Hello, whoa, hello. I got your attention. Right, great. Cool, well, we're eight minutes behind schedule, so as I start my next two minutes, we should be fine. You can't see any of these slides, I guess, so I'm going to do my absolute best to narrate them amusingly. Some of them hopefully have video which will have loud, bassy sounds, so you'll be able to hear that and just imagine the rest of it. Right, cool. So, hi everyone, thank you for coming to this talk. I'm broadly talking about high altitude balloons. There's this really beautiful photo on the screen that we took from one of our high altitude balloons. It's about 35 kilometres above the surface of the Earth and you can see this curvature, it's really pretty. There's the gentle transition from the Earth, this thick blue atmosphere out to the black of space and by the edge of a photo it's just black in that space. And this is this classic photo that we get on most of our flights and you really can't see any of it. So, just close your eyes and dream of NASA satellite photos of Earth and you'll get the gist. Okay, great. So, outline of this talk for some handy bullet points. I'm going to start off with some stuff that isn't high altitude ballooning but is fast exciting rockets that are almost as high altitude because that gets the best videos. And then dig into the high altitude ballooning itself. There's a brief overview, what is high altitude ballooning and why do we do it and how does it work. And then a little bit of chat about the electronics we build and these payload systems we've made. Some talk about the software systems. We've got this really great community where lots of people can get involved and feel like they're actively participating while sitting at home in their hand radio shack. So, that's exciting. Then a kind of history trip through some exciting launches we've had in the past and more recently and my guesses at the future. I actually gave this talk two years ago at the last EMF and had this great slide of things that might happen in the next two years and they all happened so I've got some new ideas this time and we'll see how that goes. And then some quick details on how you can get involved yourself and finally details of how high altitude balloon launch we'll be doing at EMF hopefully. Okay, this is the slide with a photo of me and some details. I'm Adam Gregg. I'm an engineering student and for the last few years I've been a member of Cambridge University Space Flight which is a student society. We do high altitude balloons and rockets and other things that kind of excite us. And I'm also nominally a member of something called the UK High Altitude Society which is a very loose collective of people who are interested in these ballooning stuff and kind of come together to work on, I don't know, interesting balloon stuff. Yeah. Okay, on with the videos. Don't know if this is going to play or what because I exported it from PowerPoint in the car on the way here. Give me a sec. There's no sound and you can't see the video so just skip right past this. Never mind. High altitude ballooning. Okay, there's another beautiful photo. You can just see the outline of the airfare but you probably can't. On to the overview. High altitude balloons, these really big balloons, they're really made of latex, some people have been experimenting with different materials more recently and they're actually manufactured for meteorological radio sonde balloons. These are the things the Met Office launches twice a day from ten places across the country and they go up and they pop and they come down and the Met Office looks at where they went on the way up to work out where the winds are blowing and therefore predicts the weather. We fill them with helium or sometimes hydrogen which is more flammable but cheaper and attach our own payloads to them and usually the payloads are doing a similar kind of thing to these Met Office balloons. They have a GPS unit on them and most GPSs will work just fine at that kind of altitude. They get their position and relay it down over a radio and there are a few options for the radio system. I'll talk about those in a bit. Then on the ground you receive where your payload is hopefully figure out where it's going to come down and go pick it up and maybe you've put some cameras on the payload to get your beautiful photos. It's really the high altitude ballooning thing in a nutshell. A lot of people are into it because they like the photos. Some people like making the custom electronics. There's a lot of scope for doing interesting, exciting things on the electronics. Then the things are coming down off the radio. Someone's got to receive these signals. Usually you receive the radio signals yourself but because the protocol is open anyone across the country or across the world can pick them up if they've got a good radio and an antenna. We've built this whole system where anyone who wants to can download the software, listen to these balloons and report back on where they are. There's some great slides with photos of that too. This is where having my speaker notes on the screen would have been fantastic. I guess I'll talk about the electronics first. A classic kind of payload is an Arduino, a GPS unit that spits GPS data out over a serial. If you've ever used a GPS you know exactly what that looks like. Formats the message, slightly sends it back over the radio. Radio modules vary. You can buy a thing off a shelf but you stick into your Arduino and it needs nothing else. You just chat to it by toggling the pin high and low and your job is done. All the way through to building the radio entirely yourself from scratch with PLLs since a huge FAF and it does not work the first time. On the screen are some pretty photos of various electronics people have made. The radio telemetry, for people who know about radio we use usually something called RTTY which is where you have these two frequencies that's kind of frequency modulation and use it to send binary data. So if you have one frequency that's a zero and the other frequency that's a one and you just send out serial data. If it sounds kind of primitive it is. It predates pretty much every other form of technology. This is the stuff people used to have with the actual mechanical teletype printers over the radio. But it works well enough for us. How well is well enough? So these payloads are transmitting with 10 milliwatts of power which is about as much as your car key fob to unlock your car. The balloons are something like 30 kilometres up and say 500 kilometres away from you and we still get telemetry just great. So it's like 5 or 600 kilometres distance. Same power as your car key fob and you pick up this telemetry. The secret is it's really, really slow. It's like 50 board data. So you're staring there and you can see that each character come in slower than you could type it. It's awful. On the screen now is a map of a system we've built. I can see it kind of. There's a map of the UK and you can see these little radio masks where everyone who's running the software we've written has shown where they are and they're picking up signals from these balloons. Yeah. Cool. Let's move on to the more interesting parts because you really can't see much of these slides. We launched a cuddly dinosaur into space. It was a photo of a cuddly dinosaur in space. We launched from teddy bears into space. This was quite good fun. We went to a local primary school. Had a big outreach event. Got two different classes of kids to build spacesuits for their teddy bears so they could keep them warm up in space. The kids got to learn about insulation and building stuff and they got to be a bit crafty.  They look really sweet, right? I don't know. Can anyone see anything on the screen? I mean... Great. I'm loath to touch it. It's kind of big and heavy. Anyway, there are these teddy bears and we put firmest couples temperature sensors deep inside the teddy bears and sent them all up into space. The kids are all excited, waiting to see how warm the teddy bears stay. At ground they're maybe 12, 13 degrees C a healthy body temperature for teddy bear. By the time they got into space they were just 40. So they didn't survive that trip. But it's okay. The kids learnt a lot. There's a photo of some really rusty electronics now. Often you don't get these things back. Especially in the early days of a hobby back when people didn't really know what they were doing and we had much less sophisticated tools for predicting where the bloom would go. It was kind of a potluck. You launch your thing and it comes down somewhere and you really hope for the best. It's somewhere easy to get to. And we thought that was the end of it. Till four months later it's washed up on the coast somewhere covered in rust. Someone's found it walking their dog on the beach. Gave us a phone call. Pulled the SD card out. Everything was beautiful. Still got the photos. No trouble. Yeah. Cool. More exciting than just sending up cameras and getting photos. One of the projects Cambridge University Space Flight did was a collaboration with the European Space Agency. So if you're a space agency and you're looking to land things on Mars which you do because Mars is great you need parachutes for the very, very scary couple of minutes between orbit and on the ground. And if your parachutes don't work you will be on the ground in more pieces than one and you'll have a sad day. So you need to do these parachutes right. The problem is in Mars the atmosphere is really thin. You're de-orbiting so you're going to be supersonic.  If you want to test your parachutes in the right conditions you even need a huge wind tunnel of which there is one in the world and it is very expensive. Or you try and be a bit cleverer which is what we tried to do here. So the theory is Marsian atmosphere is quite thin and Earth atmosphere is quite thin at 20km altitude. So you take your parachute up to 25km or so and release it. Let it fall down until it's hit its terminal velocity which in this case is supersonic and then really, really hope the parachute deploys because otherwise whoever is underneath is 12kg supersonic lump of fiberglass and metal is going to have such a bad day. This will go straight through an engine block. So like the level of very, very careful planning you go to to make sure this thing has like it splits into three parts. Each part has two different parachutes. Each parachute has two different pieces of electronics which can fire the parachute. So we're really, really sure the parachutes will work. So yeah we take this thing up to 25km let it go. It accelerates until it's going really fast. Parachute comes out. We collect loads of great data. The European Space Agency gives us tons of money. Everyone is very happy. There's some pretty diagrams we made on how it would work but you can't see them. There's a great video where we paid someone to take this up in a helicopter to test it at a low-ish altitude just to make sure the parachute is deployed but you don't have sound or video. So if you imagine a helicopter kind of hovering I don't know 100m above ground and suddenly there's quite large orange fiberglass contraption. It looks a lot like a missile quite bulky but it's pointing down which is the wrong way. Suddenly it drops. It starts falling. There's an intake of breath from whoever's holding the camera. Beautiful