The gigatron, but I will not really be focusing on the workings of it. By the way, this is a gigatron computer. So I will not go into the very nitty gritty details. There's existing talks that I did before that you can find on the internet. I will briefly discuss what it is, and then I will go into the process of making a kit to help people who might also be interested in making and selling then their own electronics. Do it yourself, kid. So it's about the lessons that we learned in the gigatron project. By the way, is there anybody who here has heard of the gigatron? Quite a few, not everybody who has a gigatron to build it. Very good, very good. So first, a little bit about the history, how it came about, a short introduction. And then I'll go into the whole kit making process. Actually, there's plenty of kits out there. And am I still audible? Yeah, they are fun to make. They're fun to use. And for some people, that's where it ends. I mean, you can have enough fun just getting such a kit, building it, and tinkering with it. That's perfectly fine. If that's satisfying enough for you, no problem. But this talk will be about creating a new kit that didn't exist before. It all started a few years ago in the end of 2016, not by me, but by myself and Kervink, a friend of mine, who sadly passed away two years ago. And he bought some TTL ICs, chips, that you can see here, a soldering iron, an oscilloscope, and a big book about discrete logic. And he thought, let's do an interesting project. And I joined the project six months later, which I will explain further on. Marcel's first objective was really to, as a hacker, to learn and have fun with electronics. And he thought, well, let's build a CPU. So he had this bunch of 7,400 series TTL chips, which are chips that are really basic building blocks, like and or nor stuff. And he said, well, let's build a CPU. And that's something that a lot of people have done already on the internet. There's a CPU web ring, where you can go to all the websites of the people making such CPUs. So the goal was not to be useful or make really something that other people could use. It was just a learning project. And the inspiration throughout the project was a very big inspiration was Ben Eater. Ben Eater has this wonderful series on YouTube about CPU design. And he uses breadboarding. And he builds a computer from the tiny beginnings to a whole 8-bit computer. He's created this breadboard computer. And that was an inspiration. Also, it shows that you can actually do this. And I will go into this in a little bit. Also, the Quark 85, which is just an 80-tiny 85 that bitbanks a video signal out of it, a VGA signal, was also an inspiration and was a key factor in defining what the gigatron was supposed to become. It started with this system in early 2019. And this is a 4-bit CPU. So this was Marcel's first attempt at building his own CPU. And there's a big chip on there. That's an ALU, an algorithmic logic unit, and a few other components. But actually, it filled kind of miserably. And after January 19 came this Quark 85. And this inspired Marcel to think, hmm, can I also do some VGA bitbanging? That would be mighty interesting. Because the idea at first was to make a simple CPU that could flash on lights or a tic-tac-toe. But this bitbanging was interesting. So he built the thing on the top right, which is a system that, with simple logic, takes an image out of ROM and puts it out on VGA. So it's just like the Quark 85, but not using an 80-tiny, but using very simple electronics. And that worked. So that was the first step. And then out of that, he proceeded to not use ROM, but use RAM. Because in the end, you don't want to have a static image from ROM. You want to be able to change the image. So on the bottom right, there were RAM chips, which he had to load using a microprocessor, an external board that you can see on the breadboard as well. And then after a lot of work, in June 2017, there was the prototype of the gigatron. So this was the first working breadboard version of the gigatron. And that was the main proof of concept. What's interesting is that you can actually have a look at this project, because it's in the home computer museum of Bart van Agar.  I'm quite proud of that it's an actual museum. Now, the gigatron rules that were made during the process were we want to have a CPU that has no complex logic at all. It should be all really simple stuff, like stuff that you could buy in the 80s or 70s even. So no ALU, this big hunking chip that does all kinds of arithmetic. No, it's not in the gigatron. That's done with simpler components. It should be a single board computer with about 34 chip count. And that was inspired by Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak, his first job at Atari, was to build a game console arcade. And he was asked by Steve Jobs to reduce the chip count. It was like 100. And he was able to reduce it to, I don't know, 30 something. In the end product, it was like 40 chips. And it was really a big achievement of Steve Wozniak to make such an interesting system with such a small amount of chips. But we still wanted to do something useful and have a nice look and build to people. But if you want to build something that's interesting, as I said, you can just buy an existing project. And if you do it yourself, it will be nice if you build something that stands out, that you make something unique. So that was also something that was in this kit. It needs to have something that others don't have. So find a niche. And by having this system, which is actually a CPU combined video card, makes it a unique system. A lesson in the process up to the prototype board was, so make it niche, do something that others haven't done before. Of course, you build on the work of others. You stand on top of the other's work. But find a niche. And also it helps to document. So Marcel started documenting this from the second board that you saw in the previous slide on hackaday.io. And that is really helpful. Because other people that might also be interested will spark more motivation in you to go further. OK, so that's about the prototyping stage. So that took quite a while. We had a prototype. And then some people said, well, that's interesting. Why don't you make this into a kit? Maybe other people are interested in this as well. And so that's what the main topic is of this. And it seemed to be a nice little bit of follow-up work to get this as a kit. And we spoke to a few kit builders that we knew about what to do, how to approach this. And they were quite helpful to us. And that's also the reason why I'm now telling you my lessons learned in the hope that you will benefit from what we have learned. Yeah, so this is the working prototype. I think the work from the first buying the TTL chips to this stage was about 30% of the work. And from this stage to actually having kits that we could sell was about 70% of the work. So that's something that some people do overlook. They think, ah, this is all nice. We have a prototype. We're ready. No, we are not even halfway. That doesn't mean that the rest of the process isn't fun, because it was quite interesting. But it's not done. It's quite a bit of work. So this was June 2017 prototype. And in February 2018, we had the complete kit that we could sell. So a PCB in a nice little box, all the components, a manual controller, et cetera. So this process of going from this to this was about, well, Marcel and I, two people. We spent at least two days a week on this for that amount of time. So you can imagine that's quite a bit of work. We settled on a way of working where we were being pragmatic. Let's not overthink it, but let's think about every step of the way to find quickly the best possible solution. For the kit, we wanted to be something that could still be a bit useful in today's world. But we tried to make it really retro in the 70s. But we were pragmatic. So for instance, it has VGA output, which was not really an option in the 1970s. And for me, VGA is quite normal, because I'm a bit of an older grumpy old hacker.  So that was nice in the middle. And we also were pragmatic, for instance, in the usage of the chips that we used. So we wanted it to be 70s, where we would be using very high power consuming chips that are also no longer to be found easily. And we settled for newer versions that are plug-in replacements, but are using a lot less power. And another example is the power itself. The thing needs to be powered. In the 70s and 80s, you would have a big hunking transformer on the unit. But we thought, well, this all runs on five volts. So why don't you use B power? We also thought about a mains adapter, but then you would have the problem of having different adapters for different parts of the world. And with the USB, it's much easier. But then there's still USB-C, USB-A, micro USB, mini USB. And here we thought, well, the micro USB can be obtained in a through-hole soldering variant. So that's this one. And the other ones that you would normally find on an end system are SMD soldering. SMD soldering is not that difficult, but I do remember for myself that the first time I did SMD soldering was a bit apprehensive. This could be hard. It's not that hard, but this could be an issue for potential buyers. And we settled for the mini USB. Another example, the prototype board has two chips, which are PROMs. So they contain, well, the gigatron works with 8-bit opcodes. And each one has one 8-bit data, 8 bits of data. And that's why there are two ROMs in the original gigatron. And we combine them into one. And you can buy those 16-bit PROMs. But I grew up, years ago, when I opened up my computers, they would all have these nice EPROMs with a little glass inside where you could erase them with UV light. And I really like that idea, so I wanted to get an EPROM in there. Of course, if people buy the gigatron and want to use an EEPROM that you can electronically erase, it's a plug-in replacement. But we settled for this. And also, the clock I found in the prototyping board, there is a clock made out of it. And I have to look, because I always mix this up. This is a crystal oscillator. And this is actually a little unit that contains several components. And I know from the old computers, they always have a crystal resonator. And this makes it a bit more complicated. You need a few more extra components. But I think it really adds to the retro feel of the system. So that was changed, as well, in the final design. One of the very important lessons in creating a kit is to make things as simple as possible. This was also a goal in the whole gigatron design process. But also for the kit, it's very important. Because less stuff in the kit means that it is less work to do for your packaging, less chances of errors in packaging and missing items. It's also less work for the people building the kit. And you will have a lower cost, because you have less components. And we tried to do as much as we could in software instead of hardware minimizing on the complexity. And that worked quite well. It did mean we had to do some concessions. So at first, Marcel was really keen on having really a super standout form factor for this box, for this gigatron. So on the left, you see a really nice, interesting shape of interconnected PCBs. And Marcel was thinking about a setup like this. So it's something that really catches your eye. But of course, this is incredibly complex to make, to design, and also error prone for people trying to build this. And we spent a lot of time looking for the right enclosure. And we talked to some people, also people from my hometown of Eindhoven, of the Crypto Museum. And they had a tip to go to people who make cigar boxes. In the Eindhoven region, there used to be a lot of cigar factories. There are still a few. And this comes from a cigar box factory. And yeah, it is a bit more dull. It's a rectangular shape, but it works well. And it still, I think, looks pretty classy. And the supplier was really helpful. He said, because we thought we need to have screws and hinges and stuff.  