Well, I served in the military. I got in 17 years old on September 16th of 2005. If you try to talk to some of these college students about some of the things you've done or seen or been around they'd be like, what? And they have no idea. My name is Adam Hollinsworth, and I'm from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Right out of high school, I joined the military in the Army, and I would join the National Guard. I deployed my first time in 09-10, and I was there for 13 months in Baghdad, Iraq. That was a eye-opener, because I was only like, I believe 22 years old. The things that I saw over there, the things that we had to do on missions and stuff like that just it really makes you appreciate life here, and then when I was overseas my second time, I was in Afghanistan in Kabul. I was sitting there, and I was like, if I want to be better in law enforcement, or I want to have a better career, I got to go to college. So I said, I guess I'm going to UA, and now I've been for about two years now with the fishing team here in Alabama. And as a vice president, I see myself as a leader to the help to others, because I'm 33 years old. I never thought I would have the chance to be in college fishing, but now that I am, I take it to the fullest, and I'm trying to teach the younger ones who've just joined the freshmen that, hey, if you have a dream and you have an aspiration, you can get there. What I want to say to the veterans like if they're thinking about coming to college, do it. Don't wait, and don't believe what all the other people say I got told from the time I started, and even sometimes now. You're too old for this. You're not going to do well, and I just didn't listen. I was hardheaded. This is for me. This is something I started, and I'm going to finish it.


Hello, my good internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you for joining me here today for the beginning of an adventure I'm taking. I have found a wide variety of medications for a number of conditions for the past decade of my life in varying degrees and getting more and more as years have gone on. And I wanna talk about what I'm doing. Things are changing and I wanted to try something different because I'm going to stop taking them. This right here is a bag of just a few of the medications that I have been on. About a month and a half ago, I just sort of got to this point where I was really tired of taking so many medications and not even knowing what's effective or what's not anymore. Not even knowing if I still need to be taking them or if they're still working or, you know, fill in the blank. Quick and incredibly important disclaimer, I have been on medications for a while. I don't have a darn thing against them. They're incredibly helpful for so many different things. And so please do not take this video as any encouragement to change what you are doing and please do not consider if you're on medication changing anything without thoroughly talking to your doctor about it. This is just for me. I am only talking about myself and if you are or you aren't on medications, that's fantastic. Please know that none of this is any judgment or me getting off of them because I'm like drugs are bad. Legal ones taken in proper doses. So as we dive into this, if you want to like this video, give it a thumbs up. That helps it get out to more people. It helps with the YouTube algorithm and I would really appreciate it. Allow me to give you a quick overview of my relationship with medication since the age of like 14 or 15. When I had the horseback running accident that I had that caused all my leg issues, there was obviously a lot of issues with my leg but there was also almost more issues with my neck and with severe pain and migraines, a lot of symptoms. And no one could really figure it out. I have three compressed discs but they're not to the point where surgery would be helpful. Normal doctors didn't have any answers and so they sent me to a pain management doctor who eventually did an MRI again and realized that I have a Kiari malformation which is basically where my brain is compressed against the back of my skull. It causes a lot of pain. It causes a lot of symptoms. And if you ever want me to get more into detail about that condition, I'd be happy to. But long story short, there is no cure for it aside from brain surgery which I almost did have but doctors along with myself decided that would not be a good option for me. So I have been on medications for pain since the age consistently of 18 onward. And if you know anything about those kinds of medications, your body adjusts to them. Your body gets used to a certain dose and then you need more to actually get the same amount of relief. So we would change medications up, see if something worked better, give my body a break from, you know, fill in the blank. But long story short, taking opiates and painkillers at that level from the age of 18 onward can have serious consequences on your body, on your internal organs. And more than that, I have such a high tolerance for them that it's really difficult to get my pain under control when it's really bad, like after surgeries, which we talked about. But not being on them every day was agony and was not a way to exist. And so I've been on heavy pain medication pretty much every day for the last several years. Let's pause there for just a second. I was also introduced to a medication that could help with my brains. There wasn't like a huge impact. We tried like seven medications before this particular one, but there was enough of one lowering the severity that I was like, okay, let's give this a shot. And so I've been on that for like three years. Then I was prescribed medication for anxiety.  It's crushing all of the time and made it for a while so I could not sleep. I developed PTSD a number of years ago, had horrible flashbacks and nightmares and didn't sleep for many years basically. And the medication I was prescribed helps with panic attacks, helps people sleep. And then I went to the Mayo Clinic to try to solve the problems with my neck and my head and see if they had any solutions. And in the process of talking, they actually prescribed another medication that's usually used for blood pressure but helps regulate your adrenal system because I was having such horrible nightmares and it can actually help with PTSD even though that's sort of an off-label use for it. And it worked. It changed my life at that point because I went from having really bad dreams just about every night to being able to sleep through the night and man, getting good sleep makes a difference in your life. So I've been on that medication for five years now, I think. Last but not least, I am on an antidepressant and I have been for many years. I've been on the same one, same dosage. It really made a difference in my life when I started taking it. It brought me from staring at walls, feeling absolutely nothing and everything and tear streaming down my face for hours at a time, not being able to function, to being able to get up in the morning, to being able to function many days. It helped, but I've been on that for a really long time. And I've been reading this book called Lost Connections, which I would highly recommend anyone read. It's a fantastic, well-researched piece of literature. It's all about connection and depression and anxiety and how it all works together and it's very non-judgmental. And it is a wealth of information that's presented in a very digestible way. And as I was reading through this book, I started thinking about all the medications I was on and all the pills that I take every day and every morning I wake up and I assemble all of them from the different bottles and I take them and make sure it's the right amount. Then I have to carry medication with me throughout the day. Then every evening I'm taking these, you know, drugs to be able to go, these medications to regulate my system and be able to sleep and all of that. And I just sort of hit this point of being like, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of living on chemicals. I don't know if I would be any different off of them as far as like personality and focus and productivity or not. But I do know that it's been a really long time that I have consistently been on all of these medications and I don't even really know if they're working anymore. I don't know if some problems have resolved themselves like the nightmares, for instance. Do I really still need to take medication for that? Or am I at a place with my mental health and healing that they just, they aren't there as much anymore? And so it started. And the first priority that I had was pain medication. I was on two different ones. One's like a long lasting opioid you take every day and the other one is sort of as needed. And along with my doctor supervision and with their help, I stopped taking the long lasting one so that I'm only taking pain medication in moments where it's bad and I need it. I was really scared to do that and see what might happen. But I came off of the long lasting stuff completely a couple of weeks ago and it's actually been okay. I didn't experience any crazy withdrawal or super negative side effects. I experienced a lot more anxiety for a few weeks and I guess that that can be related to coming off of drugs like that. But because I was able to successfully basically half the intake of pain medication that I take every day, I started thinking about the other drugs that I'm on. And so the next one that I wanted to experiment with was the one for migraines because it only had a minimal effect and that was years ago. And so the proper way, under supervision, all of that, please keep that in mind. That's incredibly important if you ever consider coming off of any medications. Please talk to your doctor. These are conversations that we shouldn't have online or alone. They should be had with professionals