Hello and welcome back to another Autie Time livestream. How are you guys doing today? We're back for another Autism Q&A. I'm a little bit late, so apologies for that. But it is good to be back after a week of trying to get back on track with things. Things have been very difficult, not going to lie. I've been trying to get back to producing posts, producing videos, trying to sort out my podcast situation. There's been a lot of things that I've been trying to do and a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, dips in mood, as expected, with trying to get up back to the usual place that I am. But we are making some progress and in other areas, not so much in terms of my dieting. This week's been a bit of a throw-to-the-wind kind of situation, but I'm going to get back on it, I think. Today, I'm not going to wait until Monday to be a cheeky boy. I'm actually going to be starting today. I'm just going to stop eating rubbish. Hello, Mr Austin.  Wow. Thank you so much, dude. It's good to see you. How are you doing? Hello, Jack the lad. How are you doing? Joshua G says we're back, hoping we are all doing well and staying hydrated with some water, indeed. We've got our weekly hydration reminder. If you haven't been on one of these streams before, this is basically an opportunity to ask any questions about autism, about mental health, about self-improvement, fitness, relationships, anything like that. If you have any questions, please go for it. Austin says my diet has been way too much junk food this week, not enough protein. I have been okay with the protein section of things. I've just been adding on a bunch of junk onto it. Indeed, just let me know when you're going to be in the UK. We'll organise the session. That would be great. Kyoto Katnip asks, hi, I had a quick question. Is defensiveness and autism correlated? I assume you're not talking about like the Yu-Gi-Oh! stat of defence or like a game. I know what you're talking about. In terms of relationships, is that what you're meaning or just in general in terms of talking or communicating with autistic people? Let me know. I think in terms of defensiveness, I feel like a lot of the autistic people that I know and also I see this in myself, is that my communication style aligns very closely to the idea of debating somebody. I have in time become a little bit more trait-agreable to a point where I'm not so confrontational in how I feel about things. But in an actual just general conversations, I do find that I do like to not play devil's advocate, but I do like to give my honest kind of direct thoughts on something. No matter what someone's said to me really. Defensiveness in terms of friendships, any type of relationship that you might have with somebody. I think to some degree, there could be elements of pathological demand avoidance that are involved there. It could be with autistic people, which could point to perhaps being a bit more defensive than usual. And also just paying a little bit of lip service to the experiences that we have during life. Quite often we do experience a lot of negative experiences during school, particularly high school, secondary school, whatever you want to call it.  It's definitely something that I've experienced when I was a bit younger going through my early 20s. Something that I went the other way on and become the opposite and then had to kind of like readjust and like find the middle ground. But I suppose so, maybe to some degree it might be somewhat correlated. I don't think every single autistic person is inherently defensive. It could just be something that naturally occurs due to our experiences, kind of like a defense mechanism. Joshua G bought us a couple of badges. Thank you very much for that. You've done that for the past last three live streams. Thank you so much, man, for supporting the stream. Wow. Yes. So defensiveness with answer that question. Do you guys have any other questions about autism, dating relationships, mental health? Hit me. Hit me. Thanks for responding. Much appreciated. No worries at all. No worries at all. Yeah, I do have a, I have been playing with like trying to use stream elements on that very, very badly. Because I think one of the last live stream sessions that I did, I did have the like YouTube chat in the corner, but it was just cut off and it looked really rubbish. So I just got rid of it. So I'll have to take another look at that at some point. I don't know if you've got much experience with that, Austin. Might be able to give me some pointers. Ria Ranka 20 asks how to avoid timelessness. Timelessness. I think I have an idea of what you're asking me about. I'm going to Google it just so that I'm completely sure unless you want to fill me in. Timelessness is the quality of not changing as the years go past or as fashion changers. Interesting.  Like, I don't know if it's, it could, I suppose it could be used in the sense of like things to do with like fashion or the way that you interact with people. You know, perhaps you're not adhering to as many like social norms. You might not really care much about like the social norms about like fashion and how you dress and the things that you like, which I suppose could be seen as a positive trait. It does seem like a positive trait to me. If it's to do with progression in terms of like improving ourselves as human beings, then, you know, I think it's always important to try and grow and change over time. Chad the light says, do you feel that being autistic encourages you to grow as a person? I lost my first romantic person this year because I didn't feel I knew how to do it. But I've gotten on to grow myself so much. I think any hardships that we go through, that we process and try and move past always, it can come with some positive changes in us. Equally, if we don't process it very well and we feel very emotional about it for a long period of time, it can also kind of go the other way. I wouldn't say that being autistic necessarily does like will influence a person that way, but we definitely do experience more negative things in life. And also we tend to try and understand things a little bit better, like cognitively, like not necessarily just taking things as they are and how they make us feel, perhaps being a little bit more kind of logical cerebral about how we understand what's happened to us in our life. So maybe it might kind of get us to kind of grow and change a little bit more. But equally, I do know some autistic people who are not like that. They would prefer just to say like, oh, you don't know and move on.  I wouldn't say that it's particularly like an autism thing. You can definitely relate to the defensiveness topic. Got landic warrior, nice free says, I am from Sweden and the gym. Interesting. How long have you been going to the gym for? Austin asks, do you think it can be hard for autistic people to understand when somebody is flirting with them? Realized somebody I knew and then it realized, you realize they were flirting with you. And you didn't feel the same towards them. I don't know. I feel like I can definitely, I can tell if someone wants to talk to me, you know, and I can tell when someone is kind of like taking the mic or like having fun with me. It has to be very, very obvious, like that someone is flirting with me for me to like go, okay, hey, that's the situation. And it really much depends on the environment as well because if it's like a one-to-one chat, it's probably, you know, a lot of your focus is on that person. It's probably a lot easier to tell. But if you are in an environment like a social gathering with lots of other people around, you may just be kind of hyper focused on trying to perform, not perform, but cope with that social situation and sort of deal with it. And you just kind of let stuff like that kind of pass for you. So I think it's very situational for me.  A lot of things are kind of like assumed indirect behaviors rather than kind of direct.  You make me feel funny, you know. That's the kind of the directness. The flirting is a lot indirect. So I would imagine that most autistic people and myself when I was a bit younger would have a really hard time trying to pick up on that. Autistic thought says, have you ever found it hard to not be taken advantage of in romantic connections? Is misreading people's intentions as good? When they aren't? I wouldn't say like, I think genuinely like we do sometimes have a tendency of taking people's direct communication very seriously, because I think direct communication offers a level of like certainty to things, which is why even though I'm aware of indirect communication and things of that nature, that I do prefer just to have direct communication with somebody because it's not comfortable. I don't feel certain about anything and what someone's trying to put across.  