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 Thursday, August 6, 2026, and this is show number 1109.
Announcements
Last week I forgot to tell you about TWO THINGS! The first I sort of obliquely mentioned, but I didn’t give you any of the fun details, and the second I completely forgot, and it’s super cool (at least I think it is).
Clockwise #667: The TV Judge Rejects Your Argument
The first is that I got to be on Clockwise again. We had host Micah Sargent and host emeritus Jason Snell, along with me and Zac Hall, Senior Editor at 9 to 5 Mac. We talked about Apple TV recommendations, and you’ll hear Jason Snell slam me for naming two shows that are NOT on the Apple TV Service. That’s where the title of the episode comes from: “The TV judge rejects your argument.”
We turned our attention to whether and how we journal using our Macs. We talked about tech cleaning and maintenance habits, which turned out to be a dual-meaning question. I asked about old technologies people have fired up just to learn or relive. That’s why I mentioned last week that Jason Snell recommended Virtual 2 so I could have even more fun with VisiCalc and other old applications.
As always, the show is tight — landing at always 30 minutes, no more, no less.
You can find Clockwise #667 with me and Zac at the link in the shownotes, but as always you can subscribe to Clockwise in your podcatcher of choice.
Macstock 2026: How the Cool Kids Really Use Spreadsheets
The second thing is that Steve has created a video for you of my Macstock presentation, “How the Cool Kids Really Use Spreadsheets”. He really pulled out all the stops on production with this one. The trick was to record video of me, video of the screen of my workshop, a clean version of my audio, and a listenable version of the audience audio. And, as it turned out, video of a rather snarky attendee.
He used his Osmo Pocket 3 on a tabletop tripod to capture the screen of my presentation, as the Osmo is pretty good at picking up low light. The angle made it keystoned, but he squared it up in editing. He did his best to fix the color cast, but the lighting on the screen was pretty brutal. In retrospect, I should have recorded my own screen locally to give to him.
Since my talking head wasn’t all that critical, he used his regular camcorder to capture me. My audio was important though, so he attached one of the DJI mics to me so he got terrific sound.
Back on the camcorder, he mounted a boom mic facing backwards to capture the audience audio. This was a genius move because the audience participation in the workshop was one of the best things about it. People didn’t bother to grab a microphone and instead just hollered out their questions or suggestions. The boom mic picked it up perfectly.
Steve laid all of these tracks down together in Final Cut, and then cut back and forth between showing my screen and showing me, depending on what was interesting at the time. He did a really terrific job.
When one snarky audience member stood up and had some show and tell for his snarkiness, Steve grabbed his iPhone and captured the audio and video from the event. You’ll see that portion if you make it all the way through the tutorial.
In the workshop, I taught how to fill down and right not just functions, but how many items like months, days of the week, quarters, and even hand-crafted lists can fill sequentially. Next, I taught the important distinction between relative and absolute cell references. I showed two of her favorite but tricky concepts: CONCATENATE to combine cells, and VLOOKUP to search for data in an array. The real crowd-pleaser was when I showed how I was able to analyze the entire dataset of the name of every baby born from 1880 to 2026 from the US Social Security system using a pivot table. I actually found the end of Excel because this dataset was so huge.
At the link in the shownotes you can watch this 90-minute workshop and even download the demo files to follow along and use my notes as a handy dandy reference guide to remind you how to do what I demonstrate.
Thanks to Steve for doing so much work on it.
Articles
ChatGPT with CarPlay — by Jill McKinley
Audiobook Audio (V3) Part 6: Leave Headroom
Turbo Fan from JisuLife
Support the Show
You know what’s super cool? When I get an email saying someone bought me some coffee. That’s what happens when lovely NosillaCastaways go to podfeet.com/donate and push the buttons. You get to choose whether to buy me 1, 3, 5 coffees, or you can type in any number of coffees you want to buy – even numbers are allowed! Each coffee is worth $5 to me and is priceless to you in how great it will make you feel to support an independent podcaster who never sold out to the man … or woman.
Kerry Murphey Talks EVs
Bodie Grimm of the Kilowatt podcast donated this fabulous interview with Kerry Murphey, host of the Final Lap Weekly Podcast and Whooshn on YouTube
Transcript of NC_2026_08_06
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 actually see Steve and my podcast work 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 with Apple Pay or any credit card, or through podfeet.com/paypal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, you’ll have to wait till August 23rd 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.