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Life Hacks 104

Jonny is away so me and Yusef from PropaneFitness.com go head to head with another episode detailing our favourite apps, websites, resources and tools for a productive and efficient life. This is by far the most jam packed Life Hacks episode we've done, and below you will find links to everything we reference, including as many referral & discount codes as we could find! Enjoy. Links: Splitwise - https://www.splitwise.com Whatsapp Web - https://web.whatsapp.com Alfred For Mac - https://www.alfredapp.com/ Booking.com - https://booking.com/s/38_6/ade6c3a3 (£15 reward when signing up with this link) IINA - https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/ Quidco - https://www.quidco.com/raf/5682034/ (extra rewards with this link) Bulb Energy - www.bulb.me/chrisw2582 (extra rewards with this link) YouPak - https://www.youpak.com Anjunadeep - https://www.anjunadeep.com MuscleFood - https://www.musclefood.com (use mwisdom10 for 2.5kg of free Chicken breasts when you buy 2.5kg) Medium - https://www.medium.com Yumi Melatonin Gummies - https://www.yuminutrition.com - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Chris WilliamsonhostYusef (PropaneFitness)guest
Jun 18, 20181h 6mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:01

    Life Hacks 104 setup: Johnny’s away, airplane mode panic, and picking who goes first

    1. CW

      (wind blowing) Hi again.

    2. Y(

      (clears throat)

    3. CW

      Life hacks 104 this time. Uh, Johnny is not here.

    4. Y(

      1-0-4.

    5. CW

      1-0-4. He is, um, in somewhere hot, sweating-

    6. Y(

      (laughs)

    7. CW

      ... and is complaining that we're being 105 kilos is too large.

    8. Y(

      It's your own fault, Johnny. You're 105 kilos, you know-

    9. CW

      Uh, it was his choice to move to the 120s, wasn't it?

    10. Y(

      ... to be hotter. (laughs)

    11. CW

      As a powerlifter. Um, so, yeah, that is ... Oh, hang on. Ah, nearly forgot.

    12. Y(

      Oh.

    13. CW

      Nearly left, nearly left the phone on non-airplane mode.

    14. Y(

      Oh, my God.

    15. CW

      Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Come on, airplane mode. There we go. You know that the one time, (sniffs) the one time that the phone's on airplane mode, someone will ring me.

    16. Y(

      It's standard, yeah.

    17. CW

      Um, so life hacks 104. Who's gonna go first? Do you wanna go first?

    18. Y(

      Sure.

    19. CW

      Right.

  2. 1:01 – 3:14

    Splitwise for shared bills and group expenses (flatshares and beyond)

    1. Y(

      So, one that I've realized that I've been using seamlessly, uh, as you said, it's the ones that are the most background that are probably the most useful for you.

    2. CW

      Mm. Yeah.

    3. Y(

      But they're the least ones, they're, they're not the ones you'd be like, "Ah, yeah, I do that thing."

    4. CW

      They've integrated themselves so seamlessly in your life that it's like talking about breathing or talking about eating or-

    5. Y(

      Exactly. So, what is water to a fish?

    6. CW

      Yeah.

    7. Y(

      So, Splitwise-

    8. CW

      Okay.

    9. Y(

      ... is one that, uh ... So this is a tool. It's free. There is a paid version, but it, so the paid version's so high-powered that you just don't-

    10. CW

      Ugh.

    11. Y(

      ... need it. (laughs) So-

    12. CW

      There's too much optimization.

    13. Y(

      Yeah, exactly. So if you live in a flatshare and one of you handles the bills, this is phenomenal. So it's, it's got like a, there's like a machine learning element to it and everything. But what it is, each person gets an account. You join a group, which is your flat, and then you input expenses. So you can set recurring expenses that are like-

    14. CW

      Council tax and that.

    15. Y(

      ... broadband, council tax. Yeah. And you can input individual ones. It then creates a running tally of how much each person is owed.

    16. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. Y(

      And so, and it, and it'll, it'll offset based on what other people have bought. So if you pay the council tax and then your flatmate goes and buys some toilet roll-

    18. CW

      Yeah.

    19. Y(

      ... and puts it into Splitwise it'll-

    20. CW

      (laughs)

    21. Y(

      ... balance it again.

    22. CW

      This is just like your wet dream, isn't it?

    23. Y(

      Incredible. And then once a month, it sends you all an email saying who is owed what.

    24. CW

      Wow.

    25. Y(

      Um, and as you type in "electricity" or whatever-

    26. CW

      Mm.

    27. Y(

      ... you know, "British Gas" or whatever, it'll then detect, it'll, based on the words-

    28. CW

      Auto-fill stuff.

    29. Y(

      ... that are typed in-

    30. CW

      Yeah.

  3. 3:14 – 5:43

    WhatsApp Web: message from your laptop to cut phone distraction

    1. CW

      Right. My one. Oh, what am I gonna start with? Right, okay. So WhatsApp Web. Um, not everyone knows that there is a desktop, uh, browser-based partner to WhatsApp. Are you d- removing it? Ah, no? (laughs) Okay. Are you just opening it with Alfred? Um, yeah.

    2. Y(

      Alfred.

    3. CW

      So basically if you go to web.WhatsApp.com and then scan the QR code with your phone when your phone's on WhatsApp, you get all of the functions of WhatsApp through-

    4. Y(

      You only have to scan the code once and then it's just-

    5. CW

      Yeah, it's logged in. Um, and yeah, you, you get all of your chats, all your broadcast lists, all your groups. You can upload, um, files and photos directly from your desktop. It's web, uh, it's browser based, so if you go to, uh, if you're away from your normal computer and you want to use it, then you can just log in. It is such a game changer. When we're talking about strategies to try and reduce our phone usage and get away from, um, the human in the loop, idiosyncratic use of your phone, this is one of the best ways, because you use your laptop for distinctly different purposes than you use your phone for.

