I am alive. Hello everybody. Welcome to America Day. That is the day that the baby Jesus invented freedom. And that's when America was born. Happy birthday, baby America. Hello Everett. Hello Sergeant Slaughterhouse. You know what? I can actually see. Hello Sergeant Slaughterhouse. He says, good day from Australia. Good day from the United States of America of US of A. Hello.  Lots of covert convergence guys in here. Hello rat face. Hello Woodman. There's Guy Frianzi. Nice to see you, Guy. Hello figure six pack and Jeff and Matt. Oh look who it is. It's Mary Ann. Now look here. Mary Ann is, well she's here. She's sitting right over there. And you know what she said to me? You won't believe this. You won't believe this. She said, if I had brought my earrings with me, I would have appeared on screen. I would have joined you on screen. That's what she said. Those are her words. And you know what? I don't blame her because she looks like a totally different person without earrings. Like the earrings are what hold like the sides of her face down when she has her earrings off her ears are like up here. So yes, frankly, wear your earrings next time. Hello. I saw, I saw, I saw, I saw another Cobra Island Cobra Island was today on covert convergence. Hello Christian bricks. Mary Independence Day from Denmark. Happy America Day from the US of A. Hello everybody, I do not have a solid plan for this. I did not. Hey, by the time out by the way, by the way, I can kind of see, even though I'm wearing these ridiculous spangly glasses because, because I have my regular glasses underneath them so I can still kind of see. Remember I tried this last year and I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to hype up the America and I can't see anything like I can not. I can't read any of that right now. But, but see, I, I, I cracked the code here. Life hack. Oh, hey. Yes, hello Joe motion videos into hello Byron I did see your text earlier I'm sorry I didn't have time to reply but but happy to you.  Hey guys yeah. The fedora is a great touch hoodie. So, like, I guess the fedora does touch hoodie. Is it a great touch. I think it's, I think it's, well it's touching me anyway. So, hello Jeff about learn nice to see you again. I haven't had a chance to check the PO box I know I got an email from one person saying that something would be in the PO box but I haven't even had a chance to get anywhere close to checking it. So, so I don't have anything to open for you I could just pick a random thing to open for you it's too bad that. Yeah I mean it's. It's too bad I don't have anything here that I haven't opened already that that I could open for you I'm sorry I don't have anything anything to open anything to open. See, Sergeant slaughter slaughterhouse says Brian could have at least dressed up for the occasion. Yes, I know I'm rather understated. I am in Oklahoma which means that by law I'm required to lose a finger today. So, so now I have to flip people off like this. That's tragic. Mary. Let's see a sergeant slaughter Sara house says Mary and this is a family show. I don't know whose family show it is but it's somebody's family show. She's talking about gung ho. Look at look here guys. We are in the middle of Cobra convergence. I seriously thought about doing the 12 hour live stream which I've done the last couple of years. But Mary Ann is over here. The kids are over here. We are doing fourth of July stuff. So, especially since the kids are doing stuff today. I just, I just couldn't do the 12 hour live stream it just didn't have 12 hours in the day to actually do it. That's, that's right. See, Matt watched the interview. So, so instead, I'm doing the regular one hour live stream. I didn't want to miss you guys. All right, holiday or not, I still wanted to join everyone. I still wanted to see everyone. I missed you guys. Whenever I skip a live stream for the week, I always regret it. I always regret it, which is why last week, even though I couldn't do it on Tuesday, I still did one on Wednesday. That's some good American H2O. And when Tony's here. Hey everybody Tony's here. Hello. That's where he says hello there. Hello there. Oh, wait, now that that's a, that's Obi-Wan General Kenobi.  That's later after I open a open the gung ho. So let's, let's, I wanted to talk about Cobra Convergence because we're in the middle of it and it is picking up. Let me say It started out with with Zazel from Sergeant Slaughter Slaughterhouse, both Mary Ann and I were on that show. That was a lot of fun. Thank you Zazel again. Great guy and a lot of fun. And then, well here, actually, I've got, I've got the calendar here. Woodman 29 also on July 1, then some miscreant called HCC 788 was yesterday. Sparkster, our old friend Sparkster was on the calendar for yesterday. Not yesterday. Sunday. Wow. I've lost a day Sunday Sunday. Sparkster was on Sunday. It's Chad was scheduled for yesterday but stuff happened. Stuff happened personal business. But we hope that it's Chad can make it back soon hope everything goes well for him. That's his personal beeswax and that's totally fine. But but I still did an interview with Chad and I talked with Chad on his show on Sunday. So so we will miss Chad until he's able to make it back. And then today, what's on Joe minded a watch through of the 1987 GI Joe animated movie. And then Cobra Island did the profit director Destro statue, the bust. I haven't watched the watch through all the way through yet because Mary Ann hasn't seen the movie. And so I want to make sure she's introduced to the movie in the proper way. So I am absolutely going to watch what's on Joe minds watch through for Cobra convergence and thank you guys for doing that. But but but I just got to make sure that Mary Ann is eased into the movie in such a way that she doesn't leave me. So let's we got we got to we got to watch ourselves here. So, hey, hey, so hello. And you any a new table. Hello, a new a new Hello. Hello. Hey, hello, E. How do you do. Hello, Terrence. Hello, draws. I already said hello draws but hello again. Yes, we talked about the October guard. Timmer. Yes, today is Tuesday. Timmer did a review of the, the venom cycle. So, of course, you should always check out half the battle every Tuesday. And thank you to Timmer. Timmer did a Cobra thing on Cobra and during Cobra convergence, even before his day to present on Cobra convergence and that's nice I appreciate that. Not everybody does that I really appreciate that. So, yeah, Mary Ann says we survived the verbemic and the room I think will be fine. Yeah, so it's not that bad. It would be difficult to be that bad, but it's not that bad. It's just, it's different, you know, it's just different. And I will say the, the movie has a lot of supporters, it has a lot of fans, a lot of people really like it. And I will not deny, despite swearing that I would never see the movie again. I will not deny that last year at Joe Fest, they were showing the movie in theaters as a fathom event. I went to that in Augusta at a theater in Augusta, Georgia, a bunch of other GI Joe fans there a bunch of people there for Joe Fest, you know went around to to the movie theater to see it. He had a really good time. I actually did. The movie is not any better, you know, it hasn't improved. But I kind of learned to giggle at it. You know, I kind of, there's, well, there's, there's more fallacies and vaginas in the movie than you would expect for a children's film that's it's it's a I don't know. E new tabby lol. Thank you. E new tabby lol. Nice to not I'm glad you're here. E new tabby lol. Look, here's the thing. I'm from Oklahoma. Anything past two syllables. There's no telling what's going to come out of my mouth to syllables that's the maximum. All right, that's with some effort, I can pronounce two syllables correctly anything past that. And it's just gibberish.  So really mainly I wanted to just hang out with you guys. I again I'm sorry for not doing the 12 hour. I really really thought about it, but we've got the kids over. We're going to, you know, do stuff with them for the the America freedom independence freedom America day that baby Jesus's birthday. Hey, peg warmers. Happy for us peg warmers. Peg warmers. Really cool guy. He's in Cobra convergence. He's coming up. Let me see. Let me look at the calendar. See when, when he's coming up peg warmers peg warmers coming up on the 12th. So for those of you who haven't checked the website it's hcc788.com. That's hcc788.com. You can find a full calendar of everyone that's going to be presenting each day in July. So once again that's hcc788.com everywhere but Nebraska. Thank you. And please check out the website and check out everybody who's presenting the people on that list. They are the ones that actually create the stuff right they're the ones who actually do the presentations create the presentations for Cobra convergence. And I cannot thank them enough. Speaking of whom I'm glad from the hilt is here. Hello Joe fan 84. Nice to see you as well. I'm not I'm not keeping up with the with this very well. I didn't get Mr s today we launched fireworks Saturday. Well, I'll say hello to Mr s when he's here. How many fingers did you lose that. Hey, we should do a prize. Whoever lost the most fingers today gets a free no prize. What was I talking about. I'm very distractible. Oh, Lester says thank you. Congratulations on 17. Thank you very much. I will talk a little bit about that. So the channel recently surpassed 17,000 subscribers. My ultimate goal my ultimate goal was 10,000 subscribers. I honestly thought that's about where the channel would top out. But to have 7000 subscribers on top of that is amazing. Now in the grand scheme of things that's not a huge YouTube channel, but it was never meant to be. You know, this is a YouTube channel about a specific topic. And, you know, it just it was never designed to appeal to a general audience, not that there's anything wrong with that. There's some great channels that appeal to a general audience or appeal to a specific audience, but it's a larger, a larger audience, a great example of that. Comic Tropes, very good friend of mine. Chris, he started, I first came across Chris when he had 300 subscribers. When he was celebrating 300 subscribers, now he has well over 100,000. Now that's a channel. It's about comic books, about comic books in general. There is a lot that you can dig into and a lot of comic fans of different genres that you can appeal to. I do specifically vintage GI Joe so was never really designed to be that big. But the fact that we have 17,000 subscribers, which again is 7000 more than what where I thought we would top out. I can only say thank you. I can only be grateful. So, so thank you. Thank you to everyone who's here. Hey, Cyclonus says does my mind count. I lost my work today. That's funny. That's really funny. The cats over here I'm wondering how long it'll be before he walks into frame. Upload Freedom says thanks for being here for people who are alone. We love you. Thank you. I love you too. And one of the best things about doing the 12 hour live stream was that, you know, for those who were not going and blowing things up for the 4th of July, we can hang out. We can hang out all day. So I am sorry for not being able to do the long one, but I didn't want to miss. I wanted to see everybody and I'm really glad that you're all here. So I wanted to thank everybody for 17,000 subscribers. I wanted to thank everyone who was involved in Cobra Convergence. I wanted to thank the people who are on the calendar. Also, the fan participation video that went up on Monday, which was yesterday. See, I got track of the days again. So I really want everyone to participate in Cobra Convergence.  