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In this episode, Jake and Michael catch up on life, family, and tech.
Michael shares proud stories about his son Eli turning into a “soccer terrorist” on the field, while Jake recounts his own stint as a stand-in soccer coach. They dive into Laracon AU updates — from speaker announcements and Road to Laracon podcasts, to quiz night and swag planning.
Other highlights include experiments with AI-generated artwork, Bruce’s new social media adventures, sponsor promotion, and even a tangent on coding tools like PHPStan and how AI can help fix issues in the background.
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Creators and Guests
What is North Meets South Web Podcast?
Jake Bennett and Michael Dyrynda conquer a 14.5 hour time difference to talk about life as web developers
-Hi. I'm Michael Dyrynda.
-And I am Jake Bennett with a mystery
device.
And welcome to episode 181 of the North
Meet South Web Podcast.
Did the music play? I didn't hear it. I'm
sure it'll be in the recording.
-It'll be fine.
-It'll be fine. Hey, I have a mystery
device in my hands right here.
-It could be-
-Who knows where it is?
-It could be muted.
-It'll be in the recording.
-If-
-It'll be around.
It'll be in the recording. If if you are
watching the YouTubes,
I would be curious if you can guess what
this is.
-So take a look. Michael, any ideas?
-Well, yeah. I looked at that, and I
thought, is it, like, a
a temperature probe? And then I thought
maybe it's a timer, but it looks like, uh,
that little half circle thing would... Do
we call it a compass? Was it a compass?
-Um...
-It's not a compass.
-Protractor. Protractor. Is that the word?
-Oh, close, sort of. Like-
I don't know. You're the math teacher. You
you tell me.
It's it is a digital angle finder.
-So it is, um...
-Yeah. So it's a protractor.
What you do is
yeah. Sure. Sure. What you do is it's
magnetic. I am doing baseboards in my
-basement again.
-Right.
Not again. I'm doing baseboards again in
my base yes. Now I'm doing it in my
basement. Um, and, uh, and so what I
needed is, I I realized that when I'm
cutting the 45s on my baseboards, they're
not lining up correctly. Like, they just
don't like, the the angle is is off a
little bit on my saw. I've had it for-
-So they're 45 ish.
-I've had it for yes. Exactly. I've had it
for years. Right? And so in all the times
I've moved it, I'm sure some screw got
knocked loose, whatever. So Mhmm. It's not
exactly it's not what what it is is the
blade is not exactly at a 90 degree angle
with the with the actual table, right, of
the of the saw. And so, um, I've tried to
sort of level it up, like, with, like,
just, like, a a square, like, a speed
square to, like, put that on the table and
then, like, put that on the saw. It
doesn't work very well. So I I I have to I
figured out, like, how do you do this,
and people suggest these. So you put this
on the thing, and you zero it out. And so,
like, you put this on the table, you zero
it out, and then you put it on the blade,
and you make sure that it's at 90
degrees. And if it isn't at 90 degrees,
you adjust it until it is at 90 degrees
precisely, and then you're good to go. Now
it's funny because it's, like, something
you only probably have to do once, and the
tool is, like, 30 bucks. So I use it one
time, but it's, like, it saves me so much
time. It's, like, kinda worth it because
now I can make sure that the angles are
correct. Anyway, I went out and got this
about 15 minutes ago. So
-I see.
-Now I have it. If anybody needs to borrow
-one
-And now you're gonna be running a table
saw at, uh, 10 o'clock at night. Is that
right?
Well, I you know, I'm probably gonna leave
that for tomorrow. My kids are sleeping
now, so I don't I don't wanna, you know,
don't wanna wake them up. But, uh, anyway,
yes, I have it now. I'm excited about it.
Michael, we've got so much stuff we could
talk about. Um, I threw you a a list of
things that I could talk about, but I
don't know. Let's talk about let's talk
about you first, shall we? What's what's
going on in in your life, in your big
world?
Uh, well, uh,
over the the last two weeks since we last
spoke, I have discovered that
Eli, my 7 year old, is
something... He's developing into, like,
this soccer terrorist
and in the best possible way. Right? In
the best possible way. He... In the last
two weeks, he's just, like, all of a
sudden become very aggressive in attack.
-Love that.
-Before he before he kind of sat back and
he watched the play developed, and he was
quite content with being a defender. But
he has whatever whatever it is, the switch
is flicked where he has decided now that
he just wants to attack, and he wants to
be involved in the play, and he wants to
be
in the forward. So I sent some videos to
the cash money over the past 3.
-I saw it. Yeah.
-So he's kicked 3 goals in the last 2
-weeks.
-That's awesome.
He he, um, he
-nailed this poor goalie two weeks ago.
-Oh, no.
Like, absolutely squared him up in the,
uh, the nether regions and the poor, poor
child probably saw God briefly, um,
-in that moment. So
-Oh, lord.
I I look. I I, you know, he
very sportsmanlike after the game. I sent
him over to make sure that, like, the
-child is okay.
-Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Right.
Because, like, you're not gonna stop and
apologize mid game. These things happen.
Um, you know, there's no malice in it,
especially at that age where they don't
really have the control. It's kind of see
ball, get ball. I wanna kick goals.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-I wanna kick it as hard as I can. So
-Totally. Yeah.
-You know, make sure that this child did
-not wanna speak to Eli whatsoever.
-No way.
Which understandably he should not. He was
yeah. So
-Oh, man. That's funny.
-But, um, yeah. It's just fun watching him
develop and the speed that he has with the
ball and the control. Just to, like, take
control of the ball at the halfway line,
break past three defenders, and streak
into a one on one with the goalie is
just... And this is and this was, like
-Proud dad moment.
-This weekend against yeah. It was
this was against the team that the last
time they played, Eli's team lost 4:1.
-Oh, wow. Yeah.
-And this time they managed to walk away.
He was the only goal scorer and so they
won 1:0, but he was he was pretty happy
about that. And which was a good recovery
because he got, like, kicked in the in the
ankle in the first half, um, by accident.
And so to to get up and and come back in
the second half and and kick the only goal
of the match was just
it's, um... I was talking to a a friend
earlier, and I said to them
I had never envisaged myself as being a
soccer dad. Like, I think I've spoken on
the podcast before that I've never never
been involved in soccer, never had any
personal interest in it, never watched it,
you know, don't understand any of the
rules. But to see him have such a,
um, a passion for it, and he's always
talking about players, and he's asking,
like, "Who's the best player?" I'm like,
"Man, I don't even know half the names
that you're throwing out at me."
Fortunately, it's like Messi, Ronaldo, or
Mbappe. And so he's he's a big Mbappe fan
at the moment. But, uhHe's just, yeah,
it's- it's- it's really cool as a, as a
dad to see that, like, he has picked, like
-he's picked something-
-Yeah. Yeah
-...completely uninfluenced by me.
-How- how old is he now? Is he eight?
