computer do the donkey work.
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That’s my motto in life.
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Just for all sorts of things, make the computer do the work.
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Yeah, I agree.
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In fact, I’ve said that to other people.
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Make the computer work for you instead of the other way around.
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Now, sometimes I do work for my computer, but hopefully it’s usually by choice.
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And it’s because I’m just doing something fun and dumb.
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And I know I’m being fun and dumb and that’s that.
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I sometimes get a wee bee in my bun and it’s like, well, I am determined to have it go like this.
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I don’t care if this is not the path of least resistance.
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I am going to win this battle and I will do that.
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But that’s a choice.
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Yeah, pigheadedness.
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It could be fun.
00:11:58.860 —> 00:12:04.820
So you have a job that is either or at least involves system administration.
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Is that correct?
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That was correct until a few months ago.
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So most of my professional career, I’ve been a dog’s body sysadmin, I call it.
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So we are a small IT department in an Irish university.
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So I was one of only four sysadmins,
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which means you have to do everything.
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Right. If you’re one of four and we were a pretty
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heterogeneous sort of a place.
00:12:29.260 —> 00:12:32.540
So, yeah, we had a lot of we had more Linux servers than anything else.
00:12:32.540 —> 00:12:33.860
We also had Windows servers.
00:12:33.860 —> 00:12:35.020
We had stuff in the cloud.
00:12:35.020 —> 00:12:37.220
We had a lot of stuff going on.
00:12:37.220 —> 00:13:03.580
And so that actually was really nice to be very broad. But for the last quite a few years, I’ve been focusing in on sort of volunteering, everything was something to do with security, I would volunteer to take that on. And I would be proactively looking for security related stuff I could bring to the team. And so I was kind of trying to live the job I wanted. And then finally, they advertise the job I wanted, which was cybersecurity specialist. And so I applied for the job I wanted. And I did get it. Thankfully.
00:13:03.820 —> 00:13:05.580
That’s awesome.
00:13:05.580 —> 00:13:08.740
I am a firm believer in the try to live the job you want.
00:13:08.740 —> 00:13:11.020
And obviously that doesn’t work for everyone.
00:13:11.020 —> 00:13:13.980
But when you can make it work, that’s a beautiful thing.
00:13:13.980 —> 00:13:17.860
Yeah. And I mean, I’ll be honest, it took me two goes to get the job.
00:13:17.860 —> 00:13:23.140
So the first time they hired no one, which was a bit weird to interview for a job
00:13:23.140 —> 00:13:25.700
in your own building and not get it because no one got it.
00:13:25.700 —> 00:13:27.740
But they tweaked the job spec.
00:13:27.740 —> 00:13:30.060
I went off and did a whole bunch of training.
00:13:30.260 —> 00:13:34.900
And there’s a lot I don’t generally believe in getting the paper just to have the paper.
00:13:34.900 —> 00:13:37.620
But if you’re planning for a job, maybe I do.
00:13:37.620 —> 00:13:39.380
For sure. Yeah.
00:13:39.380 —> 00:13:43.780
And I think, like, I know Peter is Peter’s a consultant.
00:13:43.780 —> 00:13:49.340
He also works for a hospital in Boston as as one of their security guys.
00:13:49.340 —> 00:13:51.420
And he did go and get some of those
00:13:51.420 —> 00:13:53.740
security certificates for exactly the same reason.
00:13:53.740 —> 00:13:56.260
And it does help in certain jobs.
00:13:56.260 —> 00:13:58.020
There’s just no way around it.
00:13:58.220 —> 00:14:28.180
Yeah, and in this case, one of the things they really so when they redid the spec for take two, one of the things they really focused on was self learning. And I was like, okay, so don’t tell them you would be great at learning stuff. Show it. Yeah. So I basically went and got myself a bunch of the Microsoft certifications because, you know, at that time, we were sentinel was our main security platforms, we were all big in the Microsoft space. Yeah. And so I’m a Microsoft certified cybersecurity, whatever it is, I got two Microsoft
00:14:28.180 —> 00:14:31.620
certifications within the space of two months, actually, which is pretty tough
00:14:31.620 —> 00:14:35.700
going, but, you know, and that way I was able to go into the second interview and
00:14:35.700 —> 00:14:37.780
say, you put a real focus on self learning.
00:14:37.780 —> 00:14:39.500
Well, I taught myself this, I taught myself this.
00:14:39.500 —> 00:14:41.740
I recently did these two certificates.
00:14:41.740 —> 00:14:45.540
And I think that helped me a lot to be able to show it.
00:14:45.540 —> 00:14:46.620
I’m absolutely sure it did.
00:14:46.620 —> 00:14:46.980
Yeah.
00:14:46.980 —> 00:14:50.860
First of all, it shows that you were capable of earning those certificates,
00:14:50.860 —> 00:14:53.220
but it also shows that you said, I’m going to go do it.
00:14:53.220 —> 00:14:55.620
And you did it. So I don’t see a downside to that.
00:14:55.620 —> 00:15:01.300
I’m sure. Well, I haven’t been certified for anything Microsoft related, but I’m sure it’s not cheap to do, though.
00:15:01.300 —> 00:15:03.060
Ah, you see, there are advances.
00:15:03.060 —> 00:15:09.100
So when you’re working in the education sector, Microsoft love you.
00:15:09.100 —> 00:15:16.260
Because what they really want is for the entire education sector to run on Microsoft products so that when people leave,
00:15:16.260 —> 00:15:19.300
they just unthinkingly keep doing what they’re used to doing.
00:15:19.300 —> 00:15:20.740
Sure.
00:15:20.740 —> 00:15:26.820
So that means you need to keep the university sysadmins really happy so that they keep rolling out Microsoft services.
00:15:26.820 —> 00:15:36.860
So we get offered, I think it’s up to 12 a year, where we can do a one day training course spread over two days and the free matching Microsoft exam.
00:15:36.860 —> 00:15:40.740
Oh, wow. Or rather the matching Microsoft exam for free.
00:15:40.740 —> 00:15:44.420
That’s good. Wow. That’s amazingly good.
00:15:44.420 —> 00:15:46.860
Yeah. Now they only let you do it once.
00:15:46.860 —> 00:15:50.940
So you get one shot at every exam, which is reasonable, right?
00:15:50.940 —> 00:15:52.100
Don’t waste your time.
00:15:52.100 —> 00:15:52.780
Right. Right.
00:15:52.780 —> 00:15:56.900
But yeah, so I basically made use of it twice in a row.
00:15:56.900 —> 00:16:00.140
Yeah. So there was training going for
00:16:00.140 —> 00:16:03.900
security related certifications for Microsoft,
00:16:03.900 —> 00:16:08.300
and they just fit perfectly with what we were doing in work and our setup.
00:16:08.300 —> 00:16:11.140
And I just went for them and took the exam and got the exam.
00:16:11.140 —> 00:16:12.380
I stressed about it a lot.
00:16:12.380 —> 00:16:16.620
And then I got I think it was 70% was the passing grade.
00:16:16.620 —> 00:16:18.660
And I stressed and I stressed and I got 98.
00:16:18.660 —> 00:16:20.060
So.
00:16:20.060 —> 00:16:23.020
You’re their star student.
00:16:23.020 —> 00:16:26.500
Well, you probably wouldn’t have done so well if you hadn’t been stressed a little
00:16:26.500 —> 00:16:30.060
bit, at least if you hadn’t. Oh yeah, absolutely.
00:16:30.060 —> 00:16:32.140
Yes. Yeah, no, I mean, you’re dead, right?
00:16:32.140 —> 00:16:33.940
That’s the way it goes.
00:16:33.940 —> 00:16:36.980
I think it goes with every test. The ones you’re not planning, the ones you think
00:16:36.980 —> 00:16:38.420
are going to be easier, the ones you mess up.
00:16:38.420 —> 00:16:39.060
Oh, yeah.
00:16:39.060 —> 00:16:40.860
And the ones you stress about, you do greater.
