Hello everyone, welcome to playthings, News Clicks weekly sports show. Yeah, it's a big day. We saw a victory on the playing field in the Test match. India beat New Zealand quite soundly that too. So obviously, we will be talking about cricket today. But yeah, there is a difference as well because we will be talking slightly beyond cricket too. Because roster has changed and we have a guest in the studio. Mr. Pradeep Magasin is very senior journalist who has just now published his latest book which is on cricket and also it's also a memoir of a chronicle of the days that he spent covering cricket, Indian cricket and that too with the social and political context. It's built as a history of contemporary India and Pradeep Magasin, sir, welcome. Thank you. It's great to have you in the studio. Thank you so much for having me here on this discussion. And congrats on the book to start with. Thank you. I have to say, I have to admit too, I have started reading it and it's a very engrossing read as well. Again, I've glanced through the chapters. I've seen that you have written quite a bit on Indian captains during the time you spent as a journalist on the field. And two of them happen to be the right at the thick of things, elm of things right now in Indian cricket. And since it's a day that we saw India beat New Zealand on the playing field, let's start with Dravid, I guess. So many of you have written about him, you have dedicated chapters to Dravid as well as Ganguly, who is heading the PCCI. See their cricketing life is well documented. Both great cricketers, Dravid, a great test player, perhaps among the best India's ever had or the world has ever had. Ganguly, we know as a leader what he did, what he achieved. Now he's the board president, as you say, and Dravid is the Indian team coach. So that relationship which was there in earlier times as players is now transformed into administrative roles. My book is about, when I talk about cricket, these are my memoirs. These are anecdotal memoirs in the sense that I don't go into areas which I have not seen and I have not been witnessed to. And since cricket is so well documented in India, scorecards and matches, so I don't go into that. What I go into is how I have seen these relationships, these interplay between cricketers, between captains, between coaches of my period whenever I covered cricket, and how it affects them and how it affects the team. So for instance, I talk about Gavaskar and Kapildev relationship. Again, on anecdotal evidences, I talk about Sachin and other era, their relationships. Again, as I said, purely on anecdotal terms of my interactions with them, what I saw, what I felt was happening. Then it goes to Dravid Ganguly. So if you're asking me about Dravid, well Dravid, from the book's perspective, Dravid is a captain who becomes captain after Ganguly goes in controversial circumstances when the coach Greg Chappell accuses him of dividing the team or disruptor as he is called. And Dravid takes over the team is not in harmony because of these divisions. So I talk about that. I talk about my interventions. There is a chapter on Dravid where his coach is telling a journalist that I don't want certain key players, players like Tendulkar in the team. So you write about it and write a source-based story that how they are not needed in the team instead of taking my name. And this happens in Pakistan when Dravid is leading India. I come to know about it because that journalist, young journalist, Siddharth Vedyanathan comes to me, he's young, he's disturbed. India has lost the test match series to Pakistan and then the coach is talking like this. So my interaction with Dravid, what I tell him. So I kind of document that relationship with three of them. And before that, when Wright becomes the coach, I try to document what I've seen of Wright, how John Wright was, how he introduced new concepts, how difficult it was, what sort of a person he was, what his relationship was with Ganguly. It may not have been always a very harmonious relationship, but it was not a disrupting relationship. So all these incidents are there in terms of not my interpretation as opinion pieces, but I stitch this story through action, through talks, what I have talked, what I have seen, what they are. So that's how this whole book actually I have structured. That's interesting when you mention Dravid and his time as skipper. Because again, now he's a coach and also probably you will oversee a period where this transition happens when hard calls about which senior player should be in the mix, who shouldn't be, have to be taken. So can you just comment on Dravid's personality, what you have seen and how is he likely to manage this situation? Look, I will take you to the book for the question. My answer would be that Dravid as a captain is well aware, I think of the pitfalls of the senior, junior and the relationships and how a captain has 11 or 12 or 14 cricketers with him whom he has to lead. All of them are of, obviously no one person is this, no two persons are the same, they're different people with different backgrounds, different understanding of situations. So when Ganguly in 2004 I think was when Australia came here and there was this test match at Nagpur which had a green wicket and he withdraws overnight in the match because of injury and Dravid has to lead. I am covering that match and somehow I get this impression or I am told that people feel that Ganguly has withdrawn from the test, not because of injury but because he didn't want to play on that green top and India lose that match very badly. So I try to probe further, I come to know, I talk to Dravid himself and there is this, I realize that yes there is this feeling with some cricketers in the team. I convey this to Ganguly with the intention of making him aware that look he needs to reach out to his team, what they are feeling about and I write two stories in my paper, I am working with Hindustan Times then. I don't want to write directly what I have had, like what are my sources or what I base my story on. But I do write very cleverly one piece in which I, which appears on page one where I write that Ganguly, some players are suspecting that Ganguly withdrew not because of injury but because he chickened out. Then I write a second piece which I in a way appeal to Dravid to the new captain because Dravid becomes the captain for the next test man because he is injured, Ganguly has not recovered. Where I appeal to Dravid that look leading a side comes with very different problems. It's like I have been a sports editor or in the newspaper there are ten people, everyone has his own issues and views and everyone thinks that he should be given primacy over the others and there are tensions and handling them is not an easy job. So I appeal to Dravid that he should have a more holistic view of what has happened because it's not easy when he becomes the captain he will realize that. And actually when Dravid becomes the captain there are a lot of tensions in the team as was evident when everyone knows how India lost in the 2007 World Cup with Dravid and the captain. It couldn't even qualify for the next stage, it was one of the biggest upsets in World Cup cricket. So Dravid obviously must have and has matured enough he has this experience of how to deal with these tensions. And he has been now placed as you say in a situation where he will have to, he's not the captain now not so directly but as a coach you have Virat Kohli as captain in one format. You have now Rohit Sharma as captain in different format and there is speculation that Rohit Sharma may lead India in one day as well. So how to handle these egos as John Wright says in a conversation with me which is in the book that these are rock stars and if you tell them directly that don't do this, don't do that, they get upset. I have to find a way in which I tell them also what to do but I don't make them feel as if I am trying to instruct them or I am trying to change their style. I make them believe, feel that look they need to do that and there are times when they come to me, tell me exactly that hey John I have decided to do this. As if they have decided though it is Wright who has very cleverly placed those thoughts in their mind. So I am sure David is a sensible man, he's a responsible man, he's matured enough now to handle these situations. It's quite a, diplomacy is one of his key areas, attention to detail plus whatever the game, game insights that he brings onto the table. Again the second name that I mentioned sort of Ganguly is, I mean they are in a way working in conjunction and I would, I mean did you have any inkling towards, I mean when you saw Ganguly first initially also and as a skipper, that he would become the kind of administrator that he has become now. No definitely no. Ganguly has been one of the most remarkable characters in my cricketing journey I have seen, interacted with. In fact one of those rare cricketers I have been interacted and known more than most of the others. At one stage I was intending to write his biography with his consent. I have talked to his parents, he allowed me that access being to his house, being talked to his friends at that time and the biography didn't happen but I had a lot of access, a lot of information. And there was a time when, since during Greg Chapel he spat with him, I initially probably was among the very few journalists who backed Ganguly and wrote that Greg is not the right thing to have happened to Indian cricket. So I have had a lot of interactions with him which are recorded in the book. The complexity of sorrow Ganguly coming from a rich background and not being one of the fittest of cricketers and nobody thought that he would become India's captain and nobody believed even the players and administrators didn't believe that this is the right decision to have taken to made him the captain. Some people saw him as a selfish man but he proved everyone wrong, everyone knows that he led India remarkably well and the respect of his cricketers. So I document that how his relationship with John Wright, I also document this whole disruption what happened to him personally. There are certain intimate details because of my access to, he provided to his family, to himself which I don't think have been written about before. So he is a fascinating character and now he is the president of the Indian control board, very powerful man. Unfortunately he has a secretary who probably is more powerful because of his political connections. But still his relationship with Dravid during that period a lot of people felt was not good. Some people felt that it was a creation of media writing and here again Ganguly has got Dravid as Indian coach so it's a very interesting development. It's an evolution also, I mean next step in Indian cricket is under these two straw warts of Indian cricket. So one way to look at it is that it's great that cricketers have a bit of a say in the future of Indian cricket. Other way to look at it is that Ganguly's actions as BCDF president or the priorities that he has set, like you mentioned secretary is more powerful than the president as well. So probably there is a power mix, decisions are being made with the consensus of the other parties involved in that. You know how the elections were held in the BCC and how compromise formula was arrived and all that. Also unfortunately Lodha commission's recommendations or Supreme Court mandated, it's a Supreme Court which has said that these changes have to be made though they've been made but then it's the old way functioning because they've amended the constitution, the case is now gone to court again and court has so far not taken any decision. So the board is being run the way it used to be run except for the fact that because of those changes a cricketer became the board president. And so that's what I wanted to again get into it now that you have mentioned BCCI as well as cricket and how it was run earlier. So generally the games direction that you have seen in the past 30 years through your career as well as where it is now and why do you perceive the games future is because the way we look at it as journalists now as current journalists, crickets I mean I would probably be using a slightly harsh word but sanctity of the sport is in question because of the control that the BCCI and the top two other boards in the world English and the Australian boards they have on the international game and how that is affecting the growth of the game and also to a larger extent democracy in the game. So and it's all there is a direct connection to how money has also come into the game and money with certain people only. So the evolution just wanted to have an explanation. When I started reporting on cricket in 80s early 80s and India was a marginal player in international cricket. It wasn't a very strong team but that apart it subcontinent teams like Pakistan, India, Lanka had no hold or no power in the international cricket conference because India didn't have that kind of cloud because of the money. Now the whole thing has changed after live television broadcasting rights having made board richer and richer with IPL even more richer. India is now far more powerful than England probably ever was when the cricket was controlled by say England, Australia, Nexus. I think India is now what India used to accuse them now they can also rightfully accuse India of being the big bully. They have been doing that. There was a time when Mr. Jagmon Dalmia when he was the board president and when he also became the ICC president he turned the whole thing upside down and there was huge public support I remember in 2002, 2001 in South India were in South Africa when five, six Indian players were banned for a couple of matches and Tendulkar was accused of ball tampering. There was a big ruckus and India threatened to withdraw. India used all its muscle and clout where the ICC had to bought India's wishes. There is a chapter on South Africa in this book which refers to the South African society and India and to a place because I have written about my visit to Gandhi's Phoenix settlement and the Black Indian relationships. So I write that how India used its muscles and in a land where Gandhi was actually transformed himself from a lawyer to a future revolutionary or a future visionary there the money game was fought but it had no ethical basis like if Gandhi laid emphasis on ethical basis of everything that the process itself should be clean. The end if it is arrived through a process which is unethical it's not the right thing and I say that reverse was happening that ethics had no meaning in this in this fight everything was decided by which side had more money. So from 2000 to now it has multiplied many fold IPL has the kind of broadcasting rights sale of IPL has made India far richer than it was it ever was and because of that among the many things which has affected the game what is to a traditionalist a more important or a more disturbing development is how test cricket is likely possibility of it getting more and more marginalized because so much money is involved with the 20 cricket players are getting so much of money IPL is like no cricketer needs to play any other thing apart from whoever IPL because they make money like 10 crores 15 crores top cricketers in 3 months which most of the cricketers worldwide can't make even in a lifetime. So since the temptation the money so huge they would all prefer to play IPL or T20 cricket which then because it's managed by television and by businessman it will keep on expanding and it will eat up whatever little space is left for test cricket. And test cricket is important for cricket's future? It's important place if you talk to any player he will say test cricket is something which is special to him because of the skills involved are deeper more difficult and the challenges are more difficult but he would prefer to play IPL because that's where the money is. Flex of money into cricket into the game as also reflected on our trade. Our trade is also journalism is also sports journalism is also at a crossroads in India and I believe you have towards the end of your career you have expressed your displeasure to the direction that things were. Well I quit as a sports editor of Hindustan Times I resigned in 2000 immediately after 2007 World Cup and I was relatively young in the sense that I was only 50 but I had had enough of the pressures of handling people and handling marketing and handling so many other pressures that I decided it's not worth being part of it. And I became like a consultant feel answer that too I was lucky that the paper said no you write your columns and but I because these pressures are difficult to handle and when you're young maybe you can and since I had seen a different era where the temptation and it was an individual who would who didn't have these pressures of marketing advertising and other things if he had to report honestly he could but now it's so different that good luck to people who are working in these circumstances. Good luck indeed and we also we are test match players here because we always have a time time issue so my producer has been waving that our time slot is almost over so I'll get to the most important part of the discussion which I badly wanted to ask you as well is about the about the connections that you have made while covering the game the social context the political context and also your memoir the deeply felt memories that you have brought onto the pages of this book and you started off with Kashmir and that's where your roots are and you ended the book with Kashmir as well and as you know it's the turmoil still is on and now living in Delhi and looking at it and since you feel so deeply about the place and you have written about it as well so what do you look at when you look at it what do you see? Look I decided the book to be like this there is a lot of Kashmir in it there is a lot of Pakistan my visits to it and Kashmir back again Punjab terrorism because I happened to be a Kashmiri I spent a bit of childhood there I used to go back there I lived during the terrorism period in Punjab I've seen those things I've seen how Mandel agitation took place all these things have influenced me and all these things are in the book there's a bit of history in it again anecdotal not from an academic point of view but from an anecdotal point of view what the situation was at that time socially politically how it was how the middle classes reacted to Mandel the Babri Masjid demolition terrorism how we covered cricket at that period Mrs Gandhi's assassination what was the atmosphere among the relationship between Sikhs and Hindus and there are there are a lot of things in the book which are non-cricketing which are deeply at least I am deeply was influenced by those events and I tried to portray them as I felt how it changed me because you are an animal of the societal animal and wherever you are living whatever is happening around you is bound to affect you change you so I go into those things and I hope people and you will find them in grossing readable it is because sport without context is meaningless in itself because it will certainly decrease and losses just like that it's great it's good for good for celebrations alone but beyond that what is the meaning of that that is what in fact play things we the end full name of the show is play things with alien forces so it's the forces that control sport and beyond so we generally try to look at all these factors into it and in that sense your book delving into the rich fabric of context that cricket carries itself around the game around and which you have felt and noticed that it is it would be an enclosing read as I said so thanks for sharing such insightful anecdotes plus some insights into what is happening in Indian cricket at present thank you Pradeep it's always a pleasure talking cricket with you and thanks for coming in and sharing it's and I believe the book not just cricket it's it's been launched next week it will be in the bookstores on 11th from 11th December so do give it a read it's it's I've started reading it by the way and so it's pretty engrossing and also the larger social context and political context plus the historical happening around that happens around sport it's it's very richly portrayed here and much like how we try to present present sport at play things thanks for viewing this is a wrap for this episode


Welcome back to the 2018 THDP203 World Cup of Web Features. Uh, yes. I thought I should just let you carry on. That was quite good. So in the previous episode, we looked at eight features and we whittled them down to our favorite, like one of them. Of those eight features, yeah. Of those eight features. And if you haven't seen that video, then. You should. Yeah, this will maybe make more sense. And if you haven't seen it. Spoiler alert. Yeah, it was Skrullsnap was our favorite. One. I've got to repeat who Skrullsnap won against, but. No. But we're going to take a look at the next feature. And I would like to talk about Async Clipboard. Probably that's what it says on the tin, doesn't it? It is. Well, do you remember Clipboard? Remember doing this. Exec command. That is some API design straight out of hell. Yes. Yes, it is. And you would have to, if you wanted to copy some text, you would have to create an input element, because that's where you could do the focus and selecting properly. And setting markers in the DOM, text selection markers, which gets even worse. Which is horrible. You do copy. You've changed focus. You've changed selection. This is very destructive things for a page to be doing. And support was iffy, then you had your fallback flash plug-in until flash support got, yeah. Horrible. So this is, it's Async, so it's for large content. It's less likely to be blocking on the main thread, which is great. But I think the main cell here is, isn't that nice? It's so nice. Isn't that nice? And I'm guessing there is not just write text and retext, but there's also going to be files and images. And because you have screenshots on many operators, you just go onto the Clipboard first. Yeah, potentially in many formats. So that bit is not there yet. Yeah. That's something that's, it's just text for now. Still winning already. But absolutely, absolutely winning. So that brings us on to the next one, which is typed OM. That's a Houdini. That's typed OM. That's a Houdini bit. So it's actually one of the lower, almost less exciting APIs of Houdini. You're really selling it? Yeah. That it's very necessary to make all the other ones happen. And it's actually addressing a huge pain point, I think, of many developers. Because it gives types to CSS stylings. OK. So you might know getComputedStyles or just the .Style property on an element. And there's now the typed versions, which are either element.ComputedStyleMap or the AttributeStyleMap. OK. And so now we have a StyleMap. So what does it actually mean? A StyleMap basically has getters and gives you separate number values and their units. So now you don't want to do string concatenation and like some weird splitting or all these different things to figure out what is the actual numeric value. Much easier to do math, which you sometimes have to do, or just analyze them and figure certain things out. Well, before you, I really like what they've done here. So we've got Units, PX, which is nice and short. It's what you write in CSS to have that. And then here we have Percent. Yeah. I don't remember why, but there was a reason. There was a reason. OK. That's good. That's good. It actually goes further than that, because you can also create these types this way.  You can create them yourselves and then set them this way. But even more excitingly, you have Add and Subtract on these. You can actually do math. Oh. So you do it the same way the calc works in CSS. So this actually, if it's the same type, the same unit length, it will just coalesce. If you have different, like here I'm adding 5% to 10 pixels, it will actually give you a proper arithmetic tree. So you can do all these analysis or reorder them, all these things you sometimes want to do without having to re-implement a CSS parser. OK. I'm feeling that I might know what has won here. Maybe. Let's go back to the tree. I don't remember what you talk about. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's so exciting. You can't remember it even 30 seconds later or whatever it was. I just think as a clipboard, it's good. Yeah. It's not that often that you need type to M directly. You need them for a lot of your linear APIs. And if you need type to M, it is so huge to have it. Yes. Then again, you don't need clipboard that often as well, I guess, unless in certain circumstances. So yeah, I'm going to go with type to M. OK. OK. I agree. So as in clipboard, it's a big improvement to what we had. But it's just a lot going on in type to M, isn't it?  It's definitely something I would have loved in the past, like even the small parts of that. I love when I get excited. It's jingling. And there were some experiments where they had like animation heavy sites. And they basically rewrote them with type to M and actually got 80% faster. It's an extreme case. That's a big number. I'm going to put it through. That goes through. Right. Next, steady on, because the next feature is update via cache. OK. Yeah. So this is a service worker feature. I'm not surprised. What happened? We ran this problem where we were checking for updates on the service worker using the HTTP cache, how things normally happen everywhere for everything else. Oh, that cache. That cache, the HTTP cache. But we would always time things out after 24 hours. If it was over 24 hours old, we would go to the network regardless of what was in the cache. Ignoring the caching headers. A lot of developers still had a lot of issues with that because they didn't have control over the headers for one particular JavaScript file, like the service worker. Yeah. Good app pages, I think, is a good example where you don't have control over your headers. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, they have a default cache of like 10 minutes or something random. Yeah. So we introduced update via cache where you can tell the service worker what to go to the HTTP cache for, what to ignore. So for the source, you tell the browser whether to respect the HTTP cache for the service worker file specifically. Yes. OK. So you update via cache all, which was the old default. It's not the default anymore. There's imports, which is saying, don't go to the cache for the main service worker file, but anything it imports, you can go to the cache file. That's cool. That's the new default. Or you can say, ignore the cache for everything. All right. That's my feature. My feature. All right, what was my feature? Desktop PWAs. So I have no core templates because it's, once again, something that doesn't really change the way you write code or gives you any new capabilities. But it's basically the whole install to home screen, but on desktop. Make it its own window. Make it its own button in the launcher or in the start menu or whatever you have nowadays. And Edge has it kind of with allowing you to submit PWAs to the store? Yeah, they were ahead of everyone in doing it. But you still couldn't just install something from Edge to your desktop. That wasn't possible. It was only you have to submit it to the store. I got it proved, I think. And I got in there. So now with Chrome on Chrome OS and on Windows and I think on Mac behind the flag. Yeah, that's behind the flag. You can legit open the menu and say, install this. And then it gets into the launcher with its own window, its own icon, its own command tab spot and all these things. So becoming a proper application on your desktop. It's kind of replacing Electron for a lot of simple cases. Hopefully. Hopefully. OK, so this. This is a difficult one because when I talk about Update via Cache, the big news there is that we changed the default. It's not a new feature. It's a change. So shaky ground. Desktop PWAs, it's not a developer-facing feature. Well, it kind of is because it's something you can talk about my app can run on the desktop. It's not even on all operating systems. Yeah, it's just a weak ground. The two things that are actually have been really well received. I think Update via Cache solves. Oh, really? So I was going to say, I think desktop PWAs, it's such a major thing. It's something like it's moving the web into native space. I guess you're actually right. It just doesn't feel as real to me yet. Because there's no direct APIs for it. Yeah, and also there's no install banner, I think, on desktop. It doesn't prompt you to do it. You need to set up some JavaScript to have a button for it. I'm fine with letting desktop PWAs through. OK, well, I find in these sort of things I feel like you've done me a favor by siding with me, which is weird because it's against the service worker feature. You set yourself up, mate. I did, didn't I? And I worry that I now owe you one maybe in a later round. I'll call in that favor when I need it. OK, so that moves desktop PWAs into the next round. Into round two. So type 2M desktop PWAs. Type 2M. I'm really torn about this one. Yeah, actually, the more I think about it, now type them. Because it doesn't allow me to write better code. Like desktop PWAs don't give me necessary new capabilities. I'm not. They don't make your life easier as a web developer. They might make it easier to get more work because you're able to do things that are more like native apps. And also I feel like lots of other features are still missing to make most of the things I do want to have in a separate app actually possible in a web app. File access is one of the main things that comes to mind. So many apps I would like to have as a proper app are still not possible on the web. So the exceptions would be like, yeah, what's that web can I can install? I guess. I'm also quite not too sad about that being a tab. I feel like a lot of people are going to be screaming at the screen right now. I mean, they always do. It is YouTube after all. Go nuts in the comments. OK, so next up, as you may have seen on the screen I actually find this really difficult to read because I kind of go bitmap prerender. Bitmap prerender. Or bitmap prerenderer. OK, it's bitmap prerenderer. Bitmap prerenderer. Yeah, check it out. Look at this. It says bitmap renderer here. No, I'm now wondering if I. I think it's bitmap renderer, not bitmap prerenderer because I think it is bitmap renderer, not bitmap prerenderer. OK, yes, see it's difficult to read. OK, so it jingles when I get angry as well. It's bitmap renderer. Of course it's bitmap renderer. Right, here it is. Create a canvas, but get context. Oh, it's a new get context type. It's a new context type. And what you can do with this is you can create an image bitmap, which is an existing feature. Separate feature, nothing to do with this. You can transfer it onto the canvas. So it's just a fast path for basic canvas draw image. Yeah. That's pretty cool, but it's like blitting. I'm guessing this is super fast under the hood where there's all the other layers are skipped. It's a little bit faster. It is very efficient on memory because this is transfer. Yeah. This image object is now, oh, yeah, it's been transferred in the same way as if you were crossing over to a worker. So the data buffer is now neutered, as it's called. Neutered, exactly. Great. Those game engines are going to be happy. All right, going up against the bitmap pre-render is WebLogs. I have many fields, both good and bad about WebLogs. Oh, interesting. Let's take a look at the API. Basically, sometimes you have a resource that might be shared between multiple workers or even multiple tabs of your web app via IDB or something else that is shared across your origin. The service locker, for example. Yes. And so you have some code, and it does something. You don't need the lock. And when you need a lock, you request a lock by a name. It's just a string name. And then an async function will get invoked with a lock once you have that lock.  Because that might not be straight away, because something else has got a lock right here. And then once that async function is done running, the lock will be released, and you can continue normally. And there is also a concept of shared logs and exclusive logs. Shared logs, if you request a shared log, and you can get it if there's only other shared logs. If you request an exclusive one, you have to wait until there's no other logs and you look at an exclusive log. Because shared logs are fine if lots of things are reading from something. Exclusive log is for writing. I like that I went with shared and exclusive though, because there is multiple patterns, not just to read, write pattern. Because sometimes you might be reading and writing, but disjoint parts of an array. So that would also work. So yeah, so this is something that lots of people have requested. The more I think of it, the more I think it's actually necessary. I think there's also a lot to be done without this. Instead of using the actual pattern where you have one designated thread, but that's a different story. Yeah. Why have you done underscores? This is not very. Because I copy pasted it from MDN. Good excuse. It's a good excuse. That's a good way out of it, because I dislike that in JavaScript. It's not like any other APIs. Right. I mean, it feels to me like WebLocks is just a more. It probably has, on average, more use cases than the Bitmap render. It's kind of niche for probably game engines, probably some image processing. It's good if you've got an off-screen canvas and you want to make it transfer across. But yeah, let's see what we put WebLocks through. Let's declare WebLocks the winner of round number seven. Round number seven. OK. Right, so WebLocks is through to the next round. What are we going to look at now? I want to talk about reach, reach a policy. OK, it's the font again. This is feature policy. Lots of buzzes around feature policies at CDS. Yes, there was. So here's basically how it works. This is a header. And you can serve this on your page. And it's essentially, it's like CSP. It's like CSP for features. Exactly. So here I'm saying, this page may not use geolocation. So you're declining yourself access to the geolocation API, which is good, because that means when somebody evil injects JavaScript code, they can't do these things. Exactly, exactly. And you can also specify it for an iframe. So that's cool. You're saying this iframe may not use geolocation. And there's lots of features. Great for ads, I would presume. Yes, exactly. Yeah, you probably want to put quite a lot of this on if you really want to restrict what, if you've got me. And there's a massive set of feature policies, right?  So that one, yes, that is one, but that's an experimental one that's not released. The ones that are released is auto play, camera, document.domain, stopping that, which I quite like, because that might come with performance benefits later in line. EME, full screen, geolocation, obviously. Microphone midi, payments stuff. VR, I've written a speaker here. Can't remember what that is now. Synchronous XHR as well. Oh, sync. Yeah. That's all good stuff. All right. Absolutely, because that's something you would definitely want to stop. And I think in the future it's like, if you opt out of a certain subset of features, you actually get, there could be the option to enable a faster path in the browser, because if you can opt out of legacy stuff, the browser knows, oh, don't need the legacy stuff, I can be faster, like enable certain optimizations potentially in the future. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Right. What have you got? Coming up next is CSS Paint API. Oh, yeah. Okay. I would forward people to my CDS talk. Oh, yeah. But maybe that's a 50 minute video if you want to see the unedited version. Yeah, I see a lot of things went wrong for you. A little bit. Yeah. Anyway, let's get the quick version of CSS Paint API. Basically, it allows you to define your own paint routine whenever CSS expects an image. So just before the squircle is, is the point where your talk failed at CDS? Yes. We had a catastrophic laptop meltdown. I did. And yet you've brought it up here. Yes, I wanted to absolve the squircle from the curse that is crushing it. Understood, understood. Sorry, I interrupted. Yeah, so a squircle is basically a square that is mathematically closer to a circle than it's a way to paint a rectangle with rounded corners. But it looks a bit more natural than how rounded corners happen. For example, and browsers can do that. You have border radius, and if you don't like how it looks, then you're kind of screwed. And now with CSS Paint, you can basically hook into the actual paint part of the rendering pipeline and define your own paint routine. So here I basically load a module, which is a JavaScript file, into the paint workload and I use a name. Then in that file, I can define the paint routine and basically get the same context like a canvas. And just define what I'm going to draw. And you get the geometry, which is going to be telling you stuff like... How big is the element, and the properties, what are the styles on this element, and you can incorporate all of those in your JavaScript code. And the good thing is that in the very near future, this code is going to run off the main thread, basically not costing you any main thread budgets that you only have like 60 milliseconds per frame. Because previously, if you used Canvas, it could end up costing you a frame budget. Is it on main thread now? Currently it is. Okay, like Canvas, right? But the feature of workloads in all the units that they are migratable. So whenever we think it's feasible to move it to a different thread, we can without you having to change your code. Okay, okay, right. So this allows you to reduce the DOM and stuff. Right, so I guess we should have a think about those features. This is a tough one. Is it? I think. I was going to go straight in with CSS Painting. Yeah, I'm going to lean towards feature policy. But to be honest, that's mostly because of the projected future and not of what it gives you right now. Because right now it's mostly a debugging slash development feature, like opting out of features. But I have the hope that it is our way out of supporting legacy stuff for long amounts of time. Well, document.domain, that's one of those. And I think if feature policy today, like you said, you put this combination of things in, this stuff is going to be twice as fast. Yeah. Then I think I would be putting it through. Yeah, too, but that's not what it is today. The range of things that CSS Paint API sort of opens up, it feels like I'm more excited about it. Who am I? I'm more excited about what it can do today. Flutter is using it as well for their web port, for example, which I published a blog post about to do all the mask imaging and form morphing. And all these things is actually pretty impressive. The users that I didn't necessarily think of myself. So it is quite good. So let's call CSS Paint API. I'm going to put it through. So now we have web logs versus CSS Paint API. The CSS Paint API. Two developer features, one of them many more use cases, in my opinion, on average than the other one. Oh, which, which, because I... CSS Paint API, like for me it would be a CSS Paint API. There's more use cases there. Yeah. It makes a lot of new things possible, but also makes all things much more efficient. And especially on low-end devices where you're under memory constraints, it just gives you, makes more visual things possible. It feels the, gives the web a more high-fidelity feel, enables more high-fidelity UIs, I guess. And it's the first feature that's really opening up CSS. And I can see there being more little micro libraries released with CSS. It's a very extensible web API in that you are now hooking into the actual engine. I really like web logs. I really do. But I think you're right. I'm going to put CSS Paint API through to the next round. And that gives us another semi-finalist to decide as well. Yeah, now we have to decide between typed OM and CSS. So Houdini API versus Houdini API. Oh, this is unfortunate, isn't it? I mean, it was, it's going to happen at some point. Yeah. Depends on how we judge them. On average, the problems that I encounter when building a web app. Paint API is more useful than typed OM. And both of them are currently, as far as I know, pretty much Chrome only. Typed OM has a lot of lower level use cases, right? Like if you were trying to figure out layout stuff, this is going to become handy. Even the amount of times I've written little rubbish pauses just to take those CSS values and break them out. So that's where I guess my experience differs, because me, the problems that typed OM solves, I encounter much less than the problems that Paint API solves. Mm. We should just do that for 15 minutes and extended cut. All right, let's find. So you would say typed OM. You're leaning towards typed OM. Let's go paint API. It is, I'm more interested in the tooling that's going to be built around CSS Paint API. Yeah. I think that's a really tough one. Yeah. I'm hoping there will be an ecosystem of off-the-shelf modules with all the effects, like a ripple, and all the things that you can potentially build. Yeah, I do think that's interesting. And it also means we can come up with a first semi-finalist we can come up with. Oh, and this is too, I mean, I was about to say, this is two good ones. You would hope at this later stage in the competition that this would be two good ones, but it definitely is. Two CSS features, once again. I see a pattern, I think. Yeah, that's interesting. This is a really tough one, actually. I would look. The amount of times that I've wanted scroll snap and I've either had to implement it in JavaScript and it's been horrible because it's been laggy. Like as soon as things are moving, it's fast because you're on the compositor. But that initial picking up the touch event to starting to do the movement, it often involves setting up a lot of layers on the compositor. And then you do pretend physics and you have to do touch and pointer events and mouse events. Yes, it's a horrible moment where the user swipes. And then because it's happened to go into your code, it kind of is a bit of a break before it then flings. And then you figure out the ramp up curves and everything. And no, I agree. Scroll snap removes so much code and it's much more cross-browser than CSS Paint currently is. That is true, actually. Scroll snap is around in Chrome and Safari, but there is a sort of older standard that's available in all the other browsers. OK, yeah, I'll give it extra points because it is something that you can use today in projects. OK, so our finalist. So we are 50% through. We are 50% through. Whittle down 16 features to one. And we will do all of that all over again with another 16 features. I regret doing this already. Well done, us. Yep. How do we sign this off? I don't know. See you next time. Is that right? Is that OK? Next video, next on the other, on the flips. I don't know. Yeah, soon next one. Subscribe. Keep getting people back every day. Why didn't we do one episode per one of these? So they've been much better. Anyway, so good at this. We're so good at this. See you next time. See you next time.


Frontier fighters! Dramatically treading the wilderness paths of that deathless band of inspired pioneers who gave America an empire. One of the most noted of all frontiersmen was Christopher Carson. Kit Carson. Wise of counsel, strong of arm, brave of heart, and gentle of nature. September 1826. Franklin, Missouri on the western frontier. Beyond it lay the great plains of the savage Redskine and the shaggy Buffalo. A mysterious and uninhabited wilderness of prairie, desert, and forest into which brave men journeyed in search of adventure and fortune. Kit Carson, you dreamy scamp. Now you quit watching them wagging trains and get to work. Yes, sir, but Mr. Workman, I wasn't meant to be a hornet's maker. You're only 16 years old, Kit, and you're my apprentice. Now you'll either stop dreaming about Santa Fe and be a hornet's maker, or I'll take this strap and larypia good. You don't have to do that, Mr. Workman. I'll work hard today because those wagon trains out there badly need what we're making. But someday I'll join one of those caravans and go to Santa Fe, too. Just before dawn, one autumn morning, Kit steals out of the little town of Franklin to the open prairie where a caravan of covered wagons is waiting for the sunrise. Yeah, lad, what are you up to? I'm looking for the wagon, master, sir. Well, that's me. What do you want? I want to go to Santa Fe. Santa Fe?  I can ride, sir, and shoot, too. And I'm not afraid of engines, either. Well, I could use a hand to keep the extra stock from playing. You know, horses, mussels, and oxen. You think you could do it? Shucks, sir. That'll be easy.  Sure, lad, but you pay for every critter you lose. Now, there's the sun, and here's the horse you'll ride. Head westward. Catch up! Catch up! Forward!  Marauding Indians and great herds of buffalo crossed the caravan's path daily. At night, wolves, desperately hungry, circled the wagons. Oh, those wolves drive a tired man crazy. Broadus, Broadus! Yes, sir? Broadus, take your rifle and kill a couple of those barman. They'll give the rest of them something to eat. Sure. Got my rifle right here, under my blanket. What's happened, Broadus? Oh, this tanked rifle exploded. I think my arm's cracked a bit. Well, here, let me see it. Oh, cracked a bit there. Broadus, you'll have to cut off that arm. No, no, you won't. You ain't no doctor. But it'll be weeks before we get to Santa Fe. Poison will set in for tomorrow.  Well, I got an idea. You know Kit Carson, that riding fool lad, is taking care of the extra stock? Sure. Nice boy. Smart too. Well, this Kit Carson used to be a harness maker's apprentice. He's right handy with a sharp knife and a needle. Now, what say we ask him to amputate that busted arm? Kit Carson, sure. He's strong, but he's gentle-like. He can cut off my busted arm if he's willing, but not you. Rude as it was, Kit Carson's operation was a complete success, and the boy became the hero of the covered wagons. Eventually, the caravan reached Santa Fe, where Carson joined Mountaineer Kincaid and proceeded with him to Taos. From Taos, Kit roamed all over the west, trapping, hunting, blazing new wilderness trails. Kit was never qualsome. He never hunted trouble. But he met trouble bravely when it came. 1835, a trappers rendezvous near Bonneville Fort in Green Valley. Where's that a rap old gal? Right behind you, bully Schumar. I'm waiting for you to propose marriage tour. Hiding away from bully, eh? Here, here. Take a drink of this liquor.  Been listening to Kit Carson again, eh? He don't like fire water either. The brave pale face of whom you speak is good man. You are bad. You see, in love with him, I suppose. I will be his squawk, if you see. When I get through them, he'll be so full of holes, he won't be able to speak.   I'll use your gun. Now then, Frenchman, span your Dutchman or American. I can lick any man who'll fight me. Throw down that rifle, bully, and get off that horse. You're drunk. Let him stay on his horse. Bully, you mean me. I'm the worst American in this camp. If I hear any more of that talk, I'll rip you apart. Go to it, Kit, go to it. Ah, so you're bad, eh, Kit Carson? For the pretty Indian girl, maybe. Singing grass.  She's mine. Somebody hold my horse while I load my pistol. All right, Kit. So, now, bully, I'll fight you on your own terms. On horseback, your rifle against my pistol. Start praying, bully, for here I come. Now, keep away from me, Kit Carson. Keep away. I'm not going to have the Indian girl, Kit. But keep away from me. Are you here? No, if not, horse, when you made it fix up that arm, you'd bleed to death. Take the gun. Easy, easy, now. Oh, this arm, my son.  Just a bragging fool who don't know a better man when he sees one. You will speak now to singing grass, Master Carson. My heart's already spoken to you singing grass. We marry tonight. In the lodge, they'll wrap a home medicine man in the valley. Come. Singing grass became Kit Carson's loyal companion and willing helper. During Kit's long and arduous wanderings, singing grass was always at her husband's side, devoted and unselfish. But singing grass passed away, leaving a pretty baby daughter at a line for Kit Carson to raise. With an escort of rollicking, laughing mountain men, Kit started a long journey to Missouri to place his child in a white woman's home. One night, he and his cavalcade were ambushed by a band of hostile blackfeet after two hours of desperate fighting. What happened, Kit? What happened to them engines? I think we licked them. See, they're riding off of that hill yonder. Maybe it's some sort of a trick. I don't think so. They'd disappear altogether if it was a trick. Hold your fire, man. Now, let's see my baby. Yeah, sure you liked it. You were born in the West, little lady. Shootin's in your blood. I can't take no more risks like this, and you're going back to Missouri and be raised up like civilized folks. Hey, Kit, huh? Look, there's one of them engines riding towards us. Don't shoot at that rider. Let's see what he's going to do. I'm cheap. I am. Peace thunder horse. There's another one under our belt. We have to go before we reach Missouri. Kit returned to the white man's country. He was amazed to discover that during his 16 years' absence, the frontier had been pushed westward many miles. Adeline, his daughter, was placed in a private St. Louis home. A few days in the sprawling Mississippi River metropolis, and Kit grew back in the snow-covered western mountains, where rested the remains of singing grass. It is May. On a small river steamboat en route back to Santa Fe, Kit Carson meets the brave man and gallant soldier who was destined to chart the course of Kit's entire future life. You miss Christopher Carson, sir? That's me, soldier bore. Lieutenant John Charles Fremont's compliments, sir. Lieutenant requests some conversation with you. Send him over. I'm always glad to talk to a gallant officer like Fremont. Very good, sir. Kit Carson? That's me. You're Fremont. Heard about you in St. Louis. Shake. To Carson, your fame as an explorer and trailblazer reached my ear as well. I was at the source of this very river. Flame. It sounds like it's got something to do with harnesses.  Kit, the Secretary of War has ordered me to make a map of the Western country and to advise the government how to aid and protect the immigrants going to Oregon. I want you to go with me. What can I do? I'm only a mountain man, plain trapper, beavers mostly. You know this country, Carson, this Western country. Now this is my first command. I need a man like you, brave, resourceful, reliable. Give the matter some thought now before you say no. I don't need to give the matter any thought. I'll go with you. But on one condition only. What's the condition? That you don't write a book about me. Seems like I can't write a trail without somebody with learning wants to write something about me. Well, Kit, I won't promise not to write that book, but I will promise to send one to your little girl. All right, then. Go ahead and write it. I don't know who in blazers will ever read it. Fremont did write a book. A vigorous, truthful chronicle of Kit Carson's courageous but cautious pursuit of the ever-widening American frontier. A book which told the world of Christopher Carson's understanding of the deep mysteries of the mountains he so loved. Those mountains which, to the everlasting glory of the nation they both served, they conquered together. So we bid farewell to another of the great frontier fighters, Kit Carson, whose name will forever echo down the eternal corridors of time.


Hi guys. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. So those of you who are here for the first time, read about me in the description box. In today's topic, I'm going to discuss a very important topic with you guys, which is related to your business, the brand name that you have. And specifically if you are in Canada and your business is in Canada, then it means that you need to know about the intellectual property rights associated with your trademark. So what is a trademark? How does it work? Where do you register it? What are the fees involved in it? Everything is I'm going to share in this vlog and you do not know how important it is. Recently, I was dealing with a case and I thought that this information is very much lacked specifically in the small and the medium-sized business owners relating to food and restaurant industry. So in today's vlog, this is an initiative where I will discuss about some of the trademarks. If you want to get in touch with me, the link is in the description box. If you have any other question query concern, you can put it in the comment section. However, this is not legal advice. This is just general awareness that I'm trying to spread and there is always a disclaimer in my description box. So basically, the trademark is basically a name or design of your whole brand. It is your branding. Now people start associating with you with this brand. In fact, all the brands you see on the screen are reliable factor and trust factor. If people and customer cannot rely with you, they will probably just move on with somebody else because there are many brands in the market doing that. So why does, how does your brand stand out? What does it pitch? And what is its most, you know, its milestone that you have to show through it? What is the message that you're conveying to the consumer? Everything is done through your trademark. Over the period of time, what happens is that your business and service is not just associated with your name or anything. It is now an association with your trademark. So people spend so much on trademarks. You can't believe the Amazon brand name, just the word Amazon here on your screen is basically for $23.8 billion itself. Now this brand, if Amazon ever goes for auction in the market, then this brand, the minimum bid it is getting is $23.8 billion. Now Amazon is a very big company. Let's come to a smaller companies like the recent case of in which the federal code of Canada in Toys R Us versus Herbs R Us actually, you know, recognized part of how a trademark infringement takes place. Now in this case, Herbs R Us was selling marijuana in the names of, in Herbs R Us, named without or with intention that does not matter in a trademark case, but it was deceptively so similar to Toys R Us, which is a 30-year-old brand in Canada and in America dealing with toys and kids stuff that it wanted to take an injunction for this release. And so it sued Herbs R Us. Herbs R Us was instructed by the code to remove its name and $30,000 in terms of the damages it had already done. It's all its sales were banned by the code and all of it. So that is how important a trademark is. Now why do you want to register your trademark? I will tell you why do you first you have to ask your question. Why do you want to register your real estate? You want to register your real estate in your name so that maybe after some crime or by grace of God, somebody happens to take possession of your real estate property. What are you going to do? So exactly happens with a trademark. Why do you want to register it is because you will have a legal title to it. Now if somebody is trying to be deceptively similar, create confusion in the market with your kind of trademark, if it at all reaches that level or even if it does not, with just because of that name and because of the service you provide, if it at all happens then how will you claim it? Yes, there is an option for people for the trademarks which are not registered but that is such you have to prove such substantially because it evidence in that that it won't be easy for a smaller or medium-sized business to do that. So it is always better as a startup as any kind of startup as a small business as a medium-sized business that you register your trademark. One thing that's clarifying in the beginning is that what trademark is not. People usually confuse trademarks with patents with other intellectual property like copyright but trademark is not that. Trademark is basically one of the combination of words, sounds, design, taste, colors, textures, sense, moving images, three-dimensional shapes, modes of packaging or holograms used to distinguish the goods or services of one person or organization from those of others. Patents, what are they? Patents basically cover new and useful inventions. So now if somebody makes a vaccination for COVID that whole system of making that vaccination is going to be a patent. So patent is mode of invention. Copyright, copyright is basically all your artistic work, your dramatic work, your literary work, your musical work. It is the subject matter of the performance. What is an industrial design? Then industrial design are basically visual features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament or any combination that applies to a finished particle. So all these are important differences that you want to know about because trademark out of this is the most common, the most infringed and the most disputed thing that is going in code. Now an important thing when we come to trademark discussion is that when you register your trademark under the trademark act you get the soul right to use the trademark for a period of 10 years after which you can get it renewed. However under common law you will have rights because you have been using it for so long but you do not want to come into that expensive long legal battle which many people figure because just because of the fact that they lack this awareness and they do not think that it is such an integral part of their business. Very interestingly there are cases in which they also suggest you what you cannot register and the trademark act also specifically in Canada will tell you that what you cannot register. For example people have tried to register their names and nicknames guys you cannot do that you can't register your names and nicknames then there are places of origin that you can't register like for example if something is coming from Ontario wines then you cannot register Ontario wines winery you have to make sure that it is a descriptive word which is different. Many people sometimes ask these are some of the FAQs who is a person who can register a trademark. Any person individual proprietorship partnership trade union association joint winter or corporation can register a trademark so person definition is very wide under the trademarks act. Now when you are ready what happens the next step is that you go to file a trademark application you have to prepare a trademark application in all with all the details names and mailing address of the applicant or representation of description of both of the trademark a statement and specific and ordinary commercial terms of goods and services associated with the trademark the statement of goods and services grouped according to the nice classification nice as a UN classification when it comes to intellectual property rights the application fee or any other requirements specific to the type of trademark sought to be registered so you have to make sure that all the application is completely ready and good to go then there is also a representation of description that is associated to your application for color trademark for example you will have to show that what are the color what are the features like Toys R Us they have registered so your one trademark can be registered under multiple names so it can be registered under multiple classes I mean it can be registered with description like what the product deals with then it can register with the colors the R Us of Toys R Us is also registered so you can be very sure that the whole thing is getting registered under different classes once you have filed your application then begins the examination process the CIPO officers are going to examine under trademark act and regulation and if they have any objection they're going to raise that objection and you will get an examination hearing in which you and your council maybe or your trademark agent would go and would have to discuss about what this whole issue is about and who address that issue another of your responsibilities as trademark owner is to make sure that you use the trademark under section 45 of the trademark act otherwise the registrar has the power to cancel that trademark if someone else brings in that application that that person is not using the trademark even the trademark is registered so make sure the goods and services that you're providing are under the name that that is your trademark trademark is like any other form of property you can sell you can be quick you can assign trademark like any other property very interesting to know that many many register trademarks have become part of everyday language but you cannot use them to describe your goods or services for a few examples you can see yo-yo a bubble wrap or nelex or vaseline all of these they are trademarks dealing with the specific service and with the specific good so what you have to be sure is you do not want them to be included in your name so because these are itself trademarks and brand names but because of the because they have been registered look at the my look at the level of common thing they have become in common parlance that everything else can be related to them we for example we do not know catch up was a trademark which was registered apple per se is a apple the logo of apple it's a trademark which is registered so you have to be very careful about the trademark registered by someone else to describe your own goods and services so this whole process can sometimes be a very long and good process because if people who have experience would usually know that it is around 12 to 18 months which can last a trademark registration for so you have to be sure that your whole application process is ready if you would like this whole initiative about me sharing all the information locally available for you guys and as a small business owner or maybe as a medium-sized business owner then do hit the like subscribe button and you can also get in touch with me the link is in the description box thank you for today good day and bye bye


Okay, welcome to this week's weekly charting analysis with myself Jasper Lawler. I've got the risk warning on the screen here. I'm just going to cruise through that. Any questions at all, please just send them through the chat window or the question and answer box. A typical format here is just to get through some of the major, most popular products traded with CMC. But if there's anything else you're interested in, or just ask questions that you feel haven't covered, well then, again, questions in the chat box and get to them as best I can. Well, we've got a bit of a data deluge, you might say, this week. A lot of data out today. It was really just the China data. We saw a collapse in trade data from China and that's kind of weighing on indices a little bit today, only modestly, down a bit, particularly in the UK where we've got a few sectors that are a bit reliant on China for product growth, particularly the commodity type stocks. But tomorrow we've got more Chinese data, the foreign direct investment. Importantly for the British pound, which for those of you training it, got an absolute crushing last week and has really done for the past few trading sessions, then we've got UK CPI data tomorrow that's probably going to be one of the first catalysts as to whether this breakout lower gets sustained. Because you can see that, well, this is today's candlestick. We've not actually closed below the low here. It's looking pretty negative, don't get me wrong. But if we put this line in here, you can see that we've not actually closed below there. This potentially could end up being a bit of a false breakout. Today's move, again, moving lower below it and making a new low, would suggest it's probably not. But until we do get a kind of, and again I would say arguably, this big move down here and closing below here and even just the 147 handle was probably more significant than this spike low. But nonetheless, that was the multi-year low and we busted through that. But whether we can hold above it, I think the first bit of detail will be the UK CPI data tomorrow. But later on we have US retail sales data, that'll have a big impact on the US dollar end of things. The dollar obviously surged all the last week, even though we finished off the week prior with some pretty disappointing non-farm payrolls employment data. But that was, you know, we've got a brief sell-off in the dollar on the day of when a lot of stock markets were closed during Easter. And then the dollar just kind of rocketed back to form against most major currencies for the rest of the week. So that's, you know, sort of strength in the face of adversity, suggests we've probably got some more strength to come. Well, we've got a lot of US data, retail sales on Tuesday. Importantly, we've got CPI on Friday, but also got a few Fed speakers, particularly Stanley Fisher, the vice president of Fed on Thursday, and not to mention US industrial production and beige book data on Wednesday. So definitely quite a busy week on the economic calendar. So for those trading, FX, a lot of US-based data going on. And then, so particularly in terms of the British Pound, again later on Friday, probably got not only the most important US data for the dollar, the CPI, but also UK unemployment data and average earnings data. Now, the dollar really has been dominating against most of the world. I'm just jumping straight into currencies here because of kind of the nature of the week. I mean, arguably it's a big week for stocks and for currencies, but I'll cover the currency aspect of it at the moment just because all the economic data out. But we do have US earnings for the first quarter really kind of kicking into full gear this week. So, you know, some of the biggest banks, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, technology stocks like Netflix, they're all reporting. So that's going to have a big impact on US stock markets and thus global markets as being the most recognized market out there. But again, if I just jump to the euro here, you can say that similar deal, the euro has not broken that sort of 105 handle or just beneath thereof that would put it down at new multi-year lows as the pound has. So actually seeing a bit of kind of relative strength of the euro against the pound. And I think a lot of that is starting to get attributed to the British election, but I think maybe it's a, you know, I'm not sure how founded that is. And if you look at this euro pound chart here, you can see that's pretty much a double top that we're looking at right here. I mean, it's a very short-lived trend, but then again the pattern is quite shallow in itself as well. It's a failure to make a new high and it's making a higher high and it's making a lower low. So call it what you will. I think it's a reversal of this correction lower, but we'll have to, if we finish today as we are now, you know, it's looking pretty bearish, but you know, we do need to close the day down here and have a close, because as you can see from these kind of days, you know, we can kind of push lower but close up above significant levels. So even though the pound is looking pretty weak against the dollar, I think it might be coming back into it and it might be showing a bit more strength against the euro again and the British pound data, as well as from the European data that we see, which is not so prominent this week except of course the ECB on Wednesday. So they're not really expected to change anything. There's an outside chance that they would, you know, perhaps even like raise the deposit rate back to zero, but really what it's going to be mostly about is discussing the, some of the details in terms of how the quantitative easing program has been working to date. So one of those where we're not, there's not one specific decision that can trigger the volatility in the markets to trade. It's one of those where there's going to be a lot of comments made and you're kind of going to cipher through that and it does make it a little bit trickier, but you know, depending on, you know, really how they want to kind of play it, if you like. I would argue particularly in his press conference that will determine kind of market direction. I mean, the euro is already at multi-year lows. I mean, it's debatable how much further they want to push it down without raising instability. But, you know, some of the economic data from Europe recently suggests last week perhaps being of an exception where it kind of deteriorated a little bit, but on the whole European data has been improving a bit and I think that is largely down to the weaker euro boosting exports out of the country. So good chance that the ECB still want to lower euro even further from here, but the risk is that it's, you know, starts distorting other markets. So yeah, there's definitely sort of collateral damage possible for this quantitative easing program and I think that's what all these central banks are a bit aware of, particularly the Fed and the Bank of England, when they're trying to unwind what they've done. You know, they're unwinding a bit of these sort of unusual policies, unconventional policies could create some sort of unconventional results. Now, while we're on the currencies, let's just have a look at the major pair that's traded. There is a bit of a yen data this week, but I don't believe that's going to be the major contributing factor as to where this pair goes. Vague possibility within this larger range of a head and shoulders here, but I think it's kind of pushing through. That could have been the right shoulder there, but it doesn't seem to be happening. It seems to have pushed above it. So perhaps a bit of resistance again from this rising broken trend line, but probably not. And I'd say it looks quite good for a pushback to the peak around 122 and possibly beyond if this dollar strength continues. Now, perhaps worth looking at UK markets first. Again, always worth looking at the long-term picture here. You know, we've broken this key 6,900. We've since broken 7,000. So some big levels have been broken and the bias is clearly up in the UK 100. And this strong candlestick over the last couple of weeks. Firstly, the big reversal. And then secondly, the strong follow-through up to new highs. It paints a fairly bullish picture. Not to say it can't roll over. And actually the pattern that it's been trading within is a bearish pattern. This kind of rising wedge, if you do determine to be that, is if it breaks below there, we're looking at the height of that wedge breaking down. That would put us back to around the 6,000 mark again, which wouldn't be completely out of character because that is the kind of trading range that we've been dealing with. Again, if we refer back to this chart for quite a while. I mean, sentiment's clearly shifted to a more sort of positive tone, but a much bigger correction with people on certain leading into the general action is entirely possible. And we are running into what potentially could be a source of resistance here. And obviously I've had this trendline drawn in since these two tops were connected. It bumped into there. We fell into this rising trendline, but weren't able to close below it. Big reversal on the day and then you could see that same thing really on the week where we closed higher. We didn't close higher for the week, but we reversed a lot of the losses. And just heading straight up to the rising trendline. And today we're seeing a bit of weakness, but obviously it's in today and we still could push beyond the trendline here. Certainly plenty of scope for that. But the 7100 is the round number, which we just kind of pushed in towards. What do we actually make a higher here? 6095. You can see it's basically people taking profits right ahead of that round number. And there's rising wedge of confluence of resistance here. So probably missed the boat to some extent on a little short-term drop. But there is some scope for a bigger one. And then this square here just pertains to my kind of redrawn kind of area of potential demand here. This is where we broke out. There's going to be a lot of action here to push us through that previous peak of the previous week. So then if we were to drop down to that vicinity again, that could be an area, particularly with the rising trendline that sees some demand again. That's not to say we'll actually get down there. We could just keep pushing up higher, although not shallow a dip. But I guess the idea is that should we move to the bottom of that range and definitely below it, that changes the picture very much. Now, probably one of the most positive charts you'll see out there is the Germany 30. So debatable where you want to put this extension basically. This is using this as a bull flag type pattern and then the breakout from this original breakout area. Believers where I projected it from, did I? I'll just redo it for those who are not familiar with it. It's just using this Fibonacci extension and then just down to perhaps here. You can see where you can either go from this low or from this, but really the big one is you get the 61.8, causing a bit of resistance in the 50 in between, but that's that 100. So it does, depending on where you put it, does project us up around that sort of 12, 800 area, which would obviously still be a lot of big gains to be had from here when we're at 12, 400. So keeping that in mind, any dips are worth looking into, but there really isn't any major support and it's not even major, just vaguely substantial support. That peak there, obviously the former one-time high, and then the 12, 150 down here, which was this peak from the seventh. We do have a bit of German economic data, but again, the reason for this rally in the Germany 30 is the quantitative easing program. It's not that the economic data in Europe is that great. There has been an improvement there, boosted a bit by the QE program because of the resulting lower euro, and to some extent the fallen oil prices, but it's pretty much a QE driven move. So the key data point here will be alongside international concerns, so perhaps the data from China could be some downside risk to these indices, but the Germany 30 particularly, it's really about the ECB on Wednesday. If we jump across to US markets, it's slightly different here. Obviously there's going to be some definite follow-through from the ECB that global liquidity addition is important for US markets as well, but it's the beginning of earnings season. The big thing about this earnings season is that there are expectations for an actual loss in income generated across the top 500 companies in the US, and that would be the first time in six years actually. Normally there has been some, it varies in how much it's grown, but there has always been some kind of profit growth, and that's pretty fundamentally significant for stock markets. We don't know how significant, because normally that's the kind of all important. We live in a kind of world at the moment which is heavily influenced by central banks, and so with central banks' support, maybe markets can weather the storm of lower earnings growth and still pass on to new highs and follow this trend higher. But definitely there's been some choppiness, and you can see this is the daily chart you can't see it as well, but if you just go to the weekly chart, you can see that we've kind of gone nowhere for the entirety of this year. That was the peak in December, down, up again, down again. It's still a bias higher, but very minimal new high made here, faltered. So it could be a bit of volatility ahead, which is obviously good for trading, and if we do get a move down to this rising trend on, I think that could still be in play. I had this circle drawn by Hall. We've not got there, so I guess you kind of have to shift it along a bit, and hit this rising trend line within this kind of demand area. It could be some value to be had if in fact we even get down there. The US30, pretty similar looking picture. It seems like they're kind of slope connecting these lows and these peaks indicates something of significance here. It seems to be about of equal value, so I've put in a channel here that's kind of unconfirmed because it's got to just only two on the top and bottom, but potentially this area about 18, 120 or so, which corresponds to some extent with the peaks back in December, could be an area of resistance given the big rally that we saw on Monday and then the following days last week. So let's jump across to commodities here. Now the big mover today has been recently as all markets. Now it does seem like maybe the situation has changed here. We've got this, I think it's the most obvious thing of the two Brenton WTI in West Texas crude oil. We can see there was this, this is a bit of a sort of internal trend line debatable, but it did seem to connect these two highs. Worked to some extent here. We had a breakout with a gap on the 6th of April, and so now we're basically, we've pushed higher back up towards these February highs. We've had a drop back down to this sort of breakout area. It's a bit messy around here. We've got some moving averages and sort of too much drawing perhaps. But so you can see this was our peak here. Drop down not quite to it and sort of acceleration away from here. So sort of looking good for at least a move back up towards the bottom of this supply area. Given the fact we've bounced off it one, two, three, you could say four times, maybe the fifth time we'll be the one to push up towards the top. But this is still quite a big area of resistance here. Now I would imagine there's going to be some sort of selling going into 54 as there has been, you know, this happened more around 53. 54 I think is kind of the bigger one. But if we can close above there, then I think perhaps a bit more, a bit of a different paradigm in oil. We've of course got the U.S. Inventory's data this week and we saw again a massive build up in oil last week. Ten or so million barrels I believe. So the oversupply picture is still there and it looks like maybe a deal's going to be done in Iran. So that is potentially more supply coming in and data from China is looking pretty weak. So the oversupply under demand picture is still very much there. Yeah, I guess the only real support perhaps is slightly improved U.S. data and the eurozone on the whole seeming to improve a bit and some further potential demand from there. But it's a pretty weak case and I think it's perhaps just the market's a bit oversold and we'd really need a much bigger catalyst to send it much lower. Jump over to gold. Now again a bit more of a sort of complicated, probably overly drawn chart at the moment. But I think the one to watch at the moment is potentially an inverse head and shoulder pattern here. You can see that this, even if you're ignoring the pattern, is 12, 1, 2, 2, 5 thereabouts. It's proven a pretty heavy layer of resistance and if we do get the breakthrough there, I think that's pretty important. And if we were looking at this as an inverse head and shoulders, the height of that pattern would put us pretty much right at the January peak around 1,300, that round number. So just an objective, it's not to say that objective will work out, it's got the general sort of supply zone to deal with first and this declining trend line. But there is some potential there. I can see that. That's just kind of how I've drawn this big breakdown here through there. You could have it here. So watch out for that kind of area about 1,250, which is obviously a round number as well, but more conservatively up here. You know, gold, I think in terms of sort of physical demand in gold, it doesn't really warrant the kind of move in prices that we've been having. I think the physical demand is definitely there on the behalf of particularly from central banks, is where a lot of the demand is coming from. And physical demand is actually down a bit from China, but probably not massively justified in the kind of moves that we've been seeing. It's really, I think, gold's really pushing around based on the US dollar. The similar sort of data that we follow for FX, I think is relevant for the dollar, particularly anything pertaining to the Fed. So for that, the Bayes book, one of the Fed's Bayes book on Wednesday, and the Fed speakers on Thursday, I think could be the trigger for or not. Rather, you know, the cause of a breakout or a failure rather in this reversal in gold. We're thinking it's silver. It's a similar situation. So we basically failed at this 1750-odd area with this previous peak from February. Failed a couple of times.  Once we've failed to make a new high, now we've made a new low. So looking fairly bearish, we had an opportunity on the bounce there back to the breakout area. We're already selling off again from it. There is some scope for a move off this area, but I think it's to some extent already happened. So you could probably get rid of that. And now it's just this kind of weekly demand area coming from the bottom here. Could still offer some sort of support, maybe somewhere in the middle of it based on the breakout that took place above this March 16 peak. But it's, you know, this action is, to me it looks like it's rolled over and probably heading down to the lows again. In this instance, given these kind of strong support back seen back here and the fact that it was that, that we were trying to push below but couldn't, I would probably put more weight on the 1550 than I would at the 15, sort of 30, that was the absolute low. Could just get a rebound straight off there. So I think that is, that's about it. You know, we're looking at a date, a week full of economic data. China is going to be an important one. I think I didn't even mention the fact that on Wednesday it's China's GDP, which given the sort of global growth concerns are still the kind of biggest downside risk to particularly stock markets. So if you trade in some of the indices, that will be big on some of the early on, on Wednesday, and obviously later on on Wednesday we have the ECB, so that's going to be pretty huge for if you're trading the UK 100 and the Germany 30. And a lot of economic data should be pushing these FX markets around. So I think definitely a good amount of opportunity this week. And of course, if you are trading any U.S. equities, it's going to be a big week for the banks. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, they're all reporting earnings and may also have an influence. I would say most likely will have an influence on the likes of the U.S. 30 and the U.S. SBX. Okay, thank you very much for attending. Jasper Lawler, signing out.


