Hello, Oscillator Sink here. One of the things I really appreciate about Electrum Boxes and I guess the Digitone in particular is that it provides you with a very strict, well-defined set of tools and concepts to work within and although you're kind of boxed in to these ideas, what you can do with them is only really limited by your imagination. It's kind of like having a children's play area, it's fenced in, you've got a set of play equipment to ensure you can slide down the slide and you could go on the seesaw and you could swing on the swings but there's nothing stopping you using those swings as a bridge or hiding under the slide as a dent. What you actually do is only really limited by your imagination and that's kind of how I feel about the Digitone. That being said, that level of freedom and control does allow you to do things which lead to undesirable results and one such undesirable result that I see people talk about is the fact that they are getting undesirable clicks in their sound while they are working with especially more complex arrangements on the Digitone. So I thought in this video it's a good opportunity to talk about the Venn diagram of sound design and voice management. There's quite a big crossover in the middle of that Venn diagram which is or could be responsible for causing those clicks and by understanding how these concepts within the box actually work and understanding what causes these unpleasant clicks we can learn how to mitigate against them as well. So I thought I'd begin with the simplest concept in terms of going hunting for clicks and it's also the concept which lives purely within the sound design aspects of the Digitone. We don't need to worry about voice management at all here and that is simply that on the amp envelope the amp envelope when you turn your attack or release or indeed decay down to zero it is incredibly incredibly fast so fast that it will shear off waveforms which will then cause a click. So if we have our attack and release down to zero which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do on a lot of synths to get an organ style attack sort of gated on and off. If you do that on Digitone you can hear that there's quite a harsh click especially at the end there and it gets worse on lower notes typically as well. So the easy fix for this is just to not have your attack and release set at zero unless you particularly want that instant onset with that click which can be useful for percussive sounds and actually on the Digitone anything up to about 10 on the attack and release will still sound pretty much instant but just dropping it down to say about four still a tiny bit of a click there but less of an offensive one more of an attack to it you'll get rid of that that nasty click there. So that's the straightforward one and if you're getting clicks in your sounds then definitely check that no part of your amp envelope is set to zero. So for all the other concepts we'll be discussing today we are going to be thinking a little bit about the voice management the voice allocation on the Digitone which is to say how the eight voices that are available are being allocated to the notes that are being played. So to that end we'll just be spending a little bit time in the voice menu here and we'll talk a bit about what all of these various parameters are doing but just to begin with I just want to draw your attention to the eight boxes up at the top there. The eight boxes at the top there represent the eight voices on the Digitone so as I play a note one of those boxes gets filled in and as I continue to hold down more notes and play more notes they're going to fill up to the point where we have eight notes playing and all of our voices are being allocated. Now if we play those eight notes and then play a ninth note just keep an eye on on those that row of boxes and as I play this extra note you'll notice that there is a there are a rectangle that got placed around let's try again playing another note around the voices there and what that tells you is that at that point a voice has been stolen and in the settings that we currently have here that means that a newer note has replaced an older note and you would hear that some of the original notes have dropped out. Now this is not always totally truthful in what you see here and I'll give you an example if I put on a very very long or infinite in fact envelope here so these notes will now sustain forever without me having to hold down. You'll notice that I'm playing in all these notes but the boxes aren't staying filled because those notes are not currently being held down. So this isn't a representation of the voices that are being played it's a representation of the voices that are currently being held down and if I play another note now a voice has definitely been stolen but we don't get that visual feedback on here and I think maybe it would be useful if you did but that is what it is in this case. As I say we'll come back to this a little bit and talk about what we're seeing here as we explore some of the other concepts. So I'd like to move on and talk about probably one of the most jarring times where you get a nasty click which is on nice lovely luxurious pad sounds. So I'll give you an example here if I play down this note here fades in and it's got a very long release on it. Lovely. Now if I go to play that note again you might have heard that there was a click there. That is a bad click on a lovely pad sound especially as that click also gets echoed through your reverb and delay meaning that your error is held out even longer than it would have been otherwise. So the reason that this click is happening on this initialised patch is actually down to two different settings. So if we go first over to the voice management here and I play in this C note here. Now when I play it again you'll notice that it's the same square that's getting lit up which means it's the same voice which is playing this note over and over again. The reason that's important if we go over to our amp envelope that's where our amp page two is this setting here which is the amp envelope restart. A reset rather. While this is on whenever this voice which as we know is the same voice over and over again gets re-triggered it's going to hard reset this amp envelope which means that we could be in the middle of this sustain here and it will immediately drop to zero which is going to cause a click because again you have that hard cut off of your sound. So there are two ways we can look at to reduce this click. The first lives purely within the voice management here. So the reason that the same voice is being used over and over again for the same note is because this parameter here this re-use parameter is turned on and actually if we turn it off play that note in play it again we're not getting a click because actually that note is now being played three times but on different voices. Now that's not to say that we can't get a click this way and actually if we play in eight of these notes in quick succession or stuck in clicks afterwards they're not quite as obvious because you've got all the other voices going on at the same time. The downside of turning off re-use is that it's kind of what you're seeing right here is that when you have the same note being played multiple times it's going to move to another voice which actually means you're going to be stealing voices more quickly. With it turned on if I play that C chord there and then play another chord and then another chord we're not getting so much voice stealing happening whereas here if I play it we'll be hitting that hard cut-off a lot sooner but for some arrangements that's going to be a perfectly fine way of dealing with this voice stealing clicking. The other way of dealing with it lives more within the sound design side of things so as I noted the fact that this reset is turned on. So the fact that this reset is back on is what's causing our envelope to jump back to the start so you might well think well if I turn that off all of my problems will go away however if anything they've got worse which is surprising because what's happening now is that our amp envelope is starting it's playing and if we hit it again sort of somewhere in sustain it's just going to start from that sustain level attack a little bit and then carry on along its merry way but for some reason our click is now much much worse which is the opposite of what we wanted. Now the reason that is happening is actually over here in page two of synth two and it's this parameter here which is our phase reset. Now at the moment and on the default initialised patch it's going to be set to all. What this means is that every single operator that we have in our algorithm whenever a new note is played it will hard reset the phase so it will start back at the the center of the graph of your sine wave if you like. This is even worse than our envelope resetting quickly because this is almost always going to create a very very hard pop as the operator jumps from wherever it is in its cycle back to the zero point so it it's as bad if not worse as what we already had with our amp envelope. So to fix this problem we have to turn off the phase reset and you have different types of phase reset on here and depending on how your sound is working anything other than all or C is probably fine A plus B will be a problem if you have got your mix turned up in this algorithm because you've got B1 coming through here. A plus B2 will usually be safe again depending on the algorithm. Basically you don't want to be phase resetting any of the operators that you're hearing directly. The easiest way to do that is to go to off. So now if we play those notes multiple times we're not getting a click because our amp is not resetting and neither is our operator. So we can happily play chords which involve the same notes and we're not going to get that click and we're also not going to be using up our voices so quickly because we're still going to be using the same voices for the same notes. So that's my usual chosen way of getting rid of clicks on pad sounds. Okay so let's dive back into the voice allocation and talk about some other settings in here that if you're not careful can lead to some undesirable results. So this set up here is what you will have on an initialised patch. So the voice steam will be set to cycle, the reuse will be turned on for all of the different parts by default and the locked voices will be set to dynamic for every track as well which means that currently as set up each of the four different tracks are all sharing the common pool of eight voices that are available. So I'm going to set up something that's slightly contrived to prove a point but hopefully I'll be able to sort of abstract this contrived idea and see how it applies to a more realistic arrangement. So on track one here I've got this bass sound, it's got a big long decay at the moment that's not going to matter because what we're going to do is on step one we're going to stick a nice long sort of full bar trick there. So we've basically just got a bass note there that's pulsing away. Okay cool. So over on sound four I've kind of got this reedy paddy sound. So again I'm going to be slightly contrived here for the sake of proving the point. So I'll set all of the step tricks to be fairly long, 12 steps or something like that will be fine and I'll just on each of these steps just put a long note and we'll just build up a big chord, something like that will be fine. So if we just meet track one some of some to the cacophony we've created here. What that actually is doesn't really matter but what you will notice is that we have eight steps here and by the time we get to step nine and because of the length of each of these being 12 all eight of these steps are playing. So without track four in there we've got our bass note here which is what's grounding our arrangement and on track four we've got that sort of paddy sound up at the top. So if we bring track four in do you hear what happened on step eight? So the reason that's happening is that by the time we get to step eight we have all of our steps playing and because we're using the dynamic allocation our bass note is being stolen which is not what we want from an arrangement point of view. Obviously you probably wouldn't have an arrangement that sounds like that but you can probably see how across the four tracks and a more sort of realistic arrangement it's quite likely that you would get to the point where you would hit that eighth note. Now the reason that our bass note is being killed off here is because of our voice stealing mode here and by default it's set to cycle and what cycle means is that the oldest note that's currently playing is the one that will be stolen when another note is required. Because our bass