00:16:40.860 —> 00:16:42.980
Not because you shouldn’t have stressed,
00:16:43.180 —> 00:16:48.180
But because you actually because you were appropriately concerned.
00:16:48.180 —> 00:16:49.140
Yeah.
00:16:49.140 —> 00:16:50.460
Which is the chicken and the egg?
00:16:50.460 —> 00:16:52.900
You’re a very techie person.
00:16:52.900 —> 00:16:58.940
Did you go to the job already with some of those administration skills intact?
00:16:58.940 —> 00:17:03.540
Or did you kind of go sideways into that job and then really start learning from there?
00:17:03.540 —> 00:17:06.020
That’s an interesting question.
00:17:06.020 —> 00:17:08.540
Sideways is certainly probably the closest description.
00:17:08.540 —> 00:17:11.620
So I did a degree in computer science,
00:17:11.660 —> 00:17:16.380
Which I also slipped into sideways because I thought I was going to be a physicist.
00:17:16.380 —> 00:17:18.420
I was convinced I was going to be a physicist.
00:17:18.420 —> 00:17:22.340
So I went to Maynooth University because they had a really good physics department.
00:17:22.340 —> 00:17:24.420
And in particular, I wanted to be an astronomer.
00:17:24.420 —> 00:17:28.660
And there’s only one famous Irish astronomer and she was at Maynooth.
00:17:28.660 —> 00:17:31.220
And so I went to Maynooth because that’s where she was.
00:17:31.220 —> 00:17:35.460
And I realised quite quickly that I hate mathematics.
00:17:35.460 —> 00:17:37.300
Like, I really hate mathematics.
00:17:37.300 —> 00:17:38.980
I didn’t know I did, but I do.
00:17:38.980 —> 00:17:46.900
I’m great at arithmetic and I’m great at all the stuff you do before you go to university, but at the university level, at the Simpsons theorem on the plane.
00:17:46.900 —> 00:17:48.540
No.
00:17:48.540 —> 00:17:50.860
So I ended up, I had to choose.
00:17:50.860 —> 00:17:55.540
I did, it was probably the best thing I ever did was to do an omnibus science degree is what we call it.
00:17:55.540 —> 00:17:58.140
So you didn’t have to pick your speciality up front.
00:17:58.140 —> 00:18:00.900
You basically came in as a first year and you had to pick four subjects.
00:18:00.900 —> 00:18:07.300
And then you only after the first year did you start to narrow it down to three, then two and then either one or two for your final year.
00:18:07.300 —> 00:18:08.940
And so I knew I wanted physics.
00:18:08.940 —> 00:18:12.780
So they had experimental physics and mathematical physics and mathematics was compulsory.
00:18:12.780 —> 00:18:15.260
So they were my three I just knew I wanted.
00:18:15.260 —> 00:18:17.980
And then I had this fourth subject.
00:18:17.980 —> 00:18:20.220
And I was like, well, I really don’t like chemistry.
00:18:20.220 —> 00:18:22.660
And I’m really not good at learning names and things.
00:18:22.660 —> 00:18:24.980
So biology is probably not my thing.
00:18:24.980 —> 00:18:25.980
What else have they got here?
00:18:25.980 —> 00:18:27.020
Oh, computer science.
00:18:27.020 —> 00:18:28.380
I like games.
00:18:28.380 —> 00:18:29.860
I’ll do that.
00:18:29.860 —> 00:18:33.580
And I ended up, the mathematical physics got dropped first.
00:18:33.580 —> 00:18:35.420
The mathematics got dropped second.
00:18:35.420 —> 00:18:39.620
And I ended up doing a double major in experimental physics and computer science.
00:18:39.620 —> 00:18:43.820
And to be honest, the experimental physics didn’t really get used afterwards.
00:18:43.820 —> 00:18:46.020
I ended up as a computer scientist.
00:18:46.020 —> 00:18:51.580
And then I went to be a grad student and then funding got cut off.
00:18:51.580 —> 00:18:53.220
And I also realised I hate academia.
00:18:53.220 —> 00:18:55.260
I actually hate writing journal papers.
00:18:55.260 —> 00:18:57.420
Yeah, I could see that.
00:18:57.420 —> 00:19:00.140
Yeah, it turns out that’s not my cup of tea at all.
00:19:00.140 —> 00:19:03.420
But I was working on a really fun research project.
00:19:03.620 —> 00:19:07.180
And I was doing a lot of coding, but the code had to run somewhere.
00:19:07.180 —> 00:19:08.460
So I was also doing a lot of assist
00:19:08.460 —> 00:19:11.580
adminning and then in my spare time I was in the IT society and they were running
00:19:11.580 —> 00:19:15.060
really cool servers and things and so I ended up becoming a system in my accident.
00:19:15.060 —> 00:19:15.580
Yeah.
00:19:15.580 —> 00:19:19.700
And then a job came up in the university’s IT department for assist admin.
00:19:19.700 —> 00:19:22.420
And I didn’t really want to leave my news because it’s a cool place.
00:19:22.420 —> 00:19:27.300
And I just run out of money for the, you know, PhD I didn’t really want.
00:19:27.300 —> 00:19:32.180
And so I took the job in IT services and that’s sort of where I’ve been since.
00:19:32.180 —> 00:19:36.340
Well, explain to me how that works, because here in the United States of America,
00:19:36.340 —> 00:19:40.940
when we think of education in other countries like yours, we think, oh, my God,
00:19:40.940 —> 00:19:41.980
they’re doing it right.
00:19:41.980 —> 00:19:43.340
They want their people to be educated,
00:19:43.340 —> 00:19:46.820
and they don’t have to go deeply into debt to do education.
00:19:46.820 —> 00:19:48.700
But you said you ran out of money for your PhD.
00:19:48.700 —> 00:19:50.540
So how does that work?
00:19:50.540 —> 00:19:51.740
Well, okay.
00:19:51.740 —> 00:19:58.460
So while I was doing the PhD, there was funding for the project for three years,
00:19:58.460 —> 00:20:02.020
which meant that that would pay me a stipend and pay for all of the equipment.
00:20:02.060 —> 00:20:05.660
and stuff and the funding for the project fell apart, which then left me sitting there
00:20:05.660 —> 00:20:10.460
going, well, either I can start to go into debt and go from being paid a stipend of it
00:20:10.460 —> 00:20:16.980
was twelve hundred a month back in the late 90s, no, in the early 2000s.
00:20:16.980 —> 00:20:19.060
Which is, you know, I mean, rent and stuff.
00:20:19.060 —> 00:20:20.980
Yeah, it was basically rent.
00:20:20.980 —> 00:20:23.180
It was half of it was rent and half of it was living.
00:20:23.180 —> 00:20:24.180
But that was fine. Right.
00:20:24.180 —> 00:20:25.780
So so, yeah, absolutely.
00:20:25.780 —> 00:20:28.660
It was fine. And while that was funding was going, I was quite happy.
00:20:28.660 —> 00:20:32.020
But then when the money ran out, I was like, yeah, do I actually want to go into debt?
00:20:32.020 —> 00:20:35.220
here to do this PhD I’m not entirely sure I want.
00:20:35.220 —> 00:20:37.940
Or do I want to go get a job and so I haven’t got a job.
00:20:37.940 —> 00:20:41.060
I love the description of the system there
00:20:41.060 —> 00:20:44.060
where you can kind of take your time choosing.
00:20:44.060 —> 00:20:48.020
And that’s one thing that we’ve definitely lost over here, just for the simple
00:20:48.020 —> 00:20:50.820
economic reason that you can’t afford to experiment anymore.
00:20:50.820 —> 00:20:53.900
I mean, you’re lucky if you can afford to go to university to begin with.
00:20:53.900 —> 00:20:58.860
And then you have to know what you want to do and get it done and don’t screw up
00:20:58.860 —> 00:21:01.660
because it just is too bloody expensive to experiment now,
00:21:01.700 —> 00:21:07.220
which I think is incredibly insane because how many people know what they want to do when they go to university?
