Hello, everyone, about ready to get started now. There's no moderator for this session, so it's me. I'm introducing myself. I'm Joyce Ray from Johns Hopkins University. And I'll be talking about my talk is based on a meeting that we had last October on digital curation in art museums and what emerged from it in terms of promising practices and opportunities for education and research. And so this is based on the Master of Arts in Museum Studies program at Johns Hopkins coming out of that program. And then my area within that is the Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation. And I'll talk a little bit more about these programs too. The MA program was launched in 2008. It's mostly online, except for a two-week required on-ground seminar that's held various locations in the US and also outside the US. We have students from 44 states and 10 countries currently, quite a wide age range of students. So some are just starting out, some are changing careers that are doing something that they've always wanted to do and now they decided this is the time to do it. 70% approximately of our students are already working in museums. So this is designed as a part-time program, although we do have some full-time students as well. And about 9% have another graduate degree. And we already have over 400 graduates from the Master's program. We know that digital curation jobs in museums are emerging because we see job postings on the Museum L listserv. For example, things like collection data assistant, digital archivist, digital asset management specialist, digital collections manager, digital content manager, different projects manager. So all these different job titles, so we know there are some out there. We also know from a previous meeting that we put together in 2013 prior to launching the digital curation program, we brought together a number of educators as well as employers, including from the major institutions in Washington, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the museum people who came told us they really do need staff with digital curation skills. They would prefer to hire what they call their own that is people with museum experience and a deep understanding of the museum mission, but they are hiring librarians and archivists instead because there haven't been opportunities for museum professionals to acquire the skills and knowledge of digital curation. So that's really what inspired us to launch this program. It was a little soft roll out at first. It officially launched in 2014 with a dual degree option so that students could come in and take just the digital certificate program alone of six courses, five of which were core in one elective or they could get a combined master's degree in museum studies and the digital curation certificate. It also is almost all online. We do have an onsite requirement that is part of an internship requirement for the certificate. We currently have about 35 students in the program. We'll probably have a few more by next fall because we have rolling admission, and we're admitting students all the time. So most of the students are also entering the museum studies program going for the dual degree in which case they get a two course discount. I guess you could say they get to count two courses towards both the MA and the certificate. So in that case, they complete a total of 14 courses. Otherwise it would be 16, 10 for the MA, six for the certificate. And the most common backgrounds in the certificate program, backgrounds in interest or in archeology, art and art history, collection management, history and historical collections. So the meeting that I mentioned was supported in part by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. We also got a little funding from the Johns Hopkins Investment Bank, and we had this two day seminar, October 8th and 9th of this last fall. We had 29 participants that includes representatives of museum, museum archives, research centers, funding organizations, consultants, digital exhibition designers, myself and Phyllis Hatch who's the director of the MA's in museum studies program. And Diane Zorich who is a cultural heritage consultant who was actually fabulous to help us kind of scope the meeting. She made great recommendations. She was the facilitator and she wrote our final report for us. So we had representatives from 14 museums. I won't read all the names of them, but they're kind of a mix of some smaller college art museums, medium-sized museums and some very large museums around the country. Now I said 14 museums. There were 13 job titles from these museums. We had two directors and everything else was a unique job title. So chief information officer, one person with curator in his title. Curator of digital and emerging media. But we had a collections data manager, chief of digital imaging, associate media conservator, chief digital officer. So all these different titles, job titles are people who are involved with digital curation in their museums in some way. Okay, so our first topic was what do we mean by digital curation? Now we could have spent the whole meeting talking about this because 14 museums, 13 job titles, everybody kind of brought a different perspective. And I think the person who actually had the job title of digital curator for a museum was hyperventilating because he said he had never heard of some of this stuff. And he was actually hired I think to be a social media manager of social media program, although he had gotten into other things as well. But so we finally ended that conversation by saying, okay, well we've already defined what digital curation means for our program. So that's what we're gonna use during the course of this meeting. And what we say is the planning and management of digital assets over their lifetime from conceptualization through active use and presentation to long-term preservation in a repository for future use. And this of course is derived mostly from the definition and the digital curation lifecycle model developed by the Digital Curation Center in the UK. And I say mostly because, well for one thing they kind of keep changing their definition. But we added the concept of presentation to our definition because we feel that that's so important for museums. It's not just use, it's thinking about how you're gonna present digital assets as well. So these are the challenges that we identified to address. Sustaining and archiving innovative displays for audience engagement. Managing digital assets for preservation and access. Adapting curatorial practices to curating, displaying and preserving digital art. Okay, so topic one, going back to that was the definition of digital curation. Topic two, the challenge. How do museums engage audiences in innovative ways? How do they manage and sustain innovative digital projects? So this is the gallery wall from the Cleveland Museum of Art. A very kind of innovative concept where when you enter the museum, you see this wall and you can pull up with the touch screen. Any of these works that you see here read something about them before you go to visit the collections in the museum. And it was developed by this company called Local Projects and we had a representative from the company as well as somebody from the Cleveland Museum of Art talked to us about how they had developed these concepts. So the first question that came up is what is the shelf life of innovative experiential projects? And the first question that was asked of the person from Local Projects was, well, how do you sustain this work? And he started