It's a brand new year, 2024 is here and with it comes optimism, hope, and promising futures for everyone involved. But that doesn't mean we can't start out with a negative and look back on what went horribly wrong in the movie space in 2023. These are movies that are bigger blockbusters, not a lot of indie stuff on here, while there's no indie stuff on here. I'm sticking to the popular kids in school. One of them is actually featured number one on Netflix right now. So that's fun. Let's get started with the list. First off, happy new year. Secondly, I do need to bring up a dishonorable mention that kind of skirted by at the end of last year. And that's Avatar 2, The Way of Water. Again, this is not a 2023 release. It was at the tail end of 2022. It was a December release. I had already put my worst of list out, but I got to give it a dishonorable mention. I hated Avatar 2. A lot of critics praised it for the visuals and I don't really know what else because this is a tech demo at the end of the day. It reuses a lot of the same plot from the first film. The characters make no sense anymore. Jake Sully's a total dipshit who abandons the tribe from the first film that he fought so hard to protect. Now he's just like, eh, we can leave. We can leave and just assume that the people invading the planet aren't gonna bomb them into tomorrow for no reason at all. Like we're gonna secretly leave without them knowing, but yeah, they'll be fine. Who cares? I mean, who cares, right? We're leaving, we're dead to them. I just found the whole thing to be a really stupid, shallow attempt at a sequel, shallow pun intended because we're gonna be spending a lot of time in the water here. There's some bizarre whale storyline where they're the fountain of youth, even though people can clone themselves a million times over or go into other bodies entirely, such as avatars, which is the entire point of it. Remember that was the point of the first movie? This thing just was a chore to sit through. It's too freaking long. It doesn't have this massive bump in quality from the first one. I wasn't getting 3D in my eyeballs.  No, it was like the first movie again, but without the excitement of the first film because it was so fresh and different with that layered animation. It was just gorgeous. So yeah, tech demo out of the way. What I'm left with is just this stupid, vapid, boring film that I don't wanna watch or think about ever again. Subscribe if you hated Avatar 2 as much as I did. All right, let's get to the top 10 worst. In the number 10 spot, Jason Statham's back and he's streaming on Netflix right now in high definition glory with Meg 2, The Trench. And as of recording, it's sitting at numero uno on Netflix in terms of popularity, so we're doomed. Listen, I get it. That was their day fun at the theater. Giant sharks terrorizing the beaches. Jason Statham looking cool on a jet ski, trying to save the day. It just makes sense on paper. Unfortunately, that's the only place it made sense. What little of it it probably did at the time. I hated this film. It was a chore to get through. At almost two hours long, it's way longer than it should be. It's way dumber than it should be. And it's not that fun like it should be. I'm done saying should be, I think. We'll see how it goes for the next several minutes. Statham's back as blank slate character. He now works for Greenpeace as a, I don't know, James Bond-esque operative or something. I'm pretty sure he was filming an Expendables film during this. So they're just like, we'll take the B footage, put it in the Meg, Meg 2, The Trench. And really, that's the only excitement on land. The rest of this is gonna be out at sea. Very deep down under the sea with Little Mermaid and Sebastian and a bunch of other CG creatures. There's an octopus at one point that shows up. That's kind of cool for the 10 seconds it's there. There's some dinosaur things that are swimming around. I don't know what's going on in this movie. It's somehow simultaneously ridiculous and at the same time completely boring and generic and stale. Simultaneously and at the same time are redundant but this movie's redundant. There is a lot of the same stuff from the first film. Giant sharks in the water swimming around at Nazium and then, oh, we're gonna spend the last 10 minutes of the movie with them terrorizing the beaches. Why is that not the priority? Why is that not the main focus? Why are we spending so much time in the deep, dark depths of sea? Not being able to see much of anything except for a flare occasionally and some shitty CG megalodon in the background. I can't believe how sluggish this movie feels. I thought after a very mediocre first attempt they would say, okay, we have a fun premise here. It made a ton of money. Let's just go all in. Let's go wild with the mags. Let's have them do these crazy larger-than-life things. No. Now, to its credit, there are a couple fun shots way late in the game such as a POV of the teeth closing on some people and that's about it. The intro where the megalodon somehow takes down a T-rex in a foot of water as ridiculous as that was and at least sets the stage for a very fun, exciting film that we will never see anymore of. If they're gonna start with that, keep it going, right? They shot the whole load right in the first two minutes. Everything after is just a complete letdown. This movie's a complete letdown. The Meg 2, The Trench, somehow way less fun than the first and I wasn't expecting very much. Insidious The Red Door is the Chex notes fifth film in the Insidious franchise. Who's watching these films? Why are they still getting made? Obviously someone, if there's now five of them, I actually didn't know that going in and really didn't need to. I think I saw the first one and bounced after that. Insidious The Red Door kind of piqued my interest mainly because it was the first time I'd heard the word insidious in a decade. So I thought, all right, let's go and see this. What's happening with the family? What are they up to? Turns out pretty much the same thing they've been up to for four prior movies, which is not a lot. The Darth Maul creature is still terrorizing him. The son's grown up, he's off to college trying to make a name for himself as a artist. Really into the coal drawings. He's good at it too. And this film loves showing the coal drawings. They're gonna spend a lot of time in those close-ups of the hands on the charcoal hitting the page. It's honestly the most exciting parts of this film. There is very little scaring going on. The budget looks to have been 25 bucks plus a stick of gum. I don't know what happened. I don't know why this was green lit. Maybe they thought, all right, we have enough brand recognition still with insidious that we can churn this one out relatively quick, bring back the family for one more ride and get some butts in the seats. I hope it paid off. It's a bold strategy, Cotton, but it did not work for me at all.  