In today's video, we're continuing my quest to pull every Ghostra ever made with two vintage Yu-Gi-Oh boxes. What's up guys? We're back with another old school opening, which I know. Legacy of the Valley in Primal Origin, not necessarily what we consider vintage these days, but these sets are like over 10 years old at this point, so maybe vintage is the wrong word, old? I don't know old sets. We've never pulled either of the Ghostrares in these sets. And shout out to Kip K for purchasing these on my website when we did the big sale video. He purchased these, asked these to be opened up, so we're opening these up for Kip today, so hopefully Kip gets some good luck and helps us with our Ghostrare journey. But before we get into it, we have a giveaway. I'll be giving away this Duelist Pack special edition. All you have to do is like the video, be subscribed to our notifications. Let me know down below what we get at Ghostrare in either of these boxes and what is your favorite Ghostrare ever made? All right, enough dawdling around. We've got two booster boxes to be opened up today. Let's just, let's open them both at the same time because that'll make it more fun. So let's slice these things open. Classic boxes. I've had these lying around for a while and a lot of these boxes that were kind of in the same lot I purchased at one point and pulled Ghostrare out of like three different boxes so far. I think the black wing was one of them. I'm trying to remember what the others were, but we went crazy. We kept pulling Ghostrares out of the boxes from those lots. Primal Origin. Here we go. Let's see if we can pull something great today. So Primal Origin, Legacy of the Valiant. I don't know which one will do better. Maybe we'll do a little mini box battle. I mean, we have two, we have two boxes here. We might as well do a little box battle while we're at it. So let me know which one you think will win Legacy of the Valiant or Primal Origin. They're both first ed. So we'll have a little score going up as we go. I am going to shuffle both of these just for fun. So I'll be right back. All right. Let's start with the left of the left. So we have Legacy of the Valiant, you know, left side of the left box. Here we go. I don't know the pack trick, but I figure we will find it out as we go. Ghostrare Museum. We need to pull these Ghostrares. One of these, I think it is, Legacy of the Valiant has the Mobius the Mega Monarch, which used to be a terrible Ghostrare. There's Utopia Roots, but it's gotten a little better as we go. I personally have always thought it was a really cool looking one and the foil on it looks great. So it would be pretty exciting to actually pull that one for the first time. This Ghostrare is the Bujinki Amaterasu, which I've always had a lot of these cards, but I've never actually pulled one before. So it'd be pretty cool to actually do that. We have number 42, Galaxy Tomahawk. That's kind of an awesome name. That's a Star Trek slash Star Wars looking ship Thunderbird. Battle, oh, Battle Box or Vale was a pretty nice card in my Duel Links, uh, Masked Hero deck for a while. It's pretty good. Heliosphere. We have Ancient Gear Box, Beotanical Princess, and a Scrap Factor. We're starting it off 0 for 2. We have not figured out the pack tricks just yet. We are doing our best. Here we go. Hopefully you guys are enjoying the videos recently. We've been doing a lot of cool stuff. I feel like the videos, we've had a lot of good concepts and stuff and a lot of good pulls to go along with it. So make sure you let me know how you've been liking those. And if you have not seen them, maybe you just are a new viewer. You've missed some recent videos. We've done a lot of good stuff. I mean, we've opened a lot of cool packs. We've done, you know, a TCG player mail opening. We've done the LOB first dead opening. We've done every Legendary Collection opening. There's a Super Rare Escalation Monarch. So it looks like it is just three from the back on Pryo at least. So Super Rare. Starting off our first foil of the video. Very nice. We have also done every year opening where we open something from every single year. There's some good packs in that one. So we opened some pretty old, in a rare stuff. Interplanetary Purpley Thorny Beasts. There we go. Release Reverse Burrs. Reneco. Yeti. Overlay Booster. Snapdragon. Seed. Silvan Peaskeeper. And Bouginki Hair. So another Super Bouginki Hair. This one I also played in Duel Links at one point when the Bougins came out. The hair was one of the ones you needed. So very cool to see that. I don't know what the values are on those Supers.  We have Destroy, Artifacta, Blizzard Thunderbird, Ghost of Warwolf, and the band played on number C43 and number 48. So basically in this kind of set, I'm expecting Ghost of War is like one in 12. So very tough. We've got about, you know, one in six chance because we've got two boxes. That's for the Ghost. The Ultis, I think you usually get one. Maybe one Ulti, one Secret, Bougin Unity, and Gorgonic Ghoul. That's honestly a pretty cool looking card. I like that. Secrets, I feel like are in the same ballpark, and then Ultras, you get like two maybe, and then a few Supers. Maybe like two, maybe like not two, four Supers. I don't know how true that is because I'm always guessing in this era about what the exact ratios are. Galaxy Dragon, Ghostric Knight. Let's see, Ghostric's so cute boss. I didn't know Ghostric's so cute boss was so old. Very interesting. Okay, Legacy of the Valiant. Just two Supers pulled so far, so I definitely shuffled these toward the end, it seems like. We have a Cronombly Wings Finks, Ruxon Special, Gorgonic Ghoul. Can, that's something. Persuade, Mighty Warrior, Snapdragon. Raw, Ruxon Special, Ride to the Secret. Here's one that I always seem to, I don't know if I pull it or I just, it feels like I have them everywhere. Imperial Tombs of the Necro Valley, Secret. So there's our first high rarity card of the video. I didn't shuffle everything to the end because there, there we go, Secret Rare. Pretty early on actually, first set, Prio. Good thing is we should have, you know, multiple of everything, hopefully because we have two different boxes. Artifact Fallenauts, Sylvan Waterside. I don't know what, I mean, I haven't opened these like a ton compared to a lot of the other sets. Like with old school, we've opened a ton because they're old and I'm always looking for them. With the new sets, you know, obviously we open cases and cases. This is kind of in that era, like Xexal and Arc V and stuff like that where I never really opened a crazy amount, but I also, you know, I visit them sometimes to get the ghosts and stuff like that. So that's what we're trying to do here. We really need to pull both ghosts at some point, Virginia Fox and Gorgonik Golem. Is the Xexal Gorgonik in here? I think it is. It's a pretty good card and dual links. Yeah. It was good and dual links for a while. Crazy, I know. I make a lot of dual links references. Like a lot of people are like, why do you make so many? The reason is because I played a lot more dual links than I did TCG. So it's like anytime you would make a TCG reference when you see a card you use there, oh, Vampire Vamp, dual links. The reason is because that's kind of where I played a lot of my Yu-Gi-Oh! was on dual links or it was originally back in the day when I was, you know, I was just mashing 1800s and 1850s and 1900s with my friends, you know, just dominating and using trap cards and stuff. So I was like, you know, really early on the first few years and other people had moved on and I was, you know, moved on to like better strategies, but I was just a kid. So I was just using the same stuff. So Dino Buster, Cerberus, that's why I make so many dual links references. If you were wondering Ballad and a Photon Dragon and Gravekeeper's Ambusher, I didn't know there was a Gravekeeper in here. Interesting. I'm guessing at this point, you know, the flip effects of stuff just not going to be great in, uh, maybe back in Xexal era, maybe you could get away with it back there, but not any more artifact. We have Hydra, Grocery Doll, especially with like, when Pendulums came out, Heliosphere Dragon, Slipneermail, Vanish, Sage, we have a number C43 and No Penguin. No Penguin. No Penguin. I love that. That's a good one. I got to pull that one out. Okay. So one secret of our, no Ultras yet. Still no Ultras, no Ultis, no Ghost. It'd be great to pull those. Let's see if we can get something. Tackle Crusader, Sylvan Blessing, Spy Plane, Mijingiswala, Crusader, Carrier, Swordsman from Disneyland, Oath of Shhh, Companionship, not Championship, and a Sylvan, Blade Defender. I like how they, they really like mashing words together in this. We have No Penguin, we have Blade Defender, like putting two words together. It's kind of, kind of hard to say. All right. So far, Kip, you're doing pretty decent. Let's see if Kip can get something else awesome. Here we go. One, two, three, four. Oh, I shouldn't have done four. I shouldn't have done three. Okay. We have Bolt Penguin. That's an awesome card. That is an awesome card. Number 48, we have Unleashed, Lotus Swain, Slipneermail, Thunderbird, Ebo Singularity, Xyz Universe, and Hundred Foot Horror. Hundred Footed Horror. Hundred Footed. Not a hundred feet. Hundred Footed. Okay. This set just has very difficult names. Let's just say that. First, Legacy of the Valiant. Not Legacy of Darkness. That's what I would go for when I hear Legacy, but Legacy of the Valiant. Gorgon and Golem. What is that? Gorgon and Guardian, maybe? What is it called? No, not Guardian. Cerberus, Parcherite. Maybe we'll pull one. I think it's a rare in here. Gargoyle, Jack Frost, Hintills of the Necro Valley, and Catantosa, Mystical Beast of the Forest. I always thought this was just a strange looking card. It has, like, more magic to gathering vibes, I feel like. It's an interesting card. Primal Origin. Can you bless us with something crazy? Number 48, we got Artifact. Buj incident. Bangal Tech. Parade. Shogi Knight. We have number C103, and the number 62 Galaxy Eyes. Prime Photon Dragon. There we go. That is a beautiful looking ultra. Our first ultra, that hollow hits really well in the right lighting. That is beautiful. First edition ultra. Pretty nice pull, Kip. All right. I see you. Making a run here at some nice pulls. We're doing decent so far. One, two, three. We have Overlay Sentinel. Dark Artist. Gruntman. That Dark Artist is pretty creepy. We have Skeleton. Ghostrix Skeleton. Ghostrix for MBT. We have Gravekeeper's Heretic, and the Calantosa at it again. Let's try not to get out of order. I feel like I'm going to mess this up and be ahead on one or the other, but here we go. We've got 100-footed horror. We've got Gimmick Puppet. Gaze of Shark. Last counter. Heliosphere Dragon. Vanus Sage. Diamond Core. Number 80, and a Double Dragon Descent. Very nice. Lavalval bless us with a ghost rare. Our first one. We need one of these. One, two, three. We have Alpacarrie Carabou. Alpacaribo, so I'm about to say. Cool. The Busta. Doodoo Buster. Do-do-do Buster, not Doodoo. The Doodoo Buster probably wouldn't be on a Yu-Gi-Oh! card. We have Nicotama, and we have Ghostrick, Mew, and Seal. Oh my gosh. I'm struggling reading these cards big time. Pryo, give us something that is not going to, you know, get me canceled. We have a Reverse Breaker. We have Bujint intervention. No penguin. Very nice. Phantom Nine Hydride. And the band played on. Oh, ancient gear box. I dropped you. Vanus Sage. Traptrix Delonia. And it's an Xyz. Ooh, a secret rare, Bujinte Amatorasu. So this is the ghost rare. It comes in secret. It comes in ghost rare, and it comes in ultimate rare. So here's the secret, the lowest in version, but that is a really nice card. I actually think I need that one to get for my binder, which is it's falling behind. I've not been, I need to dedicate more time basically to update that thing. I've just been kind of like over the years just letting it kind of build itself. You know, as I get collections, I find something I need. I go ahead and grab it, but a lot of times they're not near men, so then I need to replace it anyway. There's an ultra rare Gravekeeper's Nobleman. So as it's, you know, grown more full, it's getting harder and harder and harder to get like cards I actually need. And that has definitely happened over the last like year or so. I haven't added too many cards. Okay, we've got Bull Penguin, Balm unboxer, Hundred Foot Horror, Galaxy Dragon, Bellatoc, we have Shogi Knight, we have Dawn Knight. Oh wait, is there another card in here? Yeah, the monarchs are rough. So okay, no penguin again. More hollow cards. So we are halfway through the opening so far.  