He said, no, we can do this like this. So we can put a bit of plexiglass in there. And then it fits in there nicely. And you can just close the lid. And we'll put some wood in, and it will fit without using any screws at all. We just need to drill some holes in the back for the connectors. We also have some LEDs on top, but they do not need any holes because we have plexiglass on top. And it did mean that we decided not to have any buttons at all on the device because that would require additional drilling or anything else to make that work. So we changed the electronics. As you see on the top right, we added some electronics to make sure that the system will boot up nicely without having a reset button. And the reset can be done in software. And then we needed a controller because that was not included in the kit. And we had no idea what to use. I found some controllers on the internet in China somewhere. And this is a Famicom controller, also known as a NES controller. It's not completely the same. They come normally with a NES plug that you see on the left. But this plug, well, it's really hard to get the connectors for them. And they are hard to find, they're expensive. And, but I did find a supplier who had those with a standard DB9 connector, which is very common and very easy to get. And so we decided to own that one. So we bought it in China, just bought a few, and we started experimenting how this thing worked. So we put it on the oscilloscope and we found out that it's really a very simple shift register. So you give it a pulse and then you, to wake it up, then you give it a second pulse and each pulse you get one bit of button data out of it. And that was really great because it allowed us to hook it up to the Gigatron actually without any additional hardware. Why? Well, now I go into a little bit of technical detail. The Gigatron is outputting a bit-binging VGA signal and the VGA signal has a horizontal sync pulse at the end of every scan line. And then at the last line of the screen, it has a vertical sync pulse. And we use these to trigger the controller. So every vertical sync pulse, the controller is being read and then every horizontal line, it reads one bit out of the button state of the controller. And for that, we just needed to add some extra wires and fix the rest of the software, which was great. And also since we were working on this, we could also add LEDs with just one component, extra plus the LEDs and audio out with four extra components. The next big thing was to get this onto a PCB because we had the prototyping board, but of course we wanted to have a PCB. And this required learning key cat and getting all of this on there. And this is all, those traces are handmade. I mean, you can do some auto tracing but this is all made by hand to make sure that it looks nice but also that it is logical. So for instance, over here you see the algorithmic logic unit and you see there's four chips here on the outside and there as well. And those are 48 bits that it uses in the calculations for instance. So this is logically arranged but that took a lot of work. It took 10 weeks of work to get this to the stage of this board. And in this process, we also had to know which actual components we would be using in the kit because you need to have the holes in the right place, obviously. And that's where we also really tried to make sure that everything that you can put in the board can all be accidentally switched. So on the right you see two types of capacitors and they have different values so they should not be intermixed. So we selected from the vendor different capacitors that have the pins in a different spacing. So it becomes harder to accidentally swap them out. So these things were taken into account for the PCB. And we made a few and there were two mistakes still in there which we caught before we hooked it up. We fixed those and we turned it on and it actually worked and here you see it showing a picture of itself as a prototype board. I have to say we were a bit lucky because this computer runs at a very low frequency at 6.25 megahertz and at that clock speed, it's not really that important how the traces are laid out. If you work on high frequency systems that becomes really important. But for this system, it's really tolerant to making all kinds of rookie mistakes in the RF field. So that was good. And lessons we had from the people that we talked to from the other kid vendors, from the people that made PDP and from the crypto museum, the Enigma, was that we should minimize support effort because that takes up a lot of time. If you supply a kid and it's not really easy to build and people start asking questions, which of course they are entitled to do, but that takes up a lot of time. And it's better to spend the time upfront to make sure that everything is, everybody will be able to build it in one go without any issues. So that means making everything unambiguous. So that's why we use a different component so they cannot be intermixed. Anticipate everything that somebody could do wrong. And again, simplicity. So that was a lot of work. In the end, this prototype board, if you have really good eyes, you can see this version, already version 1738. And a few versions later, we had the final board. And here we did our best to make sure that everything is labeled as good as we can to avoid mistakes of people putting chips in the other way around, et cetera. Then I remember we also, Marcin and I had a discussion about sockets and that was really a controversial discussion. Should we supply chip sockets with the kid? So you solder in the socket and then you put in the IC into the socket. And well, you could say the pro is that it looks really neat. It looks professional, like a high quality product. And of course, if you ruin a chip, you can just easily replace it. So those are the pros. But it is more costly because you have to add them. You also need several types. So you have the mixing up problem again. And there's a high chance that people who are not accustomed to using those to insert the ICs in the wrong way, bending pins, and sometimes they bend to the inside and you put in the IC and you don't see that the pin is bent and it gives rise to all kinds of problems. So we were fearing all the support calls for those. And also the chip is there with a physical connection or a soldered connection. And that could also lead to issues, although maybe not very often. In the end, we settled that we needed a socket for the EEPROM because you want to take it out and erase it and reprogram it. Now you have ZIF sockets, zero insertion force sockets that have a little lever to easily extract them, but they're really big and bulky, or they are not so bulky, but really expensive. And we, in the end, we decided to use these cheap dual leaf contact sockets. They are a bit lower quality, but they have a bit more tolerance for not putting in the chip at the exact right spot. It will still fit. It makes it easier to insert the chip. For the RAM socket, well, we also put it in a socket to allow for further RAM upgrades. And here we use a more quality turn socket, but it's quite hard to put a chip into a 28 pin socket if you've never done that before. So you need to make sure that the pins are straight. So I decided to bend them and insert them in the socket for every kit. So the kit comes with a pre-inserted RAM into the socket. The problem is well that if you now solder any of the other ICs into the board and you do it the wrong way around, yeah, then you are really out of luck. You can desolder a complete chip, but if you do not have the experience in doing so, you probably will ruin the complete PCB. And we've had cases of people doing so, and we advised everybody who's soldered them in the wrong way to just cut all the pins and then solder out the pins one by one, which is quite easy, and then ask us for a new chip and put that one in. So that was the components. And then we had to have a manual. So I spent about a man month on creating this manual. That was a lot of work, but it includes a little bit of information about electronics, how all the components work. It includes information about soldering. How do you solder? And here you can see a picture of how you bend the ICs to make them fit into the board or in sockets. So the soldering instructions. And we also have it in a ring, so you can lay it flat, which makes it easier to have it open next to your bends while you are soldering. So we thought about all these things. And actually this is after the wooden case that we supply with the kit, but this was the most expensive part to make as well. I don't know, is there anybody here who has experience with a heat kit? Do it yourself, kids, by any chance. Anybody heard of those heat kits? No, those were a thing of the past. I was one person who knows them. A thing of the past, but they had really awesome manuals. As you can see here, I looked up this image after the fact, after I had written the manual, but you see this one also has soldering tips. So how do you solder? How do you recognize bad soldering? And that's really helpful because it saves a lot of work in fixing problems later if people make mistakes. So that led to this manual. And what also was really helpful is that we were doing this as a team. And for instance, Marcel has a lot of experience in software. I have less experience in software, but I have more experience in soldering, whereas Marcel didn't. And that really helps to get out of viewpoints. And for the soldering, for instance, Marcel told me that the first time he was soldering, he put in the IC on top of the PCB and also soldered on the top side. And I had not thought about people doing this because I had been soldering all my life and I know you soldered on the bottom side. But that's really useful information because now the manual can clearly warn people for such mistakes that people will probably make. And actually, quite a lot of kids were sold to people who did not have any prior soldering skills and they were still able to create this kit. So that was really good. Oh yeah, and also I'm used to, I've been soldering and doing electronics for a long time. So I know the resistor color coding table on the top of my head, but nowadays people use SMD resistors and they just have the number on there. So