Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel. I hope you're all doing great and for anyone new to the channel, my name is Lee. Today we're going to be continuing on with our VGC Series 9 content. The new rules have just hit us on the 1st of May. So we're continuing on with that today with a bit of a different team from the last one that we played. We featured that Assault Vest Metagross kind of tap with Vinny took the center stage in that episode. But today it reverts on to more of a kind of a sand core and one that I think can do very well in this format. So we're giving Drake Assault with the sand rush ability a little run out. It's obviously got the gigolith there, which can perform in trick room with the weakness policy, the sand to be able to kind of their function well and it's slower than talk all. So it allows it to always get the sander in that first turn to allow Drake Assault the kind of freedom it needs in some situations. So the sporting cast you've got the trick room set there is Porgon 2, the talk call there for the opposing weather. Gigolith doesn't like the rain. It doesn't like water type moves. So just wicking in those and talk all gives you a nice way to deal with those grass threats as well. Then we've got screen support going to be useful for pretty much everything on the team and then landerous theory and with that intimidate support the Assault Vest and just gives us a few other options outside of the other kind of mode of the team. There will be a poker base down below as always and we'll have a couple of games of the team and then we'll throw the rental up at the end of the episode. So I hope you enjoyed today's team. Let me know. Have you tried out Drake Assault with the Sandrush yet? Let me know. I'm very curious to know people's opinion on it because it's not something that's talked about too much in the series. So let me know down below and if you do try the team out, of course, I would love to hear about it. So without further ado friends, let's get into our first game of today. Okay. So first up today, we have an Alolan Marowak Jinx Porgon 2, Tapu Finney, Galarian Articuno and Kartana. So very interesting team. You got a kind of interest in Firewater Grasscore there with the Alolan Marowak, the Tapu Finney and Kartana. Yeah, it's kind of like you've got a trick room mode to the team and you've got kind of a fast mode to the team. Two trick room setters there and the Articuno potentially and the P2, which gives a lot of flexibility. Got to watch out for the Jinx because of lovely kiss and fake out there. They can be pretty problematic in most cases, but I do feel like Gigalith, Dracozalt are pretty good here. The only Pokemon we really need to watch out for would be the Kartana, but we do have stuff like Tocall if the trick room does get set up for us. I feel like we got pretty hyper offensive turn one and maybe a bit slower with like the P2 mode in the back and I just feel like, you know, does Tapu Finney get a bit difficult to deal with? I mean, Gigalith is pretty good still. Now, I think we go Tocall in the back and kind of it can deal with most things and then end game with Gigalith. So we get the trick room up, get Tocall, Gigalith out in the field and there's not really much on my opponent's side of the field. They can deal with it super well. Like Tapu Finney is going to be able to deal with the fire type attacks, no problem, but the Gigalith, if we've got the weakness policy activated, then at least we'll be threatened from that side of things, you know? But I'm hoping that Draco, Draco's alt can do some work in this one. So we're going to see Katana and James come up from my opponent. Okay, it's tricky because you kind of don't want to ignore the Katana, but we don't want to leave the Gigalith on the field either. We could protect Gigalith here. We have got protect. Don't worry, you can see it just there. We could protect Gigalith. That's the thing. Um, and then Max with Draco's alt and just go straight after the Jinx. The only issue, well, it's not really an issue at all because we go for the bald beak. We don't need to worry about, um, we don't need to worry about the lovely kiss then. Yeah, I think we do this. I think we try and get rid of the Jinx as soon as possible. The Katana may Max here. This is the only issue that the Katana Max can go and max air stream and then the Jinx get in the jump. The Jinx won't get the jump on us with one air stream, so we should still be fine. Um, you just want to get rid of the Jinx really and the Sasha's probably there. It's all best probably on the Katana. It's just that we've got to keep an eye on like Katana because it's get the beast boost ability. Um, and if it starts to kind of get that momentum with those, those attack boosts then it's not ideal. We're just going to see a pick up from from the Jinx. Okay, so that's fine. Um, click on that. Dynamics button to one. You take the Jinx down to a sash. That'd be good. If you do, we do. Yeah. So the sound will get rid of it and we'll probably see like leaf blade leaf blade from the Katana potentially. I'd imagine maybe maybe steel spike. I don't know steel. What? Smart strike. That's the one. Yeah. Into Gigalith. Okay. Now ideally that I want to be bringing in like talk all, but if I do that, then I lose the speed jump on the, um, on the Jinx, but we've got the option this next turn where we can potentially get something, especially if the finny comes onto the field, but it's going to be the Marua. Okay. Marua. That's fine. I mean, we've got kind of not so fine because it can, it can max and that would, that would not be so good. Um, let's bring in talk all. Um, like do we go max quick on max one max wormwind? See again, I don't really want to bring in the thing we take a steel. We definitely take. I think we just rock slide because they're going to proc a, yeah, I think we just rock slide and go max wormwind. Would you see attack stat on both? Uh, it means that at least Drake was all will still get the jump on Cartana this turn. Um, the, the, the smart strike won't knock out Gigalith and the rock slide could get some nice damage, especially with the weakness policy propped. Yeah. The Marua going to be the thing that Max is here.  And if we do get our weakness policy propped, a rock slide potentially could get that Marua potentially, potentially we'll see. Uh, there's a smart strike coming in. So it's minus one. Take that pretty well. Get the weakness policy boost. We'll see where the Marua goes. You've got to go. You've got to be going after the Drake is all right, but we should still take that. Yeah. There's a max quick. The Drake is all you're not going to get into Drake is all. Yeah. We take that the minus one helping us out so much there. And if we can get the knockout onto the Marua with the rock slide, then we're sitting in a pretty nice position. There we go. Gigalith doing all the work for us. That's what we want to see. Um, right. Well, then that's one gone and you've got to imagine that our last Pokemon is got to be, it's got to be tapoofinny, but it's poison too. Okay. That kind of works out way better for us then. Um, we get the download boost special attack, not ideal, but not the worst. Uh, have we got enough to take down the Cortana? That's a big thing here. And you kind of hope that like they don't want to set the trick room up. This is the problem. Like we still got one max turn left as well. You know, so that's that's pretty huge for us. But we could potentially I just don't know if we're going to be able to get the Cortana, but I tell you what we could potentially do is could I defend some body we could just now let's just rock slide again and let's go for another max wormwind into the Cortana this time. So going to be very effective, but it means that Cortana is not picking anything up now. Yeah. And if the trick room goes up, I mean, Google is in an amazing spot and then we've got Tocall in the back to come in. So we're not in a bad spot. Like one little bit. P2 is likely to go after the Drake result. Oh, secret soldier to Drake result. Are they doubling up into it? Ice beam into lift. No, no, no way. Not with the signup. You're not getting us there. This should get the Cortana. Yeah. And then we do a nice chunk to the P2 and then we can bald peak the next turn and we'll get the electric train boost as well, which the life orb. It should be enough to get the P2 and we haven't got the issue of hustle anymore, which is super nice because it was always one of the drawbacks right with using triggers or the hustle. You'd always like be sweating at this point. So we'll just body press and we'll go for all people and this combination has just swept us our first game. So doing really well as we see the battle cancel a little bit disappointing. I kind of want to see the both pick up the knockout, but you never get the chance very good game to my opponent. And yeah, the combination really nice. You know, sometimes you build a team with a combination and you never really get to feature it. So I feel I'm like I'm just really happy, happy, happy that we got to feature that in our first one. Anyway, we'll move on to our next battle of the episode. Next up, we got Matteo playing a team of a Reggie Rock, Enta, a Tapu Vinny Poison 2, Brim Snow and a Glareon Moltres. This looks perfect for Drake Assault. This looks so good for Drake Assault. It really does. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I would worry about a little bit would be the Reggie Rock because the Reggie Rock can start can probably take the majority of attacks that we're going to be able to throw out at it, which is make it a little bit more difficult to deal with for sure and obviously screen support as well makes things difficult. Clear body, we can't really utilize the Intimidate as much as we want to. I think probably trick rooms are best route to go down, especially with the Gigalith. And if we can kind of get our body presses kind of going early on would be really useful. I think P2 and then what's our last Pokemon going to be? Brim Snow going to be worth it here or I don't know. I feel like more of a like an endgame maybe Landriss is better, but then Torcal's just a better option in trick room, especially to sport with Gigalith. You know, especially if the Tap of Finney becomes a little bit more of an issue. Yeah, let's go Torcal. I mean, it's a bit of a stretch. You know, I think like Landriss gives us a little bit of better matchup against the Regirock. But then the Regirock gets like the curses up and stuff like that. We clock a weakness policy. It's a bit more difficult to manage. Whereas with Torcal, at least we've got options where we could potentially catch them with a burning jealousy, get the burn on to them. That residual damage might be kind of clutch and the latter stages of this game. Okay, Enti and Brim Snow. We're going to see the reflect. We're probably going to see a sacred fire on a margin. But where you sacred firing into because like Gigalith doesn't care about that at all and it gives us the perfect opportunity to go for like an eye in defense here and potentially just go into P2 right now and keep Drake is all for an endgame situation. Because P2 coming in. Yeah, it's going to take a bit of damage from a sacred fire, but we should be able to take a multiple of those to allow a trickling getting up and you know the beauty about Gigalith with even if it gets burned like the body press doesn't really rely on that attack stat. So we don't really mind too much about that. Sacred fire coming out connecting with our P2. We soak that up pretty well and do take a burn for our troubles which is not ideal. We do get the eye in defense up. So the only thing that's going to be able to kind of prevent us getting the trick room up now is going to be torn from the Grim Snow but hasn't got torn. Probably not not super likely. Now the question is do we do we protect Gigalith now? What do we go for another we go for another eye in defense because that would then give us real momentum swings if we see something like the P2 come in but I think we're probably better off just kind of not being burnt because then at least we could utilize our max turns, you know. Yeah. Okay, we'll go for the trick room. We'll go for a protect. I don't really want to get burned. I really don't want to get burnt. Hopefully we don't see a taunt. That wouldn't be bad. Fig tears. Okay, fig tears. That's fine. And then another Sacred fire doubling up into the Gigalith there. Yeah, okay. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. It's not so perfect because the fake tears is still going to be a big, big issue for us, of course. Um, and it's not like we've got a way to take down the anti probably doubling up into anti with with the max rockfall. I don't really want to max it though. That's the thing. I don't want to max it too early on. And I don't think a rock slide in a tri-attack is going to be enough to get it where I think probably his body press going to be enough to get it. I doubt it. I think we max. We get rid of the anti. We double up into that slot with a tri-attack as well. Yeah. And I think we get that. I think that should get the anti. Then anything come in and on that slot would be kind of nuked anyway. Okay, so we're gone. Full-fledged Gigalith. The problem is with the the fake tears from the Grimstall it does make it a bit easier for my opponent to bring it up a finny and kind of utilize that. But at the same time, it doesn't mean we have to keep Gigalith out in the field. It's just really good. Disruptively. It makes it difficult to kind of maintain its staying power on the field as long as it is maxed. It's been nice if it picks up the knockout. I don't expect it will not mind the reflect. Oh, it does. It's a bit misjudged then. Okay, tri-attack coming out. What we're going to see into the Grimstall. That's really respectable damage and the paralysis there as well, which may help us a little bit. Okay. I mean, the thing is with the sandstorm up as well, you know, even with the fake tears, even if we see Finny come in, we're still going to be able to take at least one attack as long as the sandstream stays up. Okay, tapping Finny, hitting the field. Going to get that Misty Terrain active. So what we want to do is hmm, how many turns of sand have we got left? Because we need to make sure that when this trip room ends, we've got, okay, two turns. No idea. What we'll do, we've got one turn. I think we've got one turn here. We've got one turn here where we can really get rid of the Finny. And I think do we go after the Grimstall? Just get rid of that liner support, you know. If it's going to fake tears again, that's the issue. And it might be worth just sacrificing everything altogether, but at the same time, I don't think you take us down. I still don't think you take us down unless you go minus four, which would be really bad. Okay, let's go after Grimstall and let's, I think we'll recover with P2 because we just timed out. So that's our mistake, but we should, yeah. I think the saving grace for us here would be the fully paralysis, like fully paralyzed Grimstall. It won't be able to get another fake tears off, but I'm still kind of confident even if they do get a fake tears off, you should be able to take a max guys out. In the sand. No. Really hope that's not us. Everything around me is working. There's a paralysis as well. Maybe that's why. Maybe that's why we've got the connection issue. You can see why you can see why happens. Let's see what happens. I'm really disappointed that this is our side. We get the recover, which is always useful. It means that we're going to be able to get health back. It means we can get the trick room up a bit later on. If we need it or reverse it as well. So guys are coming out. We are minus two. I think another fake tears would have got us. I think another fake tears would have got us and the weather does shift. So it means in our last turn, probably we've got a weakness policy. We get the sand back up and we try and concentrate. Oh, we switch out to talk call to get a sound back up later on to trick room ends. But we'll see. Is it us? It looks like it might be us, you know. Is it us? It is us. That's really frustrating. Friends, all I can say is I'm sorry. Sorry. But we had a good way to win that one. We'll have one more today. So we'll jump straight into it and we'll try and not have any more issues going forward. Okay. So next up we have Chris Sellier in Sinorua, Tapa Fini, Stack Attacker, Reggie, Alecki and Glastria. So an old familiar face that was not seen for a while is Chris Sellier. And obviously provides a lot of support in trick room, allies, switch, help in hand, all sorts of things like that. So you've got the double trick room on this team. Now you've got the support through in Sinorua. Obviously Stack Attacker being the other trick room Pokemon that's going to be able to abuse that. And Glastria is going to love the trick room environment as well. It's pretty much a heavy trick room team. Although you have got a little bit of a middle-end speed to have a Fini, which can perform well in trick room if the conditions are right. And then you've got Reggie Alecki, which just doesn't like trick room at all. Now, before I smash my Merciful Throne again, do I want to go with Dracozolt and this one? I mean, Dracozolt is pretty good against the Alecki, against Fini and do work against Stack Attacker in the right conditions. Doesn't really like intimidate too much. So that makes it a little bit more difficult. Whereas Gigalith could be a great option here. Gigalith could be a real good option, especially with Grim Snarl. I think maybe we go Gigalith Grim Snarl. P2. Did we just go P2? Compering Torko, I don't think. And I don't want to rely too much on my opponent not setting their trick room up. So I think we go Dracozolt for Torko. Yeah, Stax gives us a pretty hard time anyway. Okay, let's go for that. Let's go for that. The only reason Torko would be decent in this matchup would be obviously the Glastria. It gives us a way better option. But I mean, the Gigalith isn't too bad, is it? Isn't too bad. If we can get an Iron Defensor, then we're sitting pretty happy at that point. The most annoying thing about that last match as well is I have like the bot that we've run on Discord. Nothing wrong with it. Still connected, still running. So it's just literally the server, the ladder server. It does that for like occasionally, doesn't it? It does just kick you off, which is really frustrating. Yeah, we're going to see Tappofinny and Cresselia come out from my opponent. Kind of like to get Dracozolt onto the field. Because I don't expect we're going to see the trick room go up at this point. But I mean, you probably don't Moonblast, right? You don't Moonblast. I think we'll bring Dracozolt in. The Moonblast Gigalith then.  I mean, we could fake out as well. But I don't see the Tappofinny maxing here. The only issue would be, right, if they do trick room, which would make no sense at all. But if they can't prevent the calm mindless turn, which puts us in a great position, and then the following term we could potentially switch back into Gigalith, because it's more likely my opponent setting up the trick room at that point. Yeah, no, no max, yeah. I like switch. Starting with those games already. Okay, well, I don't think we max Dracozolt either. They're going to ally switch again, aren't they? They are going to ally switch again. Because we just bald beak into Tappofinny and it just removes it. I just don't like playing the ally switch games.  