[00:00:10.210] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:10.700] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:11.200] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:13.050] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:15.440] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And we're back two weeks running. Look at that. Yeah, we had a bit of a period of time off and we're back again now, so we thought we'd keep it up and keep going nice and strong. Thank you for joining us. Any news first of all, Taylor?

[00:00:43.430] - Taylor
No real news. On the business front or anything?

[00:00:46.590] - Gordon
No?

[00:00:47.180] - Taylor
I got my car fixed. I had a battery drain so.

[00:00:50.690] - Gordon
For a while now, you've had a battery drain.

[00:00:53.150] - Taylor
Yeah, so I got that fixed, which was expensive but kind of needed doing.

[00:00:58.200] - Gordon
Well, it got to the point when every time you got in the car, it wouldn't start because of the battery issue and you had to use my big sort of booster to get it going and then it would probably last just for that journey. And that was it.

[00:01:12.330] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:12.840] - Gordon
So now you've taken it in and had it fixed properly and you found that the battery was the wrong battery for a start.

[00:01:19.570] - Taylor
Yeah, apparently.

[00:01:20.280] - Gordon
And if anyone has a black box in their car because of their insurance company, make sure that it gets disconnected properly once you don't have the black box requirement anymore because that's one of the issues you had, isn't it?

[00:01:37.570]
Yeah.

[00:01:38.170] - Gordon
So now that's all fixed, hopefully your car will start every time.

[00:01:43.080] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:43.510] - Gordon
So that's great news. Looking after your equipment is really important. I don't think I've got any news. I had a photo shoot here yesterday. I had a customer of mine come over with the family and we did a family photo shoot, which is something I haven't done for a long time, but it requires quite a bit of work on my behalf because I've got to basically change my dining room into a photo studio, with backgrounds and lights and cameras and everything else. And it's quite a big process to do and I haven't needed to do it for a long time because no one came over during lockdown. So yeah, it just reminded me how much work was involved in it. But the photos came out great.

[00:02:29.140] - Taylor
That's good.

[00:02:29.140] - Gordon
Customer's very happy, so that's good. Right, shall we get straight on with our topics then?

[00:02:33.890] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:34.580] - Gordon
Okay. So my topic is something that we discussed a while back, which was the 'Meta Quest 2,' which is the VR headset, which I happen to have here. There we go. So this is what a VR headset is, and I purchased this a few months back after having a play with it. I knew about it because it's something that wasn't Meta before 'Oculus,' but it was bought by the people who own Facebook now called Meta. I knew about it and it was an interesting technology to me, but it wasn't something that I really wanted to own, until I tried it. And once I tried it, a friend of mine, Paul, who we've mentioned on this podcast many times, he has one and he let me use his and had a play with it. And as soon as I did, it's like, "oh my goodness, this is just so great." So I bought myself my own one. So it comes as a headset. Inside here are the two screens, and it's got all the gubbins inside the front. I bought an extended head mount with a battery at the back, which helps to counterweight it because it's quite heavy at the front. And then you've got various cameras on the front there which are used to see the handsets. So these are the handsets. You hold them like this and like this, and you've got various buttons on the inside here. And you've got triggers at the front and at the side as well. And the Oculus knows where they are. So if you're playing a game or you're doing an activity, it can see where your hands are. So we have discussed this before and I made a note to come back to it and give you an update. And the update is, it's really good. I'm really enjoying it. It's not something that I bought, used for a couple of weeks and then put down and haven't picked up again. It's something that I continually use. And what makes it really good is a) the platform is getting more and more popular. So more and more people are buying Oculuses. Therefore it's becoming more of an attractive platform for the developers. So more and more games are being developed, more and more applications are being developed. One of the things that's just been added is a Sky Worlds beta. So it's in testing at the moment. But if you have a Sky account, you can effectively watch your sports channels and selected channels from within the Oculus; a little bit like Sky Go.

[00:05:15.220] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:05:15.740] - Gordon
If you have that app, but you can basically sit down and you've got a big screen in front of you, can watch it as if you were watching it on a big TV. Which is great for many reasons, if you've got Sky, which you need to have to be able to use the app and someone is watching the channel that they want to watch, and you want to watch a different channel. Well, for us we can't because we've got one Sky box that goes around our various TVs around the house. But now I can just stick the Oculus on and assuming it's one of the channels that I want to watch, I can sit and watch it with the Oculus on, which is another option for me.

[00:05:53.350] - Taylor
There's also the Sky Go app that's actually recently just come out on Apple TV, which is a big thing because I don't have a Sky box in my room. And so I was never able to watch the Formula One or anything on my TV. I always had to watch it on the iPad, but now I can because I've got an Apple TV in my room. And so it gives us a lot more freedom, especially with all of the other TVs that have Apple TVs that are all linked to the same Sky box. They can now actually run their own separate Sky kind of...

[00:06:27.100] - Gordon
Feed.