slowly but surely I weaned myself off of that and I've been off of that entirely for about a week and it's been okay. I still get migraines often but they haven't changed in severity or frequency since I've come off of that. So I moved on to the next one on my list. I started coming off of the nightmare medication that I was taking and it's now been two days without any of it, slowly decreasing over the past few weeks and I'm actually okay so far. I'm trying to really pay attention to symptoms, pay attention to things, take notes, be very aware of what's happening with my mind and my body and all of that. So I started moving on to the next thing on my list which is the anxiety medication I've been taking. I have experimented with not taking the full amount, seeing if I can get through days with half as much and really implement other coping strategies and really focus on that and there have been a number of days where I've been able to go with half as much as I have normally taken which is mind blowing to me because like I said, anxiety is a really big problem in my life. It's very, very present all of the time but I honestly was just kind of curious because that in particular is a medication that you have to keep taking more and more of for it to really be effective and I'd rather have it be effective still but not in higher doses and one way to do that is to come off of it as much as I can and only use it when I really, really have to. So all in all, I have come off a significant amount of the medications that I was taking every single day for years. Something else that always bothered me is when I would go into doctor's offices, they always have you go through the entire list of medications, what you're taking and that would be like a frickin' five minute conversation, I'm taking this in this dosage and oh here's another one, oh here's another one and I just reflected on how long that list has gotten and it's not a bad thing, none of that's a bad thing to be on medication at all. It's incredibly helpful, it's important but I just wanted to kind of see what would happen and I'm gonna continue trying. I'm going to try to come off of a little bit more of my pain medication in a very, very slow fashion under doctor supervision. I'm going to see if I can continue to taking less anxiety medication. I would like to consider coming off of the anti-depressant I've been on and just seeing how things are now because when I started taking it, that was before I was married, that's when I was still dating Brian, it's been a long time and I still really struggle with depression but I wonder how different it would be without that, how effective it really is being for me. Do I need that in my system?  Here's the thing for me, our bodies and our minds change, our chemical structure changes, we are constantly evolving as people and all of the medications that I've been on have been effective for what they have been effective for when I needed it at that point in my life but considering the length of time that I was on some of these, I wondered if I needed them in the same way that I did before and it seems like for some of them, I don't and I've always been of the opinion that if medications can help you, gosh darn it, take them but for me personally, I've always wanted to be on as few as possible, if any but the list got really long and I just don't love that. I don't love having to make sure prescriptions are refilled and being terrified of what if that doesn't happen and what if I have to go two days without it and would I be able to exist? Would I be okay, you know? And so far, anyways, it seems like I have been able to come off of a lot of stuff and I'm okay. One thing that has always concerned me and it's a balancing act for anyone who's taking any kind of medication is the side effects. These medications do have side effects and those are very real and can have long-term consequences and sometimes that's entirely worth it so that you can live, so that you can exist, so that you can fill in the blank but I've wondered for a long time how much those side effects are affecting me. Are they causing some of the issues that I've been dealing with? Are there interactions or possible interactions that could occur that I don't know? I will continue checking in with professionals. I will continue paying very close attention to my mental and physical health and symptoms and what's going on. It's been a challenging few weeks but it's been good and I'm excited that I maybe don't have to take as many drugs as I've had to take for so long. We'll see what happens. I will keep you guys updated on the process. I think I'll probably check back in on this in about a month. I think that's a good time to kind of get a better idea of how things are leveling out. I also do want to mention I've done this in stages, like I'm not cutting out one medication and another and another all at the same time. It's been staggered out. I know that I said this at the beginning of the video but I really, really want to repeat it again. There's nothing wrong with medications. I'm not like stopping taking mine because I think they're bad or fill in the blank. I'm curious if other things could work. If other things could assist me in the way that I need help now. And I'm fine if I need to stay on some of them but I'd also be pretty excited if I didn't have to worry about refilling things and making sure I packed enough medication for the day and worrying about if I run out and do I have everything I need if we ever travel on a trip because otherwise I'm screwed and just all of that. And yeah, we'll see how it goes. Also just as a friendly reminder, please don't ever do anything like this without talking to the people who are prescribing the medications without having supervision, without checking in with people. Bad things can happen if you come off of medications. I personally know of some bad things that have happened when people just stopped taking medication because I didn't think they needed it anymore and then things got really bad. So please, for your health, never do that. Make sure you are going about the right way if you ever decide to come off of anything. But I'm curious if anyone's been in the same boat, do you relate to this on either side of it? I'd love to hear from you down below in the comment section. I'm gonna keep you guys updated as this little adventure continues and I really appreciate you being here. Thank you to my patrons over on Patreon who make these videos possible and support me in so many ways. I really appreciate you guys. If you're interested in what Patreon is, check the link out on the screen or the link in the description. Lastly and most importantly, please take care of yourself today. You're worth it, you deserve it and I hope you're hanging in there. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.


Andesias, his wife and son, we have yet to see. I was hailing Agamemnon and daughter Athena, and then the god, messenger, god, and for our story, the son and god Hyperion, very, very important is the goddess of enchantment. Sirse, Calypso, the goddess of silence, the son of Poseidon. Freak Poseidon, earth shaker, lord of the waves, hear me, if I am your son, and if you are my father, Dysias never sees his home again, or if he does, let him come alone in friend-less to a house of trouble and sorrow, and there was his prayer Poseidon heard it. Odysseus, in his ships, came to the island home of Aeolus, who is the warden of the wind. His island floats on the surface of the sea and all around it is a wall of bronze. Aeolus lives there with his wife and twelve children, six sons and six daughters, who are married to one another, and they spend all their time feasting. For a whole month Aeolus entertained Odysseus and his men, and questioned them closely about the fall of Troy. At last Odysseus patiently asked Aeolus for his help on the journey home. Without it, Odysseus, an ox hide back, tied with a silver cord, in it were all as they were needed, except for the west wind, which Aeolus commanded to give Odysseus safe passage home. At first all went well, after nine days and nine nights, the shore of Ithaca came into sight. Odysseus, who had been keeping lookout all this time, fell asleep, sure, sure, and so the foolish and greedy men undid the silver cord around the ox hide by fierce tempest arose, buffeting the ships with merciless fury. One by one they foundered, they sank to the bottom of the sea and the waves closed over them. Soon only Odysseus's ship was left. The wearing winds, the warring winds blew it all the way back to Aeolus' island. You did, answered Odysseus, but my companions have betrayed me. They opened the ox hide back and unleashed loose the tempest.  