All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to classic Tuesdays at the Bedford Playhouse Virtual Playhouse Edition. I'm Dan, I'm the director of development and programming and very happy to be talking tonight about one of my favorite films from quite a while now sweet smell of success with Bert Lancaster and Tony Curtis. Susan Harrison, Martin Milner and directed by Alexander McKendrick. Before we start, if there are any new people among us who have not become accustomed to zoom at this point. If you would like to ask any questions. The Q&A button is at the bottom of your screen on your laptop or PC. It is at the top of your screen if you're on your iPad or iPhone feel free to ask any questions, make any comments. Anything you'd like to share any thoughts. It's a really great film that has a lot of different things going for it, which we're going to try and cover tonight. Just a reminder that the playhouse is still closed due to the effects of COVID-19 virus. We do hope to be able to reopen as soon as we have permission from the state to do so. But in the meantime, we are going to try to continue to operate virtually and bring programs such as this as often as we can, as well as many other different types of events, author talks, and a couple of lectures that we're doing to help people get through COVID. So please check out our website. If you would like to see some of our upcoming programs, and also if you are so inclined, I know there are many of you who have been very generous and contributed to help us through this time. If you haven't, please consider taking a moment to do so at some point in the next couple of weeks. Okay, the commercial now being over. Let's talk about sweet smell of success. It's a film war released in 1957, and it has a very fairly impressive pedigree. Although it was not very well received when it was released, its reputation has improved tremendously over the years in film schools and in art house cinemas in no small part because of the cast, the cinematography and the screenplay, which are all often cited as the textbook examples of those disciplines in the film industry. It was produced by Hect Hill Lancaster, which as the name implies was a production company that Bert Lancaster had formed in the late 1940s with his agent Harold Hect soon to be joined by his partner James Hill. And he became one of the first actors to produce films on a consistent basis, mostly for himself but occasionally for others. And they did a number of notable films in the 1950s, including Vera Cruz, Apache, separate tables and the Birdman of Alcatraz in addition to sweet smell of success. He also actually produced the film Marty which you may remember, won the best picture Oscar in 1955 and Ernest Borgnein, won the best actor that was a film that they produced which Bert Lancaster did not appear in. It's based on sweet smell of success is based on a novelette by Ernest layman and you may remember that name. He's much better known these days as a six time Academy Award nominated screenwriter, and among his credits were the sound of music and Sabrina and West Side Story. Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf, and perhaps what he's most famous for because he wrote a very great book about it was North by Northwest with Alfred Hitchcock he was a screenwriter of North by Northwest. But at this time he's just a novelist, sometimes journalist, not very successful. The screenplay is credited to Lehman, and also to the celebrated playwright from the 1930s Clifford Odette's, who is best remembered for his participation with the group theater back in the 30s, and plays such as golden boy and awake and waiting for lefty many of which were adapted for films golden boy was made into a great film with William Holden. And also the director himself Alexander McKendrick also collaborated on the screenplay although he did not get screen credit for it. The original story was in cosmopolitan magazine appeared in cosmopolitan magazine under the title, tell me about it tomorrow. And the reason they changed the title was because the editor, I guess did not like the word smell and didn't want to be used as part of that. But it was based on layman's own experiences working for a New York press agent, who was named Irving Hoffman, and Hoffman subsequently, after the publication of this of this novel at really didn't speak to layman for a year and a half, but he then later did write a column for the Hollywood reporter, in which he speculated that layman was someone who might make a good screenwriter. And within a week, layman had a contract with paramount pictures and his career was on its way. William Hecht Hill Lancaster had acquired the rights layman was in position to not only write the screenplay but also to direct the film. But they had second thoughts about that since layman had never really had any experience as a director. And so they hired Alexander McKendrick, who was a British actor director, excuse me, making his American debut with this film. And McKendrick had done a lot of great work for the Ealing Studios in Britain. They were known for making a number of classic comedies, usually with some general common theme about a simple man up against the establishment, usually played by Alec Guinness. The best known of these are the man in the white suit, and the lady killers, both of which were directed by McKendrick. He was originally signed on by Hecht Hill Lancaster to adapt a George Bernard Shaw play called The Devil's Disciple, but that project fell apart in pre production, although they would revisit it later. And he asked to be released from his contract but the producers refused to release it from his contract. And so he was assigned to direct sweet smell of success instead. He had a lot of reservations about filming the screenplay because it was so heavy with dialogue. So he and layman worked on it for several weeks to try to make it more cinematic show don't tell. Towards the end of that process. However, layman became very ill, and he had to resign from the production so McKendrick suggested that Odette's replace him. And at this time Odette's reputation was tarnished because he had named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee so he ended up coming fairly cheap. And they assumed he would only need a couple of weeks to polish the script, but he ended up taking four months. So shooting actually started without a final script. Odette's had a company the production to Manhattan and keep rewriting as they were shooting. That ended up being somewhat traumatic for him. He had all these neuroses about returning to New York after they had more or less shunned him for going to Hollywood in the first place. And so he developed all sorts of ticks and little habits that some of which ended up reflected in the script. But the pace meant that pages would go literally from his typewriter to being shot the same day with McKendrick and the cast rehearsing and making edits to the lines virtually on the fly. So it was not a typical way of working. It was very much a harried process. The producers did allow him, he had never been to New York City. So they allowed him to familiarize himself with New York before the shooting began, particularly in that area between 42nd Street and 57th Street. And so the city is really its own character in the movie and it captures the energy of the crowded sidewalks and they were trying to make it analogous to a story where the characters, virtually all of them are driven by greed or ambition. Tony Curtis had to fight for his role of Sidney Falco because Universal, which is the studio to which he was contracted, was worried that it was going to ruin his career. And he was tired of doing all the pretty boy roles that he had been known for. And he wanted to prove he could act. And he ended up getting his way obviously he paved the way for him to get future roles such as the defiant ones, and some like it hot which showed off his range, a bit more. And although Bert Lancaster has top billing, Tony Curtis has way more screen time and carries much more of the film's plot. The character of JJ Hunsaker was based on the famous gossip columnist Walter Winchell, and originally Alexander MacKendrick wanted Hume Cronin for the part, because he resembled Winchell. And then there was a flirtation with both Orson Welles and Frank Sinatra for the role, but Ernest Lehman always insisted that while Winchell was the inspiration for the character that was in the novelette. It wasn't necessarily the same character as it appears in the film. So United Artists wanted Bert Lancaster, both because of his box office appeal, and because he had paired with Tony Curtis in a very successful film called Trapeze. And so they figured that formula would would repeated success. Bert Lancaster, of course, began as a circus acrobat in the 1930s and after he served in World War Two, he began to build a career in Hollywood as a leading man, his breakthrough role being the killers, which also launched the career of Ava Gardner who co-starred with him in that movie. But he really didn't, he really didn't make it very, very much until his late 30s, early 40s, and then he rattled off a whole succession of great films, of course, from Here to Eternity, The Rainmaker, and Gunfight at the OK Corral were some of the more notable titles on his resume at that point. Gunfight at the OK Corral was one of the first of seven films that he made with Kirk Douglas. They developed a little bit of a buddy film identity and did several films after that. So Sweet Small Success was shot in 1956, late 1956, and McKendrick said they're quite a bit of duress because Pect Hill Lancaster had this reputation for firing directors for little or no reason, but he was also accustomed to extensive rehearsals prior to a scene being shot. But as we mentioned, he found himself shooting pages that had only just been written an hour or two in advance. So in addition to all of that, Burt Lancaster as the producer and the leading man proved to be somewhat of an intimidating presence because he had a notoriously short fuse. And so McKendrick decided to take advantage of this by having Burt Lancaster wear his own glasses while he's in character as Hunsaker, which gives him the appearance of being both a tough guy and a scholar. And that conflict appealed to them quite a bit. They also smeared a little thin layer of Vaseline on all of the camera lenses, which kept Lancaster from focusing his eyes and gave him sort of this perpetually blank stare because he couldn't look into the camera quite the same way.  