they are not used to using the colors. So we need to add the color codes, but I also made sure that in the steps where it describes how to actually put the components onto the board, that it does not only say you need to insert a 10K resistor, but also has the brown, black, et cetera, coding on there to make sure that people use the right components. Because not everybody likes to read, but people nowadays normally will go to YouTube to find information on how to do stuff, myself included, we thought, let's also make a series of videos. So the kind people of, again, the Crypto Museum in Eindhoven helped me out and provided me the space to do some soldering, and I made 13 videos of the whole process going through the whole Gigatron build. I checked yesterday and we're now at about 500 views. I'm not sure if this is people who are just like somebody to solder stuff and tell people about it, or if they are actually building a kit, but I think it was a nice addition. Then, source and parts. If you build a kit, you need to have the parts, and what's important for your prototype, you just buy the parts and you're done, but if you want to make a kit and sell it for a extended period of time, you need to make sure that you are able to get those components for all of that time. So we looked around to see what kind of people had these components and what their stock was, and we found out, well, the game controller, we had no idea how many there were in stock, so we took a bit of a gamble. The crystal was a bit of an issue and there is one resistant network that might be an issue, but that looked to be okay for stock, and then also we need the parts to be reliable. So we heard some really horror stories about cheap components being bought, even chips that were bought that turned out to be empty shells with pins. That does happen sometimes. So we went for sources like Mauser, Digi-Key, Farnel to be sure that we had the correct parts, except for three components. The eProm is no longer really in production, I think, I assume, but we found a source that had a lot of them and they looked to be new. I also did the swap test to see if the label was not printed on later, but it looked to be a genuine part, and for this component, it's not that critical because I need to program it anyway before it's being put in the kit, so we know that it is working. Now, the controller, that was a bit of an issue because we ordered a few of them, we sold some kits, it worked fine, and then we ordered our second batch, and then the controller was different. So there was different electronics inside, and to be technical, one was activated by an up flank and the other with a downward flank. So we had to rewrite the software, but we weren't able to make it work as smooth as the first controller. So all the people here and on the stream that have bought from that batch, my apologies for the controller not being as smooth as it could have been. And we had some problems with USB cables that were substandard, so they had a huge voltage drop over them, and if the voltage drops, it gets one no longer works reliably. And for the next batch, we switched to AWG-28, which is the measure of thickness of the copper inside of the cable, so thicker cables, and then all these problems were gone luckily. Now the first batch was 10 systems that we gave to beta testers to get valuable feedback about things that we could still improve, and then we had a 100, a batch of 100. And of course, the advantage of buying a bulk is that you get bulk discounts, so they start at 25 or 50 or 100 or even more. So we thought, well, let's hope we can sell 100. Actually, our goal was to outsell the Apple One, which sold 200 back in the day, so we hope you were going to make that. We had no idea if you were ever going to get there, but we thought we could take the risk of buying for 100 to drop the cost. So let's talk about the cost. If you build a kit and you are going to sell it, you need to determine what the end user price will be. How do you do that? Is it the cost of the components? No, it's more. And this is something that I didn't know at the time, but I took it from the URL here at the bottom and it says you take the cost of the stuff you bought for the kit, you do it times 1.66 to get your wholesale price, and then you do that again to get your retail price. And that might seem like a lot. Actually, we were below that figure, but we upped it substantially, but we need to pay taxes, we need to pay income tax on what we make. And what people sometimes forget is the amount of work that has gone into building the kit. So we did get a few people saying, well, I can buy these components for 80 euros. Why should I buy a double that amount? Well, that's because there's also a few many years or more than a many year in a few, maybe two, into design and then going from the design to the actual kit. And the process, when we got the kit, it still cost time to package all the kits and ship them out. So that was about 0.2 FTE continuously for the time we sold those kits for two years. So that is also to be taken into account and we need to reserve money for kids that are being returned or get broken or lost or whatever. So that figure is not that strange. If you're going to make a kit, you will also need to realize that you need to do an upfront investment because you need to buy your stuff before you get your income from selling them. And it is nice to get a legal entity to make sure that everything is in order with your local laws. I would also advise to discuss the financial with the partners you're working with on the kit. First of all, I would advise to work with a partner because it's more fun to do things in a group, but also because you can learn from each other that really worked well with Marcel and me, but also discuss the financials. What if somebody accidentally needs to stop with the project, which unfortunately Marcel had to. So it's good to make agreements upfront on what happens next and also talk about the amount of work that each of the team puts into the kit and how you then share the earnings in a fair way. I'd also like to talk a bit about kit packaging because that's quite a lot of work as well. So, as I said, we made sure that all the components were different and not so easy to mix up. So we could put all these standard components into a little anti-static bag, and that's that. And I did that using the rule, check everything twice. So I would make, for each of the components that need to go into the bag, I made little piles of maybe 10 or 20 of these components. So I count them, then I take the bag and put in all the components that need to go in there. And once all the bags are done, then there should be no components left. And if there's a resistor left, then I know that one of the bags will be missing a resistor and I have a lot of work in finding out which one. And then I also needed to count all the ICs, the chips that go in there. So I used a piece of anti-static foam on which to put all the chips. So I would open up a tube with the chip type A, put in the chips, then next one, next one.  And again, check them twice. Then the bag, the ICs, the PCB, all other stuff went into the little box. And again, I would make little piles, collect them and check them, check if all the piles were empty at the end. Yeah, this is a kit that came back after a round trip over the world. So some kits, I bought a kit last a few months ago which was really nicely packaged. So it was specially purpose made foam with the indents where all the components went into and that was really nice because if you shake it well, it still stays in place. This foam does hold the chips quite well and in most cases, it will work quite well but if it is really handled in a bad way by the local postal office, this is what you get. But this was really incidental. So it was for us, it was good enough. And then in the end, the box with the components, the manual and the controller were put in a envelope. And again, we would do that twice. And if I were done, then forget to put a manual in one of the boxes and have one left at the end. Yeah, it would be a bit harder because I would need to open all of the envelopes to see which one was missing. But of course, you can then weigh all your envelopes to see which one is lighter so you know where you forgot the manual. Now, we sold the kit for two years and we met our goal of selling more than 200. We actually sold over a thousand. And as I said, it cost about 0.2 FTE during that time to do all the packaging of all the kits. And people have asked, couldn't you find some cheap labor to do that for you? Well, we didn't actually trust others with that. I'm not sure if that is the right decision. Well, actually, I think my opinion is it was the right decision because if there's a mistake, the amount of work that it takes to solve that problem, yeah, that's quite an investment in time. We've also got questions about pre-built kits. Can we provide them? And the short answer is no. If you decide to build a kit, it best is to sell them in kit form because then a lot of rules and regulations do not apply. If you build a ready-built electronics device, you will need to have CE and FCC markings on there and that's a really costly, long, elaborate process. In the middle, you see a test I did with Mark Siemens, who had a nice device to check the RF emanations from the device and it's horrible. So this will never pass to any FCC test. And yeah, but selling as a kit, no problem with that at all. For shipping, you can shop around for a good bulk shipping person, but there is no one-size-fits-all. You will, in the end, have to deal with different shipping options. If people live in Manila, they cannot rely on the local post office. You will need to use DHL or FedEx or something else to be able to send over there. And insurance, it would be nice, but we decided not to have insurance. In the beginning, we did have insurance and then if your package gets lost, you can apply for the insurance, but then they will say, well, only if we reimburse you the cost of the components in the kit, not the amount of money you sold it for. And please show me all the paperwork that explains how much the components were worth. So it's a lot of hassle and it's actually cheaper to just have these few parcels be lost and not pay for all this insurance. And yeah, in the end, maybe a portion of a percent had an issue. And some places are really hard to send packages to, so there was one sent to Brian in the Falklands and that one did never arrive, unfortunately. We also try to exceed customer expectations. So make something that people are really happy with and they are happy from getting something that is better than they expected to be getting. So that's why we spend so much time on the manual, make it super, make the support better than expected. So they're happy with the whole experience. And support we did via email, but we also tried to do a lot for people to do self help. So we had websites on the internet with all kinds of guides, how to measure voltages to pinpoint a problem. And quite early on, we made a forum. And we had very limited issues with the parts that we got in, only with