00:21:07.220 —> 00:21:09.620
Well, the thing is, so I didn’t change program.
00:21:09.620 —> 00:21:17.780
So what I did was what we call the omnibus science, which basically means, you know, you’re doing science and you have you’re on a railroad,
00:21:17.780 —> 00:21:21.940
but it’s a pretty broad railroad and you get to pick and choose on that railroad.
00:21:21.940 —> 00:21:26.420
And that was the fashion back in my day.
00:21:26.420 —> 00:21:30.260
And then it went out of fashion for a while and they started having these really specialized degrees.
00:21:30.260 —> 00:21:34.700
Like my brother went off to become a, what was it, bioinformatics,
00:21:34.700 —> 00:21:38.460
which is like a very small subset of biology and computer science all mushed together.
00:21:38.460 —> 00:21:45.060
And he ended up transferring out of that into an omnibus science degree because he was overspecialised.
00:21:45.060 —> 00:21:50.580
And since then, the trend has completely reversed and we’re back to omnibus, but not just omnibus.
00:21:50.580 —> 00:21:56.500
So our university has taken the lead in taking down the barriers between the faculties.
00:21:56.540 —> 00:22:00.580
So you can actually go to Maynooth and do experimental physics in French.
00:22:00.580 —> 00:22:01.820
Oh, wow.
00:22:01.820 —> 00:22:07.540
So we have just removed so many of the barriers so that the amount of permutations.
00:22:07.540 —> 00:22:10.780
I think someone worked it out that there’s, like, 4 million different degrees possible.
00:22:10.780 —> 00:22:13.260
If you take all the different permutations.
00:22:13.260 —> 00:22:17.060
Not that anyone does it quite that nuts, but basically, as long as you end up
00:22:17.060 —> 00:22:20.380
with the appropriate number of credits at the end of every semester, you can proceed.
00:22:20.380 —> 00:22:22.780
And there’s almost no barriers.
00:22:22.780 —> 00:22:25.540
Well, at least if you want to be a professional student,
00:22:25.580 —> 00:22:27.540
there’s plenty of options for you to experiment with.
00:22:27.540 —> 00:22:29.220
Yes, that is absolutely true.
00:22:29.220 —> 00:22:33.300
And if you can find yourself a research area you’re interested in that’s funded,
00:22:33.300 —> 00:22:37.700
then you can continue to do, you know, master’s, PhD or whatever afterwards, too,
00:22:37.700 —> 00:22:39.620
in a very broad range of topics.
00:22:39.620 —> 00:22:42.580
That’s the other thing, actually, the university has done is
00:22:42.580 —> 00:22:45.260
it used to have lots of separate research institutes,
00:22:45.260 —> 00:22:47.140
which would be named after famous people,
00:22:47.140 —> 00:22:49.700
and they’ve ended up sort of pulling those back and basically going,
00:22:49.700 —> 00:22:52.540
we now have one research institute for the whole of social sciences
00:22:52.540 —> 00:22:55.540
and one research institute for the whole of the sciences.
00:22:55.540 —> 00:22:59.860
which means that it’s interdisciplinary by the fact that it’s so broad.
00:22:59.860 —> 00:23:06.980
And so that actually results in way cooler research when you don’t force people into these narrow little bits.
00:23:06.980 —> 00:23:07.940
For sure. Yeah.
00:23:07.940 —> 00:23:10.420
You can come across stuff more naturally, probably.
00:23:10.420 —> 00:23:11.620
And a lot more.
00:23:11.620 —> 00:23:13.620
I hate this word, but it’s an inappropriate word.
00:23:13.620 —> 00:23:15.300
A lot more synergy.
00:23:15.300 —> 00:23:18.300
Because you’re in the same institute,
00:23:18.300 —> 00:23:23.460
you end up having coffee with people who do very different things to you and ideas spark.
00:23:23.460 —> 00:23:27.860
It’s probably another very clever thing they did was that they put the IT services department
00:23:27.860 —> 00:23:33.140
on the same floor of the same building as the computer science department.
00:23:33.140 —> 00:23:36.980
And it’s very, very rare for admin departments and academic departments
00:23:36.980 —> 00:23:42.340
to cohabit a space like that. But it has actually sparked a lot of really useful things in both directions.
00:23:42.340 —> 00:23:43.460
Interesting.
00:23:43.460 —> 00:23:50.420
Yeah, so it’s kind of been fun that we, that they thought so broadly to put the IT people together
00:23:50.420 —> 00:23:53.780
so they could cross-pollinate, whether they were admin or whether they were academic.
00:23:53.780 —> 00:23:59.700
Yeah, it’s interesting because we talk a lot about Apple wanting people to go back to campus,
00:23:59.700 —> 00:24:05.060
and there’s views on both sides where you don’t hear the more tempered views on it,
00:24:05.060 —> 00:24:08.020
but you hear the people that are completely furious that Apple would do such a thing,
00:24:08.020 —> 00:24:11.620
and then you hear the people that think that going back to work is the only way to do things.
00:24:11.620 —> 00:24:19.860
To me, it really does make… Well, first of all, I work in semiconductor tests in a group that
00:24:19.860 —> 00:24:25.300
tests and develops roadmap for the software that runs on the equipment.
00:24:25.300 —> 00:24:26.900
So I do a lot of hands-on stuff.
00:24:26.900 —> 00:24:28.740
I have to be at the tool a lot of times.
00:24:28.740 —> 00:24:29.740
Sometimes I don’t.
00:24:29.740 —> 00:24:32.940
I can do a lot of my testing remotely, and so I do work from home sometimes.
00:24:32.940 —> 00:24:38.520
But even without that, I am very much a person that gains more from being able to stand there
00:24:38.520 —> 00:24:41.580
at the tool with somebody, looking at them in the eyes.
00:24:41.580 —> 00:24:43.620
There’s just some better learning that takes place for me.
00:24:43.620 —> 00:24:44.840
It’s so much better.
00:24:44.840 —> 00:24:49.280
And so I think that companies should be flexible when they can.
00:24:49.280 —> 00:24:52.600
But I also totally love the in-person thing as well.
00:24:52.600 —> 00:24:56.400
I discovered thanks to the pandemic, for me, it’s a yes and.
00:24:56.400 —> 00:25:03.400
So during the pandemic, initially, I really liked it because I was so much more productive.
00:25:03.400 —> 00:25:05.080
I was getting a lot more done because I’m
00:25:05.080 —> 00:25:11.240
an introvert and just being able to be in the zone and stay in the zone and not be
00:25:11.240 —> 00:25:14.840
all out of the zone by all the stuff that happens in an open plan office really worked for me.
00:25:14.840 —> 00:25:18.120
And so for the first few months, I was actually really quite happy at home.
00:25:18.120 —> 00:25:20.760
And it was also, I have a respiratory condition.
00:25:20.760 —> 00:25:23.360
My hubby has a really serious respiratory condition.
00:25:23.360 —> 00:25:28.440
So we were kind of in hermit mode pretty strongly.
00:25:28.440 —> 00:25:30.200
And so, well, I was quite happy.
00:25:30.200 —> 00:25:34.240
Well, on the scale of how one was during the pandemic, I was quite happy.
00:25:34.240 —> 00:25:35.480
Yeah.
00:25:35.480 —> 00:25:41.400
But after a year, because we worked from home for a year and a half full time.
00:25:41.400 —> 00:25:44.920
So after the first year, I began to feel isolated.
00:25:44.920 —> 00:25:48.440
I began to feel disconnected from the team.
00:25:48.440 —> 00:25:51.600
We were fraying at every edge you could imagine.
00:25:51.600 —> 00:25:54.600
We’d forgotten that we’re all human and we all have our own.
00:25:54.600 —> 00:25:58.920
We ended up taking the wrong tone from text conversations.
00:25:58.920 —> 00:26:01.600
And we just began to fray.
00:26:01.600 —> 00:26:02.680
It’s the best way to describe it.
00:26:02.680 —> 00:26:03.840
We just meant to fray.
