Good morning everyone and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live, the weekly online event from the Nebraska Library Commission where we talk about anything and everything of interest to libraries. I'm your host today for this month's episode of Tech Talk. I'm Michael Sowers, the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission, and I am really, really excited about today's session. Some of you may know I personally do a blog called The Travel and Librarian, which means I travel not as much as I used to, but as much as I can. And I got to say that in my travels I meet lots of interesting people, one of whom we have on the show with us today. Before we get into that, just start a little bit of housekeeping. If you have any questions during the show, feel free to type them into the questions area of go-to webinar. Also, if you have a microphone attached and you would like to ask a question, we will feel free to raise your hand and I can turn your microphone on for that. Generally, we leave the questions for the end of our guest presentation, but if you feel free to submit them through the Q&A as you have them, and I will happily pass them along to our guest. So back in 2008, in that summer, so almost five years ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Accural Conference, which is the Association of Caribbean University Research and Institutional Libraries in Jamaica. And one of the sessions I attended was called the Internet Social Networking and Information Literacy, and one of the gentlemen on that panel was Mark Shane Scale, our guest today. Mark Shane is from Kingston, Jamaica. He has his Masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of the West Indies, and he is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Welcome, Mark Shane. Thank you very much, Michael. Yeah, I have been kind of following Mark. I don't know if he remembers actually meeting me at the conference, but we... Definitely, I have not forgotten you. Thank you. We kind of stayed in touch on Facebook on and off, and I read his blog Small Island Librarian, which I highly recommend. It's probably the only blog I read where he actually cites his sources and has a bibliography at the end of most posts. And one of these projects I heard about that he's working on lately is called Narrating the Opaque, and I thought that sounded really interesting, and I wanted to hear more. So I've invited him on the show today to give his talk and explain to us what he means by narrating the Opaque. So Mark Shane, why don't you just introduce yourself, give us a little bit about your background, and take it away. Thank you much, Michael. Yes, I... As Michael said, I'm from Kingston, Jamaica, and I'm currently here in Canada called NART to do my PhD. And one of the projects that I am working on that I'm interested in is storytelling and narrative analysis, especially how librarians can use it to improve our communications, our online communications. And so today I want to talk to you a bit about narrating the Opaque. How can storytelling and narrative analysis improve the user friendliness of our flagship... What I consider a flagship product of the library service or online public access catalog, the Opaque. So basically my goals, I'm persuaded that libraries and librarians have many stories to tell, and we have rich sources in our collection that we want for users to find out about. So my goals are to basically persuade you to think about our catalog differently and see how we can narrate our collections through the Opaque and perhaps get us to see the broader perspective, how we can apply storytelling to all our library communication, especially online. And my premise, this premise is that while new media and technologies create new forms of storytelling, we can still incorporate ancient storytelling practices that can impact design and development of new technologies. So even though we have the Facebook, the Storify, the blogger, the YouTube, that people are using to tell stories, we can adapt those same storytelling principles to our own online communication. Organizations are now creating online artists. If you saw this article in the New York Times where Coke is Coca-Cola, the company is revamping its website. So it's got to tell its story, so it's making its website more into like an engaging online magazine so that persons can actually get a story out of it. So it's changing the way that they create their, tell their story online. And I believe that libraries too can actually adapt those principles. So my question is, can the same principles be applied to inform and design the library's Opaque? Traditionally, our Opaque has been considered a resource discovery tool that tells a narrative about human knowledge, a narrative of the knowledge accessible through the library. So let's look at the literature a bit. Storytelling, genres of science fiction, folklore, and even mythology has impacted the development of new technologies such as the Space Age program. NASA got a lot of its insight into how to design spacecraft from science fiction as well as the Old Testament Bible. Various works indicate that storytelling narrative can be applied to technology for purposes of information provision. There are some research done that shows that you can use folklore principles to organize how we communicate and document information regarding new software, et cetera. Within our own field, our own literature, our narratives and storytelling, I want to start with Bates who talks about the very picking theory, our very picking idea. She argues that online databases are not designed for how people actually conduct searches. Rather than searching for a one query tool, a one result to answer our questions, people usually pick up fragments of information from various sources and they construct a final story in their mind to organize bits and pieces of information that they collect from various sources. Also, the sense-making theory. There have been sense-making metaphors that discusses the fact that narratives and stories are some of the means by which people reduce uncertainty and bridge information gaps and meet their information needs. Also, Fisher's theory of the information grounds discusses that we create spaces where we exchange stories along with information. So stories and information go together. That story can create opportunity for information seeking to take place. So let's look at some literature on stories. For education, it has been acknowledged that the way that people approach new knowledge acquisitions through the reliance of stories from others, usually experts, combine with their own experience in order to learn something new. As it relates to organizational storytelling, Boucher gives differential stories and he usually argues that stories are not one narrator or one voice, but usually a multitude of voices. Gabriel also gives a differential of stories, arguing that stories are not necessarily factual, but are wishful-filling fantasies between fiction and reality. They might be reality-based, but not necessarily truth or facts, but it might be the artful manipulation of facts. So let's just look at the OPAC. Usually when computer scientists look at the computer, they consider it a tool, but this author Laurel critiques the metaphors of the computer as a tool and proposes instead the metaphor of the computer as a medium. Secondly, if we think about Fisher's information grounds idea, a liminal space for exchange of stories as well as information, and we combine it with Laurel's idea that our computers are not tools, but a medium, then we can have a new view of the OPAC, not as a tool of resource discovery, but as a medium facilitating storytelling about humanity's knowledge, as well as facilitating resource discovery. So I want to look at some technology prototypes for storytelling. Generally, we are accustomed to the first person, the journalistic narratives in digital storytelling, which usually includes either video performance or text and images, especially photographs. And then there are the timeline approaches. There is a beginning, middle, and end, and you can scroll through, see how a story unfolds. But today I want to focus on two main prototypes that I feel have great relevance to even our OPAC. Let's start with Laurel, who wrote the book Computers as Theatre. And she focuses on fictional, personal storytelling. Now, Laurel developed this prototype for a multimedia database where people navigate the database not through click-in true links, but actually through three characters, three Asian characters that guide persons to different information in the database. These three characters embody three different perspectives. There's the front-stairs man, a Native American and a settler woman. And they both guide people to different sources of viewpoints about the history of the North American expansion. So these agents are cast as storytellers, and they perform in video formats. And they represent it and provide context for the information sources in the database. The sources of these accounts are derived from diaries and journals of real historical persons that experience the expansion. And they dealt with the first-person narrative account of these incidents and topics. These agents, they introduce themselves by a video describing their real-life professions, the source materials used, and lessons learned. And according to Laurel, this established agents as storytellers rather than fictitious characters, thereby reinforcing their credibility. Again, we talked about them represented viewpoints and multiple representation of events and knowledge within the database, or the knowledge base. Laurel argues that this approach is natural in that in the real world, human beings do not navigate to information but rather experience information coming to them from a variety of sources, especially in the case like, for example, we talk to people and we are talking to people, natural flow of information takes place. Somebody tells you their story, and from their story, you get insight about all different things or a different world or a different point of view. So again, Laurel argues that it's more natural to represent information through these narrative characters rather than having people click through links. Another prototype of great interest to me as I see so many applications live is not just to our OPAC but even to the way that we tell stories about our spaces is the Lombardo and Damiano's cultural heritage spider tour guide. They have a spider tour guide with a fictional Italian anthropomorphic spider who access a virtual guide to a historical site. This one is designed for mobile devices. Carlito represents the interface of the application and he guides the visitors touring an old Italian palace. He's a single character narrator and he performs dramatically communicating both fact and fiction about the places and objects within the site. Now, Carlito being based on the mobile phone when a person steps into one room of the palace he comes up on the phone and he tells persons about the room and he gives them facts about the rooms and it looks and also tells them about his own fictional story as a spider or his family is what he did in the room. So it makes it quite very interesting. With Carlito, the fictional world is superimposed on the real world. He follows the visitors by a webcam by which he can give contextually relevant information to the current room in which the visitor occupies. User being present in the room is an input to Carlito to provide information on the location. And so he reacts to user's location on the mobile screen through scripts that are pre-written and