And I'm just going to click into the, I'm just going to click into the finny slot. I'm just going to light screen while you've got the opportunity. You may see a trick room get set up here, but I mean, it's fine. Okay, Tappofinny protected. That's all right. We're just going to see the trick room get set up. I would imagine. Now, we either go for a spur of break into Finny and just double into that slot. Or we kind of cover bases and play to the ally switch now. Because like, what's Crest got? What can Crest do? Can he help in hand? Or can ally switch? Or we can get caught out. I mean, I've just said I don't play into the ally switch games and I shouldn't really. But now I feel like if we don't target the Crest. Okay, we'll play it safe. Just in case we'll spur of break into the finny slot. I shouldn't play the ally switch games. This is why I should listen to myself and you should listen to me. Because yeah, this is annoying now. Up in hand. Okay. Right. Well, we blast. It's minus one. Find the light screen. Dragazot is done. We'll get a bald peak off, but don't think it's going to be very relevant. I mean, it doesn't do too bad damage. We need to keep Dragazot. What do we need to keep it for later on this match? I think I'd like to switch in Gigalith now. Because the Finny's after this, after this point. I'm going to switch in P2. I'm going to switch into Gigalith. Why don't we just switch in Gigalith for Dragazot? Because I could do that then. I just worry about a muddy water potentially coming out now. But I don't think we're going to see that. I think you've got, well, potentially. It makes sense because you probably get, helping out muddy water will get Dragazot. And then obviously as well, it covers the potential. Gigalith switching, which makes sense because of how low health the Dragazot is at this point. Okay, well, we get P2 onto the field. Regardless, we've done it now. Ice Beam coming out into P2. And we're going to see, yeah, another Moon Blast. But this time into the gig, as I reckon, yeah. Okay, well, I mean, we take that pretty well. Pretty well. All things considered. I think we double up into the Finny here, potentially. But they're going to protect, right? They're going to protect. So it might even be better just go on for a rock slide. And then try to attack into the quest. Just removing, okay, helping hand muddy water. Well, I kind of take that, to be honest, because they'll just, they're just going to activate our weakness policy then. And then they're going to be in that bad position where they, we will be able to just remove both from the field with a rock slide. This doesn't get that one. Just, I'm just missing. Tell me Finny Finches. Okay. We tend to trick really good left. Maybe one, which is not ideal, because the Finny just protects now. And we kind of want to sign back up. But I mean, we can get a sign back up if we want. Yeah, we'll just cover the Finny with a try attack and we'll go rock slide again. Ooh, they're not protecting that. That's dangerous, dangerous. Unless we proc a 50% berry. Oh, you know, one of the big berries, which we potentially could do. But there's always a chance that they could just um, no, there's no berry there. Huh. Okay. They just lose Finny. The trick room does reset now, which isn't ideal. But I mean, at the same time, we're kind of in a good spot with P2 just to get the trick room back up and get Giggleith kind of rolling. Get Insie coming in and Glastria. Yep. The trick room is a little bit tricky, of course. We kind of want to get... I think you get Grimmsknoll onto the field, maybe max Giggleith and go for Max Rockfall into Glastria. We could protect, get a weakness policy back of it. I don't think so. I think the only issue is doing that. Okay, I think we go Max Rockfall into the instant roll here. Because I think this turn, I think they go fake out into P2 and I think they max, go max quick into Giggleith. I'd rather get rid of the Incineroar though, so I'm not having to always contend with parting shots and stuff like that. And I don't really fancy activating a weakness policy to have to deal with that the next turn. Be kind of nice to get the reflector before you go any further and just dread a steel spike from the Glastria into Grimmsknoll now. Just to boost those defences, that would be ideal. But we probably need the weakness policy activated to get the Incineroar, I think. The minus one. I'm not too sure if we get it. The other option here would have been just protecting. Okay, that's not ideal. That is not ideal at all. Okay, so no fake out. They were kind of happy for us to get and the steel spike, but they're losing our minds. They're losing our minds. We're going to get a weakness policy activated, which just resets our attack. So we'll get the Incineroar. They get the defense boost. We don't just miss the Incineroar. Okay. We may need to max guard this next turn. Reflect. I just don't want to take another parting shot. That's the big problem. And the defense boost, it's the defense boost that's kind of give them the leg up, isn't it? They're just going to parting shot us again. That's the issue, isn't it? And this cluster is just going to get like super out of control and I don't feel like we've got anything to kind of deal with it considering that P2 is probably our only option. It's not the best option, I would say. Right, well, I mean we can fake out Grims Incineroar here and just get rid of it. But then we don't have the reflect. But I do think they actually go after... I do think they go after the Grimstone here. I don't think they go after the Gigalith. If they do, obviously, then we're in a boat of trouble. Field spike? Yeah, they go Grimstone, which we'll lose but it's kind of... It's not too bad because we'll get Griggers all in or we can get P2 in. It's probably better to get P2 onto the field in all honesty because then we can potentially try and get a trick room up and then get an eye on defencing before... Wow, there's like nothing. There's like nothing. Yeah, we need to get Griggers all onto the field now. Get rid of the Incineroar. Because you've got to worry about the Incineroar having something like taunt as well, which would be a bit of a problem. We'll go with old, reliable, dragging claw here. We'll just max guard, I think. The problem is it's going max guard. I think we have to max guard because I don't think you go after Draker's ult. I think, well, Draker's ult will go down anyway to P2 to the residual damage and life ult damage. One HP. Ooh, we don't know. We're going to survive, I think. They do go into the Draker's ult. Okay. And we can maybe still do... I don't know, I don't think we're going to be able to do this. I really don't think so. They've got like plus three attack. They've just managed the Glastria so much better than us. Our side of the field anyway. So P2 in. Let's think. What can we do? I don't think we're going to be able to iron defense. We maybe can. Thing is like P2 will just drop whatever Glastria does. But can we get a trick room up? I don't think so. Because the options are we double protect, right? We try double protect and get that trick room up. But it's not risky doing that. Because I think we're better off. We're literally better off just doubling up into Glastria here. Do we go for an iron defense anyway? We're probably solo health. I don't think it's really going to make too much difference. But I think we just double. And I think we just body press. No, we rock slide, I think. I think single target rock slide. P2 might be able to get it into it. No. We get the paralysis. I mean Giggler's going to be faster than it. So that is just the hacks that we needed. Because now whatever happens we're going to be able to get it. We don't deserve to win this game. But we are going to take it. We are going to take it. Which is really unfortunate. But yeah. So the trick room there wasn't really. Because it's so risky at that point. Like if they attack into P2 that turn. Then the drop with close combat that they potentially have to get. Would mean that Giggler might be able to clinch it with a rock slide. Maybe. Maybe I don't know. But very unlucky for my opponent. And we do manage to clinch a victory to end this episode on. But I hope you've enjoyed today's episode friends. We'll hop over now and get the rental code of this team. And then we'll wrap up the episode. Okay friends. Here is the rental code for today's team. You've got the Gigalith and Porygon too. Grimsnall, Drakerzall, Tockel and the Landry. Apologies for the lack of face cam here. Obviously because we've already filled out all of our rental teams over on our main court. I've had to call in the help of a very good friend of mine. So massive shout out to Bebham. He was actually hosting this rental team for me right now. And for all of you. So if you do have a go with the team. Do give Bebham a big shout out down below in the comment section. And definitely let me know if you try it out. If you have a lot of fun with it. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode. It has been a bit of a fun one. Really enjoyed the Drakerzall. It's definitely something I feel like I'll be continuing to play with. And kind of tweak the team going forward in the format. So do let me know if you're in the same mind as me. Would love to hear so. And I'll just say thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great rest of the day. And I'll catch up with you all for another episode on the channel very soon. Thank you.