-He's seven. He's seven.
-Seven? Okay.
Yeah. So, you know, obviously with me
having nothing to do with soccer ever, for
him to, to be completely uninfluenced by
me to f- find something that he's
passionate about. And, like, at school it,
th- they're very much either basketball
or soccer at, at his school. And so he's
picked soccer because that's the first
sport that he has access to, um, at
school. Basketball doesn't start until
second grade. So, yeah, the fact that he's
just picked that up and he's running with
-it is, is really cool as a dad to see.
-That is. It is, it's neat as, like, you
watch your kids become their own little
people.
-Mm-hmm.
-Like you said specifically, like, when
there's a decision that they've made that
was not prompted by or directed by you,
-that's just so cool.
-Yeah.
And I remember for Graham, it was probably
around that age, he started getting
really interested in basketball. It was
probably... Actually, I- I take that back.
It was probably a little bit later than
that. I- I'm sure it was later than that.
But
when he started, like, watching NBA
Highlights and things like that, you know,
-and he would know-
-Yeah
...all the names and he would know who
played last night and the scores, and he
knew all that stuff. And it's just like, I
don't know-
-Yeah
-...any of that stuff. And it is-
-Yeah
-...just so cool. Um, so cool to see kids
-kind of, you know, developing their own-
-Into their own
...little worlds. Yeah, yeah, it's so
cool. Uh, at that age, it's funny with
soccer, like, aggression, uh, makes up for
so much skill. Like-
-Mm-hmm.
-Just, not that it's not-
-If he could just get there first.
-Not to say... Correct. Not to say that,
like, he's not skilled. That's not what
I'm saying. I'm just saying-
-Yeah
-...the kids that are the most aggressive
are often gonna be the ones who are gonna,
you know, gonna have the ball-
-Yeah
-...and who are gonna make the goals. And
so that's- that's awesome. And as he, as
he kind of, you know, continues to grow,
I'm sure he'll- he'll be really, really
good. But, you know, at this age, you're
right, it is just about kind of getting in
there and getting at the ball and
putting a foot on the ball. The goalie is
not, you know, if you can get the ball
anywhere, uh, other than exactly where the
goalie's at, there's a good chance it's
-going in. And so-
-Yeah
...that's- that's super fun though, and
it's just great for their confidence.
Like, "I'm good at something. I found
something I like."
-Yeah.
-Like-
-Yeah
-...that's so cool. So good for him, man.
-That's awesome. That's exciting.
-Yeah. Yeah, he's a .... My- my brother
came over on a, on the weekend and Eli's
like, "Can we kick the ball around?" I'm
like, "No worries." Anyway, my poor
brother ended up on the ground twice
-because he got kicked in the-
-Ha
...in the neathers, so.
-Oh, that's hilarious. I am-
-You need to go home.
I'm gonna use, I'm gonna use the word
loosely here. I'm coaching Harrison's
-soccer team right now, um-
-Uh-huh. Uh-huh
...you know, which means basically show up
and hand out snacks. Um-
-Mm-hmm.
-But, uh, I had an opportunity to do so
this last week. I- I was subbing. I was,
uh, I've- I've been kind of helped with
crowd control a couple times, and then
this last Saturday-
-Yeah
-...the- the coach was out, so I got to
-coach. Um-
-Mm-hmm.
But, uh, Harrison has got a good leg and
so I put him on the corner kick twice. And
I told him, I said, "Just kick it as hard
as you can into the middle. Just kick it
as hard as you can." And some unfortunate
kid, two different kids at two different
times, stepped in front of him. I'm
like... And they got it right in the face
-twice, two kids. I'm like, "Dude-"
-Yeah.
"...I felt terrible." But it's like,
you're gonna stand right in front of the
-ball.
-Yeah.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like,
he's gonna kick the ball-
Eli is... Eli is definitely very much a
stickler for the rules, so he's-
-Oh, okay. Okay
-...been hit in the face a couple of times
because he refuses to put his hands up to
protect his face. And I said-
-Oh, yeah
-..."Look, I get it. I get that that would
be a- a- a penalty and it would be a
handball, but do you wanna give away the
penalty or do you wanna get hit in the
face with a ball? These are your options."
That's hilarious.
I said, "You could just duck. Like, get
out of the way. Don't stand there and
-watch the ball hit you."
-Nope. He's too hardcore. He's too
-hardcore. He's like his dad.
-Because the amount of times, like, we- we
went to the- the pitch where they- they
play to have a kick around a while ago,
-and I kicked-
-I'm listening. I'm gonna go grab a soda
-while you talk. I'll be right back.
-All right. I kicked from the halfway line
at goal, and he was in the goal. And I
watched this ball sail for, you know,
three seconds in the air on a full-sized
pitch towards him. And I'm like, "He'll
catch that. He'll catch that. He's gonna
get out of the way. He'll totally..." And
then he got hit right in the stomach, and
then he had a, he had it, he had the gall
to have a crack at me because I kicked the
ball at his stomach. I'm like, "Mate, you
had an eternity to do literally anything
to get out of that ball's way, and you
chose instead
-to get hit in the stomach."
-Oh, that's hilarious.
-So I- I don't know what to do for you.
-Oh, that's so funny.
-But, um, he's definitely getting-
-I love it, man. You should-
-...more resilient to the-
-Yeah
...the knocks and the bumps and the hits
of- of the sport. I said, "It's- it's
gonna happen in the sport. People are
gonna run into you. You're gonna, you're
-gonna..." Especially at this age-
-Good for him. Yeah, that's good for him
...you're gonna not be looking where
you're going and you're gonna bump heads
-and things like that.
-Yep.
And it's, you know, you gotta persist with
it.
-Get tough.
-And you will just learn to get awareness
-for the game over time.
-Yep. Yep. No, that's awesome, man. That's
super fun. Yeah, it's, uh, it's about that
time of year for you guys. And for us,
it's, like, perfect sports season, you
know? It's like-
-Mm-hmm.
-It's, uh, the weather's just the right
-temperature. It's not super hot-
-Just turning
-...it's not super cold yet.
-Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It's just that perfect time
of year for these sort of sports. So
-it's- it's really fun.
-And even just standing there, like, you
know, 18 degrees Celsius on the weekend
and it was, like, warm just standing
-there.
-Yeah.
But the days are getting longer. It's
supposed to rain for the rest of this
week, but the sun is beaming down at the
moment, so-
-Jealous
-...it's- it's certainly getting closer.
Which- which makes me panic a little bit,
because it makes me realize that as it
gets warmer, it means we're getting closer
to Larak on AU, which makes me think,
"Well, there's probably some things that
we should be getting underway now." So
we're gonna put the schedule out for that
soon as well to transition to another
topic, I suppose. We'll put the, um...
Which we've done in- in the past. We- we
announce all of the speakers, and then
once the speakers are announced, we then
put the, all the talk titles up on the
schedule.