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Color Decoded. The Textiles of Richard Landis. Richard Landis is a retired weaver who lives in Prescott, Arizona. His work explores complex systems of related colors. Color and form have always, apparently since I could conceive of anything, those were of interest to me. And then, you know, Crayolas, when I was a little bitty kid, I mean, I was always marking up everything. And then later, I mean, in cooking and in selecting fruits and even vegetables, you look at the coloring to tell are they good or not. And so everything we do with our senses visually is interpret color in very meaningful ways that help us eat better and so forth. The way we were moved around, I got to see some of the lower southern part of Japan by train. And just the mountains, the country, and the way things are organized, I was thrilled. I just thought this was the neatest thing because I'd traveled a lot before that. But I really thought that that was just... There was something about the way design was considered and carried out that I responded to. I'm sure I never would have gone into weaving if I hadn't fallen in love with the fabric and OB design. And they would have these kimono lengths, you know, on display in the window. And they'd have five or six different ones and they were stunning. I mean, and I was just blown away by it. And that's what really did trigger me to think, God, maybe you may be weaving. Because the other arts never did really... I did life drawing and I even had a show. And some of my work went into offices of the people at ASU. And I was, you know, well-received, but it just wasn't personal. And the minute I got to, took these three days of weaving course with Mary Pendleton in Sedona, I then really started pursuing weaving. And very soon I became really engrossed and I sort of realized I was going to make a stab at it. When I first decided I was going to commit to using the loom. I mean, actually the day that I was at Mary Pendleton's and I started she was showing me how to dress a loom, how to wind a warp, how to put it onto the loom, and how to start weaving. You don't have a whole... there's so many technicalities that you have to get in the beginning that you're completely consumed in just trying to do it. Trying to do what you're told, trying to get it right. And then after a little while I started changing some of them. I saw that I wanted to do a different thing with it. And then one thing led to another. And I was, boy, I was diligent. I remember I had a warp that I was quite excited about on the loom when I went to work for the post office at Christmas. Which I did to get just a little bit of money. And so we were working 14 to 16 hours at night at Christmas time when it was quite cold. And then I would come home after that and I would put in an hour to weaving. Just so that I felt I wasn't losing track. So I was diligent at times. And then when the weaving really starts to get interesting, then it was really fun. Because while I say you can't see the whole weaving, but you can look at a certain area that you've just woven and before it gets wound on down. So you've got this little area you're watching. And if there's really, if it's working and it's really a beautiful color system in it, you're seeing it come to life because you've only imagined what you hope it will look like. But when you see the actual thing, I mean I would go all the way around the loom looking at it from like four different directions. Because the light is hitting it and that's the beautiful thing about weaving. So when I got into the, even the first warp with Mary Pendleton up there in the three-day deal, she usually had them start out with a white or off-white warp. And I chose to do a blue warp and then I was entering all sorts of other colors in it. And that's what fascinated me. So color, I could see that I could not only use the color, but I could blend these colors and come up with new ones that I didn't even have.  And especially when the finer you get, the more that is so. I mean, more obvious it is.  How do you get interested in something? And when I looked at art or when I look at nature, including in my gardening, in fishing and hunting, these things are never direct. They are inspirational. I get very involved in them. And it's the feeling you get from being very involved with something that leads you just little by little, leads you astray into whatever it is. One of my instructors, my sculptor instructor was Phillips Sanderson. And he and I went down to Organ Pipe National Monument and took steak and camped out. And I said, aren't there any artists around here that are really interesting? And he says, well, I've heard about a crazy artist in Prescott. And he says, I've always kind of wanted to meet him. And I said, well, let's do it. And he knew somebody that knew Frederick Sumer. And so he was our Virgil. And we called and he called Fred and they arranged one night.  And so Philip Sanderson and Phil Curtis and I drove up and got to Prescott in the afternoon. And we met down on Whiskey Row. Our Virgil came by and took us out to Fred's. Fred showed us photographs first. And here was the first time I saw in photography, I saw what I considered to be abstraction. He caught parts of nature that was abstract and completely composed. And I was blown away by the photographs. And then after that we saw drawings. I'm on the way home, driving the other two artists home. I said, you know those drawings were crazy. And I mean crazy. Fred was interested in a full tone scale. So he didn't want a lot of contrast. He wanted a real richness of tone scale. Well, that really did appeal to me. And you can take that right on into color. And I did. But I didn't do it from him. I did it from looking at the colors of a peach where it's blushing. And then it goes through all these shades. So to say that I responded to his richness of tone scale is true. And it did help me, I'm sure. I mean that was when I saw it in his work. I wanted to get some of that same effect. But as far as photography in the black and white, other than this beautiful tonal range, which is important. And the one thing that I consider in my work is that I was interested in tone and hue. So the tone scale and then the presenting of the color itself. But they're totally interrelated. And that was the thing that in weaving really got to me. When I first started, the first warp I ever did was with cotton. Because it's strong and plied, I used a plied yarn. Later I got interested in using things like, I went from that very early stage. I got into linen yarns and holed up from Sweden, I think it is. But the tone scale, the selection of colors was very limited. And so I picked out the best I could in those. And some of the things happened where I could saw that these groups would either make a solid block or they could neutralize. And then when I started working those things, even with a fairly limited tone group, I could work. But then later I was able to get a much nicer selection in wool colors than I was in linen. But I didn't, it's still, the wool was a heavier yarn and I wanted to get a finer gradation of blended colors. And Jack Larson told me about Annie Albers had used thread. And so I went to California, I went to Los Angeles. And I saw the thread market for coats and clark and a number of different places that sold these things. Half pound spools, it's like three miles of thread. And they were in almost infinite colors. So that's when I found that out, that's how I got into using thread. When I would get, when I would decide what my next project was going to be, what the program was going to look like, not finished, not worked out.  So I was looking at all these colors I was going to use. I was lining up my palette. And if you didn't fit in, if you weren't a good part of the chorus, if you didn't operate with the other people in the chorus, you got substituted, something else got brought in. So I was working with real experience. I mean, I was seeing it before I ever selected. And that was very helpful. The little system itself was something of a formula. But then it was how to tease that into looking completely different and expressing itself in a different way. And in my work, if anybody ever finds out what I was doing, they'll see that that was what I was doing. I was taking something that was quite simple. It delivered the variation that I wanted as a possibility for sizes and continual movement from one thing to another. And the neat thing in a piece like this large one is that the last color, the last color in each unit is also the first in the next unit. So the transition happens. I mean, that was all taken care of in the way I worked this thing. And because otherwise you couldn't put something like that together, it would just look really haphazard. But they transition right into each other seamlessly. And then also, one of the things that I really loved was that I decided I would accept the absolute loom control. That it was going to be throwing shuttles. There was not going to be any lifting out here and then starting in again. I took a course in tapestry. And I was fascinated with it. But I just saw that's not what I want to do. I want to use the loom because these things are slow anyway. But on the loom, you've at least got the setup is there. And you can do very complex things if you have patience. And it doesn't take as long as you might think. On that big piece, I probably didn't actually weave more than four days on that piece. Which is pretty remarkable to get that much variation in four days. Well, as I said, it took a month to work out the program. So yes, there's no easy way. But anyway, the fact that these things are in stripes where the one color is on the front, then it changes and it goes on the back. The other one pops up and comes on the front. And Larson called them knife edge abstractions. But actually as far as the surface goes, it's plain tapestry weave all across. Every other thread is threaded. And that was kind of a discipline I put on myself. And I wanted to see what I could do within those confines. I wanted to get something more abstract and something that I could make a composition with. And so I started using the striped double weave, which gives you all this alternation possible. And then when you put that with a lot of different colors, they have written about my work that there were hundreds of different shades. Well, there really aren't. Because I always kept fairly reasonably limited pallets, not just six tones. But I mean, it was somewhat confined. Because that way you get a relationship that things when you make all the variations, they hold together in the end. They look like they're part of a work of art. And so anyway, double weave just offers you so many different possibilities of positioning. And that's the main reason that I wanted double weave. And I could work out very abstract compositions in double weave. I don't think I could have done some of these very complex pieces without having looked into that all the time. And then the little picture down there on the floor of the spring, the way the vegetation is all intertwined. And then my whole time, like up in the Sierra Anja and in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, I was looking at incredibly complex landscapes. And there's a place on the Salt River that we floated through in a little rubber raft that is the most chaotic piece of earth I've ever seen. It's just total upheaval. And in the most stunning ways and being comfortable in big complexities allows you to do complex things and to see them. And I really did see what abstraction was. And then when I saw Frederick Somers' photographs, I saw abstraction in photography of nature. And then I realized it was just freewheeling. You could abstract anything. You could just make something that would represent the natural living thing and it would be the symbol of what you had seen and in a way what you experienced. And of course, Kandinsky was one of the people that gave me permission. And I could always see how art related to nature. I mean, how it was trying to and trying to represent in ways that we could understand. And I thought I understood and I liked it. The more you understand in nature, if you're also dealing in abstraction, obviously it gives you a wider range that you can apply to your abstraction from nature. And nature's the big baby. I mean, my inspiration is simply life itself and all my different relations to different aspects.  I mean, I think that I definitely have always been a real sensualist. I mean, my senses, I trust them and I have always cultivated them. And that is what gives you the inspiration to do anything. For the exhibition, Color Decoded, The Textiles of Richard Landis.