note is on step one it's that note which is being stolen. So let's see what happens when we use some of the other modes here. So if we move over to track our bass note is no longer being stolen. So the reason that our bass note is no longer being stolen when we have this voice stealing set to track is because in track mode and this is a global setting this isn't something that's different per track it's a global setting within the voice allocation here. When voice stealing is set to track then track one always has preference over track two and track three. Track two has preference over track three and track three has preference over track four. So track four is the lowest priority for voice stealing so if any of the lower tracks require a voice or let's put it another way if track four needs another voice it can only steal from itself. Track three can steal from itself or track four. Track two can steal from itself. Track two or track four and track one can steal from any of them. So from an arrangement perspective if you've got an element that needs to always be playing and never be stolen by any of the other parts then having track voice stealing turned on and having your most important elements on track one and your least important elements on track four you can be assured that you're not going to lose the important elements to voice stealing when you're using dynamic voice stealing uh dynamic voice allocation. As it happens if we set our voice stealing to low we should also be safe apparently not sorry i've gotten the wrong way around um yeah wrong way around i always get this wrong way around on low mode then low notes will always be stolen first which is why our bass note which was lower than any of our pad notes got stolen um and on high mode the higher notes will be stolen first which will always leave your bass intact so if you're working with a complex arrangement across multiple tracks where that low end is really really important to you for example you probably want to have your voice stealing set to high to make sure that your low notes um don't get eaten up i think what will be happening here in our chord it's not actually that first C that's getting stolen i think it's the note that played just before but yeah we're using the correct voice stealing mode um and thinking about what elements you put on which tracks um can save you from some clicks and worse still some embarrassing gaps in your arrangement okay let's try something subtly different that allows me to demonstrate a slightly different concept so i've set the voice allocation back to the default and um my bass sound actually has a very long decay so i don't really need to hold it out for that entire time i can just play it at the start of the the bar there and let it decay naturally which is a nice sound i always think that the natural decay on a nice low sign on the digitized kind of sounds like a low bass scale anyway i don't digress so again we've got this nice pulse it's a little gentler now because we're not holding out that entire time because we don't need to because of the the sound design that we've done here so i'll come over to our pad sound on track form we'll do something slightly different and that is i'll put a couple of chords down instead so um let's put a c mage seven there and a f mage seven there and maybe a d mark on a seven or something there i'm not trying to create revolutionary music here just uh just prove a point a little bit um these will still be really really long i don't need to be as long now it's got a long tail on it anyway so just it's a three-ish that'll be fine okay so without traffic again we've got a nice pulsing bass here it's gentle decay very nice so let's bring this in you can hear again that our bass note is being killed off in terms of the way that it's being dynamically assigned so you may be thinking well we've discussed this already um we're not set our voice stealing to track or high to solve this problem so let's give that a go sadly that doesn't work and the reason that doesn't work is that these voice stealing modes only apply to notes that are being held down and played so because our bass note here um is being played on step one but then is actually not being held down anymore uh it's just decaying naturally just because of its amp envelope it's no longer given been given preferential treatment depending on how we set up our voice it doesn't matter how we set it up that note is always going to be killed off because there are so many notes in the chords that have been played on track four so what can we do in this case to make sure that our bass note doesn't get stolen well that's where the locked voices come in so um as i said before by default everything is set to dynamic which means that everything is sharing that common pool of voices but you can say on a per track basis and again so it's a unlike the um the other stuff on here which is kind of global with the voice stealing with a lot voices it's a per um per track thing so on track one which the bass note now says one which means i have said that there is one voice within this pool of um of voices that is reserved exclusively for this track so that means two things one this track can never steal from any of the other tracks which is good and two and none of the other tracks can steal from this one so now if we hit play you can hear that our bass notes has been sustained or rather has continued to decay naturally despite the busyness on our chords here and i think for me usually using locked voices is the more um natural way of working um and you can think about what you're trying to achieve on a sort of per track basis to make sure that um you lock things in a sensible way so we might say that okay well this we're going to treat as a monophonic bass part so we can lock it to just one um this one we happen to know is playing um four note chords now if we set this one to four they're going to cut off every single time because they reach four note chords but you can do stuff with the rest of your synthesis to make that smoother situation perhaps depending what you're trying to achieve of course um and of course uh this sort of setup and locking voices in appropriate ways across your tracks um and working with those constraints in a more sort of tightly focused way is a really good way of um uh are you getting the sort of sonic result you're looking for but i think also it does focus the mind a little bit um and you think a little bit more about um your arrangement in terms of the technical constraints of the digitone as well which i think is a good thing often you can also use these locked voices um as a as a sound design tool as well so for example um if i wanted to create like a glitchy drum track and i had lots of different drum sounds uh for sure i would lock that drum track to being just one voice so that each new drum hit completely cut off that last one giving you that sort of glitchy break um sound um without having to do any additional work uh because by default if you had that on dynamic and you wanted to pitch the different drums different ways they would get assigned different voices which means that one no one drum hit was sustained across the other whereas locking it exclusively is going to get you into a much more glitchy um situation if that's what you're looking for of course so the last little area i want to explore um when it comes to the voice allocation side of things is is kind of a side note because it's not going to necessarily help with clicks and the like but it is worth um exploring especially for certain types of patches so um i'm back on uh my bass sound here um and i'll just unlock it quickly uh so it's back to dynamic voice allocation so this is a bass sound and it's kind of a classic sort of mono kind of sound so you would expect to be able to play it like a mono synth obviously if we don't um constrain the number of voices it's going to use then it's um gonna play polyphonically so if we want to make this a bit more like a mono synth obviously the the easy thing to do would be to lock it to one voice so and we kind of get that kind of mono vibe from it now but it doesn't really play like a mono synth because um it doesn't exhibit any note priority which is to say if i play a note and then play another note my expectation generally speaking on a mono synth depends on what type of synth it is my expectation would be that i'd be able to release this high note and my low note would then continue playing but it doesn't um because what we really have here is a poly synth that only has one voice and that's how it's acting so um one i think maybe overlooked aspect of um the setup menu so shift and trick um is down here on the play mode so by default this will be set to poly which gives us the behavior we were seeing there uh we have poly with mono lfo which um is really useful for um perhaps i'll show you in a second actually um for for cheesy organ patches that's where i would use it um but um importantly we have mono and mono legato and we have then access to different note priorities so now if i i get that mono synth behavior that i would expect to get um at the moment you're here as i play each note it's kind of starting again from the start of the envelope we're getting that attack if we lower that bit more you'll hear a bit more too much i'm gonna click there we go you can hear that we're getting that um definite attack at the start of each note there um we also have mono legato which um doesn't re-trigger the envelope the amp or the filter envelope on each hit so get our attack on the first note but the sustain notes are not um giving us any click only when we release are we going to get a click and we can set the um note priority two different things so we can have it to low note priority that means that um the lowest note we're playing is always going to be the one that we're hearing and i'd have to play a lower note to hear something else uh high means the high one is always going to be the priority they also have uh last that middle note there because it's the one i most recently played is the one that has priority and then that one and then that one back down at the bottom last is usually why i have it set to this is especially cool um when we are using portamento as well sounds a lot more natural uh yeah i was just saying i quickly show the uh the difference with the lfo here so if i just put on some pitch just when past it didn't i pitch all there we go a little pitch modulation you can hear there maybe that the um pitch wall there is kind of playing off against itself and it's creating this nice chorus anything which may be exactly what you're looking for in a lot of cases if we set the play mode to poly with mono lfo it basically means that there's one lfo shared across this entire track rather than one per voice and that should mean that we always get a very well defined vibrato across these notes rather than mess them up by doing this it's subtle but for certain patches it's definitely going to be useful i think so anyway i hope you enjoyed the video and that you found it useful maybe it introduced some some concepts that were new to you that will help you finesse some of the arrangements on your digitone this sort of voice management stuff it really is kind of the the fine tune that certainly more involved arrangements often need just to make them work in exactly the way that you expect them to work so certainly learning about the voice allocation has been really useful to me in sort of more densely packed arrangements if you enjoyed the video it would be truly wonderful if you could leave it a like and also if you're not already make sure you subscribe to the channel for more synthesis stuff and obviously more digitone and digitap because i can't quit them because they are wonderful wonderful instruments but there'll also be some videos around the modular coming up probably an apz video as well and i'm hoping to get my hands on at least one new synth in the next few weeks that i'm very excited to start digging into on the channel as well so keep your eye out for that as always thank you so much for joining me until next time take care bye


The Anambra State Governor-elect, Professor Charles Soludo, has received a comprehensive report from the Transition Committee led by Dr. Obi Ezekwisili. Soludo, who addressed the over-80 member committee, said he has a strong conviction that Anambra would be great, but said there was a lot of work to be done, just as there was a lot of war to be fought. He said to the best of his knowledge, this is the first time the state is having a transition committee since 1999. Soludo stated that about 1,100 persons applied to be commissioner in his government, and that the state had less than 20 ministries. But he is happy with the excitement of the people to serve.