    6. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    7. CW

      It's very easy to go onto WhatsApp to deal with something which you can, quote unquote, "have as productive," and then tumble into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, so on and so forth. Whereas on your laptop, personally for me, I find that my, um, time is a lot more, uh, it's a lot more directed. It's definitely a lot more, uh, mindful. So yeah, it means phone can be down, face down. And obviously if you've got a MacBook, as we said, life hacks 101, the first one that we said was Apple products, if you've got iMessage linked up between your MacBook and your iPhone, you've got your two main platforms for messaging.

    8. Y(

      You've got your entire phone on-

    9. CW

      You've got your phone on your, on your-

    10. Y(

      Your laptop.

    11. CW

      Yeah, exactly. Which is unbelievable.

    12. Y(

      So I'm part of team fat thumbs as well. And I just can't, like I'm using a, I use an iPhone SE, which is the same size as a 5.

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. Y(

      And texting is just a nightmare every time. Like I, I really abhor-

    15. CW

      Yeah.

    16. Y(

      ... texting on my phone, but I only do it when I have to.

    17. CW

      Yeah.

    18. Y(

      So WhatsApp Web, at least it means that you can write out a more considered response 'cause you're not dealing with the arson or trying to text and thinking, "Well, I'm just gonna say."

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. Y(

      And act- I've got myself in trouble by sending s- short messages or trying to be too concise 'cause I can't be bothered to type it on. I know this is like, some people would be like, "Oh, first world problem." Like, yeah, I know. But I'd rather batch process WhatsApp, type it properly on a computer-

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. Y(

      ... not have to deal with a touch screen.

  4. 5:43 – 7:34

    Mac emoji shortcuts + Alfred emoji search for faster messaging

    1. CW

      Oh. On the side of that, Control, Command and Space on a MacBook, that brings up the emoji menu. Now, this is going to trigger Yusuf because he has an even more shortcutty way of getting them up.

    2. Y(

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      But for m- mere mortals like myself and most of you who are listening.

    4. Y(

      Oh, God. This is about where I realize how lame I am. So it's a great shortcut. The only reason I've set up a Alfred quicker version...... is because it takes about one to 1.5 seconds to load. And for me-

    5. CW

      It does take a little bit of time. That's-

    6. Y(

      ... it was-

    7. CW

      ... just too long for you. But yeah, can, if you have your MacBook up and you press control, command, and I'm gonna make sure that this is actually correct or else I'm gonna be giving people ... Yeah, control, command, and space.

    8. Y(

      It's quicker on yours actually.

    9. CW

      Uh-

    10. Y(

      Maybe I've just got a slower Mac.

    11. CW

      Um, and yeah, it brings up the full emoji keyboard. So, if you're writing statuses or WhatsApp web, iMessage, stuff like that.

    12. Y(

      And again, it's, it's indexed, so as you start typing watermelon, it will come up with-

    13. CW

      Yeah, it'll come up, yeah. It's, I used to have all of my commonly used ones in a note, on notes, and then go onto the note-

    14. Y(

      Oh.

    15. CW

      ... copy them out, and then I found control, command, and space, and I was like, "Do I even need to be there?" Um, right, lemon. What do you want to do next? What's your next lifehack?

    16. Y(

      So, my next one is... Oh, by the way, just before we go onto this, speaking of, uh, Splitwise-

    17. CW

      Yep.

    18. Y(

      ... and paying your friends-

    19. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. Y(

      ... Apple Pay Cash is coming out soon, which is gonna be a way that you can just iMessage your friends money.

    21. CW

      Okay.

    22. Y(

      So, again, with the paying the bill and stuff.

    23. CW

      It'll probably be all integrated into something like that, and you just send a text-

    24. Y(

      Could be lovely.

    25. CW

      ... and the text sends the money across.

    26. Y(

      So we could maybe even with meals and things, it could even be up to the kid

    27. NA

      (overlapping dialogue)

    28. CW

      One person pays, pays the bill.

    29. Y(

      And everyone just texts them the money, so-

    30. CW

      Yeah, or gives them cash.

  5. 7:34 – 10:25

    Alfred deep dive: Spotlight on steroids, workflows, tweeting, and Google search

    1. Y(

      Moving on. We talked about Alfred and the emoji search.

    2. CW

      Yeah.

    3. Y(

      So, you can either do control, command, space, or if you use Alfred and you've listened to one of the other Lifehacks where we mention it every time, 'cause it's incredible, is, um, a shortcut that s- you, so for me, if I'm just typing an emoji, spa- it, open Alfred, so command, space, E, and then just type the word.

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. Y(

      So, E, lemon. That will come up with the emoji. Now, another discovery I made on Alfred yesterday is the Google Search. So you can now do a built-in Google Search function. So let's say I want to type, I want to find my Ramadan article on Propane Fitness.

    6. CW

      Okay.

    7. Y(

      It gives you an inline response-

    8. CW

      Oh, okay.

    9. Y(

      ... within-

    10. CW

      I understand, yeah.

    11. Y(

      ... there, so-

    12. CW

      That's lovely. Yeah, that is cool.

    13. Y(

      So then if I want to copy the link, I just do that and then paste the link to people.

    14. CW

      So basically just everyone should download Alfred. I don't think we've actually gone top to bottom on what Alfred is. Can you very, very-

    15. Y(

      (laughs)

    16. CW

      ... very basically explain what it is-

    17. Y(

      Yeah, so-

    18. CW

      ... at its core level?

    19. Y(

      ... so if you've used a Mac and you've opened Spotlight, which is the universal search bar, that comes up with, it's a currency converter, calculator, file search, any of those things. Alfred is like that, but it's a bit more superpowered, and it also has-

    20. CW

      It's like, it's like that on steroids.