We've had a lot of, a lot of long videos recently. I will say that it's been over 20 minutes, a lot recently. And I think you guys are actually enjoying that, which is great. So if you're not, you like shorter videos, let me know. But I feel like a lot of people these days, there's a grocery kitty that's called Gugane Guardian. It's a common in here. Very nice card. Oh, the chip of the companionship. Now I keep wanting to say championship. Too much basketball. Skill prisoner, very nice. Too much basketball. All right. Super rare. But yeah, now I can't remember what I was. Oh yeah, my binder. It's been slower recently, but it's a work in progress. And when it's finished, it's going to be epic. That's all I got to say. Helios for your dragon, Battle Boxer, Galaxy Tyranoh, and number 48, Shadow Lich. So far, I feel like we've had pretty good, pretty good pulls overall, like to spend some good stuff. Rosewitch, Dark Artist, Roach's Special, Sylvan Blessing, Cerberus, Seed, Perjray, Seize Avenger, we got Sylvan, and Sylvan, Gardarock. Gardar, Gardyock. Gardar, Gardar Oak. Oh, Gardy Oak. That's what it is. It's like an oak tree. Okay. Cherubs for out. I finally got it. We got the Boat Ping one. Try and guess. I will try and guess that we're going to get a go-sure right now, Trap Tricks. Okay, we're not going to get a go-sure right now. Maybe next time. Global Vol. One, two, three. Can we do it? Can we pull it? Release, Reverse, Burst, Spy Plane, Xyz, Xyz Override, Moicare, Black Bracchus, another Duolinks card, Avenger, Automata Para. That was also, I think, big in Duolinks for a while, but I didn't really play during that point. You know, I haven't played every era of Duolinks. I definitely take breaks. I'm not playing right now. Been a while, number 42, but Breaker Descent. We have Slepnir Mail, Bengal Tech, Warwolf, Parade, Augustus, and Cherub Sprout. So, okay, we're on a culture. Okay, so we got an Ultras. We've gotten two secrets. We haven't got any Ultis yet and no ghosts. So, Ulti is what we're really hoping for, I guess, the rest of the way. Ghost, obviously, we're hoping for, but that's going to be our number C92. Hoping for those ghosts, but I am not counting on them because there is a small chance we get one. If we get one of them, we're going to be happy, especially if it's, like, you know, gradeable. That's pretty hard to get. Number 43, Diamond Core. We have Singulair, we have Mech Vanity Beast, O'Lion, and Sylvan Charity. Very nice with another bullpink one at the end. It's Electro Whip. His arms are Electro Whip. That's kind of weird. Sylvan Charity, another Ultras. So, the Ultras are mounting up at this point, which is not a bad thing. Let's go Legacy of the Valley, guys. Legacy of the Valley, Laval. Bless us, baby. Tack or Crusader, Dark Artist, Photon, Chargeman, the Jewel. Gilgogogo, Lancer, Standoff, Swallow, Ghost or Dullahan, and Starship, Ship, Spy Plane. Okay, Ship, Ship. Pryo. Come on, baby. It's like the old days. Well, yeah, I guess Pryo is old. It's an, they just change how it works, I guess, still exists.  Oh my goodness, we're maybe two-thirds of the way through. No Ultis yet, no Ghosts. So, we're getting a little nervous here. Come on, we need to pull something big. Ghost Trick. Neko Musumi, Crusader, Blessing, Buster, Steed, Rocks and Special, right to the Gravekeeper's Shaman. There are a lot of Gravekeeper's cards in here. I did not realize this. That's pretty cool, though.  They're just not really holding up these days, which, you know, these days, this is not a these days set. This is pretty old intervention, but back when this was like the current set, everything was completely different. In like the world, in the card game, in what, if you were collecting, I mean, everything was different. The prices were way cheaper back then. I mean, if you started collecting, back when these sets were new, you would be loaded right now. Your collection would be absolutely insane. Mighty Warrior, Gorgon of Guardian, Brachios, Snapdragon, Ghostrick Dullahan, and Ghostrick Museum. So, yeah, there is a lot, a lot has changed in the last 10, 12 years, whatever it is.  Oh, is that a second secret? Glad it would be Narochius. Wait a second. We already got a secret out of here. We got the, we got the, what should we call it, the Ghost, the Ghost guy. What's his name? Yeah, the Amatsurasus. That's two secrets in one box. That, I feel like that's unusual. I hope that didn't replace our Ulti, but it definitely could have. It definitely could have, but either way, I mean, two secrets in one box, that's not, that's like a new thing. Like, that happens in new packs. That didn't happen in old packs, I feel like. Unless, maybe we're about to pull one out of here too, Gorgon of Guardian in Temple. Oh, and it holds him in rare. Not a secret. Number C-101 Silent Honor Dark. I think this is one of the best cards in the set. And check out the Ulti. A lot of people don't like the new Ulti, which at this point we have another new Ulti, so this one's not even new anymore. I love this. I think it looks really cool. The only problem is it can get dark, like straight on. It's a little bit hard to see, but the shine on it is really nice. Number C-101 Silent Honor Dark. That is a nice pull. All right. It's not crazy in value. I just looked at it. It's not like insane or anything. It's like 10 bucks, but either way, it's a really awesome looking card. So it feels good at least. I would maybe take a look at that. I mean, like personally, if I pull a card like that, it's like 10 bucks. If it's in like gym and condition, I will check it out and see if I can grade that thing. Because something like that probably doesn't have a ton of population. There's a Tachyon Castle because, you know, it's kind of an era. It's like past the original vintage stuff, the GX. And then you get into five of these Go-Shirts and stuff. Like it's not in that era. So like that's kind of what everybody's focused on grading. If you can get something like that in a PSA 10, those can be like 150 bucks, stuff like that. I mean, they're like pretty solid cards. And if you just send them in a bulk submission, which you can easily because they're $10 cards, you can really do pretty well there. We have the booster and a Chronomaly Wingsfynx. And plus, it's just a cool card. Like if it has like, you know, one of the best cards in the set, but the set doesn't have like a crazy expensive card, it's like that is something that like people might at some point be like, you know, I like Legacy of the Valiant. You know, it's a really cool PSA 10 card with 10 of full princess and a number 48. So I don't know. I maybe take a look at that kit, some good stuff. I don't know. Or maybe you should want to keep it, you know, some people don't like to collect graded. They like to get in their binder and stuff like that. We have Moichari, Ubrachius, Skeleton, Cerberus, number C69, and Albuqueribu, not Caribo. You want to say Caribo? That's not a Caribo. That is a tree. They're from Kirby or something. There's one back for Pryo. I'm hoping we get a ghost out of Pryo. I mean, maybe we'll get a, sorry, an Ulti. I would like a ghost too, but I would hope we get an Ulti as well. But two secrets is making me think maybe not. Legacy of the Valiant though, getting a secret and a pretty cool Ulti. I'm not going to lie. Gorgonic Golem, we have the Sphinx, Interpenetary, Privately, Thorny, Dragon, Gargoyle, Dragon, Ritual, Overlay, Booster, ZW. Oh, and a Gravekeeper's Oracle. Dude, we are pulling, this is the Gravekeeper box. Gravekeeper's left and right. This is insane. Gravekeeper Oracle added again. That has a Speed Duel Terminal Pack 1 printing. We are down only three packs left. Okay, Primal Origin, let's go. Overall, been a pretty good opening, I feel like. Got some good cards, Fall Night. Nothing like crazy valuable because that's really the Ghost Shards in these kind of sets. Aegis, Parade. I would love to pull one of those, Phantom Knight. Let's do it right now. Number C80 and Artifact, Achilles Shield. I don't know what the score is right now. Here's the score. We've been popping it up throughout the video, but here it is right now coming into the last pack. Legacy of the Valiant, let's see what you got. Let's see what you got. One, two, three.  We have Xe Shift, Sylvan, Guardioc, Golem, Gargoyle. Sort of from a distant land. I really like the artwork on that. That feels really old school. Gorgonic Guardian. Okay, Sylvan, that Kuma Shroom.  What a tease. Fairy Knight in Gunnar. That would have been an amazing last pack. But either way, another foil can't complain about that. That brings us to the final, final pack, Primal Origin. If you guys have enjoyed the video, make sure to subscribe. If you have as well, make sure you check out some current videos, you know, they don't have to be current, but recent videos, older videos on the channel. I've got over 1500 openings. Go check it out. Here we go. We have Unleashed. Fairy Knight. Shout out to Kip. Let's see if we can get him something big in the last pack. Avo Singularity. We have Bugaltach. We have the Princess and Boozion Intervention. Okay. So overall, not bad. A two secret box. Pretty unusual. Let me know down below. Did Pryo have two secret boxes? Or is that like an error or something? Shout out to Toam Poe Show, Puffin Zidoo, Mernester Dianne, America Deutcher, KK Beats. Another side show, Ian Moose, the Jr. Browning, Robert F., Thomas McLean, Changelang, and Aldelso Galicia Jr. Thank you guys for supporting the channel, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