Odysseus, heavy at heart, turned once more to the open sea. No friendly wind filled the sails this time. Instead, the men had to pull on the oars against both wind and wave. And all the time they knew, no matter what course they steered, that Poseidon was waiting. Odysseus and his men eventually made landfall off the island of Eicia, the home of Circe, to the ship. Odysseus climbed a nearby hill to see what he could. As he stood gazing over the island, a stag crossed his path on its way to drink from the river. Odysseus flung his spear and killed it. Men, he cried, our luck is with us once again. Come, let us feast, and tomorrow we shall explore the island. Next day Odysseus divided his crew. They drew lots as to who should go first, and Eurylicus won. So he and 22 men set off inland. But before long they came to Circe's palace. It stood in a clearing in the woodland and was built of stone. Wild creatures such as lions and wolves roamed outside it. But Circe's power was so great that they did not attack the men, but fawned over them like dogs. When the party came to the doors of the palace, they could hear Circe inside, singing in a lovely, bloating voice as she worked at her loom, weaving such dazzling gossamer cloth as goddesses make. Mm-hmm. Polities said, there is a woman in the house, singing as she weaves. The whole building rings with the echoes of her voice. Come in, mixing in them drugs that made them forget their country and their loved ones in long Circe. Then she touched each of them lightly with a rod. And as she did, they turned into bristly snuffling swine, the minds of men though. But when they tried to cry for help, only grunts came out. Neuralicus saw it all and ran back to the ship with the terrible news and wanted to sail at once, abandoning polities. But Odysseus would not leave them. He made his way alone to Circe's palace. Odysseus met Hermes, the messenger god, with his golden wand, golden-winged sandals. He looked like a boy on the edge of manhood, with the first soft down still on his upper lip. Nevertheless, Odysseus bowed low, knowing that he was in the presence of a god. Hermes departed, and Odysseus continued to walk his way towards Circe's palace. When he reached the doubt to be let in, Circe welcomed him, ushered him to a chair in the hand, saying now be off to the big sty and lie down with your friends. Odysseus saw it and raised it high, as if to strike her dead. And Circe fell to her knees and spoke, and pleading to Odysseus answered, How can I trust you when you have turned my men into swine, Mr. Freedom, and to do me no further harm? And I will lie with you willingly, Circe's handmaidens prepared her bedchamber. Odysseus went back to the ship to tell Euralicus and the others the news. The men would not believe him, and wanted to put straight out to sea. But Odysseus told them, I have given my word to a goddess, and I cannot break it. When Odysseus and his men reached the palace, Circe welcomed them. Put aside your care, she said, eat, drink, and be merry. For a year Odysseus and his men feasted, while Odysseus kept loving company with the goddess, who bore him a son, to likeness. At last, however, they grew homesick, and Odysseus begged Circe to help them go back to Ithaca. You have offended one of the most powerful gods, said Circe, and I cannot help you. If you want to return home, you must ask advice from the wisest of all. The blind seer, Dorisius. But Dorisius is dead, Cerodisius. Yes, you must venture into Hades itself to speak with him. It will be worth the journey, for while the rest of the dead are mere fleeting shadows. Dorisius keeps his wits about him still. He alone can tell you what your future holds. Who will pilot me on such a voyage? asked Odysseus. No sailor has ever undertaken the dark journey to the house. Not worry, she replied, hoist your white sail, and the north wind will carry you where you wish to go. Once you have passed the river of the ocean, you will come to the coast of Hades with its black and blighted trees. And there you must leave your ship and walk into the land of the dead. When you come to a rock where two rivers meet, dig a trench, and fill it with milk and honey. Add sweet wine and water, and sprinkle barley meal upon must take a ram, and anew, and sacrifice them. Horns up the dead will swarm at the scent of blood, but you must hold them back with your sword until Dorisius arrives. He will answer your questions. Odysseus gathered his men and returned to the ship, but one did not come with them. Young Elpinor, having drunk too much wine, he was lying asleep on the palace roof. Hearing his companions calling for him, he leaped up, lost his footing, plummeted to the ground, and broke his neck. Odysseus meanwhile spoke to his men. No doubt you think we are heading for home, but we are not. Our destination is Hades, where the goddess has told me to seek the advice of the seer, Dorisius. Odysseus and his crew did not have to touch the oars, as the ship carried them to the dread land of the death. Odysseus' breeze filled the sail to speed them across the darkening sea to the very spot she had described. There Odysseus poured out milk, honey, sweet wine, water, and barley meal for the dead, and promised them a sacrifice when he should return to Ithaca. With many prayers and invocations, he slaughtered the ram and the you. In dark blood filled the trench, ghosts flocked to the palace of sacrifice, drawn by the vital energy, still pulsing from the heart. Odysseus would not let any of the shades feast on the blood until Dorisius came, leaning on his golden staff. Draw back, and let me drink, said Dorisius. Then I will reveal your future to you. Odysseus put up his sword, and Dorisius bent down to the streaming, steaming blood. Then he spoke, Prince Odysseus, you have come from the sunlight into the land of the shadow in order to learn of your fate. So listen, you seek a safe passage home, but this will not be easy, for you have offended the earth shaker Poseidon. First, your cunning brought down the walls of Troy, which Poseidon himself had set up. Second, you have blinded his son, the Cyclops, Polyphemus. You cannot hope to escape the anger of the gods completely, but if you are careful, you and your companions may yet come safely home. Be warned, if you arouse the wrath of the gods once more, the reward will be death and misery. If you return home at all, it will be late. You must hope it is not too late. For even now, students of many lands are arriving at your palace and wooing your wife Penelope.  How can he protect her? I will heed your words. Whatever may befall, I shall not give up hope. He was still an infant. My son Telemachus fell from a fisherman's boat into the salt sea, yet he was not lost. A dolphin carried him on its back, safe to shore. That is why the seal on my ring shows a leaping dolphin, in the same way, surely the gods that weave my fate will bring me safely home at last. After that Odysseus led each of the shades, one by one, for his sacrifice. And as they did so, they seemed to take on substance and remember themselves again. Odysseus was stricken to see his mother and to clear among them. Mother, he cried, tell me what brought you to this dim land. It was my longing for you, my son, she replied. Odysseus reached across the trench to comfort her. Odysseus questioned all who came, and they told them their stories. Some still hugged their envies and spiked to them, like precious treasures. Some remembered golden days and tender words had thought for the future, except the blind seer, Odysseus. Sleep well. Have an even better tomorrow.


And welcome to Soladieta. Hey everybody and welcome to my desk. It's been beautiful weather here in New York City. We've been enjoying the outdoors and we've also been doing some electronics and we also had some events last week. Mr.Ladieta, what can people check out on the YouTubes? Yeah, on YouTube and pretty much all the places we broadcast to from Meta Facebook to Twitter X. You kind of have to remember all these terms now. LinkedIn, Twitch, all the places. We have our Circuit Python Day video series. We did a bunch of events on Friday at 8.18. And we did a special show and tell. We did a special Ask an Engineer. So it's our yearly celebration of all things. Circuit Python, Python on hardware, MicroPython, all these things together making it easy to do electronics. Some would say too easy, but they say that and then they say that by themselves alone. So yeah, so that was what we were doing this week. A bunch of new products, top secret. You know, a lot of stuff going on this week. The last stuff. Let's kick it off. What's on your desk this week? Okay, so let's talk about my desk. A couple things going on, a lot of displays and kind of like blasting different display stuff going on. Just go over here and I'll show a couple of updates. So I'll try to weave this all together in a way that makes sense. I got the update to my prototype for the resistive touch shield revision. So for those of y'all who watched the show before, this originally used the STMPE 610 and then 811, I squared C to resistive touch controller chip. And then that got discontinued, didn't make it to the part shortage. And I kind of like dilly dally it around and then eventually it's like, okay, I really have to revise this. So it's been revised with a TSC 2007 I squared C driver. And then, you know, I got my prototypes in and I had actually a little bit of problems because it turns out that this has a little bit of a power on reset issue thing where it's like it really needs a good strong power reset. You can't like just kind of reset it quickly. It has to be off for, you know, 200 milliseconds or so. So I've put on a second regulator and connected it up to, I already had a power on reset chip that would reset the TFT display because the TFT display also, you know, does not, it likes to have a solid reset after powering up to reset the registers and take it out of whatever weird mode it might be in. So the addition of that secondary regulator, I think solved the issue. It also moved the IRQ pin to pin two. And but I think this is otherwise pretty good to go. You can set the address if you want. And now it seems to be doing a lot better. You know, I can, before, if you remember, like I had this issue where if I like I powered it on, the I squared C didn't come up. Like it didn't recognize the I squared C sensor this time. I mean, it goes to that long reset because it's a, it's a SAMD, I'm sorry, a at mega 328. And, you know, it takes a while for it to reset when you plug in the USB. But actually maybe I'll plug in to power. It'll start faster. There you go. And still starts up and works just fine. So a nice improvement. I think this design is ready to go. And some people, people would ask me like, what's happened between resistive and capacitive touch? And I actually had both versions here for reasons I'll explain in a minute. This is the resistive touch. And you can tell it's got this silver outline and it's got like a kind of a cloudy coat on it. You can sort of see it's not quite as sharp. The