In Plato's famous allegory of the cave, people have been chained inside a cave their entire lives and all they can see are shadows cast on the opposite wall, assuming this is all there is to reality. Except, if they venture outside the cave, as the philosopher ought to do, they would realize there is a world of ideal forms and they have been staring at projections all this time. The parable speaks to knowledge, epistemology, ontology and enlightenment, asking us to look past their first appearances to peer more deeply into reality. What if this story gets it backwards though? What if the cave itself is the ideal and the world being represented is flawed? This is what Mackenzie Warke claims in the book Gamer Theory. Not only this, but Warke claims video games illustrates this inversion best. What if the video game is the cave, an ideal world of perfect rules, goals and objectives, and the real world is an imperfect facsimile of the logic of games?  Ever get the fierce desire to quit, resign and forfeit. Only to realize there is no umpire, regulator or referee to announce your resignation.  Can't know the score and know who keeps it. Welcome to Game Space. Game Space is what Warke refers to reality as slowly having become, a world that is functionally like a game without the engagement, precision, fairness or transparency. The game has not just colonized reality, it is the soul remaining ideal. But simply, games are the art form of our time because they represent how the world has been turned into game space. For example, everything in a game is quantified and the same is happening with reality. The topography of the world is now quantified by GPS and Google Earth can venture into every street. All our data is tracked online, our viewing habits, our purchasing proclivities. Games then use this information to frame a version of reality you find appeasing. Statistics. Code. Game Space is the world turning into a digital field of play. Warke continues.  Games have victory as a goal in itself and now this logic has extended to reality. Most politicians no longer care about political ideals or serving the common good. They care about partisanship and winning for its own sake. We are told we need to get an education, to get a job, to have a happy family life, to win at a game whose only victory is death. The economy is an abstraction that stockbrokers play like a game, numbers data and value, becoming further removed from the reality of everyday people. But games have colonized other media forms as well. What is reality TV but the hollowed-out replica of a game, a conflict for its own sake without purpose? Stories now enact conflict as an abstraction, without having anything to say beyond this. Game creation and celebrities and social media influencers are famous for being famous, winning a game that simulates victory without testing anything. Gamers don't win what they desire, they desire what they win. The logic of the game has extended into reality. When victory becomes people's value, Game Space has taken over. Gamers switch roles and allegiances at a whim and the same is true of reality. We are no longer bound to our communities or families, we are atomized units who can choose to be anything we want. Game theory is Warx's solution to this, when the gamer realizes that games are idealized versions of a reality that is imperfect. However, this impulse itself is being colonized. The counter-culture wants play outside the game, the military-industrial complex expanded game to the whole world, containing play forever within it. What does this mean for games though? What are their functions as cultural objects? Do games cause game space? No, under this view, they are representing it. Game theory games don't cause game space as much as they don't cause violence. Games reflect reality, they don't really change it. Are games impotent then? What even is the point of them? What games do is show an ideal version of game space or reveal its perverse machinery. The Sims models human behavior and creates a culture of commodity fetishism, sure, but as Warx states, the game is a knowable algorithm from which you know you can escape. Game space is an unknown algorithm from which there is no escape.  In essence, games give us a sense of control in a world eager to deprive us of it. This is what the book Ludo-Politics argues is the central rhetoric or politics of games. They are the aesthetics of control, but also its subversion. Games play with the boundary between submission and playful rebellion. Others have made similar claims, like reality is broken by Jane McGonagall, where she argues that games show us a version of reality that is more ideal, more just. But this leaves us with a paradox. Are games idealized versions of reality or a force of corruption? Games create quasi-utopian ideals. In fighting games, we try to make sure all characters are balanced, so the best player wins by their own merits. In adventure games, we craft a difficulty progression that makes sure perseverance and dedication will eventually prevail. There are obviously imperfections. Chess is not perfectly balanced. White starts. It is asymmetrical. However, this is notable because it is an anomaly. Chess is a game where the better player almost always wins. Games are meritocratic. And of course, some games are purposefully designed not to be. They have chance. This is a different rhetoric of play, as Brian Sutton Smith argues in his book The Ambiguity of Play. Different cultures emphasize different aspects of play, from power to community to chance. Games of chance tell us that sometimes reality is not controlled, that we might be beholden to the whims of the fates. But here's the paradox. Games create idealized versions of reality. But game space posits that the logic of the game has corrupted reality. We digitize the analog world to bring it under control in games, but when the analog world is then digitized in turn, it all goes to hell. Warwick's thesis is fascinating, but there is no explanatory mechanism. How is the world turned into game space? How do we resolve this paradox? Games reflect a gamified reality, but somehow reality became more game-like before games represented this. Games we follow rules before we are aware of their existence, and other times we abide by rules we can't even quantify. We internalize them because of our evolutionary machinery, but are not explicitly privy to it. So what if when the digitized precise logic of games gets foisted onto reality, it simply reveals how perverse reality was to begin with. It isn't that reality is becoming game space, it always was. But that games are an interface to help us see how broken reality already was. Metal Gear Solid 4 tries to foreground the military-industrial entertainment complex, but also game space. War has changed because it has become a game. Private military corporations fight for profit and not for national pride. Soldiers pledge allegiance to no flag but their own. People send drones and unmanned vehicles to fight proxy wars that are abstracted from any purpose. However, the game also gets this rhetoric backwards. It makes the claim that video games have made people see reality as a game, but game space posits that reality was game space before games came to be. Metal Gear Solid 4 has an economic system. We incapacitated people, pick up their guns and use this as currency to buy even more guns. That's what it represents procedurally. We embody the logic of the military-industrial complex in the way we play. We instrumentalize people for profit and victory, the same way the military-industrial complex has done. Beyond this, the world in implies shows how all soldiers are registered with the system and are hence controlled, but we too are registered. We are registered on the PlayStation Network to play the game. Some choose not to, there are cracks. But most players of the game are data as much as the soldiers they play as. Is this perverse? Is it strange? In his essay, Postcripts on Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze argues that we have moved from a society of discipline to a society of control, where explicit control through punishment is turning into implicit control, where people self-regulate to still have access. Control is exercised by exclusion. We see this in some form on social media, but more papably in authoritarian regimes. We self-regulate behavior to preserve access to networks of information, a world made into a digital ecosystem. This video essay has to omit swear words, and has to meet a list of criteria that deem it suitable for advertisers. The idealization happening in Metal Gear Solid 4 is the argument that a heroic agent can break through the system, that Solid Snake can persevere through hardship and his ailing body. This is gamer theory being represented in a game. It is presenting the gamer in a cave, seeing shadows on a wall, and realizing that there must be more to reality. But this is backwards again. Solid Snake is in the ideal world, and we gamers are trapped in game space. Games are a simulation. They can represent any physics they want, but the real world has no such luxury. The world cannot be packaged into discrete phenomena and be modeled exhaustively, like games. Our representations of reality are game-like, in that they assume things can be quantified. Economics is what some call physics envy. It wants to be able to model all phenomena, except physics itself has moved past this. The whole quantum-mechanical revolution shows how uncertainty reigns in the universe. We can quantify it, but we can only quantify probabilities.  Flight Simulator takes the real world and simulates it in incredible detail, but a simulation must omit. There is nothing on the city streets. It is all pageantry. Games reveal how reality cannot be turned into a game, precisely by its omissions and crafting a simulation. Ironically, Flight Simulator used cutting-edge technology to map the entire world. It has used the game-spacification of reality, satellite imagery, to create a game for gamers. Flight Simulator is a model of the real world, just like Modern Economic Theory is a model of the real world, just like Metal Gear Solid 4 is a model of the real world, and models omit. In Jorge Luis Borges' famous short story on exactitude and science, there is an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice, and this is functionally what might have happened with game space. More models of reality may be fake in that they obfuscate, but they are real in that they have an impact on the world. The digitization of the world is a model as such. Of course, economic systems exist before we model them, language exists before linguistics studied it, and this is another paradox. Reality informs theory, but then theory informs reality. Reality might have turned into game space because of the dynamics of markets and systems. It's impossible to tell for sure. Supposedly, we went from an egalitarian species to a hierarchical one, because surplus accumulation of goods led to wealth disparity, the creation of classes, and the politics of distribution. We went from a game of decentralized communitarianism to a zero sum game, one that has existed in different guises for centuries now. We could push further past this, and see the game originated with evolution itself. Survival of the fittest, whether at an individual or population level, is a game with victory conditions, built into the logic that governs life itself. When we model this phenomena, we don't bring it into existence, but we quantify it, abstract it, and inevitably reduce it. We are exercising control over chaos, but this very impulse to quantify it is not the origin of game space, but the origin of our representation of it. Game space is being game spaced. Put simply, reality is a game before we identify it as one, and the way we represent this in aesthetic form, in video games, reflects not just game space, but representation itself. What does this mean for games and play? A vulgar interpretation of work's gamer theory is to see it as a call to become self-aware, to take a red pill and discern reality from fiction. However, work claims our attempts at liberating play from the game have been thwarted by the colonization of reality by the game, there is only game space. Awareness doesn't lead to subversion, it can be entirely vacuous. So the final paradox here is that games both represent how reality has turned into a game, but are also guilty of doing this themselves. They create ideals that are more just, more meritocratic, that give us agency and control, but through this reveal how it is the very impulse to control, to govern, to quantify that is contaminated reality itself. It is the creation of a game that is the final metaphor for game space, the very process by which we fold reality into a game. We created the cave to escape from reality, but reality itself can't escape from the cave. Welcome to game space.


Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Caitlin Schilling, Associate Program Manager at Rebus Community and I will be facilitating today's session. I'm grateful to be joining you from Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 Territory and I'd encourage you all here to let us know in the chat where you're joining from and post questions throughout the session in the chat. So let's meet our panelists. Please introduce yourself and briefly describe your role in this collaboration. My name is Purva Ashok. I am the Assistant Director and Director of Open Education at the Rebus Foundation, which is a Canadian charity that supports open publishing efforts and open education initiatives around the world. I typically work in the traditional territories of the Nishinopeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, but today I'm joining you from the traditional homelands of the Lenape. We at Rebus work to provide professional development via our textbook success program as part of this collaboration and I'm happy to tell you more about what this was like as we go through the session and I'll pass it over maybe to Malita to describe her role and introduce herself. I'm Malita Payne. I'm the Emerging Technologies Librarian at Southern University and Endham College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I served as the Librarian Lead for the Biology General Biology I cohort. Emily Frank, Affordable Learning Administrator with Lewis, the Louisiana Library Network. Lewis is an academic library consortium and a program of the Board of Regents. And our project, the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment Project, was funded with a nearly $2 million grant from the Open Textbooks pilot program. I just want to briefly acknowledge that the activities that we'll cover today were funded through that Open Textbook pilot grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education and the views represented here do not represent policy of the Department of Education. But this was our project that we spearheaded through Lewis with lots of collaborators. So I'll pass it off to another collaborator, Brian. Hi everybody, I'm Brian McGeary and in my day job I'm the Learning Design and Open Education Engagement Librarian at Penn State University. But for this particular project, I was a facilitator for two of the cohorts in the Redis Textbook Success Program. And my name is Amy Minervini and I'm joining from the traditional lands of the Nimipu in Lewis to Idaho. I teach composition at Lewis Clark State College and I serve as a facilitator for two of the Lewis cohorts and I'm a former Textbook Success Program participant. Thank you all. We hope today's panel session will really highlight the philosophy of creation as a collaborative act and help you envision statewide co-creation networks to support equitable OER. Before we move into our direct response questions, I'll pass it to Emily and Aparva to provide a little context around the Lewis and Rebus partnership. So speaking about this project, the project broadly had three goals to eliminate textbook costs and 25-dole enrollment courses, to design courses that are deployable and redeployable as OER should be, and to create a replicable model of OER development and that's some of what we'll be talking about here today specifically. The work brought together Louisiana academic librarians like Melida and teaching faculty to develop those redeployable open courses for 25-dole enrollment general education courses in the state, dual enrollment being where a high school student takes a class and gets both high school and college credit. Participants were organized into 25 cohorts for the 25 courses, each cohort having one academic librarian acting as a cohort leader and up to five teaching faculty. Thank you. And so those five cohorts that Emily described were actually led and facilitated by Amy, Brian, myself and a former colleague Monica Brown. So Rebus and through our textbook success program course really stepped in to offer hands-on guidance and best practices around publishing OER. We tried to tailor and customize content for those five disciplinary groups, whether it was history, languages and social sciences, STEM, composition and arts or business and communication. With the experience that Amy and Brian brought to this project, we also hoped to pass on lessons learned from having done this work over the past five years and really support Lewis's goals in building a sustainable network for not only dual enrollment OER creation, but OER creation more generally across the state. One of our motivations for partnering with Rebus was the scope of this project and that many of our selected project participants were largely new to OER and open publishing. And we knew that Rebus had a lot of experience that we wanted to leverage, experience guiding authors and collaborators through this process. Additionally, the 25 selected courses that we were working on all had high rates of letter grade D and F and course with course withdrawals and equity gaps. We knew that Rebus had been active specifically in advancing DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion principles in their work and accessibility in OER materials. And that expertise was important to us as we pursued this partnership and designed materials reflective of learners in Louisiana. I'd really like to open the floor to panelists to touch on those experiences that you both mentioned. So Purva, maybe you can kick us off and ask what did working as part of this really unique group allow you to do that maybe would have been close to impossible doing on your own. I really appreciate this question because it allowed me to reflect on the expertise that each partner brought to the group but also how our combined and collaborative efforts made this so much more successful. It allowed Rebus to see how each unique role was central to making a successful open education program. So for instance with Lewis, we learned about state policy and governance structures that inform higher education or dual enrollment courses and curriculum specifically in the Louisiana. We were able to adapt a lot of this learning to our work in other states or with other partners. Librarian leads like Malita shed light on how these types of programs could be maintained within their units or departments, or how skill sets could be developed every year to support this type of work in the longer term. The faculty and industry experts that Emily mentioned that were part of the project teams, they brought subject matter focus to the four, but also helped us continuously keep students success at the core of the work at the core of our decision making. Amy and Brian are alumni facilitators really helped us revise our curriculum and models to be more adaptable and think about how similar systems, systems initiatives trying to create equitable we are could be set up in different contexts so Brian offering his input from working at Penn State University and Amy from her contacts in Idaho for me on a personal note. This was a great chance to also collaborate with other BIPOC educators who are interested in making equitable systems and growing networks for for educators really looking to shape a new future of education and I will pass it over to Emily. The scope of this project was so big. So for us having the librarian cohort leaders having rebus having the facilitators as collaborators lightened my load and I think lightened everyone's load in terms of providing relevant support and having a tried and true publishing framework that could be applied beyond that rebus and the facilitators in the librarians as well were real thought partners for me throughout I could bounce ideas off them and help get direction on next steps when we needed it. I think finally one, perhaps unanticipated value for me was how the facilitators could speak directly from their experience with open textbook publishing, both the challenges and the impacts they had seen as educators applying we are in their students. I think that this firsthand experience that they could speak to was at times comforting for participants and cohorts when times were tough and also was a boost at other times a boost that they would need when they needed to be re energized. I think that's a great answer to Amy next. For me as is was mentioned the, not only was the scope very large but the groups themselves were very large. So during those, those sessions it was really comforting to have rebus staff and librarians readily available to handle any of the questions as they did in the chat. And sometimes before I could even read a chat response. It was, it was answered. So it like Emily had mentioned it really lightened my load and therefore I was able to concentrate more on content delivery and thinking about the approaches to from a faculty perspective but then also bringing in the student experience and how they might engage with the material and librarians are just so adapted mining through the abundance of information that's out there. More efficiently than some of the rest of us. And so they were always able to, it seems find that perfect fit for whatever the participants needed. And they were also quick to share best practices and so I know that along the way. So I was picking up these, you know, tips and tricks from them. And so that was just an added benefit. Okay, I'll jump in next. I would say that working in the library and cohort cohort was a valuable learning experience. For cohort lead Emily frame guided a group of librarians with various degrees of understanding and knowledge of we are with such grace and patients also the exposure to the comprehensive training and collaboration with rebus and press books, allowed me to dive deeper into we are where I build on my understanding of components I didn't fully connect with in my experience, transferring that newly acquired skill set to the librarian led cohort model, seeing this experience through the lens of the faculty member, prove valuable as well. In the stages of my we are experienced the trainer trainer model focused on a librarian's role. This experience along with collaboration with other librarians and other we are experts provided invaluable we are experienced. I didn't have before it would have been me on the campus so you know, generally faculty members on campus teaching faculty on on campuses have that that type of camaraderie but in bringing together we are just to have a skill set with our library and cohorts was just great. And for me, this was a great chance to work with and learn from people outside of my my usual networks and to get different perspectives and ideas that I could bring back and apply to my work at my institution and in my state. And it was also a chance to get to be a part of something and hopefully have a positive impact on something that is much larger and reaches beyond what I would be able to accomplish that just my institution. It sounds like teamwork really does make the dream