parachute unfolds and someone goes Yes! Then it hits the ground gently. So that's that video. There are some still photos of it that you also... Can you maybe see a kind of missile-shaped orange blur? Yeah this is it under the parachute. It's great. Okay and then we eventually did the real test in space and it was a great video with this parachute being deployed in space. Cool. Never mind. We sent an android phone into space so a lot of people have been playing with easier electronics. If you don't really feel like programming your own thing or soldering up an Arduino for apps or you can write an app for your phone. Phones have a GPS phones have cameras, phones even have their own radios built in so it can just text you where it is. It works quite well. That was fun. More recently people have been doing some more exciting things. Traditionally we sent positions back down over the radio and you had to go and find your payload and really hope it survived and so forth to get the photos off a memory card. So obviously why not send the photos down over the radio. Sounds great but at 300 board it's still several minutes for a tiny, tiny thumbnail. People have been working on this slowly and we're now at the point where you get kind of good images. There's like I don't know I should take this to the glitch art tent really because this is all the photos of space corrupted by radio noise. It's another beautiful photo of the earth's atmosphere and the gentle curvature of the earth against the backdrop of space. This one transmitted live from one of these high altitude balloons. And then finally the other really obvious thing to talk about in terms of exciting hub flights. Sometime between last EMF and this EMF someone called Leo Bodner decided oh this looks like a fun hobby and in the last I don't know year has launched something like 70 balloons. So he's refined this payload thing down to a fine art. I mean 70 is a lot of these balloons.  It's got little solar panels. It's about the size of a stick of gum. It weighs 11 grams and it goes up on a balloon. His very first flight kind of launched from wherever he lives and came down a few miles away and it was by all accounts fairly pedestrian. The next flight drifted out into the North Sea which is not uncommon. The next flight hit France which happens on a very rare day maybe people started to pay attention. The next flight went even further into the North Sea. We're now up to flight 10 and it's drifted over France into Germany down past Lithuania almost hit Ukraine and landed in Turkey which is a bit more exciting. He continued flying, launching a couple every day for a long while. This one goes into Germany up past I don't know parts of Scandinavia and ends up landing in Ukraine. The next one goes even further past Finland and lands in Russia. We're up to flight number 40 and it's gone past the Arctic Circle. Flight 44 lands in Syria. 45 and you're really starting to see what he's going for here. Drifts all the way past North Africa and ends up landing at the corner of this map but maybe you can see South of Russia past Afghanistan. Flight 47 and last heard from just over Japan. At this point no one really knows where it landed but it probably had a sad time in the sea. Flight 52 and we've done a big circle all around Southern Europe past Turkey and back again into Ukraine. At which point people are starting to think what is his secret and it turns out the secret in this case is trying 52 times. It works great. It turns out you can get this thing down to a fine art. These payloads are every bit as perfect and precise as they need to be. They weigh as little as possible. The solar panels mean they can run for as long as they need to go on. The balloons start getting more and more special. Now we're on to flight. Oh, well yeah. There's been a thing running for a few years where people are like what would be really great really really great is if you could get a balloon all the way across the Atlantic Ocean because it's a really long distance and transatlantic has always been this big thing in aviation. Everyone's always wanted to go transatlantic and for a long time people would try and they'd come up with such fantastically complicated systems. You had these balloons with loads of mechanical contraptions and valves and satellite modems and all sorts and they kept not working and it kept being very upsetting. Really difficult from the UK because the jet stream always blows you east instead of west. So you pretty much have to launch from America or get really lucky. That was the status quo until some group in California launched a bog-standard balloon and by freak chance it went all the way into Mediterranean and everyone was like well let's forget about that. Everyone was kind of hoping maybe one of these balloons would float across the Atlantic and eventually one did the long way. So in fact this balloon was launched when all the way out over Russia, over Alaska all across continental America then did the transatlantic before finally coming back to where it was launched from and has since done the same thing again so it's now circumnavigated the globe twice. Did so over like 30 days and obviously he's not going to stand still and not launch anything for 30 days so a day after this one goes up another one is launched and it's done the same thing one circumnavigation is great but what would be really fun is skipping directly across the north pole so in fact comes within 10km of a north pole going straight up and down the other side of the earth and there's a top down view that you probably can't really make out but it is in fact going all the way around which is great and then there was a third one of course and the third one has also gone round the earth twice so he's kind of blown all the records out of the water these things are still in the air they're still transmitting maybe one will drift over EMF while we're here in any event they keep going round when they come over you can pick them up and listen to them and they drift on their merry way I think it's like 35-40 days of continuous flight now which is crazy and there's no end in sight so those have been some very exciting launches there's another map of all of them so last time I said what might happen, what are people going to do in the future what are interesting directions to go in and there were things like maybe people should start using these radios for stuff like actual photos and people have done that which is great and there was this idea of these Pico launches where instead of taking a huge latex balloon you take a very small kind of foil balloon or plastic balloon and people have been doing loads of that in fact all of these long duration floats have been these special balloons he makes them by hand now they're made out of the same plastic that you get in microwave food containers long duration floats and then finally I was like maybe someone will finally do the transatlantic and that's happened so exciting things to play with in the future now especially if you wanted to get into things and kind of push the boundary a little through these new radios the Laura radios which have built in error correction they're actually really fast they'll probably work a lot better than everything we've used so far plus they're about £5 on eBay which is a quarter of the price that's an expensive amateur rig to receive them so probably that will become really popular TurboHab which is mapped in the corner over here invented same radios as before but with actual error correction and it's kind of nice and binary and efficient and if you're an engineer it kind of pleases you because the old format was about as inefficient as you could get if you tried and the new format is about as efficient as you can get if you tried on the other side of the spectrum probably all heard of Raspberry Pi which is this small cheap computer Pi in the sky is a thing that sticks on to it and turns it into a hab payload so now all you need to do is buy the thing and stick it on and you have a computer on a balloon and you can do clever things with that computer maybe and then finally there's this new networking idea coming about which we're playing with a TMF in fact called UK Hasnet which is where we say instead of always people manually tuning radios and pointing them up balloons and trying to get data down wouldn't it be great if it was all automatic you have a thing in your garden and it can chat to other things all over your house and people nearby and if a balloon comes overhead it just chats to it automatically and they relay messages and maybe the balloon lets your house network connect with your friends house network on the other side of a country and all the while it's connected to the internet and everyone can see where all the balloons are and it's starting to happen and it looks like it will actually work and if those radios here at TMF someone elsewhere in England might be trying to launch a balloon to go over us and see if the whole talking to everything automatically will work which will be great great, so the getting involved slide if you too want your own pretty photos of earth but you can't see on this projector but I assure you are beautiful it's very easy to get involved there's a friendly UK high altitude society there's a great IRC channel called hash high altitude on three nodes there's a website which has everything you need to know and it's UKHS.org.uk and it's on the screen but you can't see it so yeah and there's a great wiki it's got loads of examples it's good fun more excitingly launching from EMF time is to be confirmed because I only arrived half an hour ago location is Haftville which I don't know where that is but it's straight to this tent right down the far corner apparently is it near A2 it's near A2 and so this time two years ago we did the same thing we had this 100g latex balloon we bought two of them at the time it's about this big and we attached a payload called Joey which was this fun little experimental thing we just made and we let go we duct taped it into a jiffy bag and we said if found please return because we figured we're not going to go out chasing it now and up it went and we all had some fun and we tracked it and then somehow the duct tape failed the payload fell out of a jiffy bag and hit something like 60 metres a second which is 150mph going down and then crash landed in central London so as successful flights go this wasn't the best we got a lot of really angry emails my favourite was the one calling out for me to be banned from all future uses of a distributed tracking system which I felt was a bit harsh given as I wrote half of it anyway we're doing exactly the same thing this time we've got a new batch of joeys none of them have been made since for catastrophe two years ago but I found the PCBs so we sold it up six more we've got the twin 100g balloon it's the same one as the two we bought two years ago and it's been kept in a bag ever since it's probably fine twice as much duct tape twice as much duct tape is pretty much for plan maybe we'll put a little power shoot on it but I don't know if we have any power shoots no no power shoots so twice as much duct tape there's one tool I should mention which is this predictor we have and it uses this high altitude wind data to predict where your balloon will go and it's great if you know some properties