Hi and welcome to the session. Let us discuss the following question. Question says, figure 12.26 depicts a racing track whose left and right ends are semicircular. The distance between the two inner parallel line segments is 60 meters and they are each 106 meters long. If the track is 10 meters wide, find the distance around the track along its inner edge and second part is find the area of the track. This is the given figure 12.26. First of all, let us understand that area of semicircle of radius r is equal to pi r square upon 2 and circumference of semicircle is equal to 2 pi r upon 2 which is further equal to pi r. Here r is the radius of the given semicircle. Also area of rectangle is equal to length into breadth. L represents the length and B represents the breadth. Now we will use these formulas as our key idea to solve the given question. Let us now start with the solution. First of all, we will join diameters of these two inner semicircles. Now we know distance between the two inner parallel line segments is equal to 60 meters. So this distance is 60 meters and we also know that distance between these two diameters is equal to 106 meters. We are given that length of these two line segments is equal to 106 meters. Now in first part of the question we have to find the distance around the track along its inner edge. So we have to find this distance. Now clearly we can see if we add circumference of these two semicircles and length of these two line segments we get the distance around the track along its inner edge. So first of all let us find out circumference of this semicircle. Now we know diameter of semicircle is equal to distance between the two inner parallel line segments which is equal to 60 meters. Now this implies radius of semicircle is equal to r is equal to 30 meters. We know radius is equal to half of diameter so radius is equal to half multiplied by 60 equal to 30 meters. Now from key idea we know circumference of semicircle is equal to pi r. Now substituting corresponding value of pi and r in this formula we get 22 upon 7 multiplied by 30 meters. Now this is further equal to 660 upon 7 meters. Now clearly we can see diameters of these two semicircles are equal and this implies their radii are also equal. So circumference of this circle is also equal to circumference of this circle. So we can write circumference of two semicircles is equal to 2 multiplied by 660 upon 7 meters. Now this is further equal to 1320 upon 7 meters. Now we will find out distance around the track along its inner edge. Now this is equal to circumference of two semicircles plus length of these two parallel line segments. This is equal to 1320 upon 7 plus 2 multiplied by 106 meters. We know circumference of two semicircles is equal to 1320 upon 7 meters and length of two inner parallel line segments is equal to 106 plus 106 meters. So we can write it as 2 multiplied by 106. Now simplifying we get 1320 plus 1484 upon 7 meters. Now this is further equal to 2804 upon 7 meters. So we get distance around the track along its inner edge is equal to 2804 upon 7 meters. Now this completes the first part of the question. Let us now start with the second part. Now we have to find area of the track. Now clearly we can see area of the track is given by area of this rectangle plus area enclosed between these two semicircles plus area of this rectangle plus area enclosed between these two semicircles. We are given that width of the track is 10 meters. Now let us find out area of this rectangle. We know area of rectangle is equal to length multiplied by breadth. Here L represents length and V represents breadth. Now in this rectangle length is equal to 106 meters and breadth is equal to 10 meters. Now area of given rectangle is equal to 106 multiplied by 10 meters square. Now this is further equal to 1060 meters square. Now clearly we can see length and breadth of this rectangle are equal to length and breadth of this rectangle. So area of this rectangle is equal to area of this rectangle. So we can write area of two given rectangles is equal to 2 multiplied by 1060 meters square. Now this is further equal to 2120 meters square. Now we will find out area enclosed between these two semicircles. Now we know radius of the inner semicircle is equal to 30 meters. So we can write radius of inner semicircle that is r is equal to 30 meters. Now radius of outer semicircle is equal to 30 plus 10. So we can write radius of outer semicircle is equal to r is equal to 30 plus 10 meters. Now this is further equal to 40 meters. Now we can find area of this semicircular region by subtracting area of inner semicircle from area of outer semicircle. So we can write area of semicircular region is equal to pi r square upon 2 minus pi r square upon 2. We know area of the outer semicircle is equal to pi r square upon 2 and area of the inner semicircle is pi r square upon 2 where capital R is the radius of the outer semicircle and small r is the radius of inner semicircle. Now this expression can be further written as pi upon 2 r square minus r square. Now this is equal to pi upon 2 multiplied by square of 40 minus square of 30 meters square. We know value of r is equal to 40 meters and value of small r is equal to 30 meters. So substituting these two values in this expression we get this expression. Now this is further equal to pi upon 2 multiplied by 1600 minus 900 meters square. We know square of 40 is equal to 1600 and square of 30 is 900. Now substituting 22 upon 7 for pi and subtracting these two terms we get 22 upon 7 multiplied by 2 multiplied by 700 meters square. Now we will cancel common factor 14 from numerator and denominator both and we get area of semicircular region is equal to 1100 meters square. Now clearly we can see radius of this semicircle is equal to radius of this semicircle and radius of this semicircle is equal to radius of this semicircle. So area enclosed between these two semicircles is equal to area enclosed between these two semicircles. Now we can write area of two semicircular regions is equal to 2 multiplied by 1100 meters square. We know area of this semicircular region is equal to 1100 meters square. So area of this semicircular region is also equal to 1100 meters square. So we get area of two semicircular regions is equal to 2 multiplied by 1100 meters square. Now this is further equal to 2200 meters square. Now clearly we can see area of the track is equal to area of these two semicircular regions plus area of these two rectangles. Now substituting corresponding values of area of two semicircular regions and area of two rectangles in this expression we get 2200 plus 2120 meters square is equal to area of the track. Now adding these two terms we get 4320 meters square. So we get area of the track is equal to 4320 meters square. Now this completes the second part of the question. This is our required answer. This completes the session. Hope you understood the solution. Take care and keep smiling.


Always got to check the elbows before you record video. What's good y'all? I welcome back to ko t4q reacts where we sit back and we watch NBA highlights and have a lot of fun That's that's that is just what this channel is about nothing more nothing less So not to everybody that's been sending me videos to react to today. We have the art of Passing you know a good old pass off the up off the elbow One of the greatest passes ever was off the elbow, and I bet you Jason Williams was not ashy when he did it I bet he was I'm not ashy the bro. I'm kind of I'm on my I'm on my game today Um, but yeah, we're gonna be looking at some of the best passes ever. That's the fun and A good pass can make a lot of people like fools. So let's get into it So this one was created by Brazy again put a link is in the description man Shout out to you bro my guy cuz you have been going pretty brazy on these We know I'm saying so the first one I see see my boy Derek Rose. So I'm super happy And they're beating the Celtics by a dub Hmm see how what this pass looking like That's that's beautiful and their girls is not known as a great passer so Him to be able to do this and passes look so much better when they slow-mode and yeah, that's the perfect pass D rose Shout to my boy D Rose man. I wish he was playing somewhere else again But it is what it is man. It is what it is Detroit for the next year LeBron This man is amazing Bro LeBron is gonna be on here a lot I would just guess he's gonna be a lot cuz it's LeBron James, bro How many players can see Danny green right here and make that pass and set out to Danny green for not smoking the highlight? Shout out to him for not smoking the highlight. That's a ridiculous pass It does not even look possible, bro It doesn't even look possible And it's only possible for a few guys in the world bro and LeBron is one of them I know this is this is this is the full core he from Stephen Adams to go to OT Let's go, bro Who is the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings? Is it Kirk Cousins? I'm not a football dude, but whoever the quarterback of that team is would be sweet. No, no, no No, he'd be super mad because this is okay. See okay.   Oh, I knew this one. What am I doing? This is this is a few seasons ago I knew this one. I don't know why the heck my brain didn't process that but yeah, that's a beautiful pass by Steph Curry That's a beautiful pass Beautiful right on right where you needed it to go Katie didn't have to go too far for it Let him for easy. Yeah. Oh Oh Okay What percentage of that is skill and what percentage of that is luck? I need I need to know let me know in the comment section What percentage is a nutmeg like that on the fast break skill and what he laughing at it? So he know it was look look at this whoo the legs whoo And shout out to Colisex for not smoking a highlight because a lot of people smoke highlights, bro I know that firsthand cuz I'm usually the one smoking the highlight if we be an honest with each other Are this the bounce pass? I was there and I'm gonna be an also weekend this year, too So hopefully we get highlights like this again Charlotte was a blast last year man. Very underrated city if you ask me very underrated city Chicago's gonna be a blast too But yeah, that's that's crazy. Congratulations to Yanis on his baby boy, too. I Bet father was gonna be great for him, man. Carrie Irvin. Let's see what Carrie got in store for us Wow Wow, wow I feel like Coby white right now in the amount of wows. I'm throwing out here, but yo, this is a ridiculous pass I mean and when players do pass is like that. It's kind of rare Oh, that's another LeBron with Jesus Christ It's kind of weird that it doesn't work out You know I'm saying like you had to have an extreme amount of cough I had a stream amount of confidence to make a pass like that and and knowing that you could fail But really fail wait Wait, did that also go through his legs? Don't tell me that also went through his legs because that goes to another level So he gets it and went through and went through his legs too, bro Wow Oh my god That is correct. Oh, yeah, I know this one. Ah, I know this one, bro Y'all gonna see this a lot coming up in a few days, man.   I know this play. I was gonna try to predict it I didn't know this played in Tyson's channel. Dang it. I knew it. I knew it I knew it. I wanted to see if I could predict it before it happened, but I guess not I guess not it happened too fast for my brain to process But yeah, that's a great pass It's cool when people just run away because they know what's up.  