TIC TEK TOE

Welcome to another very occasional episode of the Tic-Tek-Toe podcast with your hosts Marcel Gagné and Evan Leibovitch. In this episode (037), the duo dives into the hardware and software defining 2026, exploring the rising appeal of compact, sealed AI mini-PCs as the perfect workaround for the sticker shock of modern desktop GPUs and RAM .They also tackle the ongoing debate between paying for mul...

This is Episode 036 of Tik Tek Toe. Join Marcel and Evan for a caffeine-fueled rollercoaster, from the woes of malfunctioning computers and the magic (and limits) of tech support, Superman lore, running AI models on your own PC hardware, privacy, copyright, the ever expanding wild west of open-source language models, and nostalgic TC tangents, this one is for you.

This is episode 035 of Tic Tek Toe , the premier podcast of whatever captures our attention from one week to the next. Today, Marcel and Evan discuss modern movie musicals (Wicked, Better Man, A Complete Unknown, and more), including great and not so great musicals, not to mention the unmentionable. We talk about making real, honest to goodness movie theatre popcorn at home, and how to make popcor...

In today's episode, Marcel and Evan solve all the world's problems, or they don't. This is our post-US election episode, so be warned. We cover browser wars, colas, root beer, cream soda, and other soft drinks, Evan's trip to Florida, understanding why someone would vote for Trump, or not, moving to Bluesky, X/Twitter battles between John Oliver and JK Rowling, and more. Oh, and Evan thinks he can...

This is TIC TEK TOE, Episode 033. In this episode, Marcel and Evan cover a lot of ground, from the recent solar eclipse, the Niagara Falls state of emergency, the allure of being there vs watching it on TV (or YouTube), always being connected, smart contact lenses, the Meta Quest 3, and mixed reality, government overreach, video games, wokeness vs based issues in the media and gaming, Sweet Baby,...

This is episode 032 of the TIC TEK TOE podcast, featuring Marcel Gagné and Evan Leibovitch. Today, the boys are talking about why the whole FOSS world has become so boring, and why there may be a solution to that boredom and a renewal of that old open-source excitement courtesy of AI. Links Marcel's "Free Thinkers at Large" Discord server. Chat with us here: https://discord.gg/STbxVA...

This is episode 031 or your beloved TIC TEK TOE podcast. Marcel and Evan decide to, at the very least, attempt to take TIC TEK TOE direct to YouTube. While here, they discuss the new tech being used to record, namely Wave. Video, along with virtual reality games (Marcel got himself a PSVR2 headset for his PS5 game console), ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, guardrails, blogging, and attempts to fi...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 030. Marcel and Evan dissect the topic of art created by Artificial Intelligence using tools like Dall-E, Midjourney, and Marcel's current favorite, Stable Diffusion, and try to see if this is the beginning of the end of the world. Most specifically, the world of art, for artists.  What does the word, "the", mean to an AI? Also, the boys compare notes on what they...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 029. Marcel and Evan riff, again, on the subject of virtual worlds, wherein Marcel gets ordained as a priest in an imaginary church, gets an honorary doctorate at an imaginary university (you can call him Dr. Marcel, if you like), and obtains dual citizenship from an imaginary country. Between the two of them, they discuss what any of this means in a world that is beco...

This is "TIC TEK TOE" episode 028 and one for which I (Marcel) must apologize up front. I decided to wear my gaming headset and just assumed that it would be just fine for the podcast. Instead, it's noise cancelling microphone cancelled far more than it should have and my audio sounds clipped and occasionally vanishes into the pits of wherever audio goes. Evan, on the other hand sounds just fine.

This is episode 027 of TIC TEK TOE, your light-hearted look at whatever comes into your hosts' heads. In today's episode, Evan and Marcel discuss slowly getting back out into the (hopefully increasingly) post pandemic world and what it feels like to travel right now. Evan heads east into Quebec and Marcel heads into Niagara Falls for an overnight stay. They discuss wine, feel-good television as a...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 26! Marcel and Evan discuss why neither owns a Che Guevara poster, hard to find centrists, progressophobia, why you really should not feed the trolls, platforming and deplatforming, empathy, moral panics, the future of work, the coming collaps of the commercial real estate market, Zoom, real live people, embracing avatars, Yoda (not baby Yoda), and dark circles. In sho...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 25! Woo Hoo!  Marcel and Evan discuss the ethics of killing NPCs in video games, simulation theory wars, and why an otherwise respectable university would sabotage its standing in the Linux community. That last bit is juxtaposed with Evan making a blasphemous presentation at the Toronto Linux User Group, GTALUG. The boys also cover running graphical Linux apps in...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 024, the episode they said we would never do. Marcel and Evan discuss cheese, because . . . well . . . CHEESE! The boys discuss their favourite types, chat about declining attendance in US churches and synagogues and whether Trump has anything to do with it. Because NFTs are a thing now, Marcel and Evan find ways to make fun of them, while decrying the insane price of...

