Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, February 8, 2026, and this is show number 1083. Well, Steve and I leave for our trip to Finland and Estonia. Last week I asked if anyone wanted to meet up with us in Helsinki, and we’re excited that Timo answered our call. Should be great fun to get the feel of Finland from him. He is originally from Michigan, my home state, but has been living in Finland for almost 30 years. If anyone else can be in Helsinki on Wednesday, February 11th for lunch, shoot me an email at [email protected].
While we’re gone, the delightful Jill from the Northwoods will be taking the reins and making sure our 20-year streak of NosillaCasts isn’t broken. She’s even going to do Security Bits with Bart, which should be awesome. The only thing you’ll miss is that there will be NO LIVE SHOW on Sunday, February 15th. We’ll be back for the live show on the 22nd.
Clockwise #642: A Hierarchy in My Head – Relay
You know I always have fun when I get to be on the Clockwise Podcast with Mikah Sargent and Dan Moren, and this week’s experience was no different. The second guest was the lovely Chris Lawley. We started out talking about our “cozy gaming habits”, where I had to admit I have no game at all. We chatted about whether AI coding integration makes us want to build apps, which gave me the opportunity to plug my two time-based web apps. Then I turned the show political by asking each person, “list view or column view”, and demanding they defend their positions. We ended friends when we gushed about what rumored Apple products we will instabuy.
You can find the show at www.relay.fm/clockwise Show #642: A Hierarchy in My Head.
How Many Mea Culpas Do I Get?
We all may remember 2026 as the year it took Allison around five tries to fix a borked audio file. It all started when I misaligned two audio tracks in NosillaCast #1080. When I fixed it so they were aligned properly, I didn’t notice that it was two of the same interview. So I fixed it again to put in the right two interviews. Throughout this process, I renamed the file from the original to add an A to adding a B. When I finally got it fixed with Rev B, I thought I was finally done.
Imagine my surprise THIS WEEK, when JoeP posted in Slack that his podcatcher (OverCast) was saying that the content for episode 1080 was unavailable. I made him go through a bunch of machinations, like deleting the episode, then deleting the subscription and resubscribing to the NosillaCast, and finally to trying another podcatcher. He reported back that the results didn’t change; the content was unavailable.
I decided to look at the source. If you go to podfeet.com/NosillaCast/rss.xml, you can see the raw text of the RSS file that brings you the NosillaCast. It might look like utter glop to you at first, but if you scan down the file, you’ll see tags that say <item> and </item>. Inside each one of these tags, you’ll find the title of an episode, a link to the associated blog post, and then the description, which is the actual blog post content. Next, you get the publication date, and finally, you get to the most important one, the <enclosure> tag.
And to my horror, I saw that the Enclosure file was set to NC_2026_01_18A.mp3 not B.mp3. I’d fixed the link in the blog post, but on my last pass through, I forgot to fix it in the feed file! And, I had gone back and deleted rev A in Libsyn, which is why when JoeP tried to fetch the file, it said it was gone. Once I realized the problem, it was a quick one-character fix, I pushed the feed again and Joe was finally sorted.
So now I’m wondering what happened to all the people who tried to listen to episode 1080 through their podcatchers over the past couple of weeks? Does everyone listen so much later than the shows are produced that they just haven’t hit the problem yet? And I can’t tell you how much I wish I could reach back into the past to tell them.
Oh well, I sure hope this is the last time you have to hear about episode 1080.
Perplexity — I AM Somebody!
Did you ever see the movie The Jerk, starring Steve Martin? He plays a young man who isn’t terribly sophisticated in the ways of the world. One day, the new phone books arrive, and he loses his ever-loving-mind with excitement, because he finds his name in the phone book. He starts yelling, “The new phonebooks are here! I’m somebody now!” www.youtube.com/…
That’s exactly how I felt last week. Dave Nathanson, who is a member of a local Mac Users’ Group, asked Perplexity a question about how to use Hyperback up on a Synology. He was curious about which encryption method he should use. One of the advantages of Perplexity is that it shows you the original source of the answers it presents. To his delight, the first recommendation was from podfeet.com! He sent me a screenshot and everything.
That absolutely made my day. But then it happened again! Kiwi Graham posted on Bluesky a screenshot showing where he asked Perplexity a question about Synology migration strategies and the first hit was also from podfeet.com for my article entitled, “The Great Synology Migration of 2022”.
How fun is that? I AM somebody!
Ok, let’s actually get the show started with a CES interview. This one is fun in audio, but it’s also really fun in Steve’s video (which you can get to with the chapter link in the shownotes). You get to see me walking around in an exoskeleton!
Articles
CES 2026: Hypershell Exoskeleton
Touch Portal, An Inexpensive Stream Deck-like Solution — by Steve Mattan
I love this so much, Steve. By the way, Touch Portal runs on Linux and Windows too, and you can use Android devices to control the machines. So it’s cross-platform, inexpensive, and lets you use older devices. What’s not to love! Hope you’ll be back with more reviews soon, keep them coming!
CES 2026: Naqi Logix Neural Earbud-Based Control Platform
Support the Show
Last week, I explained that I needed to buy a new bit of bumper music when I discovered that my beloved “Cha-Ching” sound wasn’t being heard right before begging for money. I suggested in the panhandling section that it would be cool if someone bought me 3 coffees using podfeet.com/donate to cover the cost of the new music. John Ormsby, aka NASAnut in the live show, was kind enough to do just that. When I thanked him, he said, “It’s probably the least I can do for you putting up with my snarkiness.” He’s not wrong, he is a bit of a pest, but that’s just the kind of person I like! As Amy Poehler says, “Sarcasm is my love language”. So thanks, John, for the years of snarkiness and for covering the cost of the jingles!
CCATP #829 Jason Howell on Smart Glasses
Transcript of NC_2026_02_08
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Did you know you can email me at [email protected] any time you like? If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet.com/mastodon. If you want to listen to the podcasts on YouTube, you can go to podfeet.com/youtube. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com/slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely NosillaCastaways. You can support the show at podfeet.com/patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeet.com/donate like John did to help pay for the jingles, or through podfeet.com/paypal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, you’re going to have to wait till February 22nd to head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5 PM Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.