That's a good one. It ain't super flashy. It's just he knew he was there And he threw it out there. That's a good one. That's a good one Hey, sometimes a good assist ain't gotta be super flashy. You know what I'm saying? You find a cut in guy, especially when there's a double coverage. That's a good one Just a little one hand tap Keep running the sad lad and stuff with that growing injury Yeah, that's yeah, that's a that's a nice pass Lonzo. That's a nice pass round of applause from Lonzo Bob rush to us. We're gonna turn around and throw it behind his back. I remember this for two I remember this for two. Yes. Yes. Yes. One of the top plays this is last season I think this is last season one of the top plays from last season Because you have to have some crazy coordination and do a 360 spin and still know where you're at to throw behind your back to a cutting Yeah, that's that's a crazy play. That's a crazy play right there. That could have ended bad Milo's tear dosage Ain't thought about Milo's tear dosage in a minute.  But yeah, that's beautiful That's a beautiful beautiful pass to DJ always cutting DJ always cut surprise. It wasn't a lot for these days for DJ Yep, beautiful that is just talent Uh, who we got here, you know who's gonna end up being But who is he passing it to it's a lot going up Just look them off everybody is so much they so Infatuated with cow quiver because he is such a great shooter that he gets easy. It's a wide open look Geez, that's just a terrible defense by the younger Lakers thing um Market smart from the flow. Oh, oh, that's just good team basketball That's just good team basketball at the end of the day. It ain't super flashy As good defense market smart throws it up throw it over to give it back give it go That's that's just great team defense. Yes, beautiful Beautiful this Wiggins will never wear that jersey again. I can't say that Maybe he signed back when it's current contract itself. I don't know We have some John wall missed this guy playing Oh Oh my god, bro, and this is in the playoffs, bro Get well soon John wall man. I I'm telling you he's one of those players that I just I can't get enough of watching him when he was healthy So without having like a year without John wall has been crazy, man Russell Westbrook. That's a dime between the legs Play of the day man. That might be playing there. Yeah, bro. That's that's another fast break between the legs I think that was Corey Joe's legs Yeah, that is Corey Joe to a young video this vote before victor depot, you know got buff basically You know dropped all that that fat Oh, yeah, a lot of Chris Paulson be coming up Oh my god, bro Just again, the vision is ridiculous, bro I like to think when I'm on the court, I have at least decent vision Never in a million years would I've been able to see a cutting Bob Mute for that pass Never in a million years, but that's why he is the point god. You know what I'm saying? That's why he is the point god another LeBron moment Fast break LeBron is is nasty. The shoes are ridiculous Hmm Derrick Williams, where are you at, bro? I ain't seen Derrick Williams in a minute, but uh, yeah, it's a good pass It's a good pass Between the legs. Okay. Let's count how many nutmegs LeBron has thrown in this video alone. Is that number three for LeBron? Not against my bulls not against my bulls the fake And then a give up This is back when the bulls were relatively decent though. So these are probably into the being a very good game Joe Kim Noah I see Nico Mirtich Derrick Rose Is that Aaron Brooks? Aaron Brooks is on the court, whatever I was about to say no way we got a Steven Jackson dime Who is this guy going to? Woo, that is a fastball, baby That's a fastball, baby Oh, no, what's that new dude name that be throwing a hundred Chapman? Oh no, don't Chapman I don't know. I don't watch anything but basketball. Yeah, I could probably tell 30 point game here Oh, this is another another, oh, this is a different one It's a good one, but that mean that's it was just an open-cutting man He looked away made it a little bit more difficult Manu has some underrated vision because when you look at Manu's assist per game It ain't gonna jump out on the page for you But if you were watching Manu, you knew his vision was elite. That's all I gotta say You knew his vision was elite OC Nash To chris cayman. This is a preseason game. Where are they playing at?  Chris caveman a caveman from mr. Nasty Yeah, I'm surprised it's not more. I mean a lot of the times when I watched these clips though They're like recent NBA a lot of Steve Nass stuff would be like early 2000s where he was like elite um Look at that dying full court leo um Wayne Wayne That's the full court of that's the full court. That's the full court Rondo rondo. Yes, baby. Yes, baby. You knew it.  Best of all, LeBron's gonna put that on the glass and some All right, thank you all so much for watching this hour of passing with me Um, that was great. That was great. Subscribe. Leave a like whatever you got to do. I'll be back


In this section, I will be describing the tools that can help us in reducing the principal agent problem. So principal agent problem arises that the people through whom you are executing the business, who manage the entire business, and the people who are the owners of the business, i.e. those who have bought shareholders, the objectives of both of them are found to be contradictory. Because of which, we have to experience the principal agent problem. So how can we eliminate or reduce this particular problem called the principal agent problem? One way is to produce the information through monitoring, that we monitor all the working of the managers, that what kind of expenses they are doing, what kind of costs are involved in the processes, what is the total income that has been generated, and what are the different heads where the expenses have gone.  To monitor it, basically what is the use of auditing firms, and to audit them, they have to bring all the expenses to the record, and then they have to rationalize what are the reasons for all these expenses. But there is also a problem in this, because when you are producing all this information for the audit purpose, or for sharing with the shareholders, there is a lot of money spent on this information. So for verification, you have to incur costs, production of information also involves a lot of costs. So this can be like moral hazard, but at the same time you will have to bear extra cost, in order to maintain the books, in order to share the data, in order to keep an eye or monitor, the information produced that can end up in increasing the overall costs. Thank you.


What's up everybody? I'm the hook and I'm the blade and together we are, you know Welcome to the hook blade podcast a show about all things us politics assassins creed I'm your host Lawson and I'm joined as usual by your host Tim Burton. Hello. It's been a while dude. It's been a minute It's been a couple minutes I literally I was pulling my mic out from its corner on my desk and it literally had dust on it I literally dusted off the old microphone to get going on the hookie blade again Let me just dust off the old microphone real quick What have you been up to on this long, uh break from podcasting? What kind of valuable and educational exploits have you filled your time with?   What interesting things have I been have I even done at all? I'm trying to think because I know I have some anecdotes.  You can just interrupt me mid mid anecdote. I don't know. I've been chilling. I got a vr headset That's been pretty fun Playing poker and vr a lot to replace the empty void of social interaction that uh, currently is my life I'm starting classes Next this monday, and I'm also an intern at a hollywood studio now And that's fun. That's right, and I got a job. So It's busy days. Oh, and I found out yesterday. I probably have cove it. So that's fun Yeah, which is it was just a matter of time really but but everyone uh, keep me in your thoughts and prayers Yeah, everyone do that I I've been meaning to ask you a question So please do and this is gonna sound this might sound like ridiculous to ask Right, but okay. Okay. So that like tv's monitors screens in general, right? Like you were telling me about how our samsung has like an OLED screen apparently our phones our phones Yeah, like we have the same phone. Yeah, so they both have a 10 plus. It has a beautiful OLED screen, right? Okay, so my question So I keep thinking like, you know as we're getting into like 4k televisions are pretty prominent right now in people's homes I guess 8k eventually will be a thing and like I know that like q leds and whatnot like they're supposed to like Give you a bigger Spectrum of color and whatnot to pull from yeah at what point are we just going to exceed where our eyeballs are able to process? Is that ever gonna happen? I mean debatably we already have I don't believe anybody who tells me they can look at an 8k monitor side by side with a 4k monitor and tell me they see a difference now I know everyone says that every time there's a jump that like we how am I supposed to tell the difference between 1080p And 720p.   I I've seen plenty of a cave I up until the pandemic I worked at best buy and I had to walk past a Wall of 8k monitors every time I went to piss. So I've seen it. Okay. I know what it looks like And could I tell you side by side? Blindly which one is is 8k which one's working? No no Not a chance And that's why I think like things like OLED and micro led in the future That's going to be more important because you can actually tell the difference right with those technologies. They make a difference to have an OLED um higher refresh rate also will be a big deal depending on certain applications But I do I think there's going to be a big like do I think anyone's really pushing to have 8k content And presentation I hope not seems like such a waste of data and size and space and everything just seems like a waste of time Yeah, I I guess I just because like for instance, right like Filming things in black and white is a way that like like it's not natural We don't see in black and white. So there are there are maybe some things that are going to appear on a camera That's filming in black and white that we wouldn't see normally I mean you kind of get that with like when you put things under like a black light, you know, and you can see semen so Okay, like Whatever, let's just keep going. Let's agree about it. I don't think I know where you're going with that But uh Speaking of semen, um, so that's a screed for black flag assassins creed valhalla So a couple notes at the top of the show by the way guys, uh, we have As you might have noticed a new design new aesthetic Uh, for no real reason other than that it gives me something to do and I like to do it Well, it's also a new year. It's a new it's a new year It's a new era of hook blade a new season of hook blade Just sort of moving away from the like northern lights motif that was very valhalla centric But kind of keeping that mint green because it is a it's a foxy color.  You know what I mean? It's just sort of how we stay in touch with our roots But also alongside this new design. We do have a new upload schedule Because of my aforementioned clusterfuck of a life that includes Classes interning and working and coven all from the comfort of my bedroom We're gonna try this.  We're gonna be a little less frequent just every two weeks just for the The near future and we're gonna see how well that works for us and we'll just we'll see how that goes And we're only uploading now instead of on thursdays. We're uploading on tuesdays Don't ask why because it doesn't matter and it's not interesting. It's really easy to remember every two weeks on tuesday Just get that in your brain It is this two tuesdays a month Two of the tuesdays every month. Yeah two out of four two weeks on a tuesday.  