    21. Y(

      Like it on steroids, yeah.

    22. CW

      And, and speed at the same time.

    23. Y(

      Yeah, exactly. And so it's faster, on steroids, and there's workflows as well, so you can, it builds in certain keys or shortcuts or whatever, that'll do a bunch of things. So you can like, select a file and then Alfred will move it to the folder that you want it to.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. Y(

      Or you can open a, a website in about two key presses or whatever.

    26. CW

      Yeah.

    27. Y(

      So, and it's linked up with all of your-

    28. CW

      It's just, it's a very powerful shortcut tool, right?

    29. Y(

      It's great, like, you can call people with it, open bookmarks, um-

    30. CW

      I found the other day, there's a, a plugin that you can get for it where it'll tweet from Alfred. So I can just be on here now, and in fact I'm gonna do this for a second.

  6. 10:25 – 14:09

    Alfred power features: clipboard history and text snippets (text expansion)

    1. CW

      ... you've missed off some of the best stuff because it's too basic, so the, the most used things for me on Alfred are the fact that it gives you a clipboard history.

    2. Y(

      Oh, yeah.

    3. CW

      So, if you can, if you can imagine that when you copy something on a normal MacBook, you, you only can command and V, you can only paste-

    4. Y(

      You overwrite the thing you've copied.

    5. CW

      ... the most recent thing that you've done. Whereas Alfred gives you a clipboard of, I think it's the most recent 100.

    6. Y(

      You can change the number as well.

    7. CW

      Yeah, okay. So it gives you a history of pretty much everything of all time.

    8. Y(

      And it's in rich text format, so it doesn't strip the formatting.

    9. CW

      It copies the formatting through and all the rest of it.

    10. Y(

      So you get images, whatever. And if you want to strip the formatting, you hold down shift and then it does that, so-

    11. CW

      Yeah. It's about as slick of a workflow tool as you can get, but it's across everything, so whether you use your web s- uh, your, uh, computer for designing websites, whether you're a writer, even if you just use it for your, your MacBook for, um, doing articles or, um, university work, whatever it might be, there's something in this-

    12. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    13. CW

      ... that I think will improve... It is akin to speeding the trackpad, uh-

    14. Y(

      Makes me so happy to hear, b- b- because I recommended Alfred to Chris, and it's 20 quid or something?

    15. CW

      Yeah.

    16. Y(

      And obviously there's a sense of like, "Oh, shit." Like, "He's just got 20 quid."

    17. CW

      I've forced someone else to buy this, yeah.

    18. Y(

      If he doesn't get his value for money out of it, it's gonna be on my head.

    19. CW

      Which is the single most painful thought that you could have, isn't it?

    20. Y(

      Oh, God. Well-

    21. CW

      That someone else has spent money at your request.

    22. Y(

      (laughs)

    23. CW

      ... and it's not. It's not been of value to them. So yeah, that's, Alfred definitely ... There's another part of Alfred which is a game changer, which is the snippets. So, um, if like me, I do a lot of social media and a lot of the social media posts that I write have elements in them which are the same, Alfred will allow you the same as what's called text replacement on iPhone. Basically you can write a short, uh, selection of characters which will expand out into either a full word, a website, um, a-

    24. Y(

      So can you give us some examples?

    25. CW

      So for me, I use ... A lot of the time I use get, uh, get on guest list, text, space, dash, space, and then a phone number. Now, that phone number is different for each event that we use. So for me to go back and have to copy this out of my notes was really arduous previously. Whereas now I've got VV1 for voodoo, AA1 for aloha, MM1 for both the Manchester nights. And what-

    26. Y(

      Nice.

    27. CW

      It means that I don't need to go back in. It's just automatically pulled across. Now, what I've also got is much longer replies and responses. So I've got my, um-

    28. Y(

      Like the standard canned responses that you would give people.

    29. CW

      Yeah. So if I get ... If, if, if someone asks about, um, they want to send some product out or something like that, then I've got a canned response in there with line breaks, formatting, my address, my phone number, my telephone, all of the bits that the people need. And it's just done. Um, a, the, the expediency is-

    30. Y(

      Incredible. Yeah, so-

  7. 14:09 – 16:04

    iPhone text replacement + prank potential

    1. CW

      And it'll jump on the back. Yeah. Um, right. So text replacement on iPhone was actually one of mine. So what this is, is, um, the exact same thing as the text expander that we've spoken about on Alfred, but it's on your phone. So if you think ... Especially on your phone, a lot of the time, what are the things that you need to type in? So your phone number, your email address, addresses. Um, if you go ... This is on iPhone, I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for Android. Settings, general, keyboard, text replacement. And then if you go-

    2. Y(

      He's got the entire iPhone settings.

    3. CW

      I've got it mapped. It's in my mind palace. Yeah. Um, top right, press the, press the plus button. The phrase that you put in at the top is what you want it to say, and then the shortcut is optional, and that allows you to expand it out. So for me, I've got EML expands out to my email, MY NUM expands out to my phone number. And it means ... One of the main things is you're never ever going to get it wrong. If you've got it right that one time, you're never going to typo your email address or your phone number again because you've outsourced getting it correct to a previous point when you knew it was correct.

    4. Y(

      Exactly. So unless you've got it wrong then-

    5. CW

      Yeah. Well, in which case you're really fucked (laughing) and you've been fucked for a long time.

    6. Y(

      So you can also have some fun with it, like we did with Ben, where you change a or the or in to, "I really like it when you put your thumb in my bum."

    7. CW

      (laughs)

    8. Y(

      "Thanks very much." And then, (laughs) and then whenever they'll send a message to a friend or whatever-

    9. CW

      It's just complete gibberish.

