Crossed Wires

As many of you know, we use SquadCast to record every episode of Crossed Wires, and indeed Charging Status. It’s been such a genuine pleasure to build a relationship, mostly thanks to Jae’s existing connection, with the team at SquadCast.

In this episode, Zachariah Moreno joins me again, this time to talk about how things have been going for them since we last spoke, including their hugely ambitious V5 launch, and what 2023 holds for the platform. We even do a bit of brain-storming on how streaming could work within SquadCast.

Up front, Zachariah and I talk about the way in which SquadCast are directly helping us here at Crossed Wires. For full transparency, in exchange for our continued feedback and testing of features, we are being kindly provided with their ‘Studio’ plan at no cost. I can’t express how grateful we are to the team, in particular Zachariah and Arielle, for their continued support and encouragement.

If you do want to check out SquadCast, please do use our affiliate link either in the links or at the bottom of our site. Our affiliate links really do help to pay the other bills around here, and one day will make it possible for Jae and I to make this our full time jobs.

Do you have any experience of remote recordings, or maybe you want to ask about some of our workflow? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and closing theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

With the Macintosh having such a long history, and Apple doing so much over the platform’s life I wanted to get a panel together to discuss all things Mac collecting and our thoughts on past and present.

I’m really pleased to be joined by returning guests Dan Vincent and Sean from Action Retro, as well as new guest Steve from Mac84TV. We had a truly enjoyable and insightful chat about Apple’s world-changing computer.

As well as plenty of comedic moments, our improvised ‘Desert Island Mac’ spot, and plenty of tangents, we talk about our ‘Report Cards’ for Apple in 2022 (at least at the point we recorded back in October), and what got the panel into collecting Macs.

This is a bit of a longer episode, but I really hope you enjoy this panel style episode We’ll absolutely be doing more episodes like this going forward.

— James

Do you have memories of classic Macs, maybe you’ve been there the whole journey, or have a favourite Mac you’d love to tell us about. We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Due to the current state of Twitter, we’re not actively promoting Twitter links where possible. Thankfully, all of our guests are on Mastodon, so please do find them there

Intro and closing theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 personal struggles to work through which made things more challenging for him. Andrew has been working in theatre for a long time, and is a huge Star Trek fan, so with plenty of time on his hands he discovered a talent using his iPad Pro and an Apple Pencilto recreate some of his favourite scenes from Star Trek and other shows that meant something to him.

We also talk about how technology helped the theatre industry recover from the pandemic, particularly in regards to remote auditions and virtual experiences.

However, the real depth of our chat focuses on the negative impact that social media can have on our own lives and our relationships with others. This is a really challenging discussion, and I can say I certainly took a lot of Andrew’s thoughts onboard for my own life and my own relationships.

This is such a deep and important discussion and we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and closing theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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’ gaming podcast which is a 10-minute or less twice-weekly show focussed on concise gaming news from across the industry.

We talk about the problems with a lot of gaming journalism, the rumour mill, the attacks on developers over game features and release dates, as well as the state of game payment, content moderation, and the general state of play when it comes to gaming.

What’s your take on the current state of gaming, do you have views on micro-transactions for example? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and closing theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 back of an article about Google’s RCS push, in which the TMO team mentioned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as alternative messaging options. You can imagine that got me somewhat riled up, due to my very public aversion to Meta, so after a nice back and forth with Jeff we agreed to put together this episode to really explore what the various platforms have to offer and why a secure chat app may not always be a private one due to worrying metadata collection practices.

You’ll notice that we focussed mostly on messaging apps, rather than chat apps like Discord or Slack, and that’s really down to the nature of the discussion, as we’re really focussing in on ‘mobile messaging’ with your contacts rather than larger community apps.

Since recording, Sunbird has come along as a way to get iMessage up and running on Android devices. We

We’d absolutely love you to chime in on this one, as I’m sure many of you have differing views on this topic. As long as those views are civil and respectful, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 deep dive into both backup and cloud storage with our guest Pat Patterson, Backblaze’s Chief Technical Evangelist.

We look at why backup is so important, the difference between syncing your data to a cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive and actual cloud backups, as well as exploring more about cloud object storage in the form of Backblaze B2. As well as talking actual storage, we also take an important look at how our increasing need for storage can have a real environmental impact and what Backblaze are doing to try to tackle this by means of their partnership with Nautilus.

Do you have data loss horror stories, or want to share your backup strategy with us? we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

As a little bit of an aside, this is our first episode to be released first on our new site and hosted by Castos. We made the move sooner than planned because we found out that our previous host, Substack, had been stripping the MP3 chapters from our episodes – so sincere apologies about that.

For full disclosure, we do have an affiliate link with Backblaze (thanks to Pat for pointing us towards their affiliate program in our post-show chat). This doesn’t give you any discount, but if you are considering getting setup with their cloud backup plans, using our affiliate link may just help us pay the bills around here, and that’s hugely appreciated.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 video based on his DIY project for the latter, that video then went somewhat viral on YouTube.

It was great to chat with Rees about the actual setup involved, things he learned from this project, what going viral really feels like, and some great general discussion about solar and off-grid power.

Have you had any fun with solar power, maybe you’ve got a whole-home system or have been tinkering with an off-grid solution like Rees’, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 part of the wider Fediverse. My guest this week is James Smith, an open-source developer who also happens to run the Mastodon instance I joined in the last week or so.

We chat about what precisely the Fediverse is, looking back at the early days of the internet for some context, as well as going fairly deep into the what, why, and how of Mastodon. James also shares the story of what happened to his server during the rapid ‘abandon ship’ style departure from the bird site and how one high-profile member meant a quadrupling of server costs! 

One thing to be very upfront about, Jae and I have pretty much decided we won’t be active on Twitter. However, because we don’t want to cut off our amazing listeners who are still on the bird powered platform, our Twitter account is staying put, as well as our new home on Mastodon, which because of the nature of the platform means we have more scope in terms of content.

Have you jumped into the Fediverse yet, or is something holding you back? If you have comments, or have some questions about Mastodon and need some help, we’d love hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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 Twitter presence.

Whether you just listen to lots of podcasts, are already a podcaster, or are looking to start a podcast, I think you’ll find something of value in this week’s episode. It was a genuine pleasure to chat with Arielle and we’d absolutely love your thoughts on both listening to and creating podcasts, send those over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

(*) Please note, no actual prize is available, though if you want to send in audio clips we’ll absolutely feature the best one on our social media!

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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, calendar, and contacts experience.

It was a great pleasure to have Helen join us, especially given her wealth of experience and knowledge in the email space. We really appreciate the behind-the-scenes work that went into getting this episode together, especially the willingness of Fastmail to partner with us for this episode.

What’s your experience with email been like? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

To help you get started with Fastmail, they’ve very kindly set up a discount link so that you, our wonderful listeners, can get 10% off your first year of Fastmail service. 

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW