Hello everyone, this is the Circuit Python weekly meeting for April the 11th This is the time of the week where we get together to talk about all things circuit Python My name is Tim and I am working. I am sponsored by Adafruit to work on circuit Python Circuit Python is a version of Python that is designed to run on tiny computers called microcontrollers Circuit Python is an open-source project, but the development is primarily sponsored by Adafruit So if you want to support them and circuit Python consider purchasing hardware from Adafruit.com This meeting is hosted on the Adafruit Discord server. You can join anytime by going to adafru.it We hold the meeting in the Circuit Python dev text channel and the Circuit Python voice channel This meeting typically occurs on Mondays at 2 p.m. Eastern 11 11 a.m. Pacific Except when that coincides with a US holiday in the note stock There is a link to a calendar that you can view online or add to your favorite calendar app that lists out all of the Meetings including the ones that do end up occurring on Tuesdays if that Monday is a US holiday We also send notifications about the upcoming upcoming meetings via Discord if you'd like to receive those notifications Just ask us to add you to the Circuit Pythonistas discord role There's a note stock to accompany the meeting and the recording the note stock contains time stamps to go along with the video So when you so you you can use the note stock to view only the parts of the video that interest you most and skip around as needed The meeting tends to run about 60 to 90 minutes So this gives you the option to skip around using the notes After each meeting we post a link for the next meeting's notes document in that Circuit Python dev channel on the Adafruit Discord checked the pin messages to find the latest note stock and you can add your notes throughout the entire week You don't have to add them on Mondays. We put that up In the about the hour or so following the meeting we put the the next meeting's notes up So you can fill those in at any point throughout the week if you'd like If you wish to participate, but you can't attend You can leave your hug reports and status updates in that document and then the host will read them during the meeting So this meeting is going to be held in five parts. The first part is community news This is a look at all things Circuit Python and Python on hardware in the community It's a preview of the Python on microcontrollers newsletter The second part is the state of Circuit Python the libraries in Blinka. This is a statistical overview of the entire project It's a chance to look at the project by the numbers separate from what we are all working on The third part and the first of our round robin sections is called hug reports Hug reports is an opportunity to highlight the good things folks are doing take some time to recognize the awesome folks in our community The fourth part is status updates. This is our second round robin section Status updates is an opportunity to sync up on what you've been up to Take a couple of minutes and talk about what you've been doing in the last week since the last meeting And what you'll be up to over the next week until the next meeting and the fifth and final section is called in the weeds This is an opportunity for more long-form discussion. These discussions can come out of status updates If we you know start getting into a topic and it starts growing We may you know decide to bump that down to in the weeds We can discuss it further later on or they can be identified ahead of time and listed out down in that in the weeds Section if it is anticipated that they will be too long for status updates So that covers how the meeting will go First up is going to be community news. So let me take the time stamp for that Okay, a couple items from this week's python on hardware community newsletter We reached the milestone of 350 circuit python libraries this week Circuit python community reached a big milestone together on thursday. There are now 350 circuit python libraries The growth is steady and healthy for the project and there is a link listed here to the ate a fruit blog where there was a post Showing this occasion when it happened. There's some charts and other information in the post Second item today is a new version of circuit python Circuit python 7.3.0 beta.1 has been released. This is a new version of circuit python that came out last week Notable changes since the latest stable release 725 the notable changes are experimental mdns support usb to serial j tag support for repel on the appropriate boards Initial experimental usb host support Merging of micropython 1.18 changes Preliminary zlib module support and then gzip will be added later on to add more functionality to that Pio has new features wrap and wrap target have been added for support And then lastly keypad has had an enhancement to scan key states immediately upon creation You can see all of these items and more information listed on github under the releases page for the circuit python Repository which is linked here in the note stock as well Next up, we'll take a timestamp is a project from a member of the community this week. It's a I believe it's pronounced crooks radiometer. I am not a hundred percent certain, but this is An electronic crooks radiometer is an actual electrical instrument that basically measures light And this person has created a circuit python version of this using vector i o So they shared this in the show and tell channel. I believe on the discord and it'll be included in the newsletter There's links to github and youtube if you'd like to see the code or watch the video but it's a really neat implementation of a Circuit python visual widget. So if you're into that sort of thing, take a look at that next up Is remotely answering declining and hanging up calls on your iphone using circuit python and a and c s Todd bot has added functionality to the circuit python apple BLE notification service library to allow you to answer or decline and hang up the telephone calls Remotely using a circuit python BLE enabled device Connected to your iphone There are links here for twitter and github to learn more about that Next up is a usb midi controller. This is another usb midi controller This one is made with a raspberry pi pico and is coded with circuit python And there is a link to diy electro music website in order to learn more about this project All right, so those are A couple of the items from our weekly newsletter, however, there are many more So keep a look out for that coming to your inbox tomorrow To recap the newsletter. This is the circuit python weekly newsletter It's a circuit python community run newsletter. It gets emailed every tuesday The complete archives are available at eta fruit daily.com. There's a link again in the notes And it highlights the latest python on hardware related news from around the web Including circuit python python and micro python developments If you'd like to contribute your own news or projects, you can edit the next week's draft on github You can file a pr to do that Or if you don't if you're not set up on github or you'd rather not go through all of that You can also tag a tweet with hashtag circuit python on twitter or email to cpnews at eta fruit dot com So thank you to everyone who contributes project and news for the newsletter Next up is the state of circuit python the libraries in blinka So i'll read the overall section Overall this week we had 34 pull requests merged By 17 authors a couple of the names that i didn't recognize on the list this week So these may be newer folks to contributing Dom df coding Pontus oh Reese robinson and curt e those were the names that i hadn't Didn't recall seeing before so thank you to all of those folks and all the rest of our contributors across the circuit python ecosystem this week We also had eight reviewers And we had 24 closed issues by 11 people and 29 opened by 22 people So next up i will pass it over to i think jeff uh if you want to tell us about the core I would be happy to so the core is the c code that uh as a is at the basis of circuit python and um within the core we had 21 pull requests merged from 11 11 authors Including a couple of those uh that tim called out for being uh new or infrequent contributors. So thank You to dom df coding and curt e in particular um And race robinson is a name that is unfamiliar to me as well And thanks to our three reviewers. That was uh dan lemore and me In terms of pull requests, we've got 12 open pull requests Um that we need to take a look at some of those are held for version eight and most of the rest one Well about half of them are under a week old. So That's good. We just need to continue to keep on top of that Issues-wise we had 18 issues closed by eight people and 16 open by 12 people So it's nice to see the uh raw issues count go down a little bit and also uh participation from a bunch of folks Leaving us with 524 open issues When it comes to work that adafruit prioritizes We uh sort those according to milestones. So according to this list We have two open issues that we'd like to solve within the seven two stable release series And three open issues we'd like to solve before we release version seven three as the new stable release series And then we've got other lists for seven xx and version eight As well as libraries and long term issues And uh, it looks like we do need to catch up on assigning milestones to recently added issues And that is something that hopefully dan and i can get uh onto this week So as far as what is going on in the core, we've had a number of releases both a stable release seven two five And a beta of version seven three And it's really helpful if you uh check those out and let us know if they're working for you And especially let us know of any problems you encounter We can't test everything so we rely a great deal on our users helping us out by trying Alphas betas and release candidates. So, uh, thank you very much to everyone who does that and that's what I got for the core Alrighty, thanks jiff. Uh next up. I will pass it over to catney to tell us about the libraries Thanks tim So this applies to all of the adafruit circuit python libraries, which is everything that starts with under I'm sorry adafruit underscore circuit python underscore as well as a few extras such as our cookie cutter This week we had 12 pull requests merged from six different authors One name that wasn't mentioned earlier that is new to me is mkende Um, and we had six different reviewers One of the pull requests that was merged was 83 days old. So it's good to see we're still getting through older prs As well as caping up with all of our newer ones Uh, and that leaves us with 25 open pull requests across all the libraries We had five issues closed by four people and 13 open by 11 people leaving us with 630 open issues 198 of those are labeled good first issue If you're interested in contributing to circuit python on the python side of things check out circuit python.org slash contributing You'll find all of this information and more Um, including open pull requests and open issues If you are looking to get started reviewing take a look at the open pull requests Um, if you have the hardware test it if you don't check the code See if it looks all right to you leave a comment. All of that is super helpful And after you're comfortable with that we can talk about uh adding you to our review team Um, if you're interested in contributing code or documentation check out the open issues Um, if you're new to everything good first issue is a great place to start um And we have a guide on contributing to get and github I'm sorry contributing to circuit python using get and github and we're always available on discord to help out with that So don't let that side of it intimidate you. We want to help you contribute in a way that works for you In terms of library updates in the last seven days, there were no new libraries and the updated list was too much for this document Um, however, you can check out the library report if you're interested in seeing that massive list of updated libraries And that's what i've got All right. Thanks, kenny Next up I will send it over to maker melissa to tell us about blinka Yeah, blinka is our circuit python compatibility layer for Micro python raspberry pi and other single board