work right by way of comparison. If you were to do it over again. Is there anything that you would change or maybe leave behind and why. So this one maybe we'll start with Amy. Because the textbook success program is so good at community building, I would have preferred that the those sessions were weekly, instead of monthly. And that's just because I would have liked to see folks every week and and really try to build those relationships. I would have preferred to go more deeply, maybe shorter sessions in a weekly format would have allowed me to sort of get to know them, and their projects, a little bit more intimately. However, I do think it's a testament to the rebus TSP program that even in the monthly sessions, there were still meaningful for me. Thanks, Amy. My suggestion is similar about the restructuring of maybe sessions in the program you talked about timeline. My suggestion would be to maybe make sure that content around best practices is delivered right when teams that are arriving at key points. And it's worth noting that for this particular partnership, we did adapt the usual delivery of our program to better support the cadence and frequency of meetings that the Lewis team had set up. We're actually going to be experimenting with this format the next time around. So we're already getting a chance to make a change and see how that plays out, maybe also ensuring that folks are connecting in our forum space and really to describe that camaraderie with one another and really focusing on community building as well as we are of course creation. I wouldn't change anything. However, I can say that I've grown in my knowledge of open educational resources as a librarian and equally grown in terms of collaboration team building project development editing planning and so much more so just the wealth of information. It was just great. It was invaluable. As I just have said, I would have liked, you know, more opportunities to connect with not only the cohorts that I was working directly with, but also the other cohorts just to have kind of a sense of the bigger picture, a bit more, but I mean I also realize that to some extent it's impractical or goes beyond the remit of what my particular role was in this, but it's just so energizing to work with all these different folks and you can't help but want to be more directly involved with with the work that they're doing. I'll round this out to speak to a change. You know I imagine everyone listening today has a sense from this panel of the importance and the centrality of the librarian cohort leader role the role that Melida was filling and in that role we had a real structured role for it. So that they had a clear team building responsibility project management responsibility associated with that role, the teaching faculty in the cohorts on the other hand, were more under an umbrella role of content expert. I think in retrospect we learned that it was important to design and delegate additional roles beyond content expert, such as instructional design need accessibility lead technology lead with press books and the learning management system that we were using. And that was because in the absence of these designed and delegated roles in many cohorts the librarian took on the role given their varied skill set you know a willingness to step in and fill in the gaps but I think moving forward, designing and delegating those roles throughout the cohort would encourage you know participants to more clearly know who is doing what support success and ensure a more balanced workload throughout the cohort. Thank you. I think what's really apparent by all of those answers and responses is that how intentional all of the feedback around this cohort and partnerships are, you know, community being at the core of it and ensuring that people around these projects are very community focused and then equitable work distribution right. So, speaking of success and maybe I'll start with Emily since you were just on that. What would be one piece of advice that you might give to someone who's really interested in following a similar model of librarian led projects. I think my piece of advice is to do just that to have librarians involved in your open publishing projects and to work to compensate them for their contributions as you would keeping faculty involved. And since they really are significant to the success of projects like this, the librarian involvement for us in the project was really central to our success. Like I said they acted as project managers, they brought in expertise and areas like copyright creative instructional design accessibility other areas, you know projects like this, they're really more than just writing content, the librarians engaged in continuous team building in collaborating and communicating with their cohorts, and it is thanks to them, you know I know that the impacts of their work extend beyond this project, they built capacity within their cohorts with the teaching faculty, and they have really set them up to lead on OER projects separate from this experience. So, so bring in the librarians. Well one practical piece of advice I would say that as a librarian in this process you will be challenged and will grow in areas that will propel you forward in your career as an OER librarian. Hang in there when it becomes challenging and rely on the village that you have in terms of the support you have with our OER experts. As you know, with our librarians we love to share information and that input is always beneficial in keeping the wheels in motion for the project. I might try to combine the recommendations that Malita and Emily made for someone who is organizing a similar type of initiative. Remember that the librarians will be stepping in as Emily described in filling in the gaps, but this is also professional development opportunities as Malita was saying emotional labor is going to inevitably come up as part of that librarian lead role. So when you are organizing and setting up your system, make sure you're building in an intentional support network and offering training and connections to that support network for your librarian leads when those inevitable challenges come up throughout the course of whether it's a one-year project or a three-year project. Creating OER is human first process and as librarians, as educators we will feel compelled to bring that humanity in our work, but we should remember that it's not always at the cost of us as individuals. So keep pointing back to those support networks. And Eileen Passed on to Brian who was part of my support network through this entire project. And you were part of mine as well. But yeah, I think that if you really leverage those support networks that one of the things to take away from this is that you don't have to be the expert on everything. That really think about those different roles and the different pieces of expertise that everybody brings to the table and really try to leverage those. And that way you don't have to be the person to do it all. Everybody brings their own thing to the table. And I'll just book in that, that just go for it. It's one additional expert to have on your team. They're cheering for you, and they're helping to guide your success. As we all know, putting together an OER whether via creation or adaptation takes a lot of work, a lot of hours, a lot of commitment, but as the saying goes, many hands make light work. So, besides being an excellent resource, I think librarians can serve as advocates for faculty and for students. They can serve as sounding boards during those frustrating times because there will be those. And then just be that extra set of eyes when you need a new or fresh perspective. And so I say go all in on library and lead teams. It's been such a wonderful years and seeing how projects have been progressing and it's very apparent through this entire session and the last year, how successful this collaboration was. Not only did this partnership build individual and statewide capacity for creating OER, it also increased the confidence of participants and librarians to develop equitable OER and established a large group of new and emerging OER leaders. Lewis and Rebus, as we mentioned earlier, will be continuing the partnership with another round of OER creation with TSP. And for Rebus, it's allowed us to redesign our curriculum based on the feedback from facilitators and Lewis and participants, as well as support of pathway for interested facilitators such as Amy and Brian, looking to continue their professional development and journey in open education.  Well, looking forward, I could say that we've completed what we set out to do our goals and objectives and getting that creation of that adaptation of that book and having it in a course ready to go forward. As for me as my personal and on my campus, I'm developing an OER webpage where we can start more collaborative efforts here on campus to build momentum with that. Amy, maybe I'll ask you the same as a facilitator. I feel more confident facilitating so that's a that's a bonus and then just knowing, just having a more global perspective of some of the OER that's out there just being familiar with more examples to be able to share with others. I'll chime in next and say, moving forward, we at Lewis are doing this again with collaborators from around the state and read this as well. And I think we'll be stronger having learned so much from this work that you all heard about today. And the collaborators on this panel and everyone involved not here today. They have left me energized to the point that we want to do this again that we're excited about doing this again. And it's thanks to them that there is really an increased awareness of OER across the state that we are is becoming a viable alternative in Louisiana and impacting students, academically, financially and pedagogically. I think for us at Revest, as Emily was describing, it's a chance to continue to invest in individuals and try to bring about systemic change in education. I think going forward it's giving us an opportunity to help people be more aware and mindful of their roles, whether it's as a librarian, a facilitator, a subject matter expert, and how this can positively impact students who are coming on from high school pursuing college degrees and graduating with clear pathway for success beyond college. Thank you. Yeah, for me personally I would love to see us try to do something like this in Pennsylvania I thought that this is such a really cool model and it's been very successful and a great way to bring about the sort of cross institutional collaboration that we would like to see more and so every opportunity I get to try to talk people into doing something like this in Pennsylvania I take that opportunity. And we hope others listening will think of something similar just as to what Brian just said and really thinking about implementing something similar in where you are so thank you very much and please let us know if you have any questions in the chat.