And so like for me, when I've been in situations like that, I've been looking for some semblance of certainty like what's going on here. Like what's happening? What are they thinking about? Why are they doing the things that they do? And so sometimes it can be quite difficult to be like, okay, they're saying this thing to me and it makes sense and it feels good to me to have that certainty around it, but is it true? And that's the bit that has taken me quite a while to get to the point where I can be like, I don't necessarily have to have certainty around this situation. It feels very much like it's not a good situation for me and just removing myself from it. I think that's what I meant because we have to work hard to understand life. We grow more, I think, than the average person maybe. Do I game at all? I do game. RuneScape, Pokemon Go, Apex, Overwatch at the moment. Mixed it a bit. It depends if I've got enough time. MiaMantry says, does anyone else find they are stopped from processing things by people telling us to just forget the past? I think it's something that I was talking about earlier actually. It's important to process things and it is also important to move on from things as well. One thing that I recommend anybody who is going through a difficult time with something is to set time aside to think about that thing. Try as hard as you want to distract yourself. Do things, get on with life. Everything like that. In terms of processing it and then give yourself some space to actually process it. You're splitting it up so you're allowing yourself to process how you feel, process what you think, etc. And then giving yourself the ability to move past things and keep progressing in life. There's a middle ground with that kind of thing, definitely. Hello, Nika. How are you doing? And hello, Ikra. How's it going? And Maria. Hello. I got Atlantic Warrior in 1983 so I've been going to the gym for many years but it's in recent years that I've really used the workout as my special interest in ways to socialise. Absolutely amazing. That is like the top reasons that I would suggest like any physical activity. Good for mental health, good interest, keeps you focused, allows you to see progression over a long period of time, allows you to get into a state where you feel a little bit more relaxed and open than you might usually be due to all the hormones and endorphins that go around from exercising, allowing you to socialise a little bit better with people. It's brilliant. It's good to hear that. Hello, Beholder. I am not doing too bad actually. Today has been a pretty good day. Although my brain is very much all over the place at the moment, I'm trying to get back to things. So we are. I'm on my way to getting back to usual business but it's taken some time. It's always difficult like returning after a burnout. You've got to transition into a whole different schedule and focus yourself and do the opposite of what you're trying to do when you're trying to recover from a burnout. So very interesting. Was your viewpoint on people with autism doing the driving test? Definitely do, if you can. It's a good thing to have. I don't drive. I have a driving licence. But I do drive because it takes way too much for my battery to do so and I can just get public transport. Tatum 95 says I excited today too, feeling tired. It's always a good feeling. I love feeling tired after a session. That is the best part. Finishing it and being like, oh, did a good job there. Well done. Sorry I didn't tie that as well, no worries. Mia says I have hyperfimesia. Hyperfimesia. So I can't just forget the past. But I think not forgetting can help us identify what the problem is and helps us spot patterns. Yeah, 100%. I think there's a difference between remembering things and processing things emotionally. Perhaps maybe 10 years ago, just not 10 years ago, about 5 years ago, just coming out of the high school systems not really processed everything emotionally, but it's really, really difficult for me to be like talking about things that I've experienced or difficult situations that I've been through without first slight processing how I react to it emotionally. You've got to understand things. I think that is a good part and also learning and things like that. But the emotional component can sometimes be difficult. It brings up a lot of negative emotions. So I'm going for life, you know. I did Reans game like at 12 and 13, me too. Joshua G asks are you staying hydrated, Thomas? No, I'm not. I know I'm being a bad person. I do have a bottle of Pepsi, but I always feel like shame. I always feel shame like coming onto these drinks and drinking like a two litre bottle of pop. It's very, very professional of me. But I might just have some. It's mostly because I don't like the executive function of going down like filling up a glass of water is like sometimes, you know, sometimes I'm like hyper focused on something. I'm doing some work. I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'll just bring like a two litre bottle and it'll last me like three days or something, you know. This stream as you can imagine is not sponsored by Pepsi. Mia Mantry says for me, distracting never works. I need to talk things out of people, but I was surrounded by a lot of toxic positivity. So for many years I couldn't process negative emotions. I see. No, I completely understand where you're coming from. It's good to validate, understand negative emotional experiences 100%. PM Ferrius says hello, Pedro, how you doing? Not been a great week for me, but still going on. Austin says I didn't get a license until 27, which is where in the rare in the U.S., but we don't have the best public transport. I mean, the public transport in the UK is definitely not like on point. It exists. It works to some degree. It's not very consistent now. For those wondering what hyperfymia is, it's a memory condition, meaning I can remember things as far back as childhood off than the exact date. I imagine that you're very good in terms of exam preparation then. Just read the entire textbook before an exam. Just remember everything. I don't know if that's how it works. It could be a long-term thing, I guess. Maybe stuff that's been stored in your long-term memory you can remember. Did you know that there's now a new flavour of Pepsi Max? I have seen that around. I think it's been around for quite a while, just maybe in different countries at different times. I remember in Thailand drinking Pepsi Max mango. It's definitely like my... I wouldn't say... It's definitely a safe food, but it's definitely a safe drink. PM Ferris says, Thomas, I just wondered on Instagram, did you see the video link I provided? I'm keen to know your thoughts on that video, which was about autism and bullying. What is it about? Is it a YouTube video? I might be able to approach that in one of my live streams at some point. If it's a good video to have a talking point on. Okay, what's it called? Let me find it. The World Stratostreamer or something. Okay, World Stratostreamer. Is this the story of Chibi? Is there... I mean, that's the only thing that really comes up, to be honest. Could you find it for me? So that I can probably talk about it on my live stream when I do one next. Well, if you can let me know what the video name is called. Yeah, it's the Chiba one. Okay. Okay, okay. World Saddest Speedrunner. I will save that for when we do another stream. Thank you very much for that, Pedro. Joshua G says, the gliders for us here in the UK are pretty good gliders. Along with the translink buses. Yeah, translink buses are good. I was in Thailand for a year. It was part of my industrial experience course at University of Manchester. Went into the mosquitoes, which is good. Very fun. Pedro says, I watched it and I have mixed feelings. I was really keen to get your narration on it. Well, we will do at some point. Maybe not in this stream because I don't really do the video reaction stuff here. But we could do it another time. Yeah, that sounds good. That's very good. Oh, man. I've been making a lot of progress in terms of my weight loss. And I can just see my face and how it's changed after a week of just not being as on it as it was. It's very depressing, but I did give myself that week as a break because as you may know, usually the best course of action in terms of losing weight is a long-term thing. And it's not all this sprint that a lot of people make it out to be. It's usually best done over time. It's still very difficult. It's still very difficult. Give myself a break. What are your thoughts on time blindness? I think I've already talked about that earlier. Would you be able to explain to me a little bit more about what you mean in terms of time blindness? Timelessness, sorry. Oh, time blindness. Oh, no, we talked about timelessness. Time blindness. I think there's a lot to do with executive functioning if I'm not wrong. Something that I experienced to some degree. I think it's a lot to do with hyper-focus. You get really focused in on something we know from just studies on humans that when you are focused on something, you get into what's called a flow state where other factors, other things that are going on around you, including time, just seem to pass very quickly and you just work and work and work. Because of my predilection to get focused on something, get hyper-focused, I do experience a lot of that, but not always. I think if it's something that I've done quite a lot like going to the gym, I can usually tell based on the time that I've been in and what exercise I'm doing, what the time is, weirdly. Do you feel like learning difficulties like dyslexia are further an issue if someone has autism or can dyslexia in relation to autism have challenges? Maybe to some degree, because if you imagine as just as myself as an autistic kid when I was younger, communication was quite hard in terms of social communication, actual verbal communication wasn't too hard. But if I imagine if I struggled with verbal communication and also struggled with written communication, that would be exacerbated to some degree. I wouldn't be able to read the books and learn the words as easy as I did. So I imagine if there's dual struggle with verbal and struggle with written communication, it's obviously going to be an issue. I think there is also