00:26:03.880 —> 00:26:10.280
And so we’ve now switched to a hybrid model where it’s three, three in two out.
00:26:10.280 —> 00:26:15.960
And I think the ideal for me would be three out two in because I am the introvert.
00:26:15.960 —> 00:26:16.600
Yeah.
00:26:16.600 —> 00:26:19.720
But no time in the office is terrible.
00:26:19.720 —> 00:26:23.640
It was bad for the team and it was even bad for me, even though I am an introvert,
00:26:23.640 —> 00:26:28.520
even though I do a lot better with focus time, you do actually need to bounce ideas off people.
00:26:28.520 —> 00:26:31.960
You actually need to have a certain amount of time where you can just,
00:26:31.960 —> 00:26:33.560
I call it prairie dogging.
00:26:33.560 —> 00:26:36.200
We just stand up on the cubicle farm and go, “Oh, anyone.
00:26:36.200 —> 00:26:41.320
Does anyone know what the heck is going on with this minus whatever flag to whatever?“
00:26:41.320 —> 00:26:44.920
You know, and you usually get some sort of a sensible answer in our place.
00:26:44.920 —> 00:26:46.440
And so I need a bit of that.
00:26:46.440 —> 00:26:47.080
I agree.
00:26:47.080 —> 00:26:50.440
And I think for, I’m introverted in some ways, too,
00:26:50.440 —> 00:26:54.280
although probably some of my co-workers would disagree because I can never shut up.
00:26:54.280 —> 00:27:00.040
But I also think that having that in-person connection,
00:27:00.040 —> 00:27:04.800
Like people are so different in text and even sometimes they come across so
00:27:04.800 —> 00:27:07.720
different on calls and most of our calls we do on Teams.
00:27:07.720 —> 00:27:09.680
We’re not doing video calls.
00:27:09.680 —> 00:27:13.600
Most of our calls are just voice calls, which is better than just text.
00:27:13.600 —> 00:27:15.280
We have a video pod.
00:27:15.280 —> 00:27:18.040
We turn on our video and I really, really think that helps.
00:27:18.040 —> 00:27:21.480
I think that helps so much to not dehumanise the calls.
00:27:21.480 —> 00:27:23.200
And we don’t necessarily leave it on.
00:27:23.200 —> 00:27:25.880
But we will start to call
00:27:26.080 —> 00:27:30.880
with video and a couple of minutes of chit chat always.
00:27:30.880 —> 00:27:32.440
And the video is really important.
00:27:32.440 —> 00:27:34.840
And then usually once we get, you’re okay, right.
00:27:34.840 —> 00:27:35.680
What’s our agenda today?
00:27:35.680 —> 00:27:38.000
You’ll see all the videos go off.
00:27:38.000 —> 00:27:40.440
That’s a good approach.
00:27:40.440 —> 00:27:42.320
But that’s fine. I like that.
00:27:42.320 —> 00:27:44.800
You know, yeah, seeing people’s faces,
00:27:44.800 —> 00:27:48.040
it just serves as why we function this way, I don’t know.
00:27:48.040 —> 00:27:49.520
Why we can’t adapt better, I don’t know.
00:27:49.520 —> 00:27:52.400
But it serves as a reminder that, hey, I like and trust these people.
00:27:52.400 —> 00:27:53.240
These are my people.
00:27:53.440 —> 00:27:56.600
It just gives you that feeling that you cannot get any other way.
00:27:56.600 —> 00:27:58.720
I think we humans, I think it’s utterly
00:27:58.720 —> 00:28:03.800
subconscious, but we read faces, we read signals, we read body language.
00:28:03.800 —> 00:28:08.920
And we can hear it a bit in the voice and we can see it relatively well in video.
00:28:08.920 —> 00:28:10.800
But there’s nothing that beats the in person.
00:28:10.800 —> 00:28:14.440
So I think it is actually a spectrum between in person, video, voice.
00:28:14.440 —> 00:28:17.640
And text is just, text is off the list.
00:28:17.640 —> 00:28:19.120
Text is terrible.
00:28:19.120 —> 00:28:20.120
Text is terrible.
00:28:20.320 —> 00:28:24.480
I’m bad at text and I’m really bad at taking the wrong tone from text.
00:28:24.480 —> 00:28:29.560
And I’ve had a number of online communications that have gone awry.
00:28:29.560 —> 00:28:32.000
100% because of me.
00:28:32.000 —> 00:28:33.960
But it’s just how it works for me.
00:28:33.960 —> 00:28:35.440
And then when I talk to the person in voice
00:28:35.440 —> 00:28:37.480
or whatever, I realise, oh, it’s completely different.
00:28:37.480 —> 00:28:39.200
I was totally off base there.
00:28:39.200 —> 00:28:41.360
You know, just… I know exactly what you mean.
00:28:41.360 —> 00:28:43.200
Why I have that problem, I don’t know.
00:28:43.200 —> 00:28:45.000
I actually got to…
00:28:45.000 —> 00:28:46.480
I learned it on a podcast.
00:28:46.480 —> 00:28:48.400
I don’t remember which one, but I learned it on a podcast.
00:28:48.400 —> 00:28:52.360
not going to take credit for this advice, but I found it really helped me during the
00:28:52.360 —> 00:28:57.460
pandemic. It’s called steelmanning. So you know the way a straw man is where you take
00:28:57.460 —> 00:29:01.900
the weakest possible argument from your opponent and then knock it down like a blade of straw
00:29:01.900 —> 00:29:06.340
because it’s easy. steelmanning is where you proactively do the opposite. You find
00:29:06.340 —> 00:29:11.500
the most benign possible tone in your head for the piece of text because all the text
00:29:11.500 —> 00:29:16.680
is fluffy, right? There’s a spectrum of choice. And so always take the most benign possible
00:29:16.680 —> 00:29:25.600
interpretation and reply in that tone. 80% of the time, you are replying with a really
00:29:25.600 —> 00:29:30.660
nice way to a really snotty email. But the thing is when you do that, you knock the other
00:29:30.660 —> 00:29:36.700
person out of it. You snap them out of the snottyness. And so even when you were right,
00:29:36.700 —> 00:29:41.000
you’ve saved yourself escalating. And when you were wrong, and that they actually were
00:29:41.000 —> 00:29:45.740
being snotty, you still usually break the cycle. You still usually end up bringing the
00:29:45.740 —> 00:29:51.900
whole project, the whole conversation back on a firm footing because you’ve now
00:29:51.900 —> 00:29:55.860
taken the moral high ground and it’s really hard for someone that’s keeping
00:29:55.860 —> 00:29:58.460
snooty when someone is just not taking the bait.
00:29:58.460 —> 00:30:00.340
For sure.
00:30:00.340 —> 00:30:00.780
For sure.
00:30:00.780 —> 00:30:03.340
It’ll always work, but you know, it has helped me a lot.
00:30:03.340 —> 00:30:05.180
No, that is really good.
00:30:05.180 —> 00:30:06.980
Yeah, it’s something that I’ve been working on.
00:30:06.980 —> 00:30:09.260
And for how old I am, the fact that it’s
00:30:09.260 —> 00:30:14.380
taking me this long to even become a tiny bit better at it is pretty wrong.
00:30:14.380 —> 00:30:16.420
You know, it’s a failure of mine, I see it as.
00:30:16.420 —> 00:30:19.380
But at least I wouldn’t go that far.
00:30:19.380 —> 00:30:21.940
It would have been optimal to be better early on.
00:30:21.940 —> 00:30:25.540
Who teaches these things?
00:30:25.540 —> 00:30:27.020
It’s not part of education.
00:30:27.020 —> 00:30:31.020
So I think becoming self aware is really bloody difficult.
00:30:31.020 —> 00:30:33.580
And we’re not helped.
00:30:33.580 —> 00:30:36.940
And there’s not enough mentors left in the world these days.
00:30:36.940 —> 00:30:39.420
Everyone seems to be just sort of in a race to the top,
00:30:39.420 —> 00:30:40.740
but no one’s mentoring anyone else.