the controller problem I told you about. And once, believe it or not, we had a customer saying, there were the wrong resistors in my package. Well, no worry because I'm an electronics geek so I have enough spare ones. And then somebody else said, I'm also missing resistors and it turned out I had swapped them in the two different bags. And of course, my little piles were all down to zero. So I didn't notice that I had swapped resistors in two packages, but that was the only mistake I made in two years, so that's fine. Marketing, we did a little bit. First of all, we used a really nice white box to send them in to get that first experience of, ah, this is a nice kit. But of course, we also need to do some marketing via vloggers and we decided to send a kit to the 8-bit guy who has a blog about 8-bit computing and we already knew in advance that he would not like the fact that it would not run basic. Actually, the current version does run basic, but the first version didn't and he also commented about it, but he did a really nice review and that video now has almost two and a half million hits. So that was really great. And we also sent one to the EEV blog, which is an electronics guy, and this was cool because he got the kit and he opened it up on this channel and he saw the manual, said that's nice, do it away, and then he just started, he saw on the PCB what should be on there and he just started soldering all the stuff on there without any manual at all and he got it working from the first try, so that was really great. And he did a live soldering session video and he also did some follow-up videos about, ah, this is a nice system to show you the difference between two-layer and four-layer PCBs. So together with us, he made a four-layer PCB and he did some measurements to see what the differences are and he also did a video about the caps that are there, well, the bypass capacitors. So that was cool. And we sold quite a few. In the first month, we sold to 25 countries. We sold to companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM. Well, we sold to Apple, but I don't think we sold to Steve Wozniak, which was our super, super goal. We also created this community on form.gigatron.io and then it took off a little bit and that was really great to see if you have your brainchild come to life with people starting to use it and experiment themselves. And after one month, we had some additional software. We had Sprites. We had people doing hardware like RAM extensions. We had somebody who built a really fast version using special fast TTL chips that would run at quite a large speed. But of course, then the screen is reduced. We had things like this, like a special breadboard, sorry, breadboard PCB with everything in a very small form factor with more ROM and four-layer PCB. We had software like a C compiler. People are working on fourth for the Gigatron. We have video repeaters. We have all kinds of other stuff. And in the end, it's crazy what people have written. So on the right, yeah, that's actually coming from a system without a microprocessor with just under 1,000 logic gates doing the VGA as well. So that was cool. Now, issues, there weren't many. One issue we were worried about in the beginning was what if somebody takes our RDR and just clones the PCB? Copycats. And it was only after one and a half years that we found on eBay this Gigatron from Russia. And I was curious, most of us furious. I was curious, I ordered one, I had a look, and this thing does not work at all. It is really not a working copy, but it was interesting to see and there were only maybe 10 sold and that was it. So we didn't have any problems with that. We did expect that it would be a nice kit for educational institutes, but in fact, yeah, we didn't sell, well, we sold some to universities and such, but not that many as we would have expected. Another issue that we had, there was one guy who in the beginning asked for schematics. He was also working on a CPU for himself, which we explained were in the manual and then suddenly he became bad-mouthing us on all kinds of occasions. We just ignored him and so did the other people on the internet. So that was also controllable. Now, after two years, the project ended. At that time, Marcel was terminally ill. We spoke about this project. He had actually plans to continue and maybe port CPM to it and do some other stuff. And I said, well, actually it was really fun to create, to make the design and also make the kit, but putting resistors in little bags for one day a week, yeah, that's really work. That's not hacking. So for me, there was not much fun in there. Well, there's still fun in following the community and what people are building, but not so much in creating actual kits. So everything was then open sourced. You can find everything online and a few companies have started to sell kits as well. They don't have the manual, which you can download from the internet and they don't have the nice little wooden box and some also do not include the controller, but it is enough to get a working gigatron. So important lessons that we've learned is it really pays off to have a minimalistic design. That makes it easier to create the kit. It makes it cheaper. It makes it less error prone. The problematic approach, we tried to have a set of rules to stick by, like making it a 70s, 80s error machine, but where needed, we would deviate a little bit where we felt it was still right and tried to put a lot of effort, not in support after you've sold the kits, but get that time spent in advance to make sure that people do not need the support. Make sure that you have a team because two, no more than one, so that really helps in making the product better. And we were lucky that we in the beginning made sure that we were able to update the software later and add functionality to it. And of course, most important is to just have fun doing this. It's a really fun project. You learn a lot and stop when it becomes work. And the greatest achievement I think we've got is that Indiana One was sent to Steve Wozniak. So I know he has one. He was impressed by the chip account on the system and he actually did sign a gigatron that I have here. So to Infinity and Beyond, thank you very much for your attention. And maybe I have 30 seconds for questions or... Yeah, go for it. You've got two minutes. So yeah, if there's any questions for GigaWaltz, please quickly head up to the microphones in the center and be brief. Yes, on the front microphone. Was... A little closer, please. Was sending kits to these guys on YouTube really all the marketing you did? Like all the public relations, whatever you would call it? What we did was... Well, most of the marketing was on hackaday.io. So that created already a bit of a buzz. And then the online marketing we did was only create a forum that we didn't advertise any further and the two YouTube videos. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Yes. Hi. On the question of how to source things as two source parts, you mentioned to our resistor network. Yeah. If that was such a problem, wouldn't it have been easier to just use discrete resistors there? Yes, so that was our backup plan. So we thought if the resistor network is no longer available, we'll just get some resistors. And actually, they have now become really hard to source. So one of the suppliers that is now selling GigaTron kits is using that approach. Okay, thank you. So it was a good question. Thank you. Can you tell something about how people program the GigaTron? Yeah, there are several ways to program it. We have a, well, you can program it in machine language, but it is really hard because you have to keep track of all the timing to make sure that the VGA signal is still correct. So nobody does that. Then we have something called GigaTron command language, GCL, that's rather low level still, but good enough to be used to create some games or other things. And now, of course, we also have the little C compiler. We have basic. So there are a few ways to program it. But do you need to refresh the EEPROM? Yeah, so basically you need to refresh the EEPROM, but there are now hardware extensions. So this is a hardware extension that also includes an SD card where you can just put your files on the SD card and run them from there. So that's not part of the original design. That's something that came out of our community. Nice. Thank you so much for your questions. I think all the remains is to join me in thanking GigaWalt for a fantastic talk. Thank you.


أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم رب الشرح لي صدري ويسر لي أمر وحل العقدة من لساني يفقه قولي بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين وصلى الله على السيدنا وحبيب قلوبنا وشفيع نفوسنا بالقاسم محمد وعلى أل بيته الطيبين الطاهرين الماصومين لا سيما بقية الله روحي وأرواح العالمين لتراب مقدمه الفداء بأول فتر of your Lord's Salawat in honor of the greatest man to walk this earth الحبيب المصطفى محمد the second in honor of the greatest lady to walk this earth الحورا أول بطول فا طمه and the third in your final salawat in honor of our Imam ساحب العصري والزمان نحن مصلي على المدينة في المدينة الثلاثة وينة نحن لدينا مرحبا نظر من الناس الذين نعرفون خوارج الناس الذين يدفعون على مدينة أهل البيت الناس الذين يدفعون الإسلام في أسلحة أسلحة ونحن نظر على كيف يفرقون الناس الذين يدفعون الإسلام الآن في الأسلحة الإسلام now one thing that we did question is the concept and the faculty of knowledge as in we begin to question how is it that knowledge was given to them how is it that they acquired knowledge where did they seek knowledge and how did they incorporate it to their own lives therefore the importance of tonight's topic which will be analyzing the concept of knowledge how to acquire knowledge what are different types of knowledge will be over a course of two nights إن شاء الله so I'd like to start by looking at knowledge what does the prophet of Islam say about knowledge very brief very repetitive but it's good for the remembrance it will build the way up until we get to tomorrow night in which we will talk about knowledge through the imams but we can't just talk about the miracles which are in its most magnanimous nature without laying down the foundations of how is it that these people achieved that which they achieved how did they achieve the knowledge which they have what have they done in order to acquire such high levels in the eyes of Allah Subhanahu و تعالى therefore tonight will be a very brief very introductory topic for tomorrow night which will be the gist of the topic and the faculty of knowledge so إن شاء الله to help me start tonight's topic of knowledge please raise your voices and allow Salawat محمد و آل محمد when we delve into the concept of knowledge we find that the prophet has many narration discussing the idea of knowledge and its importance as an example we have a narration by the prophet of Islam in which he states make sure that you go and acquire knowledge even if it takes you as far as going towards China اطلبوا العلم اولا و فيل سين even if it takes you as far as China I put it into that context China was looked at to be a very far place just like in the idea that we are given in Islamic thought and in the stories