like it will burst at this altitude and you can avoid central London you can avoid airports you can avoid military bases you can avoid all these things we've hit in the past and had really awkward phone calls about and we used the predictor two years ago and it said it would be fine and then the balloon kept on going twice as high as we expected and hence central London so this time we don't know really it will probably be good fun so we'll probably put it on schedule we'll send out an email to the schedule people I suppose come along to a hab village if I'm going up it looks quite cool we'll track it on our radio and we'll see where it is and we'll cross our fingers but it lands in a field and yeah great thank you very much for listening that's it and we have time for questions if anyone has questions oh we have a microphone for people with questions that's great can you put up the slides on the schedule for the talks so we can look at them offline yes good idea I'll put the slides up and then you can see the pretty photos yourself that will be great when is the balloon going up? I don't know when I'll put that on the schedule have any ideas when? it's looking like Sunday apparently so how much does it cost to set up your own reg to be launching your own balloons but what's the sort of entry level for this 200lb gets you everything you need to get a balloon in the air and track it and so forth possibly cheaper these days if you go through a much smaller balloons and very small payloads but like it'd be safe within a few hundred pounds and that includes cameras and helium and so forth just curious what's the do you have to seek permission like the flying thing? I should probably mention that so if you want to launch a big balloon you have to ask the CAA and they take a little bit of chasing and it's usually about a month and you can say we'd like to launch this day and maybe this day and they say ok but as long as it doesn't go too near this airport and you have to get the permission back before you launch otherwise it is illegal and you're a bad person if your balloon is quite small less than two metres in total in closing diameter for the duration of a flight then you don't need any permission at all and you can just let it go however we have in fact secured permission for a large balloon from this site over the weekend but I don't know if we have any large balloons to launch oh we do, so we might be launching some large balloons as well there's one other detail which is if you're a hobbyist and you just want to launch a balloon and you don't want to try and get your own permission there are two sites around the country both in Cambridgeshire where we have this kind of rolling 24-7 permission all year long so if people want to rock up we can usually arrange to let them launch their balloon what does the guy who did the what's it called the 70 launches, what did he use for tracking so he used a combination of things, we've got cleverer and cleverer as time goes by primarily there's the built-in system which we use over the UK and that works great in the UK and there are more and more people running that software in Europe and a couple in America and it works quite well but for most of the world people aren't going to be running the software or listening out for your balloon so there's a different thing called APRS the amateur packet radio system which if you're an amateur radio operator you'll know all about and you can't use it in the UK it would be illegal because we're not allowed to use our amateur radio licences airborne but if you're outside of the UK and you don't look too closely at the fine print on the reciprocal licence you can probably maybe use your licence airborne and so he's been doing that and occasionally Eratam's whined at him on Twitter and he ignores them so like there are ways around it you can get say I have an extra American licence now because I'm launching a rocket with a radio in America and then I can use that anywhere that's not the UK and that also lets me operate airborne probably but yeah APRS works really well for this kind of thing if you're allowed to use it so the balloons which have been sort of gone all the way around the earth yep how long will it take them to just deflate entirely it's a really good question and no one's quite sure the theoretical rate at which we're leaking helium is really low because this plastic film is very impermeable and so far they haven't changed altitude which you'd expect them to do if they were leaking helium so it seems like more likely the UV degradation will cause the plastic to weaken and then the plastic will just pop because it won't be able to take pressure but we're not really sure yet how much protection against the cold and other environmental factors up there does the hardware need this is a thing a lot of people kind of trip up on I've seen so many times you know the kind of powder hand warmer things little sachets, you've got the mini gloves to keep your hand warm people go oh it's very cold up there my electronics will get cold we'll put one of these in two problems they need oxygen to work which you don't have and secondly there's actually so little air that the electronics can't keep cool you don't get convection cooling and the electronics are generating heat so usually they end up quite warm by themselves just because they can't cool down so most people fly fairly exposed payloads and it works just great people will tell you that lipos don't work at minus 20 and maybe they're right but it looks like they're not actually right because they work just great how does the leakage rate change between helium and hydrogen so I'm not entirely qualified to answer you'd think maybe hydrogen is a much smaller molecule than helium because it's only got one or two gobbins instead of four gobbins but actually hydrogen exists as two so it's much bigger so in fact helium leaks much quicker is the short answer can you tell us a bit about the guy that's doing around the world balloons you said it's only weighs 13 grams and you're comparing things with raspberry pies and things which are a lot heavier has he built it all himself or is he using something commercial or what so he's built it all himself I don't know I think it would be fair to describe him as somewhat media shy his website is a little sparse and he occasionally winds about people trying to talk to him on these other ISE channels he's built all the electronics himself which is a fairly normal thing to do and he's worked on getting it as light as he reasonably can so it's a very small PCB it's got a few small surface mount components and nothing unnecessary he does this for his day job as well he assembles electronic systems and things for F1 cars and things I don't know very many details about his real day job but he knows his electronics inside out so he's built it all himself and pretty much he just came in looked at what everyone else was doing and went this is nice well the results speak for themselves I suppose could you tell us about the predictor software that you use yeah I'd be happy to the predictor software is this great web tool it's available online you go to predict.hub.org and you can type in where you're launching from and it will show you where the balloon goes by downloading a whole load of wind data for every point on the surface of the earth for every time for the next two weeks which is a heck of a lot of data and it gets this from the American nowhere web agency people who run a big supercomputer model to work out where the wind is blowing and then it runs some clever integration methods to say your balloon is here and we know it's going to ascend at this descent rate based on how much helium you've put in and so forth and it will burst at this altitude because that's when the balloon gets so big it pops and then it will descend at this rate we hope because that's how thick the atmosphere is and it's got this parachute say and then it lands and the software has kind of changed a lot about how people can do ballooning it means you can launch and be confident you're avoiding airports and cities and jet fighters who are training that was really awkward like cutting down a tree was no problem but the later CIA investigation was so it's a good tool it gets used like 2,000 times a day by people all over the world there's a really great photo that I probably can't show you of every place anyone's requested to launch from and it's basically a population density map of the earth anywhere there are people we've got people requesting these predictions and also the new version of the predictor because rewriting everything from scratch is always the best idea is being deployed in a couple weeks and it's even cleverer you can do fancy things like say I'm going to launch sometime in the next two weeks show me where all the possible landing locations are and I'm going to launch and I can change how much helium I can put in to avoid going in the sea so also it's in python and mad fast it's faster than the sea version it's fantastic, it's like 2 milliseconds per prediction so it's cool what do you think about Facebook and Google and their Wi-Fi balloons do you think that's realistic? yeah, there was a UK house conference like two weeks ago and we had one of the guys who's consulting for Google Loon give us a talk about Google Loon and it seems like it's working really well and Google Loon stay up for like a couple months and they're launching they've got launching down we saw a video of them kicking off these balloons and it's like they just throw them out every hour or so and they mesh perfectly and they provide Wi-Fi so it seems to be working great they claim they can control where the balloons go by making them go up and down which is entirely believable whether it becomes a feasible commercial project I'm not sure, it seems really expensive but the technology definitely all works could you tell us about some of the worst flights where things have either exploded or run into things or something like that some of them which ones I quite like there's a military base called RAF Fetford and we came down while they were doing some helicopter training of Chinooks and they were most displeased and it landed in this really tall tree and we were like, oh no, our thing's in the tall tree and this is the one where they were like, oh yeah, we'll cut that down for you no problem and got out like a huge chainsaw cut into a tree, army jeep and then set the CIA on to us there's this big investigation where they're like, should we have done something differently are we liable, what would have happened if we hit a helicopter would that have been really bad answer, yes and eventually they concluded that really we were probably doing everything legally and fine and the guy running the investigation was like, also this looks really cool can I see some of the photos you took so that was a happy ending are there any other I think the one that landed in central London was pretty bad, it actually landed in Pineham Park and Richmond Park and we knew someone who was out walking in Richmond Park that afternoon so we picked it up for us which was great UK House 1 I'm getting a shaking head I probably shouldn't mention that one there were children and make sure they're fairly soft and well padded and nothing too bad all one happened to someone else, I can