If you have any interest in celebrating Cobra Convergence with us, there's a link on the website at hcc7a.com everywhere, but Nebraska where you click on the link and you can learn how to join how you can participate in Cobra Convergence and get your creation featured in a weekly video. And there are logos there. You can use official Cobra Convergence logos for your stuff. So I really, I really, I really appreciate that. We got more entries than I was expecting for the first three days. Like the event was only three days old and I already had enough submissions for a video. So I went ahead and did one. And I've already got some emails for participants in the next one, which will go up on next Monday. So, so thank you to everyone who's done that. I this year feels bigger. You know, it feels bigger. We've got we've got the interviews I've done interviews with a lot of the presenters. Not all of the presenters had time to do an interview, but a lot of them did. So you'll be seeing a lot of interviews with Cobra Convergence presenters go up on the same day that their presentation goes up so you can get to know them better and then go check out their stuff. So this this year feels bigger. It feels bigger and I hope that it is bigger. I really I want everyone to have fun. I want everyone to enjoy it. If everyone is an enjoy it then we've missed something somewhere. This is supposed to be a celebration. It's supposed to be, you know, all of us coming together to work together to talk about something that we love and to do something special and memorable. So I sincerely hope that everyone has fun and if anyone doesn't have fun. If anyone doesn't have fun. I'm going to kick you out. No, that's not what I meant. If anyone doesn't have fun. Did I need to know how I can make it more fun. I need to know how I can make it more enjoyable. Look, I'm wearing two pairs of glasses and a headband and a spangly hat. What more can I do. What more realistically can I do. But if there is anything that that I can do to help the enjoyment of the month and of the event. I will sincerely do everything that I can. I know that I've got some appearances coming up on some more shows so I'll be joining you live for everyone. Very soon. More. So, so yeah, I'm trying to be I'm trying to be available. I want to be here. I want to be talking to you. I want to be celebrating Cobra. This whole idea, this whole idea was to work together. That's how me and for BX 257 and Timmer started it was about working together and we worked together around Cobra. We've that was like it was a good broad topic, right. So there's so much there that you can talk about so many different aspects and just look, look at all the people who are on the calendar at the website. Every one of them has a different perspective. Every one of them has a different focus. So, so yeah, anything Cobra and even like, not even exactly Cobra, but just kind of Cobra, you know, just throw it in the whole idea is that we work together. We have some fun. We talk about the bad guys for a month.  So, so I'm really grateful that we're doing it. I'm grateful that we're here. I do have one regret. Okay, I take that back. I have hundreds of regrets, but I have one specifically that I'm going to talk about right now. Well, in the year that I took off right because I took a year sabbatical. I was away from the channel for a year during that year. Timmer from half the battle continued Cobra month. And that's that was very heartwarming. That was very kind of him to do. And when I came back, we restarted Cobra Convergence at Cobra Convergence six, I think I made a mistake. Timmer's Cobra month as Cobra Convergence six and started at Cobra Convergence seven. It's something I can't undo it. I can't undo it. But I do regret that because Timmer did did a very good thing. Timmer does a lot of really good things. Timmer does a Christmas charity drive every year that is a wonderful thing. It's very thoughtful. And I just I've got a lot of respect for Timmer and and I consider him a friend. So, yeah, thank you Timmer, and that should have been counted. I should have counted that one. And I'm sorry that I did it. I wanted to say hello to Rachel. Hello, Rachel. It says Tulsa, I need an end of July Cocoa Fest. I'm a I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Fest. I see I've, you know, if if nominated, I would run and if elected, I would serve. So thank you, Rachel. So, yes. Marianne I will explain why I'm winking when I say Rachel, but I'll explain later. Don't worry it's nothing dirty. Not yet anyway. I mean not at all. Byron has helped in the charity drive. Hello the real Aaron, I'm glad the fake Aaron Collins isn't here. I'm glad it's the real one this time. Yeah, Timmer probably would work someone out 10 timbers just a good guy, you know, Timmer is just a good guy. And I'll say that I'm very fortunate in that. Really, for the most part, the people that I've worked with behind the scenes have just been really good people. There are not a whole lot of people that at least that I've worked with who have behind the scenes just been a bunch of jerks. And that's really, I feel very lucky that our collaborators behind the scenes and when the cameras are off are still really genuinely lovely people. Hello, Jenna. Nice to see you, Jenner. Tony. Yeah, Tony says main character month, July play sets and vehicles monster month winners coming Christmas charity, the mad lab that's right. So that those are all the themes that Timmer does every year. He he's the hardest worker man in show business and by the way I should add, he's been doing this longer than me. He was doing this I think at least a year. No more than that, maybe like a year and a half ish before I started. So, so yeah, I gotta give Timmer some some appreciation give Timmer some love. He's a great guy. He was one of the collaborators on the first Cobra convergence. And he's been with it ever since he's put his his his his sweat and blood and tears into it. I mean, we torture him he doesn't want to. You know, he's he'd rather not but you know we torture him we get the blood and the sweat and the tears out of him. You know, and that's that's actually the fuel for the the the engine that drives Cobra convergence is the blood sweat and tears of Timmer. You know he keeps begging us. He's like let us let me please what have I done. Please don't do this to me anymore but man we look Cobra convergence is bigger than all of us. And it needs your blood sweat and tears to to keep that engine running so we got to do what we got to do. But seriously, thank you Timmer for for all that you do. Jenna enjoys Timmer's content. Hey is Rob Bay is Hey Rob Vegas. How do you do. Yes, happy. He says happy 4th of July to us and a thank you very much. I'm, I'm saluting in every every possible way that I that I know to salute I don't know. I don't know any other salutes. Hello Ivan Ivan says HTT 788 for president. If if nominated I would run and if elected, I would serve. Hey, so yes. It's it's the 4th of July and again I'm sorry I didn't plan any activities for today. I just wanted to see you guys as soon as I'm done here. We're going to like take the kids out to the pool. We're going to drop the kids off at the pool and then Marianne's over there laughing in the background where your earrings next time. We're going to take the kids to the pool to swim as soon as we're done here. I'm not going to I'm not going to wear all this because while it's air conditioned in here outside it's like 90 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you who don't measure temperature in Fahrenheit. Yes 90 is really hot in fact it is 90 in your temperature to that's how hot it is. So it's yeah it's really hot it's it's quite a hot day and so yeah this is this is all coming off this is this is all coming off and I'm well not all of it you know because it's it's not a nude pool but some of it's coming off. Come on from the hill says you all realize a vote for HCC 788 as a as president is a vote for Cobra right. Yeah see exactly you know what we're going to take over and we're going to just straighten a few things out you know what is we're just straight and a few things out. First order of business eliminate time zones time zones gone. I'm against them. I think they are unnecessarily confusing and make us do math and I don't like it. No more time zones. That's my first order of business. No time zones second order of business.  They break down. They they they they get glitches. And so I just I just think they're more trouble than they're worth no more computers. Which ironically means no more YouTube except for me as the president I get YouTube nobody else does. I get YouTube. It'll just be YouTube for me. And you know what it means. That means every video that I don't like gets deleted and every and the videos I like the most. They get we I demand more of them. So there will be wall to wall funny cat videos on well there already is so I've already got my wish. Hello. Hello there Robbie was very nice to see you. Thank you very much for being here. Time zones are fine. It's daylight savings time. No time zones must go see what suppose it's I don't know seven o'clock here. Why does it have to be six o'clock five o'clock somewhere else. Why can't it be seven o'clock there too. Now my seven o'clock and the seven o'clock in say for for sergeant Slaughter Slaughterhouse in Australia. You know it may for him it may it may be in the middle of the night and for me it may be in the afternoon but it should still be seven o'clock don't make me do math. That just just say a seven o'clock what time of the day is it look out is the sun out. That's all anybody cares about. So yeah that this is I feel like this is a good platform. I honestly don't know why people watch me. Look here. Next week's video so the most recent one was the solviper. Thank you to everyone who watched the solviper video. I very much enjoyed putting that together. The next video I have it written. It is written. I have the setup here to record it but I haven't recorded it yet. I've run into a little bit of difficulty getting the time to record it. And the fact that today is a holiday has has complicated that even further. But I do not want to skip this week. I want to get the video out this week so I'm going to do everything I can do to get this thing ready. Hopefully in time for early access for patrons on Friday. If not then at least for for Sunday. So I'm going to keep. Oh hello chaplains assistance motor pod nice to see you. We watch because you're so charismatic as it benefits a befits a commander. That's right. I mean just look at me.  