computers And this week we had one pull request merged by one author and two reviewers There are currently four open pull requests And there was one close issue by one person and zero open by zero people leaving a net a 72 open issues And we had 12,923 pi wheels downloads in the last month and we are up to 88 boards And that's it. All right. Thanks melissa Steadily creeping our way up towards 100 there. That'll be a nice milestone Um, so the next section is going to be the hug reports section Hug reports is a chance for us to highlight folks in the circuit python community and beyond for doing awesome things As mentioned this section is held as a round robin where I will start and then we'll go down the list alphabetically Which is all of these are listed in that notes document Everyone will have a chance to participate If you're text only or missing the meeting But you have hug reports you can leave your notes in the document and I'll read off yours as we get to your name in the list Um, I will begin so my hug reports for this week are let's see here I had a hug for uh dan h and jeff for reviewing and offering some good suggestions on a core pr that I submitted Uh to dan h again for helping me get past an issue Uh where I had like an out of date version of something in my toolchain and it was preventing me from building successfully Um A user on github Uh for testing out my page layout and leaving a thorough review on the pr for it Um, hug report to catney for appearing on the upcoming deep dive stream to discuss circuit python library development and the work going into the picon festivities And my last hug report for this week is another github user named, uh bill van li woon van li woon 424 who um made their first contribution to circuit python. They Submitted a pr to add typing to one of the libraries this week. So congrats on the first contribution and thank you for helping us out Next up in the list is ask patrick w And I think it looks like ask patrick is not in the voice. So i'll read off, uh, ask patrick w's Um, and ask patrick has one hug report Which is to me a foamy guy for the great streams on friday. So that's good to hear that folks are Enjoying the uh the deep dives that i'm carrying on that's absence. So thank you to ask patrick Uh, and uh, next up is uh, lis blitz city diy So, uh, I've got a couple hug reports this week, uh, hug report to catney for proving my first solo new product guide She gave me excellent documentation. So I was able to follow along nicely Uh, hug report to eva for opening a pr get the tsc 2007 arduino library into arduino library manager. I didn't know that was a thing. Uh, so thank you Uh, hug report to dan h for pointing me to the tix library to use with the keypad library try and do um Long press and short press detection also wasn't aware of that. So it'll be good In handy, you know And then I wanted to do a hug report to ann for she proved three guides for me in one day last week That was a lot of work. So thank you very much All right. Thanks, lis. Uh, next up is dan Okay, thank you. Uh, thanks to jeff for fixing, uh, several outstanding bugs in 72x and for upcoming 730 They they've been languishing and jeff stepped in right in and did them Thanks to catney who uh, was frustrated about not be able to not having debouncing in the sort of playground library and Has figured out a way to use keypad in a very compact way um, thanks to naradok who, uh, has been experimenting with a bug With esp 32 s2 i2c and found a big clue that if you raise the frequency it works again Which really helps narrow it down and thanks to, um, lady aida for several, um fixes over the weekend for some, uh Customer customer issues about boards that aren't quite working right which we've gotten in already Okay, thanks All right. Thanks dan. Uh, next up is jeff All right, i have a group hug and then i have one for dan who had a much simpler solution to a problem that i was trying to solve about if type checking and Yeah, that's what i've got this week. Alrighty, thanks jeff Next up is catney Oof i was in the wrong window um So i have a hug report for jeff for helping me with what should have been a pretty simple concept in python But no one had explained it to me in a way that clicked until this weekend So thank you jeff for that. Um, thanks to dan for helping out with an idea. I had involving keypad and letting me talk through it Um, thanks to you tim for having me on your upcoming deep dive and a group hug Right, thanks catney. Uh, next up is k match Hey, thanks tim. Um, this may be a repeat hug, but uh, uh thought it's worthwhile to give jeff another big python A constrictor hug particularly for the frame buffer module Once i found a way of allocating some memory and pointing it to that it just kind of worked. It's amazing um, and a special thanks for Adding a few comments about which functions were necessary and which ones were optional so i could Focus on what needs to be done. Thanks jeff and thanks everybody Right, thanks k match. Uh, next up is maker melissa Uh this week i just have a group hug for everyone Perfect. Thank you maker melissa. Uh, and then the last for hug reports is tammy makes things Sorry, my phone decided not to unlock when i told it to unlock. Um, so i have a hug report for You foamy guy for the great, uh deep dives into display i o lately. I've been learning a lot that i know i'm going to use And then a group hug That awesome. Yeah, thank you tammy Uh, so that is the end of hug reports So next up we will do our second round robin section, which is status updates Uh, so a reminder status updates. This is our time to sync up on what we're doing The section is also held as a round robin where i will start and then we'll go through the list as they appear in the note stock Um Let's see everyone will have a chance to participate when i call on you You can take a couple of minutes talk about what you've been doing since the last meeting and what you will be doing Until the next meeting. This is also an opportunity to provide tips and tricks that are relevant to what people are working on If a discussion Starts to go a little long then we can move it down to the end the weed section to do at the end of our call So i will uh get started with this round robin Uh, so let me time stamp it here Yep, and then so, uh Last week for me, uh, I built the uh main sort of structural functionality for a tab layout widget. Um, right now it supports adding named tabs and switching between them from the code Um, I will be working on that this week as well Namely the things that need to be done are adding the visual tab icons so they can actually have Um little shapes that look like uh folder labels Um, and then implementing the touch input to be able to change between tabs right now The the code exists, but it's not actually hooked up to take input from the touch screen yet um sort of a Side project that I got started on while I was working on that tab layout is a uh a tile grid inflator utility This takes a small three by three tile sprite sheet and inflates it into a larger tile grid by repeating The center row and column tiles as needed to fill up to the desired size um, so my use case for this was the uh the visual uh little icon Images that are used in the tab layout, but I think this idea of being able to take a small sprite sheet and make a larger rectangle out of it Um, it will come in handy in a couple other places as well I have a few spots like buttons and other things that I think this will be helpful for um, I also started Uh from there peeking into the core a little bit inside of the tile grid object I was looking for a way to be able to update the bitmap Ordinarily when you create a tile grid, you give it a bitmap And there is not currently a way to change the bitmap So if you want a different one, you need to create a separate tile grid And there are ways you can create it and switch between multiple tile grids But it would be pretty handy if we could just switch An existing bitmap to a new tile grid So I dove a bit into the core to try to implement that functionality and I had a fair amount of success I submitted a PR with that and got some good feedback So I've got a couple of items to take care of this week in order to get that ready to go And that's a thing as well that I have in mind using it in this tab layout specifically making the difference between the active and the inactive tabs But I think similar to the inflator there's going to be lots of other display IO Use cases that pop up for this as well once we have this functionality This week, I also published a video on YouTube that shows the process of adding Type information to a circupython library So if anyone is interested in contributing in that way, there's now a kind of a video You can watch to get a peek at what that is like This week I am running the meeting today I intend to finish up the bitmap updating PR based on the feedback that I received Once that is good, then I will move back into the tab layout widget that I was working on And make use of that new functionality to set those active and inactive tabs And another thing I'd like to do this week is record another video that shows the process of making and submitting PRs I got some feedback on that typing video And somebody mentioned that it would be helpful to watch the creation and submitting of PRs So I figure we can make a video with that as well this week And possibly from there, I thought about as well It might be good to have one for the newsletter as well Like if folks want to see how to submit a PR to the newsletter Maybe we can make a video that shows that as well And that is it for my status updates So next up is AskPatrickW and I will read theirs AskPatrick has been working on a new board PR for the Wemos Lawlin C3 Mini It's building fine Now they just need to test all of the pin mappings And they're working out a process for doing that testing This is a when I have time type of project So the PR is in draft But if anyone has suggestions or feedback on the PR Feel free to ping AskPatrickW And the PR number is 6256 If you're interested in finding that in the core repository So next up I will send it over to Dan Okay Last week I debugged two unrelated UART problems on the RP2040 That was with board.ur and had to do with garbage collection And on the ESP32S2 that had to do with No, it's the other way around ESP32 was the other thing And RP2040 they started handling an additional interrupt In the SDK which we hadn't handled And it caused things to hang up So then I released CircuitPython725 to fix that To fix another bug that Jeff fixed And two other bugs that Jeff fixed Which were NRFPW and pinnail allocation and MP3 looping Then also released CircuitPython730beta1 Because it was about two weeks since the 730beta0 And we may as well catch up Because otherwise we can't point people to A named release to have them try the latest stuff It's much easier for them than to point them to Often to the S3 land stuff There's some problem with the release process The CircuitPython.org update job is not working properly So I have had to be running it by hand for the past several releases And I made a mistake when I did the 7251 And I did it in main So it thought that there were 725 releases for all the new boards that were in 730 So I redid that one and it seems to have fixed the problem Some people on Twitter found this So we had to respond to it to be able to To appear responsive on Twitter We were responsive We didn't have to appear responsive I reviewed a bunch of PRs from Jeff and from Lady Aida and other people I'm debugging a very weird I2C issue on ESP32S2 Somebody was trying to do motor controlling with a stepper motor And it ran really slow And it's because there was this 10ms gap between I2C transactions Which was ridiculously large And it seems to have to do with the frequency The I2C frequency The I2C code in the ESPIDF is really a mess And keeps changing There's a lot of churn in that code The workaround is to just choose a higher I2C frequency for right now And I'm also debugging some crashes of the ESP32SPI Code that is using the airlift It seems that what people see is that they Do a lot of requests And it might crash after a couple of minutes Or maybe 45 minutes or an hour, a couple of hours The problem seems to be present only when you use the portal libraries Like the PyPortal plus PortalBase But I tried a very