-Yep, yep.
-So that everyone knows, like, "Okay, well,
if you've been on the fence about coming
for whatever reason, now you can see what
all of the topics are gonna be this year."
And then we'll start putting out the
speaker intro videos, which I've been
editing. Um, you know, I said to the
speakers, "I want this all by the end of
July," and- and I've got seven, I think,
out of 18
speakers' intro videos. So, you know,
chasing them is like herding cats
-sometimes.
-Yeah. Yeah.
... people, people have lives to get to.
So it's just a gentle reminder. And it's
not like I'm hassling them every day for
the last, you know, 26 days. It's like,
-"Hey, by the way, I would like-"
-Yeah. It's like when you get a chance.
-Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
-"... would you mind publishing these
videos?" And it's, like, one a day, three
times a week so, you know, we've got-
-Sure
-... a little bit of time up our sleeve
with, with what I've got. But, um, yeah.
We'll get those out soon. So get, you
know, people will get a chance to, to meet
the speakers. We're doing Road to Laricon
-again.
-I love that. I always think that's so fun.
-Yeah.
-Yeah. Doing, um,
Road to Laricon again, so we'll do the,
the, you know, 10-minute short form music
podcast with the speakers where we talk to
them about that kinda stuff. So I'm
recording those at the moment and getting
them ready, and we'll, we'll put those out
sort of in October as a, as a lead-up to
the conference. So, like, here's the
playlist, you can listen to it on the
plane if you want, or you can listen to
the podcast on your flights into, into
Brisbane. So that's happening. We're,
we're getting into the, the thick of it
now in terms of putting in our orders for
merch and all of that kinda stuff, so. And
we're starting to ramp up some of our
marketing stuff, so those of you who
have... I, I think people are kind of
overtly aware, like they've seen it around
the place but they haven't thought much
about it. I was talking to Ashley Hindle
yesterday about some Boost stuff, and we
were talking about, you know, how, um,
trying to get GPT to generate images can
sometimes be a bit hit-and-miss. Like, I
gave it a photo of me and a photo of
someone else, and we wanted to, um,
create, like, a cartoon version of it. And
so, you know, the first version was,
like, close but it gave me purple
eyebrows. I'm like, okay-
-Oh, fair enough. Okay
-... oh, and then, like, a full, full
-beard.
-Nice.
And I was like, okay, I can't grow facial
hair so let's dial that back to stubble,
you know, this, this patch- patchwork
quilt I've got on my face, and make my
eyebrows closer to the color of my beard.
Like, it got the, it got the beard color
right, i- but eyebrows... So, okay, no
worries. So it did that, and then it,
like, completely removed the facial hair,
but it got the eyebrows right. I said,
"Okay, cool. The eyebrows are right. Now
let's bring the stubble back." And it went
back to a full beard. And so it's just ,
you know, theoretically, it's supposed to
have the context to be able to do this,
and then... Okay, let's fix that. So it
fixed the beard and it fixed the eyebrows,
but then it completely changed the style
-of the image.
-Oh.
It went from, like, a cartoon illustration
to, like, this neon vogue, like, bright
pinks and blacks and s- I'm like, no,
let's go back, and then, then it changed
my hair. I was like, no, don't do that
with the hair, like, let's get back there.
And eventually, you know, uh, three
rainforests and a couple of, uh, species
later, all, all wiped ou- out of
existence, uh, we finally got, like, a
passable image, so.
-And that's why-
-But, uh, you know, Ashley, Ashley said-
... sometimes it's easiest to hire
somebody off Fiverr, but-
Right. Yeah, that's right. So Ashley's
like, you know, it's, um, it's, it's
interesting. Like, some people can do
really good work with it, and other times
it's, like, really hit-and-miss. And I
said, you know, yeah, just like, like
-Bruce, he's got his own social media now-
-Oh, yeah
... he's having a great time, like, and
he's like, "Yeah, people at, um, Laravel
Live Denmark were talking about it, but I
hadn't, hadn't seen it yet." So he's,
like, definitely present. We're gonna use
him to do, um, some of our sponsor
promotion in the coming weeks as well, so
he'll be, like, sending out his own little
social media videos. This is all being
managed by Nuclear, so it's-
-Love that
-... it's a lot of fun for me as well as,
as, like, an observer of it happening,
because whilst I'm sort of aware
of, you know, the content that is in the
pipe and the stuff that... Like, I don't
see the videos or the images that get
generated ahead of time. So it's always
fun when I see Bruce pop up in the
timeline as a, as a, as his own little-
-That is-
-... entity there.
It's like a fun little surprise. Yeah.
Absolutely.
-Yeah, it's like, "Ooh. Oh, that's right."
-That's pretty cool.
-Today he's posting.
-Since you're not the one directly managing
it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah,
they look good. The videos look really
good. I started following them when we
were at Laracon US together, and it's-
-Yeah
-... really well done. Really, really good
-stuff, so.
-Yeah, there's-
-Um-
-... there's a few, like, combinations of
things going on there, they're, you know,
combining image generation with video
generation with, like, you know, really
finely tuning the, the prompts and things
like that. So we've got that going out,
we've got other stuff going out. Tickets
are, tickets are moving along as well.
We're, um, the quiz night is almost at
capacity, which is really exciting, 'cause
it was, you know-
-What's that? What is that?
-So, like, Mostly Technical had the, the
-day zero party before Laracon US. We-
-Yeah.
Last year, we just did, like, we organized
a space at a pub and we were like, "You
know, if you wanna meet up, they've got
food and drink specials, you can kind of
just meet up there." And we had probably
about 70 or 80 people filter in through
the afternoon and the evening for that. So
we thought this year, we would try and
structure it a little bit more than just,
like, turn up at the pub. It's now, you
know, for attend- It's, it's free for
attendees to go, um, but they need to get
a ticket because we've got limited space
in the venue.
-Yeah.
-So we're, we're hiring in, like, a proper
quizmaster that's gonna come in and, and
do all the questions. There'll be AV,
there'll be some prizes, there'll be, you
know, the food and drink specials will be
there as well. So people will have the
opportunity to, like, reconnect with
friends, or if you, if you're coming for
the first time, you'll be able to put
together a team on the night. And, um,
yeah. Just, just something to do that's,
like, you know, people will start coming
in the night before the conference, or the
afternoon before the conference, so if
they get there in time, just something to
do. So
-yeah, I'm keen to-
-Are they technical questions?
-See how it plays out this year.
-Like, technical quiz stuff, or?
No, no, it's not, like, not a Laravel
thing, it'd be like a general knowledge-
-Pop culture?
-... we're gonna-
-Yeah, okay.
-Yeah, pop culture, we'll throw some, like,
'90s stuff in there, 'cause we're, we're
deep in the '90s for, for this year's
event. And, um, yeah, looking, looking
forward to how that plays out. We've,
we've got some cool prizes in the pipe as
well, though. My initial thought was let's
get movie vouchers, but if you have
people coming from overseas, it's hard to
-give them a movie voucher-
-Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be tough
-... that they're not gonna use.