answering and it became obvious that his concept of sustainability was how well people remembered what they had seen and how they reacted to it and how long they retained that. So it was a completely different understanding of what is sustainability for them. So that led to what needs to be preserved? What is the archival unit of an interactive project and who is responsible? So we didn't exactly answer some of those questions but we did answer who is responsible by reaching a consensus view that the museum bears the responsibility of considering preservation at the very beginning of the development process not after a project has been designed and implemented. A couple of other, I think significant takeaways was included the idea that today's digital curation is retrospective and the recognition of that and that we are aiming for prospective digital curation. We should be moving towards building tool sets that people work in and that automatically capture and curate data at the point of creation and use. The focus must shift to making things curatable as we go along, not after an activity has been completed. Okay, so moving to topic three, how should museums manage their digital assets for long-term preservation and access? And I think certainly one of the most, if not the most farther ahead, I guess museums in this area is a moment, the Museum of Modern Art. So this was a presentation that I'm really drawing on by Ben Fino-Rodin who is the Associate Media Conservator at MoMA and he talked about the digital vault that they have developed that has three parts, what he called the Packager, the Warehouse and the Indexer. So the Packager creates an archival information package containing the objects, standard-based metadata and they're using Archivematica software. And then the archival information packages gets written via archivum software to very fast disk and tape. They have copies stored at MoMA Manhattan, MoMA Queens, and also offline at MoMA's Film Preservation Center in Hamlin, Pennsylvania. And they run integrity checks based on the locks model, locks of copies keep stuff safe so that if there's a corrupted copy somewhere, they'll replace it with a good one. And then they also have a tracking system and Indexer, they call Binder, and they said that they looked around to see if there was anything that would meet their needs. They felt that nothing did, so they developed this binder themselves which scans the archival information packages, extracts rich technical metadata, facilitates on-demand streaming access to all collections material, which provides both access and preservation. And this is open source and it's available on GitHub. So their entire ecosystem includes Stage One, which is acquisitions and registration of digital materials in a collections management system. Stage Two is the digital vault, the repository and access system. And Stage Three is the dams, the digital asset management system. And all systems talk to each other, but stages one and two are still human centered. So this ecosystem keeps the repository and access system in-house so that the total cost of ownership of digital assets can be estimated. They had concerns about cost and trustworthiness of cloud storage. And one thing that they mentioned that I think they're probably right that at least museums have not really considered this that in using cloud storage, if the company goes out of business or you decide you wanna move your data somewhere else, there's gonna be a cost involved and that may be very hard to project what that cost would be. So that was one reason that they wanted to keep control over it themselves. So that was the cost reason was, and the trustworthiness were both important factors in their determination to do this internally. Currently it's used only for collections assets, not yet for other holdings. So like your imaging and visual resources. And they also felt that it may not scale well if MoMA continues to acquire film at the rate it has been doing. That could be a problem in the future. It also, they acknowledge won't scale for small to medium sized institutions. They thought it could work on a consortium model or at the low end of the spectrum, small museums could copy their collections to hard drives and store them in different locations. They thought that Hydra in a Box is promising. However, they were wary of turnkey solutions that they thought might require considerable customization to meet museum needs. And so they felt that a near turnkey solution might be preferable. And a takeaway from that is it took MoMA 100 years to acquire 3,500 paintings. They thought it is not unreasonable to assume that in the next 100 years it will acquire more than 3,500 digital works. So definitely a challenging problem. So moving to topic four, how are curatorial practices changing in the curation display and preservation of digital art? So I just wanna get some clarification terminology here. You may often hear the term time-based media art which is used a lot in museums to mean works that have duration is basically what it means. So it's a beginning and an end whether it's a video or interactive work. It could often be the same as digital art but digital art doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily time-based and by the same time you can have something that's time-based, it's not digital. But this is an example of time-based media art that was a portrait of late night talk show host David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno that obviously when you could play it and it has a beginning and an end. So that's an example of time-based media art. So speaking of digital art in general, challenges, lack of resources and expertise creates barriers to acquisition in the first place because people are concerned that they don't know how to preserve it or they won't be able to afford it and that that is probably resulting in a loss of some art that might otherwise be acquired by museums. There's an inadequate vocabulary to even describe the components and the functionality for documentation. There's a lack of criteria for determining what is the archival unit that should be preserved for future restaging and it usually is a retrospective endeavor. So after creation when we already said that that's not what you wanna do but that's the reality. So here's an example of a work in digital art, William Kentridge's Tango for page turning that was purchased as a joint purchase by a consortium of small art museums in New England and it provides greater access to the work and also enables institutions to acquire works that would be impossible if they did it individually. So in this case each institution has a copy but the work is displayed at only one institution at a time and in this case they also worked with the artist who was very excited and supportive of the idea of this joint purchase because it would expose the work to different audiences and it would always be on display somewhere but they've already found that each institution had different ideas about approaches to preservation. So that's their next step is to work through those issues collaboratively and come up with a preservation solution. One other thought that emerged from that and the idea was that large art museums might help their smaller peers by sharing resources and expertise. In turn small museums can give their larger peers access to new and diverse audiences. One resource that I just want to mention if you're interested in more information about preserving digital art is a book by Richard Weinhardt who is now at the Sammit Museum at Bucknell University written with John Epulato. Re-collection art, new media and social memory that has a lot of good discussion about approaches to preserving art that's digital or hybrid mixed media. So other summit topics that I'm not going to go into here but that are discussed in the report or the organizational challenges. Of course the technology is only one they're probably bigger challenges as the people and the processes. Digital art history, things like online scholarly catalogs and the role that museums can play in that. Collaborative access projects like the American Art Collaborative that is doing a linked open data pilot and international collaborations like the European Digital Library and the work of the International Committee on Documentation which is a committee of ICOM, the International Council on Museums. And then we come to the final part of our meeting and the final part of my discussion which is the discussion of education and research opportunities. And as I said just to refresh you in our certificate program we have five core courses three of which are taught digital preservation the foundations of digital curation course managing digital information museums that goes into a little more hands-on work with some software. But in addition to that there's an on-ground internship that it's a whole semester course but students must spend at least 120 hours on site with the host institution but they can complete the project online not necessarily there. There's also a research requirement that it's not really a thesis requirement but it allows students to explore do research on an area of digital curation that is of interest to them and there's certainly plenty of opportunities in the museum world there's so little research being done in this area that we feel that it's really gonna make a contribution to the literature as well as let students develop some expertise in their own area of interest and then they get one elective as well. So we really wanted to consult with this community while we had them there about how we could make this program as effective as possible. So we had the questions posed to small group breakout sessions. These are the questions that they addressed. What next steps can the art museum community take to move digital curation forward in their institutions? What are key principles of digital curation internships in art museums and what are the roles and responsibilities of all partners involved? Finally, what research projects might students and interns undertake that will contribute to digital curation and advance the museum's mission? And so these were some of the recommendations that emerged. One was to resolve the ambiguity that exists around the terms digital curation and digital curator. So we'll leave that to the broader community. I don't think we'll be tackling that. And really these recommendations are not just to us but to the museum community. So to themselves. Create an advocacy strategy, highlight good digital curation work that's going on in art museums, clarify principles of digital curation internships or residencies and identify partners and responsibilities, identify innovative digital curation research projects that might be undertaken by students or interns. So ideas for resolving this ambiguity was one is to recognize that digital curation is a core function. It's not an add on. That caring for digital collections is as critical as caring for physical collections. That digital curation adds value to digital assets. That it's more than just preservation. It should enable better visitor experiences across all platforms and facilitate interactions between curators and other users of digital collections and assets. It encompasses practices that overlay all museum professions and a diverse workforce is key to accomplishing digital curation tasks. Different points of view ensure that digital assets are cared for and used in ways that serve the widest range of audiences. So thoughts, recommendations for creating an advocacy strategy is one use professional networks to raise awareness in key organizations. Work with digital curators in other communities, i.e. librarians and archivists primarily, create low barrier professional development opportunities such as workshops and professional conferences and identify and support activist digital curators within institutions. To highlight digital curation work that's going on, they recommended compiling stories of easily relatable and understood successes, bust myths to dispel misinformation, such as the fear that if you digitize your whole collection and put it online that nobody will come to the museum, which evidence is pretty strong now that it works just the opposite, it attracts more people. And I can certainly say from the students, my students, if they don't see a robust website, when they visit a website, they just conclude that it's a kind of lame organization. And even though you might know that's not really true, I think younger people today just have that concept. Okay, they also recommended creating awards that recognize best practice in digital curation as well as innovation. And also raising awareness through programs in professional organizations and through internal channels. Clarify principles and internships, identify partners and responsibilities. In general, they felt they should provide value to the host institution as well as to the student. They should not be used just to fill resource gaps and they should offer lessons to the broader community. To identify innovative research projects, they wanted to invite relevant professional organizations to frame research questions of interest to their communities that might be structured into appropriate projects. And a number of these people are involved in these communities, so I think what I'm hoping is that this will kind of seamlessly eke out into the broader museum infrastructure. And just some ideas about internships or research projects. One is inventory and analysis of unorganized digital collections like removable media. I've already had one student who did that for her internship project. Possibly analyzing controlled vocabularies and recommend how those might be expanded. Analyze collection data for potential innovative uses. Study on documentation and preservation of user experience with technology. I thought this was interesting. Documentation of digital staff roles and practices in museums with the potential for comparing across them because I think museums are, they don't normally collect this kind of data and compare themselves with other museums. And so they're kind of each one developing their own approach and not, they don't have a good way for looking across museums and seeing what they might learn from comparison. And also assessing digital tools in use to identify gaps in improvements needed. Okay, so finally the report.  And unfortunately the FedX box went astray, so I don't have the reports. They just came out and they look great. I'm sorry. Somewhere in San Francisco. Thank you. But now this is a very long URL that includes the PowerPoint presentations as well as the Twitter back channel. If you wanna take a picture of it, go ahead, I'll give you a chance. Or you can just email me jray16, that's very easy at jhu.edu. I'll be happy to send you the link or I might even be able to send you a print copy if you want one. And so that's my presentation. I'm delighted to have so many people here. We're only more than I expected. So very interested in hearing comments or questions. And thank you.


Every soldier has a story. My story started in August of 1990. I decided to join the Army. The intent was to stay in the Army for just a couple years and go to college. It turned into a love of my life, and I've spent 31 years serving our nation with soldiers. Soldiers from every walk of life, from every place on the earth, with a common mission and a common goal. Service. There wasn't a lot of work in East Tennessee, and I moved around trying to find other employment, but it just didn't work out. My mom's older brother retired from the Army as a first sergeant. He had three tours in Vietnam, and he was a great influence on me. And eventually, all past led to the military. My late uncle, Daryl Sol, he was my inspiration. My childhood hero. I had him on a pedestal growing up. He was an attorney back in Phoenix, and prior to that, he was also enlisted in the Army. He was in the 82nd Airborne. So I joined primarily to take care of my family. I already had two kiddos at the time, and I was fresh out of college. It was kind of difficult to find a job. I knew I wanted to be a paralegal. I knew I wanted to work in the public sector somehow and give back to my community, to the country, and support my family at the same time. So the Army provided that opportunity, and I jumped at it. Back in Ivory Coast, I was planning to join the Army. The country fell into war, and the school was shut down for a year, and I won the Green Card lottery. When I came here in 2013, it was hard for me to join straight to the military because I had to learn and speak a little bit English. I spent a year learning English, so I went and spoke to a recruiter. Then he was kind of giving me all this, joining the Army. Then the Army would be able to pay for your school and give you insurance yourself, your family. And it popped up in my mind, wow, that's what I want. I didn't know how I was going to afford college. I got a scholarship through ROTC.  Here I am 10 years later and still loving what I did. But it is kind of cool to say, hey, I was the first one to go and do this, and now I have two young boys. I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and they run around my uniform at night and tell me that they want to be in the Army just like Daddy. My mom had went to the Merchant Marine Academy, and her father went to West Point. I ended up picking West Point. My mom was class of 1989. My grandfather, he graduated West Point in 1965, so he graduated and his entire class went immediately to Airborne Ranger and then to Vietnam. I could walk him around West Point in 2015, and he'd walk around and say, that's the same building that I did in history. That piece and the legacy there was impressive, and I'm very happy to be a small part of it.


You got some What does it come clove clove careful one sure? Like clove you do you say this every single time and Johnny gives me one It's not bad.  No, not really a hot and Spicy like hot candies and spicy food are different to me because they affect the different part of them. I get it interesting What about a hot take? What about your hot mom?  I'm Rick and you can follow us on and Ah For more. Well, it's the same. It's true. Oh, dude You can follow us on ah and ah for more more do more book. What that's true That's the truth. Um, I think it was and patreon Yes, one of the other one other day that it was one of the ones that I was really messing with Like this video is just a child messing with his buttons. That's true. Anyways, today. We're doing a movie review And we're doing a review of the new it just comes it comes out tomorrow here It might already be out by the time you're seeing this in India Malayalam film a Tom and we had exposure to this yes Exposure not viewership of it But we've known about this for a while because we it was at the Indian Phil festival Los Angeles actually won the Indian film festival of Los Angeles That back then and maybe we didn't get to stay for the screening No, no, we got a screener for it, which is how we're able to watch it because it's not coming to Los Angeles No comment but The we got it via that way, that's how we're able to watch it it came with Berlin and Joram and those were all part of it and this It's the directed by Ananda Karshi and wrote that as well It's a Tom is the play right essentially what it means right and the cast is It's an ensemble. There's there's being lots of people here It's difficult to call out Yeah, we've seen him a few places as well like there's a lead actress because it's predominantly a theater group of Males with a female. Yeah, so Zarin Shehab is the main actress family man actually Since you just came out we're gonna do non-spoiler review and then if we want to give some spoilers We're gonna get into some spoilers, but we will tell you before we do that just because it's and this will be technically the first 2024 film Yes, that is correct because this technically even though it was at the film festival It's not it's a theatrical release for 2024. So that is correct like a Guess technically Berlin whenever that does I know that also is a 2024, but that's weird because we watched it months ago So it's in theaters right now So if you want to go watch it there go watch it and like your initial thoughts of a time We just are on a roll Right now. Hmm. I can't remember the last time Yeah, it really was But for us as far as the movies we've just watched in a row I can't recall a time in recent memory It's been a while Where we have just gone out of the park out of the park out of the park out of the park This one is a another one. That's just hit out of the park Yeah, I was telling in drunk. I said I've got four movies right now any one of them I want you to watch because it's wonderful Yeah, and this is one of them Incredibly well-written Beautiful work by the ensemble believe every single minute of it the drama the dramaturgy of it Which is a terminology about the actual creation of storyline and plot and how it builds and how it works this thing The pacing on this builds and moves the way a story should and it's a human interest story that I just thought was Superlative have no qualms at all different reasons as far as the winning at the film festival because Berlin is equally worthy of recognition, but I have no qualms of this winning it and We've got another candidate of a film that I think could easily be submitted for international film and in any awards show I love this movie. Um, yeah, it was absolutely fan. It's a heck of a heck of a line It makes me excited for next year's Indian film festival Yeah, this is the quality of yeah film that is consistently getting submitted and these are just the features Yeah, they also do shorts. Yeah do documentaries that we didn't get to see any of them because We were very busy that week and it was we all we didn't actually get to see any films at the film festival Sometimes while they were screenings we were doing interviews. Yeah, so so this is the thing But then they somebody at the festival told me that they actually do send out screeners to critics and I'll say oh, yeah Please do that. That would be wonderful But then since these ones were smaller I decided to wait on them to more when you guys would see them So because a lot of times like when we released Berlin people like oh, I have no idea what this is as Opposed to after the trailers released and people excited. Yeah, that's why I did it anyways But yeah this film so different than Joram and Berlin Yeah, but the play is You know once you see it you'll understand why it's called the play Yeah, man, is it shot like a play like yeah, this really I was thinking about that especially in the last act Yeah, I thought Man, I this would be as gripping and this is gonna be an old reference for those of you who know the play The gripping nature of 12 angry men when it's done appropriately. Yeah, absolutely or inherit the wind Those happen to be courtroom dramas, but it's the it's that The any play that has one location and it's dialogue driven with multiple characters That's the kind of thing this is and it's just and it's shot that way It makes you feel like the editing was so good in some spots It really makes you feel like you're not watching editing it makes it makes you feel like your head turning and looking at people in the room Yeah, absolutely, and He said one look it's not this is not one location. No, no, no, it could be done that way Absolutely, it could be done that way and firm for everybody the It I can't give any spoilers right now. Yeah, but the the story Without giving anything away is very intriguing because it's almost like a knives out who done it on a much smaller scale in terms of Production obviously and and and and I guess steaks. Yeah, and even the steaks the steaks are different, but they're no less important Absolutely.  