Crossed Wires

Content Warning: This episode talks about the potential harm of social media in quite some detail, and whilst no details are discussed, we do make mention of people ending their lives as a result of social media. In future, we will endeavour to add such warnings to the front of any episode audio too. The pandemic hit the theatre industry particularly hard, and my guest this week had a number of pe...

Over the last few years, I’ve become much more of what could be considered a ‘Gamer’, being a Mac user somewhat excluded me from modern gaming and I’d play much more casual games on my iPhone and iPad. After picking up a Nintendo Switch, I started to enjoy playing mainstream titles again, and as a result became interested in the gaming industry itself. My guest, Matthew Bliss, runs ‘The Dead Drop’...

Over the last ten years or so, we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of messaging platforms. With Google recently putting massive pressure on Apple to adopt the RCS standard, I wanted to have a discussion about the security and privacy of the various platforms, especially when we compare them to plain-old SMS. This episode came about in part due to a Twitter exchange with The Mac Observer, on the...

There’s a very common saying within the IT support space, that there are two types of users; those who have lost data and those who are going to. The only way to stop data loss is to make sure you have a robust backup strategy. Because backup is so important, with both Jae and James having personal experience with losing valuable data and now being Backblaze users ourselves, we go on a fanatically...

As energy costs are at an all-time high, many people are looking for ways to cut costs and become more self-sufficient. When it comes to solar power, there are effectively two ways to do this, a whole-home solar setup that requires a reasonably complex installation, usually by professionals, or a more off-grid approach that isn’t wired into your home’s electrical systems. Rees made a fascinating v...

When I first joined Twitter, I remember the excitement and intrigue over this new platform, using great third-party apps and having intelligent conversations with people. Sadly, those days look like they have already, or are soon going to be, gone and lots of people are looking for a new place for their social interactions.  Enter Mastodon, an open-source social platform powered by ActivityPub and...

Yes, this is a podcast episode of a podcast with two podcasters talking about podcasting, say that as quickly as you can and you may win a prize!* You’ll have heard Arielle’s name pop up on many episodes of this show, as she’s been such an incredible supporter of both the show and me personally as a podcaster through the SquadPod community, as well as other great resources and her energetic Twitte...

When you ask most people about email, they probably show a genuine lack of interest, it’s not new and it’s not fancy. But, email still plays a hugely important part in our daily lives, and even more so in business. We talk with Helen about the concept of your digital identity, and how owning your email domain and being the customer, not the product, can make a huge difference to your email, calend...

As many of you know, the Amiga A600 was my childhood computer, so when I saw Ravi doing a DJ set in ‘The Cave’ with Neil a few years back, I was mesmerised. I’m not musical, but music technology has always been an interest. So it was genuinely exciting to chat with Ravi about how he uses these incredible retro systems. Ravi also talks about the recent Amiga 37 event in Germany, DJing for a horror...

Amanda Sloan is a friend I’ve known for years, actually longer than I’ve known James; I’ve known both for a long time. Amanda and I first met when I replied to her tweet about a hippy village floating on the water. I once met her and her partner Thom for coffee when they came through my state; I also worked with Amanda on the podcast network Dragon Powered Studios. Amanda co-runs Geek Herring, is...

It’s my first time hosting a podcast since my 19 months hiatus from my former show. I had a great time returning to podcasting, and I believe James wasn’t too disappointed in my skills. Our guest was someone I was going to interview on my previous show but sadly didn’t have the chance to at the time due to a job change that took my time away from podcasting. We talked with Drew Ackerman about his...

One of the things that frustrate me the most about my eyesight issues, along with a few other problems, is that I can’t tinker with hardware as much as I’d like to. So, when I discovered Action Retro on YouTube, I admit I became hooked on Sean’s videos of doing unthinkable things to old Macs and many other systems. Sean and I discuss what inspired him to get started with his channel, some of his m...

I’ll be the first to admit my music taste doesn’t usually extend to Hip Hop, beyond some very cheesy 90s Christian tracks. Still, when Manny reached out via the fantastic SquadPod community, I knew we had to chat about how technology and Hip Hop go hand in hand, and how Hip Hop has influenced so much and can have such a positive impact on the world. It’s very clear from chatting with Manny that Hi...

A lot of my memories of being younger revolve around summer holidays to the seaside, where there was always a reasonably well stocked arcade not far away. I’d spend a lot of my summer spending money on various games, which at the time were so engaging. This week, a chat with Alex who has a huge collection of arcade machines, and is working with Neil from RMC Retro to open a wonderful interactive a...

It wouldn’t be an Apple Event without every tech podcast in the world gathering to share their thoughts on what the fruit company had to announce. We’ve tried to take a bit of a different approach and share what we genuinely thought was interesting, as well as our personal views on whether you should upgrade. Before we recorded, we opened up a little discussion thread on our original Substack site...

Although we’re not a retro-exclusive show, we do seem to have a lot of guests from the retro community; this week is no different as it’s my delight to be joined by Dan Wood and Ravi Abbott who make up two-thirds of The Retro Hour podcast. Rather than looking at specific systems, we had a more broad chat about what makes retro so fascinating for us all, what some of our favourite systems are, as w...

Yes, it’s another retro-themed episode, but with a focus on not only vintage Macs but also the world of desktop publishing and pre-press that was shaken up by the arrival of the Macintosh and tools like Aldus PageMaker and QuarkXpress. It was a genuine pleasure to chat with Dan, I hope you find his experience and knowledge as informative and entertaining as I did. I’d also like to say a huge thank...

For those of you wondering about the title of this episode, well you’ll have to listen to figure that out. Pig eating habits aside, it was a genuine pleasure to chat with Ryan about his time supporting various Sim-related titles by Maxis, as well as hearing the rather innovative way he got the job. We also take a look at a console that, I have to admit, I didn’t know much about until this episode....

With such a diverse range of stories being told online through platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more, it’s crucial that we look at the journey to make the ability to share those stories more accessible. It was great to chat with Pam about how things have changed so much in filmmaking over the years and get her valuable insights into why art and storytelling are so important in our dig...

As I hope comes across in the episodes, great audio is something I really believe is essential for any content creator; there’s nothing worse than a great-looking YouTube video that has audio that sounds like it was recorded in the bathroom. That’s where the new Vocaster range from Focusrite comes in, and so with the kind help of Arielle from SquadCast, I was able to arrange a chat with Dan to go...

As many of our regular listeners will know, I’m a bit of a smart home addict and my platform of choice is Apple’s HomeKit. To dive a bit deeper into the platform I invited Stephen Robles from the HomeKit Insider podcast to come and chat about the good, the missing, and the frustrating parts of the HomeKit ecosystem in 2022. What’s been your HomeKit experience so far, good or bad, we’d love to hear...

For someone who can’t (due to my eyesight) drive, I think it’s fair to say I’ve picked up fairly substantial interest in the future of electric vehicles, as they’re the foundation needed for fully self-driving cars that someone like me could own. Alex kindly came back to the show, albeit in a different role, to discuss where we are in 2022 regarding electric cars. We take a look at who’s making ve...

Suppose you’ve watched any amount of online video, particularly on YouTube. In that case, you’ll likely have seen those ads for the ‘miracle’ tech products that claim to be able to do anything from cut your power bills to turning your internet up to 11. In reality, most of these are scams and don’t meet even half of the claims they make. That’s why I invited Krazy Ken all the way from the secret C...

This is an episode I’m really excited to have been able to record, and I’d like to start by thanking Chris Angel for their willingness to come and talk to me so openly about the things they’ve learned as both a member of the LGBTQAI+ community and as someone who is studying UI and UX design. Accessibility is a real passion of mine, as someone with a disability I’ve always been keen to make sure si...

Not long after speaking with Cody from Mac Telecom Networks about all things UniFi , I reached out to Alex at HostIFi, as I’d heard about their cloud hosted UniFi controllers from several of the UniFi centric YouTubers I follow, to see if we could do a bit of a follow up. Alex very kindly agreed and we sat down to have a chat about what HostIFi is and to understand a bit more about the use case an...