    10. Y(

      Yeah.

    11. CW

      Yeah. Right. What have we got next? Okay, so-

    12. Y(

      Shall I just quickly run through the potential features of Alfred, just in case you're listening and you aren't, um, not sold.

    13. CW

      I think, I think we've sold Alfred on this one and we'll come back to advanced Alfred.

    14. Y(

      Okay. 'Cause you are right. I didn't, uh, I didn't expound on the-

    15. CW

      We'll go advanced Alfred on another one.

    16. Y(

      Fine. I mean, we ... As I say, I've got a one-hour webinar on Alfred that you can listen to, so.

  8. 16:04 – 20:03

    Cashback and savings: Quidco (and stacking deals)

    1. CW

      Yeah. Get in touch. Um, so next for me is Tubex.

    2. Y(

      Yes.

    3. CW

      Now, this is one that you actually got me onto.

    4. Y(

      You know, I think we are the chosen few at this point because Tubex

    5. CW

      So this is, again, we're on financial terms today, aren't we? You can tell it's a new tax year. Um, Quidco is a cashback site online and I couldn't believe that probably the most frugal person who I know, which is you-

    6. Y(

      (laughs)

    7. CW

      ... didn't know about it, and then increasingly, the more people that I speak to, they also don't know about it.

    8. Y(

      Mm.

    9. CW

      So I may be thinking it's not quite as renowned as-

    10. Y(

      So I, I, I set up an account in, I think, 2009, 2010 from my flatmate's advice and then just never used it.

    11. CW

      Yeah.

    12. Y(

      And I've realized that actually yeah, I missed out on so much potential.

    13. CW

      Probably close to £1,000 over the last like five years.

    14. Y(

      (laughs) So exciting.

    15. CW

      Yeah, so basically, basically Quidco is a site, a cashback site. Um, you can go through it to get, uh, to purchase pretty much anything online. Myprotein, Muscle Food, BT, uh, Sky, a lot of utilities, First Energy, all that sort of stuff, EDF, they're all on there.

    16. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    17. CW

      Um, jet2.com. There's pretty much everything from groceries to utilities, electronics, consumables, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, you get varying degrees of cashback amount. Now the, the big money is to be had when you sign up to, uh, stuff that's monthly direct debit, so things like switching your energy over, switching your, um... what are you looking at there?

    18. Y(

      You get £110 if you switch to First Utilities, for example.

    19. CW

      First Utility, yeah. Yeah, like I managed to batch together I think about £150 to go over to Sky, plus with like a new, new member joining thing, and it meant that my first six months with Sky was free and my, my next six months was 50% off. Like-

    20. Y(

      Great.

    21. CW

      So yeah, it was, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive. But yeah, it's, it's the easiest thing in the world to use this-

    22. Y(

      I'm just gonna use Alfred to create an, a calendar event so that I can remind myself to do that-

    23. CW

      Yeah.

    24. Y(

      ... for Virgin Broadband.

    25. CW

      There you go. I mean, it's just-

    26. Y(

      (laughs)

    27. CW

      ... the, the optimization is just through the roof at the moment, isn't it?

    28. Y(

      (laughs)

    29. CW

      So yeah, Quidco, um, Quidco's definitely one that everyone should be using. You, you're spending the money anyway so you may as well try and save it. Um, are you still Alfreding or do you want me to go again?

    30. Y(

      Uh, okay.

  9. 20:03 – 24:21

    Medium for higher-quality reading (and why search results trap you)

    1. CW

      Um, so I've only recently started using this site, and I can't remember who introduced me to it. I think I might have just found it online, but it's called Medium, and I've got Johnny and Yusuf onto it as well. Medium is essentially a hosting site for articles that kind of the same way that Reddit is a meta blog, this would be a meta, uh, I guess news/article site.

    2. Y(

      Mm-hmm. Kind of like Hub.

    3. CW

      So you gotta think, yeah, um, if you type in on Google, if you want to find out about, um, biohacking, let's say, and you type in biohacking for sleep, Google will rank your results based on relevance, but not actually based on quality. Whereas Medium is one platform which has a whole bunch of articles hosted on there. A-

    4. Y(

      Annoyingly, Google ranks it based on relevance to you as well-

    5. CW

      Yeah, so it's-

    6. Y(

      ... and your previous search terms, which just means you get stuck in this echo chamber and you don't actually get to-

    7. CW

      That's a big thing, isn't it?

    8. Y(

      Mm.

    9. CW

      Like there's a, a whole, um, a bunch of studies that have been done where they'll have one person will type in, like, "War in Iraq," and, or just, "Iraq," and then one person will get loads of war articles and the other person will get, like, "Want to travel to Iraq?"

    10. Y(

      Oh, really?

    11. CW

      Yeah, like, based on what their history's been 'cause you get this curated news feed.

    12. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    13. CW

      Um, so yeah, Medium, i- instead of it being based on relevance, Medium bases it on, um, other users' ratings, so there's kind of an up vote and a down vote. The same way, similar to the way that Reddit works, I suppose. And yeah, the, the content that's on there, for me personally, is fantastic. I haven't spent as much time on a site in ages. There's a lovely partner app for iPhone. It remembers your, um, reading place. It'll deliver you similar articles to ones that you've up voted previously and that you've, um, that you've been wa- uh, reading. It'll give you an estimated read time at the top as well, which I absolutely love.

    14. Y(

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      I think that-

    16. Y(

      It's lovely typography as well.

    17. CW

      Yeah, it's just really, really clear, very well put together, and some of the articles that are on there are fantastic. A lot about optimization, a lot of stuff to do with news. It's a bit Silicon Valley-ish.