[00:06:28.950] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:28.950] - Gordon
Which is very good. So well done Sky for doing that. So the reason for mentioning the Sky app is that Sky saw an opportunity as a business, to move into a new platform. Now I went looking and an Oculus runs on the Android operating system, so I'm guessing that a lot of the coding was already done because they've probably got Sky Go on Android. I don't know, I don't have an Android phone, but I'm assuming they do. And so just changing the code over for a new platform shouldn't have been too much work for them, but it gives them a whole new platform and a whole new audience to bring their channels to, which can only help them as a business. And so having an Oculus is yes, it's fun, mainly used for games, but as a business owner, I like to keep up with the new technology so I know what's happening and I can look out for opportunities for making my business move into different areas and maybe do something new and different. I have the option to get a developer to create an app for me that possibly shows Gordon's Magic or Pip Kennedy Magic and use it as a way to have a sort of a virtual reality 360 degree experience of some of my performances, which is something of interest. One of the apps they have is YouTube and because I've got an Insta 1360X2, which I've just upgraded to, I can now take 360 videos and I can upload them to YouTube, which allow for 360 videos, which I've now tested and tried; and then watch it on my Oculus as a 360 video. So I can actually look around and I can create my own videos, which is going to be much better and easier than creating my own app. So yeah, it's an interesting concept and because it's becoming more popular, I've now got more people that I know that are purchasing them. So I have another two, three friends who've now bought one. And in fact, for the first time ever just a few days ago, there's a game called Walkabout Mini Golf, which is so much fun, so cool, and I was playing it with three other people in different parts of the country. And you can hear each other, so you can talk normally and you can hear each other as if you were standing next to each other. So it's a really sociable way of talking with your friends who may not be in the same country as you, while having an activity. In this case, we were playing mini golf, and it's becoming a really immersive experience, which I'm really, really enjoying. So one downside to this is because it's becoming really popular and more people are buying it, Meta have decided that they were actually losing money on every headset and they decided to change the price. So there were two models. There was the 128 gigabyte model and there was the 256 gigabyte model. So basically, just the amount of storage that you have available for games and for applications was different. That was the only difference. And the 128 used to be in the UK £299, or in the US $299. And then the 256 gigabyte model was $100 or pounds more, so that's £399 or $399. There was a posting on Meta Quest website saying that the prices were increasing by $100, which equated to £100, on the 1st August. So they're now $399, or pounds and $499 or pounds for exactly the same model. Plus some of the accessories have gone up in price as well, in fact, most of them have gone up by differing amounts. So the extended headset grip that I've got with the battery on the back has gone up by about £20 or $20. So Taylor was using my Oculus because he had an account which he had put onto mine, which means that he could play all the games that I had, but it meant that we couldn't play games together because we only had the one headset. So what did you do?

[00:11:29.580] - Taylor
So I got a Meta Quest for myself.

[00:11:34.110] - Gordon
And the time that we decided we were going to do it was like the 30th or the 31st, I think it was, whatever it was, whatever the Saturday was just gone, of July. And so we thought, "okay, now is a good time to do it because it's going to save money before the price increase on the 1st August." However, some of the retailers were either very sneaky, or decided to put the price up early, because when we went looking, we found a mixture, in fact, of different places with different prices. Some having the old price or the price as it should have been on the 30th or 31st July, and some having the price as it would be on the 1st August.

[00:12:22.650] - Taylor
And some just having it as out of stock or not purchasable because they're just waiting.

[00:12:31.010] - Gordon
Well yes. It could have been that a lot of people saw that the price was going up, because it was publicized, and so therefore went out and did exactly what Taylor was going to do and that's buy the Oculus ahead of time so that you can buy it at the lower price. In which case all the stock was being bought out. Or the retailer had decided to withdraw their stock at the current price and then put it back on like a day or two later at the new price, to earn £100 profit more on the devices that they had in stock at the time than they would have done if they sold it a day or two earlier. Which is a bit sneaky, but showing it as out of stock.

[00:13:18.140] - Gordon
Well it just said 'unavailable,' it didn't say out of stock.

[00:13:21.120] - Gordon
Well, we looked on Amazon and they said they didn't have any in stock, which I don't believe. I think they probably just took it off and decided to hold on to them for a couple of days and then put it back on again with the new price. So Amazon wasn't an option for us. We were looking around to find out who had them, and we found that Game had them at the old price. So it was a sort of a click and collect type service where you paid for it at the store. So we did that, and Taylor immediately went out to the store to get it. Weirdly though, the extended headset, which I highly recommend because it does help with the counterweighting of the headset, but it also gives you twice as much battery power, so it's a really good thing to have. That was more expensive from Game at £120 versus the £90 that it was on Amazon. So the accessory hadn't gone up in price, but the headset was out of stock, so who knew what was going on there? But you managed to get it at the last minute, at the old price. So you now have it.

[00:14:40.070] - Taylor
I do.