00:30:40.740 —> 00:30:43.740
So I think it’s a side effect of where we are in our society.
00:30:43.940 —> 00:30:47.260
that it takes a bit of work to become self-aware.
00:30:47.260 —> 00:30:48.700
Yeah, that could be.
00:30:48.700 —> 00:30:53.180
And I’ll be honest, I think my marriage is the reason I’ve become self-aware
00:30:53.180 —> 00:30:57.860
because myself and the better half, we had to work really hard.
00:30:57.860 —> 00:30:59.860
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:30:59.860 —> 00:31:05.740
And this might sound strange, but it should be obvious that that is
00:31:05.740 —> 00:31:10.300
the relationship where you should give the most leeway, assume the best intent,
00:31:10.340 —> 00:31:13.940
always come up with the most terrible explanation.
00:31:13.940 —> 00:31:19.940
And even if something is annoying, be the most relaxed and forgiving about it.
00:31:19.940 —> 00:31:24.740
And yet I’ve talked to people who, when I presented that idea to them, they go, huh, I never thought of it that way.
00:31:24.740 —> 00:31:30.900
And I’m like, but you’re married to this. What? Ah, it just doesn’t make sense.
00:31:30.900 —> 00:31:39.660
The other thing I found is always apologize when you realize you were in the wrong, even if it’s not expected of you.
00:31:39.660 —> 00:31:40.340
Yeah.
00:31:40.340 —> 00:31:44.380
And it isn’t expected in a relationship, but just do it anyway, because it’s the right thing to do.
00:31:44.380 —> 00:31:45.820
Because we all do it. Like, I snap.
00:31:45.820 —> 00:31:48.460
I do something like, I’ve had a $hi++y day.
00:31:48.460 —> 00:31:49.580
I come home.
00:31:49.580 —> 00:31:50.460
I’m cranky.
00:31:50.460 —> 00:31:51.380
Right.
00:31:51.380 —> 00:31:52.380
Innocent question.
00:31:52.380 —> 00:31:53.100
What are we having for dinner?
00:31:53.100 —> 00:31:54.940
Oh, for God’s sake, I’m only just in the door.
00:31:54.940 —> 00:31:59.260
And then if I was here, like, that was that was that was out of proportion.
00:31:59.260 —> 00:32:02.220
That was related to something that that guy in the office said that had nothing to do.
00:32:02.220 —> 00:32:05.020
And I will always make a point and go up and say, sorry about that.
00:32:05.020 —> 00:32:06.580
I said, you know, you don’t have to apologise.
00:32:06.580 —> 00:32:08.100
Like, yes, but I do.
00:32:08.100 —> 00:32:13.140
And when that then mirrors back to you, it is amazing what it smooths over.
00:32:13.140 —> 00:32:17.140
And the other one is, I’m sorry you were right.
00:32:17.140 —> 00:32:19.260
Not I was wrong, you were right.
00:32:19.260 —> 00:32:24.420
Yeah, and that’s something that I don’t know why, but for some reason when I was younger,
00:32:24.420 —> 00:32:27.300
for some reason it hurt me to have to say that.
00:32:27.300 —> 00:32:32.020
Oh, big problem for me. Huge problem for me. And I’ll tell you what it was, it was insecurity.
00:32:32.020 —> 00:32:36.420
When you’re not sure of your own opinions, it’s really hard to say I was wrong.
00:32:36.420 —> 00:32:37.900
Sure.
00:32:37.900 —> 00:32:43.460
But when you’ve done the work to get to know things, it’s actually quite easy to
00:32:43.460 —> 00:32:45.420
say, actually, no, I was wrong and now I’ve learned something new.
00:32:45.420 —> 00:32:46.420
That’s great. Thank you.
00:32:46.420 —> 00:32:46.860
Yeah.
00:32:46.860 —> 00:32:50.540
And even though it’s a different type of relationship, working with the people that
00:32:50.540 —> 00:32:55.780
I work with in a few different groups and certainly the group that I’m in now,
00:32:55.780 —> 00:32:58.900
working with the people that I work with has been a huge education in that way,
00:32:58.900 —> 00:33:01.780
because they’re so, trust me, I am the dumbest guy in this group.
00:33:01.780 —> 00:33:06.820
These people are smart, but I’m in a good group where nobody cares.
00:33:07.020 —> 00:33:09.340
It’s not about being right or proving that you’re smart.
00:33:09.340 —> 00:33:10.580
It’s about finding the answer.
00:33:10.580 —> 00:33:12.900
And they’re more than happy to say, oh, OK, that was wrong.
00:33:12.900 —> 00:33:14.100
I’m wrong. I didn’t know that.
00:33:14.100 —> 00:33:15.940
Or even ask a question, how does this work?
00:33:15.940 —> 00:33:19.060
Which might seem basic, but nobody’s afraid to ask questions.
00:33:19.060 —> 00:33:20.420
Nobody’s afraid to say they were wrong.
00:33:20.420 —> 00:33:21.660
Nobody’s afraid.
00:33:21.660 —> 00:33:24.020
And you learn that people that are way
00:33:24.020 —> 00:33:28.620
smarter than you have the ability to say I was wrong or ask a question that might
00:33:28.620 —> 00:33:31.340
seem stupid. And it’s a great example.
00:33:31.340 —> 00:33:35.260
There’s a causal link between those two things, because if you go around the place
00:33:35.260 —> 00:33:39.060
with your shields up and trying to convince yourself at all times that no,
00:33:39.060 —> 00:33:42.780
no, no, by this technicality, I was right.
00:33:42.780 —> 00:33:44.300
What are you not doing?
00:33:44.300 —> 00:33:47.380
You’re not observing, you’re not absorbing anything new.
00:33:47.380 —> 00:33:49.220
There is nothing coming in, right?
00:33:49.220 —> 00:33:50.460
You are getting no smarter.
00:33:50.460 —> 00:33:52.860
You’re getting no more new us than you’re understanding.
00:33:52.860 —> 00:33:53.980
You’re getting no wiser.
00:33:53.980 —> 00:33:57.860
You’re just going around feeling smug and having every good idea bounce off you.
00:33:57.860 —> 00:33:59.500
Yeah, it doesn’t work.
00:33:59.500 —> 00:34:02.140
No, I remember when I started working at this company,
00:34:02.140 —> 00:34:08.500
there was a particularly old piece of semiconductor test equipment that we used.
00:34:08.500 —> 00:34:11.100
And there was one mode of testing.
00:34:11.100 —> 00:34:14.620
When you were running diagnostics on it, you would go find this cable way underneath the
00:34:14.620 —> 00:34:18.320
piece of equipment and you would stick a loopback wire in two of the connectors.
00:34:18.320 —> 00:34:20.180
And then you could run diagnostics on it.
00:34:20.180 —> 00:34:21.640
And people would forget and leave it there.
00:34:21.640 —> 00:34:25.060
And then when they went to do the testing, yeah, this is antique equipment.
00:34:25.060 —> 00:34:29.260
When you would do the testing, the actual testing running production, you would have
00:34:29.260 —> 00:34:32.760
to take that loopback wire out and reconnect it in the normal way. And people would forget
00:34:32.760 —> 00:34:36.800
to do that. Well, this one guy knew the symptoms right off the top of his head of what would
00:34:36.800 —> 00:34:40.280
happen when you left the loopback connector in.
00:34:40.280 —> 00:34:43.240
But he would come in and we’d be like, “Yeah, I don’t know why this thing is doing this
00:34:43.240 —> 00:34:49.100
because we’re brand new. This thing is already antique even decades ago when I got there.”
00:34:49.100 —> 00:34:53.980
And then instead of saying, “Oh, here’s how it works,” he’d go, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll
00:34:53.980 —> 00:34:57.760
take care of it.” And he waits for shift pass down to end and for us to leave before he
00:34:57.760 —> 00:35:03.600
takes care of it. And I always remembered that because you can serve as an example
00:35:03.600 —> 00:35:08.080
positively and you can serve as a lesson and an example negatively.