    18. Y(

      (laughs)

    19. CW

      But I suppose any emerging platform like this is going to be. But there's literally everything on there, and I think you, as a-

    20. Y(

      It's more intellectual than something like Reddit as well.

    21. CW

      Oh yeah, 100%.

    22. Y(

      And so-

    23. CW

      It's, it's quite serious to a degree, but I found out the other day, so I was reading about, um, what the scientific basis is for why Snapchat filters make girls look more attractive.

    24. Y(

      Okay.

    25. CW

      Really, really interesting.

    26. Y(

      O- Oh, I guess it clears skin blemishes so it achieves the same objective as makeup does, like to start to hide blemish.

    27. CW

      That does, that does. It's, um, larger eyes convey honesty, youthfulness, which is male to female trait. Interestingly, female to male, males need to have smaller eyes because it's, um, uh, maturity-

    28. Y(

      Okay.

    29. CW

      ... and masculinity. Um, cheeks blushed, lips blushed, uh, happens also on the Snapchat filters, which is, um, indicator of readiness for sex. And then it started talking about (sighs) what'll happen apparently over time in a society that values particular characteristics is you get, and I'm gonna butcher this, I think it's recursive Fisherian, um, recursive Fisherian, uh, uh, progress or something like that. What happens is characteristics which are attractive become exaggerated over time to the point in which they become caricatured. So you've got to imagine if y- if everyone in the world likes women who have big boobs-

    30. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

  10. 24:21 – 25:40

    Minimalist kitchen hack: the “one indestructible” Pyrex bowl

    1. Y(

      Very interesting. So mine is a Pyrex bowl.

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. Y(

      Large Pyrex bowl. Cost me about 1 pound 50 back in 2008. Had it for 10 years.

    4. CW

      This is the only thing you eat out of it, isn't it?

    5. Y(

      It's the only thing I ever eat out of, and, um, it ac- like, I... (sighs) I invited my girlfriend round for the first time to have a, share a meal with me, and I realized, like-

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. Y(

      ... actually, we're both gonna have to eat out of this Pyrex bowl.

    8. CW

      (laughs)

    9. Y(

      Like, this is how dysfunctional as a human I am. So, um, so, we're, we, we've got other plates and things now, but like, that is just, 'cause it's so easily cleanable. It's indestructible.

    10. CW

      Yeah.

    11. Y(

      Microwave it. It's big enough to cook large, like, bulk food in.

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. Y(

      Um, you can do cakes in it, literally anything. It could be a mixing bowl. So really-

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. Y(

      ... if you're gonna... 'Cause so I saw this, I saw an article by a guy who has 21 possessions.

    16. CW

      Okay.

    17. Y(

      And that's it. And I imagine it, he'll have like a spork and a Pyrex bowl-

    18. CW

      Pyrex bowl.

    19. Y(

      ... and that'll be his, his kitchenware. And then he'll have like a pair of boots, and-

    20. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    21. Y(

      So if you wanna go full minimal.

    22. CW

      Pyrex bowls could ... But I mean, two Pyrex bowls would be-

    23. Y(

      Even better.

    24. CW

      ... yeah.

    25. Y(

      Yeah.

    26. CW

      Potentially twice as good.

    27. Y(

      So I mean, the, just, again, the washing up time, any of these things. There's no intricacy about it. It's just-

    28. CW

      Done.

    29. Y(

      Yeah.

  11. 25:40 – 31:15

    Outsource errands: at-home haircuts and mobile car valeting (plus machine-wash warning)

    1. CW

      I like that a lot. That's cool. Right. Okay, so up next for me is something that we've been, I, I've done for absolutely ages, which is bypassing going to the hairdresser's and getting my hair cut either in the office or at home. So pretty much every single hairdresser that you go to will also work privately. So all that you need to do, go into a salon, move to a new city or y- you're in a current, uh, location where you've been going for a little while, speak to the stylist that you usually deal with. Ask them if they do home visits more ti- like privately. More times than not, they will do. And then get them round to your house or get them to your office. You don't have to leave where you are. Yeah, you need to clean up afterwards. That's a negative. But on the plus side, it'll be usually between 50 and 60% of the cost, uh, an awful lot less inconvenience.

    2. Y(

      Cheaper?

    3. CW

      Yeah.

    4. Y(

      I would've thought they would charge you for a call-out.

    5. CW

      No, not at all.

    6. Y(

      Bloody hell. Okay, and do, do, do they just do all the guys in the office?

    7. CW

      Yeah. So we, we have one person who'll come round, and there's been periods where she's done back-to-back like four guys, four of the guys in the office, and... Did you just grin at back-to-back four guys?

    8. Y(

      (laughs)

    9. CW

      Yeah, you did. (laughs) Um, yeah, she'll come round, and, and that, that's it, and you're there working away on your phone. You don't need to leave work. Um, and on the same as that is home visit car washes. So rather than having to drive to go to the local hand car wash or the Shell garage to get your car machine washed. You shouldn't be getting your car machine washed, by the way, and this is what the guy who does our valeting said, because the brushes break through the resin on the top of the paint cover for your-

    10. Y(

      Ah.

    11. CW

      ... for your car. So if you actually look at your car, the side of your car, if you've been getting it done with a machine wash, in the sunshine, you'll see that there's these tiny little lines that bounce off the sunlight. And what that's due to is the fact that these brushes are too harsh, and they actually chop away at the resin.

    12. Y(

      Rips away at it. That's-

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. Y(

      ... interesting.

    15. CW

      Exactly. So if you can, if you're in the office or, or if you're at home, some people like the idea of washing their car. Like, that's cool. I can see it as a therapeutic, uh, activity, the same way some people actually enjoy Hoovering the house. But for me, it's not, so we've got a guy who comes round-

    16. Y(

      Outsource.