similar example With the BearWare Wi-Fi and requests Stuff And I could not get it to crash several hours So there's something odd There's something about what the library is doing It's not necessarily anything wrong But it's different And it might be exercising a bug in the ESP32SPI code Okay, thanks All right, thanks, Dan Next up is Jeff Yeah, so last week I created a Python program For visualizing the content of a floppy disk Or more specifically a flex file Representing the content of that floppy disk And that is up on GitHub I finished up a pair of languishing PRs To add support for the .wrap feature Of the RP2040 PIO peripheral I fixed a problem with looping MP3s That affected at least SAMD51 I proposed some changes To allow type checking code to be optimized out of MPY files But Dan had a better alternative That didn't require any changes to the core So I ended up closing up that pull request And I spent some time this past week Reviewing pull requests as well So this week I have a fresh report Of MP3 playback problems to investigate From the forums, this time on RP2040 And I am trying again to get conversion Of disk images from the A2R format To the WAS format working And I had some success with that already This morning So I have a pull request out on that That I will be updating And I will make a one minute video About this flex visualizer program Just show a couple and explain what it's about So you can look for that on the Adafruit YouTube channel sometime this week Then we are really close to wrapping up the floppy So I have said that a lot But I think that the last thing Is to get the circuit python built in Floppy module And Adafruit Floppy library wrapped up So that means getting the core PR merged And then releasing the library And that is more or less it That does in fact reflect what we discussed In the internal meeting so that's good And then in soon news During May and June I'm traveling in Europe with my wife And if there are any circuit pythons Slash Adafruit slash cool people Along our travel routes I'd love to meet you for coffee or for a meal So there is a list of cities That we plan to be visiting in the notes document If that is where you are Or that's close enough to where you are That you might come in for the day Please DM me on Discord Or ping me out in a public channel If you are interested in working something out It would be cool I would love to meet anybody Because people are great And that's what I got All right, thanks Jeff That definitely sounds like a lot of fun Next up is Catney All right So this last week Merge the new dot get ignoring to cookie cutter The next step is to Adabot patch it across all the libraries Started testing PyLeap Immediately found issues One of which turned out to be a circuit python issue present Since after 7.1.1 Which is to say 7.1.1 works But 7.2x does not I provided feedback on some of the upcoming layout and text In the mockups And made a couple of feature request Feature suggestions as well And obviously filed issues on both PyLeap And circuit python for the Initial issue I found Which is that the code doesn't run until you hit reset 7.1.1 automatically reloads Wrote the async.io essentials template Deployed it to its first guide Had it reviewed by Dan for content accuracy Etc before sending it on to Ann and LeMore So that's finally ready to go Check it out in the ESP32S2 feather guide If you're interested It will eventually like all essentials templates Be in all the board guides that support async.io Verified that all references to the Adafruit Web Serial ESP tool were updated To the one that we're using That it was originally based on Found two that were missed And passed those onto Melissa to be updated I wrote the basic cutie pie charger BFF guide The Arduino demo wasn't working quite right So I did not include code in the guide The plan was to port the Arduino code To circuit python But until the math is corrected That's on hold And actually that's pretty much on hold until It comes up Like where the base guide has everything You need to know about what it does You don't really need to use code with it This week I already started fixing the Feather ESP32S2 pretty pins diagram To clarify the v-sensor Is being only a power pin And not having the other features of pin D7 Accessible from it And then I need to re-upload it to the guide And the PCB repo Update the front page images And the guide schematic and fab print and PCB files For the revisions on the Pi UART The BLE sniffer and PCF8523 I have a potential update to the circuit playground library I need to test whether it fits frozen into circuit python Before doing anything with it And then submit a PR if frozen fit is confirmed Added a property called buttons That provides a keypad setup for both of the buttons together So you can use the buttons with keypad Which includes debouncing and so on Required tweaking a few other things as well To make the library work with both the keypad button setup And the digital IO button setup It works great but again if it doesn't fit Then it won't be included Next step is the guide for the ESP32S3 Feather We'll be mostly mirroring from the S2 Feather guide Making sure the pages say S2 slash S3 Or simply ESP32 to make them agnostic to either version This next thing is not actually happening Like I said, the QDPI BFF guide is on hold And then continue testing PILEAP The plan is to go through all the available projects in PILEAP To ensure they work properly And then sort out a couple new ones To make sure that the adding a project process works as intended And then think about what further projects to add Which is either new or ported old projects And Jerry's not here But it turns out the ESPAT control library We're not going to archive it but we don't support it anymore So I need to add warnings to the repository To say that we no longer support it But you're free to continue using it And then this weekend I started PyCon Prep Went through what hardware I intended to have And sorted out what I still need Started organizing the hardware that I do have To prepare for travel And started writing the demo To include on the circuit playground Blue fruits that I'm bringing for the open spaces And that's what I've got All right, thanks, Katny Next up for status updates is Kmatch And thanks, Tim So I'm continuing on integrating large displays So-called dot clock displays That they can run with a new peripheral That's available in the ESP32S3 Called the LCD peripheral And along those lines I got to REPL So now the REPL shows up on this display Driven by the ESP32 and the frame buffer library So that was a big step for me Thanks to the frame buffer library But in the process I do observe some significant glitches At first I thought it was tearing Which I think is when you write to the frame buffer While it's actually drawing on the screen But in retrospect I don't think that's what's going on Since even a stationary image sort of glitches While circuit Python is doing calculations Even like multiplications and things like that And it seems to be affected with higher dot clock frequencies So I'm suspecting that the screen is going strange Whenever circuit Python may be accessing the RAM Or it's possible it causes some other delays That then the LCD peripheral gets slowed down And out of sync with where it thought it should be So along those lines I'm learning both on the ESP32S3 side What's possible and what the ESPIDF has to offer As well as what circuit Python can do And I think that driving this kind of display Is a little bit different than the other displays Like the SPI or I2C ones Since circuit Python may need to trigger this display To go refresh So I think there may need to be some coordination Between the display refreshing And when it's doing some calculation So just a few things here briefly I think right now the LCD peripheral Is just constantly refreshing the screen With its dot clock operation And that may get slowed down While circuit Python's doing something So I'm wondering if circuit Python can actually Communicate to this LCD peripheral Until it actually when it should go refresh So I can time it Also there's some callback functions Which I need to understand If maybe I could use that to coordinate between the two And then I assumed actually that the running at a high Dot clock may be the best So the amount of time to refresh the screen would be small So that then I could leave some other time For circuit Python to access RAM Or do some other processing But then I realized that's only the case If circuit Python is controlling When the refresh is actually performed So a lot of things in there to figure out And along those lines this week I need to make a list of all the glitches And things I see in different cases So there can be kind of a to-do list for that And probably put it on the issue that I've got But I'm thinking about taking a breather from that And actually working on a bowling training aid My daughter is in the high school bowling team And learning And I've been watching the coaches How they teach the kids And one aspect is getting feedback Of how you're doing is really hard It's hard to bowl and watch What the ball is doing at the same time So look at maybe having a position sensor To measure where you're throwing the ball Versus where you wanted to And maybe an LED strip Or something like that To show you where you hit it Versus where you meant to So anyway maybe take a breather And learn something about distance sensors And how to do that So that's my week Nice, thanks K-Match That definitely sounds like a fascinating project Next up is Maker Melissa Hello, last week I worked on updating The Whipper Snapper firmware uploader To use NPM packages Instead of pointing to other repos Which involved many changes And lots of bug fixes And I also finished updating guides That were pointing to the old ESP tool And I started looking at an alternative Mipi driver for the Raspberry Pi And this week I'll continue looking at that driver And I'll also check out a potential bug With Whipper Snapper that only occurred on Chromebook And that's where I'm at All right, thanks Maker Melissa And our final person for status updates Is going to be Tammy Makes Things Thanks, so last week I did more work on the Circuit Python card deck library that I'm building And I streamed twice working on that I'm trying to, on my stream, do a good job Of explaining the why behind the decisions I'm making and how I'm doing this So it's not going as quickly as it would If I was just coding it, which is fine And I had my last week in my old job So my schedule was ridiculous Including several multi-way code merges Of gigantic blobs of XML Which was a special treat This week I'm planning on streaming twice Wednesday evening Pacific time And Saturday around noon Pacific time And maybe a pop-up stream Friday afternoon Pacific time, we'll see how that goes Still working on my card deck library Hoping to get through all of the scaffolding This week so that we can start working On the fun display IO part I'm also doing a little bit of digging around In the Python standard library to see how hard It would be to bring in some more of the Funk tools stuff and also maybe data classes And I just started my new job Which is a Python data engineering job That I'm really excited about But my schedule is going to be a little bit unpredictable This week and probably next week too So that's what I got All right, thanks, Tammy And that gets us to the end of the status Updates section So the final section of the meeting Is going to be the in the weeds section As a reminder in the weeds This is an opportunity for more long form discussion Either things that come out of status updates Or things identified ahead of time If you have any topics for in the weeds Please make sure to add them at the bottom Of our note stock And right now we don't have any topics in the weeds So unless anybody adds something real quick Then I think we are good on that today If anybody is working on that I'll take this opportunity to mention For next week we actually have a slight change To the in the weeds section So basically next week we have a hard cut at an hour This meeting runs again anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes Typically it just depends how many people Are here for the round robins And you know how much stuff has happened during the week But next week we are on a schedule And we have a hard stop at an hour And due to that we are going to go without the In the weeds section next week So if you do have something to discuss You can add it to the document for the following week Or you can also always feel free to bring stuff up On discord anytime So with that I will also get into the wrap up here All right so this has been the circuit python weekly meeting For April the 11th 2022 Thank you to everyone who participated If you want to help support Adafruit and circuit python And those of us who are paid to work on circuit python Consider purchasing hardware from the Adafruit shop At adafruit.com The video of this meeting will be released on youtube At youtube.com slash adafruit And the podcast will be made available On all major podcast services It will also be featured in the python For microcontrollers newsletter You can visit adafruitdaily.com In order to subscribe to that The next meeting will be held as usual Monday the 18th of April And we'll begin at the standard time of 2pm eastern But we will have that hard cut at 3pm eastern To end for next weekend We went about 50 minutes today So if we do something similar next week Then we'll be in the perfect time for that So let's see this meeting is held on the Adafruit discord Which you can join at adafru.it slash discord To be notified about the meeting And any changes to the time or day You can ask to be added to the circuit python Easter's role on discord And that's going to do it for today Thank you to everyone who participated And we hope to see you all next week Thanks everyone