that we have when they mention 1,000 it was a number beyond imagination that's why when they try to emphasize the number beyond imagination they say 1,000 1,000 so they times the two biggest numbers at the time and they say that's how much is a lot at that particular time so when they say go when the prophet says go as far as China it's trying to give us an example that you have to travel till the end of means to gain knowledge giving us an importance of it the second that we can look at from the prophet صلى الله عليه و آله و سلم when he looks at knowledge he says there's no time frame in which you can gain knowledge اطلبوا العلم من المهدي إلى اللحظ from the cradle to the grave your lifespan should be an ongoing journey in which we will gain knowledge acquire knowledge now the question that lies that inshallah will answer tonight and tomorrow night is what type of knowledge do they refer to as in when the prophet says go and acquire knowledge is he categorizing it in a specific angle is he characterizing it in a particular school or is it a vast majority in which you can encompass knowledge educate yourself grow we'll look at that tomorrow inshallah in more detail now we find that imam صلى الله عليه و سلم is the door of the prophet's knowledge and he himself says the prophet of Islam has taught me 1000 doors of knowledge from every door it opens another 1000 that if you calculate that's one million doors of knowledge from the prophet of Islam not anyone else from the person that does not speak of his own accord he speaks from الله سبحانه و تعالى now let's look at the knowledge of alaym ibn ta'ala of later on tonight so in the starting stage we find that there is an importance the prophet had put an importance of knowledge the second stage has he told us how to acquire it as in one of the things when we look at when the prophet mentions knowledge is how to bring up a child he says make sure when you bring up a child it's in three specific stages what are the stages he says the first seven is the first stage the second seven is the second stage and the final is the seven plus the first seven what do you do he says leave them let their intuition grow let them explore let them think for themselves do not encompass them by what society thinks do not encompass them but this is what you should do this is what you shouldn't do not yet let them explore just don't let them kill themselves obviously leave them in a suitable place in which they can explore the world, their talents then when they reach seven that's age frame you find that this is when the prophet says begin to teach them seven years of age till 14 begin to teach this is Halal this is Haram do we stop there? no this is why this is Halal this is why this is Haram that's why we find many sisters come wearing the hijab one day at a young age and you think to yourself wow that's beauty that someone at such a young age can put on the scarf which embodies Islam which is a flag of Islam the same hijab that Fatima the Zahra'a war the same hijab that say the Zainab stood for in the 10th of Muharram and when she was taking captive from city to city the hijab has its representation however if we just tell them this is Halal this is Haram will they have the strength to keep that hijab on? or will they begin to question themselves one day that's telling themselves that's why am I wearing it in the first place that's why when you teach our children from seven to fourteen we have to teach them in depth when we teach them we have to tell them why Allah has made this Halal why Allah has made this Haram to make them see the beauty in it what did we say yesterday about the Khawaraj when they tell you a particular ruling they say do not question this is how Allah says it that's what they say that's how Allah did it that's what Allah wants you to know that's all Allah wants you to know don't question what this is what that is why you're doing this this is the right way believe me that's how they teach that's what makes us different the prophet of Islam says make sure seven to fourteen it's an ongoing process teach teach teach educate acknowledge put the light of knowledge into them that idea that you want to feed with knowledge feed their souls then he says from fourteen onwards befriend them why because how many people do we know when they're going through adolescence their parents are the last people they go towards because there's a gap because from seven to fourteen they weren't teaching them from seven to fourteen they didn't want anything to do with them from seven to fourteen was a very rough road between the parent and the child however if he's in a teaching process in a relationship then he says befriend them from fourteen onwards the adolescent period why because and one of the main pivotal reasons is that they don't go towards another person which is one of the causes of Haram relationships so they don't go to another shoulder to complain another shoulder to ask questions you're their friend not just their parent not just their mentor not just their teacher you're also their friend create that bond but we find the main idea for tonight's topic where the prophet of Islam seeks to explore the idea of knowledge is to teach them now we know when someone acquires knowledge at a young age it's obviously and evidently different from someone that acquires knowledge at an old age for two specific reasons or two reasons that I want to look at number one we have the idea that if you teach someone something at a young age it's as if you're what you're engraving into stone at a young age it's like you're engraving onto stone whatever they learn they'll stay with them what's the example علي ملي بيطالب says in the will to Imam Hassan he says I wanted to cultivate your heart at a young age Imam Ali gives us the example that the heart whatever you put on it it takes it's empty imagine imagine a white page that's empty whatever you write on it you can't write on that specific place again that's how you should feed knowledge to the young Imam Ali says I tried to teach you at a young age I wanted to plant in you the seeds which will make you who you are when you are older which will make you who you are growing up to have that foundation علي بن علي بيطالب to Imam Al-Hasan that's why we find obviously there's a significance and an importance when you're at a younger age in learning because you will gain more you will resonate more within yourself resonate more within yourself resonates more within your memories and it gives you a better chance to act upon it because you can imagine the older you get the more your lifestyle is encompassed it's fixed it's very hard to change your lifestyle and to new acknowledge acquired whether it be hadiths whether it be a new source of knowledge which lets you for example read a particular prayer in a certain manner extra prayers I'm just talking about the knowledge to do with Islam and there's other knowledges we can acquire but it's going to be harder to change your routine however at a young age in your adolescence even younger than that you acquire knowledge you can act upon it and that's also relating back to the parents son relationship that we said earlier now that's another stage to look at now let's look at that specific point let's look at the knowledge that we can see and how did it affect the timeline that we have today and what I mean is what happened in history let's look at what happened in history to the concept of knowledge how has it changed what have we been given and what has been taken from us and you think to yourself has something been taken from us yes the prophet of Islam and not many people are acknowledged to this after the prophet of Islam died when we had the first second and third Khalif do you know one of the actions what they were and a narration from Aisha she says the first thing I saw my father do when the prophet passed away or one of the first things she says he has collected 500 hadiths in a narration 500 of the narrations of the prophet he took them and he disposed of them these are knowledge these are sources of knowledge sources of Sharia this is what we can base our religion on the hadith of the prophet he says she says he took them and he disposed of them why it's a very clever plan but look at the reply he says just in case someone may read them and is confused they're the things that will give us clarity the prophet of Islam is the one that defines the Quran for us the Ahlul Bayt are the ones that explain the Quran when in Safin you find that Muawiyah puts the Quran on the speed to show that they're people of the book Ali ibn Abi Talib what does he say he says أنا القرآن الناطق I am the Quran I am the manifestation I am the talking Quran he says go look at what the prophet has said Muawiyah and go look at what the prophet said about me the person that opened his eyes in the eyes of the prophet of Islam that was fed from the mouth of the prophet that grew up in the prophet's arms when Ali ibn Abi Talib says not once did the wahi come except that I know exactly what ayah it was where it was revealed and what it was revealed about when Imam Ali says knowledge it's not anything simple I remember I was watching a documentary it was a beautiful documentary the other day with my brother in law and we looked at we looked upon one particular instance when they were explaining the knowledge of Ali ibn Abi Talib when Omar comes to him Omar says to him oh Ali why is it that you have this much knowledge you answer straight away whenever someone asks you you answer straight away why how what's this knowledge that you have look at the reply of Ali ibn Abi Talib he looks at Omar he says Omar how many fingers do you have in your hand Omar straight away he says I have five fingers he says how do you know that you answered quite fast didn't you that you have five fingers in your hand he says yes of course this is known to me he says that is the knowledge of what is and what is to be is known to me like your five fingers are known to you صلى الله عليه وسلم that's the door of the knowledge of the prophet of Islam and do you know who fought him who fought this great leader who fought the very mirror image of the prophet of Islam I want to show you the example of who he was fighting when people come and defend such figures as Muawiyah in history I want to tell you who Muawiyah used to fight with who was his soldiers that he bought out a person went a messenger from Ali ibn Abi Talib went to Syria went to Damascus Sham at the time I shouldn't say Syria because it encompassed more countries back then he went to Sham at the time where Muawiyah ruled from and he had a message he was on what we know as Naqa or sorry he was on a camel actually a camel he was going towards Muawiyah and they made a plan what did they do they said let's take this particular messenger look at what they used to do to him they said let's tell everyone that this camel is belongs to us and he's stolen it now look at the people they take this messenger of Ali ibn Abi Talib to the courtroom it's a really interesting story because you will begin to realize what kind of people fought Ali ibn Abi Talib who goes towards the courtroom he's been taken to the