He's a very stable genius. Thank you chaplains assistance motor pod. So yes this this this coming weeks video is coming. I'm still working on it. Everything is ready but the actual doing of it. I know exactly what it's going to be. It's all written out. I've done all the research. I've written it all down. It's I just got to sit down. I just got to sit down and do it. So that's the next task. It's just that it's been difficult this week. I'm going to I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. Another thing. Another thing. Don't forget I have to. I have to flip people off like this now. Why would I be flipping you off?   And then you have to do this and you're not really this is the reverse flip off. This is what you do for somebody that you like.  You're all right. So there there's a poll on patreon right now.  The choices are. Let me see if I can remember off the top of my head there is the python crimson guard. Snow serpent version two. And the range viper. Right now there is one is clearly ahead one is one is quite ahead but there are still enough people who could vote to sway it it could it could sway one of the other directions. If enough people vote it the outcome is not yet determined. But there is a leader there is a very definite leader. So so please vote if you can if you'd like to the. You do need to be a patron a supporter of the channel on patreon in order to vote. But honestly that's it. It's really cheap to do that so hopefully you know if you'd like to please consider joining to it and cast your vote. If you can't. It's absolutely fine. There's never any requirement to. You will always get the video anyway you will always get the YouTube video for free anyway. But if you would like an opportunity to. To vote on this in this poll. Just join us on patreon and I did want to add so not everybody can support the channel in. A monetary way not everybody can do patreon or super chat or anything like that. You know if you want to support channel just watching the videos that that alone is a support. And I am grateful for everyone that is here. I am grateful for everyone that is here I have made so many friends. I've made friends who will be lifelong friends long after you know. After we're done with G I Joe you know they will still be friends when they're when we're in the nursing home I won't remember them but I'll you know they'll still be friends. It'll be just like old times because I won't remember any of the new times. Robby Rosario says oh Python crimson guard embrace the garishness. Yes I have. Like I don't any of them that when is fine but. Yeah I would have a few things to say I would have a few things to say about the Python crimson guard there. I know I know that's been covered before. I have to dig to find a few things to say that that haven't already been said. But but I have a few things to say I feel like we can do that. Hey it's white Vegeta nice to see you white Vegeta nice to see you nice to see you. Oh hello sparkster sparkster who was my calendar day mate on for Cobra Convergency. We're both on the calendar for Sunday I hope everybody checked out sparkster the link is still on the website on hcc788.com everywhere but Nebraska. So. Sparkster says Cobra Island she does spent some time designing the more Lego GI Joe things there's always tomorrow night yes I'm sparkster does really amazing. Lego sets. And he's like I had the opportunity to meet sparkster and cyclonus was there. Sparkster at Joe fest. And he was able to show me some stuff and cyclonus show me some stuff it gave me some stuff to which is which is why I have this is my new my new decoration thank you cyclonus. Thank you. So. Yeah. I've lost track of I've lost my mind is what I'm saying it's it's already been a long day it's a hot day. And it's gonna and I'm going right back outside as soon as we're done here it's going to be warm. But it's going to be fun.  Oh hello Kujo. How do you do Kujo he says. US happy for us folks happy for us to you. July the fourth be with you. That doesn't make any sense. Okay but I got an idea I got an idea how we can kill a little bit of time. Together. Okay I've got an idea. Staring contest. No I blink dang it I lost. All right well I didn't kill very much time. You guys are really good at this. You guys are ridiculously good at the staring contest I had no idea. I had no idea I was up against some staring contest sharks. Tonight on Barney Barnaby Jones. Hello. There's somebody I didn't say hello to hello Joe West Coast nice to see you happy fourth to you. So we have you know what I'll do. Here's what I'll do. I already read off the people in the calendar who have already done Cobra convergence let's read who is coming up. Today was what's on Joe mind and Cobra Island tomorrow is a toy kind of mood. Great show been on their show before. On Thursday July 6 is talking Joe. Very nice to have talking Joe back. On Friday July 7 we have go figure. And real American Brian. Nice name. It's spelled correctly well done. After that we have snooves corner cafe and the full force podcast great guys great guys. Following that we have the skull reviews and I was looking back at some of my old Cobra videos like the old ones before Cobra convergence and the skull reviews and another guy a friend of his. Did the first intro for Cobra month like this 3d intro so thrilled to have to have the skull reviews here Joe motion videos 82 who is in the chat our friend Byron is on the 10th along with Kujo who's also in the chat coincidence I think so. And then that's followed by half the battle and then peg warmers peg warmers who I don't know if he still is but it was also in the chat peg warmers great guy been in Cobra convergence for years love that guy. Then there's Jay Bartlett. He shows a lot of fun don't miss it chaplains assistance motor pod, who is also in the chat. This is like a Cobra convergence. Fest a Cobra convergence convergence.  Let me see if I can add that here. Let's see Cobra convergence convergence. Let's see. I hope I spelled that right I can't really see there we go Cobra convergence that's what this is. It's a Cobra convergence converge. So after that, after chaplains assistance motor pod there is toy connections. That's 10 got to meet that actually got me chaplains assistance motor pod and can add Joe fest. Then there's action. I'm sorry, JLS comics who's also been in Cobra convergence for several years action robot punch audible interlude order of battle that's that's another friend of ours a long time friend of ours. Yorktown Joe Joe on Joe that's a lot of Joe. That's a lot of Joe there's Yorktown Joe and Joe on Joe. That's that's like Joe squared that's like triple Joe. Then there's my side of the laundry room really cool guy. He's been in Cobra convergence for quite a while now Rob Vegas, who was also in the chat here a moment ago, Rob Vegas last year did a Cobra video every day. Just on his own. He just like really dived into the spirit of Cobra convergence. And you know what, he's on the calendar this year, and I could not be happier. The photo viper. Another longtime friend of the show, and speaking of longtime friends of the show. GI Joe Berg who has been in Cobra convergence since Cobra convergence to since the second year. They recently did. I shouldn't single out just one they they've done a lot of really amazing play motion videos. Joe Berg is the creativity there is amazing rat face 44 views is on July 23 rat face was also in the chat. Hey there's toy connection how about that. Hey, look at that. Look at it. Look at it. Look, look, we got it. We got a Cobra convergence convergence here look at this. Look at this 123. Like that that's that's three Cobra convergence since in a row how about that. So yeah, check that out Cobra section. So yes, you know, I don't know if anybody's noticed this but about about 60% of these live streams is me stuttering. Anyway, so after rat face 44 reviews there's island of misfit toy collectors treasures for trigger. Joe's toy domination codename new to vero to another very old friend and articulated points. Great guys, very informative podcast from the pit met those guys again and then finishing up with a new, a newcomer agent chuckles I'm extremely excited to see what all of these guys come up with. It's great. This. So it's a lot of work for me but it's also a lot of excitement for me I get this I get to see all this stuff. I mean they create it. I share it. I post it, you know, on the website and in the social medias. But I also get to watch it.  It just doesn't get any better than that. I feel like that's the that's that's that was a beer slogan wasn't it. It just doesn't get any better than this. Or maybe that was chewing tobacco I don't know. Anyway, whatever it is, it can't get better than it. Rob says Tulsa has a larger airport. I am obviously missed part of that conversation. Tulsa has an airport. It does and they call it Tulsa International Airport. And technically you can fly there to international destinations you'll have to stop somewhere first. You know, they're not they're not going to fly you to Italy from Tulsa you can get there. You just you just got to stop somewhere, you know, before you get there so it's it's international. But you know what it's still better. It's still better than the Oklahoma City Airport. The Oklahoma City Airport, you know what that's called is called the Wiley post airport. Wiley post being someone who died in an airplane crash. That just seems like a bad omen to me. If you're afraid of flying. Do you really want to take off at an airport named after a guy that died in a plane crash? I don't know. I'm not superstitious. But I just think that's a little odd. So I will take our Tulsa International Airport where I'll live with that. I'll live with that. I didn't do it a vehicle this year surprisingly. I did see that I did see that by the the the profit director Destro thing that was all right that was pretty good. And Joe motion videos 82 says I've flown in from there it's it isn't so bad it isn't it really isn't it's. I mean, as the airports go it's definitely an airport, but it's much smaller than like, I don't know. DFW or Denver those would be much larger airports. So it'd be easier to find your way around, you know, it's why are we talking about airports it's the fourth I'll tell you why. Because flying is the ultimate freedom flying was invented in America when George Washington taught the first bird to fly. And then in 1903 Wilbur and Orville of Laurel and Hardy prayed to that bird to teach them how to build airplanes. And so the first American airplane was born. I am pretty sure I saw that on on the news show so it has to be true. Tony says who to use his air quotes like Dr. Evil like evil. I'll see let's see what some of the Cobra convergence have to say. Sparkster says I have one every Sunday. That's that's awesome. Sparkster also participated participated participated heavily in Cobra convergence last year thrilled to have them on the on the calendar. See, Rob says we're moving Joe Fest from Augusta to your backyard that's that that would be that you know what why not. It would say you know hey it'd be it'd be easy for me to get there. I'm for it. Photopiper says sky, there was sky King wasn't here wasn't and I didn't say hello did I. Hello to I apologize if I've missed saying hello to everyone I'm I'm a little slow hello Gussie. Isn't there a Joe from Kitty Hawk North Carolina. I think there was but I can't remember I can't remember which one I can't remember which one. Oh, you know, see that I didn't do show prep. Right. I literally made dinner, made food for everyone and then jumped on here.  