The people of the Third District, from Sandy to Gresham, Estacada to Portland, deserve true representation. From a leader who knows our lived experience, to know what it is to make the rent, to be sensitive to the price of milk and dependable child care, to want to fix the endless war, endless traffic, homelessness, and the destruction of our planet. If we want folks who will fight for us, they got to know who it is they're fighting for. My name is Albert Lee. I know the struggle. I know it's beyond blue and red.  Join us now for a stronger, smarter, and more beautiful America. Help us bring a new generation of leadership from the Third District to Congress, representing the people. It's our time. Go forward together. My name is Albert Lee, and I approve this message. Hello, everyone. I am here with a fantastic candidate from my home state. He's from Portland, Oregon. His name is Albert Lee, and he is running in the Third Congressional District of Oregon against an incumbent that has been there since 1996. Albert, thank you so much for coming on the program. Hey, thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. I'm happy to have you here. You're the first candidate from Portland that I'm talking to, so it feels really nice to know someone who's familiar with my area where I grew up. And this is fantastic. Let's go through some of the really exciting things about your campaign. You were just endorsed by Brand New Congress. You were endorsed by Portland DSA, and you just made a really exciting endorsement. You endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. So for those who missed it on Twitter, we're going to play you the clip of Albert Lee's My Bernie Story. So in 2015, Bernie Sanders activated me, and he did so simply by speaking the truth and having a vision for a better America for all of us. Now, before 2015, I didn't contribute to campaigns. I did in Canvas and I did in Phone Bank. By 2016, I had done all three multiple times. Now, after 2016 and a little bit of mourning, I continued forward to engaging and working within my community by the inspiration of Bernie. I started working on housing issues, transit, police accountability, and social justice. I became an active member of the Democratic Party, both at the local level and at the state level. I became an active member of the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socials of America. And I was happy to know that I was contributing to changing the status quo. Now, in 2016, I supported Bernie. And in 2020, I endorsed Bernie because Bernie has vision. Bernie has integrity.  So I look forward to seeing Bernie Sanders in the White House. I look forward to celebrating. Go Bernie. All right, so getting to your campaign, I wanted to ask you a question about why you decided to run for Congress because Earl Blumenauer, a lot of people don't really know him nationally, but those who are familiar, they kind of just view him as someone who's progressive, right? He advocates for legalization of cannabis. And, you know, he just, he usually takes the right side. So what made you want to run against him? Well, first of all, it's not about Earl. It's about our future. And the way I see it is we've faced a series of crises here in this district across the country and around the world that really require bold action now, and not just inspirational and aspirational words, which is typically what I've heard out of Earl's mouth. I mean, typically what we've seen is a lot of, oh, yes, resist, oh, yes, protest, but not a whole lot of bold action. And when I first moved here in 2005, the first thing that I noticed was the homelessness crisis. And back then it was a crisis. And today it is blown up exponentially. And it's been a whole lot of silence over this last two decades. Recently he has put out a paper on homelessness or something, but I think of it as being too little too late. Yeah, I totally agree with that.  And when I first started, I noticed that homelessness was particularly an issue down there. But by the time I graduated, it was a huge issue to the point where it almost seemed as if this is a crisis. This is an emergency. Why isn't there action that's being taken? Why is the issue getting worse? So it's nice to see someone, a fresh voice, step up. And I want to go over your platform because when you look at everything that you're supporting, anyone who is in Portland who's progressive, the choice is crystal clear. So you support Medicare for all single payer. Housing for all. You want to decriminalize sex work. Not enough people talk about this. So credit to you for that. Free Palestine. So important. Free public transit. If you live in Portland, everyone knows how crucial this is. Also abolish ICE. Green New Deal. Taxing the rich. Free college.   You're speaking to my heart. So let me ask you this. In the event you're elected, what do you think you'd focus on?  But what do you think, if best case scenario, we get a Bernie Sanders president and a blue house and Senate, what do you think we could achieve and what would you push for? Yeah. So there's two big things, first of all. Number one is the climate emergency. We've got to do something about that. We've got seven, eight to 11 years to do something to stop before we have irreversible climate change. That's something that the United Nations has talked about. That's something that scientists all around the world have talked about. And simply we've got to do something. And right now we are in a situation where there's so much inaction with our federal government. Our state governments are stepping up. California, Oregon, Washington and the like are trying to step up. But we need something on a federal level because if we don't save this planet for, it's not the planet that's going to go away. It's us that are going to go away. But if we don't take care of that issue, then really none of the other issues are going to matter. So that's number one. But behind that, underlying that, is the money in politics. I mean, we've got to get the money out of politics. That's how come we have so many perverse things going on, like having federal fossil fuel subsidies when we should be doing everything we can to curtail the use of fossil fuels. Now when you have ExxonMobil and Royal Self and British Petroleum and all of those folks giving money not only to the right side of the aisle, but also to the left side of the aisle, you're not going to get the change that's desperately needed in order to save our only home. Now, when it comes to Earl, you've said it. He's a corporate neoliberal centrist. He has been branded as a progressive.  In fact, we've raised over more money than all of the challengers that he's ever faced combined in the primary. And that's not a whole lot of money. To tell you, last cycle, there were three primary challengers, and I think that they raised in total $200. That's not a challenge. And we are in a heavily Democratic district. I think the Cook Partisan Voting Index puts us at a D plus 24. So that indicates that you cannot have a Republican challenger or a third party challenger that has anywhere near a chance to defeat a sitting Democrat. So that means you have to have primary challengers. But the thing about primary challengers is it's political suicide if you are a career politician. Career politicians are not going to stand up because they don't have the backbone, much like I'm going to have to say most of the Democratic Party. You're going to have to have somebody that's going to be a fighter that's going to stand up and say, hey, there's a different way. We have to get this money out of politics because if we don't, then these folks aren't going to work for us. They're going to work for the people that are paying them. Yeah. And that's perfectly put. And it's interesting, speaking of Earl Blumenauer, I always was kind of misguided in my stance towards Earl because I always did kind of perceive him to be someone who is more progressive, maybe not the most vocal, but nonetheless, I felt like he was a good representative. Although a personal story, he actually came to speak at Portland State University. I attended one of his talks and I met with him afterwards. This was in 2016 early, like it was January. And I asked him, hey, why haven't you endorsed Bernie Sanders? You know, it's odd to me that ideologically speaking, you are seemingly more aligned with Bernie Sanders, but you haven't made an endorsement. So it just seems like it would make sense. Bernie doesn't have much support in Congress.  So I thought, hey, you know, you could help tip the scales.  So why not endorse him? And his answer was incredibly discouraging to me. Basically he said, look, I have worked with both of them, but Hillary Clinton, I just think she'd be more effective. I think that she's going to be the one to win. Turns out he was wrong. And at that point I kind of realized, look, there is a really fundamental difference with these career politicians and just normal Americans. They are afraid to challenge power. You don't want to go against the grain and upset someone who may be the president because who knows how that's going to affect you. Maybe, you know, Hillary Clinton had a great relationship with Nancy Pelosi and then she doesn't give you as many committee assignments as you had. It's just they're afraid to challenge power. So it's nice to see a lot of progressives such as yourself kind of like speak up and say, you know what, you're not doing good enough and you aren't as progressive as you've been leading us to believe because when we expected you to fight for us, you haven't been. So it's nice to see you really bring attention to these issues that I don't feel as if Earl has addressed at all. Like he has this pet set of issues, but... Bicycle and weeds. Exactly, exactly. He has this bicycle pin and he has his bows and you know, I get it. We all care about different things, but he's not addressing real needs in the community and one of the things that I think is so important, especially with regard to your district, is housing for all. So I grew up in St. John's in Portland, Oregon. This is in North Portland and going back there, it's unrecognizable. It's gentrified. So many people that I know, people of color have been priced out of that community. They can't find housing there. It's a crisis at this point and it's only getting worse and you know, that's just a microcosm of a national issue. So you talk about housing and your platform specifically and what you would do to address this crisis because this is certainly something that I think people in Portland are going to care deeply about. Yeah, sure. First of all, we've got to talk about the history of this. You know, we start off with the brown out of cities where white flight meant that there was the development of the suburbs and the ex-herbs and then people got tired of the commute. They got tired of the traffic and they started coming back into the city. We had the gentrification and all of a sudden the folks that were left in those blighted areas were getting forced out. Now, this is not just in Portland but this is all over the country and it's sort of following, I guess, the model in Europe. You know, when you talk about a city like Paris, all of the more expensive areas are down in the city center. The Erron-Dies Monts on the outside are where the ghettos are. So we're pushing folks back out to Gresham, to Troutdale, to Camus, Washington, to Vancouver and the like and we're creating these areas where no one can live except for the 1% really.  