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, August 23, 2026, and this is show number 1111.
Trip Musings
Before we get started, I wanted to muse about a few tech and non-tech things about our recent adventures. As always on our bigger trips, I wrote daily emails as a travelogue to around 130 people who voluntarily read my silliness. I have one final installment to write, but it’s already over 10,000 words and lots of photos. When complete, I’ll add it to the travelogue page on podfeet.com.
We started in Spain for the eclipse. It was our fifth successful viewing, and it was even better than all of the others. If you ever have a chance to see a total eclipse, take the opportunity. I guarantee you won’t regret it (as long as you don’t get clouds!)
From there we went to Portugal, and this is where the tech angle came into play. Remember the review I did of the Turbo Fan from JisuLife? It’s a very small, battery-operated handheld fan that’s USB-C chargeable. It’s possible this fan actually saved my life. We ended up in 99°F heat while on a walking tour, and I used the fan constantly to try to keep from collapsing. I put it on tables while eating, and hand-held it the rest of the time. I never lost battery power even though I used it the better part of every day there. By far the best $12 I’ve ever spent on tech.
Getting to see Bart in Ireland was a huge highlight of the trip. It had been 16 years since we’d seen each other in real life. Steve and I spent 3 days together with him and his delightful husband, Wing.
Now here’s the funny tech angle. As you’ll hear in this episode, we recorded a Security Bits episode from his home. While we’re quite experienced at recording 5000 miles apart, we have little to no experience recording with anyone in the same room. I’ve done it, but it was kludgy at best.
So Bart recorded from his studio, and it was surreal for me to get to see him from the other side of the camera. I recorded sitting on the other side of the wall from him, using his bedroom and Wing’s microphone.
Now here’s the really funny part. Bart said that my video was a bit delayed and the picture wasn’t great, but he looked fine to me, and the recording was just fine too. Halfway through the recording, I realized why it wasn’t a better connection. Since we’d been in many hotels on shared WiFi, I was still running Tailscale with our Mac mini as an Exit Node. That meant my traffic was tunneling from his house to my house 5000 miles away, and then exiting out of the Mac mini at my home IP, then traveling 5000 miles to his computer. Sometimes I’m just too smart for my own good.
I won’t blather on any longer about our summer vacation, but I do want to give heartfelt thanks to Allister for staffing the ship while we were gone. I did end up being able to assemble the show as you heard, but he published all of the blog posts, did the initial spam on Slack and Mastodon, and checked the Feed to make sure it was error-free (it was filled with errors) and published the show. He also recorded a segment for the show and one for this week! Bart contributed to last week and to this week too, and of course the lovely Jill from the Northwoods and Eddie Tonkoi contributed their articles as well. Without the kindness of my Internet and real-life friends, the show would never have happened!
Articles
Peak Design Phone Bike Mount
Scrappy – Digital Scrapbook for Ideas, Research, and Fun
Support the Show
Shortly before we left on our trip, the lovely Allyn Zeman became our newest patron of the Podfeet Podcasts. People like Allyn are the lifeblood of keeping the show financially viable to create. Allyn and the other heroes went to podfeet.com/patreon and chose an amount that was right for them to show the value they see in the content produced here. It’s easy, and you could even donate as little as a dollar a month. Allyn, I salute you and your support.
Security Bits — 21 August 2026
Transcript of NC_2026_08_23
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, 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.