    17. CW

      Yeah. We've got a guy who comes round, and I think typically for a hand car wash, you'd be talking about maybe £5, or inside and out, you'd, like for a mini valet, you'd be talking about £10.

    18. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CW

      So he'll come round and do, I think inside's maybe seven and inside and out's 15, but the quality's significantly higher.

    20. Y(

      Can you give me this guy's-

    21. CW

      Yeah. (laughs)

    22. Y(

      ... details?

    23. CW

      I'll give you afterwards.

    24. Y(

      Bloody hell.

    25. CW

      Um-

    26. Y(

      'Cause there's a place in Wallsend that does the best hand job in town.

    27. CW

      (laughs)

    28. Y(

      According to, uh-

    29. CW

      I've seen the sign.

    30. Y(

      (laughs) According to their sign, and you can see that they've, they've realized their mistake, and they've had to like-

  12. 31:15 – 33:16

    BetterTouchTool: window snapping, hot corners, and app-specific automation on Mac

    1. Y(

      ... is BetterTouchTool.

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. Y(

      We didn't discuss this on the first one, did we? No.

    4. CW

      No. No.

    5. Y(

      So on a Windows computer, th- this i- this feature is actually something that I've seen so many Apple users just jeer over just because they thought that it was never gonna come to Mac, which is on a Windows computer, you drag a window to the left or to the right, and it divides the window or it snaps it to that side.

    6. CW

      Yeah, th- this, this has been around for quite a while on, uh-

    7. Y(

      On Windows.

    8. CW

      ... on Windows, right? Yeah.

    9. Y(

      Yeah, well, I, I don't know how you'd describe it, but where you drag it to the top and it, it makes the window half the size again.

    10. CW

      It's like a window, a window optimizing, um, uh, shaping tool, right?

    11. Y(

      Yeah, so it shapes it to one side or the other side or whatever. BetterTouchTool allows you to do that. It also gives you a lot more customizability over things like hot corners, so which corner you put the trackpad in the, on the Mac. Um, you can create key sequences and things. So I've got one that's like if I've got a tab open, um, I can move it to another space by holding down Command and pressing, double-tapping right or left.

    12. CW

      Okay.

    13. Y(

      Um, there's also things for, yeah, maximizing windows left and right with keyboard shortcuts, compressing all the pictures in a PowerPoint. So you've got PowerPoint open, you wanna make the file size smaller. So if you're a student and you're downloading loads of PowerPoints and they're all like 10, 15 megabytes each, very soon that's gonna fill up your computer. So BetterTouchTool will give you a, a way to set up a workflow so that you can just, it goes through all the pictures, compresses them, makes them smaller, saves the file down, drops the file size of your PowerPoint presentation. Um, launching certain apps, so I ca- I launch Evernote by, like, Command-Shift-J.

    14. CW

      It's a shortcut tool, isn't it? It's the-

    15. Y(

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      ... it's the other side to Alfred, I suppose, to a degree.

    17. Y(

      Kind of, yeah. And, and you can make this app-specific too. And if you have a new Mac, you can i- integrate with the Touch Bar, so you can completely customize all the shortcuts and Touch Bar and that kind of thing.

    18. CW

      Okay. I, um-

    19. Y(

      Just looking at birds on Instagram.

    20. CW

      I'm not trying to think.

  13. 33:16 – 38:55

    Melatonin as a sleep reset tool (UK availability, dosing, and shift-work risks)

    1. Y(

      (laughs)

    2. CW

      I'm trying... So this is a girl who I know also has the melatonin gummies, which is what I was going to speak about next.

    3. Y(

      Oh, hello.

    4. CW

      Uh, but I can't remember the name of the company. The, it'll be in the description below. So melatonin, in fact, I'll put this over to you.

    5. Y(

      I'm just gonna use the Alfred, uh, search GS search function.

    6. CW

      Yummy, that's it. Yummy. No, so you can't get, you cannot buy melatonin on Amazon in the UK. You can buy products branded as melatonin, but actually it's 5-HTP-

    7. Y(

      Oh, dicks.

    8. CW

      ... or it's something else. Yeah, you can't get it in the UK, and if you try to buy it in the UK, it'll say that you can't. Yeah, see?

    9. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    10. CW

      You've just got Add to Wish List there, or See All Buying Options. So that's not-

    11. Y(

      This is Amazon America, yeah.

    12. CW

      Yeah. Well, there you go. And it won't ship to the UK either. So, um, can you briefly explain what melatonin is?

    13. Y(

      So melatonin is the sleep neurotransmitter. It's just, uh, it's the metabolite of serotonin. So serotonin metabolizes into melatonin, which is just what's released naturally when you go to sleep. Now, you can supplement with it, which will promote your natural production of melatonin and help you to sleep better. And in the studies, it looks like melatonin reduces your sleep requirement by about an hour in some, according to some data. So it's nice to use as a way to reset your sleep cycle if you've either been traveling or you've had a late one and you need to kind of reset things a little bit.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. Y(

      It's not something that I would take every day, but it's useful to have as a backup.

    16. CW

      I agree.

    17. Y(

      Like a sort of nuclear warhead.

    18. CW

      So Matthew Walker from Why We Sleep, um, he talks about melatonin use, and says that his sole, um, advice for it, or his primary advice for it, should I say, is for resetting sleeping patterns. And that would be particularly useful if you are someone who does shift work, someone who has varied working hours like myself, or someone who travels a lot and is potentially moving through different time zones. So I use these melatonin gummies. I've got no idea. Don't ask me how. It's called Yummy, which is the company that does them. Uh, a link will be in the show notes below. I have no idea how they're retailing them in the UK, because as far as I'm aware, melatonin isn't available. You can't even get melatonin, I don't think, on prescription. It's just not available in the UK.