It also didn't help their stress level that they were shooting on location in the busiest and noisiest areas of New York City. And they often had to fight off crowds of Tony Curtis fans who broke through the police barricades. They were essentially shooting in Times Square at rush hour with high powered actors and a camera crane, but no script. And this was one reason why the original $600,000 budget ballooned over $2 million by the time the production wrapped. It's completely appropriate to mention James Wong Howe, who was the cinematographer on this film. It was a Chinese born cinematographer. He started working in silent films and by the 1930s and 40s, he was one of the most sought after technicians in Hollywood. And he worked on many, many films, classic films, way too numerous to mention, known for his use of shadows and for his deep focus where the foreground and the background of the shot all remain in focus at the same time. It's the same effect that you see probably most famously in Citizen Kane, which was shot by Greg Toland, but how actually had pioneered the technique just before that. So even though Citizen Kane gets a lot of credit for that effect, they were not the first to do it. James Wong Howe also pioneered the use of the wide angle lens and low key lights and he is the first one to really use camera dollies to give you that horizontal movement of the camera without any bumps or or hiccups. He earned 10 Academy Award nominations, he won twice. And he was revered in the industry he was selected as one of the 10 most influential cinematographers in the history of the medium. And yet in spite of all these successes, as you might imagine, given the time period, he faced a lot of significant racial discrimination in his private life he was married to a Caucasian woman who was not legally recognized their marriage was not legally recognized until 1948. But for all of that, he was truly a master of his craft and I've mentioned a couple of times during these talks there's a great documentary called Visions of Light, which is about the art of cinematography and it is available on YouTube and other places and if you're a fan photography or cinematography I cannot recommend it enough. There's a section on James Wong Howe and deep focus and this this style of filming which is just phenomenal. So for sweet smell of success. They chose to shoot it in black and white with a style that would be reminiscent of New York tabloid photography. So, as we know, the film tells the story of a powerful and kind of sleazy newspaper columnist named JJ Hunsaker, who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man that he deems unworthy of her. He enlists the morally bankrupt press agent Sydney Falco, by among other things, bribing him into planting false rumors about his sister's boyfriend to break them up. And as things spiral out of control, he gets more determined to the point where even Falco wants no more part of the scheme anymore, but he can't he himself can't resist the potential opportunities that are presented to him. So we're going to play a couple of clips. We're going to play the first one right now. This is towards the beginning of the film where we meet Hunsaker really for the first time as Sydney Falco joins him in a nightclub. So we'll play that clip please. Oh yes, Justice Mike. That's right. But I believe I had it in my column last July, the lead item. Oh, I believe that's precisely where I read it too. You see, JJ, where I get my reputation for being the best informed man in Washington. Now don't kid a kidder. Well, I don't think we caught your name, young man. Sydney Falco or so, but everybody knows it in my shoes, Senator Walker. Every six years I've become less convinced of that. Well, this young lady is Miss Linda James. She's managed by Manny Davis. I know Manny Davis. Everyone knows Manny Davis, except Mrs. Manny Davis. Go ahead, Billy, shoot. Uh-huh. Sports cars are getting smaller and smaller in California. The other day you were crossing Hollywood Boulevard and you got hit by one. And you had to go to the hospital to get it removed. Billy, you're not following in the column I had it last week. Senator, do you believe in capital punishment? Why? A man has just been sentenced to death. Manny, tell me, what exactly are the unseen gifts of this lovely young thing that you manage? Well, she sings a little. You know, she sings. Manny's faith in me is simply awe-inspiring, Mr. Hunsaker. Actually, I'm still studying. What subject? Singing, of course. A straight concert. Well, why, of course. You might, for instance, be studying politics. Uh, me? I mean, I... You must be kidding, Mr. Hunsaker, me with my Jersey City brains. The brains may be Jersey City, but the clothes are trained in the rail. Are you an actor, Mr. Falco? That's what I was thinking. Are you Mr. Falco? Well, how did you guess it, Miss James? He's so pretty. That's how. Mr. Falco, let it be said at once, there's a man of 40 faces, not one. None too pretty. Can't all deceptive. Is she that grim? That's the, uh... That's the charming speeder chin face. It's part of his helpless act. He throws himself upon your mercy. He's got a half dozen faces for the ladies. But the one I like, the really cute one, is the quick, dependable chap. Nothing he won't do for you in a pinch.  Match me, Sidney. Not right this minute, JJ. Well, you can see there the, uh, they established the relationship between the two of them right away. Uh, you know, he sits behind him, slightly behind him. Uh, certainly, you know, Hunsaker is the more dominating personality, or he's trying to be. And the whole, the whole bit about match me, Sidney, which has been referenced many times, along with several other moments of this film, in many examples of pop culture, is just one of the enduring parts of this film.  Uh, Hunsaker's power mad, Falco's an opportunist, the police lieutenant is corrupt, uh, and, and so on. And if you recall the scenes with the cigarette girl, uh, in the club and then later in Sidney's apartment, we learned that, you know, Sidney Falco is just as unethical as anyone else. And those are perfect examples of that. Uh, we see it in that scene there with the senator. Uh, and, and we didn't see, but what happens right after that, uh, is the implication that, uh, you know, the senator is, is having an affair and is in the, in the, uh, on the take. Um, nothing's sugar coated. Uh, you know, which for 1957, uh, was not, um, uh, not completely unheard of, but certainly not, uh, the common, uh, themes you would see in films from the time. Uh, they talk in a way that New Yorkers wish they talked, but they don't. Um, the exception, the one exception in terms of the characters is Susan, uh, Hansika sister Susan played by the actor Susan Harrison, who is the real, uh, I guess a victim or innocent or whatever you want to call her. Um, and her, her wardrobe is the visual cue for her distress. It gets shabbier as the film goes on. We see her, she's wearing a fur coat.  Uh, it's, it's a, it's kind of an indicator of, of her state of mind, um, leading up to the end. Uh, but she is the only one who can really hurt Hansika and the expression on his face, uh, in their final scene together is almost cartoonish, uh, with the way that Bert Lancaster uses his eyes, uh, and, and, uh, the blank look on his face, uh, tells you virtually everything. Um, Susan Harrison incidentally only appeared in one other film in her career. So, uh, this is quite an achievement for her, for such a short resume, the fact that she, uh, had two career films, uh, I think is something to be said. Uh, the police lieutenant who is, uh, the muscle that Hansika employs, uh, who's on the take is, is based on a real police officer who's also said to have been the inspiration for Jean Hackman's character in the French connection. Um, so he, he was adapted into two, uh, classic films. Uh, in a somewhat of a weird parallel to real life, which was not really so unintentional. Um, Walter Winshaw, who's Hansika is based on, was so obsessive with his daughter's love life that he had her institutionalized for being emotionally unstable. And with the help of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, forced her lover to leave the country. Um, which just goes to show you the power that Winshaw had. And of course, everyone was terrified of him, especially during the McCarthy period. Uh, he was perhaps the most powerful journalist in the country. Uh, and that the filmmakers took many, many steps to try and keep him from ruining the film. Uh, the, the jazz band, uh, jazz band is portrayed by the Chico Hamilton quintet. Uh, and they were chosen partly because they represented the styles that were popular at the time. Um, but also because they were clean. Uh, the producers were constantly screening them for drugs, uh, to avoid giving Winshaw any ammunition that he could potentially use, uh, against the film. The film's score, speaking of jazz, uh, jazz was obviously very important to it, but the score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who, uh, you've probably seen his name on many, many films over the years. He had a long storied career in Hollywood. Uh, but he also combined orchestral music with modern jazz, including the songs that are performed in the club scenes, uh, to try and provide a backdrop. And it gives a suggestion, the idea of using jazz was to, uh, suggest cynicism in what is essentially, uh, a riff on the show biz drama genre and both styles of music intersect around a common theme, which is a song called Goodbye Baby. If you listen to the soundtrack, you'll hear, uh, there, there are 14 orchestra, uh, cues and seven jazz cues and the orchestra cues sort of sandwich the jazz. You have, um, seven examples of that happening throughout the film and it's very interesting how they, they use that song to transition back and forth between the motifs. Uh, upon release, you know, the film was a box office failure.  Uh, Alexander McKendrick in his biography, uh, recalls seeing audience members during the previews curling up and recoiling in their seats, uh, in disgust. Um, seems a little over dramatic, but, uh, the failure of the film caused a rift between Lancaster and his producing partners, but in retrospect, um, Lancaster spoke very highly of the film, also believed that Tony Curtis should have been nominated for an Oscar. Uh, Tony Curtis consistently, uh, listed this one as the favorite, um, uh, of all the films that he had done. Uh, so it actually had some legs much beyond its, um, its public reception. Um, Walter Winchell, of course, was thrilled that the film bombed. Uh, and at one preview showing, uh, it's reported that an audience member and filling out the, the comment cards that they used for test screenings commented that the filmmaker shouldn't change anything. Just, just burn all the prints. Uh, so there was quite a, uh, passionate reaction, uh, to the film when it was previewed and then it was released. The critical reception was much more favorable. Uh, it was included on many top 10 lists for 1957. Uh, its reputation since then has only grown and it's considered one of the best of all New York movies because it captures that atmosphere of Times Square and big city journalism that's representative of the period. Many modern day critics cite the dialogue and often do so in a manner because they're bemoaning the lost art of the spoken word in films, uh, in the age of special effect blockbusters, which, uh, I can't say I blame them. Uh, and just to, um, we have one more clip we're going to play that just, uh, has a little bit of an example of that type of dialogue. Where's Chris? I got that boy coming over here today. If I can trust my eyes and I think I can, he knows all about your dirty work. Can't hurt? Can't hurt. I had to get that boy's job back. Look, JJ, we can tie this off in a one-need bundle, address it to the dumps, to oblivion. We're doing great, but please do it my way. I've cased this kid. I know his ins and outs.  You got the boy's job back. Okay. But he's not going to accept your favor. The manager, yeah, but not that boy. What does this boy got that Susie likes? Integrity. Acute. Like indigestion. What does this mean? Integrity.  Waiting for a match. You know, it's a new wrinkle. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd make a killing on some guy's integrity. I'd hate to take a bite out of you.   That line has, like the match-me line has been referenced many, many, many times since it debuted in this film. And for those of you who are television fans from some time ago, the young man who plays the boyfriend, Martin Milner, you might remember him from Route 66. Or he was also one of the police officers on item 12 for about seven years in the late 60s and early 70s. Those two TV shows are what he's really best known for. So of course, after the production of this film, Bert Lancaster continued with really an exceptional career through the 50s and 60s. In addition to the films produced by Hacktail Lancaster, he appeared in Elmer Gantry, which won him an Academy Award. A judgment at Nuremberg where he played the Nazi judge seven days in May, the train, Atlantic City. And after he had a relatively lean period in the 70s, he kind of capped his career in the 1980s with the film's local hero, where he plays the corporate oil executive and his final film appearance, which was in Field of Dreams, which is one of my favorite movies. Certainly, he gives a very, very memorable performance in that film. After Sweet Smell of Success, Alexander McKendrick went back to England to make The Devil's Disciple for Hacktail Lancaster, which is the one that they were trying to get off the ground before Sweet Smell of Success. They finally got things straightened out, but he was fired a month into the production. And then he was hired to direct the Guns of Navarone, but he was fired from that film, allegedly for being too much of a perfectionist and because he was spending too much time scouting locations on the Mediterranean coast. I can blame him. He made a handful of minor films in the 60s, but by the end of the decade, he returned to the United States and he became dean of the film school at the California Institute of the Arts. And he actually, among his students are many, many prominent directors the one I think probably most notable still working today is James Mangold, who's done a number of really great films. He was Alexander McKendrick's student back at that time. Given the lack of success that the film had upon its release, it's generated really an amazing, significant legacy. In 2002, it was adapted into a musical with songs by Marvin Hamlisch. It didn't run too long, but that was part of it, part of the influence it had. J.J. Hunsaker is routinely cited as one of the great movie villains of all time. The Academy Award director Barry Levinson who did Rain Man and Diner and many other really great movies has used dialogue and images lifted directly out of the film in several of his own movies. If you pay attention and think in Rain Man it's playing on the television in the background and there's a character in Diner whose all of that character's dialogue is literally lifted straight from Sweet Smell of Success. There's a great episode of Law and Order which is a tribute to the film with a plot about a gossip columnist and other characters that are drawn from the film. Mo Raca, the comedian Mo Raca plays the Hunsaker character right down the glasses uses several lines of dialogue from the film and elements from it have also been used in Breaking Bad. For those of you who are fans of that series Vince Gilligan has cited Sweet Smell of Success as a major influence on him as well. Both Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese have included the film in their all time list of greatest films and in 1993 it was announced that it would be preserved by the Library of Congress for its cultural and aesthetic significance. So from kind of inauspicious beginnings to really a benchmark of film noir where all of the elements sort of come together and become greater than the sum of their parts. So I hope for those of you who were able to watch it you enjoyed it and if you haven't watched it you should definitely do so because I think you will enjoy it. It's not very long, it goes by really quick the dialogue is really snappy and it's a great way to spend an evening or an afternoon. So I do see that actually we had one question from Kirsten which is do you have any insight as to what comes across as JJ's unusual obsession with his sister? Yeah it's kind of creepy right? I think it's really more about the basing on the actual story of Walter Winchell and what he did with his daughter they were sort of trying to reference it taking it to direct a reference but yeah it's they sort of suggest and I've never read the original novelette but I have read Ernest Lehmann's book and so they sort of suggest that part of Hunsaker's psychosis is that he's a closeted bisexual with feelings for his sister that you know for the time they could never say that obviously but I think they took advantage of the fact they had this story about Walter Winchell institutionalizing his daughter and to try to draw the parallel kind of in the way that Citizen Kane tries to draw parallels with William Randolph Hearst without actually saying it's William Randolph Hearst it's kind of the same thing but the scene if you saw the film the scene towards the end when he goes to her apartment and I will say spoiler alert for anybody who has not yet watched it but she attempts suicide because she's been driven to it by him and if you notice like when she goes from that moment and then Sydney arrives Hunsaker catches Sydney in her apartment and thinks that he's doing something shady with her which sets him off and he smacks him around a little bit if you remember when she after Sydney leaves and for all we know Sydney's gone out to have his legs broken because Hunsaker has called in his buddy the cop to take care of him she gets dressed and like nothing has happened she hasn't tried to throw herself out the window five minutes before that Connelly just says I'm going back to Steve which is her boyfriend I would rather commit suicide than live with you and that's the moment where he finally gets his comeuppance next question Joyce is saying do you know what buildings were used for the office or the apartment they both seem like office buildings in the middle of Times Square actually yes the building that they shot they used for the apartment was the Brill building which as you all know is sort of the what they used to call Tin Pan Alley it's down in in Manhattan and it's where all the great songwriters had offices the scene of the apartments all the apartment scenes were filmed in the Brill building which is not really I don't believe it's a residential building but that's where they shot it there are a couple you can catch it there's a couple of exterior shots if you're familiar with the distinctive front of the Brill building you can catch it in passing in a couple of shots but that's the great thing I should also mention I know we talked about it briefly that's the great thing about it being those quote unquote New York movies whereas when you look at films that are shot in Los Angeles even if they're in black and white and the sun is shining and everybody's glowing and lit and this is the seedy underbelly of certainly of New York maybe of America you feel kind of you feel like you have to kind of wash the dirt off sometimes a little bit after you watch this film and I often think about the cigarette girl and the young girl who's with the senator in the club you really find yourself feeling for these characters generally in empathy even though they're just character parts Huntsaker is so despicable to everybody and the fact that you know Sydney Falco at one point when Huntsaker says well you'll take over my column when she and I go away and that's what entices him to stay in the plan to frame the boyfriend so she'll dump him you realize that this is probably closer to the truth than the Hollywood endings that were so popular which is not necessarily anything wrong with them but this film definitely was not going to have them and anything if you know anything about Clifford Odette's he was certainly a left wing writer back in the 30s and his sensibilities and Ernest Layman and his sensibilities there was never going to be any sort of happy Hollywood ending to the film in the classic sense that we know it so thank you for that, that was a great question if there are no other questions or comments I want to thank everybody for coming I hope you'll join us we're going to be back in two weeks we're going to be doing The Candidate with Robert Redford and Peter Boyle and Melvin Douglas sort of a little bit of an election preview from 1972 which will be a lot of fun for those of you who may be interested tomorrow night we are hosting a talk by Dr. Mark Leonard about dealing with grief and loss during the pandemic and so if any of you hopefully none of you have had to deal with issues like that but if you are and you're looking for some resources or some guidance Dr. Leonard is going to talk about that tomorrow night at 7 o'clock you can register on our website Thursday night we are hosting Trivia night it's Game of Thrones night so if all you Game of Thrones fans might be interested in participating with that you can sign up for that on our website and then coming up in the next few weeks we're going to try to continue our virtual programming so visit our website sign up for our newsletters you'll get notified if you become a member you'll get advance notice for certain events for urban tastings in the works and more fun stuff that we can do as much as we can so thanks again everybody for tuning in and hope you have a great night


Hi, and welcome to the session. Let us discuss the following question. The question says, a wire of length 36 centimeters is cut into two pieces, one of the pieces so turned in the form of a square and the other in the form of an equilateral triangle. Find the length of each piece so that the sum of the areas of the two-winged minima. So according to this question, a wire of length 36 centimeters is cut into two pieces, one of the pieces is turned in the form of a square and the other piece is turned in the form of an equilateral triangle. We have to find the length of each piece such that sum of areas of both these pieces and the minima. So now let x centimeters be the length of a side of the square and y centimeters, the length of side of an equilateral triangle. Into question, the square, that is 4x, plus perimeter of the equilateral triangle, that is 3y is equal to 36, right? This implies y is equal to 36 minus 4x by the equilateral triangle squared. So a is equal to squared plus 3 by 4 by squared, substituting value of y squared plus 3 by 4 into 36 minus 4x by 3 whole squared. Equation as equation number 1, differentiating both sides of 1 with respect to x, dA by dx equals to 2x plus 3 by 4 into 2 into 36 minus 4x into minus 4 by 9. This implies dA by dx is equal to 2x minus 2 root 3 by 9 into 36 minus 4x. Now for maximum or minimum, dA by dx equals to 0. This implies 2x minus 2 root 3 by 9 into 36 minus 4x is equal to 0. This implies 2x is equal to 2 root 3 by 9 into 36 minus 4x. Now this implies 2x is equal to 8 root 3 minus 8 root 3x by 9. This implies 8 root 3 by 9 into x is equal to 8 root 3. This implies 18 plus 8 root 3 by 9 into x is equal to 8 root 3. This implies x is equal to 8 root 3 into 9 by 18 plus 8 root 3. Now this is equal to 8 root 3 into 9 by 2 into 9 plus 4 root 3. This is equal to 36 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3. So x is equal to 36 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3. This equation has equation number 2. Differentiating respect to x, we get d2A by dx2 equals to minus 2 root 3 by 9 into 0 minus 4. Now this is equal to 2 plus 8 root 3 by 9 is greater than 0. We can see that value of d2A by dx2 equals to 36 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3 is positive. Hence by second derivative test, minimum 36 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3. We know that y is equal to 36 minus 4x by 3. So by substituting value of x, we get y as 36 minus 4 into 36 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3 divided by 3. This is equal to 324 plus 144 root 3 minus 144 root 3 by 3 into 9 plus 4 root 3. Now this is equal to 324 by 3 into 9 plus 4 root 3. And this is equal to 108 by 9 plus 4 root 3. We have to find the length of each piece. The length of square is equal to perimeter of square. The length of square is 4x66 into root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3. This is equal to 144 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3. The length of square is 144 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3 centimeter. Now we will find length of equilateral triangle into perimeter of equilateral triangle is equal to 3y. Now y is equal to 108 by 9 plus 4 root 3 and this is equal to 324 by 9 plus 4 root 3. So length of equilateral triangle is 324 by 9 plus 4 root 3. Hence I required answers are 144 root 3 by 9 plus 4 root 3 centimeters and 324 by 9 plus 4 root 3 centimeters. So this completes the session. Bye and take care.


So, hi. We are here to learn about how Gutenberg uses the developer evaluation, not just for blocks. So, I hope you're in the right place to hear Kyle Johnson, who is right here. He's making to us. Kyle is the senior software developer for GWP, is a contributor to the WordPress core, and he speaks several wordpamps and various other open source conferences.  I want to be a book author specifically. I want to be a book author. All right, stuff online, that just feels not permanent. Great. Well, thank you, Kyle. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Oh, okay. Hey. Hello. My name is Kyle Johnson. I did not expect as many of you to be in here as there is today. So, thank you for being here. I know it's early. Hopefully this goes well. Yeah, so when we're talking about Gutenberg as a development foundation, more than just a content editor for WordPress, I was told I can only put logos and stuff on the opening slide. So, I went a little NASCAR with it. I won't forgive, which is under the umbrella of StellarWP, which is a brand owned by Liquid Web. It's a little complicated, so I have to put it there. So, I remember the structure. Give to operates as an independent small team, thankfully, but I also contribute to WordPress core, plug into the directory, speak at wordcamps, WPCI contributor. You're probably familiar with my work in some way. Ninja Forms and WP Caldera Forms. U.S. to fill a WP with real mess in Gutenberg are some of my bigger contributions. So, yeah, if you recognize any of those things, that's partly my work. So, I'm not just a random person up here. It feels like it at times. So, yeah, Gutenberg as a development foundation. So, we're familiar with the WordPress block editor as developers in WordPress. I'm sure you've used it. If not, the general idea is that content is broken up into this concept called blocks, similar to Lego, so they can be stacked or rearranged and moved around. Previously, in WordPress, you would have just a text area, just a single block of code, or content, if you will, and then copy and paste, move things around. It's just one piece of content. This allows us to fragment our content into small pieces that can be rearranged or reused in different ways. For example, WordPress uses it to output on the front end using a theme. You can also do headless WordPress to pull it in, and then with that block content, rearrange it if you need to. If you want to do, like, a stepped content, inject ads or other dynamic content, it allows you to play with it as data and not just a single data point. So, the block editor in WordPress is Gutenberg, but Gutenberg is not the block editor. Square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square kind of thing. Gutenberg itself is actually a package built under the WordPress umbrella with a lot of automatic developers, and the idea is that it can be used in other places other than just WordPress. Previously, WordPress code was written for WordPress. We're written in a very specific way, the WordPress way. If you're familiar with that phrasing, their intention here was to do something different, build it outside of WordPress and bring it in to WordPress, and there's still some crossover there, but on the whole, it's made separately. So, the block editor is becoming the new interface for WordPress content management, and as I said, it can be used in different places as a standalone JavaScript application. For example, this is the Drupal Gutenberg editor. So, it's moving beyond WordPress rather quickly. It looks like the WordPress editor, the logo's different, the sidebar's styled a little bit differently, and it works a little differently in terms of some of the features they have, like Drupal has this revision log message thing that's native to Drupal. If you're not familiar, Drupal is another popular CMS written in PHP open source, very different like niche compared to WordPress, but they're using it also to bring it in in order to elevate their content in a way that can be more dynamically manipulated. So, like I said, it looks a lot like the one we have in WordPress. This is a package for Laravel called LaraBerg, which is Gutenberg for Laravel. This allows you to create your own custom application using Laravel framework and then drop in a Gutenberg editor kind of like the Gutenberg anywhere that WordPress is doing. If you go on the WordPress.org website and leave a comment, you'll notice it's no longer just a text area. They're slowly moving it to this Gutenberg anywhere isolated block editor system. We're also seeing it in October CMS, which is a CMS written using Laravel, and they're implementing the LaraBerg package into their content management system in order to introduce blocks into that system also. So standalone JavaScript application has an interface for data. It doesn't matter what platform it's on. And over the past nine months, I've been reusing Gutenberg to build the new donation form builder for GiveWP. It is a standalone block editor. It does run in WordPress, but it doesn't have to. And it's using the components of Gutenberg like the block list in here. It's got the inspector and the text controls and select controls and a lot of the button components. The shared components are working together here. But as much as this looks like the WordPress block editor, but with green instead of black on white or white on black, this is actually built in with components from the ground up. So a very generalized example of how WordPress implements the block editor is represented here. You see the individual components. Inside of all that, there's a block list component, which is very core to Gutenberg as a concept. This is the repeater for all the different blocks wrapped inside this block list component that you can use outside. But this is generally the context deep within which it's used. Observe typing is a higher order component around that. Writing flow is the same thing. And then block tools is a higher order component above the blocks that allows it to interact with the blocks using that bar of all the buttons and controls and things. For my purposes, for our purposes here, two of the important ones are block tools and block list. If you're creating a block editor for something other than just written content, things like observe typing and writing flow aren't necessarily as important. The benefits of observe typing and writing flow is you can do things like select text across multiple blocks. Or it will automatically, on the keystroke of enter, create a new paragraph block for you. So those are all content specific. And if you're using Gutenberg not as a content editor, then those aren't necessary for your implementation. So a block editor can be boiled down even farther to a much simpler implementation, where the block list is kind of the core of that application. One of the big controversies around Gutenberg has been the way it stores data in HTML comments. A lot of questions were raised. If we're separating the data dynamically from the content, why would we still store it in HTML and use HTML comments in this wacky way to encode the data into the content as opposed to just storing JSON or another format of data serialized using PHP? There are a couple reasons why they did that. One, it allows for backwards compatibility. By storing the block data in HTML comments, the block editor can work with existing content that was created using the classic editor and vice versa. And so because it's just HTML, you can render on a page. You can open it up in the block editor and it parses the blocks. Open up in the classic editor and it's still just HTML. It's a backwards compatible format. That's very important to WordPress as an ecosystem and not want to introduce an overly breaking change. That's absolutely necessary. Next, it fails gracefully if a block no longer exists. So in contrast to short codes, whenever a plugin introduces a short code for use and you add that short code to the page and then disable that plugin, that short code renders as raw text on the page in the square brackets. You lose the dynamic rendering or the content replacement of that plugin's functionality. But with blocks, either the existing HTML that was rendered by that block plugin remains. Or if it's a dynamic one, it's an HTML comment, which then just doesn't render. So the benefit of the HTML comment is you can render it but not get the artifact of that plugin no longer dynamically replacing that content. It also makes it easy to parse the blocks. HTML provides a clear, the comments provide a clear delimiter for where one block begins, another ends, which makes it easy to parse the content and identify individual blocks. You have the opening and closing ones. It works as like a header for each block.  It also stores data, some in the HTML, some in the HTML comments. There's some cool stuff with the way it works there if you want to get into it. And then, yeah, it allows easy access to block data. As I was saying, the data can be then parsed out of that. It also doesn't rely on having JavaScript or any more complex methods for reading that data. The HTML as a string value can be parsed in a stream and so you can pull data as you go through it as opposed to having a JavaScript object that can be hydrated into memory, which can be a very large object with a lot of nested properties, multiple levels deep, and that all takes up memory in your application. Every single chunk of code or block or interblock would have to be converted to in-memory objects to then go through them. And there are advanced ways to handle that with streaming JSON as well, but one of the really big benefits of the HTML and HTML comments is they can be more easily streamed in terms of parsed in a stream or using like regex or something, which means at this point it's easy to extract the data using regular expressions, which is more efficient than using a DOM parser, which again converts that into objects in memory and all that. One caveat here is with the regular expressions, it's easily extracted when using regular expressions. You have something like this, you have the type, you have the attributes, and there's intercontent. So unfortunately that's not the actual regex that WordPress uses. It actually looks a little bit more like this. And in the actual WordPress code, the opening comment is I the magic. It goes on to explain how all that works. And even here that's not the full regex. It actually goes on to farther down the line. And so it's the kind of thing like don't look into this function as you've seen before with like database changes and stuff. And so it is rather complex, but unfortunately these days we do have tools to help us better understand regex, such as ChatGPT that can actually walk you through how this regex works and what it does. And I'm actually kind of surprised at how terse this response is for how wild that regex is. So the HTML comments structure does allow for easy parsing with regex. Once the regex is written, you now have this stream parser for that. So here's an example of that HTML structure with the comments in a very simple like hello world, welcome to WordPress post. You see there's the namespace and the block type. So this is a core block. WP is the namespace for WordPress core. And then paragraph is the type of block. You'll see as an opening and a closing tag. The closing tag identified by the backslash. Regex is able to determine the difference in those to see a closing tag as well, then the content in between. And so if this were a dynamic block instead of like a paragraph that has rendered HTML, it would be just the comments and then they would just be not rendered if the plugin's not active, which is a nice benefit here. But also this paragraph tag is a paragraph tag. And if you delete that paragraph block, the paragraph tag still exists in the content, which is highly beneficial as opposed to a short code that injects something but only injects it if the plugin's active. So a lot of benefits in this system. However, the HTML comments are not the only way to do data in Gutenberg, but rather actually they are a concept of WordPress. So the Gutenberg editor doesn't necessarily use the HTML content, comments. It actually has, you pass in the value to this block editor provider for state and it's an object of blocks in data. And then on change, you can call this dispatch form blocks to export the data. And that actually happens as objects in JavaScript, in memory, in the client browser and all that. So WordPress is actually taking those JavaScript objects and parsing it into HTML comments to then store. Then when it loads the editor, it brings the HTML out of the database and parses it back into JavaScript objects for use by the JavaScript application. So actually the HTML comments are not a Gutenberg concept. They are a WordPress concept, which means if we want to reuse the block editor, HTML comments are not something we're tied to and we're more free to work in the JavaScript object JSON notation that we were otherwise used to and there's a common standard across API systems. This is an example structure of how a block is represented in JavaScript or JSON notation. Again, you have that name. There are attributes and then interblocks. If you remember back to the Regex, it was looking for name, attributes, and inner content, which are more blocks recursively. So this is that representation of that. It's a standard structure that then gets repeated inside of interblocks and it can just be going down blocks all the way down as far as you would like. So this is how we're using it in Give. This is actually how it comes out of Gutenberg as this JSON format. So we stuck with that natively for our own use cases because it better fit our application. One way we're doing that is we created this PHP layer that is able to actually take the blocks from the JSON and parse it into this block collection for manipulation within PHP syntax. And then we use that to validate and all that and then save the form data. GiveWP has a Fields API. I know WordPress has been working on a Fields API for I think 10 years now and it hasn't materialized in WordPress core. But GiveWP has one that we use for our needs and this works out really well in converting that JSON block into this collection of blocks and then into our Fields API which allows for a more fluent syntax. Like you can say field. You can have a field object and then method arrow name method and then pass it a name. Or method arrow description, pass it a description. It's a fluent almost language type syntax for doing that and we're building that around that blocks interface which means we can use it on the front and so the back end has JSON data in the front and using this Fields API to then render a different JavaScript application. So the output of Gutenberg as JavaScript is actually highly beneficial and flexible for developers' use to build any other kind of block editor you would like. And that's benefits further made evident by its use across Drupal and Laravel and October CMS and GiveWP and Contact Form 7 blocks has a new plugin that does that and how it's converting from blocks to short codes is really flexible there. So I have plenty of time for questions but that's the basics of Gutenberg as a foundation. There's a lot more detail to dig into in terms of the block list components and all the other different components and control components that work as a style guide and all that that are specific to an application itself so I don't want to go too deep into that. But if you do have any questions pertaining to an application or a piece of that I'd be happy to attempt to answer best that I can here in front of a room of people or I can talk to anyone afterwards if you like. I'll be around for the duration of the camp as well. So thank you. Water, thank you. Thank you Kyle so much. Here's what we're going to do. Oh good, it's remote. We're going to try to pass the mic around so the transcription can continue. So please speak clearly into the mic and wait until we can talk. We're going to give Kyle a moment to dry his throat and rest a little bit. But Matthew I think you have a question first of walking slowly over to you so the moisture can absorb. Any non-hecklers with the question? Anyone not from Cleveland, Tennessee have a question. So if you're using Gutenberg as a foundation but you're not using it as the block editor and you're storing this JSON, are you storing that in the post table? How are you actually storing the data? Do you have a recommendation there for what that would look like? Are you storing the column or what does that look like for what you've shown us here? Yeah, originally we stored it as the post content. We just stored it as JSON instead of HTML. It was never intended to be rendered directly from that post content. We didn't feel the need to put it in a renderable format but we did use the post content column of that table. Due to other business and product reasons we wanted to reuse that post content for something else so that each form has its own page because it's a custom post type called give forms and so we want to actually use that post type or post content to render the form itself which is a page that has a form block on it. So we ended up switching tactics and just moved it to a meta field, a custom meta field and that gives you all the space that you need. It's a flexible format. It's just a blob of JSON that then gets parsed as a string into JavaScript objects. So it's fairly flexible there. There are probably some more advanced ways where you can split it out if you wanted to but such use case would kind of depend on if you're needing to query the database based on that data but we're not querying it based on the contents of that JSON. We're just using it as a storage, a blob of storage to then bring in and parse. Hey, that's Rich from Automatic. So a lot of people are moving towards using dynamic blocks, really dynamic blocks. Do you see that becoming an issue if you turn off the plug and you lose the block just like in short curves? You would lose the blocks content, possibly. There are two ways to do that. You can have fallback content, I believe. You can render content but then update it later on and I'll handle that. You will lose the dynamic portion of the plugin if it's disabled, but you won't have an artifact remaining in the content unless you specifically choose to have a placeholder or a fallback. So as a problem it depends on the perspective of the problem for the content manager. It goes wrong, that could be a problem, but to the end user reading and consuming the content or whatever system is consuming that, it's just like it's never there without any artifacts, which I think is a smart fallback kind of a thing, certainly depending on the use case, whether how important that was, but if it's important you can just keep it enabled so I think it's kind of a non-issue there. So you would lose the content but that's also kind of a feature here where there's no artifacts remaining after the fact. Thank you. Anybody else with a question? Okay. Oh, please, please. Okay, this is the second one. So from your experience building the give donation with form and the editor, did you run into any limitations and is there anything that CORE can do to help alleviate this? So we've been trying to contribute back to Gutenberg as we've gone through. There's been at least one issue that comes to mind to where you could have, it was like a block limited to a single instance but you could still drag and drop it into the block list which in the WordPress block editor, that block's not listed in that tree to then drag and drop, so not an issue. We came across a small issue to where we were in during it anyway, but grayed out but even though it was disabled you could still drag and drop it and so that was something we addressed. Otherwise in terms of limitations, the biggest one is documentation. You go to the documentation, it's like, oh, here's the property or component I need to learn about and it says documentation not available. It's like, oh, it's right there but it says there's nothing here. So that's the biggest limitation and then jumping in you can still click through in like an IDE to find the implementation of it in order to extract how it's supposed to be used. So I spent a lot of my time in the early months of this troubleshooting and learning the internals of Gutenberg so we could then develop an application using those components that weren't otherwise documented. So using the code as documentation worked. It just requires a much deeper dive and a much more intimate understanding of the code base. So increasing, filling in the documentation would help there are lots. There's also the isolated block editor package that automatic has and that's supposed to fill in a lot of those gaps in terms of configuring the thing but even there the documentation is lacking. As much as I've spent on this, I tried to use the isolate block editor last night and it was just like one compile error after another. I think it has like SAS as a dependency, that's not listed anywhere and also not included in the dependency tree. Documentation is kind of the big thing but as fast as Gutenberg moved, it's kind of hard to expect it to be developed in real time because it changes so frequently but as it moves towards a more stable position as being used in other real applications outside of WordPress the documentation is going to become crucial but also it's a point where it's going to start to solidify and so it might be now time to start putting more resources in the documentation itself. So one of the things I was thinking about is if you have like a headless WordPress installation and you have your custom Gutenberg editor, would you see any problems on the front end like building out, I don't know, let's say you build out the front-end reactor system if you had your own Gutenberg thing or if you were still using WordPress Gutenberg with the comments and stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I'm currently using a headless WordPress installation for a blog and just using the block editor to build out the content and there is some concern with the dynamic blocks and are they going to work in a headless situation because you don't have access to the plugin itself to render the content dynamically unless you try to intentionally fetch it through an API endpoint which is an option. I was trying to read it from the database directly and so I was able to find things like a code formatting block that has headless supports so it actually fully renders that code block inside the content so that it's static and not dynamic. So there is some consideration there. If you were consuming it in another application, you could, if you're building your own application or block editor for your application, you could certainly implement the dynamic parts into different sides of the application or just consider since it's your own thing having it generate content because you're not, in that case, worrying about the large scale and scope of WordPress and how it's used. So, answer your question at all? Yeah. Okay, if not, we can talk more later. Yeah. Life-cycle, that there were memory leak and just memory cycle, life-cycle issues. That has improved considerably from what I can tell. Inside of WordPress, WordPress's version of Gutenberg, outside of WordPress, are any of those issues still kind of coming up? Were they fixed in WordPress side or were they fixed with Gutenberg side? Just from a memory usage and kind of bogging down at longer content links and that kind of thing. Yeah, I know there's been a lot of work done to make it more performant, more optimized. The interaction's gotten a lot faster, as you've mentioned and noticed. We have not come across any of those issues in Give perhaps in large part because we're not doing really long content. We are using it as a form builder so you can add any number of fields that you want.  