Um odds and ends odds and ends What are odds and ends? Um, well, they're they're just little things that kind of get the get they just you know, miscellaneous items What's the metaphor i'm going for here?  Come on. Uh, yeah, I don't know but look odds and ends. Okay. Everyone knows what odds and ends are I don't need to explain it to you They're just we're gonna talk about some assassins creed News and developments that that has sort of come and gone without us really addressing them Uh, so that's everything from like the vr game idea to like the yule festival some patches some Controversial changes that they've made All adding to the general feeling and i'm sure you're gonna agree with me on this tim It really seems like since we stopped paying attention to valhalla and stopped playing it It's just sort of kept getting shittier. Yeah, I mean keep in mind I haven't touched it since we talked about it in depth on the show I haven't even I think I booted it up once after that But it's it's it's been probably like what a couple months now. Yeah, I haven't touched me either really I played around with it on when I got my ps5 to see if it was much better and I mean 60 fps makes everything better, but It's still valhalla at the end of the day, unfortunately and that means it's still not that great So like the yule festival thing was really interesting and by really interesting. I mean really boring Um But what was interesting about it was how it fucked the game in half in so many different and interesting ways like uh, you know, um people talked about Pretty much universally they would load in drunk anytime they fast travel that happened to me in in the base game But was it during the yule festival that it happened to you or no? No, no, no, no It was it was way before when when I was doing my original playthrough of it whenever I would load up I would be shit-faced drunk and I would have to Run around and fight people just to have it wear off. Yeah, or you'd have to like talk to an npc or something Well, it no it wouldn't go away even then So what i'm thinking is that the people who are reporting it happening in the yule festival Something that same glitch was just perpetuated among like everyone for some reason. Yeah I also heard people would load in completely blind with a black screen and that would only fix by talking to somebody So you had to navigate yourself from pure memory From where you load in on the on the settlement to go talk to like gunner or something Just to have your vision restored. That's that's pretty location. That's pretty fabulous It was all these things that made me not want to do it and also the fact that like What do I like it's okay, so it's snowing and there are some activities Like drinking games and shit. I don't even know I I just I could never I could never care about this. I'm sorry I mean, I like the idea of like Having sort of an update in content of like, uh, hey, here's Here's a new thing you get because it's holidays and because we're a live service We can just do a holiday thing that only lasts but you know I also it's also part of the experience that's like it's time sensitive And it's like what am I gonna get for for doing all these activities?  Yeah, I found all the things Like what are people who keep playing the game actually doing is it just are you doing all of the like red uh radiant missions? Is that the idea is okay So is the idea that the yule festival is only accessible if you've beaten the game Because I could see people who are taking their their time with it and haven't beaten yet Which is a possibility that they're just that like the yule festival could be more Aventages to do then because you'd have stuff to take in with you for the rest of your playthrough Maybe but it's it is available to people who haven't finished the game right it was available to everybody. So maybe that's you know I don't know it's just it's it's yule festival Tell us in the comments. Did you like the yule festival? Was that something you actually enjoyed doing? If so, why because I just could not yeah be arsed to give clarification See if anyone else had the same issue with the drunken with being drunk I when I first went to yotenheim I I did the quest where I got blackout drunk with the yoten with with those day of yachtner And it was yachtner Every time every time even after finishing the quest every time I would load up a yotenheim Like if I would leave the game and come back into yotenheim I'd be shitfaced And so yeah I think it was the fault of the yachtner the the damn yeah Well, I mean we can we just we can blame them for all of our problems and not hold the right people accountable I think so too. I love that idea Yeah, so that takes care of the yule festival though, um, there is a more hilarious change that recently came in a patch Have you have you heard of this? Do you know what I'm talking about? The last thing I heard of is that bosses were level scaled with you Yeah, that did happen if that's not this That I don't know I can't really get a grasp on the significance of that mostly because I haven't kept playing but I do know a lot of people who are really upset about the way that they changed level scaling because it made it so Like I know one person was talking about how they try to keep their character under leveled and what they would essentially run into I I think this person was I think this was obese ninja 07 one of the one of the mods It might have been them or or kisex. I don't remember someone if it was you tell me in the comments who was telling me about this um But they would keep they would try to keep under leveled. I think it was obese ninja They would try to keep under leveled so that the game would actually be interesting challenging difficult in any way But then what happened after the update was The bosses wouldn't scale the same way as the enemies in the world did So if you kept yourself under leveled so that the world enemies would challenge you Then the bosses would just spank you you had no hope in hell of ever Managing the boss.  I don't like that. It seems like the whole level scaling thing Uh would worse impact people who were still playing the game as opposed to people who have beaten it Definitely, I think so.  So tim, you know how on your gear You'll have circle rune slots that are just like piss baby runes And then you'll have diamond runes that are like big boy runes actually make a difference Apparently in the most recent update They just got rid of a lot of those diamond rune slots on gear nice crucially on mostly The gear that people paid for in the store. Oh boy They said our development team has recently discovered that a few gear set items Had diamond rune slots by mistake I'm sorry How does that happen by mistake? How do you recently discover that that can't be the case right they had to just decide For some other reason to get rid of those I would think And then they've said that in an upcoming title update They're going to replace the diamond rune slots in the the niffelheim Gear set the gothic gear set the hell's damnation gear set now I'm not I'm not in tune enough with the game to really understand exactly the extent of this change like It seems like maybe it's only affecting certain items within those gear sets I guess maybe the idea is that one item is supposed to have a diamond rune And the rest are not supposed to have those diamond runes But a lot of people bought those gear sets Because of the fucking diamond rune slots and they spent like four on 20 dollars on gear Only to have it be Just ripped away from them afterwards and it seems like there's no plan for them to like Refund any of those people or even give them back their helix credits. It seems like a really weird thing to do I gotta say I really I really have an issue with I remember I sent you this tweet and it's like It was from like ubisoft and they were like, all right Well, we have we have we have a list here of all known issues And it's like the fact that there's even a list of all known issues is a problem I feel like I think most games at least in the modern era of Relying on patches and changes. I think it's a common practice But the list is pretty long for what it's not. Yeah, but yeah, but it's just like generally speaking Like it's not it's not just ubisoft.   Yeah, um, and in some cases I'd say like I'd say like one out of every three people have had a game breaking bug.  I I doubt that very much from experience I think it's I think it's a mixture of What you're saying as as it's not very memeable a lot of these things are just very frustrating but not screenshot worthy I also think the game's length Because you could you know, let's say you play the game for like 30 something hours and then you're writing an article about it You may have not seen all of the shit that you could see yet because I mean just doing the essentials It took me like 80 to 80 90 hours or so, you know So the game the game got increasingly more broken as it went on too because they prioritize Fixing the bugs that more people are likely to encounter So I I feel like it's a mixture of that the glitches that people do come across It's not like they can make a really like that Unity screenshot with with the faceless charles dorian, you know, that was everywhere That is funny as in and of itself because that only affected a handful of graphics cards Like 98 of people who played the game didn't even ever see that glitch and cyberpunk 2 has a lot more visible Memable glitchers and accepting like the the the last gen console experience Which was clearly super fucked for everybody Like I almost did feel in general like valhalla was more broken than cyberpunk was and I also have to throw in that like I was playing valhalla a week earlier than it launched So that was part of the problem too like I was running into When I when I had my game breaking bug, I believe I was the first person to post about it on the forum And then by the next couple of weeks, there were hundreds of posts. It was on the known issues list And that that certainly is part of the experience as well, but yeah all in all I feel like valhalla is almost It deserves more hate and not even when it comes to like faceless character models or whatever. I just I mean every Once every hour probably I would crash and I had to reload it. I mean that's just not fun Not fun. Not cool. Not very cash money at all. Not at all But you know, it's going to be great and not have any problems a c vr Assassin's Creed on vr. I'm actually able to weigh in on this with some experience because I've been playing Uh vr games recently. I've been trying out a bunch of them Some of them are great. You know, I love super hot. I love beat saber It is fun to play poker with a bunch of randos, but I have noticed something about vr Which is that uh, one of the strengths of vr. Let me phrase this differently One of the weaknesses of vr is any game that requires you to be moving, right?   