Yeah, that's what this film is That's why this film is as good as it is And if you don't like films that give you the feeling at first that like nothing's really going on Yeah, yeah, and then you realize there was a lot going on and you should have been paying closer attention Yeah, yeah, you can miss stuff. We can miss easily especially with my I said it to my wife when I was watching I was like, I never I love the Mali alum language because it it sounds beautiful, but I've never Heard a language that sounds so much like gibberish to my ears. Hmm. It's a horrible. Oh, yeah Yeah That's Hindi. I feel like it's slower in comparison to a lot of other of the language And I don't know if this has happened to you at this point But it's happening to me now because we watch so many different languages There are times now where I'm watching a film and I'm I'm I'm I Can't I can't remember is that a Mali alum word or is that a damel word? Yeah, or is that a to lugu? Exactly? I'm still I get them. Yeah mixed sometimes. I even don't even know if it's Hindi So yeah, so obviously all the smiley on so all the performances are good and they're all believable. Yes They all do a really really really good job It's hard to pick out one standout because I think they all did a very very good job ensemble work Yeah, if this was a if this was a US film it would be nominated for sags ensemble. Well, maybe oh, yeah The nominating committee smoke and crack these days. I don't know what's been going on with their selection sometimes But in terms of just I think most Mali alum films would yeah, you would hope they're they're just I like that post Poor things wasn't nominated for ensemble. I haven't seen it yet, but that's yeah, that'll that'll boggle your mind Um The posters cool. I just saw it Because this film it talks about so much But you have to you have to listen obviously there's a surface level thing that you can Understand if you just don't think anything else into it but there's so much more going on in this film in terms of what he's trying to say about people about greed about Believing people about lying about about truth about truth about facts. Yeah about judging people and done. It's so well written Mm-hmm in in more amateur hands. These would have just been caricatures and They're not just characters. These these are fully fleshed out human beings everybody coming from a place of Real believable rationales and everybody's saying things that are in alignment with who they are and they're not These are not simple things that people are talking about. There's nuances of complexity. There's Thoughts that people have that have to do with being selfless and caring about the truth But at the same time being protective and wanting to get what they want. It's really really well really really intriguing The cinematography and was the score very very subtle very so because a lot of times I'd say More than 85% of the film is not scored and when it is scored It's just to give you a sense of something. Yeah, it's it's very subtle The score is just done to give you a sense. This is all about dialogue. Yeah, the entire film is He's all about dialogue and in a very different way than say like the most prominent filmmaker in the world for dialogue in the recent years has been Quentin Tarantino, you know, but but Quentin will do Lots of diatribe's lots of pontificating lots of verbosity. This is not that No, this is just like a fly on the wall. Yep fly on the wall conversation Someone says a couple sentences. The other person has a response done The other person has a response and the other person has a response. Some of them make you infuriated. Yeah Yeah, there's so much going on and apparently this is the director's first film shut up He did one short film at least I'm going to be that's what it's showing He did a short film three years ago and this is his first ever film Ever done any other writing things writing. Let's see. He didn't have any other credits Look at that. Good grief. So unless he's just not Listed on I'm not credited. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, if this is pretty much a sophomore or or a freshman Wow, and he won the obviously Indian film festival that would be that would be reason That that in and of itself would be reason to see something this Extremely good At the at every level that is this good from somebody who this is either their first or second attempt at filmmaking That is Extraordinary, and yeah, it's absolutely brilliant. I don't know what else to say in terms of wow Non-spoiler stuff. Yeah, we'll get into some spoils here, but just go watch the movie watch it obviously I'm sure it only is getting distribution in Kerala. I Hope other places shame, but if you can and you like this style of film of Litch I'm not even I'm not even Kidding in the slightest dialogue driven films to the fullest You have to like that if and if you've seen our recent reviews You may not have been around for a long time, but thankfully recently if you've seen the reviews that we have done for Katha the core and 12th fail. This is in and Joram. This is all in the same wheelhouse Elevative Thespian attic the kind of movies that we want to be in that we want to show other people This is this is the top of the top except for the white people. They still sucked always.  It's like they just picked up a like a look at tourist. I'm telling yeah, but we know we know we know we know what happens Especially when it's a smaller role the only flaw is it saves them time. It saves the money.  Yeah, it does But anyways, if you haven't seen it, please go watch it and then come back We're gonna get into some spoils more about the actual stuff that happened in it I can't say anything the non-spoilers because there's just it's too much of a of something going on But spoils boys boys spoil time. Yeah, we got it. Don't we we have a spoiler warning We just did it yesterday.  So this is for everyone who has seen the movie. Yeah This It was and I I knew where it was going like right off the bat like not right off the bat like as it went on I was like Okay, so there's something's gonna happen obviously with her right and when she gets groped and I was like this Molly. I'm so I think they're all gonna believe her there. This is a true Actors they're usually very progressive people and very progressive and what the truth matters to leave the woman And I said something's gonna happen though And Right when he called I was like yep. Yep. Oh, I guess the groping wasn't that bad Yeah And then obviously it was like almost like a comedy of errors. Yeah as it went on Not really not comedy. No, no, no comedy But almost something that they were going for of like this is gonna be painful. Yeah, what you're gonna watch Bad You're gonna see a lot of things that are gonna really upset you because now they're trying to justify it and and all that But they made it so complex of like the added twist of the prank. Yeah That added a wonderful True reality because a lot of people in this situation because this is very much a Metaphor for anyone in these kinds of situations and it's not just me too relevant. Yeah It's