definitely talk about this landed on a power line and they had to shut down power to an entire village for an afternoon to get the thing off again which was a huge chunk on a certain media company's insurance claim that must have been really awful that I think later landed in the middle of a train track and you suddenly understand why they put all those emergency numbers on the bridges to phone the train companies and have them stop for trains any suggestions oh yeah we had another fun one where we came down and looked for a very long time like we'd land on a major motorway which would have been so awful turns out fun fact 1% of the surface area of England is major roads which means you launch 100 balloons you expect one of them to land on a major road hasn't happened yet this balloon was drifting straight over a major road and it really really looked like it would land on it and cause a surge of trouble then at the last moment it veered off to the side and the construction worker on top of the building the best part is the videos cameras were still running so we had this great video of it swinging by not quite hitting him and the guy goes oh what's this, picks it up we've written harmless scientific experiment on the side he goes harmless less fortunately he then proceeds to open up a box doesn't contain the video cameras and rummaging around for freebies as he calls it he goes oh batteries takes the batteries out, realises it's a GPS tracker puts it back in the box still has included what the other box is a video tracker so we've got this great video of him then carrying it to his boss and he's like what shall I do with this and the boss is like oh yeah and then they realise it's got a phone number and they debate whether they should call us they decide we'll probably some stuck up and don't call us and then we turn off at their office a few minutes later and we're like how could we have our balloon back please it's inside your office so I later edited that into a video compilation on YouTube where we blurred out the guy's faces so I think that's probably enough bad launch stories but like maybe if you find me late at night in the bar I can tell you were the one about the children hi, hello, hi I was curious about what you were saying before about if everyone put their own balloons up and then you could share your connection with other people and connect to your home network on the other side of the world could you expand on? I think that's probably enough bad launch stories so the basic idea UKHast.net is the thing that's been set up for it and you run these radio modules RFM 169B they've got some part number and they automatically form a kind of network but anyone of them transmits anyone else but here's it receives it and we have a simple protocol that lets them repeat anything they hear so the actors kind of repeat the stations was a time to live in the packet time to live I suppose so packets only get repeated so many times and then the balloons are just another note and the idea is you have one in your garden that sends back logs temperature or humidity or something roaring and you have one in your house that's plugged into your computer over USB and that's enough to get anything it receives sent up to the internet and then the internet has a map and you can see everything and even be perceived and the really key idea is if a balloon goes overhead it should have line of sight with your network on the ground and the balloons they could all see each other and send packets between them and it's not clear how useful it would be but it would be really cool and so people are pursuing it and as I understand it there are or will be several of these nodes around the site here and maybe we'll get the badges doing it as well maybe okay are we all questioned out that's great because it's now 1446 so we are one minute over time thank you all very much


it is diminished all the images formed in a what we call it as convex mirror are diminished height of the image is equals to it will be virtual and erect image object is 5 centimeter image will be 5 into 60 by 7 into 20 clear approximately 15 by 3 centimeter which is smaller than 5 centimeter clear so it is a virtual and erect image clear got it cool next question


So it's a coastal patrol craft, it's the smallest U.S. warship in our inventory. She's commissioned in 1993, so she's been in service almost 30 years, so she's one of our older and inventory. I spent a couple of years decommissioned and recommissioned with the U.S. Coast Guard, and now she's back for U.S. Naval service here at Bahrain. I have a crew complement of 24 enlisted, four officers including myself, a wide range of ratings to take care of each aspect. We've got engineers, ice seamen, electricians mates, ITs to run the networks up topside, gunners mates for missile systems and gun systems, obviously. Understanding what our mission is here in the region, I think the sailors have a lot of sense of accomplishment, and being such a small crew, it allows us to be more bonded as a family unit, but it's very rewarding and humbling to be here as a commanding officer.


Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of Conversation with a Shipmate. I'm MC1 Sony Chambers and I'm here in Millington, Tennessee. Joining me today is the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, and MASH Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Mike Stevens. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Chambers. CNO, in your last conversation, you shared the stage with CMP to talk training and talent management.  So let's jump right in. Since we're here today at kind of the heart of the Navy personnel headquarters here in Millington, can we get your view on manning? How do you think we're doing?  Manning is good and it is getting better and it's through the dedicated effort, diligent effort of the people that work down here and have worked down here over the last few years. I'll give you just two numbers. First, we had gaps at sea greater than 10,000 and I'll turn to the McPon. He always has more detail than I have. We're down in the single digit, 2,500 or so. So you mentioned manning. Manning is doing well. We have two measurements we kind of use for manning. One is called fill. And that means do you have the right number of people on your unit, your vessel, whatever? We're very good in fill. The other one is fit. Do you have the right skill set in the right timing in the Navy, the right seniority? We're improving greatly in that and we're pretty much there at sea. Next match, NEC, Navy Unlisted Classification Code. But perhaps more importantly, the question is so what is the health of the force?  I would put that in good, all right? It's not poor. It can be better. We should be very good. I mean that would be our goal, right? But we're good. We have the basics right, but we have more to do. That's why we have this initiative, talent management. We have to do better with our personnel, with our training and really with our systems that support that. So we're good. We can do better. Right. Are there any areas that you think need additional focus? Well, yes, IT, and what I mean by information technology. In other words, the systems that are people here at Millington and around really the Navy to manage people that they use. So let me give you an example. If you say, hey, how are we doing re-enlistments last year? Or how are we doing on re-enlistments, the SRB and all? One should be able to pull up a report fairly quickly. Businesses do it all the time. We manage people here at Navy Personnel Command. Businesses manage money or widgets or whatever it is. You need to know what it is that you're operating with quickly so you can adjust. We're too antiquated in that. It takes weeks for folks down here to get a report. And frankly, you start shooting behind the rabbit, as they say. So that's number one. Two, our training systems need to be more modern. We talked about that at our last conversation with a sailor. So we're going to diligently spend some time on this and get this right. We have a period of opportunity. Our secretary of the Navy, our secretary of defense, very, very focused on this area. So that's our next, that's what we need to do better. McPom, what advice would you offer to sailors in overman ratings? Well, the first thing you've got to ask yourself is, do I want to be a particular rate or do I want to be a sailor? Because unfortunately, there's times when rates become overman for various reasons. If a sailor is in that rating and they see that their opportunity for advancement is going to be very, very difficult, limited. But in some cases, if no opportunity, then they have to take a look around and say, OK, what do I want to do? Find out if they get with their career counselor and their command leadership. Find out what they're qualified to do. Because you can't just go and do anything you want. You have to meet all the requirements for that particular rate. If you're qualified for a job that you want to do, then my advice to them would be to go forth and do it. I was on a submarine in San Diego not too long ago. And I was talking with a first-class petty officer and the chief of the boat was sharing with me what a wonderful job this first class was doing. In my mind, I thought he was a career submarineer because he spoke submarine. He looked submarine, whatever that means. But he looked submarine. I'm a submarine. I look like a submarine. You do, see, you know? And so in this conversation, I asked him how long he'd been on board. And he said about 18 months he had his dolphins, his warfare quals. And I said, where was you at before that? And he named off a surface ship. And then he named off a different rate. And here we are, the first class.  You're warfare qualified and you're already a part of this crew.  And he said, Mick Paughan, it's just a matter of attitude, recognizing what's in front of you and then meeting the challenge. And he said, the best thing he ever did is make the decision to be a sailor and not let that overcome his desire to stay in his older rate, the former rate, I should say. Because if he'd have made that decision, because he was a first class, he made first class as a submarineer, he would have high-year tenured out as a second class and never had the opportunity to continue to serve. I don't mean to belabor that, but I share that with all of our sailors so that they think about that.  And where does my loyalty lie? And I hope their loyalties lie with it being a sailor in the Navy first. That's common in industry, that people would shift skills or with a company go into a different area. So we're not a company. We're the Navy. But I'd say, as you describe, there are different ways to reach your goal. So what is your number one priority? This sailor will be, I'm sure, one day a chief petty officer, senior chief and master chief. And just look at that period of time as something that happened. So what are your thoughts on the Navy maintaining or improving retention and recruiting? We're doing a great job maintaining recruiting. We are bringing in the numbers that we need. This morning, we rang the bell, which means we celebrate the fact that, in this case, 96 months in a row, we have met our goals. That's the good news. We need to continue to look ahead and stay ahead and shoot ahead of the rabbit, as they like to say. In my time in the Navy, we've had situations where we weren't meeting recruiting goals and it's awful. If you can't assess the right numbers, then you're in trouble. With regard to retention, it's a similar situation. You have to look ahead and see what is it that causes people to stay in and how do they make their decision? What kind of generation are you dealing with? In this case, millennials, as we call them. What do they think about the Navy and what do they think about their future? How do they make career decisions? So my thoughts are we have to stay with them, listen to them and make the Navy a career choice for them. Help them to make that choice. McBun, how do you think the Navy will continue to attract the best and brightest? And what can we do to bring in that top-notch talent? Well, we have to be like we've been for 239, getting ready to be 240 years, a cutting-edge fighting force that has the ability to recognize talent, recruit talent, as the CNO just mentioned, and then provide them with the education and the training and the equipment to be effective at what we're asking them to do. I believe the young men and women that raise their right hand today recognize that that is the force that we are. So our challenge is to remain relevant to ensure that we understand what it means to change and why we need to change so that we continue to progress forward and attract the best and brightest. They wanna be a part of not just any organization, they wanna be a part of the best organization. So that's leadership's challenge and our responsibility to ensure that they have that organization to be a part of. CNO, along the same lines of keeping talented people, Sectef recently talked about efforts to keep our best troops, making changes to the promotion system and even promoting people quicker. What are your thoughts on these promotion initiatives? Well, I think they're needed. Would be my easy, simple answer on the bottom line, but we spoke just a little bit about retention and what is it that people are looking for in a career today? Some folks say, listen, I'd like to start a family. I wanna get a degree. I have this aspiration to go out and do something. Can I interrupt my career a little bit here and go on and do that and then come back? So we have a career intermission program. That's what the Secretary of Defense is talking about as an example, to be able to provide options for our people, to live the life that they feel they really need and maintain that career. Industry is doing it today. We need to become a part of it. Secondarily, as we go through the Navy, we've heard this term up or out. And so it's a very much, I jokingly call it a conga line. And we talked about this the last time we had conversation with a sailor, but it's really about year group. When it becomes your time notionally within your year group to go up to select for promotion or not, have you had the opportunity to get the skill sets to go through the key elements of a career and accomplishments and will you compete well? Well, if you've been away at graduate school, if you're an officer or doing something else, if you're enlisted, maybe you've been off doing anything from recruiting to a special program. Are you ready and have we given you that opportunity? We need the flex to move people through so that they compete when they're ready based on milestone, based on merit, not based on, if you will, the kind of cookie cutter, conveyor belt, whatever you wanna call it, conga line. And so we're asking for that authority. And these are the things that the Secretary of Defense is talking about. He's talking about being able to reach out to industry and pull people in from cyber warriors to experts in logistics, you name it. And can we do that if we can't? Why can't we? What are the hurdles, if you will, or things that are in our way? And do we need the authorities from the Congress within ourself to do that? This is what we'll be researching on his behalf. Sieno, can you tell us how the Navy is using technology and personnel systems? Well, we're using technology and personnel systems not all that well.  So they will do mission first. We have to make sure that, I mean, if you had any weapon that could do that, it would be unbelievable. And that's what makes us different from any other Navy actually in history. Well, how are we doing to enable that think of it as a weapon system? It's old. The IT systems, the information technology systems are too old, the processes are sort of antiquated, and we don't train as quickly or as efficiently or as effectively as we need. So technology has brought to us the ability to provide virtual reality, 3D training systems, responsive training systems, interactive training systems, bring those into the classroom, and then bring them in a manner to study in our people. How do they resonate with that? Do they learn faster? So it's marrying up that technology. There was a time when we were ready to jump into technology, but technology wasn't ready for us in training. Now the technology is there, we need to reach out and marry it up with our training systems. How will these measures really help sailors and save time and money? It will save time and money because we won't waste time in perhaps a classroom where we're not getting the knowledge, if you will, within the sailor's head as quickly as an interactive training process that people are used to today because of what they have at home or how they're used to taking things aboard, if you will, training aboard. We'll save money by maybe being able to change a same training process within the same trainer. So let's say within this room these curtains are screens and they're interactive screens. We could put perhaps in here a diesel engine and you could be touching those screens and doing anything from moving fuel valves to ventilation lineup. Then you shift to a torpedo room on a submarine and now you're launching or loading a torpedo.  So that's the kind of, that's out there and available. That's what we need to reach out for and that's what technology can do for us. McPond, speaking of modernizing the personnel for systems for the 21st century, how is the Navy ensuring we continue to recruit and retain women to fill those tough jobs at sea? Well, let me start by saying this. I believe that what makes us the greatest Navy in the world is, so certainly we have wonderful equipment, platforms to operate on and we have wonderful people. But within those wonderful people we have diversity and that's what makes the difference. When you look at organizations around the world, whether they be military or civilian, the more diverse the organization, and I mean diversity in every respect, whether it be gender, ethnicity, religion, color, you pick it, the more diversity you have, the more different thought processes you have. So when you go to tackle a problem, you don't have group think. I'm from a small town in Montana and if I was to speak with someone of a different ethnicity in, let's say, Brooklyn, New York and you put us in a room together and give us a problem, we're gonna have different approaches to that problem. But it's our collective thought, the combination of the approach that we take that'll probably get us to the best possible outcome. So it's our diversity and women bring a tremendous diversity piece to our Navy. Without them, we cannot be successful and we cannot become a better force because that's the goal is to always get better. So to get better, we have to have more women. To bring more women in, we have to establish and maintain the conditions that will provide all of our sailors to include our women with an opportunity to be successful and do that in an environment where we treat everybody with dignity and respect. So I've personally gone out and started talking to focus groups of women in particular, the more senior women. So I'm concerned because we recruit 23%, we retain about 18%, but only about 10% of our force are E-7, 8, and 9s. Did you know that women at the E-7, 8, and 9 level leave the Navy at twice the rate that men do? That concerns me, so the question is why? And that's what I'm going out and asking them. It's not what I think, it's what they know and they're telling me so that I can bring that back to the Chief of Naval Operations, to Chief of Naval Personnel and start getting after some of these issues because we have to do better, not just at recruiting, that's, we're getting better at that. It's the retention of our women that we have to work on. I believe that it's essential to do if we're gonna become the fighting force that we need to be throughout the 21st century and beyond. So that's the change we spoke of. A couple of questions ago, the Secretary of Defense is looking for, that's within the talent management, to align our processes and our policies with what our people are looking for. I'd love to stay past the E-7, accept. What is that accept? And what do we do to make you, the individual, say, that's good for me, I can do that. And that satisfies what I really believe I need to do. That's what we gotta go out there and get. So you know, what impressed you the most about your visit here today? Two things. One, the combination of teamwork that I see here with the military and the civilian personnel. Our military sailors, if you will, and our civilian sailors working together as one team. And number two, I was really impressed by the work that they have done over the last three years. And we commemorated it today. We had 17,500 gaps at sea, out there on our seagulling units just a matter of three years ago. Today we have less than 2,500 and that's the work of, if you will, this institution here at the Navy Personnel Command. So we were honored to present them with the Meritorious Unit Citation today on behalf of the Secretary of the Navy for the work that they've done in that regard. Gentlemen, before we close, is there anything else you'd like to say to the sailors out there? McPaw. Sure, well, it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyways. I wanted to thank them and just as importantly, their families. And sometimes when we say families, we thank husbands, wives, and children, but I mean all of their families, their extended families, for providing them with the support and the care and the encouragement that they need to be successful in this wonderful organization we call the United States Navy. So on behalf of my wife, Teresa and I, I say thank you, thank you for all that you do. Well, this is a pretty unstable world and we are where it matters, from the South China Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Eastern Mediterranean, I could go on, the Caribbean. And it is the sailors out there getting it done, that asymmetric advantage that we have because the challenges keep changing. A year ago, we never knew what an ISIS was, there was no discussion of Ebola, I mean it goes on. And our sailors, they adjust to all of that, so we need to adjust to them. So like the McPaw and I say, thanks for that. And we're gonna make some changes here that I think will make the management of our talent and our talent feel that we're for them and we're the career choice for them. Thanks for joining us. I'm MC1 Sonia Chambers and this has been Conversation with the Shipmate. Check out the latest editions of our program on the CNO's leadership page at Navy.mil.


Good day, fellow investors. Today I continue with my analysis of the silver miners and we'll discuss Pan American Silver. We'll give a company overview, we'll go through the fundamentals, we'll go through some optionality that the stock has and we'll compare them at the end in the table with the other miners that we have analyzed. But before that let me just touch on silver prices. There has been a surge in silver prices over the last week, a little bit up, but I wouldn't give any importance to that. If you own silver miners you own it as a hedge, as a long-term hedge and as a protection or the increased demand from industry in silver. So you say okay one dollar up, one dollar down is not that much but silver stocks move extremely irrationally to those small moves. So rebalance accordingly. Pan American Silver. What's nice about Pan American Silver is that the cash mining costs are below five dollars and all in sustaining costs are just 10.79 and guidance is that it should stay around that in the next three years with increased production. There is also 0.8 dividend yield which is not bad for a hedge like a silver miner. These low costs lead to 527 million of available liquidity and 288 million proven and probable reserves as silver ounces that indicates lots of future steady mining. The company has a diversified asset base in the Americas, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. The company has produced 25 million silver ounces in 2017 but expects to produce about 43 million ounces in 2020. The past production growth has been staggering with little decline from the boom in 2000 silver boom in 2012 but nevertheless the companies continue to grow and increase production profitably as we see at these silver prices. However as it is the case with many other silver miners the company is not just about silver. For now 44% is about silver. Always nice to see. Gold hedge combined 25% and then economic let's say commodities, zinc copper and lead. The fundamentals. The book value is around 10 dollars per share. The company does not have much debt as total long-term liabilities are 88 million. The revenue was 816 million with net earnings of 123 million or 0.8 per share which leads to a relatively high price earnings ratio of 20 but you always have to look at cash flows with miners not price earnings ratio and it has had 224 million of operating cash flows in 2017 which is a price to cash flow ratio of 12. That's not that bad in this market. Another important factor to look is at the value of the metal in the ground and just the gold of pan american proven and probable reserves is more valuable than the company. The company has 1.9 million ounces of gold in the ground proven and probable which means very high economic profitability and likelihood that they are there. That's worth about 2.5 billion while the 288 million ounces of silver are worth 4.9 billion so it means that the metal in the ground is about 7.5 billion. The current market cap is 30 percent of that at 2.5 billion. There is also some optionality that is always nice to have as long as it doesn't cost much. The Navidad project is very interesting because it holds 600 million ounces of silver as resources but there is a small problem with the province of Chubut or however I pronounce that as there is a law that prohibits open open pit mining and the use of cnid in mineral processing in the entire province. If they change that then this would be a big big game changer for the company as it would provide low cost production for 17 years. So conclusion low debt low cost good operation long term operation ahead it looks like a good company management has delivered on guidance very very well much better than the rest of the miners so again a positive for the company. Let's look about the stock price you can see as silver has surged a little bit you can see the stock price going up so very volatile as a stock over time in relation to silver prices so you have to let's say rebalance accordingly in relation to what is your goal with the company as always the biggest risk comes from lower silver prices especially long-term lower silver prices and operational issues nevertheless the company is something to follow let's put it in our table and we can see that as I said dividend low cost reserves diversified across four countries not just Mexico looks like some good company to follow the next step would now be to really create models for each asset they own probabilities risk and see what would be a fair value at an estimate average silver price this is something that I can't really share in a video because it would take a long long time to explain everything but slowly see perhaps I'll find a way to share it with those who are interesting when I make it thank you for watching looking forward to your comments I will go through more silver miners so keep putting them in the comments so that it makes interesting at add value to everybody who watches and reads the comments see you in the next video


Spin it as slow as possible. All right, let's get it. It won't be here for a while like half trigger Yo, this is Should about a snack This is as slow as possible That I can do like this is the lowest setting that I have This is like, you know how you can fold trigger. I got a half trigger. I'm like half of the half trigger All right, here it is ready


I bet you didn't know where Michael Jordan was born. A lot of people think it was in Wilmington, North Carolina, but that's wrong. That's actually where he was raised. On February 17th of 1963, Michael Jordan was actually born in Brooklyn, New York to James and Dolores Jordan. The couple was living in Brooklyn at the time and decided to move to North Carolina a few years later after Michael Jordan was born. Subscribe so you can tell your friends.


All right, so you've put your idea in play and you're an entrepreneur and you were so passionate about it, but now things may not be going the way that you envisioned. Well, today on The Journey, we'll be talking about eight things to consider before giving up on that business idea. All right, so how do you know when it's time to end the business? A lot of people just keep on going until they just can't go anymore. Yeah, there are a lot of things to consider. So before you throw in the towel, here are eight things you should ask yourself before deciding to move on. So for our first question, is there a demand for your product? Revisit your business plan and see if things have maybe changed since you first wrote it. Maybe the market has changed. Yeah, look at that market analysis, look at that target demographic you're trying to reach, and really your plan for not only attracting but retaining that customer base. So are people just not buying your product because it's just not interesting to them or they find it useful? Maybe some things you can tweak, add another feature, maybe make it more appealing so that they'll start to buy your product. Yeah, and take a look at your competitors. If they've stepped up recently, what are they doing differently? And maybe take a step back and realize what is going to help differentiate me from the rest of the competition. So number two, does your business have a core group of fans? People that have been loyal at the very beginning of your business, making sure to push it forward and give you that patronage, they can be a reliable source to help you keep going. Yeah, those loyal customers are your ride or die. I mean, they're going to stick with your business not only to be a repeat customer, but they can also help share that great word of mouth by leaving positive reviews. That's definitely a support base that you can lean on. The third question you should ask yourself is, have you talked to your mentor? A lot of times that entrepreneurial journey can really feel like you're at it alone, but it's important to take a step back, give yourself some perspective, and talk with the people who have helped you get to that point. You know, maybe they can offer a different outlook of maybe it's not such a big deal versus maybe it is more towards the end of the line. And also these mentors are people that have real world experience in what you are going through. They don't give you theory, they talk about what they've experienced themselves. The fourth question is, have you already made substantial progress? So take a step back, I know as an entrepreneur, it can be really easy to get frustrated with where you're at in that process.  I love to say documentation be speculation every day of the week. So for our fifth question, are you able to financially continue? Now for this, you really have to take a step back, separate your emotions, because I know this business is your baby, you put your sweat, love, tears into it, long hours, and even an investment into it. But at the end of the day, you really have to make sure that financially you're able to sustain this business venture. Yeah, you've got to be real with yourself, are your products or services not selling? You know, are you having to take out loans to cover these costs? If you're continually not getting a return on investment and you're losing money, you, it may not be the most sustainable option to keep going. Question number six is, do your partners or co-founders know how you feel? I mean, if you're in this and it's a partnership, you can't make that decision on your own. You've got to have that open dialogue with them and be able to communicate directly. And many times when you have co-founders that start this business together, it started with the same passion that you have.  Or the other side, maybe they don't feel like you, and then you do need to actually have that conversation to figure out where you're going to go next. And maybe that'll reignite your own passion. You know, having that conversation with them, it may seem a little bit uncomfortable at first, but maybe they are super passionate about it and that's going to feed off on you, and maybe that's the little extra kick that you need. All right, so if you've heard everything from your co-founder, and as Alex has said, their passion for it doesn't necessarily ignite in you, then you may want to consider a voluntary withdrawal. Yeah, and that clause is typically going to be outlined in a written partnership agreement. And you want to make sure that everything that's within that agreement is taken care of so that all your eyes are dotted and your T's are crossed. Question number seven is, will you need to dissolve the business? So if you're not in a partnership and you're running the business on your own as an LLC, you will need to file for a dissolution if you want to give up on the business. And you may be asking, what is the solution? It simply is, wherever the state is that you incorporate it, you're letting them know that your business is done. Yeah, filing for a voluntary dissolution is a pretty straightforward process. The first step you have to do is file articles of dissolution. And in these articles, they include information about your business, such as your business name, the date of dissolution, and the reason why. Our final question is, do you still believe in and have passion for the company? That is the number one thing that you have to have as an entrepreneur. So if you're starting to feel unhappy, that lack of passion is starting to creep up, you're going to know. So here are some warning signs to look out for. So is your heart still in it? Do you wake up every morning and you're excited to go and do what you're going to for your business? Or do you dread every aspect of your day to day? That is a telltale sign that you're no longer passionate about what you're doing. Or maybe you're completely unmotivated whenever you see that long list of hurdles that you still have to overcome. And you just keep getting beaten down, beaten down. That can be definitely a huge sign that you're losing some of that motivation. And another sign is whenever you think about your business, if it just tears you down, you get emotionally uneasy. And it's just not something that you look forward to, that's another indicator. However, there's definitely a difference between being temporarily burnt out and done. So there are still a few ways where you can kind of rekindle that passion. Revisit your mission statement. Think about why you really got into it in a very beginning. Is it still the same? Do you still believe all of those core values? Maybe you want to edit it. Or maybe you want to think of some new core values that really gets your passion going again. The next thing you should consider is what's your plan be? Are you ready to go back to a nine to five job? What are you going to do if you do leave the business? Or you can just take a break. It's nice to just get away. Maybe take a nice known vacation. Time where you can just decompress from all of the stress from running that business. Maybe take a digital detox. I know from my wife and I, we actually have a vacation set every year that we go away. We tell everybody, you can't reach us during this time. And we don't look in any social media so that we can totally disconnect so we can reconnect. Now, if you don't have a significant other, it's not a problem. Just do it for you where you can just be one with yourself and your thoughts and just really get away from all the stress of the business. And just do a self inventory and think about yourself. It helps you come back to reality and come back fresh so that you're re-energized to take on your business. So remember, this may not be it. Entrepreneurs sometimes have one business that just didn't go well. They'll still think of another business, which is a really important thing to have a community of other entrepreneurs that have gone through what you've gone through. So your business idea didn't work. Maybe you could think of another one down the line so you can still be an entrepreneur. So you've just learned eight things to consider before giving up on your business idea. Be sure to like this video and comment down below. Make sure you subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so you're notified when we have fresh new content coming out. This is The Journey. See you next time.


ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and is often described as a mental disorder. Children with ADHD have trouble paying attention, are hyperactive, and often have difficulty controlling their behavior. It is estimated that it affects around 5% of all children aged 3 to 17 globally, and that for every girl, around 3 boys are diagnosed with it. To understand how it affects children in school, let's look at the story of Leo, a 12-year-old boy who goes to school with the best intentions but struggles hard to succeed. Attention deficit is his biggest problem. Leo gets distracted so easily. It happens even when he tries his hardest to focus. He often realizes that he has suddenly zoned out and has spent the last 15 minutes thinking about something entirely different. Just the tiniest thing can get him off track.  He is also forgetful. Books and homework are often left at home, and if he doesn't miss an assignment, he often loses it somewhere or forgets to turn it in.  Then there is his hyperactivity. When they have to do group work, he is restless and has trouble staying focused. Staying calm and listening while others speak can completely drain him, making any normal conversation a serious challenge. To him, it feels like there is no capacity left in his brain to deal with all the input that needs to be processed. He then feels angry about not being able to follow along. To help cope with his hyperactivity, he likes to keep his hands busy all the time. Last, there is his impulsive behavior. He often cannot refrain from saying things that come to his mind. Sometimes he tries hard to control himself, but then just blurts out and interrupts others. His classmates find this annoying. He later regrets his hot-headed behavior, but he knows that unfortunately he will do it again and again. It seems to him that he can't learn from his mistakes. Teachers get frustrated trying to get him to behave. Others become impatient and give up or distance themselves. After he is diagnosed and received support through concrete steps, things begin to get better. At school, he is seated next to a supportive student in the front row of the class. He gets a notebook that lists all his assignments to help him remember. And to make homework easier to track, he receives it for all subjects only once a week. To relax, he is allowed to use fidget objects during lessons and take short breaks when needed. After school, he practices speaking and listening routines with the specialist. Additionally, his dad bites with him to school every morning and in the afternoon, he is allowed to play the ball as long as he wishes. For severe cases of ADHD, prescription drugs are often prescribed. Before that happens, children like Leo need to undergo a professional age-appropriate diagnosis by a child psychologist who will try to look below the surface. ADHD could just be the tip of the iceberg. The root cause might be drama at home, bullying at school, poor sleep, or the wrong diet. Sir Ken Robinson told the story of Gillian Lin, an eight-year-old girl that was said to have a learning disorder. She cannot concentrate and never sat still. When she was brought to the specialist who didn't subscribe any therapy but instead played music on the radio, the girl started dancing. He then told her mother, Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer. Take her to a dance school. Gillian Lin later became a famous dancer and then responsible for some of the most successful musicals in Broadway history. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. If you are hyperactive or if you were diagnosed with ADHD, please tell us about your coping mechanisms so we can learn more about it from reading your insights.


Hello and welcome to Real News Network and NewsClick. Today we are in conversation with Dr. Suman Sahai, the chairperson of Gene Campaign, a group that works on issues such as sustainable agriculture, genetic diversity, and intellectual property rights and seeds. And today we are in conversation with her on the planned mega mergers of six agribusiness corporations. Dr. Sahai, welcome to the program. So this current merger that is afoot globally, where six mega agriculture corporations are merging, Dow with DuPont, Monsanto with Bayer, ChemChina with Sinjenta. The concern is that this will lead to a dominance in market share. Can you give us a sense of why is this merger happening simultaneously and what are the likely sort of impacts? See simultaneously it has to happen because if two of them get together they become too big for the rest. So everybody has to sort of keep a pace in order to compete on size now. Why is it happening? I think it is of a piece with the kind of developments that you have seen over the last years of consolidation of all interests in agriculture particularly globally. So first we had this phase of the industrialization of the food chain. Then you had the integration of food with inputs into agriculture. So you saw all these life science corporations which were actually chemicals. These are all people who moved from chemicals, not moved from but added on to their chemical base, the seed component so that in the agriculture sector you are covering all bases. So this is a sort of a consolidation of the agriculture sector. The intention is of course global dominance of this field, of the field of agriculture, of the field of food production and of the field of value chains in agriculture. At the bottom of this somewhere is the understanding that as we enter into climate change and the era of climate change and as we move towards a global population that is certainly rising we are looking at food as a very strategic resource and it is not looked as a strategic resource only today.  So the understanding that food has been a very important resource has been around but it has not become mainstream like now. There is this understanding that whoever has the food has a huge advantage and I don't think that this is unconnected or disconnected with the fact that the big food giants are now coming together and becoming bigger. So one of the concerns is that if this plan merger of these six companies into three go through they will control some 70 percent of the agrochemicals market and some 60 percent of the commercial seeds market and there's already been a lot of opposition from farmers, from unions, from researchers to sort of reject this merger. Can you give us a sense of what would be the impacts on farmers and consumers and on the environment with these companies? See this is a very basic thing the greater the choice on the market the better off the consumer is. In this case the consumer is the farmer essentially the farmer and later on then the consumer of the food. So the moment you start to restrict the supply and restrict the choices the person or the category of people who are going to suffer the most are the consumers of those products which are the farmers in this case. The large giants are getting larger and they will be able to control the product which means they can control the flow and availability of the product and this amounts to blackmail. You can use this it's a very effective tool. They'll certainly control the price as you've seen in the pharmaceutical sector the fewer the number of agencies that are producing a drug the higher the patent protection the higher the prices. I mean everybody who's been working on the intellectual property rights area has seen that it's a very direct linear correlation. You'll anticipate the same thing in the seed sector. Having said this I'd like to point out that there are many choices and if something is happening at the global level say Monsanto and Bayer or Kampchai and Shingenta it need not necessarily affect us. Let us remember at the end of the day this we must always remember national legislation will always trump international developments. In most cases of this kind quasi-commercial economic related to to vulnerable sectors you do have a choice if your national capacity is strong then you can count to this. I mean say for example any one of these giants or all three of these giants when they happen will control your pesticides and seed will you manufacture your own pesticides and seeds. A country the size of India need not really have worries on that score. I wish to underline this to try and counter the kind of it hasn't begun to be hysterical yet but there is a strong hysteria developing on good heavens you know there is this all of this merger taking place. So what if Dow and DuPont are merging. You don't have to buy their products. To link to that for instance there are regulatory challenges happening in the European Competition Commission in the US courts in Brazil in India the Competition Commission is examining the deal. So do you see a legal sort of challenge possible. See yes of course I mean if you want to have Dow and DuPont here you will have to have regulatory oversight regulatory mechanisms but what I'm saying is that if these are not things that you're able to control then you don't have to have a partnership with these agencies. The point that I'm making is that India is large enough has a huge domestic market. It has scientific and research capacity and in the area of seed God knows we have very diffuse and very capable competence in the form of farmers who produce seed. But the way that the farmers ability to counter these big trans nationals are being diluted is through trade agreements that India is signing. For instance you have I mean the TPP tried to bring in sort of the up into those 12 countries that were part of it. TPP was very bad news. But now you have Trump exiting from the TPP and you have the regional comprehensive economic partnership in which Japan and South Korea are trying to push. I mean so you of course need to challenge the corporations but you also need to challenge the trade agreements. I want to get your sense of the international movement for progressive sort of agriculture. We have a very good track record as far as to learn from as far as our experience with the WTA was