This is Witchspace news for Friday the 24th of May 2019, I'm CMDR Buur. In this weeks news, Frontier responds to the recent cheating thunderclap, that Frontier leak seems to have been all but confirmed and planetary circumnavigations come to an end. If you enjoy our content please remember to hit like and subscribe and click the little bell icon to get a notification next time we upload a new video. Remember you can also come and join us on the Buur Pit Discord server and if you want to help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon, links to both of those and also where you can find us on all your favourite social media platforms are in the description below. At the start of this week, elites community manager Will Flanagan responded to the recent cheating scandal thunderclap that we reported on last week. In a post to the official forums that I've linked below, Will stated that Frontier takes the issue very seriously and is active in taking action against those who engage in cheating in the game. He went on to say that they are not willing to share details of the action being taken or the steps that they have in place to tackle the use of the tools that have been highlighted as they essentially don't want to give the cheaters a heads up and allow them to circumvent the controls and procedures. The story was also picked up by PC Gamer who also garnered a similar response when inquiring to Frontier about the issue. I have to say I don't think this will be an end to the story, I'd imagine this is going to come up again in the future in one form or another especially as the game opens up to new and different audiences more on that in a moment. Personally I would like to see a more definitive and slightly less wooly response from Frontier on the issue. I'm not unsympathetic, I do understand why they responded in the way they did. By the same token other games have had huge PR whacks from reporting that they have banned X number of cheaters in big thunderclap moments. World of Warcraft springs to mind just off the top of my head. And in many regards I think the only thing that will satiate the understandable blood lust being felt by certain quarters of the community is one such benchmark moment. That said it's my gut feeling that that just isn't who Frontier are so I'm figuring it's unlikely that we'll really ever see that happening. A few weeks back a post appeared on Reddit as well as at least one other place that claimed to have inside a knowledge about the titles being developed at Frontier and most notably the much anticipated 2020 update coming to Elite Dangerous. Before I continue I should add that if you're sensitive to potential spoilers about what's coming to Elite you should probably look away now. As reported at the time the poster claimed to have inside knowledge of additions being made to existing titles like Planet Coaster as well as at the time unannounced titles along with what the 2020 update will contain. One of the titles that the poster claimed to know about was Planet Zoo that was announced officially a few weeks later from Frontier. One of the other unannounced projects that they claimed to know about was a Ghostbusters themed expansion for Planet Coaster. That expansion has just been announced by Frontier this week. Whilst not definitive proof of the content of Elite Next it certainly adds a huge thick delicious chocolatey layer of significant authenticity to the post. For my money I'm personally calling the leak confirmed. So in case you missed it what was claimed to be in the 2020 update? It was a brief description but it said space legs, first person shooter style action against Thargoids that have a real Starship Troopers vibe to them and base building. I have to say and this might be an unpopular opinion that has me really excited. Whilst I'd like planetary atmospheric landings I do think they would be hugely frustrating without being able to get out of my ship in anything except an SRV and personally given the choice I'd vote legs first then atmospherics. I'm also historically a first person shooter player as well as a simulation freak I really enjoy the more realistic first person shooter titles like SWAT, armor or something like Rainbow Six. And I'm so up for climbing out of my spaceship and infiltrating a Thargoid hive on foot or ground installation overrun with pirates or exploring the interior of an abandoned megaship to discover what happened to the crew. There's no suggestion that that stuff is coming to the game by the way but with legs in the mix the door is open. But that's just me and I appreciate that that isn't for everyone. What would be your preference, are you happy to drive around on a planet and leave the legs till later? Sound off in the comments. And finally a couple of significant planetary circumnavigations came to an end this week with the end of the distant cake expedition at Sematous Beacon and Alec Turner reaching the end of the first great planetary expedition which featured the circumnavigation of some of the stunning vistas on the moon of Kume in Chai Hercules. To catch up on the end of the distant cake expedition then go check out Primetime Casuals video log of the event which I've linked below. Huge congratulations must go to Commander Sabik who was the first commander to finish distant cake and is therefore the first commander to circumnavigate the furthest reachable landable body from Sol. Likewise congratulations to Commander Alec Turner on his organisation of the first great planetary expedition. We'll have some video of the end of the expedition coming up on the channel later today. I couldn't and would never undertake something like this myself, I love it that the game lets you do it however and that other people take such joy in it. What a game elite is. That's it for now. Thanks so much for making it this far, we'll be back later this week with more videos until then, oh seven commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.


excited to be here. And today I want to talk with you about how we can bring animations to the web. What you should go home with after this talk is actually to have a better understanding of where animations are coming from and how the history looks like. Also, which tools and APIs we can actually currently use to transport animations to the web today, and how we can create our own animated components in Ember.js to actually leverage and create these animations today. And before we get into the full topic, I want to shortly tell you a little bit more about myself, for example, what I currently do for work. And here I actually have the really great joy to also work with Ember on a day-to-day basis, which is really great, with a company that is called Leadfeeder, which offers an online lead generation tool for sales teams to better understand who visits the website and how they can help their customers. Also, what is interesting for me is what I actually do after work. And I'm from Berlin. Here in the background, you can see the very beautiful Alexander Tower. And what I like to do here is enjoy the vegetarian alternative cuisine of the city. Portland should also be very famous for that, so I'm looking forward to this this week.  And what I also like to do is engage in the text scene in Berlin. So I'm one of the co-mentors and organizers of different workshops of open text soup, which tries to offer free access to learning resources about technologies. And also, just recently, I started with two other Ember developers based in Berlin, Clemens Müller and Joschka Kinscher, to relive our Ember Berlin jazz meetup. So if you ever happen to be in town and actually want to say hi, please do so. We would be really happy to see you there. But there's also a really great passion of mine that brings us much closer to the topic of this actual talk. And this is cartoons. Since I was a kid, I really like cartoons, as probably many others of you as well. And if we think about animations and cartoons on a more abstract level, we realize this is nothing else than actually animations that we see on television or in the cinema. And the interesting part about this is we as developers actually think about so many other different things when it comes to animations. We might think about something like UI elements that have specific animations, once we hover over a button that we just created for our web app. Or we might think about something like smooth page transitions with Ember liquid fire, which we already saw in the former talk. Also what comes to our mind are things like data visualization with SVG. So this is something that also helps our users to better understand what is happening in a web app that we're building. And by the way, if you're interested in this specific topic, I highly recommend you to check out Jen Weber's talk on SVG animations interactions tomorrow. But summing this up, all these elements that we can describe under the category of informative UX. So everything that informs our users actually what is happening on the website and where they should be heading is something that I won't talk about today. Today I want to talk with you about how we can create stories and actually tell narratives on the web using animations. So with that said, let's maybe have a look what an animation is actually consisted of. How can we actually define an animation and what are the basics of actually creating traditional animations? Probably the most well-known and very first example of classic animation like frame by frame animation is what we see here in the background. It's a sequence of images taken by the photographer Edward Mulbridge already in the end of the 19th century in which he in very strenuous work actually had to take 12 different images of a rider riding on a horse along the Palo Alto track. And he would collect his images, put them onto a disc and a specific device that he could use back then in the 19th century to actually create animations. And here's a reconstruction that you can see of this kind of like impression that you get looking through this device that if we see these images in rapid succession it seems as if this rider on the horse is actually literally riding along the cross track although it's just a composition of different still images. If we take a look at this example and realize an animation is not much more than just the sequence of images that is shown in a specific frequency and that would later on create the illusion of motion to us.  It's something that actually is mostly powered by our brain. What our brain actually does is it has a specific resolution for like changes in our visual perception and an interesting work by a psychologist called Max Wertheimer described this phenomenon as a fee phenomenon. And he realized that with images that we see that has been shown in a certain delay that is lower than 200 milliseconds or optimally around 60 milliseconds it will give us this illusion that there are not two distinct images. There's actually a motion between these two images that we see. And this is quite interesting. We can use this actually to create animations just by still images that we show in this certain time frame delayed. So with that said you might think now okay this is like 150 years ago. How is this relevant to us today? But the good thing is the story of animations continues until today. And we as developers might find really interesting. Can we also bring this to our most loved platform that we know actually the platform of the web? And yes actually we can do. And in the next part I want to show you which kind of tools and APIs can be currently used and have been really vividly used in the past to achieve this. There's really no pun intended right? But probably many of you here in the audience can still vividly remember that there was a specific tool used for over a decade to create animations on the web. And you might also still remember when its first release was with what actually literally 20 years ago. In the end of 1969 the first release of Flash was out. And this kind of like multimedia platform enabled us to create games, animations, many other multimedia content and also deliver it to the web. But as many of you know the popularity for Flash decreased many developers abstained for actually still implementing that in the websites. And they were kind of like shifting to another space where you were like, okay we can't really use this anymore, there's a lot of controversy around security issues with this platform and also the browser support is not really given because when the browser's opted out of still supporting that. But luckily already quite a while ago but in 2014 really officially accredited by the W3C we have a new hero on the horizon. And as many of you know, now I already got it away. The zero is called HTML5 that's right. And with HTML5 you get a lot of this very lovely things that we used to do and to create in Flash. Also out of the box we get like video elements, we get access to an audio API and also we get animations just out of the box implemented for us to use and create new features on the browser. If I talk about HTML5 animations, I use the term very loosely. So although the HTML5 spec is very specific to certain features around the specification, I will also include all the cool features that we get from CSR3. I will also include open source JavaScript libraries that are based on HTML5 specifications. And many others that I cannot really go into further depth in this talk, but just to give a short summary of what we can use, we realize there are many things out there that can be used to create open web standard powered animations. And the big advantages of open web standards is obviously that they are open. This actually means for us developers we actually have insight in how the specifications are made and you might even have the power to influence how they are further progressing in the future. What we also get is a certain consistency. As these technologies mature over different browsers over the years, we realize the features that we built now on these open web standards will play for a very long time into the future. We get a lot of reliability in our code and realize this is something that is meant to last. And also the really great thing is because the web is so omnipresent, we can actually reach our users with the animations we create based on this open web standards on any device, any time, anywhere we want. So there are a lot of advantages around this concept of embracing open web standards to create content and specific animations. And interestingly with regard to other things that we used before, for example flash to create animations, we might think what about actually about the experience for all the people that don't have a really strong background in programming. People who are maybe not so familiar with the web as a platform and that really love to use graphic user interfaces to create the content and also tell the stories that they used to tell in the past. And if we have a look at that, we might kind of further investigate how this actually unfolds. And in this regard, I found a really, really powerful quote by Rachel Naborz and about winning cartoonists and also web animations advocates in the community. And she is talking about the concept of an endless canvas which kind of describes the possibility to create animations and tell stories on this almost endless possibilities that we have on the web. And she describes her transition from coming from traditional media to actually create cartoons and stories to the web as very empowering because she realized that all the new specs that were coming out, especially HTML5 specs were actually quite approachable to her although she was not really familiar with the knowledge behind it, but she was really keen to try them out. And to give you an understanding of what we're actually talking about and actually doing something with Ember in this talk as well. Let's maybe have a specific look at, yeah, a demo, something that is actually also based very similar call to an canvas, especially specifically the HTML5 canvas API used in Ember. The HTML5 canvas element is an element that we can just drop into our HTML. It comes with the canvas tag. And what we gain from that is actually the access to a very powerful web API that we can use for many, many things. So if you're, for example, interested in WebGL, you might already relate it, but we can also do traditional frame-by-frame animations with that. So that's pretty exciting. So let's have a look at that. The canvas context object is very crucial for understanding how we can actually achieve this. The context object is something like our toolbox. Once we actually get a reference to the HTML element that contains canvas, we can then get the context object with the GetContext method. And once we have this, we can actually draw on the canvas. We can set colors and background images to the canvas and get all the great things from the API. And what is also interesting to note here, the Bravo support for HTML5 canvas and the, yeah, I would say, basic features from that have a really great browser support. So this might not really relevant to you. And yes, we still have users relying on ES7 or EA8 or something. But if you do, it might be worth noting that you might have to pull the full of these features or think about a fallback for anything that you do on the canvas. So let's maybe have a look on a specific example of how we can actually create an animated component. First of all, we would have to create the component. So we could have a comic panel component, let's call it like that, with a certain width and height. And later on, we could, yeah, just describe the tag name on this component to actually create our HTML element later on once the component renders. Then interestingly, we would have to think how do we achieve this effect of the frame-by-frame animation? We learned that we want to show the certain images of the animation and rapid succession. What we would like to do is, first of all, create a sprite sheet, so like a collection of different images into one single file, which helps us a lot later on in the web app to actually just load one file and not hang into reload with several requests as several subfiles for this animation. And what we can do here is think about getting certain frames after each other and actually putting them on a specific destination of our canvas element, one after each other. And in the HTML5 Canvas API, we have a really handy draw image method, which enables us with the coordinates of the upper left corner of the source image that we want to map and the origin of the canvas space that we want to actually occupy with this image and the width and the length to map this onto the destination of our element. And if we have to look at this how this might unfold, we also realize where do we actually get the image from, right? So we would first have to load this. And what we can do here is actually create an instance of an image in our element component once it's actually initialized. And then we can say, okay, we grab the haze and the width of our spreadsheet because obviously we also want to know where does the next frame actually start and where does it stop. And we can only deduct this from the length of the spreadsheet and also from the number of frames that it actually contains, right? And later on we would like to load this image and once this actually is done, we set this object instance here in this example called pseudo image as a property on our component. Then if we move on, we would also like to actually draw something. Also just as a disclaimer, I cannot really go through the full code. So if you realize at some point, okay, there's some gaps or something, I will also link to the original wrapper of the demo so you can still look everything up that you're wondering about and also feel free to ask me afterwards. But yeah, if we do this, we create the draw function. We would define all the different coordinates of our spreadsheet and also the canvas object that we want to map to. And what we can do here is first of all, clear everything that we drawn before. This comes in handy later on if we actually loop through our drawing function which we have to do to actually create a succession of frames and then also we would actually have to draw the image with the draw image function that I explained earlier. And if we do this, we can finally get our context object. We can set a context property that can be reused in other functions in our component as well. And then we can actually draw. And the interesting thing here is as well, we actually want to wait before until the image has loaded, right? That we preloaded earlier in the initial solidization so it might be come in handy to actually wait for that. We can, for example, do this with an observer. So with that, with that said, okay, now we have a drawn image to canvas. Okay, cool. I could have just used an image tag for that. We, yeah, we actually want to make it move. So let's do that right now. And if you want to run something, there's something really handy that we can use in Ember as well to actually iterate over something over and over again. And this is called the Ember run later method. And here we can actually say, okay, we have a certain function that actually draws everything and clears everything what we've drawn before. And we can call it again, again after 100 milliseconds, which we already realize is a quite good interval to actually create this illusion of motion to our human eye. And also what we would do is call a function that actually increments our frame number because everything in our drawn function is also dependent on the frame number and will then recalculate which part of the spreadsheet we actually want to map. I won't show it here in this code example, but you can look it up later on in the repo. And also what we have to do, if we, yeah, click on the play button later on, it would be cool to maybe also pause it at some time point. I mean, animations are really cool, but they shouldn't be there forever, right? So really simply we just set reference to the current run loop as a property owner component. And then later on we can cancel this again at some other part in powerful action. And yeah, if we do that, let's maybe have a look at the demo. So what we can do then is just like play it and then also pause it. So our raccoon guy finally can jump off the building and actually save a gentleman from getting his hand back picked by rubber. So the day is saved. What's also good to know about HTML5 Canvas for you, performance wise we get like a lot of advantage by not having to rely on DOM objects being loaded in the background to actually create these animations. The HTML5 Canvas MPI is really low level. So this means everything that we do on the canvas, even if we create a lot of different layers on it is not powered by specific DOM objects and a lot of like memory in our browser that has to be used up. So this is really good for performance if you do something more heavy. And it's probably also one of the main reasons why WebGL actually relies on HTML5 Canvas. We also get a lot of control as a developers on what is actually happening in our animations which is also really great. Creative experience wise I realize we have to do a lot of kind of like lifting before we get like just six frame animations kind of running and also kind of like interactable with us. So I think this is something that might be quite approachable but maybe also to improved and also accessibility wise we realize there are some obstacles we have to jump over to actually make it accessible because we actually just rendering images into a flat object in our browser that doesn't give us access to any kind of attributes that might be used by screen readers or any other accessibility devices. So this is just like a summary and for getting this in a better context on how we can this compare to other browser APIs let's have a look at another API that maybe not so many of you might be familiar with but I would like to know actually like a hands up who has ever heard before about the web animations API? Like anyone here? Okay, actually quite a few, cool. So maybe some of the things now will be a bit of a repetition for you but I see a lot of hands didn't go up so this might be really interesting for some of the people. Yeah, the web animations API is something that is quite cutting edge and I believe it's actually the animation of the future, the future of the animation and we get from this API a lot of like control to actually synchronize animations and also get play-based control of the box which is really exciting so we don't have to do any heavy lifting for that and yeah, if we then think okay this is all cool then let's have a look at the browser port and then realize, oh okay we go to can I use.com screenshot us from this morning and realize well a lot of red, a bit of olive green, this is not so good, right? A lot of like this doesn't really work yet so okay that means that's a no, right? We can't really use it yet but luckily for the web animations API we already have really, really well maintained polyfill out there which is really great and this actually enables us to use features of the web animations API already today to create animations on the web and also for many features that are not even in this kind of like accepted draft states yet but just like still in a very kind of like discussional mode we even get another really cool web API polyfill called the web animations next polyfill and there's of course also an add-on for that so you can just install, and by install and by web animations next polyfill and you get all the kind of features that are currently in draft state out of the box