Mae'r fflu yw'r ffordd awyr ardal chi hon bwysig fel gyda'r llun o'r ystyried o'r uwch ar eu gweithio'n teimloi'r fawr. Mae'r parlyfedd yng Nghymru yn dweud ei bod yn fanfath yma, ond nid bod ni'n gweithio y rhagor, ond nid o'n half o fod o'r gweithio gyda'r holl, ond i gwyllwch o gwbl ni ar gyfer ar y cyflen a phoesiaeth i'r hyn mor ffordd a'r bynnag. Y cyfeirio'r kingdomau eu fflaesiaid ynghyd yn gyffredinol'u gweithio gyda'r fawr. I'm Mark Griffin MSP, and I'm proposing a Bill in the Scottish Parliament to create a Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council. The new council would include workers and their representatives. It would have the freedom to carry out its own research and make recommendations on the policy, and it would be able to scrutinise Scottish legislation on these benefits. The council could decide to look into the long-term effects of COVID-19, or the inequality there seems to be in the current system in payments to men and women. Currently, the vast majority of successful claimants are male. The new council could help create an employment injuries benefit system fit for 21st century workplaces. My consultation is now open and I'd like to hear your views.


going to start this session with some inspiration from Jim Wyrick. He was a legendary developer. He had tremendous experience before Ruby was even invented, and he brought that to the Ruby community with great joy and wisdom, which he freely shared at every opportunity. He was a thoughtful teacher and an effective communicator. This video clip that I'm about to show you is from Rocky Mountain Ruby five years ago. This is a song that I took an old, old tune and put some new words to it for quite a day last month. Quite a day is a celebration of all the things that quite the lucky certificate was. And I wrote some crazy code that day. At the end of the day, I had an hour or two extra. So I wrote a code about how Rubyists love to take, they love their language, they love writing code, they love to take their programs around and show other people, they go around and say, hey, does anybody see my code? Do you want to see it? So this is, has anybody seen my code? Work is for all. Ruby is for all to know, as any has one, others lack. Has anybody seen my apps for sure? Ruby is my job, but your has anybody seen? It's accompanied by Chad Fowler, who's also in the audience. He was always an inspiration. And this song, for me, really demonstrates what the Ruby community really has in a lovely culture of openness, where people share their work publicly with permissive open source licenses or song or cartoons, which that openness really provides the opportunity for serendipitous collaboration. And I'm going to talk about a lot of different examples of this, but first, some basics. So this is Bundler. We commonly have jams, libraries, applications, even, where we just invite people on the home page. This is how you install it with quick, easy steps. Sinatra is a framework that I love. They put, in case you've forgotten, how to write a HTTP response in Sinatra, they include a little whimsy there. Maybe do inspire people, pique somebody's curiosity, or just share their joy in this creation. As Jim Song suggests, we like to share our code, and we like to read the code that other people write. And just in case you think that this kind of effort of sharing only makes sense when you've got a mature thing that you've been working on for years, I picked a random repo from one of my favorite developers, Sarah May. She wrote this small app in a few days with just 33 commits. In the first day after her 14 commits, she created this readme for in blogging, which just has a quick description, installation, steps, of course, and a wish list of what she has in progress. And that is typical of what people do in the Ruby community. And it's really a best practice for open source. And this can happen like I just prove that this isn't just random and it's not just Sarah May. I looked at Jekyll, which is a popular thing now. It's used to drive GitHub pages. And if you look at it, and you go way back in time as we can with Git, the first day didn't have a readme. But a couple weeks later, the developer put together autoblog, that was the original name of Jekyll. Anybody know that? And this was clearly just for his own blog. And it didn't really explain much.  But he put together this readme and it had installation, steps, and a license. And a couple weeks later, he used that framework to put together better readme. Like he's clearly collaborating with other people now. He's got a name, which I'm not sure is better than autoblog, but whatever. But here he actually explains what it is, which is a key part of sharing what you do, explaining what it's supposed to do. And also the fact that at this point, he's sharing the innards a little bit, means that it's sort of sending a signal that this is for other developers. If you wanna get your hands dirty and see how it's made, but it's not yet the polished thing that it would later become. So we normally think of software as being made of code. But really, software is made of people. So it's people who make software. We, before we ever type the code, we are imagining what that software might do. We're typically making that software with a group of people and with our code, we turn our ideas into reality. And so whether you're working on your passion project or something for your job, communication is essential. It can be fun, but it's absolutely serious. It is not some fluffy thing that you can just delegate to another member of your team. This is hard work, but it's important because communication is a part of the technical work. It is not some separate thing. So I'm gonna talk about some examples, some that I participated in, others that I've witnessed. I'll actually show you some code too. But first I'm gonna talk about what I think are the three key attributes of effective communication when it comes particularly to software products. First, I think it's really important to convey your big vision. Sometimes it's kind of scary. You're like, who am I to say I'm gonna do all this? But if you don't tell people where you're going, they can't go along with you. And if you suggest a direction and spell it out, what will the future look like if you're successful, then they can participate and they can help. Then you can't just stop with the big vision because you gotta do something. So you wanna make sure that you have some concrete steps, some key features, some specific things that people can grab on to be like, oh yeah, this is a thing, it works, I get it. And then paint the picture of what is the path from those small tangible things that you have built already and people can use right away to that big vision and how you're going to make the thing. So my first story is actually a story of social change from Bridge Foundry, which is a nonprofit that I lead that has a vision of the future where the makers of technology are reflective of our society, where all people have equal access. And this isn't just about fairness, although that's also a good thing. This is because we have some very real, urgent, tough problems that face our world and our society. If we don't have all of the talent and potential on the planet focused on solving those problems, then they won't get solved. And software is gonna be a big part of solving those problems in our future. So a big thing that we do is these workshops. So who's been to a Rails Bridge workshop? Yeah, a lot of you. Who's been to another kind of Bridge workshop? A few of you, what kind? Closure Bridge? Closure Bridge, yay. So it started with Rails Bridge and now there's Closure Bridge and Go Bridge. It's gonna be an Elixir Bridge and Elm Bridge. It's so exciting, I can't even name all the bridges off the top of my head. But I wanna tell you how this thing works. We have this big vision, right? Transforming society and most people who are talking about this today are like, oh my gosh, we have to boil the ocean, we have to, you know, there's problems in college and before that in high school and before that in middle school. Like, holy cow, we have a certain preschool.  So we have a deceptively simple workshop and it has some key elements. We seek to have a diverse team teaching. We offer childcare. So moms and dads can show up. We offer food, so you know, you don't have to worry about that. And key thing, we have an install fest. There's usually beer and pizza and stuff. So you can get the hard part out of the way because like, I don't know, maybe some of you like installing software but most people are, it's not their favorite part of the job. And then there's a day of coding. So we create an environment that we seek to create a safe and effective learning environment. We're trying to share this environment that on our best days we have, that if we have a good job we have, that we have snacks at work and we don't have to worry about somebody taking care of our kids and we can just focus on the work that we have the difficult stuff out of the way and we can get in the zone and make the stuff we love. And that's what we share. It seems to be about teaching coding but I actually think it's really about teaching this culture that we love and want to share. And it has been a transformative experience for people. And if at the beginning people are like, yeah, yeah, I don't know if I can change the industry but I can sign up for coming for one day, one night, one day and teach a few people, five people, 20 people to code, like, I can get behind that. And then after the experience, they see that in that short time they've had an effect on a few people's lives and they can feel the ripple effects across the industry. So we actually, in our first six months, we measured what was going on here and we started with 2% women in our local San Francisco Ruby community, Sarah and me. And six months later, that was 18% of measured by people who were coming to the meetups and we found it wasn't just the women that we were teaching in these workshops who were either new programmers or just new to Ruby on Rails, but they were women who had been in the community that had stopped coming to the meetups because they felt alienated due to the homogenous nature of the group.  And it's grown all over the world beyond anything I could ever imagine. And it's not because of something I did, it's because of something we did. We co-created it because we didn't have all the answers, because we were transparent about what we were doing. People came in and helped us create the right solution for the community. And I think that was a big win in communication and a big win because the Ruby community is awesome, which is where we started. My next story is in business. So I have a new job. I now work on the Firebase team. And I'm preparing for this talk. I was like, well, can I use an example from my new gig here? So one of the reasons I picked this team is because they're really collaborative and good people and I really like the work environment. And I wanted to share this story. This is James Tamplin, who's our Firebase product manager. And he gets up every week. We have these, every other week, actually like product meetings where he shares like stories from customers and like product updates. And he starts every meeting by saying, our mission is to help developers build better apps and grow successful businesses. It's like a mantra. And I think that's cool.  