I know in the world of WordPress and products and products in general, customers will use things in ways you don't expect so that very well might come back and get us in which case we can reconsider some things, reach out to the Gutenberg team and work with them because I'm sure they're dealing with that also if it's a problem with this implementation as well. For our use case, donation forms have a lot more opinion to them than do general forms like at Ninja Forms would create or something. So, not been an issue for us. I don't foresee it being an issue but it certainly could and I'd be caught on awareness. But as fast as the Gutenberg project has moved in the past, any problems that arise, often it would be resolved rather quickly. For example, I have an open track ticket for WordPress Core. It's been open five years now, almost twice as long as I've been at Giv and it's still open. I've submitted a patch and had testing instructions and all that and so it's just still sitting there, right? So, we've came across this issue in Gutenberg. I patched it for our own use. Our development manager was like, I submit that as a PR to Gutenberg. I'm like, yeah, that's a good idea. I just did it in this way in ours so we can move forward and not worry about it. I don't know how long it's going to take. He's like, you just go ahead and submit the PR. So, okay, yeah. So, took the time, wrote out the PR, hit submit and I went to tell my development manager I had submitted the PR and when I went back to link it to him it had already been merged and approved and reviewed. So, that's very good to see. The responsiveness of the team has been great but also it just doesn't have the baggage of WordPress core so it's able to move fast now. Surely in the future we'll see diminishing returns in that as WordPress, depending on the philosophies they keep and backwards compatibility and maybe that's different in the JavaScript space because browsers and support for JavaScript versions move at the pace of the browser and the client not on the same as the server. So, the whole back with PHP upgrade and version of the server requires the person using the software to contact their host and update the PHP version if they'll even allow them to do that. Whereas JavaScript depends on the browser and browsers move at their own paces and so it's probably more likely that doesn't have the same baggage but there'll be some certainly over time but they've been very responsive, very helpful and we have not run into any issues over the past nine months of throwing new weird things at it. Okay, coming on back to you. I do speak highly of Gutenberg out of my experience of using it. Absolutely no connection to Matt Mone-Wig or Automatic or the Gutenberg team whatsoever. Also I don't get any compensation or paid for doing the talk or sharing about Gutenberg. Yeah, open source contribution is part of the community aspect. It is. We've recently packaged it up into a standalone package on GitHub. It's under the namespace of StellarWP StellarWP being the WordPress umbrella under Liquid Web. We did it in such a way that we could share it across the different plugins and so we should see more adoption from other plugins in using this which interestingly might have weight enough to get larger growth. The Fields API being developed for Core as a feature plugin doesn't have the benefit of a multi-million dollar company pushing it on other products. So this might actually have a chance to get weight and move into a larger sphere of influence. So yes, it is available on GitHub, github.com slash dellarwp under Fields API. If that's not currently public, if I miss speaking, it'll be available soon otherwise. It's also available inside of the GiveWP GitHub repository in the source framework directory. You can lift it right out. We did build it with the intention of it living outside of Give and becoming a dependency and so it does not have any of our... Well, as little of our bias as we could manage in the direction of the Fields API, we actually have a implementation of it in our own code. Framework pieces in our code in a different spot. We have the implementation of it. So we're using it as an internal dependency for that very purpose. To generate this JSON block... Yeah, so we parse the JSON string into a block collection, which is a class we have in PHP that reflects the same data structure as it does in the client in Gutenberg. And then we have a custom parser that converts that into fields. So the blocks get mapped to things. There's some opinionated ones. The amount field in our donation form is highly opinionated, but things like custom fields are just like text fields and we map those into the Fields API. And so it's just a... It's an adapter pattern. We loop over the blocks. We check the type and then convert that to a different structure for the Fields API. For things like properties that are acquired or the label or a description or help text. In Gutenberg, that exists in the attributes array. It's a flat structure. Whereas we move it into very specific key value pairs inside the Fields API. So that's the work we're doing is matching up the namings and really mapping it for one to the next. Great questions today. The next session starts at 10 o'clock. In the meantime, we have a question stopping by to say hi. Thank you for sponsoring this. You can find this hobby in water. Thank you. You'll be available today? Yeah, I'll be here today and tomorrow walking around. Happy to talk this stuff. I'm also happy to talk about working on client sites. If you're interested in foster care adoption. I know a lot about that too. Happy to talk about it. Or any of their hobbies listed prior. So I'll give them a hand.


Call all hands. Beat the quarters. It's terrible battery. One broadside into it, if you please, Captain Bush. Point is on target. Lin stops ready. Eyes are ready. Fire! Michael Redgrave at C.S. Forester's Indomitable Man of the Sea. Horatio Hornblower. Unfortunately, for us, this meant a stalemate. A summer faded into autumn and flurries of snow hurried us towards one of those earlier Russian winters. Riga Bay, where my squadron lay, was covered with a thin film of ice. Though I get a tall bush, not at all, with winter coming. I know, sir. If we stay on here much longer, we're certainly be frozen in. And yet the admiralty... My orders from the admiralty are nothing if not explicit. Remain here at all costs, give every support within our path. Riga must be protected to the last man and ship. Are there words? Yes, sir. If only we could be sure that Alexander would hold for us. You don't have a reputation for constancy, I'm afraid. Oh, well. At least we're helping to block the French path to St. Petersburg. I said, Bush, what are they doing up for, at Midshipman's Castle? Yes. With all this recent inactivity, our youngsters needed some work. I warded regular resumption of all peacetime instruction under the sailing master, Mr. Tooth. Excellent idea, Bush. Midshipman and a curious breed, Bush. I'm afraid their lot is not a happy one. Did I ever tell you of my first dubious distinction in the service of his majesty? The day I came aboard the old Justinian as Midshipman, she lay just off Portsmouth. And I was seasick, Bush. Seasick in spithead. Young, too shy, too gawky, not long out of a quiet country village. Nervous, but deeply conscious of my new estate in life. Poor old Keen, captain of the Justinian.  Yet he was not unkind that day when I reported to his cabin. Rather shakily. Mr. Hornbauer, I'm glad to welcome you on board my ship. Yes, sir. That is, er, my eye, sir. Your age is, er, let me see, er, 17. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Birthday, July 4th, 1776. I'd been six years as lieutenant before you were born, Hornbauer. Yes, sir? Doctor's son, eh? How far did your education go? I studied Greek at school, sir. I read Cicero, too. Better if you could foresee a squall in time to get the to-gallons in. With no use for ablative absolutes in the Navy. Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Did you bring your dunge aboard with you? My, er, my sea chest, sir? Oh, yes, sir. It's at the, er, at the entry port. Good. I'll get a boy to show you down to the midshipman's quarters. Well, obey orders, Hornbauer. Learn your duties, and no harm can come to you that will do. Thank you, sir. Despite the captain's words, a bush harm began to come to me almost at once. I was led down ladder after ladder into the twilight of the tween decks and came at last to an especially gloomy research. There are half a dozen shirt-sleeved young men, all a good deal older than myself, sat around the table, lighted faintly by a candle, and I entered rather hesitantly. Well, well, who's this? Who's this? Can it be our ranks are swelling? Simpson, look at him. Look. He's positively green. Oh, no, no. I'm quite all right. It's just... Well, sure, but it did toss quite a bit, isn't it? I'm a way out, man. Do you know what it is, Simpson? I do believe he's seasick. What'll they send us next, Simpson? Seasick in spithead? Oh, we're still at anchor, sonny. Did you know it? Seasick in spithead. I thought to myself that I was now labeled for life, but I'd soon cease to care. A moment later, I was prone in my hammock. In the days that followed, I learned a great deal more about the arrogant Mr. Simpson. There he goes now. Notice that strut? I could admit he is a handsome dude. Yes, sir. I suppose so. You see, Hornblower Simpson's a man who's angry at himself and at the world. He had high hopes, but just before you came aboard, he was sent back here as senior warrant officer of Midship. Oh, Mr. Commission? Exactly. Two a week in mathematics, captain's board turned him down. So acting of turning Simpson is now a Midshipman game. Maybe for years. And Simpson must be 35, at least. I understand him better now. Makes you, well, almost sorry for him, doesn't it? Don't stress, Senator. Well, thank you, General. You know, you're the first aboard who's taken time to say a word to me on any subject. Just keep out of his way as much as you can. Any time anyone rebels, he just pounds in senseless with those big fists. He's a medical prize fighter. And it's always the other who has the black eye who gets the captain's mast for fighting.  And that's an understatement. All of them did hate Simpson, yes. And some of them even showed it. But from the first, this didn't prevent him singling me out as his favorite victim. His tyrannies were petty, but ingenious. Mr. Hornblower, don't put on your coat. You haven't finished here. But you said that...  You called that a clean dick? Mr. Simpson, if you haven't just tracked... Put it on your hand on these, Hornblower. Put some drizzle into it. You've got a knick. That's better. I haven't forgotten how to give you a beating yesterday, have you? No more miserable, lonely midshipman ever rode a British ship. We hadn't even said say a word. Weeks passed and we still lay in spithead, awaiting the rest of the channel for eat. Shiners kept me from making friends and Simpson's persecutions mounted daily. I even thought of death as one way out. In my black despair, the waters of spithead promised a friendly escape and often at night I made elaborate plans for suicide. And then, one afternoon, some of us had shore leave in Portsmouth. By chance, I wanted them to the Georgian as three of our ship's company were looking for a fourth of their card table. Why, it's young Hornblower. I say, youngster, do you play whisk to the means of passing the time? Yes, sir. Left-handed masters, yes, I do. Oh, you're just the man we want, then. Haven't been able to find anybody else. Come over here. We barely need a fourth. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Graves and I... Simpson? Well, I... I like whisk, sir, but... Well, I just remember that. I have an appointment. No, no, no, I shall let you escape now. Don't mind Simpson. As senior left in it, I could order you to stay, young man. Now, come along, come along. Yes, sit down, Hornblower. Simpson dained to give me a curt nod, as I said, then. He and Graves have been drinking wine. Their faces were quite flushed. Now, it happened that I did like whisked for years. I made a fourth at home, and I even had a kind of passion for it. Excellent, excellent. Now we can cut for places and partners. Simpson and Graves against you and me, Hornblower. Shilling a trick of stakes, is that too steep, gentlemen? As you wish, Lieutenant. Well, like any sort of gambling. Good, good. Join you, Mr. Graves. Let us be at it. It soon appeared that Simpson was a very poor whisk player. Those shaky mathematics, possibly. On the other hand, I was, um... rather experienced. Masters and I took the first game and the second, Simpson grew more and more sullen and angry, and then came the end of the third game. Well, the rest of mine. What do you mean? Are the King of Hearts still in my hand? Five tricks. Game and rubber. Well, don't want to take it. All right, Hornblower. You know too much about this game, my cocky friend. Now, the backs will record as well as the fronts, don't you? Simpson was muddled. I'm quite sure he spoke without intention, but suddenly a plan occurred to me in stark outline. His life for mine. Perhaps it was my only escape from an intolerable existence. That's a very insulting remark, Mr. Simpson. I should... I should have to ask that as faction, I'm afraid. Satisfaction? No, no, I see here, Hornblower, you can't be... Now, look, look. Dueling's a serious business. But Mr. Simpson will explain that he was merely jokingly... I'm going to use the cheating at cards, Mr. Masters. That's a hard thing to explain away. Mr. Hornblower, I must insist. Oh, no. Now, now, come. The wine was in and the wit was out. Let's forget this. Oh, with pleasure, sir. If Mr. Simpson will apologize at once in a fit that he spoke in a manner most un-gentleman-lit.  To you? Tom. I'll see you roasted by the devil first. That does it, gentlemen. But then... Then there was a life or death issue. Listen to me. You're only half his age. You're hardly more than a boy.  Yes, sir. But why? Why? I've waved the pros and cons, sir. Well, I'll be frank. Simpson has the advantage physically. These conditions are the only ones that give me a... an even chance. Mathematically, one shot from each of us is better. All right, all right, I understand. Well, since you won't call it off, you'd better know. The captain's ordered me to attend the duel in person. Mr. Hippro White, the surgeon, will also attend. Aye, aye, sir. Very well. The place selected is the small heath north of Portsmouth. The hour at dawn tomorrow. The two parties will go separately, of course. Mathematically, I trust you've made the right decision, Mr. Hornblower. I hope you'll get some sleep tonight. Good luck. The yard between.  Will you stand here, Mr. Simpson? Mr. Hornblower, yeah. You're almost breast-to-breast interval. For the last time, can you not be reconciled? It wouldn't so be it. We haven't settled who's to give the word. Let Mr. Masters give it, Graves. Why not? Very well. Now say one, two, three, and fire. For the last word, you can fire as you will. Ready? Yes. Ready. One. Pulled the trigger. And there was a click. And that was all. Mine was the unnoted, just a half-second fast, and Simpson fired. Another click. And both of us still stood there, stiff and dazed. A misfire by heaven. A misfire, Hornblower. Give me those best horses. The loaded one might still be hanging fire. Which was the loaded one? That's better not to know. I'm shuffling them. But sir, why not a second shot? There will be no second shot, Mr. Gerard. Honor is satisfied. No one can now think to let Mr. Simpson, if he regrets his hasty words, nor of Mr. Hornblower, if he accepts those regrets graciously. They're faces! They're faces! You young fools! You ought to see how you all look! So long as cows! Mr. Hepplewhite, your behavior is indecorous. Our coaches are waiting on the road. The cutlery's at the jetty. I think all of us can do with a little breakfast now, including Mr. Hepplewhite. Of course, but aboard the Justinian, they were whispers. Whispers that circulated before and after. At last, I decided permission to speak privately with Captain Keane. I was so hurt and so angry, I bear it rather clonishly, I'm afraid. Keep your head young man. I can guess what you're going to say to me. Look, those bristles in the duel were not loaded, neither of them. Hepplewhite blabbed, I suppose. Ma'am, to understand that was by your orders. That is correct, I gave those orders to Mr. Vastus. Sir, it isn't unwarrantable, Liberty, sir. Possibly it was, but I saved a life for the King's service, a young life. Both you and Simpson have had your courage amply proved, and no one's harmed.  Do I understand that you are now issuing me a challenge? Let me remind you, Mr. Hornblower, have won useful regulation of the Navy. No junior officer may challenge his superior to a duel. Indeed, it is a court-martial offence. Yes, I know, sir. Now, here is some gratuitous advice. You have fought one duel with honor, that is good. Never fight another. As some men acquire a taste for dueling, there are never good officers. It seems to become a habit to, well, to occupy the center of the stage. I understand, sir. There's another matter I wanted to take up with you, Mr. Hornblower. Captain Pellue of the frigate in the Fatigable has a room for another midshipman. Perhaps you haven't been too happy here, and Pellue is partial to a game of fist. Has no good forth on bought his ship, in fact. He and I have agreed to consider favorably your application for the transfer, if you should care to make it. Why, anybody jump at the chance of... Well, what were you about to say? Is it settled then? It's very good of you, sir. I don't know how to thank you, but you accepted me as a midshipman, sir, and, of course, I shall remain with you. I appreciate your saying that. I know the heart-burning it entails. But I think I'm going to insist on your accepting Pellue's offer. This ship is not the place for you. This ship with her ailing, outworn captain. Oh, sir, please. Don't interrupt me. I have the good of the service in mind, Mr. Hornblower, when I suggest you go, and might be less disturbing for us, if you did. I never saw him again. He's been dead a long time now, Bush. I've often thought of him, though, when I became a captain and learned of all those extra burdens that go with a command. Well, at least we've passed a little while away from the Russian winter, and we've still got regatta to defend in the morning. It must be the ravens up here. Lieutenant Coe must be worried. Well, kind of make up a proper signal, if you please, Captain Bush. Commodore on board? Always well. Mario Hornblower starring Michael Redgrave is based on the novels by C.S. Forrester. Music composed and conducted by Sydney Torch. Produced by Harry Allen Towers.


Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome back everyone to Cube's coverage here at the NVIDIA GTC. This is a conference for the error of AI. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante who's here with me. This is the Cube on the ground mobile run gun kit. And we've got Cube alumni Scott Baker who's the CMO and the storage marketing among other titles he has at IBM. Scott, great to have you on. Always great to get your perspective. You know, IBM has really been moving the needle on the infrastructure as cloud. And now AI set the table for software defined, large scale, scale up, scale out. For these new AI infrastructures that are emerging that are going to power these next applications. So you're seeing a whole new systems revolution going on, but it's still the same game. It's compute and networking. Maybe more emphasis on the storage and networking as usual. So real, real interesting market dynamic. We've talked about this before. Welcome back. Hey, thanks very much.  Always good to see you. And you're absolutely right. When we think about AI, you know, we like to look at it as just another workload. It just happens to be both compute intensive as well as capacity sensitive. The ability to push that data back and forth between whatever that cluster of compute layer is requires heavy reliance on the networking. And it certainly requires a storage infrastructure that's capable of delivering that performance.   They seem to be flat footed a little bit with AI, it seems, because AI is a whole mother requirement. I'm not them specifically. I'm just talking about in general old school storage. And maybe I don't want to get in the conscious about the different vendors approach because they have reference architectures. Okay, I see that. That means they don't have anything. But there is a difference. There's a distinct architectural shift that's impacting storage. So you're either on the wrong side of history or the right side of history. I want to ask you, what is that right side of history?  That's such a trick question, right? It's always about having the right tool for the job, right? There are times where, you know, a traditional Flash primary storage array would work well for an AI workload where the size of the language model that you're working with is very well-defined and very consolidated, if you will, can be consolidated. But by and large, when we think about large language models, the emphasis is on the word large, where they're looking for distributed types of storage where capacity becomes maybe even a bit of a bias when you're thinking about the kind of storage that you want to deploy. The other thing that we look at is mobility of information, right? Large language models need to stretch from the edge of the business into the core and out to the cloud. And that's a natural reliance on protocols like S3 or cloud-based architectures that you can deploy on-prem, allowing that data in the application stack to move as it needs to, you know, from the edge of the business to the core to the cloud. A lot of times what we're seeing at IBM is that there is a bias toward object-based storage or distributed object-based storage. I think there's some emphasis on the use of files, but what we're talking about here is the ability to store large amounts of data across clusters that may exist in the same location or stretched out around the organization itself. So one of the big, obviously, we've been covering this for years, but compute and storage has been separated. That's opened up a lot of innovation. If you look at the AI right now, you're seeing a couple of different trends. One is the software-defined, I've heard Jensen even use the word software-defined as he talks about what's going on in the GPUs with the spine. He's got all these, the systems. It's basically a system, it's not even, it's a bunch of GPUs connected together with Switch. So you have a software-defined paradigm that's not new and physical. So in the storage world, this is a challenge. Can you explain the difference between the software-defined approach and the physical approach? You mentioned a little bit there, but it seems to be, you got to do both, you still have physical storage, but how is that evolving? What's the right side, what's the right story there? Sure, no, it's a really great question. When we look at developing technology at IBM, we take a software-first approach, whether that's on the IBM Cloud side or the IBM infrastructure side, how do we deliver the data services to the organization if they want to repurpose their own investments? In the case of software-defined, one of the nice things about that is that it allows organizations to repurpose investments that they've already made, in effect taking advantage of maybe an old Hadoop cluster or some servers that they've got laying around, layering on top of that those data services that are provided as software-defined storage. Software-defined storage also makes for a really great consumption model for organizations. Being able to go to the cloud and receiving that software layer and working with that directly as a piece of software means that if you move the capabilities from the cloud to on-prem, then you're moving with that data and application stack, those data services that I had mentioned. That's one of the things that we really looked at at IBM as we thought about products like our own IBM storage scale, being able to deliver that as software or on very purposely designed hardware that's absolutely architected in a way to give you the highest degree of throughput as well as the highest degree of read-write access to service out those GPUs. I think the other thing too to mention, whether it's software-defined or it's physical hardware, the integration that each vendor makes or chooses to make with companies like NVIDIA, i.e. GPU Direct, to give the absolute fastest performance available to the compute cluster that you're working with for the data in question that you're using. Well, you know, more compute, more clusters, better performance, means bits move around faster, means storage needs to map that. I see your IBM