some benefits that some people show from being dyslexic. It's considered to be a neurodiversity. So dyslexia for anyone who doesn't know is the longest difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent reading and spelling. Let's have a look at some of the benefits. I have seen some stuff. People with dyslexia have the ability to see how things connect to form complex systems and similar to identify similarities among multiple things. So like lateral thinking, I think that is something that is shown with autism as well. And show strengths, particularly in fields around science and mathematics where pictures are key. Interesting. There's a lot of stuff to do with like puzzle solving, spatial, sometimes around conversation as well with dyslexia. I suppose there are some kind of benefits, but I don't know in terms of relation to autism. It would definitely be something to have a little bit more of a look into. You're very welcome, Ria. Melissa says, hi, my son was able to start school three weeks ago. He loves this. That is very good to hear. Thank God. How old are they? If you don't mind me asking. I'm not too bad. Thank you. Not perhaps as on point in terms of nutrition and exercise as it was last week, but definitely working a little bit more than usual. So I'm quite happy with my progress so far. 100%. I just want to say, just while we're a little bit of a stall on the questions. If you do have any questions that you want to ask, which is autism, relationship, fitness, self-improvement, mental health related, please feel very well. You can ask personal things as well if you want to ask them. Ask away. This is the time to do so. And if you do enjoy these live streams and you want me to continue doing them, you can support on Instagram with the badges or on YouTube. You can support by being a member for 99 p.m. or you can use the Super Chat if you want. Indeed. Freddie's tiny design says I study design only one student was not dyslexic. That's very interesting. He's 14. He might have something called RFID. ED 41% of autistic people have it. Avoidant restriction. Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. So I only have concepts like safe foods and things like that. He lost weight, but I believe in him gastroenteritis will help. Gastroenteritis will help. Thank you very much, Mr. Austin Henshaw, for gifting another 40-odd podcast membership to Rev. and Beazey. Make sure to say thanks to Austin if you can, Rev. and Beazey. Very much appreciated, Austin. And also Mr. Joshuji, buying another badge, which appreciates. Hi. So Pedro says, prior to my autism diagnosis for a long time, I obviously blamed all my problems on dyslexia. I didn't know enough at that point. I, in fact, only found out I was dyslexic when questioned about getting extra time in exams. I wasn't taught I was dyslexic until after my GCSEs. Interesting. Well, I got extra time during my exams. I didn't have dyslexia. I don't have dyslexia. I think there's a lot to do with processing things. And I think sometimes, particularly when you're autistic, some of the way that the examiners would exam questions can be very difficult for us to understand exactly what they're asking us to do.    But no, my approach to exams and it's always been my approach to exams. I see a word. I'm like, OK, this word, I know this word in different areas. So I'm going to furiously write for as long as I can about this particular word. It doesn't always work. Sometimes it does work. How's your mental health doing right now? Hope it's much better than it has been the past few weeks. It's been very up and down, if I'm being honest, like very, very up and down, actually. Some days I feel quite calm and collected and confident and feel like I'm getting on to my usual kind of resting state. Other times, complete opposite. You know, everything's very overwhelming, panic attacks, all that kind of stuff. So mixed bag, I'm going to say this week, 100%. Supposedly 50% ish of employees at NASA is very interesting. That is very interesting. Melissa said that GL doctors, our guests are into writers doctors. OK. Sorry, I spelled it wrong. Yeah, we're about him. He's like a bird. He will get the swallow test on Monday. I'm sorry to hear about that. It's not something that I've really experienced, but I know that from my upbringing, I was always kind of pushed to try new things a lot of the time, which I think has been a good thing overall for me. I have been pushed to get into different social groups, get into different sports, try different foods. All of the things that I tried, I didn't particularly like, but some things I did. And it's been good for me. I've always had kind of the attitude that's been kind of drilled into me by my mom when I was growing up, that you give things a go. If you don't like them, you can always just stop or go somewhere else or try something else or do it differently. It's always that kind of like, you try and if it doesn't go so well, that's fine. I think that's a really good way to approach things in life. Vitamins says, hi Thomas, you are the cutest. Thank you very much. Much appreciated. Thank you, Freddie's tiny design for buying free badges. Thank you so much. Much appreciated. Really does encourage me to do more of these streams, so always very, very happy. It's nice to try it to you guys. I really enjoy doing these live streams, honestly. It's very much a part of my week now, part of my routine. When is the next podcast episode coming? I am trying my very best to get back on top of things. I have actually had a meeting recently with someone who might be helping me out with the work that I'm doing. So someone who's going to support me in terms of like emails and organizing things and all of that stuff. So hopefully I will be back to it soon. I will try. I'm trying my best. Melissa says, thank you. Just pray for him please, of course. Freddie says, hi, hello from Norway. Hello. It's nice to have you on here and thank you for the badges again. Much appreciated.  And so that's why I know what not to do. I think it's one of those things I thought for a long time that I didn't like spicy food. Because I didn't like some of the spices that were used in like Indian cuisine. When I went to Thailand, as you realize that, oh actually, I really like Thai curries. And I started to enjoy spice a lot more. So I think that over time, the way that disgust works in our human brains is that disgust is there to stop us from getting poisoned, from getting ill. Anything that we find disgusting, we usually want to avoid. But one thing that I found particularly like with my experience of eating mushrooms, I hated mushrooms. I made myself eat mushrooms for like now and again for like a month. Over time, I actually started to enjoy them. I can't say that for every single thing. Like tomatoes have always just been very difficult for me to get my head around to actually like eating on a consistent basis. Yeah, so some things that has worked with. And I say it's the same for a lot of things in life, you know, getting used to it.  And you're probably right to think that way.  You start to see things as good, you know. Vitamin says, what's your opinion on wellness, especially massages? Is this something that helps you? Massages are actually one of, like, the biggest helps for me. Like, out of everything. Like, I think it's something to do with the deep pressure. I find deep pressure extremely relaxing and a lot of people find massages quite relaxing anyway. It's just kind of a bit more amplified for me. And if I've been for like a full body massage, I have not done one of those in a long time. I probably should and really had like a deep tissue massage. It's almost like it just erases my anxiety for like probably a couple of weeks, probably a week. That's a couple of weeks is a little bit too far of a stretch, but definitely for a week. Solidarity, I was forced fed at school and developed an aversion for a lot of vegetables. My parents worried about me in the following years, but it was only when I, they took the pressure off and I was able to change my diet and my health improved as a result. Behaviorism has always had the opposite effects on me. Interesting. Melissa says, oh, I love spicy foods. My son loves spicy everything. Very interesting. So they have the half of it, but they love spicy food as well. That's very interesting. Freddie tiny design says, I had to set the table until I finished dinner, even if I sat there all night. I've had stuff like that. My dad's dad was like that as well. He would always make him eat like Brussels sprouts or broccoli or like some it something like that. And the thing is with that kind of stuff, there is an actual chemical that's involved in that. I think it's something to do with sulfur that some people can taste and some people can't. And the people who can't taste it tend to enjoy a bit more. I think there's also one to do with like bitterness just in general towards vegetables. Some people can taste the bitterness and some people can't. It's very interesting. And some people who can taste it weirdly become obsessed with it because they like the negative experience to some degree. It's kind of a similar thing to spice. Where in it's just, you know, you like the bitterness of it. And I think I fall into that category to some degree. Do you like dots pepper? I do. It's not usually my go to because it tends to be like really, really, really fizzy. But I do like a dot pepper. Mortal Scheme Tom says, hi, I have no idea how crucial you have no idea how crucial you've been to my mental health. And 24 and just came to my autism realization this year. And one of the darkest points in my life, learning about what is from autism and is not just me going clinically insane. I've been able to cope much better. And I'm finding hope again for handling life, especially your interview with Neff and the validation that it gave me. Not trying to overshare, but just want you to know how important what you do is. Thank you for everything. Well, thank you very much for that. That really does like don't really want my heart a lot. I'm really glad that I've been able to be a positive impact in your life in that way. Thank you for that. It's been really that's really nice things.  