There have been a lot of folks that I've talked to throughout the district in St. John's in Inner North and Northeast who said they constantly have people knocking on their doors asking them to buy their houses and really taking a look at them not as the residents and the owners that they are there but as, you know, someone to make a buck off of. Now, when it comes to developing these new apartments and everything, we've got what, 16,000 vacant luxury apartments, one and two bedroom apartments, we're not developing and building for families. We need to be building some high density, inner, urban, core and resound the whole area so that we can have the housing necessary for families. You know, when you're constantly building one and two bedroom and studio apartments, what you're doing or condos is what you're doing is you're building investment properties for the wealthy. We've got to get out of that mindset. We've got to do something that's going to make our city more compact, take a look at the single family housing zoning and make it so that you can build multi-units in those neighborhoods. And I understand that some people don't like that idea. You know, some people are saying, we want to preserve the neighborhood as it was or as it is. And, you know, for the efficiency of the land, for taking care of the people, for reducing our waste and the use of our resources, we need to do things differently. So I'm definitely proponent in trying to take care of all those things and reducing the expense of housing because it's killing folks the combination of the stagnation of living wages or minimum wage, not even a living wage. And the ever increasing cost of housing is putting too many of us in the struggling class. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that just your concern for like specific needs, very specific needs of people is really what separates you from someone like Earl Blumenauer, who is an incumbent, who again, he's been there since 1996. So, you know, maybe- Well, you got to say it the right way. I mean, he's been in the federal office for 23 years. Yeah. But he's been a career politician for 45 years. The man has only held one job, one W-2 job. And that was straight out of college. He was the assistant to the president of Portland State University. Aside from that, he's been an elected official all of his life. I don't understand how he understands the struggles of everyday people when he's never actually had to live like the rest of us. Yeah. And how often is he down in Portland holding town halls, talking to all of us? I mean, the problem with DC is that it's very far away and there's this bubble. So, you kind of get insulated. You get comfortable. You feel as if incumbency, you know, makes you unstoppable. So, you don't really feel the need to be as responsive and maybe just with time, you become more complacent. And we're seeing that with Earl Blumenauer. I think it's time for some new blood. And I feel like you're just the perfect candidate to challenge him because you're speaking to all of these really important issues. One thing that I want to touch on is foreign policy. So, you talk a little bit about this in your ad. You have a very robust foreign policy platform. And what's so important is that you say things that you know will get you attacked if you will become elected. But it's so bold and important that it matters. So, free Palestine is part of your platform. Talk overall about your foreign policy ideals and how you would help shift the Democratic Party back to the left because, you know, I think it's easy to see they're moving further and further to the right. And we don't really have a true anti-war party at this point. And that's really terrifying. So, what would you do differently if you're elected? Well, first of all, we've got to address the elephant in the room. And that is that our foreign policy has been a white supremacist foreign policy forever. And it has been focused on providing benefits to a very small privileged few.   What he neglects to talk about is why their countries are in disarray, okay? So, back in the 50s, we had an American company that was trying to take care of their, you know, harvesting bananas. And they didn't like the idea of their laborers coming up and protesting and wanting to have better wages, living wages and decent working conditions. So they petitioned the government and said, hey, we've got an issue down here. Can you fix this? And so our government through the CIA, through I think it was Operation PB Success, sent the CIA down to destabilize the country, a democratically elected country, install right wing dictator, okay? Then we had a series of right wing dictators over the course of years, culminating in a civil war.  The place that they think they're going to get the most comfort, consolation care. And they're at the border and they're being turned away. And this was all so that some company could make a bigger profit on bananas. And that's typically the way our foreign policy has been held. When we look at Iran, the British and the Americans went in and destabilized that country for oil. The story repeats over and over again. We're supporting an undemocratic country in Israel right now that is basically in a apartheid state. And it is to the detriment of an entire people. I don't see how we can stand for any of these things. And I think that we have to have, if not a vocal majority, at least a vocal minority, that's going to stand up and say, this is not right. Yeah, and take positions that aren't necessarily politically expedient. If we truly are going to live by this philosophy that we care about human rights, which I don't believe the U.S. government does based on our actions. But I mean, if we are going to be attentive to the needs of humans, then we have to speak out on Israel-Palestine. We have to stand up for Palestinians who are being oppressed. Stand up for Kashmiris. Stand up for individuals in the western Sahara who are being oppressed by the Moroccan government. I mean, there's all of these atrocities around the world. And we just kind of turn a blind eye because either the government there is doing our bidding or we have further interests and we never talk about human rights. And there's no moral leadership in Congress or it's few. So when it comes to foreign policy, we need to just put morality back into the equation and actually follow through. And I just don't see that. Well, and there's another part to that. And that is the amount of wasted money that we spend on our military. I mean, our military is the number one blooter in the world. We have it around the world. And that money could be better used in reinvesting in America. It could be better used in reinvesting in our education, reinvesting in our crumbling infrastructure and taking care of the people with Medicare Medicare for all, for instance. For instance, you know, I hear on the debate, how are you going to pay for it? How are you going to pay for it? There's a really easy way to pay for it. And that's to tackle that military industrial complex and our incredibly bizarre foreign policy. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think people realize how much money we're spending. What is it? Like 59% give or take of our discretionary budget. That's a lot. Yes. I mean, it's the combination of, I guess, countries combined, military expenditures, some of which are allies. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Completely wasteful, completely unnecessary. And on top of that, tax the rich. And we can already reinvest so much back into our economy. So I know that people are enthusiastic about your campaign. Tell us what we can do to help you help us and get you elected. No, absolutely. So it takes money, number one. And the reason why it takes money is because mainstream media is not reaching out. They're not going to talk about us. In fact, you know, they're going to do as much as they can to ignore us, as is the incumbent. Quite frankly, I think the incumbent is chicken. You know, he has not been, he talks about being the guy that's going to stand up against Trump. He can't even stand up against me. How is he going to stand up against Trump? You know, he will not come to an open debate.  I want to hear where you stand versus where he stands. That's number one. Number two, we are not taking any corporate contributions. We're only taking money from the people. 100% of our contributions have come from the people. So we need that to continue forward. You know, I had to step down from my day job as the dean over at the Portland Community College. It's a state government control of state government employment. So basically it was either be the dean or be the candidate. And I think that is very important that we have someone who knows the struggle, someone who's going to be a citizen representative representing us instead of someone that's part of the 1%. And that's the thing that people don't realize is that our representative is one of the 1%. You know, when he first got into office, I think he had a net worth of about $500,000. Today's net worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 to $16 million, depending on who you talk to. And I don't know how you add that up with a salary of $174,000 a year without having, I guess I'm not that good at math. But at any rate, I think that when you are so far removed from the people, you cannot represent the people. And I don't want to attack our entire federal delegation, but the simple fact of the matter is, they're all over the age of 62. They're all multimillionaires. They're all landowners. And most of them come from elite privileged backgrounds. And that is not the makeup of the state. You know, less than 1.4% of the state are millionaires, let alone multimillionaires. And I don't think that if you have all of your representatives cut from the same cloth, from the same background, you're not going to have the diversity of ideas, opinions to get to the workable solutions that are necessary to get us to where we need to go. You really need people from different perspectives from other lived experiences to really represent us here, especially in the most diverse district of our state. Absolutely. And look, I would be more than happy to host a debate between you and Representative Blumenauer. He could do it from his cushy place in D.C. if he wants to via Skype. I'd be more than happy because this is my city. I'm very interested in making sure we get a representative. That's fantastic, but I'll be fair and objective. Yeah. Well, we're doing this from a working man's living room slash office slash my kids play area. See the dog. My dog's bed. You know, this is not a mansion. This is a little two bedroom house. You know, I know the struggle quite frankly. You know, I am a first generation college grad, first generation law school grad. My family faced homelessness when I was in high school due to domestic violence. We bounced around in a couple of different shelters till a kind family took us in. And so I understand and appreciate what it feels like to be homeless. I know that side of the story. I know that people don't want to be there.  