What are they? The treadmills the 360 treadmills I know they make shoes now that are supposed to do that. I don't know. Yeah, I I don't know how they're They plan on simulating what you can do in like the regular games in terms of parkour It in vr. I I'm I'm really skeptical of that A sputter cell almost seems like the easier one to tackle out of those two because hitman is already doing their vr And I'm sure that there's a lot of crossover in terms of what they would do when a stealth game on vr The hitman's already doing like maybe May like maybe it could work just maybe I mean I can imagine teleporting around a little Tuscan countryside and stabbing people behind the backs if hitman's doing it I guess assassin's creed could do it. I do want to Say though that I I want to I want to put out like what I what I think is most likely in terms of map I think I think what's most likely to me is that it's going to be like a highlight reel of all the most famous ac locations So it will have like venison maybe even like boston. I could see that maybe being different in a vr setting Definitely a lot of the xco locations Maybe some black flag stuff But either way I just think that it's going to be like a like you're going to be jumping through these different time periods and In different in these different maps. I don't know if they're going to make like an original story or an original map for the vr I don't think I don't know if that's super likely. I think that's what they're going to do I think it's I think that's what makes most sense to me But also I want to uh I want I want to wager a guess at what the poster is going to look like for it Or or rather like the cover for it. Do you think they're going to put an assassin like atco and a vr helmet? No Close I think it's going to be like some random schmuck like you or me and Like a brahman headset with the absurd go symbol on it and it's going to like shooting out from around him is going to be like Italy and boston and all that and that's going to be the game and we're all going to love it I think that the problem with that idea is it would require a lot of different assets If they're just putting them in from the old games If they're just putting them in there's no guarantee They'll work with whatever the movement system is that they come up with for this game So I'm not saying it's going to be the entire map of venice, but it's certainly I know it could be a significant different arenas if they do little like Like squared away gameplay segments. That's totally possible. Also, are these going to be for the quest too because There's only so much you can do with games on the quest It's it's kind of not a super powerful platform because it's probably got less than a you know, your average mobile phone pretty much Hardware inside there. I don't really know. I don't know how it's going to work But you know what I like VR VR is cool. I like assassin's creed Sometimes so maybe I'll like assassin's creed on VR. Let me ask you this Lawson Do you actually like when at any point when you're playing ac? Have you ever said to yourself like this would be pretty cool in VR? Imagining that VR is as best as it could be Do you think that the ac experience could be better in VR? Not better, but good That's the thing and and here's where it gets interesting for me is because That phrase you used the ac experience Unfortunately is not a phrase that means anything anymore because There is no such thing as an ac experience That's fair because the experience you'll have in vahala is Fundamentally diametrically different than what you would have out of the ac experience of 2009 or 2014 And so like as a really obvious example of that you mentioned parkour and yes That is a curious idea of how do you do parkour in vr?  Yeah You'd be like, holy christ. I'm really high up a point if I slip I could fall and die That sounds amazing But if you look at the most recent ac games parkour doesn't really matter that much Well, so maybe i'm just writing a horse in vr. That's the thing lason is is It goes back to our discussion about the netflix show Yeah, this vr experience has to tap into even the most like casual assassin's creed players Knowledge of assassin's creed and so it's gonna have to it's gonna have to be like you could climb up this viewpoint And like they're gonna have to to focus on parkour a little because yeah Your average show that goes and walks into gamestop to buy this is going into want to run around On rooftops and stab people.  So you're gonna have those in vr theoretically, but I also think about, you know, there was a game that came out on mobile a while ago called assassin's creed identity Did you ever play that? I I know I know what it is. I've never played it, but I know I like it takes place in realm The idea of it is it's like well, that's how do we turn Your actual experience of playing assassin's creed game into a mobile game And it is kind of it is I mean that is what they do But it really just means you have a very small map You can do very basic parkour in And you can do very basic button presses, you know do assassinations and stuff It's not very open worldy, which I guess the vr game probably wouldn't be either It would probably just be like, yeah, we drop you on a tiny map. You have a linear mission There's one guy you got to kill at the end of it and you run around you do assassin things So you kill them and then you play the next level is probably what this is gonna be Probably the same for splinter cell and imagine if they're both being co-developed at the same time by the same studios There might be some interesting similarities in terms of design philosophy between the two and I don't know shit about splinter cell So I can't weigh on on what that would look like for either game I know a little I mean I I've played a I've played a couple of them I think they they're gonna have an they're gonna have such an easier time with splinter cell Just because splinter cells splinter cell In stealth games in general In terms of stealth games that are as stealthy as splinter cell They kind of promise the idea of being patient moving slowly Waiting for guard paths and being and just overall being incredibly patient and waiting for the right time to move And I think and I think that really helps them with vr because the less you are The slower the pace I imagine the the easier it'll it'll feel right like yeah And in terms of like splinter cell does have a lot of like you're climbing up on a rafters and you're And you're kind of like climbing on pipes on the ceiling and whatnot and that's very easily Simulated through vr. So they're gonna have a really easy time with with with splinter cell I think compared to assassin's creed I think in terms of the assassin's creed vr experience As so long as they give you a hidden blade and they can let you like kind of scale buildings in that way That you were describing and like just air assassinating a guy in vr would probably be kind of cool That would be pretty weird They got to be careful with how they do this because I mean There's like a game on the fucking vr store that I looked at it was called like Richie's plank experience or something And it really is just a game that puts you at the top of a tower and you have to walk out on a little plank And be scared shitless by it and they charge 15 dollars for that And there are all these warnings and things that they ask you to do They're like you should have two spotters when you play this game Standing around you in case you fall That's something that they actually have to tell you to do and I can't speak from experiences to whether that's necessary Because i'm not paying 15 dollars to step out on a plank, but it makes me wonder like In terms of the motion experience and the comfort level of it. How crazy can they really go? How how well can they do the viewpoints? How well could they do an air assassination? Without genuinely risking making people sick when they play it is the question and the answer is like Do they just not do those things? Do they just put you inside and just change the entire perspective of the game? Or do they have you controlling somebody in a weird third person way that vr games sometimes do Uh and and do it that way that could be kind of interesting. I bet I would have a lot less Motion sickness if I was playing an assassin's creed game in vr That was still third person and I was just watching you know, that's not that that's not a bad point I I I think that that that could kind of even kind of simulate the whole uh Assassin's Creed identity thing you were talking about right and then it's it's just about putting yourself in the world and having the the sort of immersive And maybe it maybe it shifts you into first person at strategic moment So you get that oh shit factor of climbing a viewpoint I do think the first person aspect of it It might be the selling point when it comes to viewpoints and like maybe a leap of faith or whatever But you're you're right in that there is the risk of making people sick and and whatnot So I don't know I but like I feel like doing a leap of faith in vr Not in first person would suck. Yeah, maybe yeah So, you know, we've talked about vr. We talked about these patch notes Uh, I wanted I've been I've been wanting to ask you Tim. I've been thinking I've been wanting to ask you Can I ask you a question? Are you asking me to prom? How do you feel about Assassin's Creed in general as a brand as a product as a as a thing as a fandom community a thing you're a part of Like let me take your pulse. Where's your heart beat at with with assassin's creed? It's not looking good Um, I might I might have I might fall on the cardiac arrest here soon Yeah, you know, look like when odyssey was coming out and I was very absent from the whole hype cycle of that And I wasn't active on ac twitter very much during that time and or the subreddit That was kind of where I fell off the subreddit. Um For a while I just kind of felt like oh, you know, it's just going through a phase, you know It's just acting out. It's it's being impulsive and sometimes rebellious Sometimes you have to let the teenager go to the party and get drunk, you know and just make sure that he doesn't drive home drunk I feel like right now though, they're getting behind the wheel and they're starting and they're not calling us for a ride home.  Like what does that? What does that mean exactly? What are you a fan of what am I a fan of my fan of? Kind of historical accuracy, you know, like like what am I a fan of right now? And if you had asked me When I went to the revelations midnight release when I was 11 years old Why am I assassin's creed? I could give you 10 reasons now. I could maybe give you one or two I'm not happy with it. I I feel and I obviously that's kind of the the motif of this podcast Right, it's not being happy with assassin's creed, but and and this is good I think to refresh ourselves on in this episode our first episode of 2021 because We're gonna have an idea by the end of the year Where it's going is it is it going is it getting on the bridge and and getting really shaky and and we're Suspenseful and like oh god, this could be it Or is it like hey they they pulled over And they called us and they said Mom, I'm not okay. And now we maybe have a chance right and we're not mad. We're just disappointed We're getting the minivan. We can drive to where they are You know, maybe call a tow truck or something or find a way to find a place to park on we drive them home And they can tell us in the car. They can be like mom.  