not all information is provided once. In case a person goes back to another room that he just came from so Carlito has some more information to give them some new information to give them about that room and developers use an ontological approach to communicate the knowledge to you and from the most general to specific. So using those two prototypes, Lorel and Lombardo and Damiano what can we learn from them? The idea of representing viewpoints in our information sources. Secondly, we could learn that non-fiction information is presented by imposing combining fictional representation with real world factual information. That such an effort can create an unforgettable experience for those who also access the information. For example, with Lombardo and Damiano's prototype people remember the spider and they were attached to the spider and they remember the story of the palace based on their attachment to that personal character of the spire's tour guide. My method, I decided to do a query to find information resources on restaurants and I designed two narratives. The first narrative is fictional and it's based on imagination about how the world should be and it's considered similar to the philosophy's taught experiment where it's a sense making of future possibilities using historical advances. Then there's also the second narrative which is created from dialogue with an artificial intelligent conversational agent. These are not so intelligent as at the moment but I use it to base the storytelling on and modify the agent's response to more interesting and relevant responses. The second narrative is more sense making of the present about how the world currently operates and some of the problems. So let's go to my first narrative. Fictional story. In a parallel universe, John, a designer steps into the virtual public library to use its online catalogs to search for information resources on restaurants. He types into the search box and launches into his search. On analysis, he realizes that live's catalog retrieves three categories of results nonfiction, life writing sources and fiction sources. Under nonfiction results, John sees the following. Magazines and newspaper articles which review great restaurants or have new features on restaurants. Books. Hospitality, industry textbooks, food and beverage service textbooks. It's called the journal articles. Under life writing sources, John sees the following results. Autobiographies or biographies. Books and newspaper articles, company documents and publications from restaurants and industry and trade associations for restaurant service providers. Analysis of the results that John sees. So let's pause and analyze these results. Each category of the results reflect various viewpoints on restaurants inside or within the restaurant business. That is usually reflected in their memoirs, autobiographies or biographies. The scholar studying the restaurant business more in the scholarly journals or even hospitality textbooks. The administrator wants insights into restaurant management or the customer that just wants to find a particular restaurant to check out. He reviews more viewpoints. Someone wants to explore career opportunities in a restaurant. He wants to find out about the life stories of restaurant employees or even founders. A journalist who wants to cover story in restaurants might want to... We should know what is already out there. So right away we see there are a number of viewpoints that could be harnessed from our collection. I now turn over to Michael to play the journalist. If he tried Laura's approach to presenting such results what are some of the ways we could see the results presented? Go open. Hi, I am Jay McDonald, a journalist from the Public Library Press. I have a number of media articles on restaurants to bring to your attention. Breaking news on trends in the restaurant industry. Reviews and reports of restaurants. And special news features on restaurants. And there are other perspectives. He could present the video presentation of the Jack McDonald, a professor at the Public Library School of Hospitality. And he could talk about the hospitality base, the more scholarly base resources. We could have Jay Chin restaurant owner. And he could talk about the biographies and the autobiographies and other life writing sources. Jay Fisher, the customer of restaurants. He would talk about the reviews of restaurants. Tips on etiquettes. Tips for eating out at restaurants. Consumer guides. And there are a variety of viewpoints that we could represent with different narrators. And there is also a practical application of results page. We could potentially use a solution of Facebook's principle of view as a specific person. That person could view the results based on the type of narrator that more represents what they are looking for. Or the information source that they want to find. Next we move to narrative two. So an actual search in the real world. Let me tell you about what happened to me the other day when I was searching the library catalogue of the London public library. I hear that England is a great place. No, not that London. London in Canada. I'm sorry. First thing that comes to mind when I think London is England with tea and scones. Anyway, the other day I experimented with the library's online catalogue and typed in restaurants. And in my analysis of the results, I noticed that the first assumption of the system is that user wants non-fiction information. First, and then articles. Isn't that something you would expect? Well, the person using the library catalogue may not want to see non-fiction first. I'm quite sure that the system provides some way of filtering results so that you can find just fiction. To be fair, I also noticed that to one side one can select format. Fiction, picture book, DVD, etc. That might not be sufficient. I checked out the non-fiction section, for example, for a life-writing source. I curiously noted the title, Writing in Restaurants by David Mamet. So I checked it out on Amazon to see what it was about as well as any reviews on the book. Here's what I found based on Amazon's book description. I know there are even predecessors. If you're not dying committed to the theatre, but you honestly can't see a unique view of the world as you see. You see, titles are often misleading. The book entitled Writing in Restaurants by Mamet has nothing to do with restaurants at all. While the book is indeed non-fiction, it is more life-writing or reality-based and should not, in my view, be confused in the non-fiction information category. Next, I checked the fiction category. Key to my observation was whether or not I could find a fictional work set in a restaurant setting. For this, I saw a few results that matched what I was expecting to find, like these two resources that showcase fiction stories in restaurants. So I clicked on the title, Simmer Down, and further found a library in its subject description as a category for restaurants on the fiction. I'm not sure persons would be looking for fiction works based on settings. I don't think that would be a normal expectation for any fiction reader. Perhaps not, but do you also see that this fiction book contains recipes? Wouldn't that be useful information for somebody? Hmm, I get you. So people can find non-fiction information out of supposedly fiction books. That's right, but I still had some unanswered questions. Like what? How do we observe reality-based writing or, more accurately, life-writing set in a restaurant setting? What is provided by the system to facilitate discovery of restaurant life-writing? In my view, there's no direct ways provided to the user to locate autobiographies and memoirs of restaurant CEOs, owners, or employees in book formats if they do not already know the titles or authors. What I'm sure one can modify the query to get more specific results. You're right. Indirectly, one can expand the query term or stir up to include no term with it. Story ends. Stories have a representational value, placing information in the context of viewpoints. Another point I want to summarize from our learning is that storytelling also makes sharing and accessing information an experience. My major conclusion is that we can tell stories about our collections. And I ask four questions for the hope of the future. One, can we have fictional, imaginary, historical, or even re-characters as narrators representing the perspective or perspectives of information resources or knowledge available through the library? Two, can we combine a timeline view for browsing purposes or use a view as interface to filter the results that show up in our catalog searches? Three, can we base narrators on the demography of our users, creating characters that are imagined experts or others that represent people that users would consult for advice based on their task requirements? Four, can we represent the dialogic voices or disagreements or disputes over knowledge? Neutrally, we don't take in size and let the users decide which voice our voice is to listen to. There are other questions and issues. Can such principles be used for information literacy sessions and training? Another issue is that once exposed, users may no longer need a storytelling tutorial or guide to use OPAC. After one exposure, they might understand very well how OPAC works and the types of resources they can get. Another question though, should the OPAC storytelling be an opt-in or opt-out experience considering that some users are already experts and do not need guidance? These are some of the questions and issues that I raised based on the actual look at the literature and how we can potentially apply storytelling to our narratives. I now open the floor for comments, criticisms, and queries or questions. Wow, Mark Shane, thank you for that. I wrote some stuff down and I'm still trying to put together my questions because there's so much here to... I mean, you've got me thinking so I'm trying to put them together. I will remind everybody who's listening in live, please feel free to submit your questions in the questions area or raise your hand and I can turn on your microphone for you. Let's start with maybe an easy one at least for me to ask while I try to put together the rest of my thoughts on this. Very early on in your presentation you mentioned that databases are not designed based on how people actually search. Maybe for our audiences, this might be preaching to the choir but could you expand upon that just a little bit? What do you mean by that? Okay. Well, actually comes from Vitz who argues that we design databases to deliver results to a single question or query that somebody types into the search box and the results that... and basically the results that persons access, we don't take into consideration the fact that we don't necessarily want a single source. Certainly just for a single source. You want to see different sources and pick some things from some and some things from the other. You perhaps want to even look at a source and go through its bibliography, its references and citations to other sources. The way that we want to use the results from a database search is not necessarily done based on how... the way that is designed is not done how we actually want to use the results. It doesn't make it easy to use. We still have to navigate from what we can only view one source at a time. Basically, again, how people actually use information is that we take fragments from one source, fragments from another source, fragments from a number of sources and combine them. We use different parts of it. Sorry. I hope I answered your question. That was good. I guess here's my other large question. This