But there's no death in this movie as far as I can recall. I know they don't kill a lot of people in insidious movies but by the fifth film, maybe we could up the game a little instead of going back further. It's regressing. And as for the college stuff, there's nothing. There's one little dorm party, but nothing of substance even happens there. The family seems checked out. Rose burns in it for maybe 20 seconds. It's just embarrassing. The whole thing is a complete wash of a film. It's not scary. It doesn't look good. There's not a single memorable moment in this film. It's a waste of time. Leave the world behind. When this film came out, I put out a review. I titled it Leave This Movie Behind and I stand by that.  I'm talking one out of 100 movies is great. And that's maybe being too generous. Hey, I see you Thunder Force with Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer. I didn't forget about you a couple of years back. What a gem that was. Leave the world behind as some actors in it that used to be cool. Julia Roberts is in the mix. Ethan Hawks in the flick. His daughter's Maya Hawk. That's how most kids are gonna know about this actor at this point. They're phoned it in. Serviceable performances. You know what, I take that back. Julia Roberts, almost an embarrassing performance, especially when she's shouting at CG animals, woodland critters right next to the house.  Basic premise, a family out in the woods at an Airbnb that for some reason this multi-millionaire guy is renting out even though it's his primary house still. The whole thing is just a little bizarre from a premise point of view. He comes back because there's a shenanigans going on in town. He needs a place to stay. He doesn't want to go to an apartment. Who cares? He's got a racist daughter. Julia Roberts is racist back.  And it's all social commentary about the world and how we all live too much online and we're quick to label each other and we're quick to make snap judgments and not really go inward at all. There's a lot of commentary here. They even played Jenga at one point and the Jenga Tower is about to fall over which definitely symbolism, it's ripe with it. And the comments when I made this review were very quick to tell me, Adam, you are stupid and you didn't understand the movie and it's deep, profound complexities. They're all over the place, Adam. You didn't get it. You didn't get the message. It's the same thing I heard when the Sound of Freedom came out last year. You didn't get the message, Adam or it's all about the message, Adam. Who cares if the movie might not be that great? It is great because of what it's telling people to wake up, wake up, world. Yeah, I think most people are awake. We just feel helpless or powerless when in, for instance, the Sound of Freedom, kids are getting smuggled and they're being trafficked. It's terrible. Everybody knows this is happening. What do you want us to do about it? It's the same thing with sweatshops going on all over the country. There was more slavery today than there was 50 years ago and that's not a lie. We are so comfortably numb to everything and you feel powerless. So when a movie like Leave the World Behind comes out it says we're all slaves to the machine. We're all cogs and we need to wake up and there could be an attack from foreign soil. America is not the superpower. We don't have a deep state. We're not that deep, bro. They could take over our satellites. They could put something into the air like an anthrax or a different chemical and we should be listening to nature. We should be listening to the creatures we're trying to warn us. It's all there.  It's not exciting and once you see one of these moments where something's going after them whether it's a giant ship crashing into the beach or it's a bunch of cars, a bunch of smart cars getting smashed together it's the same thing over and over. Look out, we gotta get out of the way.  Oh, we made it. I don't care about any of these characters.  It's one thing to watch a movie like day after tomorrow, which is schlocky and stupid or Independence Day or Twister or like, I like all those movies for different reasons but the one thing they have in common is they have likable lead characters even if they're one dimensional and they have a story with the beginning, middle and end, the one thing that leave the world behind failed to do. It's got the beginning.  Oh, great. Can I fill in the blanks please? For a movie that you never really even gave me the main threat or any real obstacles to overcome? I would love to do that. Let me use my imagination be the writer. What a wonderful experience. Said no one ever.   We're gonna go somewhere with this. We're gonna go some, nope. We're not actually, got you. Two and a half hours later, you played yourself. You played yourself. In the number seven spot, Heart of Stone which I think is a very apt title because this movie really feels like stone. It has no value. It's just there. It is a rock. There's no emotional core to it. There's no real interesting set pieces to it. It feels like it was built by a machine taking the plot of the recent Mission Impossible movie, taking some of the characters from other iconic films and then just kind of blending it together with the lead protagonist, so dull.   It's not, but they tried to tone her down a bit and give her more of an agent feel, like a computer nerd agent. None of it lands. And then to make matters worse, she's a double agent. She's supposed to be this super sexy slick spy pretending to be a nerdy bookworm agent. And early on, it's just clear that there's no stakes at all when she flies down this mountain and disposes of like 12 dudes without leaving a single footprint in the snow. She somehow got rid of all the bodies. Meanwhile, the rest of her team is coming down the lift. They can see all of this yet, don't?   It's set on a soundstage for the most part. Nothing feels tangible or real or physically there.  And I really don't get the point because from a spectacle standpoint, sure, one or two of the sequences, fine. But again, this movie is so long and without any real connection to the character or really knowing what the driving force behind the movie is, I just don't see a point. And without charisma, like I've seen plenty of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the guy's got charisma coming out of his ears.   You're left with a heart of stone. We got there. Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantum Shitia, the third entry to the Ant-Man film, the 9,000th entry to the MCU at this point. I've lost track and I don't even care to count.  I pulled that number out of my ass, of course. But I do feel based on, you know, just circumstantial evidence and online evidence and just kind of, you know, the whispers and the talking going on that no one really has that much interest in the MCU. After Endgame, we had a couple of cherries on top of the Sunday, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 being fantastic, Spider-Man, No Way Home, being solid, some people love that movie, that's fine. So there's some winners. But outside of that, we have a whole lot of losers. Eternals, Thor, Lovin' Thunder, Snore, Lovin' Dunder, Boar, Lovin' Down Under. Just a lot of train wrecks. And Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantum Shitia, really kind of solidified my feelings. It packaged it all together. A culmination of everything, fans, and even just random moviegoers alike have started to notice. This train's left the station. Any sort of soul that was put into these, any sort of heart or care, completely gone. We said for a long time, I've said it. These movies feel like conveyor belts manufactured products. They don't feel like films, they feel like products, like a McDonald's Happy Meal toy. And for a while, the MCU was able to get away with that, rest on it, because it was still fresh. You know, when Iron Man 2 came out, it was still different enough, even though I thought that movie sucked, that you wanted to see where this whole experiment was gonna go. And we liked these characters enough to go on for the journey, for better and for worse. But after they killed off, pretty much all the main ones, what we're left with is the C-Team, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Moon Knight. Who are these people? I asked about half of them. And the other half, I just didn't care that much. Ant-Man already saved the galaxy, whatever, a few times over. So here we are again, with Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantum Shitia, and now suddenly this isn't like a sea-list character. Now we're pretending this is a AAA star, and he's gonna introduce the new big bad, Kang the Conqueror. Hell no, it doesn't fit in this world that we've established.  I'm gonna go with Cassie. Putting them into the quantum realm for 99% of the picture, terrible idea. Because what we have is some of the laziest green screen work I've ever seen in a giant multi-million dollar film like this. I'm sorry, multi-hundreds of millions of dollars of film. And it just, nothing seemed like it mattered. Casey's laughing through most of her dialogue, even when it's supposed to be serious, nothing feels serious.  This is supposed to be the new big bad. There's a point in the movie where I thought, and it was already way past the point where I was gonna care much, but there was a point where I thought, all right, they're gonna do something here.  Because Cassie, Casey Jones, whatever it is, she somehow built this quantum thing with her grandpa and mostly her, I believe, experimenting with it, going in and out of this realm. Just, you know, she's like 12, so of course she can.  I gotta stay back. Lang's gotta fight Kang or Kang or Captain Crunch. And then I'll come back with you. But then the portal seals up.    Useless. They didn't even give us enough time to maybe be worried about him getting killed, let alone the fact that most probably didn't care. I was actually hoping, because then I would have had some sort of feeling during this film. This was the final nail in the coffin for me where I said, yep, I really don't care at all about what happens anymore with the MCU. Maybe they'll surprise me and throw out a good movie once in a while, but as a whole, it's over. I was watching Dune the other night and I just thought to myself, you know what, Rebel Moon kind of was like this, wasn't it? Like a school project version of Dune. And I don't think the new Dune is the most amazing movie ever, but I do think from a visual standpoint, from a directorial standpoint, it's damn impressive. Even if it is slow and long, it's got massive scale. It's got some insane set pieces, the action's top notch. And then I look at Netflix as Zack Snyder presents Rebel Moon part one, child of dumbass, who cares? This thing is dog water bad. I can't believe how garbage it looked from Zack Snyder, a guy that's known for having really good cinematography. It just feels all so light now and lame now and small. Even when he's using the vastness of space, and this is his Star Wars, his grandiose picture is two-part production or three-part or whatever he makes it. And yet it still feels like a small sound stage production. It's just sad at this point. This guy has not really grown as a director. I think he's actually regressed. He's gone backwards into his shell, into this echo chamber of fans that he's created that just love everything he puts out. And they're like, Zack Snyder is the blueprint. He made a shot from around someone's shoulder. And another movie did that. He's the blueprint. No, no, I think he's kind of just at this point a hack who's taking ideas from other directors who are more competent in the space and he's trying to make them his own. This movie reeks of Star Wars and it really reeks of a lot of other movies I've seen in the sci-fi space. And I just think to myself, is this a bug's life?  And then she's like, gotta get that dusty trail again. It's ridiculous. But even putting that aside is the premise where this giant evil empire comes down with their ships and they're gonna take all of their stuff. Like, we want you to grow crops for our men for the next several months and then we're gonna come back and take it all. Okay, why? Really? Really? And now I'm expecting this ragtag crew to rise up and face them and fight them.  It's just terrible to watch. It doesn't look great. And when it does look great, Zack Snyder goes all in on slow motion. Like it's a Bollywood film, but done in the worst way possible because at least when Hollywood and Bollywood and Indian movies do it, they usually slow-mo when something cools going on. Snyder is now slow-moing when someone's tying their shoe. Snyder's slow-moing when someone's sneezing. Cliffing. It's bad.  Think Star Wars episode, what are we at? What is it? Three? The one everybody loves, Revenge of the Sith? I think most would still agree that that final shot where Darth Vader goes, no, is about as cringe as it could possibly get. They up it here. Snyder says, I love that no scene. I'm gonna do it with my blank slate character who has nothing really exciting about him. If people dressed up as him for Halloween, it's basically just how I look. Like, hi, I'm just boring, generic dude. Trick or treat, I'm from Rebel Moon. No, screw this movie.  