    19. Y(

      Mm, you can get it on prescription, but you, you have to have a pretty good reason for it.

    20. CW

      That's if you've had a severe as- like, severe insomnia, 'cause I went and spoke to my doctor about this about six months ago.

    21. Y(

      Yeah, I'm not sure even doctors would prescribe it to someone who's not autistic or, um, have a child developmental problem.

    22. CW

      Really?

    23. Y(

      And I, I think as an adult, I don't know if they would give you melatonin. I think they'd probably give you zopiclone or some kind of sleeping pill.

    24. CW

      Okay.

    25. Y(

      But yeah, hard to say.

    26. CW

      Which is potentially, is that a, a less holis- holistic, less natural approach? Do you think?

    27. Y(

      Less natural and it's been implicated in-... all-cause mortality, which is interesting. So-

    28. CW

      All-cause mortality?

    29. Y(

      So like, you will, you will die of any cause. You, you're, you're more likely to die of any cause if you take more than three sleeping pills a year.

    30. CW

      Oh my God. (laughs)

  14. 38:55 – 41:58

    Energy switching made easy: Bulb’s simple tariff + referral credit

    1. Y(

      Next is my current electricity supplier-

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. Y(

      ... called Bulb.

    4. CW

      Oh, God.

    5. Y(

      Now, I was with Npower, who, Npower, if you're listening, you are terrible. Like, I looked them up on Trustpilot, 0.4 out of 10 rating.

    6. CW

      Oh my God.

    7. Y(

      So (laughs) -

    8. CW

      What?

    9. Y(

      They're just, they've just been inconsistent.

    10. CW

      Surely they could just get some of their mates to go on-

    11. Y(

      (laughs)

    12. CW

      ... and give them a ten star, like, and get better.

    13. Y(

      I think there's just such an overwhelming majority of people that are just like, "Zero, zero."

    14. CW

      Ah, awesome.

    15. Y(

      Um, so they're, they're really awful. And I switched to Bulb. I went on the thing and I was like, "Okay, um, switch to Bulb." It's like, "Hey, put in your address. Here's what your quote will be." And it, it's consistently the cheapest tariff possible, and they only have one tariff. Npower have about 150 tariffs based on, like-

    16. CW

      It's so weird.

    17. Y(

      It's designed to obfuscate it and confuse you because they've had a hard life.

    18. CW

      Is that why it's ... ? It's like, "January 5th to 11th."

    19. Y(

      Fit, fixed, yeah. Whereas Bulb is, is the cheapest and they only have one. It's just like flat, low, cheap.

    20. CW

      Yep.

    21. Y(

      And it's because they, they, everything that they do is from renewable sources.

    22. CW

      Okay.

    23. Y(

      And as a result, they get a huge amount of angel investors and government funding.

    24. CW

      Yeah, and the kickback is massive.

    25. Y(

      They're just piling, piling into it. Yeah. So basically, that happened. I filled in the form, which was like a page. It, it was like four fields to fill in and I pressed OK. And it was like, "There you go, you've switched to Bulb." It was like (censored) . So I called them up and I was like, "Hi, um ..."

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. Y(

      So in fact, the, right, I, I gave them a call on the number on the website and it just went, "Hello, this is George speaking. Thanks for calling Bulb. How can I help you?" And you're like, "Wha- wha-"

    28. CW

      Hang on, where's the 45 multiple option things for me to-

    29. Y(

      Yeah, like straight through to a human, like, "Oh, oh, I'm a bit taken aback here."

    30. CW

      It wasn't ready. I was, I was prepared for 10 minutes-

  15. 41:58 – 45:02

    Travel bookings: booking.com’s interface, review density, and Genius discounts

    1. CW

      Yeah, yeah. Cool. Um, on a similar vein to that, booking.com.

    2. Y(

      Ah, yeah.

    3. CW

      Unbelievable. I don't know...I don't know who else. Like hotels.com I suppose or ElateRooms are all right, but booking.com for me is by far and away the best place to book hotels.

    4. Y(

      Have you used Trivago?

    5. CW

      Trivago? I haven't, actually.

    6. Y(

      I've not either.

    7. CW

      Have you not heard-

    8. Y(

      I've seen the adverts for it.

    9. CW

      Yeah. I've seen the adverts for it as well. But booking.com is the best interface, large selection of hotels, always, um, got good ratings from users. So the same reason that I like to use Amazon is because there's a high amou- a high degree of user feedback on all of the products and the same thing goes for booking.com.

    10. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CW

      So there's an awful lot of previous customers that leave feedback about where you're going to go and stay. And this mediates the, um, search priority that you get. So you get ones that might be a three star, but's like nine out of 10 or one that's a four star, but five out of 10. And the four star will be ranked further down. And it does, it does stuff based on, um, the number of options and all the rest of it.

    12. Y(

      Is the star determined by objective measures?

    13. CW

      Yeah. Yeah. So the actual star is the, um-

    14. Y(

      Like the amenities and number of bathrooms or whatever?

    15. CW

      Yeah. Whatever criteria it is that hotels are gauged on, but then there's a user rating which isn't, and you can sort by user rating.

    16. Y(

      So it's not like it's a nine out of 10 for a three star?

    17. CW

      No. Although customers will have used that in their review because the three star presumably will be cheaper than

    18. Y(

      You're not a bad dancer for an Englishman. You know, it's not-

    19. CW

      Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing. No, I understand. Um, so yeah, booking.com. And then if you pound it enough, I think it's if you've spent about 500 pounds on it, you get something called genius level discount, which is 10% off all valid, um, stays-

    20. Y(

      Forever?