concerned. You know we went from a stage of near paralysis because our government agencies are completely incapable of comprehending and therefore responding to what the Uruguay round had demanded. First of all the patenting of seeds that it had demanded. But from there we've come a long way and we've learned a lot. Even agencies in government have learned a lot and those lessons will come in very handy now. And I think more than that the level of confidence that we have that you can take these guys on. So what's the big deal? India has after all given itself a farmer's rights legislation and gene campaign has been a very big part of that process which is the only legislation in the world that gives rights to farmers. So we've done that. Now then comes the question of political will. If you have a government that simply refuses to listen to any sense and does not consult with anybody and goes its own happy way and gets into a ditch that's a terrible thing to happen. It's a sad thing to happen. And again something like that it's very difficult to take a stand. But I think as a process yes if you want to deal with doubt you have to get into the competition commission's recommendations. You'll have to have regulatory oversight. If you can swing a deal that's advantages for you. After all all of these mergers are also facing great big caveats. That's why they're not happening overnight. That's right. They have to exit certain businesses. They have all sorts of conditionalities. So you can also pose conditionalities and say that we will allow so and so to function here with these under these conditions. And if we can control the Indian state of affairs through enlightened assertive national action and national policy then I don't think that we need to be in a flap. It's when we are weak domestically and given to pressures and given to even invariants and blandishments and I'm afraid we're very vulnerable to blandishments in all forms and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Then what can any regulatory oversight do also link to the fact that agriculture is a state subject and since your since gene campaign works across the country engaging with state governments do you see a sort of possible progressive laws that state governments can put in place being challenged or is that a good way to go because agriculture is a state subject as well. This agriculture is a state subject thing works only up to a point and it works more domestically at all international levels and international decisions. We've gone through this process during the WTO also. The executive has the right to take a decision. Its implementation may run into conflict with the states. Some states may come around and say okay fine you've done a deal your business we're not letting it happen here in XY state. But that's a tough one you know and I think the best course of action for us is for the central government for the executive to realize and I think it's our job to try and educate them. It will depend on how receptive they are or not whether they open up channels for discourse and dialogue or not. But I think civil society must play its role in bringing together I would say the informed citizen with educational materials. You know a lot of people would like to know a little bit more but they don't know where to get that information. So very succinct information you know hand-built type things that that spell out the dangers. The consolidation of seed means somebody else will control the seed its availability and its price and the implications for your average Delhi middle-class consumer is more expensive food. I don't think a lot of people give a hoot about what happens to the farmer but they will give a hoot about what happens to their own food prices their monthly budget etc. So that's how we have to tailor it. I mean all of us who've been involved in campaigns for these last several years should put our heads together and mount a challenge really for the government. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us. We will come back to you because these mergers are still sort of work in progress and we hope to get you back to the studio for other issues as well. Thank you very much. Thank you.


When it comes to the question of who exactly Noah was, we summarize the fact that he was the builder of the Ark that saved humanity during the Great Deiluge. But where did he come from? Where did he go, and more importantly, who was Noah? Wait, do you hear this? Noah was considered by God to be the only living patriarch worthy of God's trust. This was a time in human history that is widely regarded as a time of great evil spreading across the earth. He preached for a hundred years during the building of the Great Ark, and God patiently waited for any person to repent. However, no one believed Noah or wanted to follow the God. Noah was a beacon of hope among the descendants of Adam in an area where sin and lawlessness had overtaken the people. Mankind had been one community believing in the oneness of God, but confusion and deviation had crept in. Noah was a calm, patient man who called his people to return to the worship of the One True God. He was an exceptional speaker, enjoining those around him to leave the worship's vitals and to hear his warning of a terrible punishment, and it was eventually judged by God, or the Anunnaki, as we may be referring to here, that a cleansing of the earth was required, hence the flood. What if the Ark was a doomsday vault much like the one that is hidden deep in the permafrost in Norway? All the seeds and DNA are stored away there safely in case of cataclysm. Maybe Noah was responsible not only for building the Great Ark, but also for preserving all life. Animals, plants, humans make sense, does it not? After the flood, it was the sons of Noah who are said to have recovered the depleted civilization. The sons of Noah who came out of the Ark was Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. There were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth. Exactly when Noah lived is again a sign of hidden history. Education tells us he lived around 5000 years ago, despite the fact that the Great Flood took place at least 12,500 years ago. The timeline of these events that we are told about in books makes no sense. They literally must have pulled a number out of thin air, simply because they never knew the real timeline, but when you stitch together the stories from around the world with the truth about history, then a clear story begins to emerge. A story that does not need to be over complicated in any way, yet we are led on a path of confusion from the cradle to the grave. Is this to suppress the truth you have to wonder? In some ways it seems that there is a lot more that we don't know about these events than we do know. This can be intriguing, frustrating, and exciting all at the same time. The Gospel of John closes by stating, and there are also many other things which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen. And the Vatican is having a good go at keeping all these books. How can every culture from all over the world be wrong as to the occurrence of such an event like the flood? In China, they refer to Noah as Fuhi and consider him the father of their civilization. Babylon refers to him as Ut Nassvetim, and India its Manu. Australian aboriginals tell tales of the dream time flood and even the Delaware Indians tell of a time when the world lived at peace, but an evil spirit came and caused a great flood. It's crazy guys, and this is not even scratching the surface. Every single civilization on earth tells similar tales of a flood that they always refer to as the displeasement of the gods, and always talk of a man and his family that are almost always identical to the story of Noah. So the story of Noah undoubtedly must be an accurate reference to actual historical events. It is impossible for it to be anything else. The Dead Sea Scrolls even mentions Noah many times. Noah is also a highly important figure in Islam and is seen as one of the most significant of all prophets. The Quran contains 43 references to Noah, or New, in 28 chapters, and the 71st chapter is named after him. His life is also spoken of in the commentaries and in Islamic legends. Noah's narratives largely cover his preaching as well as the story of the deluge. Noah's narrative sets the prototype for many of the subsequent prophetic stories which begin with the prophet warning his people and then the community rejecting the message and facing a punishment. According to Zachariah Sitchin's translation of Sumerian tablets, he says Noah's name was Zarathustra and was the son of Inki, the Anunnaki Lord of the Earth who created humans with his half-sister Ninma by a human female. According to the book of Inki, Inki was forbidden from letting the humans know of the impending cataclysm or from saving them. Some of the Anunnaki, Inlil in particular, felt that the humans were a violation of nature and that they had messed with fate by creating us. So the flood would be a great way to undo this mistake. Inki did not want to see his creation be erased, so after it had been decided that the Anunnaki could not warn us, Inki got around it by going to his son Noah's reed hut and telling the wall of the hut about the flood and saying he would leave a tablet with instructions on building a boat that would allow survival of life. Noah hears this and when he asks the details, Inki said, I'm not speaking to anyone in general, I am only speaking to the wall of a reed hut. It is largely unclear where Noah emerged from. Inki lived for 950 years according to the accounts in the Bible and after the flood he spent his time managing a vineyard. What do you guys think of Noah? Who was he? How did he live for 950 years compared to Moses 120 years? Is he the most important man to ever live? By the way, the Bible also warns us that a second judgment is coming, this time by fire. You have to wonder what path humanity is on at the moment, right? Anyway guys, comments below and as always, thank you for watching.