I'd Rather Be Scripting Ash Arnwine & Kerri Shotts

This episode was recorded January 14th, 2024.
What's in store, 2024?Welcome to a near year and new season of I'd Rather Be Scripting! In this episode Ash and Kerri chat about the things they'd like to learn or do in 2024. Buckle up—we've got a lot to talk about in this one!
Kerri's topics:
FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) development using the Alchitry Au kit and Vivado. One learning already: getting the toolchain working on an Apple-silicon Mac is challenging! (Way easier with an Intel-based Windows machine.)3D Printing. Bambu Lab is one of the mentions as a potential buy: https://bambulab.com/en-eu. Learning Latex (pronounced lay-tech). Of note, Texifier is a nice piece of software for having live previews of your latex documents. It's not free, but it's definitely worth the price if you're into latex. And it comes with a lot of latex packages available for download, so one doesn't have to spend a lot of time manually configuring your environment.Musical topics, including learning more classical music and figuring out polyrhythms. https://4four.io/ploop is a great way to explore how two (or more) competing rhythms sound. Also looking to get into finger drumming a bit, with a Korg Nanopad.
Ash's topics:
Exploring Makey Makey. During the conversation, Ash mentioned his sound maker Github repo named Chikurin. Go check it out!Coding topics, including Deno and asynchronous APIsGenerative AI in productNative app developmentAlso mentioned a single monitor arm that Ash has been using during the intro.

This episode was recorded on December 17, 2023. Since we mention a lot of companies and products in this episode, it's worth noting that our episodes (including this one) are not sponsored. Our opinions are entirely our own. Links to any products do NOT contain affiliate links.
In this episode, Ash and Kerri look back at the year that was 2023, including some notable work and personal milestones while also looking at some hardware, software, and media that they found interesting in 2023.
Kerri's Top Hardware
ESR 3-in-1 Charger Stand for MagSafeSamsung T7 ShieldInsta360 Link WebcamStream Deck (Honorable mention)Iphone 15 Pro Max (Honorable mention)
Ash's Top Hardware
AudioTechnica Sound BurgerMac StudioMoleskin Cahiers
We have a brief chat about e-readers as we both have been considering getting one. The following were mentioned:
Remarkable 2Boox Tab Ultra C
Kerri's Top Software
Rocket MoneyBackupLoupeDaisyDisk (honorable mention, along with a mention of GrandPerspective)Adobe Firefly & Adobe Express
Ash's Top Software
Adobe Lightroom (honorable mention)OllamaDraftsCheckYourList
Kerri's Top Games
Super Mario WonderZelda: Tears of the Kingdom (honorable mention)DredgeBugsnax
Ash's Top Media
StoryworthyThe Art of Leadershipa...

This episode was recorded on October 1, 2023. The events mentioned in this podcast episode have already occurred, but you should be able to watch them online by visiting the Adobe MAX website.
In this episode, Kerri shares some Adobe updates with Ash, including some new features for Adobe Firefly and the general availability of the developer platform for Adobe Express add-ons. She also mentions a MAX session for more about using Adobe add-ons: Adobe Express Add-ons: Spark Creativity with Powerful Gems [S6712]. At the time of this recording some APIs were gated behind experimental flags, but these APIs are now available for all developers. (Note: Kerri is a product manager for extensibility at Adobe, but her opinions are her own.)
Links:
Adobe FireflyAdobe ExpressAdobe Express Add-on Documentation, including Audio and Editor (now Document Model) APIs
Ash also mentions the DevRelX summit, and a panel he was about to host on AI: 2.0 of your DevRel team - How DevRel teams can use AI today? (Recording) You should absolutely go check this panel session out — it was fantastic, with lots of great insights from the panelists.
Near the end we also chat about the new iPhone and upgrading from previous models.