is the one I'm just myself having trouble putting together. So if I ramble a little bit, please forgive me. You keep saying OPEC, which I get, but as you were describing it, my mind kept wandering to more databases of primary source material. Here in Nebraska, we have Nebraska Memories, which is scanned documents and photographs where we have... whether it's actually indexable or not, we have the full text of the content, whereas in your traditional OPEC today, we have records but not the actual content. How much more would you need to add to an OPEC record to make something like this work? Are the subject headings enough or would we have to start putting in content? Good question, Michael. Again, as I see, I recognize that these storyteller principles can apply to all databases that liars have, especially archives who have collections that we still use as well. So for even our OPEC, we already have reviews, although we be careful of Amazon reviews, definitely we have subject headings. We already do some level of details talking about what the different materials provide. We have, I think, some amount of data that we can actually use to start the process, but still we could actually put in a bit more content to give more perspective to the source. We could give more context of the source, especially the point of view. Because one thing that I know that libraries need to do is we can provide signals of content to our materials, already for movies and so on. We know about a rating system that buys people about the type of content, whether it's one graphic content, et cetera. I think libraries could adopt a similar principle and provide some certain signals that give users some idea about the type of content that is in our works beyond what we normally do. We could talk about this... Well, I'm out of ideas now, but definitely I see that more... We have to put our information resource, not just the subject heading, but we have to put it into a greater context. I will give users the clues about what to expect if they access this resource, what fragments of information they can take out of it. Sure. And when you were talking about the dramatic spider, which is making me laugh every time I think dramatic spider, and similar tours of museums that I've been on, where you get kind of a similar system where you have the headset on, and as you walk through the museum, it knows where you are. But most of that seems to be, or definitely is, kind of pre-recorded canned material, and it's just playing back to you the material based on where you are. How much, for lack of a better term, artificial intelligence do you see would have to be built upon that to kind of get to what I think is where you're trying to ultimately go? Okay. Again, narratives... We have to infuse it with some more narratives that we'll call it to people, characters. Not just presenting non-fiction information. But a little fiction information to create an experience out of that entire tour of our sites. Again, we can... It's about creating that character that can appease the people, and a storyline as well that the character can communicate the story as well as provide non-fiction information. We want to combine both a little entertainment and a little education. We want to do both in order to make the... It's not just an experience where you're just learning, but you're also connecting it to a real or imaginary experience of somebody else, as an imagined other, who's telling you their story as well, or getting you to see the objects or whatever you're viewing in another way. But not just pushing out information out there. Again, we have to make it an experience of getting persons to connect. Because we connect to people when we hear people's stories. Right. Well, and something just popped into my head to maybe... I'm now trying to figure out how could you do something like this right now? And what's popping into my head is sometimes maybe the simplest level I can think of is a book trailer for a piece of fiction, or even non-fiction, where I've seen some that are done not just saying, hey, you should go read this book, but it's actually like a character from the work introducing themselves and maybe taking... If that's on YouTube and then just linking to that or embedding that right into the record for that book adds that little bit of narrative and adds that little bit of context. That's right. That's it. That's a good idea. Right. It's starting to form in my head. I'm getting it. All right. And one other question. A few months ago on this show, we had some of the folks from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Love Library here in Lincoln, where they have an artificial intelligence interface to kind of do online reference called pixel. Are you familiar with that? No, not familiar with pixel. Familiar with the artificial intelligence conversational... well, conversational agents. Yeah, it's kind of a chatbot. Yeah, it's a chatbot. Right. Right. So pixel. Okay. So I'll look up that one now. Yeah. Go ahead.  Yeah, I think it's pixel.unl. Go ahead. You can finish it. Yeah, you should be able to find that. I think there's a possible connection here because pixel kind of has a personality. And you can even insult her and she will refuse to answer until you apologize. It's quite interesting. A reminder, our live attendees, if you have any questions, feel free to type them into the questions area or raise your hand. I can turn on your microphone. So the one other one I had specific to this project that I wrote down here is have you spoken to... and maybe this is, you know, further down the road, definitely, but have you spoken to anybody who actually creates ILSs yet about these ideas and working them into actual products? No, not yet. Yeah, not as yet. Okay. I'm still working on the ideas. I'm still working on it. Get the PhD first, then go talk to the vendors. All right, no problem. I don't think we need to get it. We need to get more recognition from the scholars. Sure. Yeah, hey, that's great. So let me switch views on you here a little bit and from some of the other things you've written on your blog, not specifically related to this project, and one actually is your latest blog post and I just want to ask you a question or two about some of the things you wrote. It's titled, What Should the Library's Primary Priority Be in this Time of Austerity and Digital Media? Right, right. And you talk about some of the more creative things that have been making the news that libraries are doing lately, ranging from there was a How to Slaughter a Pig at one library, and another library that was teaching pole dancing. Right. Definitely kind of the extremes of examples. And I'm going to quote just about three sentences of what you said and I would like you to talk about it a little more. The first part was, in my view, such libraries are selling their souls for worldly gain. And then near the end you say, however I am convinced that the path that many libraries are taking is not in our own interest. Paths to making the library an institution that provides entertainment as our major service is, in my opinion, the wrong direction. Libraries should not continue to feed consumerism habits and users that are uncritical consumers of entertainment products. Leisure and recreation, while part of our mission should not be the primary mission, our goal pursued. Now I won't say whether I agree or disagree here, but that's some pretty strong language. So I just wanted to maybe, if you could fill me in on why you've come to that conclusion. Well, because if you're, well, I'm somehow connected to the entrepreneur world, the business world. I'm not in business, but if I understand the culture of business and the culture of entrepreneurs and the culture of the administrators we'll be running and funding the libraries of the, my views are more we align ourselves to leisure and entertainment and recreation is the more that those who fund us are going to be in conflict with what we are doing, especially since we have the recreation industry, the leisure or entertainment industry is worth a lot of money, billions of dollars. And we have different and it's supposed to be our industries. Again, our library is competing against a business industry. It is a major question once we final if we are competing with that business industry. Those who fund us, it's a big question, the funding that the need for us are relevant in the funding. However, if we are seeing us adding value to the, not competing against industry but adding value to the economy by creating workers, creating new innovation, creating new small businesses and so on, there's less question of our relevance. There's less business persons and boards are even in government to say, the question whether or not we need libraries. That's just my concern and fear because I see if libraries continue going towards recreation for people, the person saying, we are going to be coming against industry, that industry and we know the power of industries and lobbies in politics. So I see it that we need to perhaps straighten out our priorities and know that we want to continue to exist, we want to continue to give value to persons and to develop our communities and we should go that appropriate way, the appropriate way of ensuring that those who fund us and those who have money and power will see our relevance and not question it. That's it. Sure, no that's great. Like I said, you've again given, I'm not I'm not sure I have an opinion yet. I get your argument, I also get the arguments that say, you know kind of do what your patrons want and if that's what they want but you do have to consider the opinions of the folks who are funding you also. That is very important. Darmea on the line said, libraries have always competed and she puts competed in quotes with bookstores. So yeah, there is kind of been that traditional competition with business on a certain level. I know of a lot of libraries in the past that didn't stock videos and compete with the local video store and now we start looking at talks regarding reselling of digital materials and digital materials expiring after 26 checkouts and various things. There are a lot of issues here and definitely your point of view is very well thought out. I can't argue with it on its merits. I definitely see where you're coming from on that. It is something we definitely have to think about. So I don't see any other questions coming in from the audience. Mark Shane, I want to thank you very much for this. This was wonderful and I'm going to be thinking about this a lot. Thank you. That's the goal. We can think about it. It's good. That's the goal because again, these are just ideas on the surface. The literature is clear that organizations are moving to creating online presence that tells stories. We see infographics moving and growing. So a lot of storytelling is taking place online and libraries need to start thinking how can we evolve and go where the technology is going and where people are expecting us to go. And where if people want to follow along with what you're doing and writing out in the future where should they go online for that? What's the best way to follow? Two places. You can go to Twitter MScale or you can go to my blog subscribe to my blog. Sorry about the Google Reader Congratulations. I'm going to talk about that moment. Well, I don't know. Google, that's the thing we can't fully depend on Google for all our services because again, they will cut some, they are business so they are going to do what they need to do. That's why libraries have to develop archives and other things that will keep certain resources that we are not fully