We're all like focused on what we're trying to do together. And I was like, this is gonna make a great story. But I'm like, this, it makes a better story if we're saying this publicly, right? Firebase used to be like a startup company. They were acquired by Google a couple of years ago. So I'm like, I don't know if their public voice is like quite as loud as it used to be. I'm just a little anxious about that. So I Google like Firebase mission and I find a bunch of stuff from like the era of like when they were acquired. And I'm like, ah, well maybe this isn't such a good story. And then I'm like looking around and on the homepage, it says, app success made simple. The tools and infrastructure you need to build better apps and grow successful businesses. I'm like, well, that's it. Oh my gosh, our mission's like on the homepage, not kind of what I expected from being in the midst of this ginormous company. And if you just read this in isolation, it just looks like marketing fluff, right? But the way that it's folded into the work of our team makes it not that. So a couple of tactics that they do, we do is focus on the first 15 minutes of the developer experience. So this happens over and over again at different interactions. Well, how's this gonna affect the first 15 minutes and how are we gonna describe this so developers are gonna get it right away? I talked to Joey Yang, one of my colleagues who talked about the developer experience. It's so important to this team where the user experience is the sum total of every interaction the user has with the product. So that is not just the documentation and the website and the code that we produce. It's blog posts, not only our blog posts, other people's blog posts. It's our GitHub repo. It's the Stack Overflow questions and answers. It's presence on social media. It's conference talks, meetups, hackathons. These are all experiences of the product. In fact, the first time I met the Firebase team was in May 2012 at Hackathon and me and a few other people were creating this app that was like, you had your mobile phone and you would like, this is the idea, you would like wave it around and then when you like click the button, it would create a 3D shape of your thing, right? You can see it on my laptop and because we were using Firebase, like we hadn't really considered doing it in real time but because we do, with Firebase, as soon as you click the button, zap, it would be like on the screen and they were like coming over and helping us. They ended up giving us a prize for like the best Firebase app at the event and they like invited us back to their office and they made us feel like superstars. Like we were there with like companies that were actually like building businesses and this was like our mobile graffiti app. We think it's cool. It's not yet on the app store. And they made us feel powerful. It was our story. Of course it was their story, right? But we felt like it was our story. And those elements of focusing on the first 15 minutes and really creating these cherished interactions with your customers is what builds to their big vision. And of course they have to make a great product and of course they have to do all the other things but having those concrete steps, let the large team actually work together to build towards something that's gonna be aligned. So my next story is about open source and rack. Who has heard of rack? A lot of you, yay. So some of this might be review but some maybe not everybody knows the history. I kind of knew the history because I started using Rails in 2008 and then it seemed like and Rails adopted rack in 2009 with two, three and it seemed like there was this era where like all of a sudden from my end user sort of developer perspective, like all the frameworks just suddenly started using rack. Like everybody got together and was like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. But I don't think that's actually how it happened. So I looked up the original blog post by Christian Neukirchen about announcing rack. So he made this observation that at the time the web frameworks and the web servers had a lot of repeated code, right? Because each web framework would have kind of custom code to talk to the different web servers and they had to like actually work to support each of the different web servers and at first there weren't that many so it wasn't that big a deal but it kind of got to be a little messy. And so he made this observation that there's actually, you could have a very simple interface of making a call and returning an array with three things and that that could be the new interface for a web server. And he wrote this up in a blog post and made this compelling argument and I'm gonna share with you a little code that is something that I used to teach, back when I used to teach Ruby on rack which is based on a presentation by Dan Webb. So rack is not a web framework. It's not a web server. It's not even a library. It's a convention. If you've got a Ruby object that's got a call method with one argument and a method that returns an array with three elements then you can connect it to any web server that supports rack and you've got yourself a web application, that's it. So I'm gonna go quick because I think I'm running out of time. So this is an example. So proc is a Ruby thing that has, you can knew it with a block and then it has a call method. So it's a really convenient way to create an app that you pass into a web server like thin and there you have, if you run this you will have a web application that serves up hello world. Completely different code. You've got a class hello world that has a constructor that takes a name and then you've got a call method, right? That's explicitly a method here and then it returns this array. And in this case, I've got mongrel, I'm calling hello world.new with Dan and this would serve up hello Dan. So you've got a call method with an environment that's views up all of your HTTP request. Information, the status code, HTTP headers, a response body. The response body can actually be any object that responds to each. So you can do this with a file. So suppose you wanna do a streaming file. You can just write in each method that serves up chunks of your file and then you have this super simple response. This common interface was then gradually adopted just I think, I don't know, I'd love to actually talk to all the people who've adopted this, maybe some people in the audience know the answers. But it was adopted gradually by all of these different web servers and frameworks. And what was great about this concept is that it only took a couple of players to adopt it for it to add a lot of value. And then every new library framework server that adopted it added more value. And that method of letting people take a small action to build towards the big vision without making everybody change everything at once, I think that was brilliant. It was like, right once, serve however you want. And what's great about Rack is it was really just an idea.  But Rack itself was not the library. He didn't have to make anybody use his code. It was an idea that it was a good idea and he facilitated its adoption along with some other people. So communication is what we do. I find it confusing that anyone could even suggest that communication is somehow like some different skill that programmers don't need. This is what we do. We write our code in programming languages. We define things and then they exist by using this language we make things real. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a wizard. And I think software development is the closest thing that I could get to this because I say stuff with my code and it makes it real. I can wave my magic wand and an image appears a thousand miles away. And that's a magical thing and that's a power that we all have. And I've been really, I wanted to kind of close this by remarking on sort of my excitement about all the different languages that there seem to be exploding. And I think that it's a benefit of like our faster processors. But I also think we have new problems in the world. They've touched on some of these this morning. We have new problems of how to build these distributed systems that require better handling of concurrency. And new user experience patterns with mobile and all sorts of connected devices. And I've sort of like sort of splayed out. I was trying to understand this. I've probably put things slightly in the wrong corners but I find that like looking at across time and across kind of different programming trends helps me make sense of what all these things are. And I think of it as a bit of a conversation between the past programmers who did all this early foundational work and how we're communicating to the future in these new capabilities that we put in the hands of our colleagues. Software developers exchange ideas through experimentation. So learn a new language. Make a new language. Code is communication. And what will you say? What's the language that you've been learning or experimenting with most recently? That is a good question. I'm not intending to languages. Yeah, well so I've been learning Angular. It's, so it's a thing. I, when I was in early in my, like in, I don't know, at some point, I don't know, 10 years ago, I made an open source JavaScript framework for UI stuff that was called OpenLaslo. And it had a very, it was very similar to Angular and that you sort of can create these tags. So it's been really interesting to see like these patterns play out in new ways. But I've been wanting to learn one of these hot new functional languages for like five years. It was like closure, first it was gonna be closure and I went to a closure bridge in San Francisco but then I didn't persist. And now I'm like super excited about Elm. There's gonna be an Elm bridge in San Francisco in October. I'm very opportunistic with like what languages I learn. I'll go to a hackathon and learn a new thing. But, but I'm pretty excited about this trend in functional languages. I think that it's really a solution whose time has come with a lot of the problems that we have today. Any questions? Oh, way back. Hi, Sarah, thank you for coming. You mentioned some of your work as a White House Innovation Fellow, the Smithsonian at AT&F. I was wondering if you could comment about your experience there and how does communication kind of work differently in government spaces? That is a good question. I need a seat for that question. So I came into government as a Presidential Innovation Fellows. It's very confusing. There are White House Fellows, they're a different thing. We were Presidential Innovation Fellows and we were partnered with people inside government who really understood government. And what I really learned a lot is one is in we use the word politics, I think in really inappropriate ways in the industry that it was eye-opening that politics can be used for good. That I saw secretaries, people from the White House, very senior government officials with a few words change the course of, like you could sort of see like, oh wow, that's actually gonna make economic impact on this industry because people are gonna go forth with this new knowledge and new awareness and do action. That you could with words, with policies, actually change human behavior in really fundamental ways. I came in on the heels of Obama signing the Executive Order for Open Data which made all data produced by federal employees by default open. So before that, anybody would have had to get permission to open a data set which is a big thing in government to get permission to do stuff. And it's not just that people are afraid of getting permission or it's a lot of work, that there's actually like laws, right? Like in government, the reason you have a job is because somebody like wrote a law that you should do the thing, right? So if you don't do the right thing you could actually break the actual law. And that's scary because you're like, I don't wanna like break the law. So there's great power in these like sort of baseline policies that let us, and how we act. And there are all these assumed policies that are a whole other thing. And so I learned a lot about different ways to communicate. And the other big thing I learned is I was for the first time really working deeply with people who had like no technical skills, right? New, like there was like assumptions that I made is just like, of course, open source is good.  