Oh, what is what is caloula? Oh, is that a is that an alcoholic beverage? Caloula spice. Not sure. Do you like coffee, Thomas? If so, what is your favorite type of coffee? I like ice. I use it go for like an ice latte with an extra shot of coffee.  But quite, I really like the sensation of it being a bit thicker that you get with milk. So I wish I could have something that thickens the drink without like making it milky. But I go for that. I go for ice. I say have an extra shot just to get like more of the taste. Have you got to try the new flavor of tango? It's like some paradise flavor. I think I have not. I will have to. I hope it comes in a zero sugar version because I don't tend to drink a lot of like full sugar things at the moment. Both for teeth and also for calorie intake for body building. Trying to lean down. Maltel says, and for now a classic American debate. How do you feel about pineapple and pizza? I don't mind pineapple and pizza. I have no feelings either way. It is an item. I'm the same with mom. I don't have any feelings either way. I can see why people don't like it and why some people like it. I would like to add perhaps an even more controversial statement is that I don't particularly like pizza. I think that's likely to provide a lot more controversy. I do like some pizzas, not going to lie. Sometimes. It really depends on the type though and how I'm feeling. Speaking of dinner, it's ready and I have to go now. Thank you. Thank you very much, Freddie. Hopefully see you again on a future stream. Calula is how we say it. It's okay. It's a Mexican spice. Oh, I have not heard of that before. Actual sweeteners can actually be worse for us. Yeah, I think that it's it's one of those things, you know, I think you can get more negative health effects by rotting like rotting your teeth and. gaining an unhealthy amount of weight, I think. I think there have been some studies that have shown that like artificial sweeteners deep reduce like an insulin response, which is quite interesting because of the way that our body. When we taste sweetness, though, our body produces like the the enzymes that are required to break down them. So I wouldn't say that they are better or worse. I think they're just different, you know, and there's been a lot of research into like the negative effects of sweeteners. I think I'm pretty clear on like the understanding of sweetness. It's not something that I intend to like engage myself in all the time. But if I have the option, I will definitely opt for that. Me too. Same with pizza. It's okay. It's it's it's it's dough with stuff on top. It depends what the stuff on top is. I also I really like if I go to a restaurant and it's like a pizza restaurant. Of course I will get a pizza. But if I have the option between a pizza and everything else. Probably going to be something else. More says to be honest, I don't care for what people answer. I just like seeing how passionate someone is about their answer. Fair enough. Some people have gone very in depth in their opinion. It's I think my my thing is is that it's a subjective thing. You know, I think with anything that is subjective, it's like you can you can apply as much fact and logic on how you feel about something. As much as you like. It doesn't necessarily like make it more or less of an OK feeling to have about it. Interesting. I find it quite funny as well. I'm also not always the biggest fan of chocolate. I go in waves of it. Sometimes I just don't want anything to do with it. Sometimes I'm like, give it all to me. I will eat it all. 100%. So we have about 12 minutes left of the stream. I feel like things are winding down quite a bit in terms of like people on the show, which is cool. I am feeling probably very tired and I'm not coming across in the best way possible, which is also cool. If you guys have any more questions that you would like to ask me, please go ahead. Anything to do with autism, mental health, dating, relationships, fitness, personal questions, go for it. This is a place to do it because I'm not always the best with like comments and, you know, things like that. So go for it. Well, we all have a tired day. 100%. I mean, I'm not even feeling tired today. I think I'm just like, it's not feeling on form. Do you like dark chocolate? I do. It's because it's the bitterness. The bitterness is there. Is the key thing there? Oh, it seems like my connection has paused. Is it back now? Is it rotating? Yeah. Muttal Sugimi says, I just got off an overnight shift. It's still before 11 a.m. here. It's a perfect timing for me to sleep too. Interesting. I've heard a lot of people say that my voice is, I feel like it could go one or two ways. It's either received as very monotone and boring or it's quite relaxing. The bitterness once tastes like burnt wood and dirt. Interesting. Yes, coffee definitely does offer that. And so I think sometimes chocolate can as well. I do. I do like it.  There is specific form of a cow, I think, as that's kind of a big health side of things. It's very interesting. What's your favorite dark chocolate brand? I don't have a favorite really. I think dark chocolate can be good. It can be bad. It depends. I don't like, I'm definitely not a live to eat kind of person. I'm more of an eat to live person. I don't really find that food really ties in my life very much. Not say that I don't have issues of like overeating or under eating and stuff. You know, I definitely do feel hunger. It's just that, you know, it doesn't, I don't really mind too much about why I eat, I guess. As long as it's like sugary. The sugar definitely is a factor that's involved in that. Used to sneak your mom's dark bakers chocolate. Isn't that like bad for your stomach? I mean, you're supposed to like use the dark chocolate to like make some and these be cooked. I don't know much about cooking. I would strongly recommend Lavaza coffee beans. I will check it out. Hello Thomas. Happy to see you healthy. Thank you very much. Happy to see you too. Have you played Starfield? No, but my brother has been going on about it a lot. I think he's been playing it quite a bit recently. Just stated, I think I'm very much. I'm very selective with games that I play. Like I pretty much like to play the same things. And so adding like the amount of games that I play just makes me feel uncomfortable. It's why I play Reanscape really because it's like an MMO. It's like I can just play that for as long as I want and do different things on there. I like to have all of my progress with games condensed into one game. That makes sense. Or rather just be like pretty bog standard at everything that I do. Everything that I play rather. Dark chocolate is good for you, isn't it? I think that there is an aspect to dark chocolate, which is the alfionine. Not the alfionine. I always do that. L-Triptophan, which is a precursor to serotonin. Serotonin in the brain, which can be quite interesting. I think it's converted into 5-HTP and then into serotonin. So I have supplements like that as well. I love my dark chocolate. You eat less, savor it more. I think my auto-interest has bailed and run from me again. What do you mean? Mia says I don't drink coffee, but I liked those Lavazza coffee adverts from 2017. They're on YouTube. The song is a parody of the Temptations, My Girl. Interesting. Hard to find a good man my age range, maybe. I'm sorry to hear that. No worries, Pedro. It's nice to see you. I think we're probably going to wrap up probably like five minutes. Anyway, so it's good to have you on, Pedro. Those are the ones I use in my house and they're amazing. I will try them. Dot Stacey says, hi, Thomas. What kind of content will you be writing about this week? I appreciate your posts. I think I'm very much trying to get to a point where I'm creating stuff and I'm on track of things because at the moment I am a little bit all over the place in terms of sorting my life out as well. It's just general content creation, whether it's like podcasts or YouTube or Instagram. So we will see. I'm going to try and get stuff out. Possibly not next week. I don't think it's going to be next week. It's probably going to be the week after. But if you are wanting to stay up to date with more of the stuff that I do, you can go over onto YouTube. Check out some of the streaming that I do. Cover a lot of interesting topics over on YouTube. You tend to frighten most. I'm a handful. Righty. It has been absolute pleasure peeps. I'm probably going to wrap things up now. Try and get myself to the gym because I haven't been in a couple of days and it is eating my sanity away. I need to go in and get some good flowing positive endorphins. Wish you had a chill night. Me too. I like your earphones. Lime is my colour. They're a total beach headphone. They're supposed to be used with Xbox remotes. They're quite good actually. Crush the work out. I will try my very best. All righty. Take care peeps.


Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of the SITREP. And my guest tonight is Dan from eBeforeI Transformer Reviews. Dan, how are you doing this evening? Hey, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on. These look like they've been a ton of fun and I'm glad to be here. Oh, they are. You're going to be part of a select few now and part of a large collective that this has grown into. And of course, this is all the fault of Matt Baldwin, Hale Hasbro Reviews. He got me on the interview show one day and I thought, hey, I can do that and here we are. Yeah, we can actually do the same thing. We have cameras. Exactly. That was YouTube's biggest mistake. We'll give it to everybody. Yeah, the world. You gotta be careful. My little one's always on YouTube and every now and then he clicks the wrong thing. Yes.  I was watching Barney and stuff. Don't worry about that Deadpool red band trailer I was watching. My son really likes Alice Cooper now. So he's been watching some interesting Alice Cooper videos. I'm bringing him up right now. Congratulations. His favorite song is The Man Behind the Mask from Friday the 13th, Part 6. You are doing it right, brother. Let me real quick for all of our viewers. All my viewers know how the sit rep is, but this is for Dan's. I have a series of 10 questions that I'm going to ask Dan five questions regarding transformers and five questions regarding him as a YouTuber. So Dan, if you are ready to rock and roll, we will begin this. Let's do this. All right. Question number one, what is the appeal of transformers for you? Well, I'm a big man child is really what that boils down to, you know, so I'm all right, I'll age myself here. So in 1984 I was 10 years old and I was playing. Yeah, I was playing with toys like everybody else. I had Star Wars was my big thing. I think back then. But you know, I always thought robots were cool, right? Who didn't? But the moment that I saw on my television, a truck turned into a robot and a robot turned into a truck and vice versa. That just really got my imagination going. And I went through this diehard love affair of transformers. I left the fandom for years and years. And when my son was born, it sparked something like, oh, maybe I could get him into the toys that I liked as a kid. And I completely fell in love with the whole thing all over again. But that's really where it started for me is a 10 year old imagination and robots that could turn into things. And isn't it amazing that here we are 35 years later still with the same toys we had as a kid? Granted, they're much better now, but it's still the same thing. It's unbelievable. I wish I still had a lot of my old original toys. My son took care of a lot of those, by the way. They are in pieces all around the house. I have trained Dylan since the day he could walk when you come into this office.  I'm going to put the link to that video right here. It's so funny. He's two years old. He's trying to name the figures. And to this day he will not mess with anything unless he asks first. I'll tell you why you're raising him right. You got to put the gloves on and do not touch for fear of losing. Of course what's bad when you're a toy collector father like Dylan's into Imaginext. And Imaginext comes with all these pieces and parts. Here I am all paranoid. Well let daddy take all these pieces and parts and I'm going to ziplock bag these up. You can play with them when you're 10. Right. Exactly. Alright. Question number two. Aside from G1, which is always the number one answer, what is your favorite Transformers fiction? Wow. So you know when I got back into it I mentioned that I'd left it for many years and that is true. I was gone for a long time. About the time that the Bay movies started to come out is when I started getting pulled back in. I want to say for me it would either be Transformers animated or really even Transformers Prime. Because when that was airing on television both of my kids were real small. And I'll tell you what, pulling at the hard strings when you can spend weekend mornings with your kids watching something that I grew up loving was really just unbelievable. And I hear Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and that iconic boom voice bought me right back into that mix. So you know maybe not everybody's answer but I'd say maybe a tie for me between Prime and animated which I just thought was great. I need to watch that again. I have an app on my PlayStation that has the entire seasons. I kind of skipped around. I know pretty much like all the Transformer cartoons when you first start them they're very kiddified until they go along and they realize who's watching it. So the kids aren't paying attention. It's their 30 year old dad's. I need to watch those. I remember specifically in animated I think it was the end of the first season when Megatron came back and how violent that show was. I remember Blitzwing coming down freezing ratchets hand and just snapping it off and you got like robot bones sticking out. I'm like yeah okay this is pretty cool.  I only have one animated figure and it's Megatron. His big leader helicopter mode. I did like that one. And I only have a few of the animated figures myself. I just and I think I got back into Prime first or got into Prime first and then I went back and discovered animated and I just that was part of that whole period where I fell back in love with the franchise as a whole. And so that just one of those things for me more than a collector just as a fan of Transformers. Did you ever do any of the comics? I remember Dreamwave was coming out in 2004 or no that was even earlier 2001. Because I remember after 9-11 happened I was on a guard duty post at an armory and I picked up Wizard Magazine. I think it was the name of the magazine with the comics and there was a big spread on the return of the Transformers. So I remember that because in 2004 when I was in Iraq I was ordering the graphic novels from Dreamwave. So that really really sparked my interest in G1. That sounds cool. I never got into the comics myself. I was just never a comic guy. And so for me it was all about the toys and TV and still to this day you know I've never really been a big comic person. If you've seen any of my reviews you know that I'm a big Marvel G1 fan. That was my G1 because out in the boonies where I live we didn't get cable TV. The only chance I got to watch the Transformers was if I visited my grandparents in town or we went to the DVD, not DVD, VHS. Really dating ourselves now. Not only did I rent the VHS tape I had to rent the player. Right. Rent the player and then the whole beta VHS fight and then we can't even get into that. You get so mad and see someone made it you couldn't find on VHS. That's right. See I told you we go off the rails easy on this. For sure. Question number four. We're on number three. We haven't gotten any far at all. Yeah it's going to be a long night kids. I dig it. Question number three. Do you have a favorite figure or grail? This is the one toy you will never let go of. This is again a lot of with Transformers. I pull into things that happened in my life during the time. It's real nostalgic for me versus is it really that great of a figure. The one thing for me I went through and let's get it all out here. I got a divorce years ago. One of the first things I did when I moved into my single house all over again was I said you know what there's nothing stopping me from getting MP 10. It's just I'm just going to do it. And so I got my my Optimus Prime. He's sitting on my desk right now and I know there are different versions. There's a million versions of MP like primes and a brand new official to car MP prime coming out. But this guy right here man is a little dusty right now because the move but this guy really is one of those figures. It was more about what it represented. It was about me being in a place where I was happy and you know I still have my kids. I still have this collection that's growing and it's it's meaningful for me so that one's never going anywhere. Nice. That's me and MP01. I mean you can't see him right now. He's over there holding that American flag. He's been my been my icon. My mascot for this whole channel. My wife bought him for me while I was in Iraq. So he's one of the ones who's not going anywhere just because of that. Of course that's the first masterpiece figure. I think he was the 2004 20th anniversary. I think I can't. Can you believe. Can you believe how fast this time is flying to. No kidding. It seems like that figure came out two years ago. And now it's a masterpiece. Everything. I have to write. OK. Yeah. I've got my collection continues to grow. Although I'll tell you how we're getting off the rails a little bit more here too. But that's fine. That's fine. With masterpiece figures like I started going down that rabbit hole and it's it's it's an expensive hobby. But I'll tell you as the as the just general retail figures have gotten better and better. I found that myself as a collector is kind of steering away from that. There was a period where anything MP I wanted to zap it up. And now I'm kind of going to what's up my local target. I might pick that up instead. See at least you have a target. I have one Wal-Mart. And then 30 minutes away is another Wal-Mart. 30 minutes in the other direction is another Wal-Mart. My closest target is two hours away. I'm a big Amazon guy. Yeah. I'm just going to say let them bring it to you. Exactly. You just got to wait for those scalper prices to go down. It's ridiculous. Yeah. All right. Speaking of scalper prices. What figure is your white whale your most wanted toy? So for me it's going to go back to some G1 stuff because it's not about, you know, what is this big expensive thing that I don't have that I want in my collection. But it's some of the things that I missed out on as a kid that I always wanted in. You know, time just flies by fast and you miss out on things. So, you know, like a G1 trail breaker I never had. I had read alert but I didn't have a side swipe. So little things like that, that if they end up being reissued at a reasonable price, that will melt my heart a little bit and bring those into my collection. So nothing big, nothing fancy. Just some of the older figures that I missed out on as a kid that, you know, would bring me some joy now. Nice. When I first started collecting G1 again, the latter years is what I went after first because growing up I had some of the early. I had 84, 85, 86, some of 86. I was just getting out of them then. But you know, like the headmasters, I never had any of these as a kid. So, man, these are the first ones I tracked down. Yeah, it was the same boat. I never had any of those either. And they're awesome. I got to get these guys reviewed. That's part of the re... Well, we'll get into this later too. See, that trains just derailin' constantly. Okay, question number five. This is our last Transformer question. What is your favorite Transformer character? Not toy character. Any fiction, any media. So, who doesn't like a good, just bad guy that's a little bit shady, you know, that's a little bit of a backstab or Starscream for me? Maybe that's a common answer, but... I think you're the first Starscream answer. Really? When I heard his nasally voice on the cartoon when it first came out, I just, it hooked me.  