relevant in a myriad of ways whenever anybody is in a situation where they know what the truth is But then they're tempted. Yep to Bend their moral compass for Reasons that seem Extraordinarily legitimate not just for themselves, but for others so the whole idea of the benefit that was gonna come to the whole troop Took it up to a completely different level now that really begins to show everybody. Okay, how much do you really? Are you willing to sacrifice everything for truth? Yeah, or are you gonna start to make some wiggle room now because There's a lot of money involved There's publicity involved and if you don't think that you if you think you would just be storming through that thing with truth You don't know till you're in it What you're gonna compromise or not compromise and who you're gonna throw under the bus or not throw under the bus Yeah, and I I like it because it made you question Everything even though the one that you for the most part you're like support her believe her and no and then you're like You didn't actually see him the whole you can't even if you don't like the guy No, can't just throw him under the bus the whole time. Yeah, my thought was Bring the guy in yeah, why don't we have them both sit down here? Why are we just assuming? Well in everything she's saying is true. Well in that I understood For the most part for a while is because if he in fact did it you don't want to bring the victim in with the other person Obviously, that's no I didn't mean they had to be necessarily together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah But it was very believable in the way they did it Yeah, and then obviously a lot of them were supporting her and then questioning and then at certain times that one guy was like It's what you're wearing.  Yeah, that was amazing and very true that people would be very believable It's just so many things and they kept going and then it was another guy They're like oh it wasn't because we were all like oh who is it now because they led you to believe That it was a couple different people throughout the thing Yeah, they gave you little hints and always gave you the skepticism of did this really take place because of that Bluetooth connection thing That the guy heard yeah, remember I'm what I I'm wondering if it was that guy Because obviously then they they went back to with the Bluetooth and his phone connected connective, right? And so he My this is my theory.  Um So I think it was him I think that was though that was the hint that I did to that it was him I love that they didn't make it complete. I also really loved two things. I'm sure you love this too. I Love that at the very end It brings us to the stage and we realize we've been watching a play the whole time. Yeah, and I loved I said it out loud to the screen When he was gonna take off his mask and he says don't you want to know I said No, yeah, please say no and a great great writing. She said no because that's the point The point is it could have been any single one of them because none of them cared actually Yeah At the end of it at the end of the day every single one of them has a level of guilt associated with this thing because they Didn't believe her. Yeah, but she also has a certain level of guilt as well But I think everybody has a level of guilt in this I think her biggest thing was the fact that Not only didn't they believe her but they didn't also try to investigate further of who was it. No So if it wasn't him It was one of us. It was somebody she didn't just Hallucinate somebody grabbing her it was somebody here, right? Someone did this who did this But nobody cared and then I think that's why I led her to be like it was you're all the same now. Yeah It was probably all of you and they were really quick to condemn at first based on what they heard and Then the complexity start to come in most especially The profitability of what's about to happen with this guy and do we really want to? Throw him under the bus when we're about to become wealthy and famous doing our play. Yeah It was a and I also thought especially in the beginning the play was shot very well like yeah I was like, oh, is this gonna be the whole thing? It's cool. I thought you put a Excuse me. It's hard to make a lot of your budget. Yeah into the play. Yeah It's hard to make a play the cool-on film, but they did it And so that was another aspect that I thought was really really nice me too really good Yeah, I just thought all of the performances were spot on. Yeah, it's Molly other I expect nothing less. I loved her laughing moment. Yeah, and I loved his response to it I was watching him and I believed 100% He was shocked by her laughing didn't know why she was laughing Just a great believable moment at that time because he didn't know that it was a joke Right, right and so he was still trying to go on the trip.  Why is that preeminent in your mind right now? And again the complexity So many different motives for so many different people to lie Yeah, that you really didn't know what was going on in the way that things were unveiled and Then you realize that once someone has lied Well, where else are they lying because if they lied somewhere they'll lie somewhere else because there was another moment that I just win The phone came out The key or something the key or the picture of the key. Yeah, the key two of them went outside and said, how does she get that key? They didn't go further into that And he's like if you're gonna look at me, I'm gonna look right right back right back at you They didn't really go into that further, but that was another like was it one of The one of them or maybe I missed something Because I think they wanted you to think it could have been well It could have been any of them and at the boyfriend and at the end of the day Like a lot of these Situations that come up at the end of the day a Woman was groped. Yeah, and We still didn't get to the bottom of who did it and why and how to how to punish the person for doing it Yep, because all of this other stuff got in there So well-written very well-written Heck of a lineup for Indian film festival of Los Angeles looking forward to next year's big time. This is our first year and The three films that we saw and I think those might have been One other one and at this time of the year to watch the films that we've been watching recently that are so good In the process of watching all the other things that are contenders for sags and Oscars So your mind is in that wheelhouse of wow I've just been watching great film after great film not always necessarily There's some things that get nominated that don't shouldn't be in the process because it's political. Yeah Anyways, these are the some of the best films in the world Yeah, let us know you thought about the film obviously if you're here you should have watched it already Yeah, and what should be the next Malia them film that we should watch and what has he got in the hopper? Nothing right now. It's nothing in pre-production or anything good grief. Yeah, let us know down below


you're always introspecting. A top student is always asking themselves, what does this experience today? What did that patient experience? What did this thing at work or at school teach me about what I like, what I should do, how I can make improvements. And because of that, whenever they are asked questions on an interview and application, a personal statement, it's very easy for them to just spill their hearts out because they thought about it so much. And this again is the reason I was able to excel past a lot of people who honestly had a greater potential than I did. And that's simply because I took those extra seconds, those extra minutes to say, what did I get from that? And when you do that and you combine it with good grades and a good schedule, now you have somebody who looks like they're fully put together. And it's simply because you've given time to think about your life and experience in its whole.