Open data is naturally good, but why would you know, like so many fundamentals I had to explain. And, but I was working with people who were like deeply experienced in other domains. And it caused me to learn how to very quickly assess the skills that somebody else has. And to realize, because the other thing in government is like, especially when you're there for a time, I was there for six months initially, like there's, you can't trade out the players.   Like I'm life short, like why don't I work with you Bozo? But then I realized like one, it doesn't serve me to assume that somebody has skills that they don't have, right? There's some reasons they never acquired those skills and they don't have them. And like life short, like I don't need to teach them those skills, I should just work with what I've got. And getting angry about it also, like it doesn't help anybody. And sometimes you just go to show up at the meeting and be like, thanks for coming to the meeting, why don't I just give you an update on our progress? How was your weekend? And like that's all the meeting's gonna have. And you know going into it that this person is not gonna move your anything forward. But you don't have to be obnoxious to them. You could just appreciate and you never know when their good word is gonna be in the air of somebody who you need to make a decision. So I think the biggest thing I learned about communication to answer your question is it's not about me. It's not even about what I want. It's about what is actually going to serve the situation. What is actually going to move this thing forward? So my last anecdote from this segment is, so I went to the Smithsonian, I was a Smithsonian employee reporting to the office of the secretary. For those of you who don't know, secretaries in government, they're like heads of agencies. They're not like somebody's admin. They're important people. But I was a presidential innovation fellow and I was with this cohort who kind of reported to the White House and like the president of the United States of America. But it wasn't like I had one-on-ones with the president, I didn't get direct orders. And it was a little awkward because sometimes like the things that the Smithsonian wanted to do in the short term were different from what the office of science, technology, policy, and the CTO of the United States were telling me were important. And it was a little awkward, right? And there wasn't really, earlier in my career, you'd have different bosses telling you different things. You'd go to their like joint manager, right? But I didn't have access to those people. So I developed a technique which was to say like, okay, I'm a presidential innovation fellow. And just like the president, I work for the United States of America. So when this situation with this problem, what is the best thing for the United States of America? In what way could I justify my salary being a good use of American tax dollars? And when I could bring it to that place, that's incredibly powerful. Because that's what everybody wants there, right? Everybody wants to do the right thing, you know? And then you could get to the heart of like, what's the problem and how to get in between those things and how do you overcome those things? And that philosophy has like helped me in every area of my life to think, okay, well like I'm working with these people for some reason. I'm in a room frustrated, communicating these people for some reason, like what's the thing we're all here for? That's what it's about, right? It's not about you, it's not about them. It's not about whatever horrible thing is in your way. It's about what you're all trying to make happen. And by any means necessary, you get there. Thanks, Sarah. Three, two, one.


Hello OscillatorSync here. On Facebook there's a really cool group called Hardware Jams Which if you're into making music on hardware, I highly recommend you go check out and one really compelling reason to do that Is that every weekend they have a themed Challenge music making challenge. So there's always an excuse every weekend to make some music This weekend the challenge is a kind of against the clock style 10 minutes to make a thing type challenge So you just have 10 minutes to do a thing and then once that 10 minutes is over you are done Which for someone who is currently incredibly short of time is pretty much the dream Challenge so I thought that I would get in on it this week So that is what I'm doing here putting together something a piece of music a jam In 10 minutes and at the end of the 10 minutes. We are done and that is the jam Starting absolutely from scratch. I'm going to use the digitone just digitone on its own Initialize patch. There's nothing else going on on any of the tracks yet. Nothing programmed. No nothing Let's Make a thing shall we I would have liked to have a snare drum in there was determined not to use a preset for the snare drum And I realized that I just rabbit lock a snare drum. It's not Peggio could do with Proposely as much to lay baseline is yes first of course on the baseline. There we go. That's 10 minutes Just alright for 10 minutes. I think that's a jam. I think I could probably take further. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that That's sort of 10 minutes Raker beat on the digitone challenge for the hardware jams Facebook page go check it out joining on the challenges because they're cool


Okay, good morning everyone. Welcome to BC 314, our class on media and technology. Thank you everyone for joining the class. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will start. Can somebody pray? It's time. Lord, we want to thank you for this morning. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to come into your presence to learn together. As we are learning this morning, we ask the Lord that you would minister to us and help us to understand new concepts. We pray to the Lord that we will be able to implement that ministry and also to have an idea about these technologies. You pray Lord Jesus that you would give us wisdom and understanding, less the time of learning in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Alright, so last week we were just looking at certain areas of Christian ministry and how things have changed in those areas and what is the good in the bad? What are the pros and cons? What are pitfalls we must avoid? Let's quickly share that and I think maybe we would do a quick discussion on the last area that we were talking about. So we talked about ministering, how we have seen changes in this aspect of ministry. Now we are seeing contemporary ways and methods that are happening and we talked about the pros and cons in that. We talked about the gathering place, the menu, where people come and gather and also how things have changed. You know, live streams, satellite churches, live streaming and all of that. We spoke about the pros and cons. What are some pitfalls we must avoid? Then we went into worship. We were discussing worship and we also saw how worship has changed so much the way we worship. Of course, who we worship hasn't changed. It's still worshiping Jesus. It's still worshiping God. But so much has changed in the kind of songs we sing in the expression of worship. So much of music and styles of music and all of those things. So much has changed. So I want us to just quickly take some time here to discuss this and I think this is very important. When you think about contemporary Christian music, the kind of music that is being released both by churches and in our days we have different churches writing music. Some are very well known and some are doing it on a smaller scale. Churches are writing and releasing songs and at the same time we have this rich heritage of our songs that were written hundreds of years ago, like the hymns. And sometimes some choruses which were written much, many years before. But we have access to it. We can still sing the hymns. We can still sing some of those hymns. So the question is, when we look at church worship, Christian music today, what we want to discuss is what is the good in the back? And what should we avoid? What should we be careful of when we look at Christian music or worship music as a whole? What comes to your mind? I just wanted to open this time for some discussion. I just want to also be happy from different parts of the world. So it would be nice to hear in your region. Of course, I understand there is a lot of English music. But there is also a lot of Christian music in regional language and that is very specific to particular regions. So it would be nice to know what is happening there. And are we seeing the same kinds of trends? What are the pros? What are the cons? What should we be careful about? So let's just take a few minutes to discuss that and then we move forward. Please feel free to share so we can just learn from each other and also know what is going on in different places. And someone can start. Usually the first question has to start and then others will follow. So one of the things I have noticed in recent months or recent years is there are really good songs. But when you see the music video that how the church has produced it, and I think we have discussed this last time also, a lot of importance is given to how the production goes on. But if you just listen to the audio, it is so good. But the production quality of it or the importance it is given to the lights and the smoke and all that, it kind of distracts the purpose of worship. At the same time, there are really good songs. Songs are really