courtroom the messenger of Ali ibn Abi Talib he had a Naqa with him he says what's your evidence he says this is my Naqa he says this is my camel he says what's your where's your witnesses he says I've come alone I'm a messenger he says who's accused you of stealing their camel he says this person he says where's your witnesses he says tomorrow tomorrow comes there's 50 people 50 people they said okay let the court session come where's your evidence he says I don't have any I've come as a messenger he says where's your where's your people that will bear witness that this is your camel he says these are the 50 people these people he's never seen in his life where did he get them from how did they how did he get them where did they where was the bribes involved he says what do you guys say he says yes we all bear witness that this is his camel they say but look at the wordings they say this this camel or this male camel is for him we all bear witness so he goes yes 100% there's 50 witnesses you don't have one I'm going to give the camel to him go Imam Ali's messenger at the time he's thinking to himself because there's one that they've bribed they've cheated they've used the legal system that's one side but that's not what he was surprised about he goes to the judge of the time he says everyone bear witness that that camel was that person he says yes he says that's not what surprises me I know the people that you have in your army he says and what surprises you he says this wasn't even a camel it was a naqa he goes معاوي says to him he says that's my message he says go and tell Ali ibn Abi Talib that I'm going to fight you with an army that doesn't know the difference between a naqa and a camel that's who the people were that fought Ali ibn Abi Talib that's the people that fought Ali ibn Abi Talib when we look at in history what kind of people or what kind of people the prophet says will fight against Ali ibn Abi Talib يا Ali or it tells Ammar he says تعمار تقتولوك الفئة البارية you will be killed by infidels meaning what what's an infidel what kind of knowledge does an infidel have in reference to a Muali in reference to a person of knowledge when you reach high spiritual grounds such as I'll give you the examples of one of the greatest companions of Ali ibn Abi Talib and one of the greatest companions of Imam al-Hussain حبيب Ibn Muzaher comes one day and he crosses paths with may them itammar look at the conversation that they have may them itammar looks at حبيب Ibn Muzaher looks at may them itammar and their horses their heads intermingle and they begin to talk to one another look at what they say look at what Ibn Muzaher acknowledge the followers of Ahl al-Bayt have may them looks at حبيب Ibn Muzaher what does he say he says it's as if I see one day a man that has two locks of hair going and defending the Imam of his time being beheaded and his head roaming in the streets tied to a horse while the horses knees hit that head and the people are listening people are listening and then and then to may them itammar حبيب Ibn Muzaher says it's as if I see a person whose origin was from a Persian background taken his limbs being taken off his hands and his feet and he's been taken on and wrapped on a tree and after three days his stomach will be pieced and he will die that's the conversation that they had and they go their separate ways these people what did they say the people that normal don't know the knowledge don't know what these people are talking about don't know their high status one of them says look at these people we've never seen anyone lie as much as these people they're the biggest liars in our days that's what they said who comes one of the other companions but this person everyone knew was truthful because whatever he prophesized came true they came and asked him they said to him who's just come past they say to him they say to him they say such and such may them a tamar and have no more doubt he says may Allah be pleased with them he says what do you mean he says they're great companions with great spiritual levels great educational values great knowledge he says we think that they're the biggest liars of the time he says why do you say they're liars he says one of them he says one of them he says one of them said such and such the other said such and such he says he says excuse me he says yes such and such person will die in that manner such and such person will die in that manner and he says I will give you an extra bit of information he says the companion of Abba Abdullah and he was referring to the person that will carry his head will be given an extra 25 coins extra why? because he was wrapped in a horse not held on a spear what kind of level do you have to reach to gain the knowledge of your death made him a tamar when he found out that Ali bin Abi Talib told him when he told him you will be taken and your limbs cut off and taken on that tree and he pointed at it what made him a tamar used to do he used to go and water that particular tree because he's like this is where I'm going to die he waters that tree he goes and goes towards that tree he remembers that tree but he had the knowledge why? because Ali bin Abi Talib referred to him that's the door of knowledge the importance of knowledge and tomorrow Insha'Allah we'll discuss in detail how an elevated level of spirituality an elevated level of religiosity and closeness towards Allah will allow Allah to put knowledge into your heart it's not just the knowledge that we acquire it's the knowledge that Allah gives us however we know that from Imam Sadaq that's knowledge that we have nowadays look at what he refers to he says everything you have nowadays from knowledge he says it was one letter from us that wasn't even complete one letter everything we have nowadays one letter that's what he says Imam Sadaq he says because at the back then when we find the alphabet in kufi writing it was an elif and it had a line under it as معطوف he says it's as if an elif but it's not complete that's what you have from our knowledge and it was seeped and you can look the first second third Khalif as the hadiths were not there they were taken away they were burnt the message of the prophet burnt taken away there was a massive loophole where knowledge ceased to exist except the knowledge which they wanted to be preached that's why we have people such as خوريرة at the time but even in the time of Abu Bakr after he used Abu Khura'ira we find أمر ابن الخطاب begins to whip Abu Khura'ira in the 50 after after the death of the prophet he begins to whip Abu Khura'ira he says stop fabricating a hadith but no one looks at that particular a hadith they say no Abu Khura'ira that's the topic for a different night inshallah but inshallah we want to focus on tonight and we end on this note that there is a huge significance and importance to acquiring knowledge and how it may be utilized today was the beginning stages tomorrow I want to look at the depth of knowledge tomorrow I want to look at what knowledge the imams had tomorrow I want to look at what kind of knowledge we can attain I want to look at the knowledge that that Allah Subhanu Wa Ta'ala has instilled in the mirror reflections that he had on earth when a person comes to Ali ibn Abi Talib and he asks him a question that we can't even comprehend back then they say oh Ali in our books and these were monks in our books we are told of a source of water that is not from the heavens nor the earth if you tell us this will come towards your religion not from the earth not from the skies what does Ali ibn Abi Talib say because this will shock you Ali ibn Abi Talib says the sweat of a horse the sweat of a horse no sodium concentrate pure water who takes that scientist nowadays in 2000 I believe in 2007-2008 and they analysed the sweat of a horse they found no sodium concentrate which makes it water now there is a hygienic obviously things that we have to look at but in essence it's pure water another person comes he says oh Ali trying to stop him from Salah because Ali was going towards Salah on the way he says it was Jewish man he says oh Ali can you tell or can you categorize which animals give birth and which animals lay eggs Ali ibn Abi Talib on his way towards the mosque nowadays we have evolution theory which is all fabrication upon fabrication and we have the ideas and the concept that are given and this animal and this species and this genes will cause this person to give birth and this person to lay what does he say categorize it one two words he says any animal that has a physical E gives birth anyone doesn't have a physical E lays eggs think about it food for thought and he walks Ali ibn Talib walks away scientists take that I believe 2010-2011 they said the only exception to Ali ibn Abi Talib was the whale they said it gives birth but we cannot see the physical E a couple of months later they said no the whale has a physical E صدق Ali صلى علام محمد ورحمد إن شاء الله tonight will be the first of two night series in the concept of knowledge we pray to Allah إن شاء الله and an ending note for tonight's lecture that Allah elevates us in knowledge and lets us apply it to our life because it's not enough having knowledge brothers and sisters we have to apply it that's where the importance lies because the people that fought Ali had knowledge of Ali the people that fought حسين أمام حسين علي أبضل صلى علام had knowledge of Imam Hussain didn't have the application in their daily lives so we pray to Allah that Allah elevates us in knowledge and gives us a توفيق in which we can apply it to our lives we pray to Allah this particular دعاء and we end with a صورة المباركة الفاتسة but before it three of your loudest محمد وقال محمد