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. Y(

      What? So once you've spent 500 quid on booking.com-

    23. CW

      I think... I don't know what the, I don't know what the, uh, criteria is, but basically when I was in Thailand, I was using booking.com for everything. And partway through my, partway through my stay, they said, "Congratulations, you've now, um, uh, you're now eligible for genius discount." And basically there's some hotels that do sign up to it and some hotels which don't. But recently I've just booked my hotels for LA where I'm going in a couple of weeks, and Best Western... LA is so expensive. Best Western for nine nights should have been 18 or like 17.60 and I got it for like 15.30 or something like that.

    24. Y(

      Wow. Okay.

    25. CW

      So-

    26. Y(

      Great.

    27. CW

      Yeah. It's, it's awesome. Um...

    28. Y(

      I've used booking.com as well. It's-

    29. CW

      And you can get...

    30. Y(

      ... it's good.

  16. 45:02 – 49:46

    Media playback + focus music: IINA player and Anjunadeep for working

    1. Y(

      So this is called Iina, I-I-N-A.

    2. CW

      Okay.

    3. Y(

      It is a wrapper, a user interface wrapper for a, um, something called MPlayer, I think, which is a, a Mac aud- uh, Mac multimedia video audio player.

    4. CW

      Okay.

    5. Y(

      The reason I like it is, again, keyboard shortcuts, very simple, very lightweight. It's like really small file size, opens instantly. Um, it saves the place where you were at. So you open... If you're watching a long lecture or something-

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. Y(

      ... and you close the window, if you open it again in a month's time, it'll just restore back to where you were at before.

    8. CW

      Okay.

    9. Y(

      Um, I know a lot of people use VLC.

    10. CW

      Yeah, that's what I've got.

    11. Y(

      I've switched over from VLC to this just because it's, it's just so much better. You can change the speed and the, the volume and everything and skip forward and back five seconds or 30 seconds with the arrow keys.

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. Y(

      It's all just so instant and it just feels like you're just plugged into the, the media rather than having to (techno music plays)

    14. CW

      It's weird, isn't it? On a Mac, especially on a MacBook that QuickTime is just so fucking clunky and shit.

    15. Y(

      Oh. It's... And it has, it... And they seem to have this deal with QuickTime that they've had for like however many years.

    16. CW

      Well, it's owned by Apple, I think.

    17. Y(

      Is it?

    18. CW

      Yeah, I think so.

    19. Y(

      Ah, okay. Do you remember when Windows used to do RealPlayer?

    20. CW

      Yeah.

    21. Y(

      That was a prick.

    22. CW

      Yeah. That was shit. But yeah, Media Player Classic if you're on Windows is what you need. That's the... Or you can get VLC also. Um, but Media Player Classic is about as lightweight as you can get. And you can do stuff like you're, you're talking about there.

    23. Y(

      Mm-hmm.

    24. CW

      Which is where you, uh, you can actually overshoot the audio volume. So you can do like a pre-amp, so you can actually have volume, audio volume at 150%. Obviously it'll degrade the quality, but it'll make it louder or quieter.

    25. Y(

      (laughs)

    26. CW

      Yeah, it just sounds like, sounds like noise. Uh, right. Let's get two more each and we will finish up. Um, so I'm gonna do a bit of a plug here, not for anyone who's affiliated with me, but just something that I love called Anjuna Deep. Um, so Anjuna Beats is Above & Beyond's record label. They also have a podcast, which is called Group Therapy and Anjuna Deep-

    27. Y(

      Group Therapy with Above & Beyond.

    28. CW

      (laughs) That's it. Exactly it. Really good.

    29. Y(

      (laughs)

    30. CW

      Um, Anjuna Deep is the deep label portion of that. So if you can imagine what... for anyone I'm trying to explain what like deep progressive house music is to people who don't understand, it's slow, melodic, non droppy trance for want of a better term. It's very, very ethereal, gentle flowing mu- music.

  17. 49:46 – 1:06:52

    Food & hygiene practicals + productivity philosophy: rice cooker, MuscleFood, deodorant balm, working from zero, and Youpak

    1. Y(

      Offline, rice cooker.

    2. CW

      Yeah (laughs) .

    3. Y(

      Have I, have, this isn't the previous one.

    4. CW

      We haven't done rice cooker, no.

    5. Y(

      I need to order the life hacks to c- to do the ones that we've discussed already.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. Y(

      As we start to do more and more of these.

    8. CW

      Yeah.

    9. Y(

      Rice cooker, you can pick one up for 30 quid new, 10 pounds on Facebook Marketplace.

    10. CW

      (laughs)

    11. Y(

      Um, (laughs) which is another life hack. I don't know if it is a hack, but-

    12. CW

      It's not. It's a life curse, isn't it?

    13. Y(

      ... it causes me more hassle than ... (laughs)

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. Y(

      It's definitely a failed life hack for the, uh-

    16. CW

      Yeah, definitely.

    17. Y(

      But yeah, so rice cooker just makes perfect rice every time. Like, how easy is it to mess up? It, it ... w- um, this is not a rhetorical question. It is very easy to mess up rice in a pan.

    18. CW

      I've never found this.

    19. Y(

      I don't.

    20. CW

      Darren's, Darren's wife's sister, Hannah, cannot cook rice. Like, can't do it.

    21. Y(

      Really? See, I was either-

    22. CW

      Can't cook rice.

    23. Y(

      ... overshoot or forget it or whatever.

    24. CW

      But she can bake cakes. And you as well. Like, you, you're Arab?

    25. Y(

      Yeah.

    26. CW

      Do you know what I mean?

    27. Y(

      It's true.

    28. CW

      Like, rice is, rice is literally in your blood.

    29. Y(

      Well, so, so, I mean, I've got, I've got the, the hang of it now, of making rice in a pan, but then it's like, it's just unnecessarily difficult-

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:06:48

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