in your application so let's have a look how, yeah this looks code wise the web animations API largely depends on key frame effects and key frame effects if you look at them they look really similar to the key frames you already know from the CSS3 spec which I think is really cool because it means if for example I'm a designer or someone who's like very familiar with CSS3 I already kind of know where this is coming from and what this is about and we also very similar to the key frames in CSS we get that all the key frames that we list up in one single list will be distributed evenly across the animation span so if there are three they will all be triggered at time point zero, 33% and then later on at 100% so pretty straightforward we can kind of get our head around that and yeah let's have a look how we can actually create also an animated component that's similar to the example before if you want to do that we can first of all have our comic panel component again and we also create a new sprite sheet that we actually want to animate in this component and we would actually create the key frame effects and for this to happen we would first of all have to have key frames defined we already saw some of them and what we also need essentially for every animations are animation options so these are the definitions that we usually know from CSS to actually find how long an animation is what kind of timing function you want to use interestingly for our key frames animations we actually don't want the animation to ease we actually want to stepwise go through the animation and we can use this really handy steps function that enables us to just put in the number of frames that we want to show and then later on actually animate through it infinitely as we have to find here we can pass this in in our comic panel component and once we have actually done that we can already very easily start our animation with just a few lines of code once our component has rendered we can just say we get all the key frames we get all the animation options that we have passed into the component and the only thing that we now have to call is this element or this dollar reference to the element that we're on and then animate and this is it so we already have an animation running out of the box just with this few changes but interestingly yeah this is really not so super exciting because I've seen cartoons most of the cartoons usually didn't involve the comic character just like running in front of blank screen there was stuff going on behind and stuff so I actually want this as well so let's have a look how we actually can create multi-layered components this is also possible with web animations API and how would this actually look like if we want to create several layers it might make sense to actually create some sub-components we could for example imagine that we have comic panel layer components that are embedded in our comic panel and what they could actually do is taking care of binding the key frames to themselves as elements that should be animated because the web animations API is dumb based so we just have elements that are animated with the key frames and then later on if we have created this a comic layer it could call a frame action that kind of like set these key frames to the parent component so the comic panel and just how this looks like to actually create these key frame effects we can use the key frame effect constructor and this will actually create a key frame effect that can later use can later be used in the web animations API to be played back to us also in the parent component the comic panel we can then very easily just with a few lines of code say okay we grabbed the timeline so a global object in the web animations API that lives to give us feedback on which animations are currently running and actually give us access to them to play and pause them and we can take the key from effects that we already get from our comic layers and later on use a group effect constructor one of the features by the way for which you would actually need the web animations next polyfill and with this we can say okay please group together all of these animations in one single instance and if I call play or pause or even reverse this also comes out of the box for the web animation API on it then please do so for all these animations that are embedded in this group effect. This is really great and what we can then easily do we create some actions for it we create a play action, a pause action what they do is really simply calling the play and pause method that we get from the web animations API and we are already good to go this is really fascinating so yeah let's just have a look how this looks like so we have a background that is already rendered as a single layer and then we have the character and if we just hit the play button and if we hit the pause button we can actually iterate through the different key frames that we have already provided with the spreadsheet which is really exciting we can do a lot of more things than that we can add more layers in the foreground we could also create single DOM objects that kind of like swirl around the foreground just imagine we had some leaves that could also be there which is quite exciting and pretty straightforward to do if we look at this instance of API so that's quite exciting and I really like to check it out with this example what's also good to know with the web animation API as a contrast to HMFA Converse we realize that it actually has quite an approachable create experience so even if I'm not a JavaScript Guru yet I kind of like understand where everything is coming from and it's very easy to set up once I actually use the polyfill for right now but it will be even easier in the future I still have lots of develop control I can define how many objects I actually want to render in my animation and I can also easily gain access to different ways to animate it with the key frame effects and also accessibility wise it's really straightforward for us to make this accessible because it's so much powered by DOM last but not least also something to consider if you would have like thousands of different objects that you want to animate this might be quite of like difficult performance wise compared to HMFA Converse at least because we realize for everything that we try to animate in the web animations API we would have to a specific DOM object that is actually created so yeah it's quite hard to argue about that but for something that is not too complex I think it's really still an interesting thing to look into so yeah we are almost at the end and let's just like get a conclusion of what we have found with this example that we have looked on so far so first of all we realize the story about animations and how we can create and deliver animations is not over it actually is still continuous until today and we have even more than ever tools and methods to actually do this and yeah the good thing is with Ember and also with the power of web standards we are actually pretty good to go and with that said I would say the endless canvas is actually now used to be animated and I'm really looking forward to see what you will create in the future so thank you very much for your attention and yeah have great fun at EmberCon


I'm Lieutenant Dick Chasen, this hadn't been a routine case, and to find the answer I've had to put a lot of little pieces together. Lieutenant Dick Chasen. Disney Springs, first time being here, so I'm super excited because they have meatballs and meatloaf, so let's go do this. Now for starters, I've ordered the focaccia bread on a wooden plank, ooh, look at that olive oil too, this looks so yummy, I'm excited, who's excited, I'm excited, who's excited. So I know a lot of people when it comes to bread, they like to compare the spreadability with the butter, but here I like to compare the soakability with the oil, no yeah, that's soaked up very well. What if you're actually going to like the whole essence here, I like drinking it without the sugar because it doesn't really mean it, but it is definitely, I mean I also don't like a lot of sugar. What's in here? This is going to be simple syrup. Okay, what's in there? Sugars. And this is the garden tea, art of tea. Sir? Thank you. I have discovered something here at Wolfgang Cups, they have a tea that's specifically made for here and I think they were called out the art of tea or the garden tea and it's right here and I gotta tell you something, I like sweet tea, I'm a big fan of sweet tea, I do not like unsweet tea, but this is unsweetened and I like it. How does that happen? I don't know, like you can really taste things, I don't know what am I tasting, what things am I tasting? To go with our focaccia bread here, I've also decided on getting lemon meatballs because I heard they're fantastic, I'm only kidding, I put that lemon there, they're not lemon meatballs, they're just ricotta meatballs, but I don't like ricotta so I asked for it on the side, but I'm excited about this, I'm very excited. A wise man once told me, you can tell a lot by the inside of what food looks like and that right there looks like a meatball. I'm sorry, Mori and Enzo, these meatballs are better, I hate to say it, but I did take a bite out of this because it was in the sauce and I see they have like garlic cloves, but I'm not sure what it is, I did not like that, did not.  The other side, just as cheesy and just as good. Ah, that's perfect. So far I have been very impressed with the tea and the meatballs and the bread, but I just ordered my entree and I've seen it at other tables and I just got to say I need to make some room because what's coming here, it ain't small. I've cleared some space, hopefully you've got some space in your stomach. Oh my lord, look at this, it's a wiener schnitzel, you should put something in there for scale. Like, what? I think that's huge. This is gigantic, isn't it? Have you ever seen anything like that? And that's a bone. Wow. I'm gonna wait for a moment because I don't have any silverware, they went away with the meatballs. This is huge. This is huge. Please enjoy. I know. I have a fort, though. I know you're not supposed to play with your food, but this is for size. It is bigger than my head. Ooh, that's kind of cool. This is unbelievable. It is so crispy and delicious. Sir? Oh man, oh that's what I'm looking for. Oh yeah. Now, they're not called mashed potatoes, they're called potato puree. Yes sir, because they're gonna be grounded down a little bit thinner than an actual mashed potato. Usually mashed potatoes are actually little pieces of chunks of the actual potato. This one's gonna be more fine. Amazing. I actually asked for a side of the potato puree because I wasn't a fan of the fingerling potatoes. I don't know if it was just like the stuff that was coated on top of them, but I feel like I might like that a lot better. Just look at this. Crunch. Oh yeah. Look at that. Actually ordering my entree, it was a real big toss-off between the meatloaf and this actual wiener snitchell. And if you don't know what a wiener snitchell is, it's pork pounded down, and this is actually on the bone, pounded down real thin, breaded and fried. Phenomenal, but I'm happy I went with this. But you know, the only thing I was a little disappointed about was the sides that came with it. I really am not a big fan of the fingerling potatoes or lemon. The roublos, okay, but I did get the potato puree on the side, but I don't know if I'm going to get charged for that, or if it's actually available for a substitute for something like this. I don't know, so I'll have to wait and see. But I mean, if I did order this again, I would ask if I could substitute the potato puree for the fingerling potatoes. I finished it all. The only thing left is the bone, and I'll be taking this home and putting it with my bone collection. So check this out. Along with an awesome discount they offer here, annual pass holders actually receive free gelato and a free cookie. And this is cinnamon roll ice cream and white chocolate raspberry. Hey, where'd your cookie go? And I gotta say, the cinnamon roll tastes like a cinnamon roll, but with a little chocolate chip cookie, I'm leaving a satisfied man with a bright sun. Hey! Okay, so that does it for me. That Wolfgang Puck had a lot of fun. That Wiener Snitzer was gigantic. I ate it all, and I definitely deserve a button. So live the life you live. I'll see you next time. Bye.


Now, as an adult who sits on the cusp of millennial and Gen Z, I'm torn about social media. I saw how social media's mission to connect us, in turn, isolated us. And yet, I'm still addicted to the scrolling. I'm addicted to seeing other people, my friends, posting about their lives and being their best authentic selves, whatever that means.  I love it. But now, I can't bring myself to do the same. I've become a lurker.