shirt says NVIDIA partner on the side, nice little logo there. I got to ask you about the relationship with NVIDIA because you guys have been doing a lot of work with infrastructure on the storage side, so that's changing a lot. You're seeing these AI systems here, certainly they're pretty impressive and I think it's a high bar on the AI side that NVIDIA's set on that side. And you get the cloud, you guys are both in both. You guys have AI with Watson X. Jensen said there's two paths to AI in the enterprise. Get apps built on with an AI API, like a NIMS, which is basically RAG and augmentation and then other ones is getting the IT data that's exhaust today and turn that into gold. And he says, quote, they're sitting on a gold mine. So I have to answer the question. What is IBM doing with NVIDIA one and two? How are you guys solving that problem where you're enabling apps to be built and you're giving the IT platforms capabilities to leverage their tools that they have that's thrown off all this data exhaust and turning that into value, whether it's RAGs or some systems that way. So what are you guys doing with NVIDIA and then how are you doing to enable the enterprise? Yeah, so IBM has had a really healthy NVIDIA partnership for quite some time. I use the reference GPU direct. It's something that we've integrated into our storage systems. We've also looked at delivering GPU as a service from an IBM cloud perspective so that organizations who maybe can't afford to purchase the size and clusters that they need would have access to those and a consumption model that would make the most sense to them. So that partnership that we've developed has cultivated into having reference architectures for different super pod deployments whether you're talking about maybe H100s as your basic compute structure or not, all of that connected to that storage scale system that I'd mentioned before. But that's an infrastructure story. For me whenever we think about AI, it's about how quickly can I get to delivering value, not about how long does it take me to get to day two operations about connecting the different parts of the infrastructure together. To that end, one of the things that we've done is we've really taken full advantage of the WatsonX product line. WatsonX.ai.data.governance so that we've got a full platform approach to delivering that kind of infrastructure backed by all of the technology that I'd mentioned so that organizations can actually step in and start working with defining what their AI model looks like and how they integrate that into the business. That WatsonX technology that's containerized by nature runs right on top of Red Hat OpenShift which sits right on top of what we affectionately like to say, you know, maybe WatsonX in a box. I'm probably not supposed to say that, but that's to me a turnkey appliance. Turnkey basically, basically making a turnkey. Absolutely, and when we roll that into the data center, that's WatsonX sitting on top of Red Hat OpenShift running on IBM Fusion that has something like storage scale on the back end. That is essentially a cloud architecture sitting on prem for rapid AI deployment and development that you could replicate as software in IBM Cloud. Yeah, well I think, I wouldn't, first of all, good plug there for WatsonX, but I would not downplay the infrastructure changes on the system side because it's pretty amazing. It's not too shabby, that's going on there. In fact, if you look at the major AI momentum right now, look at NVIDIA, Broadcom, all these big infrastructure providers building these AI clusters, the access on the consumer side. So the Facebooks of the world, Apple, ByteDance, you name all those big companies that have massive hyperscale, they're kind of indicating what's coming and that is these AI systems. Now it's heavily optimized for compute memory because it's actually in the weeds, but you can almost extrapolate and connect the dots and say, hey, there's going to be storage systems coming that are going to look different. So you have to look at this and say, in the enterprise AI, not consumer, maybe the workloads aren't as customized or purpose built given these billions of dollars of infrastructure on the table for the consumer, big players, but when you look at enterprise, there's a lot of money involved. So workloads need to run almost with custom silicon and or custom clusters. So there might be the rise of these super clusters, these super storage environments where you have to rethink that, what's your vision on, and it's kind of out there, it's kind of an abstract question, but if you want to go to connect the dots on enterprise AI and storage, you got to have storage clusters that match the speed and performance of these new AI compute and memory clusters that are optimized for those AI workloads. I mean, they're different. Are they different? Kind of a concept question, what's your reaction to that? Yeah, so what's interesting to me is you have to also sort of balance that against the organizational requirements around sustainability, right? So whatever solution you decide to put into place has to deliver on the performance requirements you're looking for, but at the same time meet those ESG goals that the organization has. So it's really going to think about the super clusters. It's not so much about how big of the storage environment we can sort of create in a single offering. It's how easily it is that we make it so that you can connect multiple storage environments together. We often refer to that as the global data platform, this idea that we can create an aggregate view of your entire digital estate without moving data around. In fact, when we talk about the storage scale system just to give you some context, 4.5 petabytes and 4U effective is what we can deliver. 4.5 petabytes, that's a lot of data that you can store directly on that disk, right? Or that array. I've also mentioned the throughput, the read-write speeds, et cetera, but we're doing that at a 70% reduction in the total amount of power that's being consumed. So as we begin to think about the future of building out these super clusters of storage, interconnectivity becomes key, self-optimization becomes key, and I think the storage itself has to be integrated or has to have AI integrated into it so that it can move and work as efficiently as the models it's responsible for supporting. That's a great point, actually. We mentioned software defined earlier versus physical. You just brought up the whole sustainability. The constraint that everyone's designing around is power and cooling. Power and cooling. And so if you look at the software opportunity, it's massive. It is. So, okay, we'll have physical drives that'll get better, faster, cheaper, but you got to run software on and that's the opportunity because you have to manage the power envelope within the rack. Right. Power, energy, watts. I mean, how do you squeeze more out of the hardware? Again, software becomes key. All right, so let's get back into the tactical. So what are you guys offering today? So when a customer comes in and says, hey, look it, I want to position myself. We're not repatriating that much. We're basically net new investment spend on premises and edge. I got to have an architecture and a storage solution. What do you guys say to that question? Yeah, so a lot of times it's, what's the intent that you plan to do with that data, right? Obviously we're at NVIDIA, so let's just assume that what you're referring to is AI. When we look at the storage scale system to address the distributed file and object needs that most organizations will have for large language models, we have multiple offerings there. So we have a 3,500 that would be more entry-like in nature, the larger 6,000 to deal with the larger capacity of storage that you need to be able to use to hold that data. Those are two offerings that we could bring to market very quickly. But then again, it depends on what the infrastructure looks like that we're moving into. So you had mentioned on premise, we do have organizations out there that rely on IBM consulting and ask them how do we in effect create a hybrid by design AI architecture that gives us the best of both worlds, takes advantage of the compute capabilities that are provided as a service, maybe through IBM Cloud, connected to something like an IBM storage scale system that's holding onto the data at the edge or the core and then blending those together with other parts of the business. It just depends on the organization we're working with. That's awesome. Obviously the AI is the hot trend. Quick plug, what are some cool things you've been working on lately since last time we saw each other a bit of few months? What cool things you've been seeing emerge, observations in the industry, things you're working on. Give us a quick highlight reel. Just a quick plug. One of the things that IBM prides itself on from an innovation perspective is what we do with computational storage. The same drives that we refer to as the FlashCore module actually work in our flash system for primary storage as well as the scale system for that distributed file and object offering that I was mentioning. But because it's computational storage we can actually push AI and machine learning down to the drive and actually trend the entropy with respect to how data changes from the host that's accessing it or writing to it. And we begin to look for patterns in that data. So one of the things that we announced recently was this FlashCore module four. Again, since the last time you and I talked where we're doing hardware accelerated inline threat detection to look for patterns that would be indicative of a cyber threat and being able to respond much quicker. And as we begin to standardize the use of FlashCore modules across all of our storage portfolio we're going to take that same AI and hardware acceleration and we're going to embed that throughout the on-prem infrastructure. And use of data is critical in that piece there. Absolutely. All right, so what is the IBM storage strategy? Since you're the CMO this is a quick test for you on messaging. What is the strategy of the storage IBM storage? You know, when I first joined the company I was asked to develop what that strategy would sound like in a news bite and it hasn't really changed. I think when you craft a strategy and you talk about it you build against a vision that you're after and that vision is pretty straightforward. It's literally to make every bit of the organization's data available to them in the most insightful and secure way possible so that they can take some kind of informed action on it. And then from that vision, how do we deliver that? We deliver that across three different categories. It's IBM storage for data and AI, IBM storage for hybrid cloud, and IBM storage for data resilience. How do we make the data that you rely on assured from a veracity and an accuracy perspective available to you without worrying about threats? And then how do we do that in a hybrid environment where some data will run on-prem, some data will run in the cloud and maybe some will actually run in a mix between the two and then build for an infrastructure platform that's capable of supporting AI and future workloads that are just as compute and data-intensive. Well Scott, great to see you, great to have you on for the quick update and thanks for the industry commentary, really appreciate you. We'll be seeing you in the studio for the super studio session in Palo Alto. You got it. And in about a month or so. We'll see, actually this month. Coming up, that's right. That's right. We're going to unpack it all. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. We are here at NVIDIA's GTC conference for the air of AI. A new inflection point is here. This is attracting not only just the hardcore developers in AI but mainstream investors, investment bankers, startups, a whole nother level we're going to here. It's the real deal, it's totally legit. AI is here, AI systems, AI storage, AI system solutions and applications will all be running on with AI. It's going to be great. We're in a systems revolution. Of course, we're covering on theCUBE. Stay with us for more coverage here in San Jose after this short break.