This is episode 023 of TIC TEK TOE, and we're calling this one "The Evil Episode" because it's all about evil, specifically who is evil, who isn't, and just what constitutes evil these days. Once upon a time, especially to those in the Free and Open Source Software (aka FOSS) world, it was Microsoft. These days, however, there's Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (aka GAFA) fighting it out f...

This is episode 022 of TIC TEK TOE. Marcel and Evan discuss cracking open a cold one, in this case fizzy water, renovation porn, the stock market along with the latest sort-selling GameStop madness, the awesome power of Reddit, the possibly even more awesome power of Elon Musk, Signal, MeWe, Animaniacs, and PSYCH. Oh, and Schitt's Creek, too! Links from the Show Sodastream discussion, spawned from...

In this final episode of 2020, number 21, Marcel and Evan ask what the big deal is with one day changes of date while really wanting to see the back end of this particular year. They then meander down the path of picking up new skills, video games, ad blockers, virtual reality (again), exploding rocket ships, and why Elon Musk is the perfect Bond Villain. 

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 020.  Today, Marcel and Evan discuss why televisions are so cheap, even those huge things that you struggle to find space for on your wall, the awesome comedy, "Superstore", a wrap for season 2 of "The BOYS", Google's cloud gaming platform, Stadia, the cost of modern video games, where concerts have gone during the pandemic, the quest for an open Metaverse, and wh...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 019. Marcel and Evan start out discussing cheese and its precursor, milk, move on to meat, including the plant based alternatives, Incredible Burger and Beyond Meat, after which Evan does his best to alienate GMO's foes. Moving on to a discussion of ultra-violence on TV with shows like Preacher and The Boys, the two slip into anime and video games. From there, it's VR,...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 018, where Marcel and Evan discuss whether anyone is real but you, dear listener, are presumably and hopefully really who you are. In today's show, Marcel and Evan discover that there musical tastes may not be entirely discerning, Evan foists some really bizarre music on Marcel as Marcel backs away slowly, Marcel suggests that perhaps we need a kind of Internet ID card...

This is TIC TEK TOE episode 017.  In today's show, Marcel drags Evan into the rabbit hole he's been exploring for the last couple of weeks. After fighting to get his Roblox on under Windows, not to mention Unity 3D development work for world development on the Oculus Quest, Marcel decides to stop fighting and give in to the dark side, setting up a Windows machine and plugging his nose. All is...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 016. Today, Marcel finally gets Evan to watch UPLOAD and grills him on the show. The guys discuss the increasingly rapid development cycles on the Oculus Quest, including VR games as well as business offerings. AltspaceVR tries to rush ahead of the long-delayed Facebook Horizons. Marcel and Evan share their experience with ImmersedVR, talk about the brewing legal battl...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 015. Today, Marcel and Evan visit the afterlife in VR, consider the world's loudest 21 seconds of silence, consider some Microsoft and Open Source conspiracy theories, wonder at the beauty of chroma key and Zoom backgrounds, mourn over the graves of many failed products, ask the tough questions about when good news becomes bad news, and generally chat about how we neve...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 014.  Today's episode, which was recorded last week but Marcel didn't edit until today, covers the ongoing COVID-19 isolation, pandemic bread and tourist food, famous chefs and food porn, an apology to Jitsi from Marcel, a happy ending for dot ORG, Universal Basic Income, Ayn Rand, buying wine during the lockdown, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and a push from Evan fo...

This is TIC TEK TOE, episode 013, from deep inside the heart of self-isolation. In this episode, Marcel and Evan discuss the strange world we all find ourselves living in, the climate of fear, the hazards of grocery shopping, Zoom going zoom and its security concerns, virtual reality headsets, virtual reality social environments, toilet paper, bidets, and why it's not so different for some people...