-Yeah.
-So it's like, okay, we need to-
-Exactly
-... come up with something.
-You could get, like, a VHS of, like, a
'90s movie and give that away, that'd be
funny. Like, or if you had, like, a, a
Sony Walkman with, like, a tape deck.
Like, an actual tape?
-Mm-hmm.
-You know what I mean? Like-
-Yeah.
-Like, I had a guy that I know, he brought
-in-
-Mini disc players.
Yeah, right. When he brought in, he
brought in a Sonny Walkman with like a
tape, a tape player. You know what I mean?
Um, just the other day. He had two of
them. I think he found them at like
Goodwill or whatever.
-Mm-hmm.
-And, um, he's this dude I go to church
with. He's, he's deaf and he's, like,
always just on the hunt for something
funny. He's just a really
-unique guy, but he brings in the-
-Yeah
... the most crazy stuff, and always wants
to show me this stuff. And so yeah. It's
a couple different Sony Walkmans, and I
was like, those are actually really cool.
Like, if somebody had that as like a give
wa- With, like, a tape of, like, a popular
artist from that time, I would totally
listen to that, take that home. That'd be
super cool. Just kinda put it on your
shelf of like, "Oh yeah, this is pretty
-neat." Um...
-Yeah, it's off the... I can't, I can't
really see it. I've got the, the mis- the
shelf of miscellany up here.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Which has got, like, my PHP Lambos up
there. I've got, like, a singing cactus.
I've got, I've got, uh...
-Yeah. The PHP Elephants maybe?
-This is fine dining all this kind of stuff
up there. Yeah, the PHP Elephants are up
on this side.
-Yeah.
-We, we can't actually see. Um, because-
-Yeah
-... I'm, I'm on to a second layer of PHP
-Elephants.
-I love that. I think I've got, like,
seven or eight now, I think. So that's
kinda fun. Um, speaking of cool technology
and of conferences and of giveaways. So
you were talking about how you guys are
working on doing some giveaways and stuff
and all that whatever. So we've got a
conference that we're going to be
presenting in as, like, a vendor, right,
as a sponsor sort of deal, I guess you
could call it, in late October, out in
-California.
-Mm-hmm.
And we're always trying to find something
that's, like, gonna be interesting for
people to stop by and want to talk to us
about or whatever, right? So we, like-
-Yeah
-... more than anything we wanna just be,
like, a fun booth, right? Like, how can
people kind of Just, what's something that
could be interesting and fun?
-Mm-hmm.
-Just almost more than, like, "Hey, let's
get a sales pitch." It's like, "Let's just
have a good interaction." Like, people
-like to-
-Yeah
... work with people they like. You know
what I mean?
-Yeah.
-And so
let's just have a conversation, like,
"How's the conference going?" And do
something fun, right? So we have this, uh,
typing test that we're creating, which is
pretty cool. Um, if you've never seen
Monkeytype, uh, I think that's the...
It's, like, I think it's monkeytype.io or
whatever. But it's, it's really cool. It's
a really simple typing test. And it's
open source, and so you can run it on your
own. You can modify it, of course, do all
that stuff. But it's really, really good.
And so we are going to fork that and use
that as, like, our typing test on our
little machine. Um, and we bought a iMac,
like one of the yellow iMacs. You know how
-they have the colored ones?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, yeah. Not the old ones, but, like, the
new ones that are just, like, the really,
-really-
-Yeah, the new ones. Yeah
... thin pane. Yeah. They look gorgeous.
And so we got a yellow one, 'cause our
colors are black and yellow. And then
we're getting a custom keyboard, so we're
getting a Keychron. That's like a 50%.
It's, like, only the three rows of keys,
-right? It's like the-
-Right. Okay
... space bar and, like, you know, just
the keys. And that's it. Like, there's
nothing else on this thing. And then I'm
gonna have Austin... Uh, what's his name?
-Austin, Austin, Austin.
-Oh yeah.
-Austin... Is it Austin Cameron?
-I'm looking for... Yeah, that's it. I
think it's Austin Cameron. Yeah. Um, I'm
gonna have him do a custom key cap
-for me-
-Mm-hmm
... for our, our logo, for Silver Connect.
That's gonna be on the top left corner
there. And then, uh, we're gonna have,
like, a desk mat and stuff. Anyway, it's
gonna be really fun. But the thing we're
giving away
is... Have you ever heard of, like, the
Nothing Phone?
-Yes.
-Oh, it's so cool.
-Yes.
-So
it's an Android-based phone. It's not like
the simple phones where it's like it only
-does two things. It's not that.
-Yeah.
It's called the Nothing Phone, but it's
just the aesthetic of it is super cool.
-Mm-hmm.
-Um, super, super cool. Well, they have
headphones
that are like AirPod Pros. That's kinda
like what they look like.
-Yeah.
-You know?
-Yeah.
-The case is a little bit different.
They only came out recently. Like, within
the last couple of months-
-Yeah
-... I think.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
And it's, uh, it's got a clear case and
the piece of the headphone is clear as
well, so you can see sort of like the
drivers inside the headphone. It looks so
cool. And so they have black, white and
yellow. So I ordered one of each color.
Uh, again, 'cause there are, like, our
colors for our booth and everything, and
-we're gonna be giving those away.
-Yeah.
-I'm so excited. It's gonna be really fun.
-Nice.
Um, and so that's always, it- it's sort of
an interesting challenge. Like, you know,
what's the thing you're gonna give away?
What's something you can do that's fun but
-it's not-
-Mm-hmm
... like, cheesy and, or, or over the top,
or not too involved? Like, you don't want
something like... A typing test is, like,
a minute. Actually, a minute's a long
time to sit there and, like, whatever. So,
like, 15-second typing test. You know
what I mean? It's 15 seconds. Like,
anybody can take 15 seconds to do that
sort of thing. And then how do you sort of
brand it? So it's like once they get done
with the typing test, it's got this fun
little, like, interaction that says, like,
you know, "Regardless of how fast you
type, you could've done this faster by
using our product." Whatever. Something
stup-
-Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
-Something stupid and silly. But, like, it
has a personality with it. Uh, but like
get a little marketing hook in there. So
-anyway, yeah-
-Yeah
... we'll get through some of that stuff.
But it's been fun. It's been cool. Um, I
really like this,
the process of just building up these cool
marketing things. And it's like, I want
to design something that I would find
delightful. You know, that I would be-
-Yeah
-... like, "Oh that's really cool." Um, and
-so-
-Yeah
... people give away AirPod Pros and stuff
like that. But for me, like, these are
just so unique, these headphones. I've
never seen 'em in the wild ever.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-Uh, and it just looks so cool that I would
like... That's definitely something I
would want to have. I'll, I'll, I'll come
-do a typing test for that, you know?