Here I have a circuit with a battery, light bulb, and gap. If I fill this gap with a metal, the light comes on. If I fill this gap with glass, the light stays off. You probably already know this because metal is an electric conductor and glass is an insulator. But what happens when I fill this gap with a silicon wafer? The light stays off. So you might think the silicon is an insulator, but what if I heat it up? Thank you. It lights up. The silicon is insulating at room temperature but conducts electricity when it's very hot. It's a semi-conductor whose conductivity changes based on the environment. This special ability makes semiconductors the perfect brains for electronic devices. Bonds of small semiconductor switches, called transistors, are at the heart of computer chips and enable them to do math and run programs. Semiconductors have enabled electronics to become smaller, faster, and more reliable. But what is it exactly about these semiconductors that allow them to either conduct or insulate? In a single atom, electrons can occupy specific energy levels. When multiple atoms bond, the electrons are shared between them. But because the atoms are now interacting, the energy levels shift around. In a solid, trillions and trillions of atoms interact with each other. Their individual energy levels smear into energy bands. For a material to conduct, the electrons must be able to jump from lower energy states to higher ones. The spacing of these energy levels and how they're filled with electrons determines if the material is a conductor, insulator, or semiconductor. If there's a huge gap between the lower energy levels and the higher ones, it's hard for electrons to jump to the higher ones. No current can't flow, and it's an insulator like this glass. Metals have no gap at all. Electrons can move to the higher energy levels with no problem. Current can flow. Semiconductors fall somewhere in the middle. They have a medium-sized band gap. So technically, I can make this glass conduct electricity if I added enough energy through heat to push the electrons into a higher band. But that amount of heat would either melt or break the glass before it actually conducts. This is true of most insulators. The amount of energy needed to make them conduct is just too high. But in a semiconductor, the band gap is small enough that electrons can jump into the higher energy bands so that current can flow. The amount of heat we apply determines how many electrons jump into the higher band and how much current flows. And heat isn't the only way to change the conductivity in a semiconductor. We can also use light, electric currents, and in a computer, electric fields. As I've said, computers are made up of semiconductor switches called transistors that switch between conducting and insulating. Computers use electric fields because heat is slow and would burn too much energy. We can turn this wafer into a computer chip by printing a circuit of transistors on it using a process called photolithography. Here, in the photo room, we cover the wafer with a light-sensitive material and expose it to light that we shine through a patterned mass. Then, we develop the wafer, like film and photography, which leaves behind a pattern that becomes the circuit. Printing the transistors at once lets you make circuits that are smaller and cheaper than if you built them from individual parts. Transistors make up the logic elements, the memory components, and the communication modules that let computers talk to each other. With semiconductors, you can cheaply add transistors to almost any device you can think of, from spaceships to servers to maybe even your toaster. Semiconductors have enabled the technological revolution, the internet, the computer, and the cell phone. No semiconductors, no information age. I'm Jamie, and thanks for watching this episode of Science Out Loud. Be sure to check out some of our other videos, including mine, on how computers compute. Check out our website for more information.


This study aimed to determine the overall incidence and risk factors for stroke in patients with hip fractures. The systematic search of the literature revealed that the incidence of stroke in patients greater than 50 years of age with hip fractures was 6.72%. The incidence of stroke by region was highest in the American continent. Diabetes significantly increased the risk of stroke, while BMI greater than 24.4 in female gender did not significantly increase the risk of stroke. Lower albumin concentrations were a risk factor for stroke in patients with hip fracture. This article was authored by Jose Maria Lamo Espinosa, Gonzalo Mariscal, Jorge Gomez-Alvarez, and others.


Five interesting facts about Vinny. Vinny is possessed by some sort of gangster. He picks up on the things we're talking about right then and there. All right, ready? I know. Hello, my fellow snippers and flighters. My name is Marlene McCohen. This is Vinny. Vinny and I, sweet, yeah. We wanna welcome you to our channel. For those of you who are new here, I wanna offer you a warm, warm welcome. Let me know in the comments that you're new. So I can welcome you appropriately. Before we go on, I would love to do some shout outs for those of you in my flighters club. And no, not all the shout outs are always in my flighters club, but today I wanna give some special shout outs to Alyssa Vo. Who did you say? Cindy Meyers? Karen Winder, Seth Wilson, Terese Brooks and Victoria Stevenson. All right, for those of you who wanna know what my flighters club is, that is my Patreon. It's not like, oh, just support me on Patreon. It's basically, I give you guys some fun perks, early access videos. I make special content for you guys and tell you guys all my secrets first. All right, so today we are going to do a video specifically on Vinny. Vinny is my galakakatu. So I'm going to tell you my five favorite things about Vinny and we'll see what Vinny has to say about this. Before we go on, check out the Vinny merch that I'm wearing. You guys can check my link below and get the coolest merch in the biz.  We are, right? This one is your favorite? That's cool. Now here in America, we call them rose breasted cockatoos a lot. It was kind of my dream bird and everyone else's and I did not set out to get one because I don't actually usually set out to get birds. They just kind of come to me but I really did have a moment in a bird store once where I wanted one so bad and George was like if you want him and I was just like no, nevermind. They will charm anyone. Honestly, like as babies, they are so sweet and so interesting and so cuddly. They will just provide you a memorable experience. Now I want you, right? I want you guys to know that this video is in no way intended to let you know how other rose breasted cockatoos are. I'm telling you five interesting facts about Vinny. Just like real deal, getting to know my birds. So let's get to the number one most interesting thing about Vinny. Well, in no particular order but the first thing that I feel you should know. Possessed by some sort of gangster. He is literally like a human in a sack of feathers. Like Vinny's soul was possessed by, I don't know who and I don't know how but this bird is insanely creepy. Vinny, Jenna's leaving with two boxes. They're not your boxes. Go. No, you probably really can't leave. He is a complete gangster. Everything from the beatboxing to the gangster music to the gangster lean that he's got going on to his threats. Look, it's Jenna. Yeah, are you mad at her? To every fiber of this bird's being. You see? Yeah, it's true, he just said. That's Vinny. That's the first thing you should know about Vinny if you've never been introduced to him before. He's got quite the personality. This bird is honestly like, I've had birds my whole life and this bird shocks me every day with things that he comes up with and things that he does and in no way and by no means do I mean that all cockatoos like Vinny are this way. Vinny truly is special and he's different in so many ways. Like he doesn't even sound normal when he talks so that's just a whole nother thing. That's very true. Another interesting thing about Vinny is he loves dancing. He loves music. Obviously for copyright reasons I can't put on some of Vinny's music right now but let me give you an example by like, let's say beatboxing. You know, he doesn't wanna be on me right now. It's obvious by his body language but watch this. I can't beatbox and in no way was I saying that I could if you guys wanna see Vinny meet an amazing beatboxer. Watch my video with Vinny meeting box of beats. Pint, pint, pint, pint, pint. But not only does he enjoy beatboxing and music he literally makes his own beats. Like he goes over and taps on the window. Things that are kinda scratchy, he scratches on them. He's just really interesting. Like he always finds ways to make music. It's so fascinating. You should watch Vinny on TikTok. I think you'll be extremely entertained, right baby? And by the way, I am no way glorifying these birds. It's extremely hard to have birds so I would like you to watch my other videos, namely 11 things to know before getting a parrot. Here's the other thing about Vinny, number three. I kid you not, understand what we say. Vinny, are you excited to meet Ruby? Yeah. Yeah? Just take it away.  Yeah, okay, let's just go now. Now, before I go on with that, you guys know that in my daily life, like I explained to you that like birds really do understand what you're saying. They have the human intelligence of a five-year-old, the emotional intelligence of a three-year-old, scientifically proven. Dr. Irene Pepperburg has written books about this and she has proved it herself with all of her research. So I'm in no way saying that Vinny is special, but Vinny has like this capacity to understand and respond to things. Whether or not you understand what he's saying, after a while, we got really good at understanding what he's saying. It's kind of mind-blowing. It's kind of like if birds are supposed to understand at a five-year-old's level, and we know that and we're used to it because of our other birds, it's like Vinny is 35. That's right? It's, you see? It's just insane. So he went over to play with his box right now. Answers on includes himself, and I'm in by no way also saying that every single word that he says is understandable. I think somebody described Vinny as like auto-fill and auto-correct at the same time and a lot of that is true. But he also like doesn't like being told no and he understands a lot about what you're saying to him and reacts off that.  It's kind of like the weirdest thing, something I never expected in my life.  And for me to be acquainted with birds my entire life and still be like, that did not happen is just like, I think he's possessed, but whatever, like that's just a theory. Okay, getting to number four. It's so weird.  Never ever have I been somewhere and heard Vinny just scream. If he's not interacted with, he won't make a noise, which is kind of unusual for them. And usually in general, these kind of cockatoos are not loud, but they do have this shriek. And when they fly, they can make a noise that they enjoy. But Vinny is not like Jersey, my umbrella cockatoo that if she wants something, she's gonna be like, ah, ah, ah, they're just kind of gonna like maybe start like, maybe. But unless he's interacted with, he minds his own business and he just has nothing to say. Occasionally, if he gets scared of something, he will scream like a girl, which totally ruins his image, but he will. It's very interesting. And that brings us to the number five interesting thing about him. He's extremely independent, oddly so. Like he's not dependent on me for love at all. Now I like to create this kind of behavior in parents. Like I want them to be able to play with things and be engaged by themselves so that they don't have to rely on love. So it's important to me that birds are independent and Vinny is completely independent. Don't get me wrong, he loves love, he loves kisses, he doesn't really go for any kind of head scratches or petting, but he does love love, don't you? So as loving as he is, he doesn't depend on it, which is really amazing and I think really special, right Vinny? See, like he'll come in for the love, but he's just as happy to kind of leave me and go do his own thing. And then he comes over, gets some love and kisses and then kind of leaves and does his own thing, which is a very interesting thing that I think you guys don't really know about Vinny. I mean, there's lots of other interesting things about Vinny, but those are my top five that I just thought you guys would enjoy. And those are my top five positive things about Vinny. I mean, yes, it is oddly positive that there is a sack of feathers in my house possessed by a mafia slash gangsta member. Maybe if you guys want, I'll do a video of the five negative things about Vinny because I do not recommend these birds to anybody. Did you hear that Vinny? I did not recommend you. Are you angry about that? Oh, tasty. Oh, and one thing. Wait, what? Oh, I didn't tell him about that. He is very silky. He has really silky feathers and he wants you to know. And honestly, besides like a major Mitchell cockatoo, he is one of the softest feather bird you will ever touch in your life. So yeah, that's like another positive. Anyway, guys, I love you. Check out my merch if you guys want to become part of the Vinny gang because it's the best gang to be a part of. The link is below if you guys want to become a flighter and part of the flighters club, let me know. And just, you know, share this video. I love you guys so, so much. Bye. And guys, don't forget to check out my new line of organic bird food called Marlene Signature Blend made with tops for small and large birds. I love that you guys are sharing it on social media, tagging me in your YouTube unboxings and your Instagram stories. If you tag me in your Instagram story of your bird getting his food, I will definitely share it in my highlights. I love you guys so much. The link is below.


This paper discusses the challenges faced by out-of-class students when working independently on tasks using cloud technology. Students reported that they need detailed instructions, as well as careful planning of how much time it will take them to complete the task. Additionally, they suggested that these tasks should be automated and monitored through a pedagogical diagnostic system. This article was authored by Oleksandr H. Calvitin, Larissa S. Calvitina, Nadia S. Ponomeriva, and others.


Studies of individual problem areas along the reservoir shoreline were made to determine which of three new approaches to malaria control would be utilized in each area. These approaches, diking and dewatering, deepening and filling, and restricting land use to daytime occupancy, offered permanent values in establishing control and avoided the excessive costs for repetitive measures such as lava siding and marginal growth control. One of land use to daytime occupancy as a malaria control measure was used in the Daniels Landing Area, a tempered upland region of limited agricultural value and supporting its forest population. Only 150 families lived in the 24,000 acres selected, averaging less than one family per mile of Lake Shoreline. After being paid a fair price for easement rights, some families tore down their old houses and with a salvaged lumber built modern homes. Old household appliances were replaced by more modern conveniences. Other families built new houses. These relocated homes were usually within commuting distance of the restricted areas so that farming or other land use could be carried on during the daytime hours. Some old houses were left in place and converted into barns and storehouses. Others with frameworks sturdy enough to withstand the strain were moved to new locations where they frequently underwent extensive remodeling. Deepening and filling is theoretically the most desirable permanent improvement measure for the control of mosquito production on impounded water because little maintenance is required, reservoir storage capacity is not reduced, and the reclaimed land may be utilized. The shoreline is straightened and shortened by elimination of inlets and shallow bays that might otherwise become problem areas, thus reducing the total area over which control must be maintained. Deepening and filling for malaria control on impounded waters eliminates shallow areas and creates a steeper and more regular shoreline exposed to wave action. Such conditions are unfavorable for mosquito production. Deepening is especially useful for the elimination of small pockets along the lake margin where diking and dewatering would not be feasible. The usual reservoir clearance preparations preceded deepening and filling. It was also necessary to remove stumps from the areas to be deepened. Extra heavy charges of dynamite were used in order to shatter the stumps and facilitate their subsequent piling and burning. Bulldozers were used to pile the shattered stumps and to level the ground for the operation of the earth-moving machine. The same equipment was used in this operation that was used in highway, railroad and dam construction. The deepening and filling operation consisted of borrowing earth from the lower half of a problem area and placing it in the upper half of the area, thus permanently eliminating it as a mosquito breeding problem. On some of the projects, floodlights were installed and operations continued on a 24-hour basis in order to take advantage of favorable weather. Operations involving these unique methods attracted the attention of many visitors interested in malaria control. The newly created shoreline was graded to an 8-to-1 slope so that wave action would not cause excessive erosion. The problem areas were in the upper three feet of the reservoir, but marginal plant growth has limited variations and the ground level made a highly irregular shoreline. But in creating a new shoreline, these irregularities were eliminated. The actual reduction in shoreline and the various deepening and filling projects amounted to more than 50 percent. The ground level of the filled areas was raised above normal pool level of the reservoir. While the borough area was deepened as the other was filled, thus a mosquito breeding area was eliminated. In the largest deepening and filling project where the Blood River tributary enters the reservoir, more than 400 acres of problem flats were eliminated, and the shoreline was reduced by 20 miles. The improved regular shoreline in the Eagle Creek area represents a reduction of nearly nine miles and promises excellent mosquito control with a minimum of maintenance. An examination of the base area of the Eagle Creek project illustrates the economy of deepening and filling in selected areas. A reduction of 8- and 6-tenths miles of shoreline was affected and a total of 155- and one-tenth acres of problem flats eliminated. Had the project not been initiated, annual conventional larvicidal control was estimated to cost $4,000 for the area. This was reduced to $900 by the construction of the project, a saving of $3,100 in annual out-of-pocket costs. Selections of projects for diking and dewatering were based on a careful analysis of such factors as size of area, amount of natural drainage, cost of construction and upkeep of the dikes and interior ditching, expected savings in reservoir preparation which would accrue by not having to clear the area of trees and anticipated income from rental of land behind a dike or sale of timber from this area. The 22 miles of levies or dikes in the eight diking and dewatering projects required movement of one and three-quarter million cubic yards of earth. The guidelines of unusually large capacity were used in some of these operations. Tractor-powered graders were used to establish the slopes. A typical dike has a very gradual slope on the lakeside where it is exposed to wave action. The dikes were sorted to prevent erosion of the slopes. Good Bermuda turf cut by special machines was transported to the dike. The entire slope was not blanketed with sod, as is frequently the practice and other sodding operations. Instead, the sod was cut into small pieces and dropped in furrows about a foot apart. The small cuttings will quickly take root and spread over the slope, thus preventing excessive erosion. At each diking project, electric or gasoline-powered pumping stations were installed to dewater the area behind the dikes during the mosquito breeding season. These plants were built of reinforced concrete and simple modern design. They project above the dike, high enough to keep the power equipment above the maximum flood surcharge level. Depending upon the size of the drainage area behind each dike, the capacity of the pumps installed at the eight projects ranges from 16,000 to 250,000 gallons per minute. In the largest plant where pumping is expected to be almost continuous during the mosquito breeding season, six electrically powered pumps were set in place. In more remotely located plants, where intermittent pumping is anticipated during the summer, automatic gasoline-powered pumps are used. The watering of the areas at the beginning of the mosquito breeding season is expected to require from 12 to 24 days each spring, depending on the size of the project. The total area behind the dikes of the eight projects amounts to approximately 9,000 acres. Interior drainage systems were constructed, which carried runoff to the pumping station by a series of laterals leading to a main ditch and sump. In some instances, these ditches served immediately as a function of draining potted water from low-lying spots in the dikes area. Interior drainage behind the dikes required the construction of more than 93 miles of ditches and a movement of more than 800,000 cubic yards of earth. The Big Sandy River was diverted from its natural channel for several miles. Railroad and highway fields located in the open reservoir where clearance has been completed require either a broad base with gentle slopes or its steeper slopes are used. Riff wrapping is necessary to prevent erosion. And railroad fields within unclear dike areas are protected against wave action. This makes it possible to use steeper slopes. No riprap is necessary. Frequently the amount of earth required is less than one half of that needed for broad fields. An illustration of these construction features may be found in the Camden area. On the far side of the reservoir, the railroad and highway field were located in the dike area where they are protected by trees. In contrast, costly rip wrapping was required on the opposite side of the reservoir where the field would be exposed to wave action. The total cost of permanent malaria control works in the Kentucky reservoir was $2,664,300. However, economy is resulting from alterations in reservoir preparation because of malaria control projects totaled $1,203,350. Thus, the net investment for permanent control works was reduced to $1,460,950 by coordination between malaria control projects and other reservoir preparations. And a fundamental importance is the fact that these capital costs result in a substantial reduction in the recurring maintenance costs which would otherwise be necessary for malaria control.