Okay, hi everyone. I just want to say again, welcome to the class. I'm excited to be discussing Art of Experience with you. Today I'm going to talk for a few minutes about the first chapter and some of the background of the book to help get our discussion started. This is going to be a little bit longer than our typical pre-recorded lecture, but I want to get us all oriented to the material. So, as we said before, John Dewey lived from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. He was a philosopher of education, a philosopher of science and technology, political philosopher, and the foremost philosopher of American pragmatism. And he actually wrote pretty much on every area of philosophy you can think of. He was a naturalist in orientation. He was also a defender of the notion of participatory democracy. He thought both education and science were governed or were a form of problem-solving inquiry. And he also developed a moral theory based in problem-solving, lived experience, and moral imagination. Now, in 1925, Dewey published a book, Experience in Nature, the first edition of it, and it was his major work of metaphysics, a work that heralds the beginning of the so-called later works. Dewey surprised many of his readers by devoting the penultimate chapter of this book to art, the discussion of art. He ends up arguing for an enormous philosophical significance to art, which he follows up on fully almost a decade later with art as experience. In that earlier work, Dewey ends the discussion of art by writing, Experience in the form of art, when reflected upon, we conclude by saying, solves more problems which have troubled philosophers and resolves more hard and fast dualisms than any other theme of thought. Art demonstrates the gratuitous falsity of notions that divide overt and executive activity from thought and feeling, and thus separate mind and matter. Well, as you start to look at the book, you'll notice what we mentioned before, the indebtedness of Dewey to Albert Barnes in both the dedication and the preface. Dewey drew a lot on the ideas of Barnes and his personal friendship with Barnes. Now, art has experienced the book, began life, so to speak, as the William James Lectures at Harvard in the spring of 1931, I guess winter and spring. Now, because of Dewey's close philosophical relationship to William James, the Harvard Department of Philosophy decided to give Dewey the honor of being the first person invited to give the William James named Lectures. In between that time, it took him about two and a half years before he published them in early 1934 as artist experience. You can actually read a lot about that in the notes to the past master's version of the book. Okay, so let's get straight to it and talk about chapter one of the book, The Live Creature. And this chapter, I think, begins with a really interesting passage. Dewey says, by one of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of the works of art upon which formation of an aesthetic theory depends has become an obstruction to theory about them. For one reason, these works are products that exist externally and physically. In common conception, the work of art is often identified with the building, book, painting or statue in its existence apart from human experience. Since the actual work of art is what the product does with an inexperience, the result is not favorable to understanding. The Dewey's saying here that the existence of works of art, which presumably is the subject matter of philosophy of art, actually is an obstruction to producing a theory of art, to producing a philosophy of art. That's quite a striking claim for Dewey to make. The reason he thinks that is because in common conception, as he says, we think of works of art as the physical things, the building, the book, the painting, in their existence apart from human experience as an object in a gallery or on the wall. But, and this is a key advertisement for what's going to be so different about Dewey's theory, the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience. So because of this ironic feature of the role of the physical artifacts in art, Dewey thinks we need to take a detour to examples of the aesthetic, not in art, but in everyday experience. So for example, with respect to a fire truck racing by or men working on skyscrapers high above the city, to a simple thing as looking at a fireplace or a campfire and poking at the fire. These are everyday elements of experience that have an aesthetic quality. The woman in her garden or the man, Dewey's references are a little gendered unfortunately, or the mechanic who takes particular care with their tools or what they're doing. Also the so-called low arts, movies, what he calls jazzed music, or the comic strip are all examples for Dewey of places in our everyday life where something of the artistic and the aesthetic actually plays a significant role. These are examples of art that we're not likely to think of as art per se. What we are likely to think of as art is something that's quite removed from everyday life. This is what Dewey calls the museum conception of art, and the chapter brings a kind of central critique towards this conception. According to this conception, art exists in a kind of separate sphere from everyday life. A remote niche should not be literally in a museum, often that means artworks are collected in some place, independent from any context of the rest of our lives, displayed for pure, contemplative, reflective purposes, often literally on a just blank white wall. This is a conception of art which Dewey thinks makes art inaccessible and distant from our everyday lives. The museum conception of art for Dewey is connected with the idea of art for art's sake, a conception which might sound nice, art for art's sake, right? But Dewey actually sees it as detrimental to both art and to everyday life. When they're separated from one another, everyday life is unesthetic and art becomes unrelatable. And so also harms our ability to create an adequate theory or philosophy of art. He contrasts in this way modern civilization where the museum conception holds sway with prior historical periods and other cultures where such everyday items as masks or weapons or buildings of a political or religious significance, where things like ceremonial dress and ritual practices or even something so mundane as pottery, everyday utensils, as well as something or bowls or baskets, as well as the sort of spiritual surroundings that we find in religious spaces. All of these are examples of art that is closely enmeshed with the places where we spend our time and the activities of our daily life. And Dewey thinks that modern civilization has gotten away from this, has gotten kind of cut off from this relationship to art. In this chapter, Dewey tells us that in order to really understand aesthetic experience, and remember for Dewey the true work of art is what it does in experience, we actually have to better understand experience itself. So that's where he's going to take us next. And luckily for Dewey this is kind of the central, the central set of ideas that he has explored throughout his philosophical career is related to the nature of experience. So Dewey tells us that the nature of experience is determined by the essential conditions of life itself. And those are conditions that apply as much for the bird or beast. Here's a cute beast, as it does for human beings. Dewey already from fairly early work in the 1890s has developed a conception of experience, not as something that takes place in the mind or the brain of a separate individual, but as a product of the organism in close interaction with their environment.  There's a constant interchange of material and energy across those boundaries that constitute human life experience and thought. So that interaction for Dewey forms a kind of rhythm, a kind of dynamic tension between on the one hand disequilibrium or need or problems, and on the other hand equilibrium, satisfaction, unity. You might think of it as like this, right? Any organism will become hungry or have a need for nutrition of some sort and will engage in various activities of seeking or inquiring or trying to find or even make food in order to reach a situation of satiety. But that satiety, the lack of hunger, the satisfaction of a full belly is never permanent, right? There's always conflict or loss or decay or change that pushes the organism environment interaction out of that unified or equilibrated state. Now interestingly, Dewey tells us that this is a feature of all experience, of all life, but also that it is given a kind of new quality by becoming more intellectual in character for humans, right? The scientific inquirer for Dewey exists along this rhythm, right? And is particularly interested in, excited by, focused on the problems and the sort of upward slope of inquiry into how to find solutions, but is not sort of satisfied to stay there and is always kind of on to the next problem that arises. Whereas the artist tends to live for those moments of satisfaction, that kind of unified experience and although the artist does inquire, does engage in that intellectual activity, they really are giving more emphasis to that side. That said, both the scientist and the artist travel along this rhythm as much as anyone does. Now our world, Dewey tells us, is a mix of both flux and change and disorder on the one hand and form, stability and order on the other. Order can emerge from that chaos and it can be encouraged to do so by intelligent creatures. And it's only in a world where both of those forces exist that the tension between them can create an aesthetic experience. Indeed, all experience whatsoever or even the conditions of life depend on the tension between the two. In a world of total flux, random chance, no stability, there could be no experience, no art and no life, right? Likewise, in a universe that was finished, fixed, completely stable, again, the activities of life would not be possible and so aesthetic experience would not be possible. So that's just some of the background and the ideas from the chapter that I find important. I'm eager to hear what you think about chapter one and where it takes us and I look forward to our discussion. So I will see you in class.


The Appalachian Wireless Arena is preparing for the Hillbilly Havoc Weekend of Destruction Demolition Derby. Tickets are on sale Friday, March 1st at the Community Trust Bank, Box Office and Ticketmaster.com. Event organizers are also seeking some local talent to help promote the show. The Demolition Derby, of course, tickets are on sale next Friday, March 1st. Well, it'll be this Friday, March 1st. Keep forgetting it's almost March. It doesn't feel like it, but here we are. Of course, you can find all the information on our prices at AppalachianWirelessArena.com. On Ticketmaster.com. On social media. We're excited for it. We're actually looking to find some demo girls. So we're going to have some girls wear some demo derby shirts and represent the brand. So we're going to be looking for them. If you're interested in that, feel free to contact us because we'll definitely talk to you. Looking for three girls. So there's something for you too. Of course, special prices for kids, three to twelve. Of course, two and under three. Friday and Saturday, both at seven o'clock. Demolition Derby. People asked for it for a while and here it is. Appalachian Wireless is spreading the love all month long, offering $500 off select devices. On the Appalachian Advantage, coordination-wide mix and match plans. Plus, new lines get an additional $100 off because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. As expected of any Demolition Derby, the arena will be filled with non-stop action and destruction. For more information, go to Appalachian Wireless Arena dot com slash shows. We've got a professional that we're working with and the, you know, there's always going to be risks there with with the rec. People want to watch the wrecks. They want to see that, but we're going to keep everything safe as possible, of course. Follow all the guidelines. And like I said, we're it's this is something completely different. So I hope folks are ready for it. We're also going to be reaching out to a local band to maybe perform before the event. So that's something we're going to be. So if you're, if you're that, that folks too, you can definitely reach out to us. You can send your email to Josh at appwirelessarena dot com, send us some stuff, Demo Girls, of course a band before. It's going to be fun. It is going to be a thrilling weekend at the Appalachian Wireless Arena. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.