00:35:08.080 —> 00:35:10.840
And that guy definitely taught me something right there.
00:35:10.840 —> 00:35:13.840
Right. And that’s the old protectionist attitude of if I’m the only one who knows
00:35:13.840 —> 00:35:16.320
this, my job is safe, and that’s not how it works.
00:35:16.320 —> 00:35:18.240
Right. That is not.
00:35:18.240 —> 00:35:20.800
Because that is how you become, oh, that guy.
00:35:20.800 —> 00:35:22.600
And that’s how your job is the opposite of safe.
00:35:22.600 —> 00:35:26.640
And that’s how people try to make sure that you don’t get brought in through the loop.
00:35:26.680 —> 00:35:28.760
Because if you’re in the loop, you’ll steal the loop.
00:35:28.760 —> 00:35:30.280
Yeah.
00:35:30.280 —> 00:35:31.320
I’ve never seen it happen.
00:35:31.320 —> 00:35:32.600
I’ve never seen somebody give away
00:35:32.600 —> 00:35:35.320
knowledge and then suddenly be asked to leave.
00:35:35.320 —> 00:35:36.520
Yeah. Quite the opposite.
00:35:36.520 —> 00:35:39.560
It’s like, oh, my God, you’re one of those people who I can ask questions of.
00:35:39.560 —> 00:35:41.560
And they share.
00:35:41.560 —> 00:35:42.560
That’s how you build a team.
00:35:42.560 —> 00:35:45.240
That’s how you build a, you know.
00:35:45.240 —> 00:35:47.800
That’s why you’re good.
00:35:47.800 —> 00:35:50.480
When you were talking about being a physicist, I thought, you know, Bart would
00:35:50.480 —> 00:35:54.680
have made a great physicist, too, because you are very good at breaking down complex
00:35:54.720 —> 00:35:58.840
topics and phrasing them in ways that interesting ways of explaining things
00:35:58.840 —> 00:36:01.280
that make sense, but they’re also enjoyable.
00:36:01.280 —> 00:36:05.880
Like that’s a pretty neat skill that if you would have been a physicist, I don’t
00:36:05.880 —> 00:36:09.200
know about the math part of it, but you would have done great with communicating
00:36:09.200 —> 00:36:10.880
ideas to people.
00:36:10.880 —> 00:36:13.240
I think I could have been a good physics teacher.
00:36:13.240 —> 00:36:15.600
I don’t think I necessarily would have been a good physicist.
00:36:15.600 —> 00:36:16.640
Yeah. Okay.
00:36:16.640 —> 00:36:17.640
Which is a subtle difference.
00:36:17.640 —> 00:36:20.960
But no, there is an alternative universe that’s not a million miles away where I
00:36:21.000 —> 00:36:25.200
would have been an educator because the reason I do so much podcasting and stuff
00:36:25.200 —> 00:36:29.360
is because I feel the path not taken appeals to me.
00:36:29.360 —> 00:36:29.720
Yeah.
00:36:29.720 —> 00:36:34.440
There’s a part of you that is fulfilled by getting to explain stuff, getting to work
00:36:34.440 —> 00:36:36.200
on stuff for people. Yeah.
00:36:36.200 —> 00:36:36.680
Yeah.
00:36:36.680 —> 00:36:40.760
And I have a colleague who feels very similar to me, and he does the same thing
00:36:40.760 —> 00:36:43.600
by doing part time teaching. He teaches two courses a year.
00:36:43.600 —> 00:36:44.240
Oh, interesting.
00:36:44.240 —> 00:36:45.840
Whereas I choose to do it as the podcasting.
00:36:45.840 —> 00:36:50.360
But either way, both of us are scratching the niche of I really enjoy teaching.
00:36:50.400 —> 00:36:54.600
There is something wonderful about seeing the penny drop.
00:36:54.600 —> 00:36:57.520
There is nothing more rewarding in life than seeing the penny drop.
00:36:57.520 —> 00:37:01.400
We as a universe have gotten a little bit smarter, and that’s brilliant.
00:37:01.400 —> 00:37:02.080
Yeah.
00:37:02.080 —> 00:37:06.560
And it also requires and I’m sure helps develop the attitude of, oh,
00:37:06.560 —> 00:37:08.120
these people don’t know this thing.
00:37:08.120 —> 00:37:08.640
Yet.
00:37:08.640 —> 00:37:10.480
Being completely non-judgmental about it.
00:37:10.480 —> 00:37:11.200
Exactly.
00:37:11.200 —> 00:37:12.320
Exactly that.
00:37:12.320 —> 00:37:13.520
Not, oh, they’re a dummy.
00:37:13.520 —> 00:37:15.440
Why don’t they know this thing?
00:37:15.440 —> 00:37:16.040
Yeah.
00:37:16.040 —> 00:37:17.000
What drives me nuts.
00:37:17.000 —> 00:37:20.680
The thing I can’t stand is wilful ignorance.
00:37:20.680 —> 00:37:21.440
Right.
00:37:21.440 —> 00:37:26.440
I know I don’t know this and I don’t want to know.
00:37:26.440 —> 00:37:28.600
Girth, girth.
00:37:28.600 —> 00:37:30.680
So we should, I should probably let you go
00:37:30.680 —> 00:37:31.520
pretty soon here, Bart.
00:37:31.520 —> 00:37:34.800
But one thing that I’m kind of curious about is,
00:37:34.800 —> 00:37:37.080
okay, so you’ve got a lot of hobbies already.
00:37:37.080 —> 00:37:39.640
You’ve got podcasting, you’ve got photography,
00:37:39.640 —> 00:37:42.280
you’ve got probably other computer things you do at home.
00:37:42.280 —> 00:37:43.720
Certainly a lot of work that you do
00:37:43.720 —> 00:37:45.880
to get ready for the podcast.
00:37:45.880 —> 00:37:47.560
And then you’ve got your work related stuff,
00:37:47.560 —> 00:37:50.160
which I’m sure that you spend a lot of time thinking about as well.
00:37:50.160 —> 00:37:52.760
But is there anything recently that has
00:37:52.760 —> 00:37:56.160
started fascinating you that your mind is working on?
00:37:56.160 —> 00:37:57.200
It could be anything.
00:37:57.200 —> 00:37:58.560
It could be societal.
00:37:58.560 —> 00:38:00.920
It could be scientific.
00:38:00.920 —> 00:38:03.520
It could be computer related.
00:38:03.520 —> 00:38:09.640
At the moment, a lot of my focus is centered on work stuff, which is a bit boring.
00:38:09.640 —> 00:38:12.160
But one of the things I’ve been getting into that I’ve been thinking about a lot
00:38:12.160 —> 00:38:16.480
is there’s a thing called Ansible that’s a tool for automating sysadmin stuff.
00:38:16.480 —> 00:38:19.680
But it does things in a way that’s different to everything else I’ve learned.
00:38:19.680 —> 00:38:22.040
So I learned lots of programming languages by now.
00:38:22.040 —> 00:38:27.520
But Ansible is different because you don’t tell Ansible how.
00:38:27.520 —> 00:38:30.480
You tell Ansible what.
00:38:30.480 —> 00:38:31.080
Interesting.
00:38:31.080 —> 00:38:33.080
And its magic is it figures it out.
00:38:33.080 —> 00:38:35.840
It’s a really different way of programming.
00:38:35.840 —> 00:38:38.960
When you’re not trying to say step one is do this and step two is do that.
00:38:39.160 —> 00:38:44.680
basically say I need all of these servers to have this config file with this line. I need this
00:38:44.680 —> 00:38:49.080
folder to exist with these permissions. I need this package to be installed. And you literally declare
00:38:49.080 —> 00:38:54.520
it’s like your God and you say universe there must be so and you hand it to Ansible and you
00:38:54.520 —> 00:39:01.160
give Ansible 100 servers all in a different state and Ansible goes to each one one by one and
00:39:01.160 —> 00:39:07.960
figures out the delta between the universe you have requested and reality and by God it makes
00:39:07.960 —> 00:39:11.720
makes the two line up. That is interesting. That’s bloody magic.