So Bob has a Masonic event today, and I was gonna stay home, but Yeah, obviously I'm dressed. I'm not I'm not staying home It's that's okay mister is all dressed up I Have on an outfit most of which I've made well at least half of what I'm wearing. I've made so yay I do have a ball of yarn in my bag because you know while they're practicing or something and And I am bringing my flower bag cuz why not all right cuz I need it all right I don't have any pockets in this dress. So I need a bag All right, we're gonna head out. I'll be back. I don't think I've logged before just now and it's I don't know what time is it? 402 p.m. Monday December 11th. Yeah It's just one of those days recovering from the vid, you know, you have Up days and down days and yeah today I kind of just had trouble getting myself out of bed and getting myself to do anything just no energy But that being said it did get some crocheting done. I did get some gift wrapping done I've got this pile of You can't really see it, but there's a pile of boxes there anyway, I'm gonna go put a couple more tags on things and We maybe go get the mail if I can make it to the box and back Yeah, yeah, anyway, I'll be back Tuesday 12 noon straight up and as you can hear juniors here for a couple hours and I Wasn't doing 100% this morning. I'm still recovering and I'm having issues of fatigue and low-grade headaches and Occasionally the headaches aren't all the time. Anyway, despite that I got the vlog edited and scheduled for tomorrow. I also enabled a new thing where Members of my channel can actually view it early so if you want to be a member of my channel go check that out and I Also got some iOS updates on my desktop done and my phone which we're filming on is done and now my Newer of my two tablets the other one's even older than the one That's here by the sofa It's updating the other one so old it won't update any more past past iOS 15 point something I don't know, but I only use it to read Kindle books on so it's fine Anyway Junior can hear that. I'm talking to the camera. He's like, oh my what are you doing? So anyway, I'm gonna focus on that and then I will be finishing or continuing work on my sweater and the scarf that I'm crocheting for my dad today. Hopefully I can get the scarf done today. We'll see and Mostly it depends on how I'm feeling We're gonna try going for a neighborhood walk today. We haven't walked in about a month because of the vid We might get back from the walk and just Sleep, but we'll see but we're gonna try to do that late this afternoon. So we'll see how that goes I'll be back. So we're gonna go out for a walk. This is the first time we've done this since we got sick with the vid I don't know how far we're gonna get but we're gonna give it a shot. Give a shot. Yeah, I'll be there noon I would say good morning. But yeah, it is afternoon. It's four o'clock Wednesday, December 13th I still have brain from having the vid foggy brain and By the way, I'm avoiding saying the full word because of YouTube algorithms. Anyway, you all get my idea I Woke up this morning thinking it was Monday and we forgot to put the garbage cans out Yeah, so anyway I did watch the grandson for a couple hours, although I am still recovering. I'm able to watch him for short bursts As long as barring an emergency which I Would do what needs doing we don't move around too quickly Because Oma tends to get a little dizzy But if there was an emergency you better believe that grandson of mine would be safe I might be barfing in the corner, but he'd be safe. Anyway I am feeling better all of that being said. I am feeling a lot better than I was Feeling even just yesterday. Am I still recovering? Yes I have discovered that My renewed interest in crocheting and needlework is good because that is something I can do from here on this sofa Which I think I've said already Although Deciding to create something that requires precision When you have foggy brain It's probably not a great idea. I Started this sweater This sweater It's a round-joke pattern. I've done before I'll link it down below. It's actually fairly easy if you Have all your marbles together and awake But this has been ripped out a couple times because I keep yeah Getting foggy-brained. Anyway, I did it for the pattern and then after row like for I did some crochet cables and Then I did the pattern as is Can you spot the mistake row?  Because there is one Anyway, I'm just gonna stay there. Probably nobody will ever notice it except me. So you know what? It is what it is Anyway, it's done with half double crochet in the back loop I Might try it at one point with just regular half double crochet because I'm kind of curious what it would look like and It wouldn't have this sort of strivy textured effect, but I might like I might like that. So I don't know love to see But yeah, you shouldn't probably be doing these when you have foggy brain issues I also wasn't sure I was gonna have enough yarn, but I Did frog it once because it was too big and I don't know why but anyway, I adjusted the stitch count and now it's just fine. So Yeah, anyway Junior went home at lunchtime and I've been working on the sweater since then I also got the Christmas letter for the cards, which we still have not sent out Re-edited Bob's gonna review it before he comes down for the evening and if it is okay I'm gonna print it and then I'll take it to go get photocopies tomorrow Yes, I do photocopies because we sent out We are on the regulars depending on the year and honestly how many people have passed away Anywhere between 80 and 125 Christmas cards every year. So I'm gonna go make copies because that's too many Did I do anything else? Oh I wrapped I did I wrapped I told you you guys I'm forgetful on a good day I wrapped the rest of the Christmas presents that I had Bob has some he has to wrap But I got everything else wrapped and it is under the tree One of the things I think I'll do tomorrow is pick up some more gift wrap stamps for the Christmas cards and the photocopies if I can get him to look at the letter. So Anyway, I Think that's it for the minute. I'm gonna just sit and chill and have some water Excuse me maybe another cough drop and Watch some YouTube Those of you who follow my adventures with the RT trio I am sorry that I wasn't able to participate last month because we got sick I'm honestly not sure if I can do the next one or not. We'll have to see how I'm feeling I have another week or so I Have no idea. I absolutely no idea. So we'll have to see. All right That's it for the minute. I'll be back guys. So I still have to put sleeves on it yet Yeah, I kind of like it. What do you think hold on I would wear it just like this the sweater over a thrifted men's shirt and some black leggings I Kind of like it It's a little crazy.  It's a little big, but you know what I'm okay with it So Not bad for Something you kind of lost count on a couple of times everybody. It's 1042 a.m. Thursday December 14th, I almost said November Feeling better every day is a little bit better The fatigue I feel like it's starting to wear off But the vertigo or motion sickness is It's intermittent when it comes it comes on strong, so I just move slowly We are Obviously in the car Gotta readjust everything I've got to go run a few errands. We still haven't mailed out our Christmas cards, and we need stamps And I have to go a couple other places, but first any gas so yeah then I'm gonna come home and try to finish my blue sweater and I'm gonna start making notes on patterns. I've either made up or Adjusted to fit me well to just be something I like and I'm gonna just start having a notebook That's not something I ever thought I'd have but yeah, anyway Work on that this afternoon, too. I also still need to write up the afghan pattern. I made while I was sick For patrons, so I'll put a picture here. So anyway, I need to do that still I'll be back Morning everybody. It is Friday morning the 15th of December. Although it is late in the morning. It's almost 11 o'clock. I Did not want to go get out of the shower if you didn't notice by the head wrap But I also Got some laundry done. You don't probably hear in the background I actually got a loaf of bread in the bread machine like that hasn't happened since before Thanksgiving because we got sick with the vid Anyway Yes, I'm feeling better That's the short story to that So anyway, it's all good so I am gonna just sit and have some water and watch some YouTube and relax a minute. I am recovering and Doing well I'm not a hundred percent, but I'm getting close. I still have some shortness of breath and some occasional dizziness and Is it fatigue right now or laziness? It's a very fine line as my husband said so Anyway, most of the nausea is gone. I'm happy about that. So All right, I'm gonna sit for a minute. Take a breather. I'll be I would say good morning, but it's already almost 1 30 Saturday December 16th, I think Yesterday I did actually kind of get a lot done Bob and I are nearing feeling normal Every now and then we'll still have a symptom that'll pop up, but it's much better than it was I started a new sweater yesterday And I also started making notes about Different patterns patterns. I've come up with patterns That I've come up with it or based on somebody else's pattern changes I've made to it to have it work best for me I Finally decided a crochet notebook is a good idea Right now. I'm working with ooh Cascade yarns eco duo, which is an alpaca wool blend super soft and Having a lot of fun with that the kids came over for dinner last night and Yeah, it was all good today. Obviously, we're in the truck We're gonna we're in task.  Hopefully tonight we can get our Christmas cards sent out finally So sign them Shine them stamp them all this all the things So We'll see. All right. I'll be back. I was putting gas in the tank I will say that I created some things for the patrons and supporters that I can put in their Christmas cards Yes, I do send it them Christmas cards So that'll happen. Hopefully we'll get all those done today and I Not only still have my designs for sale over at art foam ease They I get a commission when they sell them For my designs, but they have a lot of other designers over there to really great USA based mom and pop company Love their stamps. They're especially great for stamping with watercolor paints fabric paints All the things so go check them out. I'll put a link down below But I also have some of my old rubber stamps are up for sale Yes, I get a commission on them over at a rubber moon Also a USA based mom and pop company. No, they're no longer related or connected to different owners So anyway, that all happened and got confirmed this week Also found out that some of the designs from rubber moon got stolen and posted by somebody on Etsy this morning. I found out I There's a couple that resemble some of mine, but not super closely But I know KP had one over there and it looks like they've taken it down.  