black is a little bit cloudier. Let's do the resistive touch overlay. You can also, you know, see again that silver outline. Here it's a black outline, it's just plain glass. This silver outline is that conductive resistive coating where it bonds to the flex connector. And resistive touch is a lot less expensive. You know, if people go to Palm Pilot, you might remember resistive touch screens. I used to have stylus. You can use a fingernail. If you have fingernail, stylus works very well as well. But you definitely, it doesn't do like the pad of your finger. Like you need to press down because the way resistive touch works is that there's actually, and it feels a little softer because there's two very thin layers of conductive plastic. And when you press down, you're basically touching them together and you turn it into a resistor divider because you have like one sheet and then another sheet. And then you pass current through the two sheets and when you touch, they make contact and then you can tell where it's touching. So you do have to like, you have to kind of point it with your little fingernail or a stylus. You know, you need either a biological stylus or a plastic stylus. And they can only do one touch. And they're inexpensive, but you know, they're not as elegant because again, you can't use the pad of your finger, you have to use a nail. The passive touch is more expensive. This is by the way, resistive touch is essentially free. Like it costs almost nothing. That's like 50 cents, maybe a dollar at max for the overlay. A chip is like 20, 30 cents. The TSC 2007 or the TSC 2046, an SPI version, or you could just use two analog pins and two digital pins and just read it by hand. We have the library to do that's how we used to do it. Although these days I just use a chip because the chips are so inexpensive. It's easier than giving up the pins. The passive touch is different in that you can use the pad of your finger. Oh, the lines is because of a speedup thing on the ESP32S3, it's not part of the display. It's a bug I'm fixing right now. You can't use the nail because the nail is not conductive, CC, it's not touching but it can use the pad of your finger. The pad of your finger works great to touch. And they use an I-squared C chip that's built in. Like here you see it. So there's actually like a dozen by two dozen contacts that you can't see they're in this glass overlay. So we have a very clear crisp view. They're less likely to fail. Resistive touch displays can fail eventually they can get brittle. Capacitive touch don't really seem to fail. They're pretty, I mean, if you crack the glass they will, but otherwise they're pretty reliable. I-squared C and IRQ that come out of here and you read them in this case it's an FT6206 chip. Focal Touch is the name of the company. It's a Taiwanese company I think or Chinese company and they're very popular in the market of making these capacitive touch chips. There's like the 62 series, the 53. They have like different sizes and number of contacts for your different size screens but you're gonna see pretty much the Focal Tech, the FT5 or six series and everything. So that's the difference but capacitive touch is more expensive. A capacitive touch overlay is gonna cost you $5 to $10 depending on how big it is, or at least two. It's basically gonna be about 10 times more expensive than resistive. So that's why you, you know, on one hand it's like everyone's like, wow, capacitive touch it's so nice, but it's like, well, I get a pay for it. This is, you know, another $10, $15 because of that capacitive touch overlay. It looks great though.  The overhead is, you know, a little blown out but capacitive touch is quite nice. So the reason I'm bringing this up is because, you know I found, we mentioned, I think two or three weeks ago we were clearing out Adafruit because we're gonna do this big move in a year. And so we're sort of starting to like look at things like do we wanna move this, do we wanna throw it out? What is this thing that's been in storage? And we found four or five bins of 3.5 inch capacitive touch displays. And they are using the HX57, sorry, 8357D and I've got a resistive touch version of this display in the shop. And I actually ordered the capacitive touch right afterwards but I had some issues with it. I think actually what happened is I had this was delaminating off of a few displays but I grabbed some from a different batch and they actually seemed okay. I think I went back and forth with the company and then like, I don't know, I never really got resolved. They're like, there's no issue. And I was like, there's an issue and it was like failing but anyways, it seems like I put, you know this quick board together and maybe my code's better or maybe they just, the glue needed to set. I don't know. Anyways, I've been sitting there for like almost a decade but now they're fine and they're still quite nice displays. And so I did a little bit of update also. I added a iSpy connector. You can see I got two pins swapped by accident, the DC and clock pin. That's because on these displays with 8080, the SPI pins are shared with the 8-bit pins and sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other way. So what's nice about this is I can test this display without doing a lot of wiring. I was testing the SD card and then I'll test the 8-bit display part later but that I'm not too concerned about it. It was, you know, that's, I didn't change anything on the design from the resistive touch version. So in the capacitive touch version, you see, you know, you've got the card, chip select and detect and then this is the mode set and then clock data IRQ and this is the I squared C for the touchscreen controller. And what's interesting is this is an FT5336 which is again a focal touch display and this one has multi-touch. So you can do like one and then you can do two and you can do three touches, although it's better if I don't have my hand kind of dangling. So there you go. So you can do three touches. I think actually, I think I might technically support five but it's a little bit like you have to, you can't have them overlap. So there you go. You can see as I drew the touch chip knew that each finger touch was separate. And so you can do gestures like, you know, pinch and zoom and drag and two finger swipe. However, the gestures need to be done by the operating system. They're not, the data sheet for the chip, the FT25336 says it has gesture support. But when I try to read gestures over I squared C there's nothing there. Another thing about these chips, these focal tech chips is that they're actually microcontrollers. They're 8051 cores on the inside that implement an I squared C peripheral and then do this like capacitive touch scanning and averaging. And so the microcontroller is programmed and it has to be programmed at the factory to match the resolution of the display. So where's resistive touch, you get like zero to 4,000 and then you have to convert that into what your resolution is. So if you go to the overhead I can show this, aside of that computer, I'll show this. What I mean by this. So the resistive touch for the TSC2007, right? That's the resistive touch screen controller. The raw value I get from the ADC is zero to 4,095. And you see there's a little bit of calibration here where it's like, look, you know the resistive display goes beyond the outline of the TFT. So you have to add in these numbers and these numbers are rough enough and they'll work pretty much every time. There's a little bit of variation.  Again, you don't have to tap touch, calibrate capacitive touch. That's one nice thing about them because they're pre-programmed for the glass shape. But on the resistive touch, you have to scale to the TFT width and the height depending on the zero to 4,000 gets converted to zero to 240, zero to 320. Whereas with the capacitive touch, the data that comes out, let's see, the data that comes out is like the raw, like you can see here, I've got like one touch or if I've got like two touches. The value comes out and it's pre-calibrated for the display. It's on the TFT factory does that for you. So if you get a display that's in this case, 320 by 480, this data will go from, sorry, zero to, where's zero? Yeah, it's like zero or like, you know, very close to zero. And then if I drag diagonally, you see it makes it to about 320 by 480 on the other corner. So, you know, they're kind of like totally different even though like people think of them as the same, like interface the same, calibration the same. The way, you know, you detect touches is different. Everything is, nothing is the same, that's okay. But this seems to be good to go. So I'm gonna fix that one mistake, close my email. I fixed that one mistake. I'm also going to make it so that by default it's an SPI mode so that you can plug it into that iSpy connector and immediately like get going and have, you know, it work with your QDPI board or your Arduino or father or whatever. So, oh, see like it just did that thing. See, maybe, I think it just gets loose. Hold on, interesting. I think this was the failure I was seeing before on this. I wonder if it's these components on the back getting shorter. Okay, so that's my capacitive touch screen adventure. All right, now it's back to normal, whatever. Okay, so next up, let's go to the overhead and I'll show off these weird displays. Okay, so I had that 3.5 inch TFT display, super funky, but it is iSquared C or for the capacitive touch or SPI for the display. And then I got these funky displays because, you know, we've been doing the ICN 6211 experimentation where this is going to go to a Raspberry Pi over the DSI display. And then there's a little mic controller to program the SPI configuration. And then this goes to like funky weird shaped displays that you want to connect to your Raspberry Pi. And I, you know, I'm working with Timon who I've hired to like help do this because I'm not just not gonna have time to go through every display. And, you know, we got it kind of working with your standard 800 or 480, but then I want to get it working with this, you know, capacitive touch, square display. And you can see that focal touch driver here. And this is actually, this is like the hardest in the world to read. I can't see it, but I think it's a focal tech FT55536.  This is like a four inch square display with the capacitive touch overlay.   And so it comes with either nothing or capacitive. So, you know, I've got one that doesn't have an overlay because that's, you know, possible. Some people don't need an overlay. And then I've also got round displays. So this is like a huge round display. I mean, I just think this is hilarious. Like, I don't even know what this would be for, but this is like a beautiful, like a gigantic watch. I don't know. Like clock, like it's a home automation, maybe? I don't know. So this is a, I think this does not have a capacitive touch overlay. I thought it did, but it's not, there's nothing connected here. So this is like a 720 by 720 round. And then I've got this like tiny 480 by 480 round with a nice bezel on it. And this does have capacitive touch. You see it here. And then this is kind of fun. This is like a half round display. Well, it's like, I say it's half round, but it's not three quarters.  So it has like a line that goes back and forth. They can display whatever you like. Or Mickey Mouse ears, I don't know, could be. And then I got some bar displays. So these are long, long displays. And I've seen these used for, you know, consoles or like, you know, they fit onto products that normally wouldn't have, they do normally have like a 16 by two LCD, right? Or a 20 by four. Instead, now you can have a really high resolution TFT. And despite these not being very large, they all have the same 40 pin connector, which is an RGB TTL display. This one has, this is the only one I got that has capacitive touch on it. You can see the cap touch and the bezel. This one is nice and big. Phil and I were chatting about how this is the same size almost as your standard floppy drive. So you could have like a five and a quarter inch May display. But these displays, they don't have a SPI controller inside for drawing. You have to draw them over the RGB interface. And so there's only really two chips or methods. You can, well, there's like three ways you can do it. Now you can use four. Sorry, I keep coming in with new ways. You can use this ICN 6211, which will take DSI and convert it to TFT. And you have to like program this chip and configure it all that. And it only works on Raspberry Pi computers. You can use DPI and a Raspberry Pi where you bit bang all the GPIO to get it to display to a TFT, which uses all the pins, but it does work. And I showed the wiring, which I'm getting close to being able to take this apart. The wiring here for this is what it looks like when you want to bit bang. There's like, you know, 20, 30 wires. Or you can use a HDMI to TTL converter. And those look a little bit like this. They usually have a Toshiba chip on there that does the DVI or HDMI conversion. And then, you know, on this side you have, this is actually for a camera, but you'd have a 40-pin connector. And then the last way is if you have a very good microcontroller that was a lot of memory, you need a lot of memory, you need like at least a megabyte of RAM in order to buffer the display image because you have to redraw it constantly. You can drive these directly. And I think the IMX RT 10, 6, 10, 5 series do have a TTL driver. You need a lot of pins, but they can do it and they have the memory and you can also wire up external RAM to do it, which is the thing, it's you can do that external RAM. We're gonna get to the, you know, we're adding support to Circuit Python, but there's a really Arduino support for them other than through TNC. And I don't think, I don't know that TNC added RGB display support. But the other option is to use an ESP32 S3. So this is a dev board. I just got this yesterday. And this has an ESP32 S3, I think with eight megabytes of PS RAM. Let's see, yeah, 16 megs of flash, eight megabytes of PS RAM. And this is the GPIO expander that lets you connect different displays. In this case, it's got that 40 pin connector, the same connector here, 40 pin, 40 pin. And you can see this is a square display with capacitive touch. And this will use just about all of the pins on the ESP32 S3. It uses like 20 pins, it's quite a bit. You do have like four pins left over, but you have to start playing expander games. But this does work. And I was thinking this would be a good way for me to kind of, you know, verify the functionality. So you can see it's running this expressive demo. And then it's got, you know, this touch screen demo. Hold on, let me see if I can get it to be less blown out, tough.  I think it's using LVGL, but it's got the capacitive overlay and it's got like the full high resolution imagery going on there. And I'm having Jumplur maybe added to CircuitPython. So, you know, there's a couple of different ways to get all these displays going, depending on what you want to use it with. If you want it with a simple Wi-Fi mic controller, you don't need a lot of extra GPIO, ESP32-S3. You want to use it with your computer or a single board computer that's not a Raspberry Pi. You could use one of these Tachiba chips or Lontium chips also. Do you want to use it with a Raspberry Pi and not use a lot of pins? And it has to be non-zero DSI adapter. Don't mind using all your pins on your Raspberry Pi. Use the DPI interface. So, a lot of different ways to do it. So, what we're gonna get, we need all of them. And to inspire me, I have all these displays on my desk. So, I could be like, yeah, I want to get this going. I want to get gigantic eyeballs. So, that's what I've been doing. Oh my God, so much stuff. But that was, that's my update. All right, Mr. Lady, you want to go to the Great Search? Go to the Great Search. Let's do the Great Search. Where? The Great Search brought to you by Digikeena, you've heard every single week that you do as a part of engineering. I hope you guess you. Find things on digikeena.com. Lady, what is the Great Search of the week this week? Okay, well, we had actually, this has come up before. People have asked me, where do I find these chip clips? Not the things that go on your Doritos, but things that clip on to DIP or SOIC chips for analysis or simulation or programming. So, let's go to my computer and I'll show what I'm talking about. These are quite handy. So, this was a post. I guess I don't call tweets anymore. And they're like, oh yeah, I found this on Digikeena. Somebody was like, hey, what's the part? They asked me, what's the part number for this? Cause it looks really handy. This is somebody who does retro repairs for arcade stuff. So, you might have times where you want to clip on to one of these chips and you want to probe all the pins. Like maybe you want to do logic analysis on it. Another thing that's very common is that there might be an eight pin SOIC flash chip on a router and you want to dump it or you want to program it. Sometimes, you know, the programming interface is done through the chip. You don't really have access to it or you want to go around. And you just want to go right onto it. Now, of course, you can always solder on, but what's nice about these clips is that like, or you know, you can use sometimes a little, like micrograbbers, micrograbbers, like sometimes they fly off and this is really nice and satisfying. You just clip on, you get access to all the pins. So, Digikey does stock these in a variety of setups. You can see this one is from 3M. So, let's check out what they've got. I'll show you two versions, both the DIP version and the SOIC version, as well as a mistake that I made that you will not make after you see me find the right SOIC chip clip. So, these are called chip clips. I'm pretty sure our chip, let's see, IC clip. Yeah, they're called IC clips. So, let's go to the category. This is the category and just stacking. So, a lot of options available here. You know, Adafruit and Sparkphone, we resell some models, but we're gonna probably go with the 3M one because I think neither of us sell the DIP version. So, let's first off go for active because we wanna pick it up today because we wanna do some debugging. Okay, so, next up, let's find the DIP version. So, this is a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, two by 10 clip. So, let's search for that. And the next thing you wanna watch out for is, well, actually, let's go back. And if you look for 40 pin, this is, or the 28 pin, there's gonna be two sizes. Wait, sorry, I lied. Scratch what I just said. I meant two by 14. Yeah, yeah. Because two by 14, so, small, like eight pin dips are always gonna be 0.3 inch and 40 pin dips are like always gonna be 0.6 inch. But then there's that like in between the 20 and 28 and sometimes they're skinny and sometimes they're wide. And the clips will not work if you have the wrong one. Like this is clearly like fatter. This is the wide 0.6 inch. And this is, you can see how the teeth are closer together, wide, close. 0.3 inch, 0.6 inch. You're not gonna be able to swap the two. You have to pick the size that matches your dip. These are 0.3 inch here.  So you'll need a different clip depending on which one you're going for. So in this case, we want 0.3 inch spacing. And there's a couple of versions. You know, they're not inexpensive. I'll say the thing you're gonna pay for is whether it's gold plated or not. If you don't really care about gold plating, this one will do the job quite nicely. You can connect your logic analyzer directly to these clips. Not cheap, but they do do the job very well. So I would, you know, if you're dealing a lot with reprogramming or debugging these chips in situ, I strongly do recommend them. Okay, so that's the dip chip. And then a more common one that people ask me about is they want SOIC. So let's clear the number of positions out. So they want SOIC two by four, eight pin to clip onto, it's like your W25Q.  You wanna either program it or you want to dump the data off or you wanna analyze it because you're having timing issues. So you want a two by four, these are eight pin, EEPROMs and SPI are almost all eight pin. And then we want SOIC version. So here's the next thing. There are these test clips and they look very similar, but one thing I have absolutely learned is that the body of the SOIC chip is not always gonna be this. They look similar, but they're different widths. This kind of squarish one is called a 0.208, I think, a 0.2 inch body, SOIC, whereas, I think, yes. This one, chunky, 0.2 inch. This version, not chunky, 0.15 inch. And also this one, see how it's like less, it doesn't go all the way to the end of the pads. This is 0.5 inch, chunky, 0.2 inch. The most popular clip, this Pomona, sorry, this 3M one is not gonna work on your 0.2 inch. It's only gonna work on the narrower version of the chip and no matter how much you squeeze it, it will never clip onto the 0.2 inch. So don't get this one if you wanna clip onto wide SOIC chips. The one you want is this one because whatever, it's just got a little bit more opening and it can clip onto up to 0.35 inch wide SOIC clips. So this is the one you want for your debugging. So check it out. They also have a couple other versions, but just one is kind of what you want. So this is my pick for the great search, this and that dip clip. And that's a great search. All right, thanks so much everybody for joining us this week. We will see everybody all throughout the week. This week, lots of engineering, unending. It's an unending and my desk is just covered with electronics. Unending, I was saying we're the only entity that I know of that posts a PCB, a design, every single day. Every day. And let me tell you, sometimes it's not fun. Why not? Because people are mean. Oh.  They shouldn't do that, they wanna stop the electronics. They wanna stop you, but they don't realize it just makes you stronger. That's right. They wanna do more. Anyways, we're gonna do that right now. We're gonna post more online.  More office or hardware is gonna be posted online. Yeah, I'm gonna send off this field and this breakout and they'll be in the store in a couple of weeks. I'm psyched. It's so embarrassing to find a pile of like 500 TFT displays. Be more embarrassing to find them like 10 years from now. I know that would be even worse. I think people still want them. I think they can still sell them. It'll be nice. And we won't have to move them to the new factory location. Okay, goodnight everybody. Bye everybody, have a great week.


Welcome to Hawaii's Volunteer Champions here on ThinkTechHawaii.com. I am your host, Peter Rossick, and this is a program where we talk to the volunteers, some of the leading volunteers here in Hawaii that make organizations happen. We want to find out why people give up their most valuable resources, which is their time and their effort to promote some cause or other. And today it's kind of a crossover show for me because we're talking about the Hawaii Bicycle League, which I also talk about in the other program, the Two-Wheel Revolution. Our guests today are Patricia Johnson, who is the vice president or the board of the Hawaii Bicycle League. And with her we have Lauren Lee, whose official title is Director of Community Engagement for HBL, but we could call her the Volunteer Wrangler. So this is, I appreciate your being here. Start with you, Patricia. Why in the world are you volunteering for this organization? Well, it started all happening in 2002 when I happened with a bunch of girlfriends. We decided we were going to go on a bicycle trip to France, and I hadn't been on a bicycle since I was like six. And so I got a bike and started riding in the town where I was in San Jose.  It was like a remembrance of childhood. And it was actually stunning how much fun it was. So did this trip, came back, and then started looking for local organizations in San Jose, in the town, and found out there are some great volunteer groups, and so I started riding with them. And I think the one reason I volunteer is because I just got hooked.  And you meet such great people. And so then my mom was aging here at home, and so she called and let me, I told her before mom, you ever need me to come, I'll come. She called and said, I need you to come home. And so in December 2006, I closed everything down in San Jose and came home. And prior to that, I had checked into the Hawaii Bicycling League and had ridden the Sentry Rides. I'd come two years prior and ridden the Sentry Ride. And so then I thought, well, I'd check in at the office, and I had been with this volunteer organization in San Jose, and they were so organized, they had so many rides, and a lot of instruction. And when I came home, well, needless to say, the HBL at that time was pretty lacking. So I said, we need to get some rides here. We need to get something. Well, we didn't have any insurance. We didn't have a website. So one thing just kind of snowballed, and I was in deep, and I was really loving it. So with a friend of mine named Dale Hoffman, who has since passed on, but Dale was a very well known cyclist here in Honolulu, and a really good friend and mentor for me. And also then I met Patty Dunn, and we started a riding group called the Red Hot Ladies for Women that were over 50, wanted to just ride, just have fun. Not compete. And it just, it's kind of just grown from there. So why, mainly because it's really fun and remembrance of the freer childhood years. You meet great people, and now I've become much more socially connected and embedded in terms of cycling as an alternative, a multimodal transportation, getting people out of cars to handle some of the climate change issues that we have. So it's become much more political. But fundamentally, why? Because I really love riding a bike. Are the Red Hot Ladies still riding? Yes, we started with Patty Dunn and myself in July of 2007. So we're on 16 years right now. And our first ride, we had two women join us, or four. And we now have over 296 on our list. And I think, and every Sunday we have four rides, four different levels of rides for people to choose from. And I think we put on the road maybe anywhere from 30 to 50 people riding on Sunday morning. That's amazing. Have some men snuck into the Red Hot Ladies. So it's about half, half, and it's all ages. It's about half men, half women and all ages. Yeah. All right. We don't allow any discrimination here on this program. So here's the thing.  So why would you want to spend time working for the organization, going to those endless meetings, getting them to do the things you've described like get a website and organize all this stuff? I mean, is that the fun part? Actually, so then we so we organized and first then I wanted to get rides organized. So we started, I think I wanted to get one ride every single day of the week. Well, we did some of those and, you know, we kind of threw everything against the wall and we have, we've left now with a Monday morning ride and a Thursday morning ride and those rides have huge ridership now. So the Monday morning ride is called start the week off right ride. And it's intended to have something for beginners all the way to more advanced. And then the Thursday ride is for intermediate to advanced riders and people go right all the way to Kailua and back from Kailukahala. So we started those rides and I have seen so I've seen some people who started with us way back when I've seen them with their families. I mean, it's it's become like a family of friends. And we just we watch out for each other. Sometimes you only know the person's first name and you don't. And then if they're not wearing their helmet and you run into them somewhere, you don't recognize them. And we have to say, oh, yes, I do know. But I don't recognize them if they're wearing spandex, right? OK, Lauren, let me let me turn to you and ask you your primary role is to community engagement. And and that really, I think, means mostly volume working with volunteers. And how important are volunteers to the Hawaii Bicycle League? So my name is Lauren and I am the director of community engagement for the Hawaii Bicycle League.  There's about four. There's about four to five office staff. And then we also have our bike ed staff to go to all the schools to teach Kiki how to ride bikes in fourth grade. So when we're hosting these events for a small but mighty team, so we don't. There's only a couple of us. So we host these big events with over 1300 participants. For example, this past September, we had our 40th annual Honolulu Century Ride, which requires about 250 plus volunteers. So it is extremely important to have volunteers because they help back up our events. They help make they quite literally help make these events happen. Without them, we would not have events. So it's really important that, you know, as an organization and for other organizations as well, who recognize or feel the same way that we cherish our volunteers and make sure that we don't hit them for granted and truly appreciate them for what they do because we wouldn't be here today without them. Was it hard to get 250 volunteers and get them in the right place for this big Century Ride, the 40th anniversary or 40th Century Ride that HBL has put on? How difficult is it to get 250 people to to work on something like that? For the most part, it isn't too bad. It depends on what position I'm recruiting for. I think is the better way to put it. We have we have a lot of returning volunteers who always volunteer with every single one of our events. They're as soon as I put our volunteer sign up sheet out, they're ready to volunteer. I get so many of them immediately volunteering. I also have organizations who reach out to us as well, who are interested in volunteering as a group. There are some cases where I do have to reach out to other organizations to see if maybe their group would want to, you know, help us out with an event. And then, you know, reaching out to individuals who I feel like would be good for a certain lead volunteer position. So it really depends on what position I'm recruiting for. If it's more like early morning at 3 a.m. for events, it's a little bit more difficult to recruit for volunteers. But for the most part, we have such a great. Community that it's I wouldn't say that, you know, it's too different. OK, great. Give me an example of an organization that would reach out to you and say, can we volunteer? Can we help? Don't see me. I'd like to think of. Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts, yeah, Boy Scouts, key projects over in, I believe, Kaneohe. See where else do I have? I have this. There is this one. There's these two other groups as well during the Honolulu Sentry Ride. Actually, we scratch that. I think we have like four groups who have continuously volunteered for big events such as the Honolulu Sentry Ride. I have the Hawaii Kai JC's and the Honolulu Chinese JC's who come out and adopt aid stations, which are basically pit stops for cyclists to grab snacks, refuel, use the restrooms, get some first aid or get some mechanical support. So I'm using the Honolulu Sentry Ride as an example for our volunteers, just because it is our biggest event and does require the most volunteers. So along this 100 mile route, we have about seven aid stations along the routes to help support cyclists during the ride. And each of these aid stations are adopted by different organizations. They quite literally adopt the aid station. HBL provides all of the equipment, but these organizations provide the volunteers. We have a lot of returning organizations that have helped adopt an aid station for over 10 years. Some of them, including like I've stated before, the Honolulu Chinese JC's, Hawaii Kai JC's, Hawaii Swimming Team. We also have Keap Project and then HHS planners, so as well as the Boy Scouts too. But a lot of them have just started volunteering with us this year, but many of some of them have been volunteering with us for over 10 years. So. Terrific. So Patricia, we were talking a little before, but you mentioned for many people, HBL is events like the Sentry Ride, like the Haleva Metric Sentry and some other things like that. And for other people, you know, they may have heard of the education programs. First of all, in the schools, but also I just did a just learned to ride a trike in the senior trike class. What other things are the HBL doing? How has that changed from when you first signed on? I think the main thing is our education and advocacy. So given that we're here in Honolulu and representing a statewide organization. So we need we have Travis, our executive director and some of our key volunteers, board members, John Rogers, for example, people who know the ins and outs or have made sure that they know the ins and outs of how to work with the Department, State Department of Transportation, the city Department of Transportation services and then the legislature. So we need to we're advocating then for things for the needs of cycling, but much larger than that. Actually, we're on board with collaborating with other organizations, Sierra Club, Ulupono Initiative in terms of. Bills and things that will make our planet a more livable place and also will be an enticement for people to be out, be active and to get out of their cars, for example, feel safer doing it. One of the things we have people move to Hawaii and they think and they've come from a place that's been very cyclical and friendly and they come here and they're very disappointed, especially in Honolulu. They said, I'd love to ride my bike, but I just don't feel safe on the roads. So under Mayor Caldwell, there was some major advances made in terms of and I know I'm not popular with some people, but for us and for the community, the King Street protected bike lane. And now we have we have South Street and we have a Pensacola connector and there's more being planned. So I think mostly the events and I'll really help promote the commitment that we have to furthering the needs of people who ride bikes, but also the needs of all of our citizens to live in a healthier, safer place. That's great. You mentioned it's that HBL Hawaii Bicycle and League is in fact a statewide organization. And I know there are some representatives on the other islands. And right now, of course, Maui is on our minds. And I know that HBL, since the disaster, has launched a program to get bicycles for Maui. Lauren, can you tell us just a little bit about it and how it can find out more? So HBL is currently working with community partners, including bike shops on Oahu and Maui to get bicycles to those impacted by the wildfires on Maui. We are currently accepting donations to help cover the costs associated with shipping, purchasing and distributing bicycles, as well as taking donations of ready to roll bicycles and distributing those. OK, well, is it successful or are we getting bikes over to Maui? Yeah, we've had a good batch donated to the bike shop, which is which is a location that is currently taking bike donations. But I think we have a pretty good amount. We are they're already stacking up in our storage right now. OK, so if I have a bicycle that I want to donate, I think I know how to donate money. I'll go to the HBL website. That's the easy part. If I have a bicycle, I want to donate to make sure that it gets to Maui. What do I do? Yeah, so you're going to go to HBL.org slash bikes for Maui. It'll give you kind of the summarization of what this program is going to be for, as well as all of the bike shops that are currently accepting donations of ready to roll bicycles.  OK, they should be in good shape, in other words, ready to roll. Not something that's going to have to go get repaired or whatever. Right. Yeah. All right. I have Peter. I have at my house, I have people bringing bicycles to my house. And then we're going to take them over to Hawaii Bicycling League. But so people are really looking to see like, do I need to have these extra bikes around? No, let's get them over to Maui. Yeah, just about every year, I live in the condominium and there are bicycles in our garage that have not been unlocked in the 20 years I've lived here. So I know we know there are a lot of bicycles out there that could be put to better use. And I really encourage people if they have a bicycle that's in serviceable condition or take it to one of the bike shops and have them with it into usable condition for a few bucks and then get it to, well, we're not going to say go to Patricia Johnson's house, but we'll say take it to the HPL office in Kaimuki or I imagine some of the bike shops are accepting donations and moving them along. So this is so important to help people on Maui right now. And a bicycle could mean the difference between somebody getting to work, getting to school and not. So among the many things that you could do for Maui, that's one that's probably among the simpler ones. And of course, donating money would always help. So Patricia, you've been involved for a long time. You've talked about some of the changes you've seen, a lot more bike infrastructure, a lot more cyclists, a lot more different kinds. And now we have electric bikes. We have regular traditional bikes. We have scooters. We have electric skateboards that are all regular old fashioned skateboards. How has bicycling changed at all these different kinds of devices coming into the picture? Has that changed bicycling or changed the work of the HPL, I guess? Yes. And it's going to be up next, I think, with legislature. And because right now, with all the new devices you just mentioned, there really isn't, hasn't been any legislation on that. So that's going to be up next. Also, we have Beaky. We have the bike share program that Laurie Shepard did. And it's been very successful here in Hawaii. A lot by our tourists, but now in Kaimuki, they have it. And up in Manoa, we have some bikes. So it's becoming much more familiar for people. But I think, Peter, for us, it's just an educational outreach that we just have to get for people to understand that it's easy to ride a bike. It's safer to ride a bike. And we really need to get the message out. So this program is really helping. And also, HPL, we have a volunteer. This is under Malia with educational classes. We have free classes for people to learn how to ride a bike, how to ride a bike safely, how to traverse and traffic safely. And those classes are free. They don't have to be a member of HPL. And that program is taught by all volunteers, who people who have become what we call League Cycling Instructors. And Malia is one of our national trainers in that program. So there's been a lot of commitment about our staff to educate themselves and to be politically active. And we just, yeah. So once we need the word out, and then people can get back and find the true joy of getting back on their bikes. Too bad we can't figure out a way to have classes for people who drive vehicles and give them, how do we get, how do we do that? How do we get people who are driving, not bad people, but who just are not in their heads aren't in the right place. How do we reach that audience, do you think? I think the main thing is we need to build it and they'll come. I mean, just like the movie, we need to connect. We have a lot of bicycle infrastructure, but a lot of it's not connected. So for example, right now, from riding from Nanakuli all the way into UH, that is the South Shore bike lane we're calling it, believe like that. That thing gets