In this lecture, we are going to consider a partial differential equation which is studied very well in the literature. It is called Berger's equation and we consider certain initial value problems for Berger's equation. The Berger's equation is one of the simplest quasi-linear equations and it exhibits many features of solutions that is common to non-linear equations. Common in the sense, they occur very frequently for many non-linear equations. So, the non-linear effect in the Berger's equation, we already saw the Berger's equation, but we will again see the equation and then we will talk about it that. So, we are going to consider initial value problem. It is an equation which has one variable is called time variable. So, therefore, it is an initial value problem. We consider examples basically of the initial value problem, solve them explicitly. And then study, if I consider an initial condition with a monotonic function, what happens to the solution? So, question is why study Berger's equation? Why study this special equation? It is a simplest quasi-linear equation. Its solutions exhibit a typical behaviors of solutions to general quasi-linear and hence even non-linear equations. And the study tells us to be ready for certain surprises that we may find in studies of more general equations. So, we consider Cauchy data of this type Ux0 equal to Hx. If the variable y, it is a function of two variables, independent variables x and y. So, the variable y is interpreted as time. In fact, it is interpreted as time. So, this is nothing but initial value problem. That is why we write initial value problem for Berger's equation. In the examples that follow we use functions H of x which are monotonic functions, but they are of the following type, they are discontinuous or piecewise linear or smooth functions, differentiable functions. Of course, you may ask this question, why consider non-differentiable functions? Yes, our existence and uniqueness theorem is not applicable for such an H. However, we have to deal with such H, as they are physically relevant. We cannot always say that my theorem allows only smooth functions as the data, I will work with only that. No, these are also important, it is also important to study such functions H. Of course, in such cases, solutions needs to be interpreted differently, not the way that we have been talking about. So far, the idea of solution that we have introduced is what is called a classical solution. So, we have to now generalize the notion of solution. We have to define what do we mean by solution, so that whatever we do is meaningful. And computations are very easy for the kind of function that we propose to deal with. And formula for solutions within quotes can be derived. So, it helps in understanding properties of solutions very clearly. So, we find expressions or formula for solutions. We get formulas, basically some formula like f of x, something like that. Then we understand what is the domain of this f, for what x that f of x makes sense. These questions are to be asked later. So, first we find formulas and then ask, when are these formula actually give rise to solutions? Once again, observations made in these examples continue to hold with a smoother function. It is not that smooth function things are all right, no. But when you consider smooth functions, you cannot go from one constant to another constant in a smooth way. It takes some time where the function is not constant and computations are difficult and illustrating them by graphs is difficult. But we can be guaranteed assured that similar difficulties will be there even for such age. Only thing it is more complicated. So, why consider non-differential functions? Again, same thing. We are going to use non-differential functions even though they are bad. There is a general theory. This is some kind of assurance. There is a theory do not worry in which we can make sense of whatever we are doing. So, please go ahead and do, do not bother about whether it is correct or not. And that discussion is out of scope for this course. We will see a glimpse of it later on in the next lecture. References are books on partial differential equations by Evans, or Fuland Prasad and Renuka Ravindran. And there is a book by smaller shock waves and reaction diffusion equations. There are also many more beautiful books written on this kind of material. So, this is the Burgers equation. u y plus u u x equal to 0. We would love to write u t plus u x equal to 0. But since we are going to follow method of characteristics where t is used as a parameter running on the characteristic curve, we are not using the t here.  And initial condition u x 0 equal to h x x in R y positive. So, let us parameterize the given Cauchy data. We need to solve the method of characteristics. Let us follow that. So, first is parameterization of the Cauchy data, x equal to s, y equal to 0, z equal to h s. Now, characteristic system of ODE, dx by dt is equal to a. In this case, that is a u x that is u which is z, dy by dt is 1, dz by dt is 0. We need to solve this set of ODE is, system of ODE is with this initial conditions. Observe that z does not depend on t. What does that mean? It means that solution is constant along each base characteristic curve. And the solution is satisfying initial conditions is easily given by this. First is z, dz by dt is 0. So, z is constant, at t equal to 0, it has to be h of s. So, that is h of s. And dy by dt equal to 1, therefore, y equal to t plus constant, but at 0 it should be 0, it is t. Now, when it comes to x, dx by dt is z. What is z? H s. Therefore, dx by dt equal to h s, if you solve you get this with this initial condition, very easy. Now, u equal to h of x minus y u, that is what we get using these three equations. Yeah, ideally we should solve for t and s in terms of x and y and then go and substitute here. So, h of somebody, right. So, if I show s is equal to x minus y u, we are done, which comes from here, s equal to x minus h of s is supposed to be a solution, u and t is the y. So, that is why you get this implicit expression u equal to h of x minus y u. Of course, when we admit this as an implicit solution provided you can solve for u as a function of x and y. So, note that this equation is meaningful, even if h is not differentiable, right. It is just asking that u equal to h of x minus y u, imagine h is continuous. Equation is meaningful. Now, question is whether you can solve u in terms of x and y is another question. We may be able to define a function u of x, y from this equation, defined on some subdomain of omega 2. What is omega 2? Recall, it is a projection of omega 3. What is omega 3? Omega 3 is where the coefficients of the Causillian equations are defined. Omega 2 is a projection of omega 3, 2, x, y plane. Solutions will be defined in some domain of, subdomain of omega 2. So, it is possible. And function thus obtained may turn out to be a solution, may turn out to be differentiable on a further subdomain. Therefore, it will be a solution to Berger's equation. So, therefore, given this possibilities what we do in the examples is we arrive at this equation, somehow solve for u and then ask on what domain it is differentiable, catch hold of that domain and say this function defined on this domain is a solution of the Berger's equation. That is what we are going to see in the examples later on. Now, for each fixed S, what does this represent? This is the base characteristics x equal to h s t plus s comma y equal to t. As t varies, s is fixed, what is this set? It is a straight line passing through the point as 0. This is the point s comma 0. So, it is a straight line passing through as 0, this point with slope 1 by h s. Therefore, what we observe is that it is possible in principle for example, like that these some at the next point if the slope is like that, so that equation straight line goes like this, this is not correct. So, at this point equation goes like that, it is fine they do not touch here, but on the other hand if you have like this and at this point slope is like that. So, they will intersect. So, base characteristics can intersect, it depends on h s, we will see that. So, this base characteristics we use a notation l s, l s is a straight line, alpha line s for passing through this point as 0 and this is the equation slope clearly 1 by h s. If you take two different s 1 and s 2 and take base characteristics through those two points, do the intersect we already saw the picture. This question is important, why are we asking this question? This question is important as we anticipate a potential problem. Recall that any solution to Berger s equation is constant along each base characteristic curve. For example, we had this and we had a base characteristic curve like that and we had a base characteristic like that. So, this point is s 1, 0, this point is s 2, 0. What we saw is any solution of the Berger s equation has to be constant on each base characteristic curve and what is the value here? It is h s 1 and here sorry this is h s 2, this is h s 1. So, therefore on the green line it is h s 1. On the blue line it is h s 2. What will it be at this point of intersection? Problem. See base characteristics they carry information from the gamma 2, this is gamma 2. It carries the information which is given namely u must be equal to h x that is the information given on this x axis that is being carried forward by these lines which are characteristic curves. So, they are carriers of information from gamma 2.  What if they are not same? It means conflicting information is reaching at the points of intersection of the base characteristic curves. What will happen there? Solution becomes multi valued. If at all you want to say solution. So, there is a trouble at those points. That is why this question is important.  When you write down if they intersect at a point x 0, y 0 that should lie on both l s 1 and l s 2. This is the equation for l s 1 first line. Second one is a equation for the l s 2 and it should be satisfied. That means this system should have a solution for x 0, y 0. It is a non-homogeneous system. So, if the determinant is non-zero, definitely you have a system. You have a solution for x 0, y 0 and determinant is h s 1 minus h s 2. So, if h s 1 equal to h s 2, then there are parallel lines. They do not intersect therefore no problem. But if they are not equal then the system has a solution. They intersect at this point leading to an ambiguity in the value of the u at that point x 0, y 0 because it is both h s 1 and h s 2 and they are not equal. So, there is a problem. There is ambiguity. Should it be h s 1 or should it be h s 2? Now let us look at the transversality condition j t s, which is dou x y by dou t s is this. So, this turns out to be minus of 1 plus h dash s into t. From our existence and uniqueness theorem for Cauchy problems for quasi-linear equations, if this is non-zero, no problem. If this is 0, troubles to be expected. Where is it 0? Precisely when h prime s t plus 1 equal to 0. That is from our experience, recall the discussion during the proof of existence uniqueness theorem, we expect troubles at points where this happens. We will get back to this discussion later, later on. So, j of 0 s 0, this is actually where what we use to apply our theorem because we do not know at a general t. So, t equal to 0 only we have the information. But in the last slide, we have all the information. We have explicitly solved everything. That is why we could write j t s and we know this expression. But otherwise we do not know the particular the second column at arbitrary t only at t equal to 0. So, j of 0 s 0 is minus 1, it is never 0. So, it just means that there is a existence uniqueness at every point which is nearby at some points nearby the datum curve. This is the