The Greyman Reclaims Time During the Day
Years before I evolved into a Greyman Technologist, my Thursday night consisted of watching two straight hours of NBC sitcoms:
8:00 - The Cosby Show
8:30 - Family Ties
9:00 - Cheers
9:30 - Night Court
I happily planted my teenage butt on the sofa and watched these shows as they were broadcast to the nation, only leaving the sofa to use the bathroom during a three-minute commercial breaks. It was a glorious time of life. But it also required dedicating two hours of my evening for entertainment.
Nowadays, we make choices to view entertainment online and on our televisions requiring hours of time in our day. But it doesn’t have to be.
Let’s take the modern spectacle of a large tech company’s live presentation for example…
The Traditional Method
Watching a presentation as it happens. For Apple “keynotes” this can be viewed on their website, Apple’s Youtube channel, or your home AppleTV. For Microsoft “events” you can view it on Microsoft’s website as well as other online areas. For Google’s “special events”, you can view it on Youtube, as well as other websites.
Total time investment = Two hours, give or take.
Potential drawback = Having to sit through numerous instances of:
“I’m so excited to be here to tell you about…”
“The new [device] improves [hardware specification we don’t care about] by 75% over last year’s [device]!”
“We think you’re going to love it”
The Time-Reclaiming Method
Watching a recap of the tech event on Youtube. Tech news websites such as CNET, The Verge, and Engadget (just to name a few) provide a heavily-edited video of the presentation’s highlights on a YouTube channel a few hours after the event concludes.
Total time investment = 9 to 15 minutes, depending on your tech news channel
Potential drawback = Having to sit through unskippable ads randomly placed in your recap video… if you don’t have a premium YouTube subscription.
The Greyman Method
Watching a tech news site’s recap of the presentation events, not on their Youtube channel, but on the (free) Freetube desktop application or one of the many Invidio.us instances online…at 1.5x speed. This method gives no data telemetry to YouTube and there are no ads plopped in during your viewing.
Total time investment = 6 to 12 minutes, depending on the tech news channel.
Potential drawback = Sometimes you may have to switch to a different Invidio.us instance.
But wait… there’s more!
If you would rather not invest three to four hours of your day watching an NFL football game in its entirety and be subject to a barrage of loud advertisements for big ol’ trucks, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals which have horrendous side effects, you can watch highlights of your favorite NFL team using the Greyman Method. If you only want to view your favorite team’s highlights, just type in the two teams playing against each other that week.