And that's not how folks get started. It's one car accident, one medical bill, one eviction, one bout of domestic violence in my case. And you find yourself in a situation that is very hard to get out of unless you get some help from someone out from other folks. And I think that, you know, for us, we were lucky that we had some kind of strangers that came in and helped us, but you know, the federal government and the government in general should be the ones that are helping out, providing that housing first so that you can stabilize folks so they can get back on their feet. Yeah, and thank you for saying that because I've made this point before that it seems like nobody really cares about homelessness who are elected because they're not like considered a real constituency. Like they don't have addresses. So you can't send them campaign mailers, right? You can't, it's difficult to canvas when somebody doesn't have a home. So they just tend to get brushed aside and ignored, but it's gotten to this point in Portland where you just, you see it everywhere and it's so heartbreaking and somebody's got to do something. And the fact that Earl is not stepping up to propose some type of nationwide rent control plan at a minimum. It's just, we need change. So I'm absolutely going to be following this campaign. I'm going to be rooting for you, Albert, because I think you're doing everything right and your campaign is so inspiring. Thank you. I appreciate that. Go ahead. I was going to say the website is albertlea2020.com and let me make an additional pitch for Albert. If you don't live in our home state, Albert is still going to benefit you. It doesn't matter if you're in Texas, Ohio, the policies that he passes will have a national impact. And I use this example now about 552 times, but Ilhan Omar isn't in my state. But if she passes her bill, which would cancel student debt, that has a very direct concrete impact on my life, probably your life as well. I'm assuming. So we need to make sure that we recognize that this is a national movement. And even if you can chip in a buck, that's one extra dollar that will help Albert Lee. Anything else you want to add to that? Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought up Ilhan Omar. You know, in all of the squad, they're in their first term, their first two years. And I think that they've done so much more than our representative has done in 23 years. So one of the questions that I ask those folks that say, you know, I like Earl, you know, I kind of like him. I ask, what has he done for this district? What has he done for this country? For me, I've looked through the records and I really haven't seen much of anything. You know, I understand he's a proponent for weed. Weeds great. Yeah. Bicycles are great, but we have some really serious problems that need to be addressed besides bicycles and weed. Yeah. Yeah, it's not enough to just have a few pet issues. We need you to talk to people, find out what their concerns are, what their needs are, and respond accordingly with policy. He's not doing that. So I'm sorry, Earl. You've got to go. So, you know, for us, we talked to everybody. I spend four hours a day on the phone talking to constituents here. We have people coming into our campaign office. We had folks coming to our campaign. We had regular middle, middle class homeowners come into our office. We talked to some wealthy folks on the phone that have given money as well. Look, we are looking to try to represent the entirety of this district. It's not just the people in the Mac Club. It's not just the small subsection of the super wealthy. We've got to take care of this entire district. And one of the things is if we don't take care of everyone in this district on the front end, you end up paying so much more on the back end because either way, you pay. Yeah. That's a great point. So we'll leave that there. Albert Lee 2020. He's running in Oregon's third congressional district. Oregon is a closed primary state. So if you want to vote for Albert, you do have to be a registered Democrat. Get that done on the website. I see that you have provided a link to assist people. Very important. Yeah.  We're in the most heavily Democratic, one of the most heavily Democratic districts. The decision is not made in November. The decision is made in the Democratic primary May 19th 2020. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Albert. Thank you.


This is about analysis of well-being. During the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, using an understanding society and my colleague Janet and Murthy and I were responsible for this video. So the overall purpose of our study was to investigate the trajectory of well-being in the population over the course of the first wave of the pandemic. And we were also interested in sub-segments of that, whether change in well-being was distributed equally across the population. So there are obvious things that might impact from previous work and sort of theory. Medical conditions, social isolation, financial stress deprivation, these were all predictors for changes in well-being. And we're also further than that interested whether there were community-level characteristics which might protect against decline. So social capital of some form or other being the obvious predictor. There's plenty of work done prior to us publishing our own work, psychological effects of the pandemic, lockdown and contracting COVID. All are kind of relevant to thinking about what might actually be causing changes in well-being. So there was Deheri et al's 21 paper, Psychological Impact Observed, across 18 different countries. So there's an effect that's pan-cultural. And Google trends indicated an increase in terms like loneliness, worry, sadness during the initial stages. That was a paper by Brejure et al. So there was already a precursor in work that was published very quickly into the pandemic. It's really just outlining that. So what do we do? We use the first four waves of the understanding society COVID-19 survey and used wave nine of the main understanding societies as the baseline. So that was where people were before the pandemic hit. And then we're observing changes relatively to that baseline. Our outcome variable was the GHQ caseness score, very commonly used outcome variable for well-being. And then we're looking at the impact of the onset of the pandemic by comparing wave nine of the main survey with wave one of the COVID study. And then looking at the trajectory of changing well-being up to the first relaxation of restrictions, which was effectively in wave four. So we run two different sets of simple OLS regression models. One for the initial response and a separate one for the decline. So we used longitudinal weights inevitably for these particular models. So these are the explanatory variables we thought on the basis of previous work and theoretical concerns that might be relevant to predicting whether an individual had a change in well-being. So deprivation and we have only got the decile by LSOA. So it's a bit coarse-grained and I'll talk about that later. And then community cohesion variable which is one of the survey questions. So that's really looking at that social capital question. And then loneliness as a predictor. So we have loneliness before the start of the the pandemic and how that itself changes during the course of the pandemic. So loneliness obviously very tied in with ideas of well-being and then the baseline well-being. And then two particular variables because obviously one of the impacts of the pandemic was the changing people's income statuses and because of furlough and or even being being laid off. So a financial crisis indicated by these food banks in the last four weeks and an actual reduction in recorded income. Covariates that were thought to be relevant were age, ethnic minority and a deprivation indicator and an existing health conditions indicator. So the mean GHQ case in a score by sex is what we're showing on this diagram and you can see here probably reasonably predictable that there's this initial decline in well-being. So the case in a score, high case in a score equals poorer well-being. And that is having a different effect on on men and women. So women were more acutely affected by the initial effects of the pandemic but the recovery was also stronger as the pandemic progressed. There is of course a well-established difference in overall baseline level of well-being between between men and women and obviously this is self-report based so that we don't know whether this is to do with under-reporting by men or actual real differences between men and women in their in their well-being. However, the relative effects here are obviously noticeable. So our first model here predicting the declining well-being. So this is the basic covariates and what we can see here is that the covariates are having not a great deal of effect. So you see these r-squares at the bottom here, really tiny r-squares, slightly more for the female model than the male model but essentially there is no particular nothing really going on here. So the covariates actually are not having that much of an impact which is slightly surprising and noticeable that health conditions and IMD deciles are not significant at all. Now once you add in the baseline well-being then there is a sudden increase in in the r-square. There's a really quite noticeable change. So this is one of the big predictors of a declining well-being. However, what's happening here is slightly surprising because it's having a negative effect. Now just to get this clear that means that it's actually associated with a smaller decline in well-being than if you have a higher baseline score. So the the effect on well-being is perhaps the opposite of what one might have predicted. Those who were already had poor well-being did not decline as much as those who were their well-being was good. If you add in loneliness as a predictor that effectively is adding another significant amount of to the r-square. So loneliness and baseline well-being are heavy predictors of the decline. So here we are looking at something very specific going on in terms of possible mechanisms because we're actually after is a change in loneliness over the course of the of the pandemic. So during those ways and this probably is the mechanism which is causing this change in well-being and that begins to make some sort of sense because if you have you're in a situation where you've got a lot of social capital and that is then challenged by the pandemic the lockdown essentially separated out. It was a leveler in that sense. Then your change in loneliness will be a natural consequence of that and that might then lead to a change in well-being. So we can see a possible causal mechanism here although obviously this is regression data and we can't read too much into that. So this is the recovery and again the covariates are not really making much headway in terms of the r-square value that we've got here and the predictiveness of the of the recovery. But once we add in the baseline well-being and the initial declining well-being as a predictor then the r-squares jump up again. So the recovery feels a bit like a boomerang effect and the well-being is declining and then the amount of the decline and the the original baseline is then predicting the race of recovery and that that is happening in a strong time. We reversed because we're talking about recovery here we've reversed the coefficient so a positive value means a greater recovery and that again and then we've added in a set of other covariates here to do with somebody who's always lonely as a as a predictor of how well they recover and that is that's a good predictor and then this financial crisis caused by the pandemic is also also a significant predictor and this again increases the power of the model. So our conclusions a declining well-being was first observed at the beginning of the first lockdown period at the beginning of march 2020 no great surprises there but this was matched by a corresponding recovery between April and July as the restrictions were gradually lifted. There's no association between the decline and deprivation nor between deprivation and recovery so this again was a slightly surprising result obviously the granularity of the deprivation indicator may have been an issue here but the strongest predictor of decline in well-being was the baseline score with the counter-insurgency finding that those with the pre-existing poorest well-being the impact on the of the pandemic restrictions on mental health was minimal but those who felt previously well the restrictions was greater and so for recovery the baseline the degree of decline new economic hardship and reporting of loneliness were all important factors so just to say again IMD was at LSOA level and that may not be fine grained enough the findings do conflate several different factors so the background effects of the pandemic the effects of lockdown itself and then personal effects of the pandemic so individuals may have people who have died or have become severely ill they may themselves have become severely ill and these will obviously have very particular effects on one's sense of well-being so there is a question about whether it's the background effects of the pandemic the personal effects of the pandemic or all the specific effects of lockdown and we these are obviously conflated in the data and in the sense one sense of that is this doesn't actually matter it would be good if one was trying to get deeper into this to try and tease those out but there is a kind of almost a collated effect of those things the sample significant attrition between the main survey and the COVID survey we have to be straightforward about that obviously we've applied the weights that are available but there are quite a lot of people who elected not to take part in the COVID survey who are in the main survey and obviously that may be that may be a factor in predicting the change here people who suffer the biggest change in well-being may well have been the ones who have elected not to be in the survey so there may be some biases in here that we have that we can't possibly pick up on that the weights won't help us with so that's something just to be careful about interpreting these findings okay and here's the reference to the paper the published paper and thank you very much for listening