And it's funny how he's been portrayed different voices, different looks throughout the years, but that core is still there and I love that. Yeah, I'd say Starscream for me all the way. And I remember how cool it was as a kid when you watched Transformers and there's Starscream, and then G.I. Joe came on, you're like, wait a minute. Yeah, that sounds similar. Can't be the same character. The Starscream version I hated the most, other than the Bayverse version, was when Transformers Prime came out and they first introduced Starscream, I'm like, man, he looks horrible, boy, that character grew on you so much. Oh, for sure. Another series I need to rewatch, it's been a long time. I've got them all in Blu-ray.   Somehow he survives, even if he turns into a ghost because he's killed, you know, it's spoilers. It was really shocked when he appeared in Beast Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was awesome. That's the one character I only have. I have classic Starscream, the Popeye-Armed Starscream from Power of the Primes, and 1G1 and the G1 Walmart Reissue, and that's it. Yeah, yeah. I had a lot more, but there was a great Transformers Purge of 2011 where I got rid of a bunch of stuff, but it came back. I used to have every line. I mean, when I got back from Iraq, I was doing Armada, Energon. Right, right. Every Predacon, every Predacon for Beast Wars, and then when I decided I just want to focus on G1, tone it down a little bit, of course then you realize how expensive G1 is. Right. I've got every Generation 1 American release Decepticons. I'm still working on the Autobots. Wow, congratulations. That's impressive. I tagged my last one. I think it was early fall. It was a MicroMasters set that I realized I didn't have. Right. Found it on a Facebook group of all places. I can't think about all the money spent over the years on this stuff. I don't want to. No, no, we'll change the subject. You think about the money you spent and all it's doing is sitting. Yeah, yeah. Hey, you got it dusted every so often, but yeah. Yeah. Give them a shot. The money we put in plastic and candier is ridiculous. Oh, it's nice to see. I don't have any of those nice detox shelves. Mine's all out there. Oh, but boy, do you have quite the collection and display. They look great. You know, it's all about how does it look. When you walk into that room, you feel that pull. You have to. When I walk into this room, I see a couple. My wife designed this. Yeah, you got a keeper there. Hang on to that one. Right. Well, that is it for the Transformers questions. Now we're going to get to know you as a YouTuber. And you've been doing this for quite a while, haven't you? I have. And I've actually slowed things down a bit recently. But, you know, like I always say when I do reviews is I'm going to be back. Sometimes life gets in the way. And my problem is I have too many hobbies, just way too many hobbies. But I do have a passion for showing toys on YouTube. I love it. And so I'm always going to come back. And at some point soon, I do plan on picking the channel back up and just go and add a full steam again. Well, that pretty much leads right in.  You know, we I talked about earlier how when my son was born and maybe we talked about some of this before the show started too. But when my son was born, it bought that thing back in me that said, you know, well, hey, maybe I could get him a transformer. You know, I had all these toys as a kid. I love them. I played with them and my parents would look at me like, how do you do that so fast? And I'm like, well, it's just a turn of the waste in this.  So I thought that's where they still were. Right. When when the big movies came out and I'm walking through Target with my son who at that point was a little baby, but I convinced myself that, hey, you know what, I'm going to get him a transformer for me. So we're going through and I find, you know, a bumblebee or something. And I think it was one of the bumblebees, but I picked this toy up and I was so freaking excited just to show him how you could make a robot into a car and vice versa. And I rip it out of the box and I get the instructions and I remember that the instructions back in my day were, you know, three or four little turns of a page. And then I'm unraveling and unraveling and this thing is huge. And I'm like, what in the heck is going on here? So I start to transform it and I'm like, oh my God, I'm old now. I can't figure this out. Like I could not put bumblebee into a car or a car into bumblebee. So I didn't know what to do. I could not do it. And so I went to YouTube and I started typing things in like bumblebee, transformers, put in the year. And I found a video reviewer and I think it was Pia's reviews that I found first. But I found this guy, you know, at that time, grainy footage, but it was hands in front of a camera going through the motions. And I did it and I figured out how to do it. So that repeated a handful of times. And then just the light bulb goes off like it does. I think with most reviewers is, you know what? I have a passion for toys. I'm getting back into transformers. I need a really good excuse at home to buy these things as an adult. I'll be a YouTube reviewer. So if anybody questions, why does this grown man have toys? Well, but I do it for YouTube. And that was, you know, that was a thing for a while and I just fell in love with it. I absolutely loved showing off figures. And what's funny, you don't get those odd looks. I mean, I just got my Patriot Prime gear. So I was wearing it around the flea market. There are days people are looking at me. What's that? Well, I do toy reviews of vintage transformers on YouTube. Oh, you get some people give you a weird look, but then others are very interested in your surprise.  Right. Right. So thank you. Some of the early people out there like the Pia's of the world and emgos and those guys that drew me in from the beginning. Good old collector 75. He was my go to. He was always. Yeah, I remember. He's like every any G1. He had it. If I was interested in buying it. Let's see what Graham has to say. And boy, the day he subscribed to my channel, I was just like, oh, it was like meet Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right. Right. All right. Where are we at now? Question number seven. What keeps inspiring you to get in front of the camera? I know you said you took a little bit of a break, but man, when I first discovered you, I loved your videos, man. You were just so you were right there. I was really entertaining. Oh, I jumped right on your Facebook page, too. Yeah. Yeah.  You know, I have been with the same company. I'm in IT and I've been working there for 27 years now. So for a real long time, I'm a musician. I play bass. I am a ghost hunter and I founded or co-founded a ghost hunting team here in Atlanta. That's part of TAPS family and we were busy doing cases with that. Yeah. We'll get into a whole other conversation about that. So I just have a lot going on. And when that starts to happen, I get pulled away a little bit, but I still collect, you know, when I'm in the store or I'm on Amazon or Hasbro pulse or whatever, I'll see something and I got to have it. It's got to be mine. And so when I bring these things in and they sit here and I just have this desire to want to show it off, you know, not to brag, but just to share my passion for toys because I do have a passion for toys. And so being able to share that with whoever, whether it's one viewer, 100,000, 10,000, it doesn't matter. It's just sharing something that I enjoy and hopefully that brings a little bit of joy to somebody else. And the community helps too. When you're getting those comments on those videos, man, you just got to keep going. I mean, you develop your own little following, which leads into a question later on. So get back on track. Yeah. All right, my friend, there are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. Trust again, there are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different than the rest? I have hands that go in front of the camera. I don't know. We're all doing the same thing. You know, I don't know what makes me any different other than just, again, it's a passion for toys. What you generally won't see from my channel is me being overly critical on things unless it's really freaking bad. If it's really bad, then, yeah, you're going to hear about it for me. But in most cases, oops, hang on a second. I got a little bit of a technical glitch. In most cases, for me, it's not that I'm trying. Like sometimes you'll watch a reviewer, and I won't name any names, but you'll watch a reviewer, and you're almost convinced they're getting a kickback from somebody. You know, they're so positive on toys. And, you know, and it's, and maybe that's exactly what's happening. But in my case, I just, I just enjoy them for what they are.  And yes, it's an adult hobby, too. But for me to bash on a toy, it's got to be laughably bad. And I've done it. But for the most part, if you come to my channel, it's not going to be me picking things apart. It's, hey, you know what? I've got this thing. It bought me joy. Let me show you why. And that's really, that's really what my channel is all about. And I think that's what a lot of people look for anymore. Like you said, you can tell the ones that they're getting the toys. They're not like us. We, you know, you and I have to go out hunting or waiting on Amazon for that price to drive. When you finally get this toy, there's a new type of appreciation that you have than if somebody just gave it to you. Now, granted, I've had some people give me some very generous gifts on my channel that have blown me away. But, you know, you know what I mean.  Do I recommend this? Yeah. But, you know, I try to be as honest as possible.  I mean, after I bought them, I was like, I bought one guy on clearance and I still paid too much for it. Yeah.  