It's probably a fact that I customize my desktop too often. I've talked about this before that I kind of have an addiction to rising and I know that there are a ton of people out there that just hate the word rising, but it's kind of the one that the community has adopted. So when I say rising, I mean, customizing my desktop, choosing a color scheme, choosing a wallpaper, choosing a GTK theme, those kind of things. And we're just going to use the term rising, even though I know some people hate it. I know that I do this too often. I've even talked about it in terms of it being a waste of time and all this stuff. So the problem is, or not the problem, I guess, is that I don't care. Like I don't care that I do this too often. I have fun doing it, so there's no sense in me stopping doing it. So if you're kind of like me and you enjoy racing your desktop, what I thought I'd do today is go through five things that you absolutely must get right to have the perfect rice. So let's go ahead and jump in. The first thing on the list that you absolutely have to get right is the wallpaper. If you fail to do a good wallpaper, the rest of your rice is going to suffer. It's kind of like walking out of the house with a pair of pants and a shirt that just don't match. You know, they just don't go together.  So the very first thing you should almost always do, unless you're taking a rice from someone else, is find the wallpaper that you want to use for the rest of your rice. And this is going to help you through the rest of the customizing process. Because what you can do if you don't have a color scheme in mind, you can take the colors from that wallpaper and then use them as your color scheme throughout the rest of the system. So for example, this is my current rice right now. And if we open up a terminal and stuff like that, this is what my rice looks like. And this is actually a rice that I came up with on my own. It's not based on anything else. So if we just fit them into something else, you can see even the Vim theme is kind of going with this red and black scheme. And all goes with this wallpaper. Now, the one thing I haven't quite got right is the color matching of the reds. They're kind of off. Wallpaper is more of a pinkish red. And the red that I'm using here is more of a dark red. I'm still working on it. I'm tweaking it. But the point is, is that you want to make sure as you go along the customizing process is that you've gone. You've kept in mind the color scheme of the wallpaper that you've chosen. This is most important when you're doing your own color scheme. If you're using someone else's or you're using one of built pre-built color themes like Nord or Dracula or whatever, it doesn't matter as much because you're probably going to find a wallpaper that fits that color scheme instead of the other way around. So that's number one on the list. The next thing on the list is borders. Now, when I talk about borders, actually, I will just go ahead and show you. This is again, when I talk about borders, I'm talking about something like this. So you can see around this terminal, I have a red border. So one of the things that is important, if you're going to use borders, is making sure that the colors of those borders match everything else. And you also want to make sure that you can live with the thickness of those borders. Now, I like a very thick border around my windows when I'm in floating mode or when I have gaps. So if I just open up another terminal and you just see when I'm have one screen open or one application open, there's no border at all. But if I open up another terminal, then I have borders with this particular setup. I like it simply because it allows me to have borders sometimes and not have borders at other times. It's not for everybody. Some people don't like borders at all. Some people have thicker borders than I do. Some people go through and have just really, really thin borders. It's a choice. But the point is, is that when you go through and do your racing, you want to make sure that you can live with the border choices that you've made. And I find myself that the borders are one of the things that I tweak the most often when I'm first doing a race, because I always want to make sure I get that ratio right. Because if you have two really too thick of borders, they get in the way. If they're too small for me, I can't really see them. And then it makes no sense to have borders at all. So it's kind of a balancing act. It's not as if it's important, but none of this stuff is actually all that important. It's all about cosmetics. So the next one on the list is gaps. So while we're here, you can see that I have gaps enabled. Now, gaps are not for everyone. So we've talked about this before on the channel. Gaps are something that are very kind of polarizing because a lot of people, they can't stand the fact that I'm wasting screen real estate with gaps because they really provide no purpose whatsoever. Like none whatsoever. There are no reasons that would actually make a gap useful, at least that I can think of. They even call them vanity gaps, but I like them and I like them to be around. But the thing is, is that I've moved. I used to have gaps all the time, even if there were only one client on the screen. But now that I've moved to this, I like it when the gaps aren't there, when I have one client on the screen, but are there when I have multiple clients. And that's just a personal preference. The reason why gaps are important is because it's one of the things that is going to play a really big role in how your rice looks. The difference between a rice with gaps and a rice without gaps is very large because a lot of the times if you have no gaps, you'll probably never going to see your wallpaper at all. You could probably just go ahead and choose a blank screen for your wallpaper and you'd be perfectly fine because you probably never going to see it. But going back to that first point, your wallpaper is important. And if you spent a lot of time on your wallpaper, gaps allow you to see it every once in a while, even if you just see a little bit. The same thing with transparency. Transparency is not really on the list because it's really not for everybody. But if you are interested in kind of having a peek of your wallpaper, transparency and gaps are great tools. The next one is very nerdy and it's one that I don't get right a lot, but I try. So the next one is padding.  If you've never done any development on websites, you probably never even heard of the word padding, at least in this context. Padding is basically the space between one object and another. So, for example, in these terminals here, you can see that there's a space between all the stuff that's in the terminal and the edge of the terminal. That's padding. Now, one area where I don't do a very good job of padding is in the bar. Really, my bar needs a little bit more padding on the outside in order to be good. But I haven't actually gone through and done that. It's not something that I pay much attention to. But I should if I was having really good racing etiquette, I guess, I don't know. It's not really the right term, but you get the idea. The reason why padding is important is simply because it adds detail to your race. It allows you to go through and kind of make your race neater, if that makes sense. So let's just go ahead and get into my Lackardy config. So if I go into my repo here and go into a Lackardy and vim into my Lackardy config here and remove all of the padding, we're just going to change these two numbers to zero. And now if you take a look at these terminals over here, the padding is gone and that looks kind of like garbage. It really does. Like everything is right up against the edge and it just doesn't look all that great. Now, I've found that about 15 pixels of padding in your terminal is perfect. It may be a little bit too much for you. It depends on how big your monitor is.  So how you go about doing this whole padding and this kind of goes for gaps as well. It's going to depend a lot on how much real estate you have on your screen. Frankly, for padding, you need some, whether no matter how big your screen is. So whether you're just doing five pixels or 10 pixels for me, 15 has worked really well. But I could see for some people who have smaller screens, maybe you want to go with five. The point is, is that padding makes your terminal look better. So I'm going to go ahead and undo those things so you can kind of see the difference again. And you can now see that the space between has come back and it's so much better. So that is padding. I highly recommend that you play around with padding in your terminal and getting that right. You also want to do the same thing on the bar, like up here along the side, you want a little bit of extra padding. It would make it look better if I did. And obviously I have some serious padding issues going on up here in the bar, which actually leads into the next thing. So the last thing you want to spend some time doing is working on your bar. Honestly, if you use a bar, and most people probably do, it's probably going to be the one area that gains most of your attention, simply because it's the place where you can do most of your customizing. I've done a lot of these time lapse, racing videos, and I've been getting some comments like, isn't this more about Polybar than it is about i3, BSPWM, whatever? And the answer to that is kind of yes, because when you're customizing your window manager, there's not a ton actually that you're going to do. You're going to choose the wallpaper. You're going to choose the border size, the gap size, and the border color. Those four things, usually that's about it when it comes to what you're going to customize that are actually part of your window manager. Everything else is the bar. Now, in this case, we're in DWM, so DWM has its own bar, and that's what I customize. If you're in BSPWM or i3 or Xmonet or something, you may be using some other bar, whether it's Polybar or Xmonet or Tint2. You have options.  You're going to go through and customize those to have their own scripts and whatnot.  And that is the bar. It's probably, as I say, the most important thing you can do when you're going to be racing your window manager or whatever is mess around with the bar outside of the wallpaper. Wallpaper is the most important. The bar has to be the second most important because those are the two things that are going to play the absolute biggest role in how your rights looks. So make sure when you're doing your racing that you have a good plan for your bar. Remember to focus your color scheme to match your wallpaper and then bring that color scheme forth into the bar in some way. So that is the most pointless video you've ever watched on YouTube. I'm sure that's true. But for those of us who are into racing, getting it right is part of the fun, right? If you are into this kind of thing, dealing with these minute details of how much padding is in your terminal and how much padding is in your bar, what widgets are in your, or modules are in your bar, do the workspace all show up or are you just going to show the ones that are active, the background colors, the wallpapers, the borders, the gaps, all this stuff plays a role in how entertaining this actually is. Now, obviously it's not for everyone. A lot of people don't like the tedium of going through and changing their color scheme once a week. It's just not for them. They find a look that they like, they stick with it forever and ever. Or there are those people out there who use a boom too and happen to really like that color of aborigine and they stick around with that wallpaper forever and ever and that's the color scheme and they like Yaru and it's fine and that's just what they do. I personally don't understand these people but to each their own, if that's the way you want to use your computer, that's the great thing about Linux, just do whatever the hell you want. I happen to like customizing my stuff and I like helping other people customize their stuff. So if you have tips for getting the best rice ever, leave those comments in the comment section below. I'd really like to hear from you. Make sure you like and subscribe. I really do appreciate everybody who has done that. You can follow me on Twitter at Linuxcast. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast before I go. I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons. Today, Devon, East Coast Web, Patrick O, Primus, Marcus, Meglin, Jackson, Iqtul, Steve, Betty, Saberka, Linux, Geeric, Mitchell, Arts Center, Carbon Dated, Jeremy, Sean, Odin, Martin, Neen, Merrick, Camp, Joshua, Lee, J-Dog, Peter, A, Crucible, and DarkVanet6. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.