Anyway, so that's a thing So, yeah Anyway We have the house cleaner coming tomorrow and this coming week because we're feeling better We'll be doing some babysits sitting so that the kids will be able to catch up on some of their Christmas stuff They need to do Bob is off of work. So he'll be helping me and yeah, it's all good But yeah, I'm feeling a lot better than I was still not a hundred percent but a lot definitely a lot better So it's all good. Anyway, we are going to go hit a couple places. I Don't think we're gonna go any place. We don't need to go But yeah, and I kind of would like to go home and work on my sweater I'm working on But, you know, anyway, all right, I think that's it for the minute always a challenge at any age and Station in life trying to work your favorite thing of creativity into your daily schedule and Your daily life, which is why I continue filming the vlog. You aren't the only one struggling with that I do too. It's a challenge constantly. So I gotcha And maybe we can help each other out trying to figure out how to do exactly that even if it's five minutes It's five minutes. Well spent. All right, that's it for the minute Gonna pump gas and then head over to Costco yay not really but yay I'll be back So it's been a week the good news is we're feeling better And we also I think got all the Christmas shopping done today Did we get much else done? No Not really We're gonna work on the Christmas cards tomorrow. So that'll be a next week's thing I did get some knitting done and my new calculations for the round yoke sweater pattern are working out really good So I'm pretty happy with that It fits really well. It's only taken me like four times, but you know Fourth time's charm Anyway That's it for this week. So don't forget to check out the video description for relevant links ways to support the free content here on YouTube I do have a patreon. I also sell some of my Stamp designs through rubber moon and art foemies. So there'll be links for both down in the video description Yes, I get a commission Um What else? I'm about to send out Christmas cards for the patrons. They get a little free gift They will also get a digital download for those who sign up After the cards go out and don't get a chance to get the one from me. You can still download it and print it and All that jazz. So anyway Have a good week, everybody. Enjoy the upcoming holidays. We certainly will do that It's our first home with the grandson. So that'll be interesting. Although he's too young to remember anything. It's fun for us so anyway, I hope you all have a good one whatever holiday you celebrate have a good one and Stay healthy wash your hands people wash your hands Stay home if you're sick Whether it's the cold or the vid or I don't care. Just don't cough on me. I don't want to give me sick anymore Anyway, that's it for this week. Don't forget to go out and have a good week Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. He's really not grouchy. He just is tired of me talking Bye guys


So let's talk a little bit about a word you might have heard. And that is ion. Let's talk about what it is. And then we'll talk about trends in the periodic table on, I guess, how hard it is to make something an ion. In particular, how hard it is to make something a positive ion. So an ion is just an atom or molecule that has charge. And it'll have charge if the protons are not equal to the electrons. Neutrons are obviously also a constituent of atoms, but neutrons are neutral. What you're going to get your charge from are your protons or electrons. So you're going to have a net charge if your number of protons, and this is for an atom or molecule, molecules just a bunch of atoms bonded together, if the number of protons does not equal the number of electrons. And you can have positive ions if the protons are more than the number of electrons. Protons are positive, electrons are negative. And you could have negative ions if the number of electrons are greater than the number of protons. For example, if you just had hydrogen in its neutral state has one proton and one electron. But if you were to take one of those electrons away, then hydrogen would have a positive charge. And essentially, it would just be in its most common isotope, it would just be a proton by itself. And so when we talk about a positive ion like this, where our protons are more than our electrons, the number of protons are more than the number of electrons, we call these cations. Cation, once again, just another word for positive ion. Likewise, we can have negative ions. So say, for example, fluorine. So fluorine gains an electron. It's going to have a net negative charge. It's going to have a charge of negative 1. And a negative ion, we call an anion. And the way that I remember this is, a kind of means the opposite or the negation or something. So this is a negative ion where we're negating. You could somehow think we are negating the ion. So with that out of the way, let's think about how hard it will be to ionize different elements in the periodic table, in particular, how hard it is to turn them into cations. And to think about that, we'll introduce an idea called ionization energy. Ionization energy. And this is defined as the energy required to remove an electron. So it could have even been called cationization energy, because it really is the energy required to remove an electron and make the overall atom more positive. So let's think about the trends. And we already have a little bit of background on the different groups of the periodic table. So for example, if we were to focus on, especially, we could look at group one. And we've already talked about hydrogens, a bit of a special case in group one. But if we look at everything below hydrogen, if we look at the alkali metals here, we've already talked about the fact that these are very willing to lose an electron. Why? Because if they lose an electron, they get to the electron configuration of the noble gas before it. So if lithium loses an electron, then it has an outer shell electron configuration of helium. It has two outer electrons. And that's kind of, we typically talk about the octet rule. But if we're talking about characters like lithium or helium, they're happy with two, because you can only put two electrons in that first shell. But all the rest of them, sodium, potassium, et cetera, et cetera, if you take an electron away from them, then their outermost shell, well, all of them, they're outermost shell, they're going to have the electron configuration of the noble gas before it. And for sodium on down, that outer shell is going to have that perfect eight. Lithium, if you remove an electron, it would get to helium. It will have two electrons in its outer shell. So you can imagine that the ionization energy right over here, the energy required to remove electrons from your alkali metals is very low. So let me just write it down. So when I say low, I'm talking about low ionization energy. Low. Now what happens as we move to the right of the periodic table? In fact, let's go all the way to the right of the periodic table. Well, if we go here to the noble gases, the noble gases we've already talked about, they're very, very, very stable. They don't want their electron configurations messed with. So it would be very hard. Neon on down has their eight electrons. That octet rule, helium has two, which is full for the first shell. And so it's very hard to remove an electron from here. And so it has a very high ionization energy. Low energy, easy to remove electrons, or especially the first electron. And then here you have a high ionization energy. You have trouble seeing that H. So this is high, high ionization energy. And that's the general trend across the periodic table. As you go from left to right, you go from low ionization energy to high ionization energy. Now what about trends up and down the periodic table? Well, within any group, even if we look at the alkali, if we look at the alkali metals right over here, if we're down at the bottom, if we're looking at, say, cesium right over here, that electron in the one, two, three, four, five, six, in the sixth shell, that's going to be further from that one electron that lithium has in its second shell. So it's going to be further away, it's not going to be as closely bound to the nucleus, I guess you could say. So this is going to be even, that one electron is going to be even easier to remove than the one electron in the outermost shell of lithium. So this one has even lower, even lower. Even lower. And that's even going to be true of the noble gases out here. That xenon, it's electrons in its outermost shell, even though it has eight valence electrons, they're further away from the nucleus. And so the energy required to remove them is still going to be high, but it's going to be lower than the energy from, say, neon or helium. So this is low. So once again, ionization energy, low to high as we go from left to right, and low to high as we go from bottom to top. Or we could say a general trend that if we go from the bottom left to the top right, we go from low ionization energy, very easy to remove an electron from these characters right over here, to high ionization energy. Very hard to remove an electron from these characters over here.


It took me a long time to learn no one is the judge of me. And this isn't quite true, because in many ways I'm judged all the time. At school, at work, on the Twitter sphere, everything I say and write is criticized. But if you aren't careful, this judgment will each you alive, as the comedian Jenny Slate said about a low point in her career.  And this is the terrible side of judgment, the side that stifles creativity and leads us to forget we're all people, we're all more than the sum total of our mistakes. So let's stop giving judgment the final say.