You have to learn from your mistakes assassin's creed in this case is a teenage son because Boys are stupider than girls are and because they never advertise women right in the franchise the the sister is at home setting Yeah, the the ac sisterhood is at home being a very good Child, they're not doing anything wrong and we love them. We we love them right but uh as far as assassin's creed goes that rascal listen And I I struggle with this because like I'm I'm like I'm an eternal optimist I don't know if you know that about me, but I'm very optimistic person in life in general I'm not we're not gonna get too deep into this because we actually have a real fun epic time plan for our next episode We're having on as a guest mr. N staff 13 who is a working game developer person and and he has some insights some some thoughts to share on the recent spate of leaks and You know, I say quote-unquote leaks because they're not they're not really leaks. Sorry they tim they're pretty much What's another good word lies? They're lies that people are telling That are not based in fact the reality they're not leaks. What's another good word? I bullshit Someone yeah, someone did an ms paint map of india and we're gonna talk about it next next episode Yeah, I guess the preface our positions on it. Yeah, we They're kind of bs, but well, you know, we'll talk about them I guess and and the most exciting or the one that everyone's picking up Is this idea that in 2022? Uh, like maybe quarter one of 2022 we're gonna get a smaller game That is and I'm kind of I'm fusing a couple of different rumors together because they're pretty compatible but this idea that the next one will be set in like medieval france in germany like medieval europe basically in general and that it's going to be uh, uh, they they've said a fantasy take on assassin's creed and As if that hasn't already been a thing As if as if they haven't been fantasy games since 2017, right? No But but just in that just think about this with me for a second. Let's just play this out hypothetically Hypothetically for the sake of argument So let's say hypothetically for the sake of the argument. Okay, um We have these last three games they exist that we know what they are. They're very mythologically influenced They have these mystical elements to them some are more grounded than others And at no point in these three games has ubisoft called them fantasy games So the question becomes If this game this new one that they're definitely making and isn't a complete bullshit leak If they're willing to call that a fantasy game What does that mean for what the game actually is? Yeah, and here's here's the confusion for me is I felt I thought like phoenix Whatever and mortals rising like I thought that was kind of their way to take The elements of odyssey that they really wanted to explore more and expand on and then make its own ip So that they didn't piss off more people We also know that at one point ubisoft cancelled like a full-on Arthurian legend fantasy game too like it was called avalon people were really excited about it And then the higher ups at ubisoft were like, what if instead we didn't do that? It's like it's like they all want to do these things and they have to like prove Themselves by doing it in an established brand first So they all have to like muck about and they have to piss in the pool of assassin's creed In order to get approval. Yeah their own thing that they want to do It does seem as if though we got about like three different potential games that people are talking about right like yeah We have the medieval france germany fantasy garbage. We have the india and some parts of Pakistan, right?  Yeah, and and then what's the third one? I'm missing the third one China or japan. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes. We've got yeah. We have china potential No, wait, wasn't there one that might be read that was japan? Uh, yeah that that leak and I I still don't know if that's been yeah leak. Yeah, I keep I keep saying leak I mean rumor or lie That lie I don't know if it got reposted It was like intercepted by our auto moderator and it may never have gotten past it Right people may not have seen that one probably for the best because it is It's it's like real fan fiction type shit for sure But out of all of these three proposed ideas that is the one that I hope is true So if we get into that next episode that could be fun. Yeah, and no uh, uh He's he's such a handsome lad.    I know I really pissed about that Okay, here's something remember when I tweeted you not tweeted you when I sent you the tweet about the xiaojun manga I I thought that already happened. Am I losing my mind? Didn't the xiaojun manga already happen? It did but it was in Another language, but do you think this do you think is this is just a translation or is a new story? Uh, I gotta look at it again. Let me uh, let me see if I can find it again I mean, look, I'm never gonna read a manga. So sorry You'd be soft and vis media partner up for an assassin's creed manga Yeah, three days ago from euro gamer blade of xiaojun This is different. Oh wait. No, it's not it's not different from the one that was already out It doesn't look like it to me. Shit. This is one that's coming that will be available in english I'm seeing in november of 2020. It says assassin's creed blade of xiaojun manga coming in 2021. So It's possible that I was thinking about the announcement of it But I I thought there was already a xiaojun manga that came out like years ago No, you know what there was a chinese comic that came out That was not about xiaojun and that's probably what you're thinking of it was called assassin's creed dynasty It was not to my knowledge ever released in english and it was created in china written by chinese authors Published in china was never it never came to the us or or france or duke or anything, right? So that might be what you're thinking of because I think xiaojun appears as a character in that but it's not about xiaojun If that's not what you're thinking of then you are just probably thinking of an earlier announcement for the xiaojun Right. Yeah, I think I think it's I think it could be a combination of the two. I think I I think I might be thinking of the comic and I'm torn on this because like I love I mean xiaojun is is cool xiaojun is some would say xiaojun is my queen Yeah, yeah, don't say you love xiaojun. What is it?  Well, well what you have to understand Tim is that xiaojun is my queen. That's right. I'm sorry I that's what I say all the time and I've never heard anyone else say that Right Just kidding. Aren't you writing aren't you writing a trilogy of novels about xiaojun? Yeah, people know that I'm writing a trilogy of fan novels called the blade in the shadows That's the thing that I'm doing Uh that you might be familiar You might have seen on twitter Might have seen on twitter No, we're just we're having fun. Uh shoutouts to sarib underscore beg. I think that's how it's pronounced. It probably isn't Uh, he's writing a trilogy of xiaojun fan fictions And uh, I can't wait the first one is coming out soon. It's coming out soon Maybe maybe even be out by the time we push put out this episode I don't know. I'm not sure if the manga is gonna interrupt some of that. Maybe we'll see Yeah, might I mean I've uh, I've definitely had to cancel a fan fiction project Due to a different trans media thing coming out that would have stepped on it. Yeah, I've done that I know I know about that one. Yeah me and me and blue from overly sarcastic productions had a really cool idea That we were gonna write about and then they made a last descendants novel and we said, why don't we just not do this anymore? Look, I here's how I feel about xiaojun. Let's just talk about xiaojun real quick Do I have a little chat about xiaojun? I uh, yeah, that's yeah, sure. All right, listen xiaojun Cool character design embers is great There was definitely a time in which had they announced like a xiaojun full on Chinese set assassin's creed game That would have been great Now if they were to announce that next year or something I would have the same reaction to it as like the black widow movie at marvel. It'd be like cool But too late. You should have done this five years ago Now I just don't care that much and with every like trans media announcement they make Uh, that they're doing more stuff with xiaojun in these comics and manga and chronicles and what have you That feels to me like pretty solid indication not only that they're never getting a xiaojun game but also that we probably shouldn't have one anyway because I would at this point. I would rather see a china game with a like a completely new character And xiaojun can be a side character xiaojun can maybe be like the the ancestor who leaves collectibles for you to find or codex pages or what have you that that was what I was going to say too Is I feel like if they do make a china game It's not going to be xiaojun But xiaojun is going to be like like you can collect her sword or some shit right like she's going to be a A formidable assassin that everyone talks about and she's like a legend among among the creed there But she's not going to be present in the game necessarily or you know They do a china game before xiaojun exists and then you get little like teasers of the of the zhun family You get like helix rift style flash forwards because she would be like you're descended And you can play a little little gameplay segments of xiaojun in a future In a later china than the one you're in in the game because they've talked about I think ancient china as being a possibility I don't know I'd personally rather see japan than china in a game Maybe I know everyone thinks that that'll be too ghost of susama Ask but I still think it'd be cool. I don't know too much about like chinese history I don't know like what ancient china looks like compared to like i don't know medieval china I don't I mean I have no idea but this isn't the podcast for people who care about history Yeah, go over to osp production sarcastic. We'll ask we'll ask noah next episode osp history and we'll hear what he says osp sarcastic productions podcast productions overly sarcastic osp Our overly sarcastic osp productions podcast xiaojun is fine I liked her and I liked her in embers. I appreciate the little foot blade thing Yeah, but beyond that. I don't I think I think people fell in love with the idea of xiaojun. They don't know like they don't love the character They love the idea and well, that's the thing. She's just she's a great design Yeah, she's she's a good template, but there's not a character there It's like boba fet like we just like thought he looked cool And everyone confused that for thinking he was a good character. It's exactly like boba fet It's exactly like that literally the euro gamer article just said like fan favorite xiaojun. It's like they're It's a fan favorite like character design pretty much as you're saying it's not like I mean she is a fan favorite How many people do we know with xiaojun avatar? I know, but okay, tell me losin What is a okay? I actually know I'm gonna leave it to the people in the comments Uh list off xiaojun character traits and if you can't name more than one that is a problem Okay, yeah, that's a fun challenge tell us tell us what defines xiaojun as a character beyond her aesthetic So hey everybody look if you enjoyed this episode of the hook blade podcast Shout it from the mountaintops tell your friends Who like assassin's creed and podcast that they need to listen to this one? Leave a comment leave a like Subscribe to us hit the bell icon Tweet at us at hook blade leave a review on apple podcasts These are the things that really help us out They go a long way and so we really appreciate when you do them.  No, that's not right. I've been the blade I've been the hook and I've been the blade and We will see you on our next episode when we are joined by Mr. N staff 13 or or noa As we sometimes call him as well And uh, we will we will have a good time We will talk about the leaks the rumors the lies.   Thank you so much for listening to us And I would say we'll see you next week because that's not yeah, we had an episodes But we're not gonna see you next week. We're gonna see you in two weeks on tuesday It's really easy to remember when you say it like that Right It's super helpful. So, uh, yeah, enjoy the rest of your couple weeks. Uh, have a good one. Bye. Bye So you can use one or the other an elegant design design design Do you want to hey real quick? Do you want to segue into this topic and talk about it? Sure Okay, hey, so lost and how do you feel about us? That's the screen right now Hold on i'm gonna do it. Okay