dependent on any business. We have to maintain our own collection. We still have to back up all that. My blog Smile and Librarian and my Twitter account at MScale. I'm going to quick take control back here and put your blog up on my screen here so everybody should be seeing that momentarily along with my little smiling face in the corner here. SmallIslandLibrarian.blogspot.com Mark Shane, thank you once again and for that presentation, like I said, I think you've given us lots and lots to think about. Folks, I just want to spend another couple of minutes what I usually do at the end of each of these tech talks and give you some tips and tricks and some websites that I found and some news and so I will switch over to my delicious account here for this month's links and we will be providing all of these links in the show notes so you don't need to try to write down all these URLs but we will start with the big one that Mark Shane just mentioned. Google Reader is being pulled as of July 1. People are kind of scrambling to find alternatives. Bloglines, basically at this point if you do a, and I almost don't want to say this if you do a Google search for Google Reader replacements many people are writing articles about those so just something if you're not aware of it, your Google Reader user that is something you want to keep an eye on you will need some sort of new RSS Reader in the next couple of months. A few other things, the LA County Metropolitan Museum, I believe is this, LACMA they have actually been photographing many of the items in their collection and they have just provided over 20,000 free, high quality digital photographs of items in their collection that you are available to use for free, they're available to you you can search, you can browse by object type if you are looking for high quality photographs of historical objects for used in blog posts anywhere else on your website, this is a great site that you might want to take a look at. Also with that I have found a new website called Pixabay and this is also public domain images, mostly LeanSports clip art I have found at the moment I don't even have an image coming up on their home page. There is also photography in here, here is one of the Flamingo all available for you to use. So we got a couple of image resources for you this month one other one I am going to mention here there is always a couple more but let's see the secret door, this is a very interesting site, you are going to hear some music kind of come up in the background here and I am going to go ahead and mute that and you click on the door and what this does this pulls data from the Google Street View project but Street View inside buildings so each time you go through the door you get another kind of high quality online, scrollable and movable inside of a building, sometimes the buildings are really nice sometimes the buildings are run down but it is just kind of a very interesting way to explore and move around and if I return to the door and open it again I will get a completely different one this time and up here we are in a museum in this case the Tate Museum in London from the looks of it. So just I am going to be honest with you, other than just kind of playing around and looking at really interesting places not 100% sure of what a library could specifically do but thinking back to what Mark Shane has been talking about some sort of narration along with this would be probably spectacular you just have to do a little bit of recording, a little bit of video to go along with that so that is the secret door and that is actually through a window company I believe in the United Kingdom so an interesting thing to do two others here that I have for you, one is a free online OCR service. This is something that I have played with a little bit to be honest I have mixed results but the idea here is that if you have an image that you want to turn into text you can upload that image and output it as either a pdf, a word document text document or rich text format it accepts jpegs, bitmaps, tiffs and gifs for uploading, does say here that as in guest mode without registering it allows you to convert only 15 images per hour but if you don't have the software that will do this because sometimes that software can be a bit expensive this is a service you might want to try like I said I have had mixed results the clearer the source obviously the better the OCR is going to come out but it is something that you might want to try and lastly I want to mention this new type of SD card and so we are going to get a bit geeky here on this one this is a 1 gigabyte SD card called a worm card or write once, read many and the concept here is that you can write data to the card and then you can read it back but it can't be erased it stores the material securely and traceably and if you look at the product description down at the bottom what they are kind of marketing it for is say police needing to take photos of an accident or a crime scene and then ensure the integrity of those photographs so that they have not been manipulated and they are the originals that were taken on site pricing I am going to scroll down here I am not sure there is actually pricing in here these are not cheap but when I was shown this I was kind of mulling over the idea of maybe another archival format for libraries with digital content they are also supposed to be good for something like 100 years of storage things like that it is not magnetic it is not optical so you don't have scratching you don't have degradation of the magnetic media just something I am kind of throwing out there maybe something if I tweak a little interest might be something that you would want to take a look at so with that those are my links for this month and my news so Google Reader being the big one and thanks Mark Shane for bringing that up that reminded me I was definitely going to talk about that so I am not seeing any other outstanding questions or comments from the audience so I am going to take this moment to thank everyone for attending and thank Mark Shane once again for participating in this session like I keep saying he has given me a lot to think about and I like it when that happens and come as live as every Wednesday morning central day light time at 10 o'clock or central standard time as the clock may be we have upcoming sessions here get ready to celebrate El Dia de los Niños next week dig into reading this year's summer reading program on April 3rd and easing information anxiety teaching information literacy strategies and skills for college readiness on Wednesday April 17th so you can find all of our recordings here on the Encompass Live site just Google that also Encompass Live has a Facebook page we welcome you to like us on Facebook and join us there where we will post information about upcoming episodes when the recordings are released and as always if you have any idea for presenting whether yourself or somebody else you would like to hear from in Encompass Live please feel free to send those in either via the Facebook page or directly to Krista here at the library commission so with that I am going to say thank you to everybody once again thanks for attending and we will see you next week on Encompass Live


Going on everyone Sam here late in sports cards doing a five box personal for Jonathan D We've got two 22 tops five star baseballs to 22 trap tops triple threads baseballs and one 21-22 leaf pearl multi-sport So good luck here, buddy Let's do it That might not be the worst idea in the world. I would say Zach Especially if you could get it graded and sold before he has any products in the NFL Like I think like you Selling time would probably be like mid-calibe season next year if he's doing well. Yeah, I would say so Yeah The redemption so yeah It'll basically be the parallels awarded at the time of fulfillment So there's a chance you can get one number to 30 and there's a chance you can get a one-on-one. It's completely random on that one Yeah, that's how it goes to the redemption. It's a little weird the way they do that Oh Well bet now Peter Lonzo to 125 on the pink as well as an orange Roy Campanella one 99 Connor green rookie on there. We've got an Andrew McCutcheon Slim in a pinch 11 of six 18 for the Brewers Yeah, of course that thank you man. Appreciate it, buddy and MJ Melendez 52 of 99 for the Royals on the on-card auto Nice one there Send you an empty box and wrapper All of these rookie autos for the most part have peeling on the bottom. So I'll get you one of those Jonathan case You do want to get it replaced? You'll have the box and wrapper to do so What's the truth what's the truth last time we I sent Zach a note I put an auto on it so we can do that too if you want to sign a filler and put on Zach's order We'll sign it sure not only to 125 and yellow one soda to 75 base and base Griffin Jack's rookie Jersey auto to 99 for the twins Nice one there and a the Brian Hayes 38 or 48 That's for the pirates keep Ryan Hayes All right box two triple threads Now really honestly the bot True just programmed to yeah never get tired He gets low on power it isn't true. There you go very very well put down very well put This problem Jesse have a go on buddy ourselves are depleting We're going into the backup backup battery. There's hobby bias 259 purple Jackie Robinson at 299 base There's a Tyler McGill rookie Jersey auto 21 of 50 the Mets and Jerb Kelnick 10 of 27 for the Mariners On the jurors card is actually having a really good year But I've got a hand of Jerb Kelnick finally showing off hunter green 2 of 99 and a hunter green purple to 299. So nice one there a couple of hunter greens never bad thing Please do nice one here. It's gonna be a blue patch Chris Bryant Left field center field right field and first three color one color three color two of three there you go John and Chris Taylor 41 of 75 for the Dodgers nice one there as well. All right two five stars now It's gonna be a Josiah Gray rookie auto for the Nationals. Nice one there rookie on we've also got a Matt Olson Eight of 25 for the Braves having a great year in Atlanta. Grats on that Jonathan It's gonna be a Riley Adams rookie auto for the Nationals Hey, nice one here. How about 20 of 75 Bobby Whit jr. Rookie auto for the Mariners. There we go Jonathan. Congrats, buddy That's awesome. I'm gonna get a chance. All right. Leaf Pearl. Good luck Jonathan Say that I say Mariners. I met Royals my bad Royals Royals Royals Royals Royals that is about All right first hit three of six Naomi Osaka Hell yeah, man Congrats on that one there Jonathan dating Core day One of the best rappers in the game Formerly YBN Corda. I swung there congrats on the Osaka one of the best tennis players in the world No, it's gonna be Jersey card one of three Willie Mays Wow The say hey kid part of the number four That is game-worn Willie Mays Incredible man. That's awesome. Nice one up. It's gonna be a Don Drysdale six of six hollowed heroes Box of Pearl 40 it's like 4500 Six of six hollowed heroes Don Drysdale, that's awesome Jersey action there next up is wow Vinnie jr. Three of six with like the Brazil patch Game use memorabilia, what if that's from the World Cup dude, that'd be so awesome. Yeah, I'm assuming it's probably from like International friendly, but that's freaking awesome Vinnie jr. What a patch on that thing man Grats on that Jonathan the Pearl There we go. See me. That's gonna be six of eight paylay On the pro can't ask for a much better pearl than that man. That's awesome Rest in peace to a legend on the black pearl. That's awesome Congrats Jonathan big-time paylay Pearl signatures for one of four Allen Iverson Tony Parker Mike, Bibi and Penny hardaway bunch of great point guards That's awesome. The answer TP Bibi and Penny That's awesome. Congrats and I must have good luck on that one Congrats on that signatures for that's sick. That's so sick. It's like you got a duel I see Joe Montana and Steve young there. He is That's gonna be a dual Paragon dual signatures five of five. That's probably the coolest one of Montana. That's awesome Yeah, that's not like maybe a four eight or whatever. You're right, right The game use dual jerseys as well. That's awesome. Yeah, that's cool. That's freaking awesome Joe Montana Steve young Paragon dual signatures Indie moss three of four nice Jersey auto that's cool Paragon signatures game use don't see a lot of game use moss, dude, right? That's not easy to come by That's so nasty, but I feel you don't see a lot of auto moss anything Yeah, he's been a little bit more and more recent years, but up until like 2018-2019 he was in like nothing. I was gonna say the only auto eyes really seen like it was like impeccable Yeah, he'll be yeah, yeah, he had someone flawless last year But yeah, really impeccable and like iMac is really the only time you'll see any Moss stuff Next one Dan the man Dan marino five of ten game use Jersey auto Nice one there again on the Paragon signatures Very nice. Very nice Dan the man next up is gonna be a John elway 24 of 32 hand numbered QB bling This is a football box sweet dude that's sweet that's a gorgeous elway sig to Gorgeous elway sig who received buzz Aldrin on the redemption Magnificent cut. Oh, that's so cool, dude Uh astronaut. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay buzz Aldrin was even thinking about that. That's so awesome Yeah, Roy, that's how it happens. Uh, they're full for tonight. So if you do order one, it'll go tomorrow It'll go tomorrow with Matt That was freaking awesome, dude buzz Aldrin on the cut Cut auto wow wow wow wow Jonathan, thanks again, man. That's gonna do it for your personal. I appreciate you buddy. Um, thanks again, man. We'll get him right out to you, buddy


Hi everyone, welcome back to the makeup chair. Today I'm going to be doing a review on this. This is the Urban Decay Reloaded Palette. Remember the original one? Yeah, it's been reloaded. So I'm going to talk you through kind of my thoughts about this palette, what I liked, what I didn't like. And also, I'm not going to do swatches. I'm going to show you guys it on my actual eye. So I feel like you can go online and find like different swatches, like really good ones and really bad ones of kind of any palette out there. But I want to show you guys kind of a couple of the looks. I do actually have it on right now, but I only have like the really natural ones. So I'll show you a few other combinations and talk a little bit about the palette in detail as well. So let's just get started. So this is what the palette looks like when you first take it out of the box. It's got a beautiful, almost satiny silk covering. Classic Urban Decay style, a mixing fabric in with makeup. Not usually be a fan of it because it does mean that it will absorb product, but it does look super beautiful. And that fabric actually runs through into the inside of the palette where you have a large mirror and then you have your eyeshadows, which are set in like a really high quality plastic base, which I love, like super high quality plastic. At first glance, I loved these eyeshadows so much. On a little bit more of an inspection, I kind of got a little disappointed, mostly on just the actual texture, not the actual shadows because I love the shadows. I think they're beautiful. Probably notice that the outer four are slightly different in size. And this is probably because you're going to use these the most. At least I thought that I was going to use them the most, but let me explain. You have bribe. You also have blur on the other side, which can be used as a base and nice matte shade. I would have to use bribe for my skin tone. And I'm just so disappointed because it has sparkle in it, but it kind of gets away with it because it is so light and the sparkle that's added into it is so light. So you don't really notice it. I wish that the texture had been the same as blur. You then have your barely baked another slightly bigger shade. This one is a beautiful highlight, probably going to be used time and time again. What I really like about this is that even though it's a gold, it's not too cool or too warm. It's not too dark or too light. It's going to work on so many different skin tones. I'm so happy that that's slightly bigger in size. On the other side, they have what I thought I was going to use time and time again as a transition shade, but once again, they added in the sparkle. And this one actually is the worst for the amount of sparkle that's been added. The sparkle is like a soft, kind of goldy kind of sparkle.  Essentially, these shadows are all labeled as matte on the website, but the only actual ones are these ones. These ones are beautiful matte shadows. Super creamy, super gorgeous, easy to blend. Then these ones, even though they're beautiful and matte and just creamy, just like the other ones, they have this added sparkle, which I just found was just so unnecessary. I didn't want it there. And the worst one was this one. So if you can't tell, I'm very disappointed. Moving on, they also have metallic shades in here, which are beautiful, classic urban decay. And they also have these, which are like iridescent sparkles. These ones are gorgeous again. Very classic, original urban decay, naked palette. Remember how they were kind of chunky? And once you work with them, they actually end up going on really beautifully. I find the best way to really get a feel for a palette is to actually apply them. So I'm going to be using the shades that I've highlighted here as my highlight, fade, contour, mid-tone and base. And I'm also going to add in that shade that I'm kind of disappointed in over the lid as well. We're going to start off with our base shade. We're going to apply this all over the lid, went on a little darker than I thought it would. So I actually added in a little bit of that lighter highlighter shade just on the inner corner because I needed to kind of brighten it up.  With the disappointing shade, I applied this all over the lid. I feel so bad and I'm not one for complaining, but I love the shadow so much. I just didn't want to see the glitter and actually you can't see it on the lid. So that's a big plus. It's kind of there when you kind of turn your head to the light, but overall you couldn't really see it. And then took my contour shade, which has red glitter in it for some reason. And I applied this on the outer edge of the eye. Once again, you couldn't see the glitter, which was a big plus. I was so relieved. And then took barely baked and I was going to actually coat my crease. And then I thought, you know what? Let's see how pigmented this is. So I applied this with a damp brush and I kind of like cut the crease with it and then used the not so disappointing disappointing shade just to blur the two of the lines together. And taking that highlighter shade, then I just apply this underneath my brows and a little bit on that inner corner as well. Overall, I really ended up loving this look. I was really surprised because the color swatched a little differently and the texture was a little different and you can't really see that sparkle. So pretty happy with that. Next up, I'm going to use the pink tone. So I've labeled these as my highlight to mid tone lid and contour. We're going to start off with our base again, though. I'm going to be using bribe as my base. Just apply this all over the lid. I've already prepped with concealer and we're going to start off with our mid tone and blend this over and back in the crease of the eye and slightly onto the lid as well. This went on so beautifully. It was really easy to blend. I loved the pigmentation from this peachy tone. And then took the contour shade, which is the darkest of the kind of pinky tones and I just apply this on the outer edge of the eye and also on the inner corner as well and already this look just took so much shape because these colors work beautifully together. I then took my lid shade and it actually wasn't that different. So what I had to do is cut the crease and then apply the lid shade over the top because these two shades, which I was using as my contour and my lid were a little bit too similar to really create that kind of spotlight look. So by applying a little bit of concealer underneath, you're going to get a slightly different tone. And then I took Angel Fire and just apply this on the inner corner. Angel Fire is very sheer, but over the top of burn, it went on really nicely. It's almost like a pressed glitter in a way. Then I took bribe and just apply this underneath the brows. Then I went back in with Angel Fire because I loved it so much. I just applied this around the edges of my cut crease and this sort of just brightened up the look, add a little bit of shine and glitter. I actually want to do another look using Angel Fire because I loved it so much. I'm really happy with how this turned out. I don't usually use these kind of pinky peachy tones, but I loved it. Really easy use. The combinations are perfect together. Gorgeous. Give it a try. Now we're going to do the brown tone. So I've got my contour, highlight, lid and mid-tone. We're going to start off first of all with our mid-tone shade and apply this in the crease of the eye. This went on beautifully and easily and this is what I would use as my mid-tone or transition shade. It's such a shame because I feel like if they had switched these two around, I would have got a little bit more of that transition shade, a little bit more product. I'm then going to take my contour shade and apply this all over the lid. If you haven't seen already, I did a video on how to create a smoky eye. So this is basically that same technique. I then took my lid shade and just apply this over the top of the contour shade. Beautiful. So beautiful. Even at this point, I was like, wow, these are going on like a dream. I then took the highlighter shade. So this is basically like a pressed 3D glitter, I think it's referred to as. And basically it needs a little bit of work because it's kind of chunky. I tried a few different brushes, but my fingertips are probably the best way to apply this because you kind of almost need to work this in if that makes sense. I then added black liner to the lower waterline. I used our lid shade just running this underneath and this looked turned out really well. I only did it in like two minutes. Really easy to do. Perfect if you're in a rush. That perfect kind of bronzy smoky eye. I loved it. My overall review of this palette, I like it. I don't love it. I feel like there's other Urban Decay palettes that I love way more than this, but I feel like it's a throwback. And sometimes I feel like we need throwbacks just to kind of make us feel calm inside. I feel like that's why everything is being reloaded or redone and rebooted. I feel like we just kind of needed this, this, which is like the main one in the beauty industry that we needed to be reloaded. So let me know what you guys think of it. If you love it, you hate it. I'd love to hear from you guys. Why do you love it? Why do you hate it? Definitely let me know in the comment section. Hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button. And I will see you guys in the next one. Oh, like when you meet your friend, do you haven't seen since college? Not that I had the original one to be fair. So I really didn't like the original one at all. Oh, it's taking a picture. Hi.