connected, that could be a game changer. And we need funding to keep those paths clean and safe. And so for me, it's like build it and they'll come and then also messaging. And this is, Lauren is great at social media getting the word out. Okay. So Lauren, I'm not gonna get up at 3.30 in the morning to man of age station for the century ride, full confession there. And I'm a very amateur cyclist. I like to get around. What else could I do? If I wanted to volunteer, I came to you right now I said, Lauren, I really want to volunteer to support this effort. What else, what can I do? We're always welcoming volunteers. Sometimes I have volunteers such as Patricia who comes in every Friday to call all of her new and renewing members. She's been doing this for I think quite a while now and she comes in every Friday just to make these phone calls which is amazing because we want to be able to welcome our new and renewing members. We also have membership packets. We make those in-house in the office. So if you're willing to sacrifice maybe a few paper cuts into making these membership packets we welcome that as well. But also tabling events, you know, quite advice when we've also attends a lot of community tabling events where we're out there possibly hosting a bike rodeo just doing a tabling to see get more people on bicycles and educating people about, you know, the cycling community. If you're interested in any of those like reach out to me, Lauren at hbl.org and we can always, you know, custom fit some type of volunteer position. Yeah, that's great. You, from the days that Patricia described when there was no website, I think you've come a long way. hbl.org is a very active and very lively website. And I encourage anybody that's even vaguely interested in the subject to go take a look because if you ever heard the expression something there for everybody, I would say that pretty much anybody could find something interesting on that website including a lot of pictures of people in spandex. So that's terrific. Patricia, let me ask you again something a little different. If you've talked about the changes you've seen and some of many of them you've actually caused to happen or helped cause to happen. Right now, is there something missing? Is there something in the volunteer work of hbl that you threw every so often think, gee, I wish we had a or we should be doing this? Is there something in that category? Well, I think for this, one of the things like Lauren's staff there, Lauren said that the staff is a mighty, mighty crew, but they're small. And so we always, first of all, funding for an advocacy position. We need another staff member that will they'll be full time leading the advocacy charge. And then Lauren has been one of the things she's been charged with is finding a new membership. We've ever since I've been here since the very beginning, we have just never had a very good membership. What do we call it, Lauren? Membership coordinator. Yeah. And so she's been raised. What do we call it? Tell me that again. Membership coordinator. Membership coordinator. So with the Hawaii Bicycle League, another way that you can help us out is by becoming a member of the Hawaii Bicycle League, you get discounts from our events, you get discounts from some of the local bike shops, but we do have a couple of different plans. So you can always sign up at hbl.org, but yeah, we're definitely looking for someone to kind of take the lead with both our advocacy side of things and Hawaii Bicycles membership. So with more people riding, as I think we've all seen, with more bike lanes, with more different kinds of ways to get around on two or three or four wheels, there ought to be a flood of people coming into HBL and saying, you know, very least take a little, take a few bucks or very most I want to volunteer, help make this happen. It seems like the time is ripe for that, for HBL to move up to the next stage and how do volunteers fit into that? I think volunteers also have the passion for the organization that they're helping, which I think is a key factor in helping grow the organization such as the Hawaii Bicycle. We have volunteers, like I'm mentioning Patricia again, volunteers like Patricia, who have been volunteers for many years and have helped drive a lot of the new adaptations to the Hawaii Bicycle and helping to improve it as a whole organization itself. So I'm not saying you have to have the passion for the organization you are helping out with, but it's always nice to have because it helps the organization grow. It's on its own too. I have a feeling if you had about 20 more Patricia's, we'd be in much better shape. Well, I think- Patricia, what can you do about that? How can we get to 19 more? Well, I think one piece is a lot of people have different passions for different projects and the staff can't, you know, people will send, I think you should do this. Well, the staff should say, that's a great idea. We'd love to have it. Will you take it on? And for people to be willing to, for example, we would love to have a bicycle hub, you know, a place where people can come and learn how to build bikes and then we give way bikes into the community and perhaps it even turns into a business where we could strip down old bikes and, you know, that's a Salt Lake City, for example, has a fabulous model. Well, we don't have the wherewithal to do that, but there was groups of people who have passions for different things, take those things on, then like Lauren said, then, you know, the passion just shows up and it's varied and wide and it can fit all kinds of needs. That sounds great. I know Kalihi Valley, of course, has a very active bike restoration and distribution program. And if you're not aware of the Kapuna Shed, the, what used to be called the Men's Shed, before it sounds saw the light, there's Frank Smith who is on the board, of course, I think he's still on the board of the HBL and he's still in one of the better bike shops that's got a bike restoration section in there. So it's kind of happening, but we just need to see, I'm assuming we need to see more of that. There's still kids out there, I suspect who don't have a bike or don't have a good enough bike or grew the one they got from Christmas five years ago. So, and more bikes, more bicyclists, more attention from drivers. I think it's kind of, you know, I'm obviously an enthusiast, so I'm not going to pretend to be an impartial observer. So this has been great. I want to thank you both for coming to the end of our time. If there's anything last words you want to give, Lauren, or anything, you know, how do you already told us how to volunteer, how to give money, anything else you want to leave people with, 60 seconds. If you're interested in participating, whether as a volunteer or writing your events, please visit our official website, hbl.org, which is our organization's acronyms for Hawaii Bicycle Week. So, hbl.org. I also just want to take the time to thank all of the organizations, the individuals, and also the local bike shops who have volunteered their times to help the Hawaii Bicycle Week grow to what it is now. And we hope to continue to, you know, power through with your support as well. So just know that we are extremely grateful for you guys and Mahalo Nui Lua. All right, that was 62 seconds. But that's okay. Patricia, you have 60 seconds. Any last words? I just want to, well, first of all, just thank our staff and our new executive director, Travis Council. So after coming out of COVID, we're now really reinventing and we're in a strategic project right now, reinventing who we are and what we're up to. And there's been a lot of people who are engaged in that. And the intention is to really grow this big time and become a part of the whole overall conversation about having Hawaii be a green, safe, climate sensitive, sustainable culture. And we're considering, we want to be a part of that, a big part of it. And we think we have a lot to offer there. So this is a moment that people, this is a good moment to join up, to get involved because you're about to have this growth spirit, I suspect. All right, well, thank you both very much. It's been a real pleasure. My enthusiasm for HBL and for your work and for people like you, Patricia, is boundless. I really think it's people that will make the difference. And with that, we've come to the end of another half hour of Hawaii's volunteer champions. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a different volunteer and a different organization. And I hope you will join us. Also check the two-wheel revolution where we talk about the subject a lot more. Thank you both to Lauren and to Patricia and to everybody who's watching both of you. Aloha and have a great day.


Hi everyone, I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com doing a quick little R&B random number block randomizer for these three teams right here For pick your team a six. That's how the number blocks work And big thanks to this group here for getting in on the action. They're the numbers here Let's roll it and randomize names and numbers six into two eight times one two three four five six seven And eighth and final time after eight. We got mark down to PJ six into two eight times for the numbers one two three four five seven And eighth and final time All right six into two is eight. There's eight nine down to five Now remember zero gets any and all redemptions including one of one redemptions. I'm sure we all know The big name in this group that could be a redemption Let's actually mark those teams in that tab on the bottom right there Charlotte, Minnesota and New York mark with nine PJ with seven Sean with zero PJ with six Shamima with three PJ with two Sean with four Joshua with one mark with eight and PJ with five Sort by column B By a number and coming up in a different video will be the break itself. We'll see you for that. Jaspy's case breaks.com