solution. Solution exists. Good. Once again as before the expression is meaningful even if h is not differentiable. But this may not represent a solution. The way a solution is defined, there could be problems. We go ahead without worrying about this for reasons explained at the beginning of this lecture. Let us look at specific examples. So, we are going to consider 4 examples of Cauchy problems for Burgers equation. Initial profiles, the function h of x, it is graph that can be called as initial profile. Those are monotonic functions that are piecewise linear or piecewise constant. Note that such functions are differentiable with exception of a few points. Monotonic functions are very close to being differentiable. So, they are differentiable almost everywhere. And explicit expression for u can be obtained in these examples. And the function exhibits the effects of nonlinear nature of Burgers equation and the monotonicity of the initial profile both. So, these examples highlight the role played by the nonlinearity of a partial differential equation in solutions to Cauchy problems. Now, in this example, method of characteristics fails to determine a solution in some region of the upper half plane, which means it is not global with respect to domain. So, consider Burgers equation with Cauchy data minus 1 for negative x and 1 from x equal to 0 onwards. LS we already observed the family of base characteristics are equations with slope 1 by hs. So, for s less than 0, LS has slope minus 1 and u is minus 1 on that because the data carried forward is minus 1. For s greater than or equal to 0, slope is 1 because hs is 1, 1 by hs is 1, hs is 1 therefore, this is 1 slope 1 and information it takes is 1. So, solution will be 1. Let us draw a picture. So, this is the picture. So, here we had s negative. This is for s greater than or equal to 0. These are the base characteristic curves. These are the base characteristic curves corresponding to positive s. So, these are all lines parallel to y equal to x. These are lines parallel to y equal to minus x. Now, what happens in the in between this region? In this region no base characteristic curves. So, no information is being passed from the initial data that is the gamma 2 into this region which is in the V shaped region. Dots means this not included because h of x was like that, right? h of x was minus 1 if x is less than 0. That is the reason why this 0 line is not included x equal to minus 1. So, in the V shaped region no base characteristics pass. Therefore, no information on the solution from x axis reaches there via base characteristic curves. This is happening because the jump in hx because suddenly shift from minus 1 to 1. Therefore, the slopes also across s equal to 0 that is what results in the V shaped region. Now, u equal to minus 1 is a solution defined on this domain. You can see in the picture 1 is a solution on this domain. So, what to do in the V shaped region? That is a natural question. What happens in the V shaped region we saw via base characteristic curves. But can you define a solution in the V shaped region? This is a question that we ask. Yes, something can be done so that we can define a solution. If you observe the solution, I have put it in quotes. Means some generalized notion of solution. But this discussion is out of scope for this course. So, I look up the references that I mentioned earlier whenever you are interested in this question. So, if we choose a h that goes from minus 1 to 1 in a continuous manner, then V shaped region would not be there, right?  So, think about this. Now, let us look at the second example. Here what happens is solution becomes multivalued in some places. So, h is now 1 minus 1. It is a decreasing function. It is a monotonic function but decreasing. Equation for the base characteristics is the same still. So, s less than 0, ls has slope 1 and it carries solution will be 1 there. And for s greater than or equal to 0, h is minus 1 therefore slope is minus 1 and solution will be minus 1. Let us look at the picture here. But these families intersect in this V shaped region. In this region, maybe this line is excluded but here base characteristics are intersecting and they carry 2 different informations. So, if you want to say the solution, at this point it is both 1 and minus 1 if you want to say that. So, you have to change your notion of solution. But we see that conflicting information is reaching there.  So, they intersect here. At this point it is both 1 because of this and minus 1 because of this. Now, we can write down where 1 is a solution and minus 1 is a solution. Once again there is a problem in the V shaped region. The answer is same as given before. Something can be done which is out of scope. You can read the books that I have suggested. Did you notice that you are thinking of global solutions by asking this question. Once you get some solution in the V shaped region, you have the solution in the entire upper half plane. So, it is there at the back of our mind. Let us look at the third example. Here initial profile is very nice initial profile. It is a linear polynomial 1 minus x. No jumps, nothing. Continuously differentiable c infinity. It is analytic polynomial after all. So, let us substitute and get the expressions for u. We get u x y equal to 1 minus x by 1 minus y. Obviously, y should not be equal to 1. So, it means the line y equal to 1 u is not defined. So, it is defined on unit of 2 disjoint sets. 1 above the line y equal to 1, 1 below the line y equal to 1. U solves Berger's equation on each of these sets. Of the 2, only this one below the line y equal to 1 is in touch with x axis which is where that is a gamma 2. That is where initial data is prescribed. Therefore, that is a solution with this domain. So, this is a picture. Any 2 distinct base characteristic curves intersect at this point 1, 1 and solution becomes multivalued at 1, 1. Are there regions in the upper half plane where a solution is not determined apart from the line y equal to 1? It looks like yes, because there seems to be no characteristics passing through this, but that is not the problem because as you see the line from here is going like this. So, if you want to go like this, it might have gone out of the picture that is why you are not seeing. So, characteristics do fill up all these points except these dotted points base characteristics go through each and every point. Now, this is the most complicated example. Why? Because it is mixing all the 3 things 1, 1 minus x and 0. So, it is a piecewise constant and in between linear we will see what is going to happen. There are 3 distinct families of base characteristic curves depending on yes. Earlier we had only s less than 0 as greater than 0. Now, what will we have? We will have s less than or equal to 0, 1 case between 0 and 1 and bigger than or equal to 1. Let us call give names. So, it will be easy for us to refer to. F1 family corresponds to s less than or equal to 0. These are lines parallel to y equal to x because the initial condition is 1. So, therefore slope is 1 and therefore the value that solution takes along them will be 1. F2 family is that 1 minus x. So, solution will be like 1 minus x by 1 minus y. F3 family is where solution will be 0 and slope will be like 1 by 0. So, they are lines parallel to x equal to 1. Yes, yes. LS has slope changing from 1 to infinity whenever s is between 0 and 1 as s goes from 0 to 1. For s greater than or equal to 1, LS has infinite slope as we saw these are lines parallel to x equal to 1. So, question is do base characteristics intersect. So, we have to analyze cases whether family any 2 members of family f1 intersect, f1 and f2 intersect, f1, f3 intersect, any 2 members of family of f2 intersect or some member of f2 intersect, some family some member of f3. These are the various cases we have to analyze. So, take s1 and s less than s2 do the base characteristics LS1, LS2 intersect. So, this is the picture. Here these are all lines parallel to y equal to x. Here these are the lines parallel to y axis or x equal to 1 and in this region which is identified here in this region which extends base characteristics intersect solution becomes multi valued. So, here u is equal to 1 because my initial condition h of x is equal to 1 here. Here h of x equal to 0 for x greater than or equal to 1. Therefore, the solution is 0. Here the solution is 1 because of this. Here it was polynomial 1 minus x. Therefore, the solution will turn out to be 1 minus x by 1 minus 5. Now, at what point they intersect it is algebra. I will skip the algebra and they are all intersect here at this point. If you start here do not intersect. Now, the question to be asked is at this height do they intersect? Yes, they intersect because at these points. At this height do they intersect? Which height? This height? No, no two base characteristics intersect. Then I raise like you know high jump I raise the bar a bit and I ask is this the place? No. It turns out this is the place where base characteristics start meeting that is basically this family is what is responsible for that all of them are meeting at this. This is the first time if you why is called time t time the first instance where some trouble starts brewing is at t equal to 1. So, this is often called breaking time for solution. So, two members of F1 family clearly do not intersect because all of them are parallel lines. They never intersect. Similarly, two members of F3 they do not intersect. But two members of F2 they always intersect at this point. And then you can ask when is this family intersect this that is once again at this point because this line is going right. And here the smallest time would be this. So, please compute this. So, whenever base characteristics intersect then thing of interest is always what is the first time at which they start intersecting until that time they should not be intersecting. So, this is just algebra. So, I just skip but I just keep it on the screen for some time so that you can do the computation. As S1 varies in minus infinity 0 means F1 family. This is F2 family. S2 is in 0 comma 1 is F2 family. It is 1. So, I am showing this once again through picture. Now, F1 family and F3 family where do they intersect at 1, 1. It means some member of the family of F1 meets some member of the family F3 at the point 1, 1. Now, F2 F3 once again the point 1, 1. Now, both of them are from F3 family. They do not intersect because they are parallel lines. So, no two base characteristics intersect in the open region bounded by x axis and the line y equal to 1. We have observed this. Solution is uniquely determined in that region and is given by this formula. Observe that u is not a differential function on the line segment x equal to y and x equal to 1. Let us summarize. So, we discussed four initial value problems for Berger's equation. We understood that a solution may not be determined on the entire region omega 2 where the PDE is posed due to base characteristics not filling up the entire region. This was the case in one example or base characteristics intersecting with each other. This is true in the other two examples and carrying in conflicting information possibly. So, that is a problem. So, now question is how to overcome these obstacles of the type that we discussed above and have a solution. That means we have to define a new notion of solution. Wherever the PDE is defined we want that. In the context of Berger's equation, let us limit ourselves to the context of Berger's equation. That will be discussed in the next lecture where we will be worried only about how to give a meaningful solution or how to make sense of these functions which we obtained here as solutions in a some kind of generalized sense that we will be discussed in the next lecture. Thank you.