But now I've been showing this off since I got back from Joe Fest I did get the retaliator. I got the retaliator at Joe Fest with the box. At the time I did not have the figure updraft or the file card since then guess what I have the figure updraft with the file card so that rounds this out complete with the box and no I did not pay eBay prices. If you added up it's still less than what I would have paid on eBay so I'm really thrilled I've I've had my eye on this thing for a long time the little bombs are in there it has some little bombs and there it has them. I've had my eye on this thing for a while. This may be a candidate to be reviewed shortly after Cobra convergence. When we get back to Joe stuff because I, I am intrigued by this I I have some thoughts. I have some things about it. So, so that's new. Yes, smart. Exactly smart. Shop smart shop as smart. You got that. Yeah, tell all rise crispy. That is that that is the nickname that we gave to to Byron isn't it. So, yeah, we got how many we have six minutes and 15 seconds to kill ever. I'll just talk slower. Everybody talks slowly. That was the host enjoying a refreshing water. That was the host refresher, refreshing a with a refreshment.  That's an art piece. No, that should be in Sundance. That should be a can title host refreshes himself. Not relieves himself. I refreshes himself. Talk slowly. Thank you Byron for talking slowly. Let's see. Mr. Grudge says I'm not ashamed to admit it. I own a classified Python Patrol Crimson Guard and I like it.  You should never be ashamed of liking something. I mean, unless that's something is like illegal. If it's if you like something and it's like illegal, then you should be ashamed. But don't be ashamed of liking an action figure even if nobody else likes it. Even if you're the only person that likes it. You still shouldn't be ashamed of it. And you know what? Don't let some yahoo on the Internet. Change your mind about it. You and you love what you love.  Unless it's illegal. As your attorney in this matter, I advise that you turn yourself in other than that. Don't be ashamed of liking an action figure even if nobody else liked it. You know what? Let your freak flag fly.  For people who are proud of action figures that nobody else likes. This is where we have solidarity with with other people who like action figures that nobody else likes. Rachel Rachel says a row row row your boat that was a wonderful song. The first time that song was ever sung was in Star Trek five. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grudge. Yeah, so we're, hey, guess what? We're down to three minutes and 15 seconds. I think we're doing pretty good. I think we're doing pretty good. I am, I will admit, I'm, I'm pretty exhausted. I'm pretty, I've got a lot on my plate right now. A lot on my plate right now. But most of it's good. Honestly, most of the things that I've got going on are really good. It's just a lot. I'm just, I'm busy all the time. I have to make sure that I leave enough time to sleep.  One of the things I'm busy doing, as I said, is putting together the next video review, which I sincerely intend to have out for Sunday next Sunday. So please stay tuned with me for that. And thank you to Watson Joe Mind and Cobra Island for your Cobra Convergence contributions today. And tomorrow the sun will come out and a toy kind of mood will be taking over Cobra Convergence. The only Cobra Convergence are the, I should say, the idea behind Cobra Convergence is really just a collaboration just coming together to for a common cause. It's not its own channel, you know, it's not a physical convention that you can go to. It's just, it's a group of people who care about something who are creative, who work really hard to share their passion and their love for, for, you know, this brand and these toys and comic books and stuff that, you know, we've enjoyed for so long. That's really what it's about. So when you check the calendar and you follow the links on the calendar, it will take you to the accounts, the websites, the channels, the podcasts, the blogs of those participants because that's where you will find it. You will find Cobra Convergence in all of those places. And I will again reiterate that I would like everyone to participate in Cobra Convergence. There is a link at the website, hcc788.com everywhere but Nebraska where you can make your own Cobra Convergence creation. You can send it to me, I can include it in a weekly video, I can share it. So, so please consider participating. The more the merrier. So, and thank you to everyone who already has and like I said, I've got emails already for stuff that will be in the next weekly video so people are already lining up to do more stuff so thank you everyone for for doing that. Christian Burke says which US states don't have Joe's born there I think there was one state. Wasn't there one state that did not have a Joe. I could be wrong because Larry tried to spread it around Larry tried to get like somebody from every state but I can't recall if there's was a state that that there wasn't a Joe from the Joe who. Joe, who is from Oklahoma was lift ticket and he, where was he from I want to say Vanita. Hold on I got a look. I should know this. I know ticket. Lawton I'm sorry I knew it was an L word. Lawton. So, yes. Vanita he's not from Vanita law law that's not even close. Yes, the Joe who is from Oklahoma is lift ticket and he is from Lawton. I actually when I did the review of the Tomahawk and lift ticket I thought about driving out to Lawton and doing it from there, until I looked on a map and realize that's kind of a really far drive to, you know, spend half an hour recording a video so so I did not do that. But, but yeah, Larry really tried to include everybody on the file cards. It's it is eight o'clock everyone. Thank you all for being here I do need to take the I need to drop the kids off to the pool and then take the kids to the pool. And then we better do that sooner we're going to have a riot. But thanks everyone. Again, I'm sorry we didn't do the 12 hour. I only had time to do the one hour this time but I sincerely thank you all for being here. Make sure you catch what's on Joe mind and Cobra Island today on on Cobra convergence and catch a toy kind of mood tomorrow. And I will see you guys soon there's a lot a lot coming up there's a lot coming up. And I really hope you enjoy it I'll see you all later everyone. Bye and happy baby America day. Happy baby America freedom America freedom baby day. Bye.


Are you ready for warm weather and a little sunshine? The Appalachian Wireless team has decided to have the ultimate spring break event. The spring break event is going on now through the end of April and all smartphones are on sale with Appalachian Advantage. We are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. As part of Remake Learning Days, Pikeville Elementary School held its annual steam night to showcase students and their use of technology. Tuesday, Mountain Top spoke with technology coordinator Neil Arnett about the event. So one of our big things, especially here at an early age when it comes to exposing students to this much technology and this much engineering, is to really get them used to creating and exploring and sometimes they come up against problems and learning how to creatively problem solve around those problems. And really our goal is at an early age to begin preparing students for our advanced computer science pathways and our engineering pathway at Pikeville High School and really begin to build those high tech skills for the workforce that we are building here in eastern Kentucky. During the showcase, students displayed a variety of technologies ranging from 3D modeling and robotics to an electric car. Well, it was just like it is right now and we took it completely apart and we put it all back together all by hand. No power tools, no nothing. It took many days and we had to figure out how electricity works for the battery and how to use most power, how to use most tools that most of us didn't know how to use when we first started. In just a month, Coleman Stapleton and the rest of the Blazing Panthers team completed the vehicle just in time to race. Coleman says they hope people see their efforts. We hope people see that it took a lot of time, took a lot of effort to make it and that we all put a lot of time into this and we hope people like it and enjoy the car that we took so many hours and days to create. With an abundance of technology, students were able to use skills to better their community. One project in particular was a 3D printed water filtration system. So the way it would work is you would put it in any type of body of water like a river or lake and the water filtration, like the actual thing would be in the nozzle area so whenever you would drink it all the bad stuff would be filtered away and you would be drinking geer-fied water. And lastly, while students were excited to display their technologies, a hope from Arnett was for students to use those skills to create jobs locally. You know, one of our mottos here is that we're creating students that are going to be part of the workforce that hasn't even been invented yet. You know, when my student, my son, he graduates in 2033 and we don't know what kind of jobs Eastern Kentucky is going to have but we want him and all of our students to be prepared to creatively problem-solve and create whatever kind of community they want. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Chorjol.


Hello! Welcome to SS-Initech. So, see this side and this is continue lesson of SQL Server Performance Training. So, today we are going to discuss about RID lookup and key lookups. So, what are these two lookups? So, in the last two videos we have discussed about the table scan, cluster indexes scan, cluster indexing, non-cluster indexes scan and non-cluster indexing. So, if you haven't watched these two videos, I would strongly recommend to watch these two videos before going forward. So, let's start with RID lookup and key lookup. So, first is what is lookups? So, if all the requested column by the query is not available in the non-cluster index itself, a lookup is required to the base table to pick up those columns which are not part of the non-cluster index being used to retrieve the data. So, what it mean? So, let's assume you have an address table as we have used in the last two videos and here we have created a non-cluster index on CT column and we want to get all the data from the address table where CT is Boston or anything else. So, CT columns data is available on the non-cluster index. So, it will be going to pick from the non-cluster index but other columns data is not the part of non-cluster index. So, it was required to additional lookup with the base table to get the other columns data. So, here we have two type of lookups. First is RID lookup, second is key or bookmark lookup. So, what are these two lookups? So, first is RID lookup. So, what is RID lookup? So, if base table doesn't have any cluster index on it, a row ID is heap will be used as a row allocator and if query is required to lookup using the heap row ID then it will be performed as RID lookup. Next is key lookup. So, what is key lookup? If base table has a cluster index on the table and non-cluster index is also created on the same table and at this time it will have cluster key as row allocator. If any query required lookup using this cluster index key locator will be performed lookup and it's called a key lookup. Basically, we can understand if our table has a cluster index then that would be performed as key lookup. If table doesn't have any cluster index then that would be performed as RID lookup. So, go to our SQL server management studio to see in practical. So, here I am using SQL 2017 and here I am using Adventureworks 2k16 database. So, in last video we have created this at the stem table. So, let me drop this table and now let me create the table. So, table has been created successfully. Now, as we know it doesn't have any constants right now as we have seen in the last videos. So, let me create a non-cluster index with the city and postal code. So, we can execute non-cluster index is created successfully. Now, I just want to check city and postal code. So, before going to execute this query let me enable include execution plan. So, now we can execute the query and go to one execution plan as we can see it's going to use non-cluster index with the non-cluster because city and postal code both are available in the non-cluster as we can see city and postal code. If we want to get all the columns which is available on the address table so, we can execute and this time we don't have other columns like address line 1, address line 2, address ID and many more columns. And non-cluster index has only city and postal code. Now, we can check the execution plan. So, this time as we can see it's going to use a nested loop join. So, we will discuss later on this video series about the nested loop joins. So, this is the physical join as of now you can understand. So, here as we can see this is indexing and it's going to get data only for two columns that is city and postal code. And it's going to use a listener lookup because our table doesn't have any cluster index right now. That's why RID lookup is required as we can see inside this RID lookup that is heap. If table doesn't have any cluster index then it's going to use as a RID lookup. Now, let me create a cluster index on this table and this time I just want to create a cluster index on address ID column. So, we can execute this query to create cluster index. So, cluster index is created successfully. Now, I just want to get all the columns from this address table where city is Boston. So, we can execute this query and now go to an execution plan and this time as we can see this is going to use as key lookup that is clustered because our table has a cluster index. So, as we can see here it's going to use the key lookup but in terms of performance as we can see non cluster index seek is going to use only 11% of the cost with the batch. But in case of key lookup it is required 89% of the cost that is very costly. So, if we will face any scenario like this then we can create a covering index. So, we will discuss covering index in the next video. So, I hope you have understand about the key lookup and RID lookup. So, in the next video we will discuss about the covering index. So, thank you so much for watching this video. If you like this video please subscribe our channel to get many more videos and please share to others. Don't forget to press the bell icon to get the notification of our newly uploaded videos. Thank you so much.


I don't like to read slides on a PowerPoint, but this one I will read because I rail against these flubber artist statements that are full of highfalutin words. This is a very personal statement. I thought I was describing what I do and I realized that I'm describing what I hope to do. So it's not a description of what I do, but it's a mission statement. I document the work and energy that goes into dance, not the final performance. Being in the studio as dances are created or even as dances prepare themselves feels like being in the delivery room when children are being born. Amidst pain or anguish, tempered with rhythm and support and bolstered with faith, new life emerges. It's physical, sometimes sensual, often spiritual. Too often this process is ignored as image makers look only at the final result, the dance. This is a statement of passion. And before we even look at images, I want to say a word about passion and images come to life when we have something to say. I see people come in to a garden or to a historic site or a beautiful space or in front of a loved person and go snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. What are they photographing? They don't know. So let me play, try an exercise with you. Stand up and take a look at this room and at the people around you and get in touch with what you're feeling as you experience this space, the people who are here and some of the people who've been here some time ago and what resides in the bones of this space that communicates to you. And now, and this is a very hard exercise, can you find one picture that you would take that tells that story? And we're not obviously not gonna take it with a camera, but it's that picture that includes the light and part of the ceiling or it's that picture that focuses on the dictionary or it's that picture that looks at the old stand that the modern projector is on or it's that beautifully colored scarf that my wife is wearing or whatever it is. Because that's the exercise that I do that precedes everything I'm gonna show you and that's essential.  But I don't only photograph dancers. One morning I went to the farmer's market and there was a melon vendor who had cut up pieces of melons so we could taste them. If there's anything interesting here, I didn't just take one picture and say, I've done it, I played with it. And I said, maybe this, maybe that, maybe if I looked at it this way, maybe if I stood back, maybe if I cropped it and this was a lucky morning because a number of these I think are interesting and useful. Let's look at these images before I talk about how they're made. To me, this is an image of compassion. A ballet teacher looking carefully at a student's feet to say, why is her posture not exactly right? And she's struggling to find an answer. This is a picture of clarity. The yoga teacher not embellished with lots of stuff and lots of complexity, although those of you who practice yoga know that getting to that point is not always a simple journey or energy. What's this a picture of? I think it's a picture of the rapt attention that a wonderful teacher deserves and receives and bounding into the unknown. This is one of my favorite ballet teachers but I think of it as a photograph of a tulip. Okay, whatever we think, I've got an artist license and so do you. I think of this as a picture of fluidity. These dancers have an amazing ability to contort themselves into what they tell me isn't a contortion at all. A level of mastery. This is just a normal simple pose, picture of tenderness, picture of revolution. A dancer from Mwanda who has reason to want a revolution or head reason. I think of this as body perfection. A dancer just at rest takes on an incredible pose and can do that and it doesn't look like just a rest. It looks like something deliberate and beautiful at least to me. I think of this as having something to do with birth and in fact I used this image on a poster to say that I wanted to photograph live births and I said birthing is a dance and most of my friends, men and women loved it. One woman said, Arthur, how do you know? Connection, what's this? I'm not sure but it intrigued me. Ephemeral beauty and even more and this is a picture of I think of frivolity. A good friend of mine runs a dance company called the Equus Project. It's Dancing with Horses and one night at Bates the students did a parody of that and they created the Aquus Project or Dancing with Goldfish. And the choreography actually was very gold fishy. Motion, magic. The choreographer of this piece found this carpet in I think a Target or Walmart. She didn't know why but she just had to buy it and it followed her around for years and one day she looked at it. She said, this is the carpet that holds the energy of strong women. And she said, no, it's the carpet that holds the energy of women who are trapped in the system and can't break free of it. And she had about five other interpretations and so I spent a few hours not watching the dancers but watching the carpet to see what happened as people arrived on this carpet. I think this is a picture of my wandering eye not somebody's clothes. I'm not sure about this. And this is my tribute to Niles Ford, an amazing dancer who died very young and very suddenly. So where did these images come from? How did I create them? And that's what I wanna talk about a little bit. If you have brief questions, feel free to raise your hand and I may answer them as we proceed but I'll certainly try to answer them later. That picture of compassion. I'm fascinated watching how the dance teacher will walk up to a student and bend their body a little bit and push on this a little bit. And it's a kindness. Dancers and other artists learn how to receive feedback. And so I started photographing. This is not a successful picture but it's the beginning of a series. Sometimes just looking at what the teacher sees. I'm saying, do I want to correct that? The hands don't quite complete the circle. One goes up, is that okay? And here is that wonderful teacher from Switzerland looking at a different student trying to hone in on what's going on in another picture of her. And this is very clearly a series that's gonna lead to one of the images. And there weren't just a few pictures, there were many. One of the most insulting comments I ever got was someone who said, Arthur, you take so many pictures, you must get some good ones. But this is not snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. This is, let me look at it this way. No, if I include those women in the picture. Oh, if I'm more on the side and I get a profile. And I'm playing with different ideas and my creativity is unleashed and my judgment is held at bay. Later I will look at them and say, which one of these works best? And if you were quick, you could look at these and say, which do you think is most effective? This is the one that I picked but it doesn't really hold together as a picture. It's sort of vacuous. And then I found that if I just cropped it into a square, it had a new energy. If I go back and look at that picture, just the act of turning it into a square where this isn't quite the diagonal but it almost is.  And my yoga teacher. And she appears in many different ways. Sometimes meditative and sometimes very active. And I show you this, it's more than you can take in individual images but to get a sense of the variety of what I photographed and what was before me. But as I began to delve into what I really wanted, this simplicity of this, I'm not sure I needed the water bottle, the stuff on the left, part of a woman over there. Her eyeglasses, maybe the very fact that she shed her eyeglasses for this might be important. A number of these images are square and that has a strength in works. I'm not dogmatic about any of this stuff. There are people who feel that however you take the picture, that's it, you shouldn't crop it. I think you can do whatever you want with the one exception that if it's for newspaper publication, you can't retouch it. And even if I take out an electrical outlet in the background of this picture, the New York Times would reject it because it's not honest.  There was in fact an electrical outlet in that picture. But I think I showed you what mattered to me and I think what mattered to her. If I wanted to talk about her interaction with her students, here are two very different pictures that have almost the same structure. How many of you would prefer the one on the left? How many would go for the one on the right? Why the one on the right? Anybody? Pam? Because she's watching the person. So there's a level of connection in there. And the upright arms. But the students' arms are almost going off the curtain and does that matter? Those are the questions that I struggle with. And sometimes I say, Arthur, couldn't you get it right? And this is a dancer who's really pulling his students through some very, very fast movement. And I took series of them as they moved across the floor. And that was the one that I zoomed in on and I didn't feel a need to do much more than just say, that's my image. Now, it's out of focus, not because I'm, it's blurry, not because I didn't focus properly, but because the shutter speed is slow and so there's a bit of blur from the movement. Is that okay? I think it's great. People ask me, how do you photograph, dance, and convey movement? One way is with a blur. One way is, you know, if I'm jumping and I'm leaning over, believe me, I'm not a dancer, I should ask Sharon to do that. There are pictures which could not be static. She's up there for a minute and gravity will pull her right down. But while she's up there, there's a picture and your mind knows that it's about movement. And here is that teacher who commands such attention. Can you find an image here that you really think works? This is the one that I ended up picking. But I had to look very carefully at all of these and that's what I ended up with. What a cacophony. It's an unruly mob of students and the teacher barely stands out. And I don't do a lot with Photoshop manipulating images, but on this one I said, you know, the picture is of the presence of the teacher and the gaze of the students. I said, what if I turned everything except the teacher to black and white? Or in this case, black and white sepia. I haven't touched the image, but all of the sudden there is a teacher and a group of students and now what we see is not the cacophony of their arrangement, but that they are all zeroed right in on her. And that's the story that I wanted to tell that experienced dancers working with a teacher totally focus and get it. And if I were trying to tell the story of why you should work with this teacher or go to this dance festival, this is the kind of image I'd want to take. A set of images is I was watching a ballet class and for a while I was distracted by that red, what do you call that? It's not a leotard, body suit. There's a proper word for it. But my eye is all over the place. Somehow in that cropped was one image that tells a different story than that first image, but it's a real story that's embedded in that class and another class with a lot of energy and I was fascinated with this woman with the purple top. And this was another one of those images. I said, Arthur, you held the camera too low, you didn't get her arms. Do you agree with me? Sometimes we need to sleep on it. We need to think. And there were other images. I said, that's exactly right. This image is as much about her being up there in the clouds as it is that her feet are no longer on the ground. And I think it's perfect. But I had to wake up in order to see that. So I may be in a hurry to circle some images and say, I want to work with that, I like it. But I should not be in too much of a hurry to say I don't want to work with this. It's no good, I'm gonna throw it out. One of my, I think one of my best images was sitting around the studio when the wonderful curator Bruce Brown was visiting me as he often does. And he said, that's wonderful. And I said, Bruce, why? It lacks this and it lacks that. He said, Arthur, look at it carefully. And I had to look at it a few more times to see what he saw. We need colleagues and we need mentors. And we need guides. Here is my favorite ballet teacher. And yes, there were a lot of images tracing how she went through this piece. And I zeroed in on a couple. Now how did I get to this image? Most of what I've shown you, that was a very deliberate creative process. I was gonna hang a show of images from the previous year at the Bates Dance Festival in a gallery just outside her studio. And I don't usually ask dancers for approval, but ballet dancers are particularly concerned that they have it right and there is a right. And the leg should be turned in or turned out. Yes, it does matter, right? Jerome's nodding, certifying what I just said. I could not reach her to ask her. And I said, are her hands in the right position? Does that matter, Jerome? I mean, depending on what, I mean, for the image or for the dancer? For the dancer. Generally for ballet dancers. Yeah. So I looked more carefully and I said, I don't need to include her hands. That tulip dress tells the whole story. So some external story drove that image and it's one of my favorites. I put it on the cover of my book. And another young woman dancer, not that young, just filled with energy and vibrance and almost a crazy display of rearranging the body in all sorts of ways. I feel gifted to have this access to dancers and gifted to be able to work with these. It demands a real respect for the dancer because I can't know what's on their mind but I wanna find the integrity and appreciation of what's in my mind so that that's embedded in the image. I call that a picture of mastery because I just marvel at some of the poses that these dancers don't struggle to get into. They've spent so much time perfecting their balance, loosening their muscles and doing everything else that this is part of their vocabulary. Well, maybe this is a little exceptional but not that much. And in one of the dance studios, here are two instructors choreographing a piece about their relationship. And I was as concerned here about the background and how they fit into it as I was about the dancers themselves. And again, I'm showing you a tiny fraction of what I photographed and you can look at this and say, which of these would you work with? And they're all plausible. They're all well exposed, reasonably well composed pictures. That's what I ended up with.  Sometimes it's just finding the right image and printing it well without cropping, without a lot of retouching. And this was the picture I called Revolution. And in fact, this dancer is dancing under a noose and a white cloth and I forget what the third piece was. And the text of the background says, fear help truth. This is one of those that says motion. I don't think that there are many people who could hold that pose for more than a few seconds. But it seems to be static. And his energy juxtaposed against these angles is what I think makes this picture work. So sometimes it's not just a visual thing. I need to ask myself, what are the elements of the picture that I wanna preserve and why? So people imagine that your task of photographing is to take a bunch of pictures. No, it's first to know, what am I photographing? What's the mission here? Then to take those pictures. Then to look real carefully and say, which ones work in the way that I want? And then what if anything do I need to do? It might be as simple as cropping, which you could learn to do in five minutes. It could be something much more sophisticated. I'm fascinated with how these, not these, how dancers just in the way they hold their bodies command attention and create something. If Avner or the eccentric were in this room, just walking with a broom across the stage and back, you would be mesmerized. If I walked across with a broom and back, you'd be bored. What's he doing? I don't know, but it's magic and it's special. I see the same thing with these dancers, although it's not as common. And always you find a set of images which are interesting, they're all plausible. Any one of these stand out for you? Anybody? I would take the figure with the red stripes in the lower right and isolate her. So you just focus on her, and you really see her musculature rearranged. In fact, the image, and I could work with that and I could have worked with all of these. This is the one that I chose to print, but that's just what I chose, there's no Arthur Fink certification there. I had a teacher who, one warning said, we're gonna create a special tool. It's called the context reducer. And we're all very excited. All that it was was a piece of paper with a spectacular hole in the middle. So if I just held that piece of paper over this, I could look at this one and that one and that one and that one. It gets in the way to see all four images at the same time. And I showed you this image which I related to birth. But here again, it's a matter of selecting. You can see that I'm fascinated with the various movements and the various poses. And it's rare that I will only take one picture. I will, if I wanted to take a picture of how you all relate to this projector, I might take that and I might move over here and I might go down so that there's a lot of glare and that you're sort of in the white and I might come back up here and I might wanna go over to the side or photograph from another angle. And they're all plausible and I might not know at the time which one I'm gonna work with. But I wanna play and I wanna dance with my eyes. And although I'm a fellow who's never felt comfortable in his body, I feel like I'm dancing most of the time when I have a camera. Birthing is a dance. How do you know? Sometimes I find an image like this where there isn't time or opportunity to take that series. I learn a lot more about my own photography and other peoples by looking at what we used to call these contact sheets. Cause literally we took the negatives, put them on a piece of photographic paper and shined a light on it and developed it. So they were done in contact with the film. Now it's an index print, but the word contact sheet still sticks. And this shows much more of the creative process. In fact, the first real dance photography session that I did when I just moved to Portland, I looked at those contact sheets and then they really were contact sheets from a camera. And I thought they were just, they're filled with good images, but they were very autobiographical. It showed I photographed the dancer and then I moved and then she moved and then I moved back and then she stayed there and moved there and moved there. And then I came in and I could trace that. And I blew up that contact sheet so that instead of it being eight by 10, it was 20 by 24 and framed it. And to this day, it's one of my favorite images. So with all of these series of images, sometimes they're one of a kind images. They're not just grab shots because although I'm not thinking consciously, how do I wanna rearrange this and what am I doing and blah, blah, blah. All that knowledge is subliminally working through me. What do you think? Usable, useful? Sometimes there's a picture I wanna take and there's other stuff that's in the picture and where I'm standing and in the situation I'm in, I end up taking more than I want. All that I really needed to do here was crop out what I didn't want and wow.  Now I also did a little bit with Photoshop to bring up the intensity, the brilliance of the colors and that's not hard to do. And the New York Times wouldn't complain about that. They just don't want me to take out electrical outlets or rearrange reality. But I had to find the geometry that was there in the original picture and say that along with her movement, which here is so revealed. And you can see that she's standing on her left foot, her right foot is swinging. I think that's right, left and right. I may have it reversed. And so one looks very faint, but one foot is solidly on the ground. Most of the time when we look at a picture like this, I don't think we look at it and parse it so analytically. We get the feeling of it and that's exactly right. And you get the feeling you have, it may not be the feeling that I imagined you would have or hoped you would have. There was one image here that totally excited me and it was very different in kind from all the rest. And when I took my context reducer, that's what I found. Sometimes your subjects are fairly still and the picture is there waiting for you to compose it. And I did and I didn't need to do a lot beyond that except love the image and love the whole endeavor. Now actually that's not strictly true. The image as I shot it was a little bit dark, lightening it up, perhaps too much here, totally changes the feeling of it and this carpet. You can decide for yourself what power it really has. But the choreographer knows for herself what power she's using in her choreography.  People talk about this as manipulating with Photoshop. And I say, no, I'm restoring what I saw. What I saw was a brilliant carpet and people who for a moment appeared on it and left and appeared and left and others came. So here I'm getting it right. I'm restoring the feeling that I had as I watch this. And if I've, I've reduced a whole bunch of colors to shades of black and white, but I think of that as a restoration. And that image that I talked about as my wandering eye was in the midst of a hodgepodge of interesting images that I couldn't follow with the same seriousness in the same series. And I don't know what to say about some of these images. So I'm putting them on here. Some of them may excite you and some may bore you. And I assume that's true for the pictures that you take as you look at them. Some you say, why did I even take that and others, that's really exciting. Get a larger print of the ones that really excite you, put it on your refrigerator or your wall or do something with it so you really look at it and look at the ones that disappoint you and ask yourself, what could I have done that would have helped me bring that scene to life? And you can be your own teacher. This was a series that I shot at a dress rehearsal at Bates and the next night in the performance we got about 12 seconds into it and the dancer didn't trip. She doesn't, none of us could figure out what happened but she got a serious injury to her leg and she couldn't go to perform it in Moscow three weeks later and we spent the night looking at these pictures. So sometimes pictures have a life other than the life that you intended. It's gorgeous dancing and there are two wonderful dancers. The woman is now the head of the dance department at the Boston Conservatory and no, they're not holding back in their dancing. They're dancing full force. Yes. Was photographing dance always your favorite thing or did you photograph other things prior to this? Well, I certainly, before dance I took a lot of other pictures and I still do but dance has become a particular passion and a particular love and it's also a particular skill that I've developed that I think is rare so I cultivate it and try to learn more and try to teach it and I offer workshops. And one that I offer it's not strictly about the photography I call it seeing dance like a photographer and give somebody a camera and put them in a dance studio watching a practice or a performance they'll look for the highest leap the most beautiful arabesque and say wait, what picture tells the story of that dance? So I will have arranged for a dancer or a small group to do a short performance maybe five minutes and then I'll say what would you photograph? Just like I asked you, what would you photograph in this room? That's really hard. And then I say okay, you can take notes, let's dancers can you do that again? Then I'll say get on stage with the dancers and feel free to go right up and say I wanna take that picture that shows mostly his hat but part of his eyeglasses. And then I'll ask are these pictures idiosyncratic or are these about the essentials of what the dance is and how do the dancers feel about what we're saying? Are we really capturing what they're doing? It's largely about how would you photograph dance and how would a dancer decide how she or he wants to be photographed? So it's become something that I really focus on. Recently I'm just beginning to photograph other people for whom their movement is not their primary thing. I spent two days with Emily Isaacson who was a choral conductor. And this is not the end point, the end point is the beautiful music that results. But what do I see as I watch her? And I'm just beginning to learn that. Is that? Dan. All right, so what seems totally fascinating to me is that you can capture motion and you do that in a couple of different ways. You capture motion by stopping it right in the middle like the lower left corner there. Real clarity and force. And then you can catch it by having it make the person invisible in the motion like the other one on the far right corner. And I think it's fascinating that both of those things can convey motion powerfully. I'm fascinated with that. And I'm fascinated that I have no particular desire to shift from still photography to video. I could, my camera will shoot video. It's an art form that I deeply respect. I don't reject it. But I have plenty of creative freedom here in just the way that Pam suggested. Yes. You mentioned the New York Times a couple of times during your talk. Do you provide them with some of your photographs? Very few. I mention them just as emblematic of the newspaper world. And image manipulation is a huge issue. And the journalistic standards have drawn a very clear line. I mean, there's a lot of expressive power in what lens I use and where I stand. And using Photoshop to lighten or darken or intensify or soften the colors or maybe turn it to black and white. But as soon as I move or remove something, I've gone over that line. And I mean, recently Trump circulated videos of Nancy Pelosi in which they made her speech sound slurred and her speech wasn't slurred. And the huge debate, should they be taken down? Were they taken down or why weren't they taken down? And where does truth lie? If I take a picture of one of you holding a fishing pole with the fish three feet out, the fish might look almost as big as you are. Is that true? Well, it's exactly the perspective that I got. But I faced that question years ago when I had a photo studio in a small town and I was asked to photograph a young woman who had been beaten. And if I just put her under fluorescent light, you could barely see the scar. And if I put a spotlight along the side, you could see the texture of the wound. And I wanted to do that to show that she was beaten and she was wounded. But at what point am I exaggerating it? And that was a question I asked myself. And I can hear some people who say, no, you're showing what's there and others who would say, yes, up to a point. Other questions or comments? I think that that brings one of the thoughts I had is it's the interpretation in a way you're an interpreter of the arts because your connection with the dancer is its own story. And then dance in its ephemeral quality, we could be watching something together. And what you're seeing, you're then giving in your still image, whether it's in motion with clarity or in motion with blur. But your image is then, I forget what word you, replacing what you had seen. I thought that was an interesting way to do it because in a way, nobody knows what the dancer's thinking. Yeah, and I don't know unless you choose to tell me. Right, and oftentimes, although it could be the same dialogue, you're in a different day. And so I just find it fascinating with your immense ability to capture the connection and to see the dancer, but then to offer that image because now it's sort of like breaking the fourth wall. Now, each of us sees your image but not and the dancer, but might have understood something else in that moment. Now, Sharon is a dancer whom I photographed a number of times. To what extent are those pictures about you and to what extent are they about me? That's the interpretation that's exactly what I was thinking about as you were talking about truths and what is it that I'm capturing? And I think that as long, I think that that's one of the beauties of how you do your work is you're asking those questions without any judgment of just, well, it is what it is. Or at this moment, it's what I'm capturing. Now, some of the work that I did with Sharon has a different element added to it. That's when we were working together actually upstairs and I took some pictures and then I showed them to her in the camera, so it was very rough. Said, Sharon, is this capturing what you want to say? And she could nod to some and say, if you could only X, Y, Z. So it becomes a collaboration. And there I do get to listen to what the dancer says. And the dancer may sometimes be amazed, that's not a judgment positive or negative, what I saw. Other comments or questions? Yeah. I found it fascinating when you said when you have the camera you feel more connected to your body or more in your body. Could you speak a little more about that? Yeah. Well, there are two parts to that. One, I said that I'm sort of out of body. I mean, if you asked me what it was like growing up, I'd say I didn't like it when they threw the ball at me. I didn't say to me, I said at me. Like, it's a foreign object and I'm powerless and I'm not coordinated enough to believe that I'm gonna catch it. And then I watched dancers in the studio and their coordination, their movement, the flexibility but precision of their bodies is absolutely astounding to me. And it's always, I can't feel envy because I can't imagine a pathway that would get me to that point. But it's a deep appreciation and I feel blessed to be in their presence. But I'm often in the situation of photographing a dancer in motion, especially in a piece that I haven't seen before. And I just noticed that seemingly effortlessly, I follow them. And they move and I move and it's as if we're connected. I mean, what would we do if we were social dancing? We might hold each other loosely or might not but it's like there's a rod between your eye and mine and I didn't look away, I didn't lose you. So it's not the same but I feel totally at home. And my wife has asked me sometimes, you have so many dance pictures, why do you need to take more? And it's a good question. And I have a lot of dance images that I've barely discovered, barely worked with. But the process of being blessed to be with dancers and to go through that process and it's a totally creative process is exhilarating to me and I'm at home. Is that speaking to you? And I hope that other people have some activity that is so grounding, so heartwarming, so satisfying. It's not to say that I come away delighted with every photo shoot and there are times when I say, where were you Arthur? And sometimes I was so mesmerized by what I saw that I forget that I need to compose good images. I've learned to try to keep my focus on the photographic process as well as the experience. But so even though it can be hard and demanding and not always successful, it's joyful. Yeah. And you speak of it very spiritually, this concept of the photographing dancers, do you have that experience when you photograph other things or is it mostly the dance that the spiritual aspect comes through? Thank you for that question. I recently had an article published, the title was, the dance studio is my other meeting house. I'm a Quaker, so the reference is to the Quaker meeting house. And yes, the dance work, I understand it to be extremely spiritual. And when I was photographic, Emily Isaacson conducting, there was an element of that. It was also so difficult. I was on stage with all the singers because I couldn't be in the audience looking at her back. I had to see her conducting. But it was such a complex space, I was working really hard. So that diminished some of the lightness. You know, I will do, when I'm in New York, I will do a lot of street photography. Sometimes just with my iPhone, which has got more resolution than the cameras used to take some of those pictures. But I think the honest answer is that for me personally, for a reason that I can't explain, the spiritual nature of that work with dance is present in a way that's not there for anything else. And it doesn't stop me from taking other pictures and sometimes taking very good ones. Well, I showed you that at the beginning, but I didn't feel that I was dancing with melons.  They found that some of them found their form not because someone arranged them, but because as they were cut, they fell into place. There's a lot of miracle in those pictures and I probably should resurrect those and print some of them, which I've never done. But it doesn't hit here. It's interesting, I see a similarity actually between your watermelon pictures and your dance pictures to the extent that you also have a ready eye for pattern. So some of your dance pictures, the pattern is what is popping out of you.  But you may have heard of it, people share 20 images and with each image part of their talk. And I've given a lot of those and I work with the group and I did one in which I showed a number of my father's images and how I learned from him. And he was a graphic designer, he loved typography, he designed a lot of common products that you're used to seeing. And so there's a lot of linear, you know, if I were to take some of these pictures or some of the dance pictures you see, there's a diagonal running through that. This is bisecting and there is a line here. And as I took that, I don't think I thought about that. As I look at it now, I don't think it's an accident. As a kid we'd spend gobs of time at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Metropolitan. And I didn't think about this too much until recently. And a lot of time at the room were most of the de Ga images and mostly sculptures were. So, you know, I took a photography class with one teacher and we began by talking about the first visual things we remember seeing. Well, you know, those sculptures of dancers with the silk skirts that were in shreds but still present weren't the first things I saw but they were some of the most moving things I saw. And I guess they were implanted in me. But for me at least ballet is not two twos and long skirts. It's an excessively formal but still beautiful endeavor. Does that speak to? Any other? How did you find yourself to become a photographer of dance? And when and how did you start to step into the studio with dancers? So I was moving to Portland from a small town in New Hampshire. And there I had a room almost the size of this area up to the desk. And so I used part of it as a photo studio and I was also doing consulting work which is what I do now. But I decided in moving to Portland that I was gonna let go of the consulting and just be a photographer. And I never thought about dance. And in those days we didn't have desktop publishing so I hired a graphic designer to do my identity set. And she said, Arthur your work is so bold and so graphic. Photograph something like dancers and we can use those images on your business card and your letterhead and so forth. So I bought some dancers into my studio which was a huge living room in my home. And did exactly that. And that's where I felt that first thrill. And when I looked at the contact sheets it was like coming home spiritually. So and then I began to seek out and my wife helped me find some connections to seek out opportunities to photograph dance. And then I looked around and said, where do I find dance in and around Portland? And all paths lead to the Bates Dance Festival. And I went to Laura Forre. And bless her, she is very protective of the dance space and of people especially men who wanna come and gawk and make noisy sounds with their cameras. She said, well after a few years, well okay you can come but you can only photograph this and only and just, wait did I leave that? And I said, okay so I came for a day. And I went home and stayed up half the night printing index prints. And then what happened is when I went back to her office the next day Gantzer started crowding in looking at them fascinated to see how they appeared in my images and how somebody else another artist saw them. And so I realized that what I was doing was not taking pictures, I was sharing images. And the social part of it was a critical element. And I mentioned that because those two things together contributed to this. And at that point the floodgates opened at Bates and every night I would go through the images and print six or eight that I thought were successful sometimes it was more and I'd post them on this long bulletin board in the Bates Commons. And by the end of the summer the whole bulletin board about four feet by 32 feet was filled with images. But the whole festival was aware of them and was looking at them and was reacting in some way to them. And that's what I want. I don't want to just be the recorder. And I wonder what role photography can play even more actively than that.