Like, there are reviewers who are critical every single time because that's their gimmick, you know, and people go to that channel because yeah, I want to see this guy pick apart what's next. And that's cool. Like I'm not knocking that, but that's definitely not what, what my channel is about. Nice. Okay. Well, here we go back to our social community. Question number nine is what is your thoughts on the Transformers social community? YouTube, Facebook, and do you have any special shout outs? Oh, gosh. So my thoughts on the community as a whole is that it's not as, you know, it took, to me, it got a little bit toxic when the Bay movies were at their peak because there was a very hard divide of this isn't my Transformers. You know, I've heard that numerous times. Ruin my childhood. Ruin my childhood and, and, you know, Optimus Prime doesn't look like that. And, you know, we've all heard it. And for me, I always gave everything a fair shot. Yeah. There were some, and this is just a personal opinion. I'm not right or wrong. But my opinion on some of those movies is, yeah, you know, some of them were kind of crappy, but the imagination and thought put into the designs of these characters to me were incredible. And so to take some of the on-screen images that we had and turn it into something that you can put in your hand and actually play around with, I stopped judging. I didn't care if it was Bay. I didn't care if it was Barney. I didn't care if it was Barbie. I don't care. It was something that, again, bought me joy. It was an on-screen, awe-inspiring character that I could now put in the palm of my hand. And so I gave all of those things a fair shot and, you know, certainly defend the toys that I enjoy and speak up when I don't. The thing I learned a long time ago, though, is that there's no right or wrong answer in this community. You know, if somebody wants to jump on a message board and say that a toy is no good, that's cool because to them it might not be. And I'm not judging that at all. And, you know, I've got a Facebook group that we'll talk about later, but you're never going to see me get on to somebody because they express their opinion.  And the community, after some of that little bit of toxic thing that was going on, seems to have calmed down quite a bit. I know what groups to stay in and what groups to stay out of, but for the most part, it's a great community right now. And I'm real happy with the quality of people that are in it. Thank God we're not Star Wars fans. Oh, man. That's a topic for a different day for sure. I mean, I love my Star Wars, but you don't mention it. It's like, are you old Star Wars or new Star Wars? Yeah. Yeah. But as far as, oh, man, we need to do another podcast for sure because there's a whole lot to say about that.  And I'll have people that share things.  Well, when Ben Yee of Ben's Transformers or Ben's World Transformers joined my group, I was like, wow, like, you're in the wrong place, dude. Like, seriously, this is, you're in the wrong place completely. But, but he put stuff out there all the time and he's been a big supporter. You've been around on my channel for a long time and I appreciate you very much. Thank you. People like Jackal, one of the original guys that was on there, just a host of names. Optorotimus is a guy that I've known for a long time and just a whole bunch of people out there. I don't think I've had really any bad experiences with people in the community personally. I feel fortunate that way. So, anyway. Excellent. I should have more names, but I don't. Don't worry about it. There's a lot out there. I'm always forgetting some. But yeah, this community has blown me away. I mean, like I said before, people will just out of the kindness of their heart. They've sent me gifts. They sent my son gifts. I had a message today. He said, I want to send your boy something else because I just love watching his video reactions when he gets something. It's going to be the next generation YouTube star. Yeah, I've got a great idea for an upcoming challenge that I'm going to integrate him into. So, look for that in the next couple of weeks. Awesome. I'm ready. All right. Our last question, sir. Do you have any channel goals for yourself and where can our viewers find you? This is your time to plug yourself. Plug away. So, you know, goals for the channel is really just to get momentum back going again. You know, what happens in the Transformers YouTube community is that you can get momentum and things are going pretty well. And then the overall popularity of the franchise might die off a little bit, not to us hardcore, but to the general population. If there's not movies making a billion dollars, it does tend to go down a bit.  For me, when momentum starts to stop, I get people that drop off and the subscriber count doesn't change that much, but it doesn't go up either. And so I think for me a goal is just to kind of get things back rolling and start increasing that count once again and get my numbers to where they were at one time. But you know what, I really, I don't live and die by that. If I've got one viewer that enjoyed something that I did, I'm cool, I'm happy, and that's all I need. So certainly anything above that is a bonus. But as far as just, you know, what I am looking forward to in the future, it's just being the, getting the opportunity to share more figures that are quality figures that we're coming in like crazy right now. The Siege line is nuts. It's absolutely crazy. And as long as Hasbro keeps, oh man, as long as Hasbro keeps cranking out quality stuff like that, then I'll have plenty to talk about. Where people can find me. I'm sorry, I mean to interrupt. This is kind of where I was going to earlier, you know, brag and brag. I love my G1. G1's awesome. Siege and their G1 throwbacks is amazing. I mean, we were just talking about like Siege prowl how, you know, he doesn't look it, but when you transform in robot mode, I was like, my gosh, that's cartoon prowl from the 80s. But what I am starting to get sick of is every new line that comes out, they're always targeting the 84, 85, and 86 bucks. Titans return came out.  Okay, I want to see some pretenders. I want to see some power masters. Yeah. I want to see some reimagining of these guys. And you know, I love pretenders. Yeah. And another thing, and another thing too is they have to keep in mind that a big chunk of their community are hardcore.  And so there are definitely an adult population that are buying these toys. But I think that to bring along new fans as well, when those 80s cartoons really don't mean a darn thing, that if they were to start creating brand new characters, you know, just again, what was the original draw of the Transformers? It was this cool looking machine that turned into a robot, you know. And so if they started doing something brand new, you don't have to fall back on 84, 85, 86, or even in the 2000s or all the different types of Transformers that there have been over the years, show us something new. And I think that they might be surprised in who bites at something like that. But they got to get the story behind it too, because think about it, you had the go-bots, you had the Transformers, and it was the Transformers that took off because of the writing, the voice acting. Right. You know these characters. Yes. I mean, yeah, like I got this guy, he's a cool looking go-bot. What's his personality? Right. What's his voice sound like?   We start talking about cartoons, but you just can't beat the cartoons we grew up with. Right. And the reason being is these toy companies sponsored them. They had the money to do it. Now you got these quick, crappy animated shows, and you got turd toys selling at Walmart now. Boy, you sure do. You got aisles of them, just aisles of them. How long was that sell? Yeah, there has to be, there has to be that combination of something that can grab at the magic of a kid's heart and also pull at the adult collector. There is a happy medium and it's not overly kiddy animation.  It doesn't have to be animation at all. But it does require money. It does revolve. It does involve corporate people making decisions in which they think they can profit from it, but bring back the iconic voices and the stories and something that's compelling and they'll bring in an audience. But it's not going to happen in a day. It's going to take time and it's just a matter of whether or not some of these companies are willing to put that time, maybe lose a little bit of money at first with the idea that they bring something wholly new to the franchise. Will we have these guys for another 35 years or will they go the way of G.I. Joe? Interesting question. That's a great question. What happens when the people that lived in the 80s, 90s and who were born in these eras are alive then? When we move on, is the Bay-like movies going to instill this on new young people? I really don't know the answer to that. But I think there's always going to be kids who are wanting to use their imagination and things that inspire them to be creative, to use their brains, to take something that they can put in their hand and turn into a puzzle and do things with versus just getting on the game machine or just in the glasses, virtual reality, whatever they have 20 years from now, there's going to always be a child's imagination. It's just a matter of whether or not these companies can continue to inspire it like they did us. Exactly. Great answer. All right. Well, you never got to plug yourself. I'll let you do that now. No worries. They can find me at eBeforeIReviews if you just search that in YouTube. But the actual channel itself, it's youtube.com slash e-b-4-i-net. And you just spell it all out. It's e-b-e-f-o-r-e e-b-4-n, with an i. And that name people have asked me before, what that means... Well, just get ready to. Yeah. it's funny because in school, they always said i-b-4-e except after C. Well, my last name is Bernstein. And so there is an e-b-4-i in Bernstein. And I was just racking my brain, like I've got to come up with something for you to e-b-4-i. So that's really how it came to be. But they can find me at, is that, you know, it's funny they see it and they're like, what the heck, is that Transformers? I don't know, they'll figure it out. But yeah, I'm youtube.com slash e before I net. Facebook is facebook.com slash e before I, no net. And if you want to join my group, like they're having to pay me money, you click a join button. You just look up e before I transformers and more hit join. I'll add you in and you're golden. You're in the group unless you start berating people or start doing and I've only had to ban a single person from my group ever. And there was good reason for that. But other than that, it's just a place where people can come in and talk about toys. And it's not just transformers, whatever they want to talk about, they can talk about it. If it's Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, I don't care, you know, anything that people have an interest in and you want to discuss it, come on board and say whatever you want. I have had to catch up on Game of Thrones. I haven't watched any of this season yet. I don't have HBO, so I have to get mine other ways.  Maybe I'll just leave it alone and imagine what happens. You know what, that may not be a bad idea. I have my own opinions of it as well. I didn't hate it completely, but yeah, we'll talk about that after you've seen it. There's only six episodes this season, right? I think the six? Yeah, I think so. Six episodes. I've got three. I just use the wait until I get them all and hit them in one shot. We are starting to get off the trail again. Dan, thank you very much for coming on with me tonight. And for everybody watching, I will link Dan's channel in the description of this video. And at the end, when you have Optimus Prime with that American flag waving in the background, I will link a couple of Dan's videos. So we'll get some folks your way that way. Nice, and we'll promote you as well. Thank you. This has been fun. Thank you so much for doing this. Excellent. And I want to thank you guys for watching. Don't forget to like. Don't forget to subscribe. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Ho-wah!