-Yeah.
-So...
-Prizes-
-It'll be fun
-... prizes are always a tricky one. Like,
the, the sponsors will bring their own
things. I know Titan did, like, the, the
-custom keychain keycaps-
-Yeah. Yeah, those are fun
... which had, like, the light-up key. Um-
-Yeah.
-But, uh, you know, and then Givebutter had
-this, this stupid design.
-Yeah.
Like, I've got, I've got part of it done,
but I hate it. Um, I told them- ... I
hated it. And, uh,
I took a video of, like, the solved one so
that I can one day maybe put it back
together, 'cause it's... Yeah. But it's
always interesting to, as you say, uh,
especially for a, for a sponsor or someone
presenting in the exhibition spaces,
people don't necessarily need your product
or know your product or want to use your
product or whatever. But if you've got
something cool that will hook them in just
for a conversation, even the, the
conversation is really good. Like, one of
our sponsors last year, they brought a
pickleball set.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Now, they brought a pickleball set. One,
-one for every attendee, and it was just-
-Oh, wow
... something different that... You know,
you could... You've got a paddle and a
ball and, um, and you go and hang out with
the sponsor, and you just talk to them.
And, you know, you might not have an
immediate use to it, but through that
conversation you may find, oh, you know,
at least the name is there, that, yeah, I
could use this thing at some point in the
future. So, it's, it's cool to, to do that
kind of stuff. Um, from a, like, from a
conference organizer perspective, it's
always... I'm always looking for things
'cause, yeah, you can do the, the, the
AirPods and you can give away the Apple
TVs and things like that, but there's
something... Expectation. And, and for the
Laravel ecosystem, it's generally a
sound, um, generalization that
90% of the people there are gonna own a
Mac, and the chance of-
-Yeah, yeah
-... of winning a prize and, like, you
know, if you don't have an iPhone and you
win AirPods, it's... It can work, but it's
-not the best experience.
-Yeah, it's a pain in the neck, yeah.
So, it's always a matter of, like, trying
to figure out what can we get as a prize
that has broad appeal irrespective of your
existing ecosystem, which obviously we
can't account for
at the time of giving away a random prize.
-Right, right.
-So, the- the- the Switch is always a good
one because it's like, here is a Nintendo
Switch that you can now be, you know, in
that ecosystem. Or, um, you know, we had
the, the MacBook Air last year because,
you know, a Mac Mini's cool, but you wanna
give someone something where there's no
expectation that they need to bring
anything to it. Like, you give someone a
MacBook and they can plug it in and turn
it on and they can start using it straight
-away.
-Yeah, yeah.
Whereas the Mac Mini, well, there's the
expectation of they've gotta have a
-keyboard-
-They've gotta have a display, yeah
... and they've gotta have a, you know,
all this extra stuff, so... Always
thinking about those things and trying to
balance being just Apple things versus, or
maybe we get some Sony headphones or some
Bose headphones or the-
-Yeah, yeah
-... but nothing ones are interesting
because
they certainly have a certain look to
them.
-Yeah.
-And I don't know that I would necessarily
want to wear them outside in public, but
other people may be less, uh, less
particular about that. So, yeah, always
trying to find things that, that people
are interested in, or that would be
interested, you know, that they would want
to keep that, um, is always, uh, a bit of
a challenge as well.
For me, it's always like
the thing I want to do is I want to be
anything but ignored. Like, I, I don't
even care, like, if they don't like the
giveaway. I want it to be more unique than
anybody else's. I want, like, even what
we wear. I wear, we wear yellow shoes,
like, at these conferences, and then we
wear, like, really loud shirts, because I
want them to have seen us and be like,
"Oh, yeah, you got..." So, like, when, you
know, we end up going to, like, they'll
have lunch or whatever, they'd be like,
"Oh, yeah, you guys are the ones wearing
those yellow shirts, right?" Like, "Yeah,
-exactly."
-Mm-hmm.
"Like, what do you guys do?" You know? So,
it's like they've seen us, um, and it's
-so- so anyway, that's-
-You're not there, you stand out so that
they look, you know, take a second look
that, like, they commit to memory-
-Exactly right
-... that they've seen this thing a couple
of times. "Oh, I've seen them out in
public as well," and things like that,
-so...
-You got it. Yep, and then anything that's
-just a conversation-
-Yeah,
-for anyone sponsoring-
-Yeah
... anyone sponsoring Laracon, whether
ours or any of the other Laracons
-listening, you know?
-Yeah.
If you've been on the fence about it or
trying to figure out what to do, something
that, um, that stands out is, uh, is
always interesting.
Absolutely. Yep. And then driving
conversations, you know what I mean? It's
like, it's, it's, uh, so much about it, of
it is about relationships, um, and if
they had a good interaction with you and
your team at the booth, like, even if they
don't have an immediate use for that
thing, 'cause, um, I mean, let's be real,
like, conferences aren't really where you
close the deals. It's where you start the
-conversation.
-Nope.
-That's, that's what it is.
-Yeah.
It's just about building relationships.
And so, you build those relationships and
then when they have a need for that thing,
like, "Oh, yeah, that's right, I did
need," like, um, or, "I'm interested in
switching. Well, I had that contact with
that one guy at Sentry," or whatever it
is, you know? And then-
-Yeah
-... um, you know, that's, that's the next
product they look at. So,
yeah, anyway, I think that's, um, I think
that is good advice, though, for people
that- that are presenting. It's like, just
be a good person and have fun giveaways,
and just try and make it a fun time to be
at your booth. Don't always be pushing,
like, "So what's the solution you guys are
looking for?" It's like, you know, eh.
-Yeah.
-'Cause some people wanna talk about that.
Most people just wanna, like, come get
your stuff and have a positive
-interaction.
-Yeah, most people would just... Yeah,
especially, like, and Laracon US, they did
the, the stamp card thing, so there's
gonna be a nonzero number of people that
are just gonna want their, their stamp
-card punched. Um-
-Yep. Give 'em, give 'em the stuff.
-But, you know-
-Yeah, be, be kind.
-Yeah.
-Like, don't, like... You know.
Yeah. You know, some people will just want
that. Some people might be really into
your swag, and it depends on how much swag
you brought, like,
I would assume that the sponsors are gonna
try and qualify people for some of the
cool stuff that they've got as well. It's
like, "Well, this person just came for the
stamp, so we'll give them the stamp." But
someone that sticks around and talks for
a minute or five or whatever, more
inclined to wanna, you know, give them a
T-shirt or a cap or something like that as
well.
Agreed. Agreed.
Okay, couple of things I, I wanted to loop
back to real quick. Um, we talked about
this conference that myself and Ben Holman
are talking about. We've got
interesting
ideas around it, but don't have any really
solid updates, so just heads up. We
talked about that last time and I really
appreciate your insight from that last
time. We've been working through some of
those things and think we have some ideas,
but nothing super concrete to share, so
there's that. Um,
we also have been talking about the idea
of our team switching, um, where we're
-handling our permissions.