10 English Idioms with the word water from espressoenglish.net number 1 a fish out of water if you feel like a fish out of water it means you feel Uncomfortable like you don't belong in a particular situation For example, I don't have any experience working with kids So I felt like a fish out of water when I had to teach a class of six year olds number 2 come hell or high water if You say you will do something come hell or high water. It means you will definitely do it no matter what difficulties appear For example, I am going to run a marathon this year come hell or high water Warning the word hell can be offensive in professional situations Use the expression no matter what instead for example, I am going to run a marathon this year no matter what number 3 in deep water means in a difficult situation especially one that is beyond the level of your abilities or in trouble for example a Number of customers have taken legal action against our company. We're really in deep water now number four in hot water This means in trouble Usually when somebody will be angry at you or you will be punished For example, Jason borrowed his dad's watch and then lost it. He's gonna be in hot water when his father finds out number five dead in the water This expression means a project or process is stopped without any chance for success or progress for example Unfortunately the after-school theater program is dead in the water. There's no space available in the building to hold the classes number six not hold water if a If a statement or belief doesn't hold water It means it has some flaws and is probably not completely true or correct For example, his argument just doesn't hold water. It's all based on emotions not on facts number seven test the waters if You test the waters you are trying to discover a little more about a situation Situation before you go ahead and become very involved For example before I decided to become a full-time photographer I tested the waters by doing a few projects to see if I'd enjoy the work number eight keep your head above water this expression means trying very hard to survive Financially or when you are barely able to handle a lot of work, which is almost too much For example, my boss gives me so much to do that. I have to work weekends just to keep my head above water number nine a watering hole This expression literally means a small area of water where animals go to drink But it is also a slang term for a bar For example, if you're looking to have some fun O'Reilly's is the best watering hole in town number ten water under the bridge This expression refers to something that has happened in the past and can't be changed So there's no point worrying about it For example Ten years from now all the little problems you're having today will just be water under the bridge To learn more idiomatic expressions take the English idioms course available at espresso English net You'll discover English idioms in context and practice them with exercises Visit espresso English net to take the idioms course


Welcome to another edit with Affinity Photo. It's been a while since I've done one of these edits in Affinity Photo. I'm trying to get my channel to be a little bit more educational this year. And so I'm going to go ahead and show how I edit my photos if if it's something that people want to see. I don't use Lightroom. I used to use Photoshop and now I use Affinity Photo and I've been using Affinity Photo for about four years. So I'm currently using Affinity Photo on a laptop. I used to use it mostly on my desktop. It's a quite a bit older computer and the laptop has a much newer operating system and I think Affinity Photo is running a little bit better on it. One thing that I used to do on the old system was I had a lot of nick plugins that I kind of relied heavily on in my workflow. Now I'm on the laptop. I haven't loaded the plugins. I felt like maybe I was getting a little bit too reliant on the plugins. So for a while anyway I'm going to be using Affinity Photo and only Affinity Photo for my edits. So the image we're going to edit today is from a shoot this last fall. It was at the Oregon Dunes. And I picked one that isn't a perfect exposure and it's got some issues. But I think we can resolve the issues and make a pretty nice image out of it. I'm not trying to be a spokesperson for Affinity Photo. They can do a lot better than me in promoting their software. I'm just trying to show you how I do it. This isn't a tutorial. This is just how I use the program. So I've got a raw file loaded up. Let's jump in and start the edit. All right we've got the photo loaded up and there's a couple things wrong with this photo as you can see. It looks kind of dark and it's got this spot on the sensor.  You get into a some good light and what do you get? You get fuzz on the sensor. But I think where it's located I think I can crop quite a bit because I don't need this this little clump over here. It's kind of messy anyway. So if I'm able to crop it about here I think I can save this image. Now I keep the tone curves off. Open this up. The development assistant. Where it says tone curve down here I have it set to take no action. So that's one reason why it looks a little on the dark side when you when I bring in a raw file into Affinity Photo. You can set it up to apply a tone curve and it does lighten it up. But generally I start with just the raw data and so if it's a little on the dark side that's okay. But you might prefer to go ahead and apply the tone curve when you're using the develop persona. But for me right now I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to turn that off and just take no action there. So we've got a kind of a dark looking file and we've got this ugly mess over here. So first thing I'm going to do is go ahead and lighten it up a little bit. A little bit on the exposure slider. A little on the brightness slider. That might turn up the black point just a little bit. I don't usually do a lot of contrast adjustments or saturation adjustments in a development persona. You can add a little contrast if you want to. Just want to be careful. You want to make sure you take a lot of a good information into the photo persona. If I slid this all the way over I think it would be overexposed. This is it at a sunset and the light is pretty low. It's pretty warm so I really want to overcorrect that. It's kind of hard to do while recording. That looks pretty good. We're going to develop that and take it into the photo persona. First thing to do here I think we're going to crop it. I think for this image I'm not going to keep it in its original aspect ratio. I'm going to go ahead and crop it unconstrained. I could put it in the original aspect ratio but for this image I don't really think it's that important to keep that aspect ratio so I'm going to go ahead and leave it unconstrained. What I want to do is at least crop out that little group dark group at the end there but because the way that fuzz drops down into the dunes there really I just I think I'm going to try to crop out just the edge of it so all I have to do is deal with it in the lighter area. Bring it down just a bit because there's really nothing in the sky that's all that important. Keep it just balanced just a little bit closer to a four by five it looks like. I think that looks pretty good. Let's go ahead and apply that. All right let's deal with this piece of fuzz here. Get it where we can see it. Magnify it a little bit. We're here about 75 percent. Over here we've got a good assortment of tools and I like this in-painting brush tool for this kind of operation. That took care of it pretty slick. All right now we can just work on contrast and the color and saturation. Let's start with the levels. Just a little bit darken up the shadows adding it's basically just adding contrast to the image is what it really needs. Looks pretty good. We're going to go with that for now. Let's go down to brightness and contrast. Slightly lighten it just a little bit. Let's add a little contrast. A little bit more. Too much. It's starting to come together already. Really is in vibrance. Add a little saturation. Bring out some of those warm tones that are there. Not too much. It's so easy to overdo this. There's a little bit of a haze in the sky. There's really not a lot I can do about that. I think that looks pretty good. I know this is this is pretty basic stuff. To my eye that looks pretty good. It's really good when you get an image where you think you like it. It's good to look away from the screen a little while. Maybe leave your monitor go get something to drink. Then come back to it and then look at it again to see if your eyes have weren't overly adjusted to the screen before. I find that if I stare at an image for too long my eyes have adjusted to that image that it isn't really as dark or light as my eyes are telling me. Sometimes it's good to look away for a while and then come back and get a fresh look at it. For this one we use the vibrance, brightness, contrast, and the level slider. I think that looks pretty good. Maybe I will try the shadow highlight. If I can darken just the shadow it's just a little bit more. Just to add a little bit more contrast in those darker areas. Is that really adjusting anything else? Yeah I think that looks pretty good. Probably do the same thing in levels. Can check what you've done. Well it seems to pop pretty good now. I don't think that looks unrealistic. That looks pretty much what it looked like when I was there. Now you can save this and it'll save your your layers that you've created. I usually don't. I rarely save a edit because it doesn't take very long for me to get to where I want it to be. So I could save this as a 16-bit tiff which is what I normally do and export this as a 16-bit tiff. I've done so many of these that I rarely save it. I just export it. When you're exporting it you're just saving it as a tiff. It still has a bunch of information. If I want to fine-tune it a little bit make some tweaks to it it's really easy to do as a tiff. I rarely need to go completely back to the beginning to edit a photo. And I'll make a jpeg version. I like to put a border around these. So I'm going to go ahead and flatten this since I'm not going to save the layers. I'm going to go ahead and flatten it and then we're going to put a border on it. Gotta have a border on it before it's done.  It feels like a piece of art that way. So resize campus. Think a point in the center. I like to click at the inches. I'm going to make it a thin border. Resize it. Okay now we go to layer. New field layer. Drag that behind the pixel layer and there's the nice border. We'll export that to the file. Export jpeg. I know it's pretty basic stuff. It doesn't have to be that complicated when you're editing your photos. That's what's so nice about this software. It's just a few different... They give you a few different usable tools. They make some really usable layers. It'll do a lot more complex editing than I've showed you here. It shows where we started. Well that's it. That's another edit in Affinity Photo. If you'd like to see more of these, let me know. I don't really want to continue making these editing videos if nobody's using Affinity Photo. I know it's a pretty small minority of people that probably use the software. It's an alternative to Photoshop. It may not be for everybody but I find it works great for my needs. I've found anything that I need to do that Affinity Photo can't do. Until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.