The physical layer of ADSL technology is again very important to be understood because it deals with the frequencies and the modulation types which are used in ADSL. The frequencies are usually leased out to different service providers. And the choice of the frequency is a very strong determining factor in overall efficiency and utilization of a certain technology. So ADSL frequency bands are used for providing internet connectivity to a broad range of users. That's why it is important to understand this. The physical layer, first of all, needs to be understood in conjunction with voice. The telephone lines primarily are meant for voice. The voice is usually band limited to 300 Hz to 3.4 to 3.5, 3.6 kHz. So that actually gives us some room because in the earlier module we said that the frequency band for voice is limited to the upper boundary of 4 kHz. So the frequency range between 3.4 to 4 kHz serves as the guard band. And this is according to the Modem specifications, specifically V.90. ADSL to provide internet connectivity is two-way and it is a full duplex technology. It means that both the uplink and downlink transmissions can take place at the same time. The variants of this duplex modes of communication can be the frequency division duplex, time division duplex, and the echo cancellation duplex. But frequency division duplex is the one most widely used. The ADSL spectrum is divided into certain ranges, both for uplink and downlink. Broadly speaking, the overall range for the initial versions of ADSL because ADSL has also grown and some newer spectrums have been assigned for ADSL. So we'll talk about the initial versions or variants of ADSL. The spectrum actually was from 25 kHz to 1104 kHz or 25 kHz to 1.104 MHz. The lower band that is from 25 kHz to 138 kHz is meant for upstream. Now, if you may have already noticed, this choice of assignment, the lower frequencies being assigned to upstream, essentially implies that first the lower frequency band has lower capability to carry or modulate information because you can carry more information on a higher spectrum because you'd have more frequency assignments possible in the higher frequency band. So on the higher side, we have 138 to 1104 kHz band that is for the downstream. Now it is up to every vendor to have appropriate hardware that allows these frequency bands, both for upstream and downstream, to be used more effectively. Regarding the modulation or the line coding, the initial mechanism or the initial modulation mechanism was the carrier less amplitude phase modulation. Both the amplitude and the phase are modulated and the carrier was not transmitted. So this was initial, but these days as per the ANSI as well as the ITUT recommendations, discrete multi-tone is used. If you look at the overall spectrum, let's appreciate it. We have the telephone call, the PSTN frequency band limited to 4 kHz. Then we have gap, a very broad around 21 kHz band gap so that there is no interference whatsoever between the ADSL frequencies and the voice signals. So we have from 25 to 138 we've got upstream and then we have from 138 to 1104 kHz we have downstream. Although it's already shown to you here, but it would be appropriate to talk about it at a later stage that the frequency band actually has been extended. In fact it's been doubled from 1104 to 2208. So naturally if we keep the modulation scheme same as discrete multi-tone, we are expecting double bandwidth or double data rate for the ADSL to and ADSL to plus downstream transmissions. So this carrier less frequency amplitude phase modulation actually divides the spectrum into three bands. Again for voice, the lowest one then for upstream from 25 to 160 kHz and then it gives a band gap between the upstream and the downstream and from 240 kHz to 1.5 MHz is the downstream. The discrete multi-tone actually as the name suggests is multi-tone, it means so many sub-carriers. We don't call them carriers, we call them sub-carriers. Now discrete multi-tone modulation was adopted by ITUT as a standard in their variants 991.1 which is ADSL and 992.1 which is G.Light. So basically what happens is that there are around 256 sub-carriers each with a width of 4 kHz. So these carriers are allocated to bit stream. So if a user transmits a certain bit stream for instance we say that let's say user has 256 bits to be transmitted. So each bit is now carried on individual sub-carrier. This is for an example say otherwise of these 256 sub-carriers 32 are allocated for the upstream and the remainder which is around 234 sub-carriers are allocated for the downstream. The discrete multi-tone carriers are modulated according to QAM, the quadrature amplitude modulation. If you recall the i and q, the in-phase and quadrature components were used in QAM. So then we have the variants of ADSL as the name suggests ADSL 2 is a successor. Then we have 992.4, 992.3 is the successor of ADSL as such and its splitter less version where the splitter is all together obviated is done away with is the 992.4 and then we have the ADSL 2 plus that we just saw when we looked at the overall spectrum. The bandwidth has been extended from 1.1 to 2.2 MHz. Let's quickly look at the ADSL standards and their bit rates. Let's just quickly recap ADSL as the name suggests it provides 8 Mbps in the downstream 1 Mbps in the upstream so naturally there is a 1 to 8 ratio as we looked at the carrier assignment as well. Then we have the discrete multi-tone that is provides up to 12 Mbps in downstream and 1.3 Mbps in the upstream. When we look at something interesting we will observe that from ADSL to ADSL 2 plus we are getting 24 Mbps in downstream which is quite a lot. If you are doing internet surfing along with the voice over IP app running and an IP TV running also we can offer interesting services and we can in fact offer digital channels as well in such rate. The upstream is not much significantly growing. You see that it is 1 Mbps in the upstream for ADSL whereas it is 3.3 Mbps for ADSL 2 plus because not much changes on the upstream except for certain interactive applications like voice over IP and for instance Skype like apps. So on the right most side we see the corresponding ITU assigned codes for these different standards.


Among what projects could be a low ceiling running back draft class, Alabama's Josh Jacobs emerged as the top option for most draft analysts. Scouts can point you a combination of the traits you would want in an NFL running back, good size, power, vision, and burst, and Jacobs used those to net an above average rushing success rate even when compared to his teammates in an already efficient offense. However, his overall production was kept in check within a committee and he posted a troubling 40 yard dash time at his pro day while dealing with a groin injury. With Jacobs, the talent is definitely there, but he does possess possibly the weakest production profile of any first round caliber back in more than a decade. The bottom line, there's no reason to think he can't be a complimentary piece to an NFL offense, almost like a better receiving Sony Michelle was as a rookie for New England, but his profile does not suggest that he's a can't miss every down back at the next level.