So, my name is Jai Kanakya and I am an avid tracker and a front-end developer at Sokrati. Today, I am going to show you how you can become a better front-end developer by maintaining a daily jQuery plugins website. So, just a quick show of hands. How many of you have used jQuery plugins before? Okay. That covers almost most of the audience. How many have created jQuery plugins before? Okay. A good amount. So, we all know that jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library right now. As Chris had previously shown, jQuery powers 65% of the top 10,000 websites. So, how did jQuery reach such a high usage amount? I believe it is because of the following factors. Simplicity. So, the first time I saw that you can chain methods, I was mind blown. Second cross browser. So, the initial reason why people adopted jQuery in the first place. You have to just write code once and it should be able to run across all browsers. So, that means you have got lesser code to write and maintain. The fourth one is community. So, you have got a huge and robust community with active maintenance, which makes sure that all your browser-specific bugs are acquired and your website runs smoothly across all the browsers. And I believe one of jQuery's greatest power lies in the variety and diversity of its plugins that developers have built upon it. So, a famous quote from John Desig, I just like the plugins where you just snap something in and things just work. So, this was what got me hooked on to jQuery in the first place. From the most complex plugins that creates 3D parallax scrolls to the most simplest one that just let's say submits a form using Ajax. jQuery has got each and every type of plugin available. So, how many have visited this website once before? So, what is jQuery.in? A quick show of hands. Okay, one. So, jQuery.in is a very simple curation engine that features one jQuery plugin a day. It has got prominent links to the home page, to the author, to the demo, and to the download links. You get to start it as fast as possible in using that plugin. So, currently it lists about 1300 unique jQuery plugins. So, let's say you want to add some amazing audio effects to your website. You can use easyaudioeffects.js. Let's say you want to add some snazzy background particle system on your website. You can use particle around.js. Let's say you want to visualize complex calendar schedules on your app. I've got the one for you. grassschedule.js. So, similarly, let's say you want to add some intelligent time-away flat shadows to your DOM elements. jQuery has got you covered. You have got four shadows.js. So, I can go on and on about the 1 to 9-6 plugins that are more available. So, let me give you a bit of a background. So, why I started jQuery.in. So, back in June 2012, I was just getting started with my web designing career and plugins.jQuery was down and there was no website or app where you can just discover new jQuery plugins and search for newer tools. And at that time, I also wanted to learn WordPress. And I was using browser bookmarks to save and link to all the important scripts, tutorials, code or anything interesting that I found that was quickly becoming unfeasible. So, this is why I launched jQuery.in. So, what is the most important thing in maintaining a daily jQuery plugins blog? It's curation. So, curation is a field of endeavor that is involved in managing, assembling and presenting a select list of items. So, how does this help you as a front-end developer? So, every weekend, I go through a lot of Twitter feeds, a lot of RSS feeds, a lot of NPM repositories, a lot of GitHub repositories in order to search for newer and better jQuery plugins. So, how does this help me as a front-end developer is that, one, I always get to stay in touch with the current trends and the latest tools. Second, for any new project that I use, because I've got this vast knowledge of jQuery plugins, I can cherry-pick the most useful or the best jQuery plugins to use in my next project. The most important thing I learned over here is patience. Because doing this for the past three years for every weekend, it requires a lot of patience and persistence. Especially in front-end development, learning a new framework, whether you are learning a new language, whether you are solving a very hard-to-debug bug or whether you are thrown in an existing project of which you have no idea about, you should have the patience and the persistence to continue with it. Also, the next time your client or your designer or your project manager asks you if a particular effect, animation or user interface can be implemented, you always know the answer because you have listed so many jQuery plugins. So this is how it helps in your current projects. The next thing it improves is your skill set. So today, if you go through the careers page for any front-end developer today, the number of skills that are listed goes on increasing day by day. So because of which coding is not the only thing that front-end developers need to be mastered in. So every day, you have got to work in sync with the clients, with the design team, with the marketing team, with your project managers, with the back-end teams, with your DevOps teams in order to get something online. So it's always advantageous to have a basic knowledge of how things work across all the domains. So if you're maintaining a daily online blog, you automatically get to learn all of these things and you are able to solve problems in other teams as well. So this is how you can remain in better sync with other teams because you have already worked in that team and you have some very basic knowledge of how it works. The next thing I learned is marketing. So out of the rules, laws, axioms, gans of marketing, I believe these following points form the main foundation. First, marketing starts before starting any project. Marketing should never stop even after a successful product launch or a successful product. Third, content email marketing, content marketing, word of mouth marketing, so these are the best mediums.  So in my case, whenever I want to launch anything new, I first run some basic marketing on jQuery.in in order to get some beta feedback and I should be able to measure them effectively. The next thing I learned is search engine optimization. Now SEO was a very hard-learned initial lesson for me. SEO is not something that you can just lay off doing for a very long time. Think of it like this, SEO is a long-term game plan and if your app is dependent on SEO, you have to go to include it from the beginning. So some key points for SEO I learned is that one, black hat SEO does not work. You can try your best but it just does not work. These three points always contribute to a good SEO score. The first is content, so which is the king. The next is regularity or the frequency of your posts. The last one is social media. Don't just have accounts across every social media. You have to be active and interactive across all of them. Coming back to the less sexy part of the job is maintenance. If you build it, you got to maintain it. So some key points over here I learned is that you don't realize the importance of backups until you lose data once. So I've lost data once and I know how important, how difficult it is to get it back up and running again. The next thing, always get a reliable host with a good hosting plan and quick support. Server prices have decreased drastically in this last few years and hosting is one of the area that you should definitely splurge on. Some quick pointers to you always maintain revisions. So that's basically and a quick rule of thumb is that let's say tomorrow you lose everything. You should be able to set up everything right from DNS to automated email marketing in less than a day. So this is a ground rule that I always work upon. The most important thing that I have learned is source code hunting. Now everyone has got a different way of writing his or her own code. Some people like to make use of heavy use of software patterns. Some people follow very strict coding guidelines and structures. Some people write more comments than the code itself. Some might follow some entirely different conventions than you. Browsing source code is still considered one of the best ways to boost your development skills. As great writers or also voracious readers, we too should also learn to spend quality time reading quality code. So by reading so many codes, what I have learned is there are so many shortcuts in writing the same thing. There are so many new workflows of writing the same code. There are so many new tools and integrations that aid you to write better code. People have written so many integrations with existing apps that you weren't thought were possible before. The next thing is networking. So how many of you people say that networking is very important? So that is why we are all here in the first place. Because we want to interact and exchange ideas with other FEDs and we enjoy ourselves doing so. So in the case of jaco.in, I have tried to contact each and every plugin author whether it can be through Twitter, whether it can be through Facebook, whether it can be through LinkedIn, whether it can be through email, or even Google+. So because of contacting a new FED almost every day, I have gotten a lot of project recommendations, a lot of offers, a lot of ideas, a lot of collaboration opportunities, a lot of amazingly long email chains. So I've got to learn so many things. So I can tell you with certain certainty that if you are maintaining an online blog, your network will grow exponentially. And it's also great to be in touch with so many developers, opportunities. And coming back to career choices, so as a relative newcomer to the field, you can also make informed career decisions by asking some very crucial things to the more experienced peers. The next thing, automation. Everything that can be automated should be automated. So if you're running an online blog, every single bit of automation counts. So this is very important. So right now, jqa.in, so it has got some existing WordPress plugins. It has, I've written some custom WordPress plugins. I've written some custom book marklets. I've written some custom Chrome extensions. I have made use of some of integration with some online apps. Also, I've written some custom automation scripts. So right now, jqa.in has got the ability to buffer up push for one month to get the repo information to schedule them day by day, to check for broken links, then to schedule, then to publish them day by day, then to inform that author, then also simultaneously to share it across all the social media channels, including email, and later on do some basic SEO optimizations. So all this flow is currently automated. So how does this help you? So you can use this existing infrastructure to have to launch newer blogs, or you can use that existing pieces of code that you have to write more automation tools. Also, for every next project that you undertake, you will make sure you will write the project in such a way that it can later on be automated. So some key takeaways for you is that keep using jQuery plugins. It's never too late to start something. Just launch, you can iterate and optimize for it later. So thank you guys. I think so. So the slides are available online as well. It's kind of fresh through the slides. So I wanted to make this more interactive. So if you have got any more questions, any doubts, how do I launch, how do I do this, how do I do that, you can easily ask me. Any questions? Two different things. So jQuery plugins, Angular Directive Web Components. So this is how it is structured. But I think so Web Components is currently in kind of beta testing. Everyone is still trying to get to know them. Some jQuery plugins are trying to adapt to Web Components. So they are trying to write the code or they are trying to write the structure in such a way that later on, let's say one year later or two year later, they can then shift to Web Components. They can offer that same thing as a Web Component. Because I have seen many jQuery plugins that have become independent scripts or independent Angular Directives. So by separating the core logic, you can do that. Web Components, I think so is supported by Chrome and Firefox. But the adoption rate, so right now it is still getting that initial bunch of user, it hasn't still hit that sweet spot where everyone starts using it. Okay, thank you for being an amazing audience.