This episode was recorded on September 4, 2023
IntroIn this episode, Ash and Kerri talk about the various resources they use to stay up-to-date with technology and related news. But first, they chat about some events that were coming up (in the past as of the release of this recording).
Traveling & Events:
apiDays London 2023 (YouTube playlist)Adobe Max
We also chat a little bit about setting up kiosks for conferences and setting up education setups using GitHub Codespaces and Replit.
Before we delve into the main topic, we also make a few detours, as per usual:
Vergecast (Aug 23): Mythical computers and super appsHacking the Timex m857 (Found on Hacker News)Atari 2600 reissue
Our sources for staying up-to-dateAsh and Kerri go back and forth sharing some of their sources for staying up-to-date in the ever-changing world of technology and related topics.
Hacker NewsReddit & Reddit-likes, including Tildes, Lobste.rs, and Lemmy's technology forumProduct HuntIndie HackersYouTube — and a channel right up our alley: Work From Hype. Also check out this interesting related article: "The $60 Monitor Worth Having on Your Desk"Stratechery
Honorable mentions (including apps) that didn't get called out in the episode, but you should go check out anyway:
TechmemeNetNewsWire (App)GoodLinks (App)Daring Fireball (& The Talk Show podcast)Morning BrewTechnology Connections (YouTube)Dave's Garage...

Recorded July 23, 2023
IntroThis episode is all about desk setups! (And a little about desktop menu bar setups…)
But first, Kerri and Ash catch up on We Connect the Dots, Apple II Basic, and summer movies. 
Desk setupsIt's been alluded to a few times, and now it's actually happening—Kerri and Ash share all about their home desk setups.
Some of the gear they cover includes:
Insta 360 Link webcam: https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-linkWave XLR: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/wave-xlrStream Deck+: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-plus-blackStream Deck SDK: https://docs.elgato.com/sdk/plugins/overview

iStat MenusKerri and Ash then pull the trigger on doing a dive into their respective iStat Menu setups for monitoring their Mac hardware in real time. CPUs, GPUs, RAM, network, and more!

Beyond OpenAI APIsRecorded Jul 9, 2023
IntroKerri and Ash kick things off by talking about their 4th of July celebrations. Also they talk about learning Japanese and not learning German.
Music ML Update Kerri has some follow-up regarding a recent episode on music and ML.
Topics covered include:
Google’s AI Music KitchenMusicLM (Example; Dataset; Paper)
Kerri notes how these tools today can be great for idea generation, but won't necessary write your albums for you... yet.
Going beyond OpenAI APIsAsh is interested in exploring beyond calling OpenAI APIs for creating smart features.
On reason for the timing of this exploration is that Ash's team at Nylas is sponsoring WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin and his team needs an AI tool that doesn't require a credit card when running a workshop.
Hugging Face joins the chat...
Hugging Face—which Ash will refer to as the GitHub for AI models—is quite useful with its free tier.
There's a Node.js module for Hugging Face, which Ash built a tiny, tiny demo around (GitHub repo here).
Ash notes that there is some dialog in the developer community around whether LangChain is pointless or not (Reddit; HackerNews).
You can decide for yourself by checking out the LangChain docs.
Also... LocalLlama is something Ash and Kerri want to play with.
Mac stuffAsh refrained from talking about his new Mac Studio in the last episode. He gets into it a little more in this one.
Our co-hosts marvel at comparing their lived experiences with MacBooks on Intel i9 vs Apple Silicon M1 vs a Mac Studio with M2 Ultra. Nothing scientific here in the comparison, but DiffusionBee speed gets discussed.
Desk stuffKerri and Ash talk about their different approaches to cable management:
Kerri: avoidAsh: obsess
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2810/

Ash also brings up the topic of KVM switches.
Ash got: ELECABLE USB C Switch Bi-Direction 2 in 1 Out or 1 in 2 Splitter 8K@60Hz Video / 10Gbps Data Transfer Compatible with Thunderbolt Device (Black)Kerri is eyeing: SABRENT KVM Switch, USB-C, 1-PC to 1-Display with 60 Watt Power Delivery (USB-KCPD)