All right, I get it and I respect it and you should too. So YouTube team keep it clean. What's going on? It's engraving here with another video and in this video, Brandon Knight, he cleared up exactly what's going on with them and why he didn't report to the Ravens. And again, John Harbaugh did say it's for personal reasons. And initially when Harbaugh said that, I told y'all, I got Ben Mason vibes. Like when Ben Mason may have came to an agreement with the Ravens that he was going to come back to their practice squad after they cut them, after they drafted them in the fifth round this year. But it obviously ended up being something a lot different. But before we get into it, team keep it clean. I love y'all. I appreciate y'all. Shout out to all the team keep it clean patrons. Thank you for doing what you do. If you want to become a team keep it clean patron, you can go to patreon.com slash engraving feeds. If you don't and you like, no, I don't want to be no patron. Then don't go to patreon.com slash engraving feeds. I must still love you regardless, though. So you already know what time it is. Anyway, Brandon Knight, he took to Twitter to clear up everything. And I appreciated that because he didn't owe us that at all. He didn't owe fans that he didn't owe media that he didn't owe anybody that well, except his new employer. But I'm sure that they talked about that already. But to us, we didn't have to know what was going on. And we could have just continued to speculate and wonder like what went down. But you got to respect him for addressing it and letting the fans know what was up. And let's read his his what he said word for word. So he said, first and foremost, I want to thank the Baltimore Ravens for allowing me another opportunity to play the game I've always loved. As of now, I've decided to take a break from football to address my mental health. Although it was a difficult decision, it was a necessary one to be back home with my family. I look forward to returning next season. And shout out to Brandon Knight because I know there are going to be some people that say, oh, man, what's that? That's weak or he shouldn't be doing that. No, man, he just didn't want to play for the Ravens. And it could be a number of things. But you got to respect it for what it is, man. You got you got to respect it for what it is and what he said it is. Like, we don't know what's going on in his mind. We don't know what's going on with his mental health. But the fact that he said and he's addressing it, let it be known like, hey, I'm stepping away from the game right now to address my mental health. OK, good. We're glad that he's addressing that because one thing that you wouldn't want just as a as a person, you wouldn't want somebody who is dealing with an issue and they dealing with an issue for the Halvalon. They dealing with it for and it just is bothering them. And they just they just keep on suppressing it, keep on pushing it away, keep on like, I just deal with it later. And that that could make it get worse and worse and worse. And we've all been in situations where we dealt with something and we try to do that. We try to suppress it and we try to just be like, now I feel like even bothering with it right now. That doesn't help. It doesn't help at all. It may make you feel like you temporarily help it, but it's going to come back if you don't deal with it. So with Brandon Knight stepping away from football, like one thing that I was thinking about, he's been with the Cowboys since 2019. I'm not sure if this is what triggered something with him mentally, but I tried to put myself in his shoes because, again, we got to remember these football players, these NFL players, they are not robots. They are they are humans with real emotions. So they go through things, too, regardless if they in the NFL or not. But I tried to put myself in his shoes and I was thinking like, man, if I like, he was with the Cowboys since 2019. So if I was with a job, if I was with a company since 2019, had been there, put in work and been putting in work for the past couple of years. And it's now 2021 coming up on 2022. And we in the middle of our fiscal year. So it ain't like it ain't time for layoffs, anything like that. So OK, I'm good. I'm straight. And I'm really thinking about my future with this company, thinking about different opportunities that I could possibly get with this company in the future. And then all of a sudden, bam, I get fired.  Even though the company could be like, hey, and we don't know if they did this, but it was said that they wanted him back on the practice squad. But the company could have been like, hey, engraving. We love you. We appreciate you. We got to we got to let you go for now. But hey, we got a spot for you when you come back. We got a spot right here, waiting for you. And we want to rehire you again, but you just got to wait a little bit. Just a little bit. So then I don't end up getting that spot. If I don't get to end up getting that opportunity, especially when I put a lot of work into this company and I invested a lot into this company. But I don't end up getting anything in return. That could mess somebody up mentally. And with Brandon Knight, it is a different situation. And it's hard to compare a more normal situation to him getting claimed by the Ravens. But still, maybe he has so much invested in Dallas with his family, with his friends, maybe he has so much invested in Dallas and he had planned for the future in Dallas. And that was what he was thinking about. That had what that what he was planning his life around and whatnot. Then all of a sudden, boom, it's like you got to go from Dallas to Baltimore. And that's a big change. That's a huge change. So if he had to do that, then that could have been a big shock to his system. Like, oh, man, what am I going to do with my family? What am I going to do? I don't know if he has kids or not. But if he does, what am I going to do with my kids with their schooling and whatnot? Because you think about all of that stuff. If you got to make a big move from one city to another, from one state to another, because it's a whole different atmosphere. You go to go from Texas to Maryland. It's a whole different atmosphere. And I mean, to be straight up, people in Texas are a lot nicer than the people in Maryland. So it'll be a very rude awakening for him if that was the case. And then something else that I think about, too, is even if this this possible move, that could have been something that triggered a just a mental breakdown for Brandon Knight, but at the same time, like we said earlier, it might have been something that he may have already been dealing with. He may have already has an issue that had just been bothering him for the longest that he was going through, that he may have been just trying to suppress it and trying to keep it down. But all of a sudden this happens where you have to make this move. And this was not in his plans. And you and one of the one of the craziest parts about it, one of the craziest parts about the NFL, especially when it comes to the waiver wire, is that you have no say so. You have absolutely no say so in what goes down. So with that being said, if you get cut from your team and you haven't put in, I believe it's four years or more as an NFL player and you're subject to waivers and your original team cuts you, you don't have a choice where you go. You have none at all. And even veteran players, we've heard so many stories where veteran players where they end up getting traded. And it's like, whoa, they didn't even see it coming. Some of them end up hearing it on social media. Like a couple of Ravens, for example, that come to mind. Remember Lody Nada, when the Ravens traded Lody Nada to the Lions, I believe they said that I think he said he was at school picking up his kids. So it's like, man, I think he was like even in the pick up lane to get his kids from school or something, he was picking up his kids from school. So it's like, man, you you're doing that and you find out you get traded. It's like, whoa, what is crazy? And then with with Anquan Bowden, with Anquan Bowden, when he found out he was getting traded to the 49ers, I think he was in Africa doing volunteer work.  But my point is when when it comes at you like that and you have no say so in the matter, oh, that can bother you a lot, that could bother you a whole lot. So it's just it's a lot to deal with. But back to what I was saying, it can be scary for somebody who had had possibly don't know a situation. But if he had possibly already been dealing with something and then he gets this this car, hey, you got claimed by the Ravens. So you're not coming back here. We can't bring you back. It's over. You're going there. You got to move. You got to go. That's a lot. That's that's a lot to take on. That's a lot to deal with. And if you're already dealing with something, then it's even more. It weighs even heavier on your mind. It weighs even heavier on your mental. So with Brandon Knight, with him taking care of what he's taking care of. Cool. I got zero problem with it. And I don't think that you should have a problem with it either. Now, of course, everybody's entitled to their own opinion, but. Got to respect it. Got to respect it. Like I said, for what it is and for what he is letting it be known to. Because, again, like I said earlier, he doesn't owe it to any of us fans. They don't know us. Like, but he ain't got to explain none of us. We are not paying his salary. We ain't the Ravens front office. Sometimes we'd be thinking we always, especially with some of them questions from subscribers and whatnot, which I love, but we're not. We're not the Ravens front office. So we don't call the shots. We don't wave people. We don't trade people. We don't sign people. We don't claim people. We don't do any of that. But I did really appreciate that. Again, like I said, that he addressed it just to let it be known. Because I'm sure, especially since he has Twitter, he's been seeing people speak on his name. He's been seeing people say, oh, this kind of stuff. And I saw some stuff in the comment section like, come on, come on now. It ain't like that. Like yesterday, we we joked about it yesterday. We joked about the situation. But like I said, in the video, I hope that in all seriousness, that everything was was good with him. Because like we always say on here, you never know what somebody is going through, you never know. And that's why it's important that you treat people with respect. You treat them with love and it can be hard. Like if somebody is nasty to you, it can be so hard to treat them with love. And trust me, if somebody nasty to me, I don't always treat them with love. Because it's tough. It's tough. We're not perfect. And it's they they they make it. Some people make it so hard. They really could be trying you, man. People be trying you and people try to take your kindness for weakness. But anyway, we've got to try to try our best to treat people with respect and treat people with love and just just try to be good to people, man, because everybody got their own story. And you don't know everybody's story.  Shout out to Brandon Knight. Shout out to your team. Keep it clean. I love y'all. I appreciate y'all. And oh, and thank you for for forty seven thousand subscribers. We have forty seven KS. That's wild, man. Y'all are just y'all are insane. Y'all are cool, cool, y'all crazy. But I love y'all, cool, cool, crazy, insane insanity. So appreciate y'all. Thank you. Now, the Ravens, they still do. They have Brandon when Brandon Knight returns. He will be a Raven. He will be a Raven because Ravens, they they have his his rights.  Some of these turns in the NFL just bother me a little bit. But they do have his rights. So whenever he decides to come back to the game, he will be a Baltimore Raven. So whenever that time comes, we'll see you. But until then, just like Brandon Knight is temporarily when it comes to being in the NFL, I'm out.