00:39:11.720 —> 00:39:15.000
It’s like you’re a manager of people that you trust and you can just set it and forget it.
00:39:15.000 —> 00:39:17.880
The type of people where you go, hey, I need this to happen and make it so.
00:39:17.880 —> 00:39:21.080
Yeah. And so when you have an estate, how does it work?
00:39:21.080 —> 00:39:25.320
Well, it’s so the golden rule to make Ansible work is that at every level,
00:39:25.320 —> 00:39:31.240
it’s what they call idempotent, which means if something is already the way you want it,
00:39:31.240 —> 00:39:35.000
nothing changes. So it’s always safe to run an Ansible rule again.
00:39:35.000 —> 00:39:37.360
And that is applied down to the smallest level.
00:39:37.360 —> 00:39:39.720
And then you build up your playbooks by ever bigger levels.
00:39:39.720 —> 00:39:42.720
But because they’re all item potent down to the little atom,
00:39:42.720 —> 00:39:44.520
it actually does work that way.
00:39:44.520 —> 00:39:47.600
But when you have years of technical debt built up,
00:39:47.600 —> 00:39:49.320
which is certainly what we do,
00:39:49.320 —> 00:39:50.920
and I think everyone does,
00:39:50.920 —> 00:39:53.440
what you have is this sea of different servers
00:39:53.440 —> 00:39:55.320
that were all hand built.
00:39:55.320 —> 00:39:58.920
And everyone had the same destination in mind approximately,
00:39:58.920 —> 00:40:01.600
but we all hand built them, we all did it our own way.
00:40:01.600 —> 00:40:03.000
And now an auditor comes in and says,
00:40:03.000 —> 00:40:07.000
well actually guys we really need you all to have a consistent firewall across all of these.
00:40:07.000 —> 00:40:12.520
But to manually do that is such a pain. But when you can rely on plugins that other people have
00:40:12.520 —> 00:40:17.560
written for Ansible, so you basically there’s an Ansible plugin for firewall D, when you just
00:40:17.560 —> 00:40:23.800
basically specify this is what I need and then the plugin does all of the donkey work. It’s loads of
00:40:23.800 —> 00:40:28.040
vfl statements right? Okay so I need the public view to have these rules. What does it have now?
00:40:28.040 —> 00:40:32.120
Remove, remove, remove, add, add, add. But at the end of the day that’s all it is. A bunch of
00:40:32.120 —> 00:40:39.160
comparisons and a bunch of, you know, if should it be here? No, take it away. Is it not here,
00:40:39.160 —> 00:40:42.880
but it should be? Yes, add it in. And that’s literally, you know, you do the same thing
00:40:42.880 —> 00:40:47.700
enough times. But what you’re left with is, and it’s also in YAML, which is a very, very
00:40:47.700 —> 00:40:53.240
human friendly language, it almost looks like Markdown. It’s it makes JSON look complicated,
00:40:53.240 —> 00:40:59.360
YAML, right? So you just writing YAML to describe the universe you want. And then you point
00:40:59.360 —> 00:41:02.160
looked at your servers and you just see all of these beautiful and it’s all
00:41:02.160 —> 00:41:05.000
color coded on the terminal. It just comes back and gives you a little table at the
00:41:05.000 —> 00:41:08.920
end of it and goes, yeah, you sent me 100 servers here to turn on automatic updates
00:41:08.920 —> 00:41:12.480
with live kernel patching. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
00:41:12.480 —> 00:41:17.680
And it’s just done. And it just makes me very happy.
00:41:17.680 —> 00:41:24.720
That is fascinating because we, like we do, one of the things that I do help with
00:41:24.720 —> 00:41:31.000
work is I help the guys who install the servers into these semiconductor test equipment, and
00:41:31.000 —> 00:41:34.480
each one of them has anywhere from five to seven servers.
00:41:34.480 —> 00:41:36.080
Currently it’s like five.
00:41:36.080 —> 00:41:41.260
But then we image them and we set them up, and we use Symantec ghost.
00:41:41.260 —> 00:41:45.400
We have USB drives if for some reason we can’t use our Symantec jobs, but we have Symantec
00:41:45.400 —> 00:41:49.500
ghost and we just run all these jobs against the server, and then in theory they’re all
00:41:49.500 —> 00:41:53.720
the same for each given type of server.
00:41:53.720 —> 00:41:56.840
But it doesn’t always work that way because there’s still a tiny bit of human glue that
00:41:56.840 —> 00:41:57.840
has to happen.
00:41:57.840 —> 00:42:00.200
There’s still a little bit of this, still a little bit of that, and those things get
00:42:00.200 —> 00:42:01.680
missed.
00:42:01.680 —> 00:42:03.260
And over time they drift, right?
00:42:03.260 —> 00:42:06.720
If you start off with five identical servers, they won’t stay identical.
00:42:06.720 —> 00:42:10.740
But when you manage your five identical servers with something like Ansible, if you then need
00:42:10.740 —> 00:42:14.560
to go make a change, you make the change once in the Ansible playbook and you apply it to
00:42:14.560 —> 00:42:17.840
the five servers so they stay in sync with each other.
00:42:17.840 —> 00:42:21.100
And the other thing is, so I’ve never been playing with Ansible for about six months.
00:42:21.100 —> 00:42:25.900
So initially it was retrofitting taking old technical debt and paying it down, which is
00:42:25.900 —> 00:42:28.920
already really cool to be able to pay down the technical debt.
00:42:28.920 —> 00:42:34.880
But this, the week just gone, I was deploying new stuff that had never been deployed before.
00:42:34.880 —> 00:42:37.360
And I didn’t start by doing it on a server.
00:42:37.360 —> 00:42:40.000
I started by writing the Ansible playbook.
00:42:40.000 —> 00:42:46.060
And I did my first deploy by, I debugged my Ansible playbook on the first deploy.
00:42:46.060 —> 00:42:49.340
And at any stage, if I made a mistake, Ansible would fix it the next pass through because
00:42:49.340 —> 00:42:59.340
So if I make the file with the wrong permissions, well the second time I fix my playbook and I run it again and now it fixes the permissions because reality is now out of sync with what I’ve asked for.
00:42:59.340 —> 00:43:05.340
And then when I was done, because we had to deploy the same agent to our entire estate.
00:43:05.340 —> 00:43:11.340
Like we had to employ, well sorry it was a Windows agent and a Linux agent, we had to employ an agent universally.
00:43:11.340 —> 00:43:15.340
Which would have been a gigantic chore, right?
00:43:15.340 —> 00:43:22.860
Right. But I did it once and I wrote it as a playbook from the from moment one, step one, use curl to download the file.
00:43:22.860 —> 00:43:31.260
Okay, great. Is the file been downloaded? Yes, then don’t download it again. Step two, run the human store, step, step, step, step.
00:43:31.260 —> 00:43:42.340
And then when I was done on one server, I just basically went Ansible, you know, Ansible dash playbook. I just ran it. And instead of saying minus minus limit to my test host, I left out the limit.
00:43:43.700 —> 00:43:45.860
and just let it run through the inventory.
00:43:45.860 —> 00:43:47.980
And it just did them all.
00:43:47.980 —> 00:43:49.420
Interesting.
00:43:49.420 —> 00:43:51.260
Yeah. So, you know, what did you do yesterday?
00:43:51.260 —> 00:43:53.700
I spent three days deploying the agent to one server.
00:43:53.700 —> 00:43:54.660
What did you do today?
00:43:54.660 —> 00:43:57.500
I spent five minutes deploying the agent to 99 servers.
00:43:57.500 —> 00:44:03.140
That’s interesting because so you basically you have a predefined set and it will run it against that.
00:44:03.140 —> 00:44:05.100
We I like that.
00:44:05.100 —> 00:44:07.420
The way we have to do it with Symantec
00:44:07.420 —> 00:44:10.940
ghost is when we’re pushing jobs to a bunch of servers at once, we have to select them all.