Welcome back to the Make Money Coaching Sports YouTube channel. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to stay up to date with all the latest content. And if you need to reach me or connect with me, a number of ways you can do that, visit the description below this video, and a number of ways you can either book a 15 to 20 minute call with me, or we can exchange questions. You can send me any questions to text me either to my WhatsApp number, which is below, or to my email address. At this point, over the last three years, I've responded to every single email and every single WhatsApp message that has come to me, all right? So don't stay stuck with your business. Reach out to me and love to connect and see how we can help you to grow and scale your business. Now, today I want to talk about financial challenges of indoor soccer facility owners in the US. Now, our company has worked with a lot of coaches who have then gone on to open indoor training facilities. So if you're in basketball, you're in soccer, if you're in another sport, it might even be baseball, OK? And you are currently an owner of an indoor facility, OK? This video is going to be for you. Now, because I'm in soccer myself and I work predominantly with soccer coaches, right? This is more geared towards the soccer industry. But the challenges and struggles that I'm going to share with you today are going to be relevant to coaches in basketball, in whatever sport that you are in, and you're running an indoor training facility, OK? So I want to share with you the screen in front. So as you can see, I've got a number of highlighted points, and I'm just going to go through them very quickly. And what I want you to do is if you're going through any of these challenges with your indoor training facility, reach out to me. Our company would love to see how we can help you to turn your struggles around and improve your business. Right, the first one is operational costs, OK? Now, there's a massive difference from using a park to run your training sessions or to lease in a facility, OK? When you either lease a facility or you become the owner of a facility, there's a lot more overheads costs to it, right? So you've got to obviously pay for the cost to just maintain the facility. A lot more bills are going to be ranking up. So the operational costs is what essentially a lot of coaches struggle with and this adds to a lot of their financial problems that they encounter later on down the line. So a lot of coaches, what they tend to do, and this is a very common one, is when they move into an indoor training facility, they keep their prices the same. Now, when they keep their prices the same, they're not realizing that, right, we have operational costs now for the indoor facility, which means that our costs are now going to get a lot bigger, which means that the cost of training and coaching clients cannot maintain the same. It's got to go up to reflect on the operational costs, right? So operational costs, it might be if you're paying for staff or admin work, taxes, right? So everything that comes down to the operations of the facility is something a lot of coaches struggle with. And this is because they keep their prices the same as they were when they didn't have the indoor facility, right? So they don't adapt and a lot of them are scared to increase the price because they don't want to lose customers. Next one, seasonal fluctuations. Again, and this is a struggle that a lot of coaches have, even if they don't have a facility, right? There might be moments in the season or in the year where your facility becomes quieter. So the summer could be one of them because a lot of people are away on vacation. So you're not going to have the same amount of people of traffic going in and out of your facility, then you would have maybe in February, OK? Christmas, again, that's another one, people are away. So there's going to be a lot of times in the year where your facility is going to be kind of up and down and your income fluctuates. Now, if this is a challenge for you, our company have helped coaches to overcome this and we can show you a number of ways that you can and use your facility to generate more revenue in those quieter months. The next one, competition with outdoor alternatives. OK, so again, there might be a time of the year where a lot of people don't want to be indoors, right? There's certain areas in the United States where when we get to the summer season, you know, it's really, really hot, OK? And some some people don't want to be in an indoor space because they want to be outside, right? They want to be in the sun. They want to be in fresh air, right? So this could be a challenge for some coaches, right? It kind of comes down to seasonal as well. Now, maybe in the winter months, your facility does really well because everyone has to be indoors. But then when you get to the summer months and some of your customers who are using your facility can go out and use a park, public park, and they don't have to pay any fees, then. That's when your business starts to fluctuate, right? So that's you.  In the good months, well, good weather, people can just go outside and do their activities outside. So if you hire out your facility to local teams and local trainers, right, they might want to cut down their costs during the good months of of weather. So they might instead of paying to use your facility, they might go and use a public park or an alternative outdoor venue. So that obviously brings a lot of challenges because that's revenue that you are losing with your facility. Marketing and branding, a lot of coaches don't know how to market and brand their facility. OK, what they and this is a very common one is they kind of market and promote it under their own brand, right? And the problem is that some parents start to if your facility or your business, shall we say, if your business has a bad reputation, OK, your coaching business has a bad reputation and a lot of parents have been talking to each other and, you know, it just has a very bad vibe. And this happens, this happens in this industry. Maybe that coach has treated their clients very poorly. Maybe it has a lot of bad reviews. And then your facility. You name it after your business, then, you know, it's going to have that same reputation. So that's one challenge a lot of coaches have. The second one is kind of sponsorship, right? They don't know how to create sponsors to sponsor their indoor facility. And this is something we do help coaches set in these type of sponsorship deals up where you can have a local business sponsor your indoor facility. Like that helps with the marketing and branding because if the local business is quite big and they've got a lot of traffic, then a lot of eyeballs can get onto your indoor venue, right? So that's another challenge that a lot of coaches have, separating their coaching business with the actual venue and how to market and brand, how to create sponsorship deals to help with the cost of running the indoor facility. Now, the next one is limited revenue streams. This is a very good one and a very common one. A lot of coaches that run facilities, they don't know how to create different streams of income for their indoor facility. So most of them don't know how to run other things aside from one to one small group or the odd camp. But there's a lot of alternative options that you can do to create more revenue streams. So hiring out to local schools, the hours that your facility isn't busy, hiring out to local clubs, doing events, hiring out to Zumba instructors, right? So using your venue, not just for sport, but maybe for other fitness activities, for other instructors or dance instructors in your local area, right? They hire out your facility. They bring in a lot of parents who maybe like to do Zumba and that creates more rivals on your indoor facility. But it also drives traffic because then you can sell them on to other things, right? If you have a bar inside your training facility, you can sell them food, drinks, etc. Now, the next one, maintenance and upkeep, right? So this is a big one, especially for indoor facility owners, maintenance and upkeep, right? The maintenance costs of an indoor facility is very high. Now, if you've got a turf field and it's indoor and you have to get that change, then that is a massive cost for the owner, OK? Because changing an indoor soccer turf, right? It's anywhere from, you know, you could pay anywhere between 20 to 30 K to change that just that turf, right? And that's a massive cost for a lot of coaches. Now, also, if there's any leaks, problems in the bathrooms, right? All of that adds up to your costs, OK? And if you want to create different revenue streams and you're not creating options for that indoor facility to do that, indoor facility to generate revenue for you, the maintenance costs are going to be very, very expensive. And there will be some maintenance that you won't be able to cover. And how does that affect coaches? It affects coaches because, for example, if you're in a very cold part of the US, you might get pipes that burst because of the cold, right? And that could create floods in the venue, which means that the venue will, you know, you'd have to maybe shut it down. You won't be able to, people won't be able to use your facility and that just can create a lot of problems, OK? So that's another financial challenge a lot of owners have. And then the last one is economic downturns, right? So the financial instability or as we are going through the moment, inflation, when inflation becomes very high, people have a lot more, well, everything becomes more expensive. So people start limiting down certain things that they spend money on. So if your venue is quite expensive for a lot of people to use, then what people tend to do is they find either alternatives or they don't use your facility, OK? And that's not to say that you need to be a cheap venue because you do have a lot of costs, but that's just, it goes with the economic downturn, right? When there's a downturn, teams will start to look after their costs. Individuals start to look after their costs. Parents start to spend less on coaching sessions, right? And it just all mounts up and it can drive a lot of financial challenges to your indoor facility, OK? So if you're going through any of these things with your indoor venue, reach out to me, love to speak to you. You can book a call with me. Just go down in the description below, apply for a call. Tell me what you're currently doing. Tell me about your coaching business or tell me about your facility, OK? And then we can jump on a call and discuss what challenges you're going through and see if we can help you to grow and scale, OK? Thank you for watching and make sure you subscribe to the channel. See you in the next one.