Welcome folks, we have the Dow Industries trading down $100, NASDAQ is up 61, S&Ps are flat. Gold contract up $13.30 trading at $19.76, we have Silver down $0.10, $23.26, Light Sweet Crew taking a hit down $3, $69.65 a barrel, notes and bonds, a 10-year note up $24.6, trade in $13.05, the 30-year up a full point, plus 18 ticks at $127.06 and $Kingdala, down $40 ticks, $104.16, $165 rather, Euro $107, yen is at $139, British pound is at $123 to $1 US dollar. Well get over and take a look at the spy folks, bottom line, you got a sideways move out here, you're coming into window dressing, it's a positive time of the month, no doubt about that, you're over the swing, we're at $420 right now, the swing's $418, if we get into the cash, and we're going to take a look at the cash S&P, which we've been dealing with out here, the cash S&P, we're at $42.11 and that cash is $41.95, so that's saying it's going to the next swing. And the X100, that continues higher, the inside the Qs, the three Qs right now, it's up $215 and the next swing, we are at $350, I think it's $364, maybe $371, $371 is a game, that's the bottom line, that's a game, you had volume come out on Friday, you're away from the breakout area, the breakout area is $334 and you have $350, bottom line, that thing's a game, so we'll see how it handles it when it gets up there, gold, gold contract, bottom line, with the gold contract, it's traded down to $1949, you're at $1976 on this contract, which is the August contract, you've done $252,000 contracts, big contract volume, the problem is here that, well let's see, I believe we're going into $200,000 or $300,000 also, not $400,000, yeah I know, okay, so we're rolling contracts once second, let me put the GLD up, we've been rolling since last week, okay, yeah this is not good, we're still going low up, you can see the GLD, the popwood light volume, that's not done on the way down, stay right there folks, come right back.


For the sake of people who are coming to Unity with no C-sharp or Java experience, I want to go through the basics of C-sharp as quickly as possible. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to start with my Pigeon educational language as a basis. I'm going to assume you understand that stuff of functions and variables and control flow, the stuff common to all programming languages. But then building on that notation, we're going to add into Pigeon the semantics of C-sharp. So we'll be learning a C-sharp-like language, at least semantically, just with different syntax. And then once we get through that, we'll translate over into the real C-sharp notation. It may sound like extra work to go this path, but I think it's actually more efficient because the syntax is clearer and will distract you from the semantic ideas. So first, looking at this Pigeon code here, I have this function foo with two parameters a and b. If a is greater than five, then we turn the string high, otherwise we return the addition of a and b. And then in main, we're creating a local over x, assigning a string to it, calling foo with integers nine and ten. And then calling foo again with x and six, but we're going to get an error in this call because the string will pass to a and then when this operation is performed, the language checks every time it does an operation, hey, do we have the right kinds of inputs? And if not, it throws an exception and you can't add together a string and an integer, so this gets us an error. So that's what we call a type error. We're attempting to perform an operation or call a function with the wrong kind of input. Pigeon checks for type errors when an operation is executed. So we say that Pigeon is a dynamically typed language. The alternative to dynamic typing is called static typing. And if Pigeon were a statically typed language, well, first off, we would denote types and code at certain places. And so here for our purposes, we'll say capital I refers to the integer type and capital STR refers to our string type. And now the same code we written in a static version of Pigeon might look something like this. Our function foo, we have to specify what type of value it's going to return. And we're going to say here that returns an integer. And then for our parameters, we also have to specify what types are. So if you say a is an integer and b is an integer, we're putting the type name after the parameter. This colon here is just for visual separation. So it's easier to distinguish the parameters from the name and the return type. So we specify the types of our functions, meaning the return type of that function and the types of the inputs. And then also on our variables, we specify what their types are. So here this variable X, we specify it's a string variable. And what that means is that when we assign to the variable, the compiler checks to make sure we're assigning the right kind of value. So this is valid. But then if I make this some other time, let's say an integer, now it's invalid. The compiler will complain about this assignment and say, I refuse to compile the code until you correct this. So let me put that back and now it's good. And then when I call foo, the compiler looks at this and says nine and 10. Yeah, that's valid. You can pass integers to foo it's expecting two integers and we're passing two integers. That's good. But now here, if we pass foo X six X, the compiler knows is a string because that's how it's declared up here. It'll know for sure this is always going to be a string. And so it knows this call is invalid. And so we get a compilation error and the compiler tells us, Hey, on this line, you have this function call where an integer was expected, but instead you're passing in the string. Lastly, having specified that foo is a function returning an integer, the compiler will force that as well. So anywhere we have a return statement inside foo here, it has to be returning an integer and not any other kind of value. So if this we're returning a string like we had up here, that's invalid, we can't return anything other than an integer from this function foo. Whereas in the dynamic version of pigeon, we didn't have that problem in a dynamic language in our functions just at any point we can return whatever we want. So down this branch of code returning a string down this branch of code returning an integer, whatever the compiler's happy. So this is a case where dynamic typing is arguably more flexible. In a static code, we have to have our function return just one type, except there is actually a workaround for this as we'll get into later. There's a way you can have a function, you declare to return one type, but the net type has so called sub types. And so you're not locked into returning just one specific kind of piece of data. So you can return different types of things from a statically typed function. There is no some extra work you have to go through to achieve that. In the dynamic language, it's couldn't be more straightforward, you just return whatever you want at any point. On the other hand, in the static type language, we now have the benefit of any time we call function foo the compiler knows for sure what it's going to return. It's guaranteed at compile time that this function foo is always going to turn an integer. So if we had, let me just add another variable of type integer, I, and now if I were to assign this to I, the compiler can know for sure that yes, this call returns an integer. And so this assignment is valid. So the some effect of annotating the types in our code by specifying what the return types of our functions are, what the types of their parameters are and what the types of our variables are, is that the compiler can analyze our code and know the type of every expression in the code. It can look at every call, every variable, every value and say, I know what that thing is, I know what type it is. It doesn't know specifically the values, of course, but it knows the types. And so we can do type checking at compile time and effectively eliminate all type errors at runtime. In a dynamic language, there's always the danger that we don't know if our code has type errors or not. Yeah, we can run the program and see if we get a type error. But of course, there can be branches of code that don't necessarily always execute they execute only under rare conditions. And so we can't really systematically say that our code doesn't have any type errors in a dynamically typed language. On the other hand, advocates of dynamic typing will say there are cases where dynamic typing is more convenient and more flexible. And they also argue that eliminating type errors at compile time is really not that big a deal. Because of course, type errors aren't the only possible kind of bug in our code. We can have just logic errors of any kind in our code. So why are type errors so special? That is the argument they might make. Another point in favor of static typing, though, is that statically typed languages generally are more efficient because the compilers can know for sure what types everything are. And when it knows what type everything is, it doesn't have to do extra type checking at runtime like we do here in regular dynamic pigeon where you do this ad operation and it has to check, are these two things integers? It doesn't know at compile time and has to defer that question until it does the operation every single time. Whereas here, the compiler knows for sure A and B are both integers. So it doesn't have to bother to check their types. So there's less work at runtime. Also by knowing what type everything is, in many cases, the compiler then knows exactly how large the thing is, meaning how much space it occupies in memory. And that opens up a lot of possibilities for optimization that the compiler can do. So generally, statically typed languages are more efficient. So in our C sharp code, anytime we create a variable, we have to specify what type it is. And anytime we create a method, which is what C sharp calls as functions, we have to specify the return type and what the types of the parameters are. As I discussed in another video about number representation, the way numbers are represented as bits, one way to do it is what are called floating point numbers where the value can be not only an integer, it can also have a fractional component, it can have basically a decimal point, like say 82.4, that is a floating point value. Alternatively, though, when we know we just need to deal with integer values, there's a more efficient representation that doesn't account for fractional values. And so generally, if we want to be efficient, we'll make the distinction between floating point numbers and integer numbers. In Pigeon and other languages where performance is not a high priority, we can simply represent all of our numbers in terms of floating point, but in languages that are trying to be more efficient, like C sharp, a distinction is made between integers and floating point. So in our C sharp code, we have integer type numbers and floating point type numbers, and they're not considered to be the same thing. They are different types, even though they're both numbers. And so here, if we can create a variable with the word var, specify its name, and then it's type, this is creating a variable i of type integer, this is creating a variable f of type float. And then we can assign floating point values like 82.4 to f. We can assign integer values like 6 to i, but then if we try and assign f to i, they're both numbers, but the compiler looks at this and says, well, you're a floating point value, not an integer value, so I can't assign you to i. However, using a cast operation where we specify the type we are casting to, the type we're