It's actually called Barcelona, but you could have fooled me. I think my title's more appropriate. This is a film that I don't think anyone asked for. It just came out unceremoniously, shat onto Netflix like most of their properties are. It might have to date to the most unlikable lead character I've ever watched. And I'm not even trying to be like over the top or extreme with it. I hated this lead character. He constantly screws people over and he's selfish.  But some people, they're actually brainwashing or taking over or doing something. It's just not exciting or interesting to watch.  And when it's revealed that, oh, he's under the spell of this creature, okay, that doesn't make anything more fun to watch or even more interesting to watch. It just makes me hate him all the more.  And the whole production feels like a budget version of the first with Sandra Bullock. And that movie I thought was perfectly fine. Didn't love that, but for a Netflix movie it was like, eh, all right. And aside, no, I love that there's now an excuse people have baked in with Netflix movies. When I was shitting all over Rebel Moon, people go, Adam, it's a Netflix movie. Like you need to understand that.  Netflix and these other streaming services are the new movies now. They're running the big guys out of business or they're making them change their model.  Fox doesn't even exist anymore, Disney owns them. Warner Brothers might get bought up by freaking what, Universal or Paramount or something. Like everybody's, there's gonna be like three companies pretty soon. Amazon owns MGM, I think.  Netflix will own a bunch of stuff. Apple will own a bunch of stuff. And that's it, these are movies now. So to say, oh, it's a Netflix movie, what did you expect?  Why waste the one time we have on earth watching shit? So my job, at least this is the job I've given myself for some reason, is to watch these movies and say, hey, this is worth your time because there's 50 new movies that come out every day now. Maybe check this one out. Or this is a big blockbuster that you are going to enjoy. Probably, or tread lightly, I liked it, you didn't. There's a lot of indie stuff that comes out too. Some of it's really good, but I've always been a sucker for the big Spielberg films, for the big James Cameron movies, for Christopher Nolan, for Zack Snyder, believe it or not, back in the day. And so yeah, I'm still trying to hang on when a big blockbuster comes out or a large theater release. And then I give you my thoughts. And sometimes we get a worst of list and yeah, bird box, box of bullshit's on there. Strays is one of those comedies that you either love or you hate, I think. I don't know if there's much of a middle ground. It reminded me of Sausage Party. It's pretty much a one-note joke from beginning to end.  Isn't that crazy and different because it's food?  Isn't that wild because it's animals? It's the same exact thing. Very sophomore humor, which I can definitely appreciate from time to time, but it's just too much. It's just swearing every other sentence for shock value and that loses its luster. I couldn't even finish this movie in all like real practicality. This should really be number one on my list because I couldn't get through it.  To be fair, it's one of the movies that I didn't go to theaters to see. I saw it on Peacock or something. I checked it out on the cock. I didn't pay money to see it in theaters. I have yet in my lifetime, oh wait, I did once during Biker Boys. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I did it twice. I've walked out of two movies in my lifetime. One was Biker Boys with a Z and another one was House of the Dead by U Bowl or UA Bowl, whatever the hell it is. I was in college at the time, so I had to get to class and I just didn't care enough. I hated these movies so much that I'd rather go sit in a boring class than actually finish the film and that says a lot about me. It says a lot about the film too. Stray's just, I made it 30 minutes in. Not my cup of tea.  I will say some of the cinematography, the way the animals were done is pretty impressive if I'm gonna throw a compliment out there for no real reason. Outside of that, nothing here worked. Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey. I mean, the name says it all, doesn't it? What we're gonna get here is a real magical experience. When Winnie the Pooh went into public domain, one small little film shop licked their lips and said, you know what, we can do something really special with this. We can take this in a different direction and you know what, the thought process isn't bad. I kind of like the idea of imaginations running wild, a little South Park riff idea. Christopher Robbins and Dyer Straits, he's back in the woods and his friends are not what they seem. The problem is they didn't take it very far. Clearly this had no budget. Winnie the Pooh looks terrible. The masks on these creatures are awful. Piglet doesn't even look like Piglet. He's got tusks for some reason. They only had enough for one of the masks, I guess. Eeyore's just a tail. They couldn't get the rights, I guess, to Tigger or they just didn't bother. Well, oh, bother, right? Oh, bother. Christopher Robbins in it for a little while. The kills are really lame. The cinematography's atrocious. The lighting is all over the place. It was clearly shot on different days, maybe different weeks or months. The whole thing was probably done though over the course of four months, I feel like or less. It just seems rushed as hell. The script is half baked. There's no real references to the Disney show at all because they don't have the rights to those characters. It's just, there's nothing here. It just feels so stock. Like this could have been anything and they threw Winnie the Pooh in last second, sort of a deal. What a waste of time.  A year later, they already finished the second movie. So that's gonna tell you everything you need to know. They're trying to speed this along to stay on the hype train. And again, these things cost so little that they're gonna see some revenue and we're gonna never see the end of these garbage movies, unfortunately. Great title though.  I'm not an expendables guy. I've seen all of them. And I really like Sly Stallone. Sylvester Stallone's great. Love seeing Arnold in these. It was great seeing Bruce Willis show up. Chuck Norris was fun. Antonio Banderas, Jalee. Lot of cool actors. Dolph Lundgren's in the mix. Mel Gibson was a bad guy. Jean-Claude Van Damme. Lot of fun 80s, 90s callbacks. Really schlocky action. But man, what a sad, embarrassing fall from grace. To go to some of these legends over to Megan Fox is now one of the main protagonists. Sly Stallone's in his own movie series for maybe 10 minutes now.   This movie is so poorly done. From top to bottom, the jokes don't land. It has this really awful plot where they kill essentially an innocent dude. They fake the death of Stallone by replacing his body with an innocent guy that he got in a little tiff with. But there's no reason to strap him to a plane still alive and blow him up.  Outside of a bizarre premise, this movie clearly had little budget and they spent most of it on this ship. Container ship with a lot of the actions gonna take place. I'd say the majority of the actions here. It's all back loaded. And it ranges from some noticeably good choreographed fights to just the usual shtick. Shooting around. Dolph Lundgren has just a terrible character arc where he can't see cause he's getting older and he has to drink so he can shoot straight again. Just so dumb. Again, Stallone's barely in this thing. Statham looks just completely checked out. He's just cashing a check. He's doing 18 different movies right now. Meg's right around the corner.  He's probably filming for. The guy's just cashing checks left and right. Andy Garcia's the villain of this. That's who they went with. From Mel Gibson in the last one. Andy Garcia. What are we even doing anymore? The thing was just such a sad way to end the expendables. Again, a film franchise that was not by any means peak. This wasn't the dark night of movies, right? This is just some really schlocky, low budget effort action and humor. But in this instance, you have nothing left. We're at 50 cent now. That's where we've landed. Megan Fox in 50 cent. It's just sad. And speaking of sad, there you have it. 10 terrible movies that came out in 2023. I didn't see everything that came out, believe it or not. Netflix easily could have owned this entire top 10 list had I wasted my time watching a lot of the garbage they put out. The same could be said for Hulu or Peacock or Amazon Prime or Apple Plus or Disney Plus they all have a bunch of shovelware. These are these top shelf movie rental movies that are now just shout out on the streaming services because movie rental stores don't exist anymore.  We got to get those tax rate off somehow. So we make some 14th Anaconda movie and we slip it right out the back door. This is a list of movies that I saw almost all in theaters outside of one or two that were kind of bigger releases for streaming platforms. Of course, this is just my opinion. You are free to like any of these films and I won't judge you for it. I like a lot of bad movies myself and that's okay. We can have arguments, we can have debates. Let me know though, did you see these movies?  Did you think they were terrible?  Zack Snyder is the playbook. Rebel Moon is the film of the year. Let me know, like the video if you had a good time. Please think about subscribing as I post tons of content each and every week. We'd love to have you stick around. All right, once again, happy New Year. Take care.


and welcome to Disco Lady Aida. Hey everybody and welcome to Disco Lady Aida. It's me, Lady Aida, and I'm at my desk doing some electronics and stuff. Let's get right to it, because I got a lot of stuff going on, a mishmash of things. Okay, so first up, the thing I was just working on, it's like, I literally like, you know, I was like, oh yeah, we have to video. Well, let me finish this last thing, is Nine Pedro are doing a project where they're making a little 3D printed box that houses one of our bar displays to make it a little Yule log video player. And else playing around with people who remember a long time ago, I was playing with Arduino GFX library and there's an example for MJPEG viewing. Oh, sorry. It actually isn't a STEM mode, it's a similar one. To view MJPEGs and MJPEGs are basically what you think they're just JPEGs like to put together one after the other and they basically form an animation. And we actually got like fairly good results with it. It was a 480 by 480 display. The 720 by 720, we had to go to CinePak.  There's a new demo now that is called ESP32 JPEG SIMDEE, which means Simultaneous Decoding. And this uses, I guess in the ESP32, there's actually hardware support for JPEG decoding. And so this takes advantage of that and the quality is actually much, much better and much, much faster. So if we go to the overhead, I can show off. So two things I did to make this, like three demos going on here, to make this faster is one, I'm using Quad SPI wiring. So full SDIO, not Quad SPI, SDIO 4-bit, which means I'm using six wires to communicate between the SD card and the QALIA board. And that uses basically all the free GPIO, but you really want to be able to read very quickly so that the time reading from the SD card isn't what is limiting your decoding. And then this is a QALITY2 JPEG and it looks like really nice. Like it actually looks nicer in person, of course. Let me see if I can zoom in.  I think QALITY3 or QALITY4 could probably do better. And then what they wanted me to do knowing Pedro is when it plays the videos, when the user touches the screen goes to the next video. So this video is a 480 by 480, which is why. And I didn't rotate it, because this is actually, even though we think of it as a long bar, it's actually a very long portrait. So you have to rotate the images, but you know, the QALITY is much, much better using the SIMD code. So that's pretty exciting. So we'll have a guide out and the code will be in here. And then folks who want to use this to, you know, this is a 320 by 820 display. It's not a small number of pixels. And you're getting, you know, 15 plus frames per second. But, you know, I remember what this looked like with the previous code and it was okay, but it was like eight to 10 frames a second. And the quality of the JPEG decoding wasn't as nice. This is definitely, you know, better than CinePak, I think, in coding. One thing I did notice is that like the, the example with the Stargate didn't decode properly. I'm not sure why. This is the washing machine.    So that's working really great. So, you know, slowly getting more and more projects with the quality of board out to get you more pixels. Okay. So that's one project. So I just finished that up. One fun fact, if you go to the computer, if you're like me and you're like, I can never remember FFJPEG commands, use chatGPD because it's like, I'm not going to sit down and learn how to use FFJPEG encoding for like NJPEG and transposing and quality. Like how would I remember like dash Q colon V2? Not going to remember it. So using chatGPD was great. Okay. So that's one demo done. So let's go next up. Oh, let's show off the new Memento pie case. Camera PCBs. So, I'll give you the overhead. So for the camera board, you know, I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I think the hardware is completely done, the software is done, started this project many years ago, but I'm excited to make a little camera board. So I had Phil B. design a really lovely sub-screen here and using a PCB here instead of a piece of plastic. You can see it's very dark, but it's actually use a camera. Hello. Hi. With little cutouts, I made a cutout for the speaker and then, you know, you bolt it on with these SMT hex nuts to keep this in place. And then on the other side is a ring light. So the ring light is using RGBW LEDs. I think I showed this off, but now it's just much nicer. You know, just de-panelize this and it's got this like cool quote on the back. And then this attaches here and then, you know, plugs in and then you can tuck the cable in and you know, we just stop these cables and then in the interface, you can set the light level. So, you know, take a photo of something and then I think I showed the autofocus working to take photos of macro stuff, snap, takes a photo and then I think I unplugged the SD card but Python powered camera. So the last piece is going to be getting the main board done because it's the prototype but those PCBs are on the way too. And then I made a little tester for this ring using a QtPy RP2040 with a BFF NeoPixel board and then when this plugs in, it cycles. I mean, it's incredibly bright, but in person. I can make the brightness a little less. It does white, hold on. We set this, sorry, we start. Okay, so it does a rainbow swirl and then it pulses white. So it's like a really quick way of checking that it does all the RGB and then the pure white color is like a warm white. The only thing is I think that this is so bright. It's actually, let's go to the computer real fast. I think it's actually browning out. So let's edit this real fast. Oh yeah, brightness, way too bright. Let's save it. Okay. Oh yeah, so now go to the overhead. The magic of interpreted language, I can see now it's much less bright. Doesn't blind you as much.  Let me comment this out. Okay, rainbow swirl and then. Yeah, I think there's something wrong with my math. Fate to white, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's something wrong with my division. It's like taking too long. Should be like one second step. Maybe I'll do faster step. Oh, you know what? I don't need that much brightness, hold on. Yeah, there you go. So full color and then white and then rainbow. Okay, cool. Okay, so that's my little tester, so I'll get tested. And then let me see the last thing. Oh, I got some also some RGBW neon, which is kind of cool. So I do like the RGBW stuff. So this is, let me plug this guy in this. This guy in this. So I like these like rounded neon strips. This diffuser is like a silicone, it looks really good. So let me test this out. Plug in white, black, and then I'll just touch this.  So it's Neopixel, this is a little metal clip and then this is the white. So it has RGBW. So I think I'm gonna stock this because it's a nice, a nice, very flexible. And like you can kind of twist it in different ways. Neon strip. And it's like good for outdoor stuff too. And then this is like a metal clip that you can screw into something and attach the neon.  Like once you cut it, it's kind of permanent. It does have a little cap. You could like theoretically remove, I think, and then cut this shorter but you can't. It's not like Neopixel where you can join it together if you wanted to, the stuff you can't. So this is sample that I got and I just checked it out. And then let's see how we're doing on time. 11 minutes, okay, cool. And then last thing, so let's go to the computer. So the last thing I've been working with, Timon on a project, which is a replacement for the TFP401, which is a, I don't like to T-Place. Which is an HDMI to RGB decoder. Cause I wanted to make an RGB decoder for these cool, you know, bar displays and round displays. So like, you know, if you just had HDMI, you could plug it in. And the TFP401 works quite well, but there's a few trade-offs with it. One, it's expensive. It's actually been out of stock for a while. I just got a couple, so I'll be able to get the TFP breakouts back in stock. And it doesn't have I2S decoding. Whereas the ADV 7611, so this chip has, so the only thing that's annoying about this is you have to configure it over I2C.  The ADV 7611, you do have to configure it over I2C, so you need a separate chip. But it has I2S decoding, and it's actually fairly inexpensive right now. Even though it's an old chip, you know, I'm seeing it on a bunch of distributors for like three or four dollars, which is a pretty good deal. I also found, I picked up one of these boards to go to the overhead. This is a Lantium, how long is this? This is a, hold on, Lantium LT-6911. And this is also, this is HDMI to MIPI, and they also have one that's HDMI to RGB. And these are very inexpensive, but there's like NDAs all over the place. And they have a version with a scalar, but it's like you need to program this firmware. It's an AD51. And I basically have to make this decision, do I want something that's a scalar, which basically means you can send any resolution that will remap it to wherever the display is, or do I want something that doesn't require an NDA? And I'm actually gonna get running. And this is like a tough engineering challenge. But I decided, let's go with the ADV-7611. It has the iTrust decoding, which I think is cool. So you can do HDMI video and it'll have audio output, but it doesn't do scaling. So whatever you send it is, it's gonna be one to one pixels. I think that's okay though, because as long as the, almost every thing that has HDMI output these days, whatever resolution you give it, it will do the scaling for you, like pretty much, almost always. And also I think, especially for the round displays, I don't think you want scaling. I think you want one to one pixel, so it'll look really good. Like I have those RTD 26, you know, whatever, or 2660 boards, or 2668, and they have a scalar. And honestly, they look really crummy, and if they're scaled, you're really best off just using the native resolution when possible. So this is design that, so I don't have time to do like designs as complicated as much anymore. So I hired Tim on to do this design, but he did a really great job. So over here, we've got the DVI HDMI, you know, standard size port into the ADV 7611, and then we've got the 888 RGB output with like, you know, it's also like the reds, you see the reds here, and then blues, and then greens, and then, and then these are the sync and clock and pixels. So this is 888, we'll do 666 afterwards. There's the EDID, I squared C E prom. So that will have to be programmed depending on the, what, you know, what you want the ADV to present at. So it should match the resolution. And then the I squared C, that's the interface for the ADV to program it. And then we've got a buck converter because it actually draws a lot of current. Anything with the HDMI decoding isn't gonna draw a lot of current. Sorry, that's, sorry, this is the boost converter for the backlight. Sorry, I lied. This is the boost converter for the backlight. And then down here is the buck converter, 3.3 volt output from USB-C. And then there's also a 1.8 volt regulator, you need both. And then down here, this is the CS4334, which is kind of a generic I2SD coder. Doesn't need I squared C configuration, it just like takes whatever it gets and gives you audio line level out. And then this is a line level out into the headphone jack.  And this is an analog digital converter for the touchscreen to give you I2C. So you do need a chip that kind of is gonna do all the like work of like configuring the ADV and like making it pop up in the right setup. And so we put an RP2040 down here with some flash memory. This is a secondary bus for the, a power supply for the TSC. Debug port, boot reset. But, you know, it's not like too bad. Let's see how big this is. This is like two inches by two inches. It's like, it's actually, you know, fairly small. And should be able to drive various HDMI to RGB outputs, you know, fairly nicely. So we're going to send out this prototype soon. Is it going to work? I don't know. We're going to find out. And then hopefully I'll use chatGPT toward the driver because it's like, there's like a bazillion libraries. Sorry, registers for the library. I'll have it work in circuit Python and Arduino. There's a, there's a Linux kernel driver at least. That's nice. We'll use that as well. This could be nice. And then I'm going to start with just replacing the RGB 888 display driver that we've got. But I'll also make it work with these, you know, cool bar and round displays. This is like another bar display I've got. So, yeah, so that's that. I think I got to everything on my desk. Let's go to the great search. Well, I great search for you by digikey. Thanks to digikey every single weekly day, user power of engineering to help you, yes, you find the things you need on digikey.com. Lady, what are you looking for on digikey.com this week? OK, so sorry, some of my notes behind the scenes. So I take notes before the videos. So this week, well, first off, I want to point out that the digiWish 2023 is running right now. You can get free stuff. I can't get free stuff. I'm not eligible. The biggest tragedy of doing stuff with digikey. But that's OK. You can get stuff for free. All you have to do is post with the hashtag digiWish on a variety of social networks. You can do one entry per day. And the thing you have to request is $100 or less. I have a lot of Adafruit stuff that's stock. That's 100 bucks or less. You get like a PPK. I saw some people looking for wire strippers. Pick something that's like, you know, $80, $90 range and post up and they pick one person every day to get free stuff. And they've been doing this for a very long time. This is actually one of the oldest social media events that digikey has done. So I've never won again because I'm eligible. But I know people who have and it's a joy to get something for free. So check that out. So this week I saw we got a request for somebody who was using a Raspberry Pi and they were using the Raspberry Pi 5 to do like continuous data logging in video. And they're like, well, what micro SD card should I use to make sure that I don't have failures in the field, especially if you're using it for industrial purposes, you're going to have this Raspberry Pi outdoors or it's like, you know, part of a mobile or seafaring data logging system. The most delicate part of the Raspberry Pi is definitely the micro SD card. You want to make sure that's well specced.  And I said, well, if you do that, you're going to, you know, they're inexpensive, but they're not designed for industrial use. They don't have guarantees for how often you can write to them. Can you write to them continuously for a very long time and how many years and temperature gradient. Also, I found a couple other kind of funky things that you can get with micro SD cards if you get them like industrial style. So let's go to memory cards, just click on memory cards. So let's just only look at active because, you know, just minimize the number of options to search for.   These are definitely going to be for industrial uses with single board computers. And so they're going to be more expensive, but they're going to have more guarantees and a wider temperature range. So the first thing to watch, to check for is what class you want. So the class is basically how fast you can write and read from the micro SD card. You know, you can check Wikipedia for a full document of every class setting, but basically the higher the number, the better the class. And once you get to class 10, there's like subclasses. So class three is going to be the faster. I think it's about a hundred megabit per second, read and write.  Class 10, UHS three, U3. So it's going to be the fastest. And, oh wow, you need like one terabyte for real? Geez, that's expensive. But you want a one and a half terabyte, guaranteed class 10, U3 SD card? That's cool. Anyways, you can order them. But we're not going to get a one terabyte. We're going to get, you know, eight, 16 or 32. So let's look for that. Okay. So there's a couple of options available, a couple of vendors, each vendor's going to have their own thing. So first up, let's just do normally stocking. So all these are going to be micro SD because that's kind of what you're going to get. I did notice a couple cool features. So ATP, they had a guarantee of five years or two years, with also, you know, documented reliability for insertions and also mean time to failure. They also guarantee their sequential reads and writes, which is kind of nice. Of course, if it's not sequential, if you're like jumping around, it won't be the same. And there's also ones that are, so you can see all the different options. And there's a slightly less, slightly lower warranty through it. A slightly less, slightly lower warranty, three years, not five years. There's also, let's see, was it APACER? I saw one that had, let me see if I can power it. It had a guarantee for, if you had power lossage, it would like actually be able to recover from it. But even like things like, you know, the amount of current draw, like that's actually unusual, like for low cost. Micro SD cards, you're not gonna have guarantees for that. Guaranteed humidity, guaranteed operating temperature. They have ones that go, you know, negative 40 to 85. These are good for outdoor use cases. And try to think what else. Yes, some of these have like guaranteed for random reads and writes and bus mode. Oh yeah, power failure management, which I thought was kind of neat. So, you know, some of them have extra air correction, power failure management, guaranteed that not only will they do wear leveling because all micro SDs do wear leveling, but they will do like even wear leveling and they'll make sure that like, you don't reuse the same area multiple times.   And if you need, actually let's go look at a temperature range for select one. So let's maybe pick one that does, you know, that full negative 40. And then, yeah, this one, for example, 500 in stock. And also some of them I noticed, they will guarantee supply. So if you register with them, they will tell you if they discontinue the card and give you a last time buy. So if you have spec'd a card for your use case and you're like, okay, I don't want to go and we spec other cards, they guarantee that you'll be able to supply you for at least like a year past the end of life date. So check out some micro SD cards for industrial use. Again, not, you wouldn't get this for your switch. You'd get this for a single board computer or something that's outside or doing data logging. You're sending it to space. These are some good options. It's my great search. Wait, wait, wait. And thanks so much for joining us this Sunday evening. We'll see everybody throughout the week. We have a whole bunch of shows and more as it hits December, don't forget you can get stuff on Ageford Store. We also give certificates and more. Please support an open source, hard work company, trying to make and share as much as we can to do good and bring people together. We'll see you next week. Thanks everybody. Have a great night.


All right. What else do we have here? What is your opinion of My Way by Frank Sinatra? I mean, I love My Way. It's a great song. I like Frank Sinatra generally. I think he's one of the great singers of all time. When it comes to popular music, I can't think of anybody of many better singers than Frank Sinatra. He had a way of imbuing the music and the lyrics with emotion conveying what he really felt about it and really bringing you in to, you know, again, exposing his soul in some way, exposing what the music meant to him. And it was fantastic. You know, and they say, I never saw him live, but they say going to perform to Frank Sinatra live was a unique experience that you felt no matter how many people in the auditorium or in the stadium, you felt that he was singing to you. He had this ability to move on the stage, to look out into the audience and to emote by singing that was just unique. And My Way, of course, is fantastic lyrics. I did it My Way. You know, of course, it always has a tinge of subjectivity. You know, as an objectivist, I want him to say, you know, rationally or objectively or something like that. But no, I'm kidding. It's I love the song. I think it's a fantastic song. It's a motivating song. It's an inspiring song. I would use it on the show as one of my theme songs, but it's a little too obvious. So I don't. Okay, what is the super chat? And I noticed yesterday, when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity. Go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this to keep this going. I'm not showing the next


which is really all you could want. So is this, I guess this is a current day rivalry, right? Chandler, I know we want these things in the league. That's what we crave as fans. Would you call this one a rivalry? Yeah, for sure. And you can tell, like I said, they're getting under the warrior skin. And this is what Memphis does. You look across the league, there's the New Orleans, Phoenix rivalry. There's now this one. This is an exciting one because Clay Thompson's right. Like they have no room to talk, but on the flip side, Memphis is also right. They are old. They can be beatable this year. Their time may be passing, but you give me the Warriors fully healthy with Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins in a playoff series. I'm not betting against them against the Memphis Grizzlies. And I love the Grizzlies. They're young, they're exciting. Desmond Bain was, you know, had an inefficient game. Dylan Brooks has got to find a way to be more efficient, but they don't have the experience, but they do have the arrogance. So in a way that helps them, but it also it hurts them and it's definitely a little immature on their part. But this is what we want as fans, as media, as players. These are the games that you can, you know, get up for in February and March because it's such a fun, exciting, physical game. I kind of love that the Warriors got 30 piece twice in New York and five words from John Morant was enough to turn them back into the champs for a night. I don't, like, I don't get it. I don't know why Clay Thompson has this running list of just grievances and disrespectful comments that he fills and then slights, but it's hilarious that it wakes him up every time and he makes sure to let us know when he gets a mic in front of him. Look, I'm all for it. I'm all for the pettiness. I'm all for the rivalry, the beef, whatever you want to call it. They clearly don't like that team. They, especially Dylan Brooks, like I'd imagine they have some loving their heart for John Morant, but the entire Warriors organization clearly hates Dylan Brooks. And yeah, I hear them talking after the game, saying, hey, is this a good look for the league? Yes, yes, the fans love this.  This is great. We love that these guys hate each other.  Hopefully they'll play in another series. The best rivalry in the league, I don't know. I might go a couple others, but this one's fun for sure.


We are not allowed to do this for the best of us. I'm worried, yeah. I'm speaking at 41. I'm worried, man. We are talking at the bottom. I'm not worried. I'm afraid that we're going to drop the same number of people. We're going to drop the same number of people. We are not allowed to do this. We are not allowed to do this. We are not allowed to do this. We are not allowed to do this. We are not allowed to do this. You don't care. I want to thank you for this idea of post-partum outreach for all of my friends and family. I want to thank all of my friends and family for all of my friends and family.