good. You can sing as a congregation, you can sing into worship God. But I think the involvement of this kind of setting, the production has impacted it. And also, one another trend which we see is people write songs and awards and recognitions which are given. And it is actually a good motivator for the writers, but eventually it creates a celebrity culture. And when people introduce someone, they say, this award winner, that award winner. And it kind of takes the glory from God to trying to put to these people. That is one thing which I have been noticing. But at the same time, as Pastor was mentioning, there are hymns which have been reproduced even now. And even the lyrics of the songs, there is one particular band called Sovereign Grace Music which has been there for many years. But the songs that they write is so, something like hymn itself, but so theologically sound. So there are both types of songs that we see currently. Good observations. Good observation. And I think I agree that the production these days, when songs are being released, there's so much emphasis, not just on the song and the music, but also the whole production. And for better or for worse, it can either distract or it can bless people. Good. Celebrities. That's also another issue. Anyone else? Thank you for sharing. Anyone else? If I may add one more. Another thing which we notice in our church is we sing a very regional language song. But if I can accept it, it's connected to regional language songs. And many people have said that they stay home because they think that they should use the song. So different languages to attend an English church. This can be connected to their own language song. Yeah, that's true. So there is that benefit. I mean, while we generally are singing a lot of English songs, because we're living in a city and all that, there is that, I guess, the connection of the heart to songs being written in the mother tongues and the regional languages. Yeah, definitely. Go ahead. Anyone else? Yeah. Can you hear me, Pastor? Yeah, so based on one of my observations, like when the youth write the songs these days, and I've seen some of the song where there's no mention of even the name of Jesus, and it's more feeling based, more emotional based. I do say it's a Christian song and it's more like a positive song from my side when I see the lyrics, when we see the crowd pumping out and all this. Maybe the Christian community can, they just say truth and they don't say what's the truth. So some of the songs I have heard like that and I felt, I don't know if it's right or wrong, I don't want to debate on that. People do like the music, people do like the song, but I personally don't feel like it's without the name of Jesus. Like when an unbeliever listens to the songs, they might not encounter Jesus, they might not encounter that death singing about Jesus, it just becomes an enormous song. And I've heard quite a songs like that, which are sung by Christian fans and they are doing it for the glory of God. But in the end I don't feel like it's being expressed through the songs, and that's one of the lack I feel like, but not many songs, but quite a few songs are like that where there's no mention of the name of Jesus. And maybe they are doing it so that they can be socially accepted, that's what I feel because it's kind of a safer side, it's kind of like everyone can hear it. But yeah, but I don't feel like it's so beneficial. Yeah, that's a good observation. It's true, it's true. But I think, let me know, while you were speaking, I was suddenly reminded about, so at one point I don't know how much it is there today, maybe it is still there today. There were Christian artists, and maybe it is still there today, who were trying to say, okay, I want to reach out to the unseen. And in order to do that, they started writing these kind of songs, sometimes even songs that we would say are very secular, even love songs and those kinds of songs. And these are believers, Christian artists, Christian musicians, so they go from writing songs of worship to writing songs where their target audience is people outside the church in the world. And this is a big debate, or I should say, is it right, is it wrong, they look at it as a form of evangelism, a form of outrage, etc. So that is the trend, I think it's still going on these days, and that's why we have to be careful where in church, coming together as a people of God, our focus is worship, and our focus is to worship God and build each other up in faith. If artists want to use their gifts and talents outside the church as a means of evangelism, we leave that between them and God. Our goal is to encourage them to be strong in faith while they are engaging the world, and maybe using their gifts as a way to, evangelism is a way to reach people. Okay, if God has called them to do it, bless them, but we want to make sure they're strong, they won't get drifting away off into other things and maintain a good testimony, all of those things are there. Yeah, good doubts. Alright, anything else, anybody else wants to share anything about worship, worship music, pros and cons, what we should avoid? I would like to add one more, which is when famous celebrity like the secular singers, and they sing one part of the Christian song, like maybe the bridge, which is also becoming, I don't know if it's trending, but I have seen that happening. And when you go and listen to the song, you wonder whether you can listen or not, even though the lyrics are good, but we know the real side of the celebrity and their way of life and how they use the words in the other songs and their lifestyle, which are not really acceptable in the biblical principle stuff. But they have some Christian songs, I've seen some famous singers, they sing the bridge, the rap part, and it gets famous because the celebrity has sung the song. And the lyrics are even good, it's biblically strong, it's doctrinally sound, but still creates a lot of controversy among the Christians because it's a celebrity. It's the life they live, and maybe they don't have that motive, maybe the right motive for us to just to focus on God. So even that's quite a controversy creates a lot of questions and confessions, should we listen or should we not? And then finally, I personally have avoided, I don't want to get into the controversy. We've got much more songs that are really spirit-filled and from the worship bands.  Good thoughts, thank you for sharing. Alright, anyone else? Okay, so we know there's a lot going on in this ministry area of Christian music, Christian worship. And there's a lot of good, but there's also a lot of questionable things that we have to think about it carefully. And I think ultimately our focus is to worship God with music, without music however, but just worship God in spirit and truth be genuine and do it the way God wants us to do. Alright, let's move forward now. We'll look at a couple of, my plan was to cover at least three months of it today. Let's do that. Let's try to move forward. The next area that we want to talk about and look at is creative arts and how this has been and where this is going in the church. Now, when you talk about creative arts, we are talking about again a very wide range of things. There are many, many things out there. There's dance, there's drama, there's mind, you can have painting, writing, poetry, spoken word, lots of different expressions. We can add to, you know, sculpture, some people like to do sculpture work, some people like to do pottery. So there are many different creative expressions in the church. The whole idea is that these also can be used as forms of worship and forms of communication, communicating truths to people, which is true. That is, yes, it can. We can dance and drama and mind and so on and so forth. We'll talk about films and other things separately, but I'm just talking about creative arts here. That these can be used and if it is done well, it can be very effective. And I think some, you know, I've just mentioned a few examples. I'm sure, you know, online, you find lots and lots of different examples of people using this in the past, have used in the past, are using it today. I think, at least in recent, in the recent centuries, the evangelist Amy Semple McPherson, who founded the Four Square Gospel Trust, and she had a cathedral, you know, a sanctuary somewhere on the west coast of the USA. I think it's, and I could be wrong here, but maybe somewhere in California. And she was a healing evangelist who also had this place of ministry. And she used to have some sort of a production as part of preaching. So when she was preaching, it wasn't just her speaking, but she would be accompanied by a set where there were people playing music and drama, things happening, which enriched the ministry of the world. And she used that, you know, powerfully, in a very powerful way, to minister to people. And then, of course, she was preaching, she was evangelist, so she would preach and then pray for the people, minister to people as well. So, you know, people have been using down some drama and mime, theater, presentation in a very, very effective way. There has been, you know, also some outstanding dramas. The one that I've mentioned in the other notes is that of a production called Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames. It was an evangelistic drama that came out of Canada. And it was very impactful, and I think this was again in the 80s, 90s, 1980s and 90s, that period of time. It was very impactful and that the drama itself prompted people or stirred people up to make a decision for Christ. And there are statistics that the drama was done by so many different churches. 