00:44:11.140 —> 00:44:14.140
And as you can imagine, that’s fraught with peril.
00:44:14.140 —> 00:44:16.060
Yes, it is.
00:44:16.060 —> 00:44:19.900
So at Ansible you have your inventory as a whole is basically the full set.
00:44:19.900 —> 00:44:21.300
But your inventory has groups.
00:44:21.300 —> 00:44:25.940
So you would actually say at the top of a playbook, hosts colon and then either all
00:44:25.940 —> 00:44:30.660
or host name comma host name or name of a group.
00:44:30.660 —> 00:44:35.140
So in this case, because I was doing an agent to our entire estate, it was just hosts all.
00:44:35.140 —> 00:44:39.580
But I could also have hosts web servers, host database servers, host project one, right?
00:44:39.580 —> 00:44:41.860
or just two specific hosts.
00:44:41.860 —> 00:44:44.820
So if I was doing a set of five that belong to something that obviously have some sort
00:44:44.820 —> 00:44:51.500
of a logical name and I’d group them and then I just say Ansible whatever host colon that.
00:44:51.500 —> 00:44:56.980
The grouping thing would be perfect because we have things like each tool, each module,
00:44:56.980 —> 00:45:02.820
each big semiconductor test module has a handler controller, has a tester controller, it has
00:45:02.820 —> 00:45:05.520
something called a DPC, which is a data path controller.
00:45:05.520 —> 00:45:11.640
It’s got image processor servers, it’s got all these different kinds, and of course they
00:45:11.640 —> 00:45:16.320
all have the same base Windows build on them, Windows Server, but then they all have different
00:45:16.320 —> 00:45:22.000
functions so they all get different pieces of software that our company has written.
00:45:22.000 —> 00:45:24.160
And so you gotta be…
00:45:24.160 —> 00:45:28.760
So one of the things you can do with Ghost is put scripts in there, so we have scripts
00:45:28.760 —> 00:45:33.640
that at least check to see that the server name matches the type of server that you’re
00:45:33.640 —> 00:45:38.120
Pushing software too. Yeah. But that’s interesting. I like the idea of grouping and being able
00:45:38.120 —> 00:45:42.940
to just say push it to this group. I mean, it can do that in some ways, some limited
00:45:42.940 —> 00:45:45.460
ways, but not exactly like what you’re describing.
00:45:45.460 —> 00:45:50.880
The other thing you get for free, because it’s YAML based, is you know how infrastructure
00:45:50.880 —> 00:45:58.520
is code. Yeah. And you have it all in a Git repository. So I can roll back our infrastructure.
00:45:58.520 —> 00:46:04.440
So I can basically if I decide to add some extra auditing to our, let me say, update
00:46:04.440 —> 00:46:10.400
the config file for our Microsoft Defender agent and suddenly it’s hammering every CPU.
00:46:10.400 —> 00:46:15.560
Well, I can just roll it back in Git and just reapply Ansible and it will reapply it the
00:46:15.560 —> 00:46:21.320
way it was yesterday and it’ll take back out my silly change and Sanity will return.
00:46:21.320 —> 00:46:23.440
Yeah, I like that.
00:46:23.440 —> 00:46:26.640
That’s one area we definitely don’t use enough of is version control.
00:46:26.640 —> 00:46:33.040
Now, the guys who are writing the software for us that we’re deploying and working with
00:46:33.040 —> 00:46:36.800
to steer the direction of and get features implemented, those guys, of course, do use
00:46:36.800 —> 00:46:37.800
version control.
00:46:37.800 —> 00:46:38.800
Well, at least they’re supposed to.
00:46:38.800 —> 00:46:39.800
There was one incident where a guy…
00:46:39.800 —> 00:46:40.800
I hope so.
00:46:40.800 —> 00:46:41.800
Yeah.
00:46:41.800 —> 00:46:43.920
There was one incident where a guy made a bunch of changes, didn’t use version control,
00:46:43.920 —> 00:46:46.920
and then it broke a lot of things and it took forever to fix it.
00:46:46.920 —> 00:46:49.000
It’s not the best way to do your programming, but…
00:46:49.000 —> 00:46:53.760
No, it’s a couple of years ago now I started sysadminning like a programmer.
00:46:53.760 —> 00:46:56.300
And initially I would just have git repositories everywhere.
00:46:56.300 —> 00:47:00.140
So every server would have a little Git repo checked out for the config for Apache or the
00:47:00.140 —> 00:47:01.180
config for whatever.
00:47:01.180 —> 00:47:05.240
But now with Ansible it’s one giant big Git repo that holds the Ansible rules.
00:47:05.240 —> 00:47:09.620
But the effect is the same and it has gotten us out of hot water on a quite a few occasions
00:47:09.620 —> 00:47:10.620
now.
00:47:10.620 —> 00:47:15.220
Where I have just been able to go, don’t worry, it was fine last week, yes, I shall make it
00:47:15.220 —> 00:47:17.480
be like that again.
00:47:17.480 —> 00:47:18.780
Roll back time Bart.
00:47:18.780 —> 00:47:19.780
Yeah.
00:47:19.780 —> 00:47:21.180
It’s very powerful.
00:47:21.180 —> 00:47:23.220
Okay, well I appreciate that.
00:47:23.220 —> 00:47:24.860
That’ll give me something to go look at.
00:47:24.860 —> 00:47:28.820
And you have a lot of different things going on on the Internet.
00:47:28.820 —> 00:47:33.060
What things do you want to point people to to get learned from you and enjoy listening
00:47:33.060 —> 00:47:34.060
to your voice?
00:47:34.060 —> 00:47:36.500
Well, BartB.ie links out to everything.
00:47:36.500 —> 00:47:37.620
It’s probably the simple easiest.
00:47:37.620 —> 00:47:41.540
And you can spell that because my surname is just an initial, which is why I got that
00:47:41.540 —> 00:47:44.580
domain because initially I owned BartBusschots.ie as well.
00:47:44.580 —> 00:47:46.300
But that turned out to be quite useless.
00:47:46.300 —> 00:47:51.100
I confess I always stumble over, is it two S’s?
00:47:51.100 —> 00:47:52.260
How many?
00:47:52.260 —> 00:47:53.260
Which ones do I double?
00:47:53.260 —> 00:47:54.260
Which ones do I not?
00:47:54.260 —> 00:47:58.980
Well, there’s two S’s together and then there’s one S on the end and there’s only one T.
00:47:58.980 —> 00:48:03.100
And for reasons I don’t know, people love doubling up on that T on the end.
00:48:03.100 —> 00:48:07.540
Even work. And I’ve worked there since 2005.
00:48:07.540 —> 00:48:10.420
That’s like my daughter’s school used to get her name wrong every year,
00:48:10.420 —> 00:48:12.500
but they used to get it wrong in a different way every year.
00:48:12.500 —> 00:48:13.380
So.
00:48:13.380 —> 00:48:15.780
Aww. Creativity.
00:48:15.780 —> 00:48:16.980
Well, thank you.
00:48:16.980 —> 00:48:20.900
I know that you’re, as we’ve just been discussing, you are super busy,
00:48:20.900 —> 00:48:23.620
but you graciously took time to come hang out for a little while.
00:48:23.660 —> 00:48:24.940
I really appreciate it.
00:48:24.940 —> 00:48:26.580
I enjoyed it very much.
00:48:26.580 —> 00:48:27.820
I had great fun talking to you.
00:48:27.820 —> 00:48:30.220
I can’t believe it’s been an hour that just flew by.
00:48:30.220 —> 00:48:31.340
You know, it’s a holiday weekend.
00:48:31.340 —> 00:48:35.340
I have a four day weekend because Ireland still does the whole Good Friday thing.
00:48:35.340 —> 00:48:38.500
So this is just such a nice way to take a
00:48:38.500 —> 00:48:41.380
little bit of fun on a holiday weekend when I’m not stressed.
00:48:41.380 —> 00:48:42.540
So, yeah, thank you.
00:48:42.540 —> 00:48:43.580
It was really nice talking to you.