-Mm-hmm.
Permission leasing, things like that. Um,
did we talk at all about delegated users
and delegated, like, managing users? Did
we talk about that theme? We maybe had a
-little bit.
-We talked about, um... So, like, your
manager delegating a subset of permissions
to
someone on the team 'cause they're going
away or whatever else.
-Yep, yep.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Yeah.
So, we did talk about that part. So,
that's, we're, we're doing this in
earnest, um, and it's been really cool.
We're using enums all over the place for
it and it's just been really delightful,
and, um-
-Mm-hmm.
-It's worked pretty well. And so good
report back on that. Like, I do think it's
very possible to sort of move all of that
role-based everything outside of that
system, um, and have it work pretty dang
-well.So, yeah.
-That's cool.
And so if that's anything you're
interested in doing with your teams, like
we've run into some, you know, things that
we had to bang our head against the wall
for a while, and, um, feel like we have
some decent solutions. So, if anybody's
looking to do something like that or has
to, you know, interact with a third party
where you're sorta doing some of that,
that stuff, role-based stuff, and the
permissions only live inside your app, but
yeah, please feel free to reach out. I'd
love to give any info, info that we've
learned from that. Um, one other thing.
Andy Hinkel, our very own Andy Hinkel at
Wilbur is doing the worldwide meetup
tomorrow. I got a preview of his talk
today, which I was super delighted by. Um,
-he-
-Nice
... used to work at a, at a, uh, theme
park, and so he kind of
draws comparisons between these roller
coasters and
design, like software design, which was
really fun. I learned some super cool
-stuff about-
-Nice
... roller coasters, actually, which I was
like, I would do that. I would listen to
him talk about roller coasters. I didn't
even know that. It's really interesting.
It's cool. It's cool to, to have a talk
that kind of ties those things together.
-We've got, uh-
-Totally.
We've got a couple of talks that are, that
are going to do similar kind of
storytelling this year, I think. So yeah,
it's always... It, it gets people to sit
up in their, in their seats and wake up a
little bit, so. I mean, you know, this
being the, the worldwide meetup, a little
bit different in terms of presentation,
but I think getting people to shift in
their seats to actually listen is, is
-always interesting.
-I feel like if you're a subject matter
expert on something other than software
and you can bring that passion into your
-talk, people are just-
-Yeah
... very interested. You know, there's a
lot of-
-Absolutely
-... people out there who know a lot of the
software stuff, but like, even if, I
mean, it could be gardening. It could be
roller coasters. It could be, uh, storms.
Like, like I know, you know, Andy, the
same guy on our team, he's big into, like,
weather, which is, sounds like, "Weather?
Really?" But there is so much cool stuff
that he's shown me, like all these
different radars and readouts and like,
"Oh, that's super interesting." And I feel
like-
-Mm-hmm
-... software developers as a sort of like
a whole are just forever learners. Just,
there's always some interesting, weird
things. Like, I wanna know about that. And
so-
-Yeah
-... um, if you're able to sort of combine
your passions, I think that's always a
really good thing too, 'cause people just
feel that, you know? It's, it's... They
can feel your energy around that
-particular thing.
-Mm-hmm.
And it's just fun to be able to
participate in that with people. So yeah,
I'm excited for that tomorrow. So, if you
get a chance to watch that, that's super
cool. I don't know if our, you know, our,
um, podcast will be out by then, but if...
I'm sure it'll be recorded, so you should
definitely check that out.
-Yeah.
-Um, okay. Omarchi? Is that what it's
called? How do you pronounce this thing?
DHH's Linux cur-
-Omarchi.
-Omarchi. Omarchi?
-Omarchi. Omarchi.
-Have you looked at this at all? It's like
all the hotness. Everybody's running
Omarchi now.
Yes. Everyone's on it. Yeah, I've been-
On, like, framework laptops. On, you know,
run on Linux, everything. On framework
laptops, yeah.
-It's like whatever.
-I got very excited the other day 'cause
I'm like, I've got this iMac under my desk
that has been sitting in this box-
-Right?
-... for about four years. I'm like, "I'll
just install it on that." But it's a, it's
a whole headache because of the like-
-Is it? Okay, that's the question
-... secured chip on there as well. So
it's, unfortunately, not gonna do that.
Um,
I did run it up in a, in a virtual machine
on my NAS for about five minutes and was
like, "This is cool, I'd like to explore
it." So I started... I had this Intel NUC,
you know, these little mini PC things.
Um, they used to be, like, my local
-server, and I've, like, migrated-
-Sure, sure
... everything off of it
onto the NAS now, which I've been, which
has been a project that I was gonna do for
about a year since I got the NAS,
with the intent to then install Omarchi on
the NUC
and use that as like, you know, to play
around with, with some dev stuff on there.
Um, so I did that last weekend and I
turned the NUC off. And I've just, like,
left it off this week to make sure that
I've moved everything off that I needed
to, that, like, things I would, um, not
access very often, that all of that kinda
stuff is still there. And then the intent
is to install it on there. But I've
realized that the NUC is old enough that
it doesn't have any USB-C on it, so I have
-to-
-Oh, interesting
... connect a, h- have to connect HDMI to
a, to a monitor, which involves, you know,
uncabling everything and running a cable
back there and all of that kinda stuff. So
-we'll see how, how that goes. But, uh-
-It is really interesting to see. Like, but
the same, same principle, same pattern.
These are the things like Aaron Francis
talks about. Like, the thing that you're
excited about, just tell people about it.
-Like, people-
-Yeah
... love and can feel the energy. Like,
DHH has been so excited about this. This
-is what he's tweeting about.
-Yeah.
And I feel like it's just gotten so much
traction, number one, because he's DHH.
But number two, 'cause he's just so
freaking excited about it. He's just like-
Yeah. Yeah,
... "Oh, this is the thing. Everybody
should use it. Like, this is really great.
Like, if you're not using it, you
definitely should be. And if you're coming
from Mac, like, just stick with it. Give
it a month." You know what I mean?
-Yeah.
-Like, all the things. It's, but it's, it's
just cool. It's like there's so much
energy around it.
-Yeah.
-It's like, I kinda wanna try it. I have no
need to try it. Like, I've got everything
I need-
-Yeah
-... with, with the current OS. Like, I
don't really need a project. But it's sort
of like, eh-
-Yeah
-... I'm really curious. I kinda wanna just
-play with it, you know?
-Yeah. I'll give it a go. Like, I'd like to
use it as, for a, for a development
machine, just to have something on, on my
desk that I can, like, just, just go with.
But-
-Yeah, yeah
-... losing the Apple ecosystem is, is a
no-go for me. Like, it wouldn't become my
primary because-
-Yeah
-... you know, giving up iMessage, giving
-up Fotos, giving up Music.