converting to, we can cast our float values to integer values, and this does a conversion. It gets us the integer equivalent of the floating point value f. And of course, there isn't any exact equivalent, any mathematically exact equivalent of 82.4 expressed as an integer. This simply is not an integer value, but what the cast operation does in this case is it'll just truncate. It'll get us the integer value 82. It just hacks off everything after the decimal point. So this returns 82 as an integer value, and that is assigned to i, and that is valid. And we can go the other way around. We can assign to f the cast of to float from i, and this goes the opposite way. But of course, in this example, the cast doesn't distort the value. We get the mathematically equivalent value. We started with a net value, but we get the float equivalent, which in this case is mathematically the same value. Now, integer floats and bool are considered in C-sharp to be so-called value types, meaning that variables of this type store the values directly. So this float variable here, when we assign at the value 82.4, the bytes that make up this value are copied to be stored directly in f. Same with i here. You assign six to it, and the bytes that make up this value are copied to be stored directly in i. Whereas with reference types like string, a string variable itself does not directly store string. Instead, it stores just a reference. It stores the address. So here, the string high is created somewhere in memory. We don't care exactly. The language decides where to put it. And then what's being stored in s is the address of that string, wherever it is in memory. So for reference types, there's a special value null, which is equivalent of what I'm pigeoning we call nil. It's just the value representing nothing. It's the reference pointing to nothing. And so you can assign null to s. You can have a string variable, a reference variable that points to nothing. That's valid. But you can't assign null to an integer variable, or a float variable, or any value type variable. So this isn't valid, whereas this is okay. So again, value types are stored in their variables directly, whereas reference types are not. And this distinction doesn't have any consequence here in this example, but it'll have significance later on. In pigeon, our code consists primarily of functions and global variables. We do have functions and global variables in C sharp, but they go by different names, and they're contained within these things called classes. So what is a class? Well, a class is, in a sense, a data type. We are defining here a data type called cat, and we'll say in our CS pigeon language that all type names, including our class names, have to begin with a capital letter, whereas other things cannot begin with capital letters. So it's capital C cat. And this data type cat is composed of three data elements. These data elements we call fields, and the first here has the name name, confusing I know, but the name happens to be name, and its type is string. The second field has the name age, and the type integer, and the third field has the name weight, and the type float. And so having defined this data type, we can create values of this type, and each value of that type will be composed of these three elements, these three fields, a name and age and a weight, a name of type string and age of type integer, and a weight of type float. There's no real sense of order amongst these fields. If I wrote them in a different order, it would still logically be the same class. The compiler actually doesn't care what order we write these things in. So having defined this class cat, we can then create a variable of type cat, we'll call it C, and understand that classes are reference types. And so what this variable C will store is not any cat directly, it stores the address of a cat. When we create cats, they exist somewhere in memory, and then we assign them to C. C then stores a copy of the address of the cat, not the cat itself directly. To actually create the cat values, or as what we often call instances and objects of the class cat, I'll probably use the term instance most frequently. To create a cat instance, we use the new operator, we specify the name of the class, and this returns a newly created cat instance, whose address now is going to be stored in the variable C. Upon creation, the fields of this new instance, the name field of string that defaults to null, and age and weight will both default to zero. But if we want to change that, we can use the set operator to specify the instance whose field we are setting. We specify the name of the field, in this case name, and we specify its value in this case of string mittens. So again, strings are not really stored directly in variables or fields. String is a reference type, and variables and fields don't store reference types directly, they store their addresses. So actually now what's happening is the address of the string mittens is copied to the name field of this instance of cat. And then here we set the age of cat C to five. But because this is a value type, the value five is stored directly in the field age. To retrieve the values of the fields, we use the get operator, specify the instance, and the name of the field, in this case the field called name. And so this is retrieving the string referenced by name, though more accurately it's getting us the address of that string, and that is then being copied to this variable S of type string. So now the variable S and the name field of C are both referencing the same string. The string exists in one place in memory, and both this name field and this variable S store the address of that string. Now here I'm creating a second cat variable called C2, and initializing this with the value of C. So C2 and C both now are referencing the same cat instance. There's only one cat instance so far we've created in memory, but C and C2 both store the address of that very same cat instance. And so now if I set the age of C2 to six, if I read the age of C, both C and C2 are just references pointing to the same cat. So here having set that instance's age to six, when I get the age, even though it's through a different reference, it's a reference pointed to the same instance, and so this returns six. If though we create another new cat, we create a separate cat and assign that C2, now C2 is referencing a different cat. If we set the age of C2 to seven and then access age of C again, well it's still six because when we set the age here, we're setting the age of the cat created on this line, not the one created up here. I understand that having defined a class, we can then use that class as a data type just like we use any of the built-in data types. So here for example if we have this class door made up of a color, which is a string and a height, which is a floating point value, well then if we also have a class house, it tends to have a field of type door and these other classes, like say if we had a class kitchen or garage, this house then would be composed of references pointing to instances of those other types. We call this composition. A data type we can define can be composed of elements of other types we've defined. In fact, perhaps surprisingly, a class can have a field of its own type. Like say here, this class cat, we have a field mother of type cat, and so when we create a new cat here, we set its mother to, in this case, a new cat, a separate cat, and that makes sense, except for the part where the mother was created after the child, but this is code, not reality. And in fact, we can do something even stranger. We can set the mother of our cat to be itself, which sounds logically impossible and of course in reality is, but in code, this value here is just a reference pointing to some cat somewhere in memory. So once we've already created the cat and stored in reference C, we can then just copy that address to this field. We can then have a recursive piece of data that has a reference to itself.


Now, if the momentum anomaly and the value anomaly, those to me seem like the two biggest anomalies in pricing theory, does Eugene Fama admit you are correct? No. If you have an academic record on this, you have a track record, right, statistically and the success of your firm, we'll try and... He's just trying to get me in trouble. I will tell you, I'm in public here, I'm with someone I admire greatly, this is going to be on the internet, I'm still more scared of Gene. So, with that said, one of the scariest moments, let me take you back, was telling him I wanted to write a dissertation on price momentum, and I swear to God, I mumbled the second part and I find it works really well.  Look what these crazy people on Wall Street do. They make all these indicators and they're throwing away their money. To his credit, he immediately said, if it's in the data, write the paper. Now, we don't agree fully on it. We don't agree on two things, and for all I know, he changed his mind yesterday, but as of yesterday, I don't think we agree on this. Value investing, remember, I think works for a mix of both behavioral and perhaps some risk reasons. I think they're hard to identify, but I'm more than willing to say that's a big... That might be a big part of it. I think Gene would say it's mostly a raw risk. I don't think he's very positive on the behavioral explanation. Momentum, Gene's a risk guy. He's an efficient markets guy. I think Gene is still cynical about it. I know his latest paper, he and Ken French, if not the best among the best papers in finance. I read everyone to this day. It doesn't mean I agree with every word. They started out with a so-called three-factor model about 20 years ago. What drives return on an individual stock? The markets return and your sensitivity to that. Values return and how much of a value stock you are, not size's return.  They've added to that over time. They've added an investment effect of firms that, for instance, reduce their share account, tend to do better and there are theories as to why. And a profitability factor. All else equal, more profitable firms seem to outperform less profitable firms. And again, that's a very strong effect that holds up. I wrote a piece on our blog saying something, our factor model goes to six. And for those of you who are curious, it was a reference to Spinal Tap where our amps go to 11. I take the other side from them. I love these guys. We agree on nine out of 10 things. I don't see how momentum is not their sixth factor. It adds a tremendous amount of return versus their model. The numbers I gave you that you can add versus, say, the Russell 1,125 kind of basis points understates the power greatly because momentum's also, in geek speak, negatively correlated with value. In English, a good year for momentum is often a bad year for value and vice versa. That's easy to create if you just do the opposite with your left hand as your right hand. It's not easy to create two strategies that both go up on average. That's difficult. And that shows up statistically in a model. It becomes even stronger. So I don't understand why. I think they should have it as a sixth factor. If you can get Gene to leave Chicago, which is far more difficult than anything else we're talking about, he can tell you why it's not a sixth factor, but it should be.


Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'll be back. I'll be back. And I'll be back. You're welcome. Thank you, I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. Don't play with that to me. Do you think I can save you? Hi. Hi. Hi. How are you, Dad? I'm fine. Good. Do you think you can save me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.