Thank you, Diane Hello everybody, my name is Stefan Fütterling and I'm here with Patrick to present our work at Daimler How we Did the application modernization of the global car configurator and how we brought it on to the OpenShift platform our intention was to be here with our Customer, Benny Rossiart from Daimler who is our product owner in this engagement, but he had such a heavy workload He could not join us So we are from Capgemini. We are doing some of Daimler's large business applications and I have an overarching role as technical account manager Focusing on innovation topics like application modernization cloud and big data And Patrick, do you want to? Yeah, well, I'm actually focusing. I'm a developer at Capgemini And I'm mostly focusing on past platforms and developing applications there Okay, so let's start into the content Yeah Many of you might know this web page the Mercedes Benz dot com web page if you enter it you can see these car models and You have the possibility to enter into the configurator And you have the possibility to configure your own personalized vehicle These websites are one of the front end applications That we have for our global car configurator back end. So what we are talking about is is the back end behind that Consuming applications and it holds the vehicle master data So it knows all about these car models the equipments the prices the taxes The descriptions in many different languages and it can check if a configuration Can be built in a in a plant So more than a year ago. We started a journey here with this global car configurator and if you look at the left side you can see the Starting point where we started we had a quiet traditional Java application so we had fixed release cycle with two release cycles per year we Was built on the license software stack with DB2 and web sphere and the development team handed over the software as a product to different Other departments and those other departments had their own infrastructure. They deployed the application and They also did the operation for the application And as you can see we have even different platforms with Linux and mainframe COS where the application is running and Where we are today is in the middle of this slide We have now a central GCC service and this central CCC service GCC service is running on a Private OpenShift Environment in the download data center it's a set up and operated by T systems and All these Consuming applications are now starting to connect to the central GCC and by the end of the year We want to have all consuming applications Migrated to to the new central GCC There's a large business benefit. So now we have continuous delivery We have zero downtime deployments. We have scalability we have a very good performance and we have a cost reduction because we do not need all these Operational teams and we we have do not have the mainframe and the license software anymore So we are completely on open source. We are cloud ready We have rest interfaces that are published in the corporate API management That's the small epigee box on top and we have a new third-party system that is called WLTP That's the new regulation for the emissions of vehicles and What is now starting is the the third part here GCC and micro services We have already started to Implement selected functionality from the global car configurator as own micro services So the GCC itself will get a little bit smaller and will talk to these micro services And with this micro services, we can avoid redundant functionality in in different business applications So on the next slide on the left side you see still the monolith The the big blue box and the functionality inside the monolith and you can also see that we are having one big database for this monolith and That's our still our status quo and on the right side. You can see this micro services architecture where Special functionality is Implemented in micro services and has its own databases and data supply And we have some architectural decisions made during that journey and also some lessons learned that we have put in the gray box One learning is we started with Jbos for a fast migration of the monolithic Java JEE application into Docker and We decided to start using spring boot if we implement these micro services here on on the right side and We have also decided to use the base containers that are supplied by Red Hat for Jbos and Postgres because we do not Want to build our own base containers and do all this maintenance work So we we had that decision taken and now I hand over to Patrick who will Dive deeper into the component model of our application Thank You Stefan Now going more to forwards to I guess more the technical part of the application like what did we do in our journey and There we started off actually with a lot of questions in mind The first question is how do we integrate the the application actually into the into the OpenShift platform and and then the second question is how does OpenShift actually help us? is there anything that helps us and To that last question I can totally easily say now after the journey Yes, it helps actually a lot the OpenShift platform gave us a lot of Things that we could easily utilize in our application and how we started there it was actually looking at we did some sort of assessment at the component component model of the application and There were a lot of components in there who were not needed anymore suddenly Like we could replace them easily with smaller and easier Components the only component and that's the component that you can see there In this light blue tealish box there That is actually a business kernel. That's the business functionality And that's the thing that we want to keep and OpenShift and allows us that so that we Actually have only the business functionality and only some sort of adapters around that business functionality which are fairly simple to implement and well, of course also we implemented also rest interfaces which are not really related to OpenShift but That was really helpful actually to simplify our application Some examples of what we did there and things that we changed are enlisted there in this table for instance, we did changes to the configuration beforehand all the configuration had to be done in different environments Differently there were actually different scripts running others just manually change the configuration We actually changed our component model so that it now uses the Kubernetes or OpenShift platform capabilities there like config maps secrets environment variables That's how we configure our application now then as already Stefan said we introduced rest interfaces The most important part about that is that we integrate that we use those rest interfaces as some sort of common standard throughout Daimler universe and integrated that into the API management solution of Daimler Then we changed the logging That's a pretty common problem when changing towards a container platform that your containers Will probably die or that they have that you want them to easily die without having any losses And so we are changed the way how we locked and introduce also chasing logging So that we can now aggregate the locks fairly simple Another very important topic for us and for actually performance of the application is We introduced caching distributed remote caches They were fairly simple to set up on the OpenShift platform there. We got the tables data grid From Red Hat and we could easily set that up and got a whole cluster running Distributed cache cluster there Lastly the monitoring chopping which in the end gives us now a lot of insight into the application and on the other hand well Implementing those life nurse checks actually helps also me to have really silent nights So that I do not have to wake up every time a container will die So there are a lot of things that the platform helps us and our main Achievements and main things that we got from there is that first of all we can keep the business functionality and just Do not just put some small adapters around there. They are really simple to implement and replace like like a lot of complexity from our application with Kubernetes or OpenShift specific components and In the end also introduce blue-green deployment to have zero downtime deployments for the application Now going a little more in depth Into the rest interface. I do not want to stretch that too much. I mean rest is I guess pretty common but The interesting part here is as I already said that we introduced that into the API management solution of Daimler which is called one API and There we could again utilize the concept of the platform We now have a small API gateway running in front of our container the small API gateway is Therefore Doing all the authentication stuff. It's actually a pretty good separation of concerns that we have now There and it gathers a lot of metrics Which API's are called how often and stuff like that So That's Yeah, we were actually coming from soap and arm I that that is also really that was actually a problem for us in our journey that there were a lot of different interfaces that we were using and that the systems the consuming applications actually used different Ways to communicate with the with the application Now having all that in place We now had the problem. How do we actually test that we didn't want to go live like Easily we wanted to see what how does it perform? How would it perform in a productive environment? and that's one thing that is I guess very interesting also for for having Everyone who actually wants to move towards such an open shift platform we introduced We introduced actually load test scripts Which were which are run outside of the outside of the cluster against our our cluster this Load test scripts these low-test scripts Emulate the usage of the car configurator so how would a common user of the car configurator use the application the Configure a the configurator in our case. He would probably come from a certain market have speaker language We would randomly select that for him He would probably choose a random vehicle and want to come once to configure that and changes the equipment and in the end maybe gets alternatives And selects one of those alternatives and What we could see there is and that's also very interesting Because see our cluster performing and in like a almost live productive environment like productive scenario and See all the auto scaling working and see how there may be bottlenecks are and I guess that was also a journey for a lot of us that That the cluster itself we actually helped in in building up the cluster and there were a lot of settings that we had to adjust so that Not a lot of settings some settings that had to be in just so that everything works fine for us So this load test we actually created that and we run even longer tests with that And I would everyone recommend to try to stress your application and of course also the cluster But mostly the application so that you can see that and really try to bring it down That's the the interesting part here Lastly I Want to speak about I guess the most important and also the most difficult part of our journey and There we are still working on That's actually the cultural change change that we are going through right now It's regarding a DevOps operating model because When we move to to this platform there was suddenly a new separation between tasks of several teams Before hand we actually gave the application to some operations team and they Operated the virtual machine. They operated the application server All for us and they also operated the application for us But now on this platform Those guys not do not operate our containers anymore They just operate the platform and that's where they stop and Now there's a gap which has to be filled in and so That's also learning and that really fits well. We are already recognizing that really right now That we started to introduce DevOps into the processes so that the developers actually start to to operate the software and in the end Yeah Yeah, and in the end are also gaining a little more are becoming more responsible for the application and I guess that's something that In the end helps a lot, but it needs a lot of cultural change Importantly to say here is When you start moving towards such a platform think about that pretty soon I guess so that you tackle that problem early because it can have some impact on the on the on the yeah on the culture and And plan your team or maybe even Yeah, like somehow Give your team some more knowledge do some knowledge transfer to them so that they gain those operations Knowledge the operations knowledge that they need to operate the applications on the platform Yeah, and lastly, that's the most that's the one single thing to say here move towards such a Product organ a product team organization like a DevOps organization Well in regards to the time. Thank you very much for