-Totally.
I mean, like, all of this stuff that kind
of, uh, iCloud, all of that stuff that...
Like, I'm not, I don't want alternatives
to it. I'm leaving all of that alone. I
would use this in addition to, which is
why I've got, like-
-Yeah
-... a secondary machine that I'll install
it on. It's not a, um... It's not gonna be
my primary driver or anything like that.
-But, um-
-Which seems like a fun middle ground.
-I'm eager to try. They just-
-Yeah.
Yeah. They, um, they just released, uh,
version two, I think overnight at the time
of this recording, which is like, got a
whole bunch of fixes in there, a whole
bunch of tweaks, whole bunch of changes.
There's like now a, a five-minute install
ISO. So before you had to install Arch
Linux and then run the Omarchi
installer, which would pull down their
repo and configure everything in the
blessed DHH way. Whereas now it's just
like here's the ISO. It's got everything
ready to go. You don't have to do all
these manual steps. You don't have to
-enable-
-That's cool
... the wifi card yourself and all of this
kind of stuff, so.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-I mean-
-Nice
-... not that, not that it was hard. Like,
it was 10 minutes to install before and
now it's five minutes. But they've done a
whole bunch of stuff like building their
own package manager because people
apparently had DDoSed the, the, the
package, uh-It's, um,
-the the upstream, like-
-Repository
... where all the packages are hosted, the
repository where all of that stuff's
hosted, so that, that caused a bunch of
issues for a few weeks. And DHH is like,
"Look, if I did this by accident because
I've got lots of people interested in it,
I'm sorry." Like, "We'll pay money,
whatever we can do to help smooth that
over." If it's, like, genuinely a DDoS
attack because, like, people are attacking
the package repository, then like, "You
guys suck," and, and all of this kind of
-stuff, as, as DHH does, so, um-
-Yeah
... it is... Like, he's got Atom on it.
You know, at, the-
Yeah. Yeah. I saw him talking about that.
Yeah
I think Framework sent him a Framework
computer, and he's gonna try it. So I
don't know.
-It's, uh-
-That's fun. Yeah. Kevin Rose, I saw from,
like, you know, back in the day. Like, he
was running it on a Framework machine. And
yeah. It's just, it's just cool. A lot
of, a lot big, big names kind of running
it and trying it out, and
-it's, it's fun.
-Every time he mentions it, I'm like, "Oh,
I'll go, go look at the Beelink website
again." I'm like, "Should I buy a Beelink
-mini PC?" No, no, no don't buy a Beelink.
-Oh, no.
Like, 'cause it's not worth spending the
money on it for something that is not...
Like, it's not that I fear that I would
want it to become my primary, it's that I
would
-spend money on this thing-
-Spend too much time, yeah
... knowing that it's only ever going to
be a secondary thing-
-Yeah, yeah
-... and it won't get the use to justify
-it. But just-
-Agree
... just on that, like these, these mini
PCs have gotten so good. Um, like, uh, it,
uh, it's got, like, a 5 gigahertz AMD
Ryzen processor in it with its own
-discreet AI capabilities.
-Geez.
It's got 32 gig of RAM, one terabyte hard
drive, and it's, like, $600 Australian.
It's like, they're not even expensive, and
they're far and away more capable
machines than, you know, desktop machines
that we bought five years ago.
-Oh, yeah.
-Ten years ago.
-Yep.
-In this little, like-
-That's impressive
-... Mac mini sized puck.
-Yep.
-So.
Yeah, they're pretty incredible. Yeah, you
can do all sorts of cool stuff with those
-too.
-And it's, like, you look at it, and you
go, you know, it's only $500, and it's,
like, all... But again, for me to use it,
-like-
-Yeah. Finding the time to-
-... in the background
-... do something with it. Yeah.
-Yeah.
-Yeah. Exactly.
Um, yeah. If, if it could replace the
entire Apple ecosystem, sure. And, and
sure, yes, there are alternatives. You
could use Dropbox instead of iCloud, and
you could use this instead of that, and
all of... But I don't, I don't want to do
-all of that, 'cause-
-Yeah. Yeah
... my wife is not gonna switch to a
non-Apple device just to be able to, like,
send me text messages and things like
that. We're not gonna move to Signal or
Telegram or whatever else to, to send
messages just because I've decided I wanna
try this other thing out. Like, that is
not practical.
-That's not happening. Yeah.
-And, like, my family's not gonna move,
and, yeah, all this other stuff. It's
just, it's not-
-Too heavily invested. I get it. Yeah.
-It would, it would definitely be a-
-It's like if I was starting over-
-... a ticket price
... if I was starting over from square
one, and I wasn't already so heavily
invested, maybe. You know what I mean? But
it's like, I'm not. I'm just not at that
point anymore, so. Stuck in my ways. I'm
an old man. Um-
-Yeah.
-Okay. Two more things.
-I'm trying to convince-
-Number one-
... uh, the boss. I'm trying to convince
the boss-
-Yeah
-... to get us all Omachi devices for-
-Oh, there you go
-... work.
That'd be fun. That would be actually
cool.
'Cause if I could use it all day, every
day, it'd be fine.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And if I didn't have
to pay for it, even better.
-Yeah.
-Um, I forgot to tell you, my daughter got
smacked in the head with a baseball bat
today at school. Um-
-I believe.
-And-
Happens to... Kids, uh, kids aren't
coordinated, and then-
Yeah. Huge split right in her forehead.
Had to go get stitches. It was a mess.
That poor kid. She's doing fine now, but
little headache, but made it alive. I'll
send you pictures. It was... Dude, it was
-brutal. Looked like a gun-
-Sprung place, sprung time?
I mean, I, I mean, not to be overly
dramatic, but it looked like a freaking
gunshot wound. I mean, head wounds are
always so bloody.
-Yeah.
-You know what I mean? Like-
-Yeah
-... their, theirs just looks like a mess.
The, the PE teacher sh- said, "That's the
most blood I've ever seen in an injury in
this gym." And she's like, "I've never
seen that much blood." And I'm like, "Holy
cow.
-Poor kid."
-Thanks.
-And so she was, it was a mess. Anyway-
-Glad it could be my child, you know?
Seris- seriously. So anyway, yeah. She's
fine, but that was crazy. Um, the other
thing I was going to talk about, and I
think we're... I mean, how far are we in?
-I'm not sure.
-We're at 40.
I feel like I do this... 40? Okay. All
right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna real quick
mention this,
'cause we've talked about it a little bit
before. Twilio conversations. So this is
something we're working on, where we're
doing, like, agent text conversations back
and forth. Um, it's been interesting sort
of the structure that we've come up with,
which is that all the source of truth
lives on Twilio. So Twilio is the one who
is brokering all those conversations. But
if we want to be able to do anything with
them in our own sort of domain, we have to
store our own copies of those messages
so that we can enrich them
and not have to pull those conversations
down every single time we wanna do
something with them, right? It's like, I
want to be able to do things in the
background in the case I haven't heard
from those conversations in a bit or
things like that. So, um, it's, it's an
interesting one. We can talk about it next
time about how exactly we're doing that.