Once again, we're talking property this morning on your feel good breakfast show now buying the house of your dreams that's situated in the Perfect neighborhood. Well, let's just be honest. It can be a very daunting task But luckily for you private property launch their brand-new neighborhoods campaign And they're taking you through all of those perfect neighborhoods that you can expect from South Africa this morning We joined by Simon Bray CEO of private property to talk about to belito Is this the neighborhood for you Simon lovely to have you with us back in studio again good to be back Yeah, man belito epic holiday destination for myself, especially with my you know growing up at Johannesburg Mid-year breaks, you know July June July school holidays. How are we going to belito? But why is it a good neighborhood to consider in terms of living? I think what you just said there is exactly the reason that we've embarked on this neighborhoods project a private property this idea of Showcasing what a neighborhood has to offer Because a lot of South Africans have built stereotypes around their own experiences, you know for me as well growing up in Johannesburg Belito and Schlange those areas were always holiday areas, you know, you'd go down to the hotels You'd go down to the the accommodation then you'd enjoy a couple of weeks of fun in the sun Belito has grown into so much more than that So the neighborhoods project on private property seeks to answer a lot of other questions around neighborhoods that people are perhaps not thinking about as Actively as they would so when you think belito, of course, you know, there's the beach There's this beautiful north coast lifestyle. There's this feeling of great weather I mean you virtually in the tropics there. So it's a great place to spend a particularly winter There's a lot more that started to happen there's obviously these greater states that have opened up and each of them offer an element of lifestyle or community that is hard to find elsewhere in case it in and Shopping centers popping up all over the place. So there's a good growth story good development story there as well All right So when of course looking at buying your house need to consider the neighborhood where it's situated But also the type of people that live in this neighborhood. Are you gonna fit in nicely as well?  So who will we kind of find living in belito? There's a great mix actually there's obviously the belito residents that have been there for years And there's a there's a sense of small town feel that's still there Which I think attracts some people to the area, but a great move of young Durban families north There's the safety and security in particular that the estates up there offer And that's drawing a lot of young Durban families out of the traditional Durban suburbs further north And it's achievable because the access to Durban if you if you work in Durban or I'm Schlunger There's still easy access from belito. It's only a half an hour drive Which you know in the context of of Durban locals is a long way, but in the context of of nationally It's it's actually a short commute. So you're seeing a lot of young families, but you're also seeing an interesting trend where Joburg businessmen not choosing to base their families down in belito and work in job You know the commutes not that far airports just around the corner.  I mean, is that even possible to do that? No, it's a fascinating thing and and you're actually seeing this sort of train pop up around the world I saw an interesting tweet online this this week a guy that works in London Was looking at London apartments London rentals and of course those are crazy expensive And he did the numbers and it made sense to actually live in Barcelona and work in London so he now commutes from Barcelona to London every day and Similarly you're seeing that in in South Africa guys are basing their families as I said in belito There's great schools. There's great lifestyle the kids get a different type of lifestyle to to growing up in Johannesburg And you can still work in Johannesburg quite easily I mean the commuters a 45-minute flight and then hop in a car and and so it's feasible to Work three four days in a business in Joburg and still live down on the coast I think that's definitely something to consider when you are buying your house specifically You know thinking about belito being such a nice area now Property-wise what can we expect? It's a great mix again. I think it's still a value market There's been a lot of growth in some of the up-end of the market particularly estates like Some bt and of course some barley those are up market estates for sure And and you're gonna pay anything between four and six million ran for a nice house there But there's still value on the other end of the market You've got complexes and smaller estates that are offering two three-bedroom homes at great prices And that's that's what's driving a lot of the growth in the area. Joch if only belita was closer to Cape Town Well, but I mean let's talk about that. I mean labor that's pretty similar I mean if you if you like the belita lifestyle and what it offers anywhere else inside I figured that we can find a similar kind of vibe You know, it's it's tough to match neighborhood with neighborhood We've we've attempted to do it on the website through a cool lifestyle filter So it makes connections between neighborhoods that are perhaps disconnected geographically, but Belito's got a unique vibe It's got that small-town feel that great coastal weather if you had to consider its similarities with other Areas of the country certainly the growth is a similarity with some of the areas in the country Belito is the fastest-growing municipality in South Africa right now So, you know, you're seeing massive infrastructure development shopping centers growth in the residential property market So similar neighborhoods would be places like four ways in Johannesburg, Centurion just outside of Pretoria and perhaps For that beachy feel and Schlunger's also got its own growth story. Yeah, all right. Perfect Simon Thanks so much man talking about belito as a neighborhood this morning But I mean deciding on the neighborhood that you want to stay in is now as easy as one two three simply log On to private property dot co dot zera and let them guide you through the right neighborhood. That's just perfect for your needs


Morning class, I'm Wilkem from Wilkem Art School and I'd like to introduce you to this video on Impressionistic Seascapes. It's a three-part video for absolute beginners using very simple instructions, a real step-by-step guide. We look at techniques to deal with watercolour and more impasto oil painting techniques and how acrylics fits in between the two. We'll be starting off just with two colours, burnt umber and ultramarine blue, and showing you how important it can be to get a real grounding in your painting, a real tonal range, so you can start to judge everything from that initial setup. The second video will show you how to get more blend in your acrylics to get clouds that really look really cloud-like. And we'll look at how important it is to have that underlying classical painting technique, so when you add that real punch of bright vibrancy of colour, all of a sudden your painting just comes together, it seems in an instant, but all the work we've done building up to that stage is where the real skill and the real technique of learning how to paint an acrylics comes from. The final video we'll look at using a fuller palette, fuller range of colours, and how you can get more variety and tones in your painting. So in the painting we'll look at how you can build up thin layers of paint in the foreground, get a reflection of water, using thick room past stone colours on top of that. How you can get a really nice smooth blend in your sky to really make it feel like it goes into the distance. And how you can use optical mixing in glazes to bring forward areas of warm colour, bringing your eye forward, and then having a pool of blues in the background, sending your eye deep into the distance. This could be really effective in your painting, and we use different brushes, but only two brushes for the entire painting, a round brush and a fillable brush. This brush that we use is usually traditionally used for oil painting, but I want to show you how that when you're first starting, the brush isn't as important as you might think. It's more just getting used to working with the pigment, working it very thinly and then thickly, and having the two together so well with the acrylics. All interlinks, they all work together, and for anyone that's been wondering how they can get on with the acrylics, and want to use it in a more painterly style, this is the perfect starting point. So let's go on a painting journey together. Grab a broom, grab a couple of paints, that's all we need. Two colours, two brushes, it couldn't be simpler, and we can really get you starting the acrylic. That's often the biggest stumbling block that you just don't get going with it. And I think that we're really surprised at the quality of painting that you can produce just by following this simple guide.