43 years, 100 countries and many, many millions were affected. So you can, there's this example where God inspired somebody to write, to make this production. A lot of other churches started doing it and using it as a evangelistic outreach to which brought many people to faith in Christ. So drama also is a very powerful way of ministering. Other areas of that creative expressions, mime, painting, writing, poetry, doing spoken word. All of these things are also very creative expressions that are there. But none of these things are very simple or easy. It requires that people are gifted or doing good in those areas. Not all of us sit down and write poetry. There are some people who write and not all of us do painting, there are some who do. So different people are gifted in different ways and they can use that as an expression of worship or communication to minister to other people. Now, traditionally the church has not been very welcoming of this. I'm not saying it's never been, that no churches are, but I think generally you don't go to a Sunday morning self-sensee people doing painting or some creative thing. You don't find dramas happening every other time or quite clearly so that it may be there in some churches, but it's not mainstream. It's not something that's so much a part of the Christian community. So believers who may be gifted by God in these areas are of fine challenges, they face challenges. God has gifted them, maybe they can write drama, they can write poetry or mime or dance or things like that, but it's challenging. How can they express that in and through the church if the church is not supportive, if the church is not encouraging, if the church is not helping. So that's one thing we need to talk about. And the question is, how can we help believers use these kinds of gifts to communicate to audiences who would be able to connect with that. Some people like to read poetry and they may not listen to a sermon, but they may enjoy reading poetry. Some people may not come to a Sunday service, but if you say, hey, there's a theater production, there's a drama that's being produced, would you like to come? They may be willing to come for that because they're interested in that. So like that or painting, some people see the painting and God can use the painting to speak to them. So these are wonderful means of communication. The question is, now how can the church help these people? So I just want to, again, I just want to open up for some thoughts and discussions, which is speaking of these creative arts, what will be the pros and cons and challenges and big faults to avoid? Generally speaking, what if the church encourages the expression of creative arts? What should we be careful of? What should we be watchful about? Also, how can the church encourage these things, encourage creative arts? So maybe we just take a little bit of time to discuss that before we move to the next topic. So anybody has any thoughts? Creative arts, we've mentioned a few, there may be others, expressions. What you want to discuss is what are the pros and cons? If a church, a local church or a church community is going to encourage people to express and use creative arts as an expression of worship or communication, what should we be careful of? The second question is, how can we help people? Any thoughts, please? Let me also throw in my simple insight about that pastor, and if I'm wrong, I start to be collected. Number one, I think we should avoid going into adultery whereby when people start making sculptures of the Christ and they start to put them near the church. You know, people, since every day they are new believers, you will find that we might also go into the Roman Catholic ways of doing things. So I think we should avoid, we should be cautious about that. We know that we aren't supposed to be paying attention to sculptures because they are made by man, and we only know that it is always the Bible which stands and should always be followed. Apart from that, I think people can as well express their talents because I think God gave us the different talents to take us to different levels. But that should always be a point to avoid, to avoid people starting making sculptures of the Christ and putting it in front of the church. You know, people come to kneel as if it ends up being like the church is going into adultery. Thank you pastor. Thank you all. So that's a good point. That means any of this, you know, maybe sometimes people even worship paintings, paintings, sculptures or any of these expressions, they should not become objects of worship. That's something we should be very clear about. We should make sure people don't fall into that. You know, buy a painting, put it on the wall or something or some sculpture and put it in there and worship me. That's a good point. But we encourage people to constantly express their creative gifts. Any other thoughts? Please go ahead. I think it is very important to have this kind of communities because as we were discussing, there are people who are able to connect so well with poetry, painting, and sometimes they don't really connect with the sermon. So I think it is important to have such communities. But at the same time, I think we should take the biblical truths, even for example, say a person is interested in painting. So if that person may see a vision or see a dream or then paint, so we should ideally teach them how to interpret the vision and dream and how to worship the Lord with theologically sound artistic expression. So the sound doctrine should be taught to them in a way that they won't go deviated from the truth of the world of God. So the thing is, I've seen certain artists especially, when they begin to paint, the initial paintings are very similar to what we see like maybe a lion, maybe a lamb or a vision that they show. But going forward, we get to see a lot of things which is popping up, which is little off from the word of God. So I think it is really important for us to teach the word even as we cultivate this community. Very interesting, very good, very good. Yeah, I think this is a very important point. Making sure that these creative expressions are aligned to God's word, they don't go off on doing something strange. So I think it's a very good point. And so while we are nurturing this community, we need to make sure they are, you know, they're just aligned to God's word and expressing God's word, worship and spirit and truth. Very important, very good. Thank you for sharing. Divya, it's something to share, go ahead. Thank you, Pastor. When you said about the creative arts, I was reminded of something that we have seen like light and sound. I don't remember the complete name, it's called light and sound, where they would enact biblical stories, especially like we have seen story of Noha, David, or even Jesus's ministry. So they portrayed in a very, it's like a theater performance. So the audience gets, it's kind of, they get to experience the setting in a very real life manner. It's like, for example, if considering Noha's arc, that particular scenario, there would be like animals just coming, like walking right across the, you know, in between the audience and getting onto the stage. It's a very different kind of experience and it brings actually the story into life. As if even the people seeing this are in that particular timeline. It really brings the story as a real life experience. And it is good because I would say for us who are in a different cultural setting and context to know what the cultural setting was during those days. It is not possible when we just read a particular passage of the scripture. We cannot visualize, maybe these productions are just imagination of a set of people, but still they do a lot of research and try to come close to the cultural setting and context of those times. And it makes much more sense when we see those in front of our eyes and experience it and then we read the passage. It helps us to understand the people's, you know, the lifestyle, what they were going through in a better way. So it's the audiovisual experiences, I would say much, much effective than if we just read. So I found it very interesting. But at the same time, yeah, we have to be mindful of, you know, all the people who are not used to, who are, you know, a bit conservative or much traditional in their mindsets. So that should be taken into account when, especially like now we have all different kinds of productions coming up.  So that might get a little bit off, but that should be a very fine line, I believe. So it requires a lot of discernment to just keep these things within their boundaries. Yeah, but it has an effect unlike just reading or hearing a sermon. Thank you. Right, right. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So we are highlighting the impact that productions like this, the Enlightenment Sound and other theater productions can have a really real life experience. And it can definitely minister to some people, people who are interested in that. Any other thoughts? So I think we as a church community or as church communities around the world, it's good for us to encourage creative expressions, but as we heard today, you know, we must be aware of the pitfalls and don't let these things become objects of worship or don't let them go off outside of the Word of God into some strange things, keep it all aligned. And the focus must be, you know, as an expression of worship to God and as a ministry to people, to bring people to encounter God. So as long as that is very clear, stay true to the Word, doctrinally, and then keep the focus on the Lord. So then that way we can really encourage these expressions in our communities, Christian communities. Let's go to the next topic that we like to talk about, which is print media. So I'm slowly moving, I'm just, you know, what we're doing is we're just slowly covering different contemporary methods and then we will move into more of the media and the technology part, which will be a little more heavier in the second part of this course. So print media from the time, you know, from 1440 when the printing press was invented and the first Bible was printed around 1454 and the Bible started getting more printed. Yeah, you know, and today, you know, literally the Bible is printed in so many languages. Of course, there's so many English versions and, you know, thank God for the printing press and for the ability to print. I think all of us have at least one copy of a printed Bible, something, you know, many more different languages. So it's just amazing. It's amazing how the fact that we're able to print has helped get God's word into the hands of so many people all over the world in different languages. So just thank God for this, this pool of the printed page, the print media. So it is a very powerful tool and many Christian ministers have worked in this area. I'm just mentioning a few scripted gift mission. They started back in 1888. They did publishing of the printing and publishing of the Bible in a portion of written over 1000 languages. They pioneered, you know, over 200 plus languages. So this is an amazing, amazing ministry. And I think in some parts of the world, scripted gift mission is still operating. It may not be as, you know, widely known, but it's still operating. But thank God for the work they did, you know, in getting God's word through print media in so many languages around the world. We also then hear about Gideons, Gideons International. They have been distributing God's word since 1908, more than 100 years. And they are in over 200 countries around the world. And their objective is very simple. We are printing the Bible, mainly New Testament, and we are going to place it everywhere possible. Schools, hotels, hospitals, wherever possible, put the Bible, put the New Testament out. This is an amazing mission and, you know, I'm sure many of us would have heard testimonies of people, you know, who at some of their very difficult times, they come across a Gideon Bible. And they open it and they read it and they encounter Jesus. So the Gideons International, another awful major ministry that took advantage of the made use of the print media to get the word of God out to so many nations and continues still today. And they're still doing a good work around the world. Another major ministry that we should be aware of are the Wycliffe Bible Translators. So they've inspired by William Downsend who initially went to Guatemala. He went to sell Spanish Bibles. He realized that, you know, they couldn't, they had their own language. So then he decided that, okay, I need to go, I need to learn that language. I need to translate the Bible into that language. And so that's how this whole ministry started, Wycliffe Translators. And so William Cameron Downsend in 1942 officially founded Wycliffe Bible Translators. So since 1942, their main goal here is to go through those communities. And from the grassroots level, so basically they go into communities where they have their own dialect or their own language. The Bible is not there. And in many cases, there is no script even for those languages because it's just a spoken language. And so they go, they learn the language, they write a script, I mean, they develop some sort of a script for it, translate the Bible in and then help people, you know, read the Bible. So it's, you know, it's something, it's going to that last mile where you have to write a script or you have to create, you have to learn a language that doesn't have any script, just a spoken dialect, create a script and then translate the Bible there into the language and give it to them and help them read it and understand and so on. So again, this is the amazing work that's going on. It's really helping fulfill the Great Commission that is take God's words to all the nations, all the people, groups and it's going on. So they've done 500 languages as of the year 2000. I'm sure they've done much more now. So again, the Bible translators using print media on Bible translation, so on. And so like this, there's so many, so many ministries around the world. And I just to share a little bit of our own journey. So as a church, from our very beginning, so from the year from the first year or from the first year we started 2001. One of the things we decided to do was we would print, write and print books and distribute them freely. So right from then we started printing books slowly and they started just giving them up freely. The goal is to get the teaching of the Word of God into the hands of people. And I was looking at it more from our own country in India where Christian bookstores, if they are there, they're only in the cities, main cities. And even in the main cities, there will be few Christian bookstores, not that many. So and also not everybody can afford to go and buy books, buy Christian books. So even if there is, first of all, there is no Christian bookstore. Even if there is a Christian bookstore, buying books is again, takes money. And so not everybody has access and definitely out in small towns and villages that are no, they have no access to Christian bookstores. So our goal was let's print the Word ourselves in a low cost way. We're not doing anything fancy, black and white and then distribute for free in as many languages as possible. And so we've been doing that now for more than 20 years, distributing it. I don't know, we've not kept count, but literally thousands upon thousands of books all across India in many, many Indian languages and we continue to expand that. And it's just wonderful to receive testimony. So people just to hear people say, I read that book and it touched my life and pastors will tell us, you know, be using your books to teach a congregation. People are using it in Bible colleges, seminaries, in conferences and seminars and so on. And just good to hear these testimonies. And for us, the joy is very good to get the word of God out to people who otherwise may not have access to it. And in today's modern world, because of the internet, we're able to make these books available digitally through our websites and also through publishing channels. So it now has a global reach. So that means people download the free PDFs literally from, I don't know, like more than 200 countries. They download the PDFs, they use it and then every now and then we get emails from people. For some strange, we never know some different part of what is in it. We download what you're just searching online, on books, they're using it. So online, digitally, this has also increased. So it's a great avenue to use. And I will be mentioning it later on when we talk about digital media. Nowadays, all of us can write and all of us can publish online because it's free. You can set up or maybe I say the cost is very minimal. You can set up a blog post or free blog and write, share what you write with the world and people can come and be blessed and ministered too. So the opportunities today are much more because of digital platforms. And we'll share some of those things a little later in a different class. Okay, anybody wants to say anything about print media? I'm going to share and add any thoughts before we go for a break. So let's go for a break and we'll be back in 10 minutes. After a break, we will cover one more topic of radio, television and films. We'll just talk about that and discuss that. I won't take the entire next hour but maybe 20 minutes or 20, 30 minutes. So let's go for a break and be back in 10 minutes. Thank you.


Welcome, folks. This is Tom O'Brien of TFNN. We're gonna have five days a week. We go seven hours a day. We go 24 hours a day on the Internet at TFNN.com. Always remember, folks, whatever you think about, you bring about whatever your focus on grows. So, everyone's having a great day, safe day. Let's make a great night, folks. Don't make assumptions. Learn to ask questions. It's always better to ask questions than to make assumptions. Have the courage to ask questions to you as clear as you can be. Once you hear the answer to that question, you won't have to make the assumption because you will know the truth. Mug it wise! Let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries up 5, 40, Nasdaq up 291. S&P's up 80. Gold. Gold contract up $2.10 straightened at $19.98 an ounce. We have Silver up 12 cents, $25.20 an ounce. Lightsweak crude up 49 cents, $74.79 a barrel, notes and bonds. Ten-year note, down 25 ticks, straightened 114, 24, the 30-year up full point plus 10 ticks at $130.13 and $King Dollar. $King Dollar right now, I just rearranged these. There we go. Up 19 ticks at 101, 487. The Euro is at, where did I put the Euro? What did you do to me here? A Euro is at 110. The yen is at the 133 and the British pound is at 124 to $1 at U.S. Dollar. Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. One note's going on in your world. In the world of the S&Ps, let's take a look at them. What do you have? Well, first off, end to see wise, folks. The Nasdaq's up 2.48%. The S&P's 1.9 and the Dow Industries 1.6. We get over and we take a look at the spy. You're going up on light volume, so bottom line, we'll see where this shakes out. This afternoon, we get some more earnings, but this is all about the dollar still.  We'll go into them too, but the bottom line, you can see what's happening out here. You, right now, you only have 58 million shares traded. Even yesterday, which was somewhat of contraction from the day before, we had 80 million. The day prior to that, you had 97 and you're going into 101 million shares. So that's telling me that you're still going to down market. We're going to the Q's. The Q's want to go hit that swing up there. The Q's, right now, bottom line, they're going to have some volume. Well, they've fought a 2 million right now. We came down with 57, so they'll do 57, and the swing up here only has, what is that? That is only at 45, so that's going to get up there. We go to the gold contract. We take a look at the gold contract. There's been a sideways move with the gold contract, but you still have volume, which is good. We have 194,000 contracts. It rejected 1982. You're at 1998 right now. Now, what should have happened with gold is that gold should have went a lot higher today. The reason being is that if we go over to the dollar index, what you're going to see here is that that good old dollar index couldn't hold price today, and that's why you can see this market getting a monster move higher. We take a look at the dollar, what you're going to see out here is that yesterday, bottom line, it gave it up on price. Today, it got to a price point of 101,802, and now you're at 101,487. So it's basically, you can't hold price, man. If you can't hold price, that's saying it's going to get down and try to test the lows once again, which you can see what happens. It gives the market huge relief. We go into the NDX 100 and take a look at the strength versus the weakness. There she is. So you got Meta up 15%. You got Lucent up 12%. Comcast is up 10%. Taken away from it. Align technologies off 10%. What is this one? Oh, curing Dr. Peppa. That's off 4.5%. Aluminum is off 3.3, and microchip technology is off 2.9. We go into the Dow Industrials. We take a look at the strength and weakness versus the Dow Industrials point-wise. You get, let's see, Microsoft's putting, well, first off, there's only two negative stocks inside the Dow. Caterpillar's putting a minus 13 points. Yeah, that's about it, basically. Strength-wise, you get Microsoft putting this positive 61, Honeywell 48, United Health 46, and let's go over to Amazon because I believe Amazon's going to be coming out with numbers after the close today. Amazon, the low is 81, the highs 146. You're trading 109. Now remember, Amazon had this high volume spike that's going after now. That being said, it looks to me, yeah, so check this out.  Now watch this. This is kind of cool, actually. So the B point, it's taking the B point out today. That's 109.  That's going to give you 119. So that's saying that Amazon's going to come out with good numbers. 119, the swing, high volume swing is 114. So we'll see how this shakes out. Let me pull this back a little bit more. I'm just curious as to what this would be. Take a look at this. Yeah, well, it won't be a larger ABC up, but on the weekly, but the bottom line, it looks to me like Amazon's going to come out with decent numbers. Revenue, this is what they're going to be looking for on Amazon. They're going to be looking for to do 124 billion to the top line, 21 cents to the bottom line. They're still growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, in the United States, you're growing by, well, in North America, you're growing by 7% a year internationally. You're growing by 5.5% a year. Web services are growing by 10% a year. Monster numbers, man. There's no doubt that those are monster numbers. Some of the higher volume equities out here. Now, the mindblower, no doubt, is going to be the aspect that you're going to be higher and you have a contraction of volume on many equities. Tesla's up $6 right now. Let me see. What is VZ? It looked to me like VZ, Verizon was moving too. No, VZ. Yeah, it's got some moving there. It must have come out with numbers. Now, that's a difference to Mar-Bell. That's interesting. That's just moving, man. That's the bottom line. That's just moving out here. Apple. Let's go take a look at Apple out here. Apple's struggling. A day like today, you're getting over this high. If you did 168.10, the highest 168.16, it doesn't look like you're going to get that $47 million that you need. Now, that's intriguing, especially when you get a day that you've had the markets up so dramatically, folks. Stay right there, folks. Come right back.