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at introduction to accounting for leases. So in this session we need to understand what is a lease? Who's the less sore? Who's the less C? Who are the players in the industry? Basically, we're setting the ground to discuss a little bit more about how to account for leases in future sessions. So what is a lease? Simply put, a lease is a contract. It's a contract between two parties between a less sore who's the owner of the property and a less C, a renter. Think about if you want to rent a place to live. You're gonna have to talk to an owner. The owner of the property is the less sore.  And what would the lease agreement gives you? It gives you the right if you are the renter to use the property to live there. Can you live there forever? If you are a renter, not really. You live there for a specified period of time. I mean, you can if you would like to, but that's not how it works. And the property will be owned by the less sore. So it gives you the right to use the property. Now in the business world, in the real world, who leases? Well, practically most companies are on either side, a less sore or a less C. For example, information technology companies like IBM, they lease their equipment, they lease their software. And you have another, so they are the less sore. Then on the other hand, you have a business that uses their assets, that uses their equipment, that uses their software, they are the less C. Transportation companies, for example, they lease trucks, airline companies, they lease their aircraft. For example, a company like Delta, Delta Airlines, what they do is they lease their aircraft. So Delta Airline is a less C. Then you have Boeing. Boeing leases the aircraft to Delta Airlines. Boeing is the less sore. Same concept when you buy a car, sometimes it's financed by Ford, Ford Motor Company. Ford is the less sore and the customer is the less C. If you are buying a car via a lease, same thing with GM, construction company, agricultural company. Basically, all companies, they're either a less sore or a less C. So who are the players? Who financed these transactions? There are mainly three parties that finance the business of leases. The first, obviously, are the banks and the banks basically control the majority of the of the leases. And that makes sense because that's the bank are in the business of financing transaction. Think of a loan, banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, so on and so forth. That's the first party banks and usually they're the largest party because that's what they do. The second party are independent financiers. Simply put, private companies are in the business of financing transactions like International Lease Finance Corp. That's the second group, the second player. The third player are captive leasing companies. Who are those captive leasing companies? For example, Ford Motor Company, they sell cars. That's one company. They manufacture and they sell cars. And what Ford Motor Company would do, they will create Ford Motor Credits. Another leasing company, basically separate from Ford Motor Company. And that company, their job is to finance the transaction for customers. What does that mean? It means if you want to buy a car from Ford Motors, rather than going to the bank, Ford Motor Credits will have their own leasing operation and they would lend you the money. Those are called captive leasing company. Ford will have them, GM will have them, Caterpillar will have them, GE used to have them. And that's specifically one division of GE, which is GE Financial. I believe they sold it, it almost brought down all of GE Company, basically General Electric Company down in 2007, 2008, because that division financed so much subprime mortgages. So they financed so many transactions for homes with lousy credit, which in turn that division alone could have brought down the whole GE. What are the advantages of leasing? Now, I'm just going to make a personal note, when it comes to leasing, especially cars, I don't believe in leasing, like I don't believe leasing a vehicle. Maybe you want to lease something for business, that's a different story, but I don't believe in leasing. Actually, I don't believe in that. I believe you should not overextend yourself in that. But nevertheless, we have to learn about what are the advantages of leasing from LSE's perspective, from the renter, also from the lessor, from the owner's perspective. So why do businesses go into leasing? Before we discuss advantages and disadvantages of leasing, I would like to remind you whether you are a student or a CPA candidate to take a look at my website, farhatlectures.com. I provide you lectures, multiple choice, true, false exercises that's going to help you do better in your accounting courses, as well as your CPA exam. Invest in yourself. Don't change yourself. I don't replace your accounting course. I don't replace your CPA review course. If you are listening, it means you are looking for some help. This is how you end up here. So go a step further. Subscribe to farhatlectures.com. So I'm going to start from the lessor's perspective. What are the advantages of leasing from a renter's perspective? Well, one thing is financing option. What does that mean? It means you cannot afford to buy what you would do. You would say, OK, if I cannot buy, I can finance it.  And this is what usually people lease cars. But again, I'm against that idea. Now, usually also the lease is a fixed rate. Sometimes it's it's variable, which is risky. It means it could go up or it could go down, but you want a fixed rate. The second advantage is minimal risk of obsolescence. What does that mean? It means when you rent this property, let's assume you are renting. You are leasing computer system. What happened is this? You don't own it. So let's assume you leased a computer system and somehow there's a newer, better computer system. What you can do, you can upgrade your lease get rid of the old computer system and lease the new one. So there is a minimal risk of obsolescence. If you buy it, it's really yours. If you lease it, there's always some sort of an upgrade, upgrade option. OK, so you can upgrade in case of change in technology. It gives you that flexibility. So because you have that option, leases will give you the flexibility in acquiring your asset, which is good. Again, those are advantages. Also affordability. Again, it gives you finance option. And usually it's more affordable than buying. It's less costly. Oftentimes less costly upfront, less costly than buying at the current time. Maybe in the long run, leases may not be as cost effective as buying. But for now, we need to get going. We need to buy the asset. We need to run our business. And your only option is to lease. And this is what happens oftentimes with people. They lease. They don't buy because the leasing option is cheaper. But in the long run, it could be more expensive. But for now, we need to get going. Those are some of the advantages for the renter, for the Lassi. For the Lassour, the owner of the company, the business that's leasing the property. Well, for one thing, it's going to give them additional source of revenue. For example, Ford Motor Company, they manufacture cars. They sell them. They make a profit. That's fine. Then they finance the transaction. That's a separate business. So they're in two businesses. They manufacture the vehicles. That's one business. And they sell it for a profit, too. They finance the transactions. It gives them interest income. Well, it also helps stimulate sales. It helps increase sales. Why? When customers, when customers have options to buy the car using a lease, they are more likely to buy. Maybe they don't qualify at the bank to get a loan. Maybe they don't have enough down payment or the cash to buy the cars. You finance the transaction for them. You increase your sales, but also with increasing sales, using leases, using credit. Also, the business is taking a risk. Nevertheless, that's an advantage for the Lassour. Three, it gives benefits. It gives various tax benefit for various parties. For the Lassi, it's tax deductible. For the Lassour, it gives them some tax benefit as well. So there's some tax benefit. And we're not going to tax benefit because this is not a tax course. Just know there's tax benefit to leasing. The Lassour may also get the residual value from the property. It means after you lease the property and specifically for vehicles, what happened is this? The Ford Motor Company sells a car, lease it. Lease it after five years or after three years. The car comes back to the company. And it has to be back with minimal conditions. Specified conditions. What happened is they can resell the car again. So there is a residual value that they can get that the owner, that the renter did not get because they're getting back the residual value. So oftentimes, the Lassour will get also the residual value. Company classified leases as either a finance lease or as an operating lease. And now we're going to get into the accounting aspect of it. Now this is technical terms. What is a finance lease? What is an operating lease? So it's very important to understand, what is an operating lease? What is a financing lease? Because from an accounting perspective, from a journal entry perspective, it makes a difference whether the lease is a finance lease or the lease is an operating lease. So in the next session, we're gonna have to discuss when is a lease as a capital lease or a finance lease? When is it an operating lease? At the end of this recording, I'm gonna invite you again. What should you do now? Go to farhatlectures.com. Subscribe, work multiple choice through false. That's gonna help you reinforce the concepts, which in turn will help you do better in your classes on your CPA exam. Good luck, study hard, and of course, stay safe.


Yesterday we had layoff announcements that Nike and now the stock has been downgraded by Drake. I'm struggling with Nike. I'm struggling with Nike because I think that the moves are going to be right, but the industry is so competitive. It's not like Nike and nobody else. Adidas came back to life, big balance sheet there. Under Armour obviously, Kevin Pines part of the mix and paying up for endorsements. But Nike, Europe had been slowing, United States is bad, the wholesale chain's bad. Is Nike finished? No, but Nike's gonna have to, it's a Nike reset and I tend not to want to play the recess for a couple quarters.


Hi and welcome to the session. I am Asha and I am going to help you with exercise 4.1. Question number 6 on page number 64. The question says check whether the following equations are quadratic or not. 6. 3x square minus 4 is equal to 0. So before checking whether the given equation is quadratic or not, let us first learn what is a quadratic equation. The journal form of quadratic equation is of the type Ax square plus Bx plus C is equal to 0 where A, B and C are real numbers A is not equal to 0. This implies degree of a quadratic equation is 2. So this is our key idea that we will be using in this problem to check whether the equation is quadratic or not. Let us now start with the solution. The given equation is 3x square minus 4 is equal to 0. Let this be equation number 1. Now 1 can be expressed in the form Ax square plus Bx plus C is equal to 0 where A is equal to 3 the coefficient of x square in equation number 1, B is equal to 0 since there is no coefficient of x in equation 1 and C is equal to minus 4. And also we see that A is equal to 3 implies A is not equal to 0 and as from our key idea any expression which can be expressed in the form of Ax square plus Bx plus C is equal to 0 is a quadratic equation thus 1 is a quadratic equation. Since it can be expressed in the form of Ax square plus Bx plus C is equal to 0 where A, B and C are real numbers and A is not equal to 0. So this completes our solution. Hope you enjoyed this session. Take care and bye for now.