And also, like, the nice thing about this
too is that Twilio is... has higher SLAs
than we do, right? So if there's a
conversation that comes in that we missed,
it's possible that, like, maybe a webhook
-failed. Possible, right?
-Yeah.
Maybe, maybe it... But for them, they
still have their copy of it. And so what
we can do is we can inspect our own
indexes on our side, and if we get a new
message in that is further along than one
off of our indexes, we can auto resync the
conversation in the background and then
redisplay it. It's also we can use
LayerVal presence channels on our side to
kind of see who's in which conversations
and who's busy responding to what. We're
working on doing, like, timeouts and
alerting and ownership. So if somebody has
it, but they haven't responded in a
certain amount of time, roll it over to a
manager or escalate it to another person.
So all these sorts of cool business
interactions that we're having to decide,
um, you know, our heuristics around what,
how we want that to behave. It's been
really, it's been really fun. And so
Wilbur Power has been working on that and
using Flux, uh, UI, um, for that, which
has been really delightful too. It looks
so-
-Nice
-... good. It really does. It looks so
good. Uh, Caleb been, uh... Caleb's done
such a good job with that.
Um, and so yeah. Shout out to Caleb and
his team. Doing awesome. And yeah, we can
-talk more about that next time.
-Yeah. Cool. Yeah. No, that, um-So, my, my
boss has been doing a proof of concept at
the moment with, um, 11 Labs speech
generation and, well, for like lead, lead
qualification.
-Okay. Okay.
-So if we get a lead from someone, we can
then have
the, uh, the machine call the customer,
you know, and, and qualify them. You know,
"Do you do this? Do you have this? We
need this information." You know, all that
-kind of prequalification stuff-
-Yeah
... before then handing off to a, an
actual human to, to do the next step. So,
interesting to see, you know, just how
much is possible now with all of this
tooling, you know, to actually make a
phone call to someone.
-Yeah.
-And I think, I think his proof of concept,
he's using Twilio at the moment as well,
um, maybe.
Probably for the program, telephony stuff,
yeah.
Yeah. For the, yeah, for the conversation,
and then, like, shelling out to
Elevenlabs to, to do, like, the actual
voice gen and the end... Like, it's
indistinguishable, uh, I haven't heard it,
hasn't called me yet.
-It is. It's amazing.
-But it's, like, indistinguishable from a
-machine.
-Yeah, it's really amazing now.
I think, you know, if you can keep the
latency down-
-That's what it is
-... in terms of processing the responses
and, and responding back to someone, then,
um, you know, that'd be really cool. So,
yes, a lot of that kinda stuff. I think,
as we're coming up for air from a lot of
the, um, work that we've been doing in
terms of, uh, commercial work and in terms
of, you know, paying down technical debt
and things like that, we are this close to
getting rid of tenancy and, and
flattening everything down just to a
single, uh, database. And, and, like, a
normal, quote-unquote, Laravel application
is, um, very good. So I'm just... I'm in
the stage now where I'm just rebasing a
couple of times a day, just to keep parity
as we, as we push out a few other bits
and pieces. And then we'll cut this across
and then
it'll be done. Makes testing so much
easier, schema migration. So all of this
stuff, now, now that all of this technical
debt repayment is done, the fact that we
have the opportunity to explore
not just, like, using AI for the sake of
AI, but how can we solve some real
problems u- you know, leveraging AI, which
is the question that I always ask every
time. You know, the higher ups are always
like, "Let's use AI, because we're gonna
get left behind." And we're like, "What
are we gonna use it for?" And they're
like, "Well, let's use AI." Okay. Let's
figure out what we can actually use it
-for.
-Right.
So there's a couple of things that we've
got-
-Yeah, give me an objective, yeah
-... um, members of the team have got on
the go at the moment that, that look
really cool that we've done, so... Yeah,
it's, uh, it's a cool, cool time, I think.
You know, as I said-
-Yeah
-... I've said before, I'm late to the
game, but I'm, I'm starting to see some,
like, very real possibilities and I'm
starting to understand better, um,
how we can leverage some of these tools
as... You know, people that know what
they're doing, uh, to, to, to really
leverage them to, you know, do more.
Which, you know, people have been saying
for ages, but I, I have seen now through
my own, like, usage and from... Like,
Aaron Francis putting out his two-hour
video of building his email, um, email
builder thing, like, and seeing how he
uses it, and it's actually clicked for me
now. So, you know, I'm two years late, but
better late than never I suppose.
I'll have to check that out. I know that I
heard that video was really, really good,
I have not watched it yet, so I'll have
to check that out.
Anyone that's still on the fence, that
doesn't get it, like, like me-
-Watch that video.
-Um, yeah, watch that video. I think it
will, it will make a lot more sense when
you
understand how
as a, as someone who's got some experience
and understands how to build software,
um... Like, I use it, every time I do a
rebase now, 'cause we're on a newer
version of PHPStan, there are things that
are not violations in master or in the
main branch that are now violations
because of the newer version of PHPStan.
-Mm. Mm-hmm.
-So now what I do is I fire up Opencode and
I say, "Hey, I've just rebased on main,
I've got some PHPStan violations, can you
have a look at what those are and propose
fixes for me?" And it runs off, it runs
Stan, it goes and figures out what the
violations are, figures out how to fix
them, and then it, you know, makes all of
the changes, and then I just have to go
through and review the, the, the, the
changes in Git and go, "Yep, that's fine,
that's fine, that's fine." And, uh, and it
makes sure everything passes. So for me
to do that, it would take an hour to go
like, "Look at this, this obscure PHPStan
error sometimes." Go, "Okay, what is this
trying to say? Okay, how do I fix it?
Where is it? How many places do I have to
-fix it in?" Go.
-Yep.
Whereas, like, you just tell, um, Claude
or, you know, Opencode, "Go and fix this,"
and it just churns in the background and
you can go and do other things, which is
nice. Which, a- again, people know this,
people have been doing this for 12 months,
18 months already, and I'm late to the
party. I'm sorry. But, you know, I'm
-fashionably late, it's fine.
-No need to apologize, yeah. It's just
that, you know, it's a young man's game,
uh, or an early adopter man's game.
-Keeping up.
-You got it.
-Yeah.
-Hey folks, this is episode 181. Thanks so
much for joining us. You can find show
notes for this episode at
northmeetsouth.audio/181. If you liked the
show, please rate it up in your
podcatcher of choice, five stars would be
incredible. And of course, if you have any
questions, hit us up on X, on Bluesky,
all the places, @michaeldurinda,
@jacobbennett1 or North South Audio.
Folks, till next time, we'll see you
later. Take it easy.