[00:14:40.070] - Gordon
And you played with mine for a couple of months before you decided to get your own. So, was there a particular reason that stopped you going out and getting it immediately?

[00:14:52.070] - Taylor
I think it was just the price, really, and kind of my priorities of things that I needed to save up for and subscriptions, memberships, things I've got that I needed to pay. So obviously it wouldn't be a financially wise decision so.

[00:15:10.630] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:15:11.110] - Taylor
That was the main reason.

[00:15:11.920] - Gordon
So I managed to sort of pay for it as an early birthday present for him. And I wanted to save both of us some money by getting it at the old price. So that's why he managed to get it there and then. But you're enjoying it?

[00:15:28.320] - Taylor
Yeah, I really enjoy it. Got quite a few games; table tennis, cricket. I just bought this kind of Call of Duty style game, which is good, and they're very realistic. And that's, I think, the scary part, but also quite cool, I think.

[00:15:44.520] - Gordon
Yeah, it is. It's great. So that's my update with the Oculus, which I said I would bring to you once I'd had it for a little while and had time to play with it. And the verdict is: it's great! Really enjoying it.

[00:15:57.970] - Taylor
So, I just wanted to kind of update, a little update about how I'm getting on. Obviously, well not obviously, but I mentioned in the last episode that I was ill for a period of time and it kind of takes a lot out of you, especially when you get out of your routine, you get out of... If you're healthy, you don't realize how much gets taken out of you from the amount of energy that you have, or the lack thereof. And just day to day things that you forget you have to do, because there's certain things you just don't need to do when you're ill, or you're not able to do. And so trying to remember all of the things that I needed to do, all the things I did previously, and trying to build myself up has been a slow process. I'm doing a lot better now. I'm slowly getting back into it. Starting to put some of the practises and things that I spoke to my coach about, which is Peter Webb from TLR Fitness. We spoke to him and he said, yes, absolutely fine. So if you do want any coaching then I highly recommend.

[00:17:20.180] - Gordon
We'll put details in the notes.

[00:17:22.450] - Taylor
But, yeah, putting some of the stuff that we spoke about in practise and it's starting to really help. And I'm finding that I think the biggest for me was trying to take control, or taking control of my business and my life in a way. Because I found that email was very much taking control over what I was doing and how I was running my business. So with the things that we've been working on, it's just helping, taking everything back and moving forward and upwards, really.

[00:18:03.210] - Gordon
So, yeah, it does knock you for six, really, to use cricketing terms, when you're not needing or able to do your normal day to day jobs and tasks, as well as running your business as well. And sort of everything gets put on hold. So it's quite good that you've now experienced this. I mean, it's a horrible experience, but it's nice that you've experienced it and now you can put in place some sort of systems so that you're going to be able to manage your clients' expectations better, and you'll be able to manage your time better. And the nice thing about having both of us do a similar type of job is that I'm able to help if I'm needed, or take over something if that's needed, or speak to the customer and be able to understand what point during the development stage we've got to and what's needed and what's coming up and so forth. And that really helps as well. So you've got a sort of a backup with me, as it were.

[00:19:20.090] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:19:21.490] - Gordon
But as far as the day to day things go, are you... It's taken a week since we last spoke about this, but it's just remembering, "ah yeah, that's what I do at this point. That's what I do at that point. I need to make sure I do that." And sort of getting back into the swing of it, as it were.

[00:19:43.760] - Taylor
Yeah, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm able to do in a day, because the amount I can get done, not just from how much I can do in an hour, for example, but how long I can actually kind of last, I guess. I'm still not able to do a full day of working. It's just too tiring. I just can't manage at the moment, which otherwise I was doing quite long days prior to it absolutely fine, and obviously it's a real difference because what I think I can get done and what I'm able to do are two different things and it's still something I'm trying to find, like gauge and figure out, "okay this is what I'm able to do." Or, "this is what I expect." And maybe I need to just reel it back in and under-estimate and then when I've...

[00:20:47.220] - Gordon
Anything else is a bonus.

[00:20:48.410] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. But it's difficult because I like to try and get as much as done as I can. I enjoy being productive, I enjoy just doing stuff and not being still doing nothing. And so having to take these breaks, a bit more of these breaks and stuff, it is tricky, but also something that I need to make sure that I factor in.

[00:21:11.350] - Gordon
Amazing. It's good that you're putting processes in place, though, which is how all businesses should run.

[00:21:18.810] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:21:18.810] - Gordon
So, anything else you'd like to say?

[00:21:21.630] - Taylor
No, I think that's everything this week.

[00:21:23.650] - Gordon
Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us. As always, we can be found on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share and subscribe.

[00:21:32.410] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.

[00:21:40.290] - Gordon
Please join us again at 1p.m. next Friday. We are hoping to be here. Unless anything happens, the plan is always to be here on Friday at 1p.m. So until then, thank you for watching. My name's Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:21:56.260] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:21:59.220] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:21:59.920] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes