It's been quite the month.  Jason was pulled over in the Tinny (again),  Inger had a mole taken off her foot. We skipped the mailbag in favour of a deep nerd chat about Obsidian starting at 32:51. The discussion gets waylaid part way through by a mutual existential freakout about Claude Opus. It's... a lot. Enjoy! Things we mentioned: Kangaroo time - Winner of the Dance Your PhD competition Be visible or vanish - the book Inger wrote with her colleague Simon Clews PostAc (on Inger's research...

Jason had pneumonia when he recorded this very long pod with Inger. It's a testament to his brainy-ness (and Inger's sound engineering skills) that it turned out as well as it did, given he coughed and sweated his way through it. Warning: in the chat section at the top there's a lot of talk about TEQSA. If you're confused, here's their webpage. Jason was too sick to do mailbag, but please keep sending in your letters and speak pipes! At we switch to our work problems section (26:04) ...

Inger and Jason are at the end of the holidays. For Jason this meant going to a hash den in Thailand (it's a long story) and for Inger it meant organising all her rococo style porcelain figurines (yes, really). The mailbag (18:53) is full of interesting letters and provokes only one moment of feminist rage from Inger. Ok, maybe two. In the Work Problems segment (56:35) Jason gives us an alternative way to think about the year ahead with the VRIO model from Jay Barney and there's  quite a...

Inger and Jason recorded an episode at 9pm at night on the 15th of November, before Inger took off for the UK. Inger was meant to edit and post this sometime in December, while travelling in the UK, but due to the vagaries of wifi and Christmas shopping, she ended up doing it at Heathrow airport on Christmas eve. So look, it's a little bit ... unplugged? But at least it's short (well, for us) and there's some good stuff in here - including a surprisingly long digression on KanBan boards....

This one has been in the can for a while - but it was recorded only a week after the previous one about the Meat Grinder. You'd think that would make the banter session shorter, but ...not really. Jason has largely avoided having his face squished at Brazilian Jujitsu and Inger has been writing whiny emails to her boss. The team finish up the Cambridge hiatus mailbag (13:32), including one from Janet Davey that was lost at the bottom (sorry about that Janet!). This prompts a lengthly...

Inger and Jason are back, a bit later than anticipated because the audio the first time this episode was recorded was borked (that's a technical term). We promise the re-record is much better, and also, much longer. There's some unscripted banter at the start, which Inger had to cut as it went on a bit long. Jason can tell you about his new bike another time and you really don't need to hear all about Inger's struggle to find supplies of Ozempic. We dig into the mailbag (18:22), but not all...

The Downs household has suffered a loss, while one member of the Mewburn household has discovered hither to unknown talents. Somehow the team still end up crapping about Obsidian a lot in the banter section. This is our second sabbatical mailbag episode (starting 20:44), which prompts a series of incredibly nerdy conversations about Microsoft Teams, Omnifocus, Text Expander, Obsidian, Bullet Journal etc - Even Nvivo and MaxQDA. In other words: the greatest hits. (A comment from listener...

WE'RE BACK BABY! Inger sums up her whole Cambridge University experience in one anecdote about dinner. Jason has gone up a notch in Brazilian Ju Jitsu, which puts him in a position to comment on Mark Zuckerberg's training routine. In other words, it's a normal catch up, but twice as long! This episode is all a mailbag, starting with a speak pipe from Jonathan O'Donnell challenging the team to regular lunches and a content warning at 30 minutes about weight talk. If you don't want to hear a...

Inger and Jason pop in for a brief, 2 minute-ish pod. The quickest episode in OTR pod history!  It's not really an episode, just a reminder that we will be back next month.  Thanks for all the amazing emails and speak pipes so far - we're enjoying them all and planning a big mailbag episode when we get back! Talk to us on Mastodon @[email protected] and @[email protected] (if you follow both of us you will see us chatting between episodes and can join our...

On The Reg is officially on hiatus until Inger returns from her sabbatical in August. Listen to our quick explainer so you know what is happening until then. We're asking you send in all your questions and thoughts so we can put together a reader mailbag episode when we come back. The claim here that Severance Pod has dropped are false, but honestly, it will be here really soon. Follow on Thesiswhisperer pod  The claims about blog posts about writing with ChattieG etc are entirely true...

Inger's dusty in this episode, after an epic David Lodge style dinner party the night before, but her blood pressure is the best her doctor has seen in years. By the time you listen to this she'll be in Cambridge, punting or something. Jason didn't win the annual hot cross bun off, but did invite Inger into the WhatsApp group so she could share the fun this year. There is also an unexpectedly long digression about workplace exploitation, so - a normal catch up. There was nothing in the...

Jason has been doing BJJ, the gym, eat sleep and repeat - with an occasional visit to country Victoria. Inger has been doing ALL the event organising and somehow managing to make a podcast with her sister about the Apple TV show Severance at the same time. You'll have to subscribe to the Thesiswhisperer podcast channel to get the episodes when they drop. In other words, it's been busy. Which means we didn't have time to prepare for this episode, other than to book an actual studio to record...

Inger's happy her Apple Watch has declared her 'fit' while Jason surprised his team with actually putting on an interesting strategy day. Inger finally bought a ticket to the UK for her sabbatical in Cambridge, so Jason is on notice that the pod will be his while she is away. He's got Plans. The Mailbag [21:14] has a speak pipe and a letter about Inger and Jason's current objects of obsession: ChattieG and ADHD. For once they don't talk about Obsidian the whole time... in the Work Problems...

Inger was late to the microphone  but Jason is in the lead this time, so the show actually happened! Jason didn't win at the first annual 'Meat Off' competition, but it was a tough field. At work it's all Chat GPT all the time, or, as Inger's sister Anitra calls it 'ChattieG'. Inger's been on the road again, this time at Monash Uni where she ran a session on Bullet Journalling. She also wrote 5000 words of her new book without even noticing, using Obsidian. The mailbag (19:15) also has a...

Inger and Jason have been on holidays, so there's a lot to catch up on. Jason was off the grid, finding boxes of romance novels in country opp shops while Inger borked all the authenticator apps on her phone and was locked out of ANU email.  There's a brief foray into Power Ballads and the Australian 80s band Noiseworks. There's a rather large mail bag to get through (13:53), which also prompts a bit of a discussion about AI (again) before the duo get to their work problems segment at...

You might have noticed this episode is rather... long. But it's  your last episode before February, 2023. so we  figure you can digest this omnibus episodes in parts! Look, there's a lot of Spider Talk in our catch up, so you might want to skip it if you're an arachnophobe. There's some very interesting questions from listeners in the Mailbag section [22:54], which gives us the chance to drop the knowledge on difficult publishing problems and how to tell someone they look nice at work. In...

Inger's had Covid Bingo, where she scored almost every symptom in the book. Meanwhile Jason has been been out there, having a life, which involves a story about the physics of gumboots. It makes sense in context, we promise. Inger snippety doodah-ded our catch up a bit, but it's still kind of long, so if you want to skip it, go straight to (24:02) when we open Mailbag. We have our first message from Mastodon and Jason got recognised in the street. Thanks to @[email protected], who wrote a nice...

Buckle up folks, this is a long one! It's been a big couple of weeks since Jason and Inger caught up.  Inger went to Tassie and experienced crossing bass strait in gale force winds on the way back while Jason got rained on while camping and discovered 'Truckie Twitter' on the UHF band radio during an unexpected 2.5 hour journey home from work.... Oh, and Thesiswhisperer Jnr is now being paid to play with puppies at a pet store, which Inger and Jason agree is a great career choice and maybe...

Inger and Jason catch up to get their nerd on HARD in this episode - you have been warned. After the usual catch up - with only a little bit of old person health problems - Inger reads out some nice feedback (17:50). People loved our last episode on 'Building a second brain for writing' where we talked about Tiago Forte's book. Because of this conversation, Jason had an epiphany and started using Obsidian - a database program which Inger describes as 'your own personal Wikipedia'. Because...

There's a lot of sweary words in this one, headphones in! Inger brought a sword to work and Jason is back on the mats at Brazillian Ju Jitsu (BJJ) so it's business as usual at On The Reg. Big shout out to Jason's wife Cath, who has nearly finished her course, which somehow leads to a long discussion of Jason's first experience of removing unwanted body hair. In other words, the usual catch up, but if you want to skip it, go straight to 24:32, where Siobhan calls in on Speakpipe to ask...

Inger and Jason have been busy, you know - the usual. Inger has been deep in three minute thesis land (ie: the annual ANU 'high school musical') and Jason paid $250 to learn he doesn't have to have surgery (yay!). There's only a little bit of 'old people complaining about their health' in the first bit before they listen to a speak pipe from Tseen Khoo (17:14). Tseen has finally read and reviewed the Navy SEALs romance that Inger sent her, and points out the trope that  ruins the book for...

Inger and Jason are both complaining about their health again. Jason has 'mild degeneration' of his shoulder joint and Inger has 'mild degeneration' of her eye lens. The duo agree that it means they are falling apart, but as Jason says ' slowly'.  After the whinging about health, and a few things about the Jeep/Tesla/Tinny there 's a bit about academic administration before a Speakpipe from Dasha from Finland (27:10) and another email from Heather Brown and finally, the point of the podcast:...

Inger and Jason catch up on Inger's 24th wedding anniversary (with Mr Thesis Whisperer's permission!). Inger went to Newcastle in the Tesla and had fun doing a workshop in a bathroom. It's been a weird couple of weeks: she also encountered giant animatronic wombats on the lawns of parliament house while taking part in an NTEU event. Jason's had Covid in the house (9:47), but avoided getting it, despite using his Aunt's method of taking temperature of kids via hugging. He's finally going...

Jason has Novid now, but he dragged himself to the mic. Inger’s been sick again and, honestly - the first 20 minutes or so of this podcast is just ‘old people complaining about their health’ (but we know some of you really like that stuff, so we left it in). Katherine Firth rings in (18m:17s) to give Jason another romance novel recommendation for the upcoming On the Reg competitive reading cage death match. In our work problems segment (25m:43s) the team leverage the advice offered by James...