Hello and welcome back here to a set of course So we are standing at the start line of layout number three of the HTC series So make sure you guys follow me on social media all that you found in the description box below So big thank you to Hexer for hooking me up with this layout three so we're gonna do how we've done every layout so far We're gonna do the quick drive-through of the course as men go full board So we are in my HTC 350 So we are gonna do a course roll second gear So this one has a very tight entry shoot into a pretty Tight little left-hander here gotta be make sure you staff the wall and off hit the cones and immediately to a right-hander Which goes into a pretty? Narrow shoot into the left-hander here with a little wall clip there on the end that we're supposed to go for one there and one there and then we go into the Basically Jersey barrier Shoot was a little clip at the end which goes into the first first little box turn and That first little box turn goes into this really tight area with cones and a hanging Little barrel that we got to try and knock down with the back of the car which goes into another Little tight box turn hopefully I don't do that when I actually run the run and this box turn goes into another Basically 90 degree left-hander with a little entry tap that we're gonna try and take out So this course is a lot of very tight corners and a lot of very tight sections Definitely a very cool track. So then we do have the nice little sweep there into a really quick Box turn area, which if you forget it's there Well, you're screwed and you lose that then into another tight section the walls and the walls are not very forgiving on this track I'm just putting that out there and There's just a few little sweeps into probably one of my favorite sections But a very dangerous section at that because you're gonna try and reach out and tag those four hanging Basically noodles on the wall without Totally, you know biffing it into the concrete wall and then that will immediately run us to a very hard narrow Exit pass through the outside of the course. So it's a very straightforward course There's only one thing that you could really miss and that is that one like Box corner that it comes out of right of a turn. So we're gonna heat up our tires a little bit And we're gonna go full send All right, so let's see if we can do this without totally biffing it on the first try throw it in the shoe Really hard 90 Took a one or two little cones out there not too terrible Not that one miss the second one into this little shoot Take that out. Oh those things actually a kind of mess with the car a smidge So it's something to be mindful of that. It will Mess with the car a little bit kind of took out some cones there into this little box turn And we kind of got offline and came on a drift there And her in we got that one. There's not much angle really in this course it's mostly just trying to Make the course and this is that one box turn you missed your screw We were kind of right on it kind of stole the car on There's our first wall here So we're unable to get this run nice and smooth, but We're gonna try it again And I ripped it into the walls I need to get more angle in that part if I want to hit those and Like I said, it's very narrow exit so for the first run out We definitely did not do the greatest so we're actually gonna reset the course here Gonna restart the session and We're gonna go Try and get this again because well, I don't really want to You know wreck too too much and try and get a clean run here for this And then we'll take a look at the replay camera, of course If we can get a smooth run all right temp number two It's much better through that section. Just a little bump on that cone. I don't think that's too big of a deal Got both of those that cone kind of sent me this way Kind of set me off a little bit. I didn't miss that one We almost didn't make it into that box turn I was surprised we didn't Biff the car totally onto the wall and we did it again. Those turns are definitely you need to be on point with that turn otherwise You are going to have a bad time This course I did here was one of the most complicated ones of the layouts that we've had and Well, I can say from experience This layout stuff you have to be on your game for this layout for sure Got that Come on exit it out not the cleanest at all But a run nonetheless We're gonna try it one more session on that and then we're gonna watch a replay of it the better How bad it is because starting to get the feel of the track this Gear ratio is gonna have to be different for this track because then the other ones because it's very tight You got to keep wheelspin up because you want to stay in drift you want to try and while I was to stay in drift as much as you can This track is very unforgiving Once again a big thank you to hexer for hooking me up with this so let's go see what we can do with this one Okay, so we can ride up the jersey barriers a little bit the back end of our car, so We got there. Oh, I mean, that's all right. If we just gently tap it out in front of our car we got those this time so This run is I Think other than taking out the front of those cones a couple cones around this probably our best Run at this thing right now That's be honestly the easiest box turn other to You kind of set in angle right there so then oh No, stay an angle Oh We And we biffed it into the wall So let's take a look at the replay of that this track is definitely going to take a lot of practice for sure to get to the line and See this track is gonna take a lot of practice and a lot of work to make sure that you are on point and not hitting everything That supercharged 350 just screaming down the chute We were looking pretty solid in the beginning Little hesitation there. Oh, that's where we went up on the jersey barriers kind of set me off course for there But we managed to somehow Keep it alive We've demolished that wall cone and that one was just just a little bump our little our you know front barrier got it That one was perfect Our front crash where I got that one that one was even better Kind of had to fishtail it back into this section Got a couple cones For a third run out not too bad of a run gonna have to definitely dial the cars tune in Because that's gonna make or break how the car reacts in this track because this track is very finesse very fine Line between you're good or you're bad and as you can see right there there was a Not good definitely not good And then I tried to get too close to the wall and I took the wall hard so We're gonna give it one more shot, but we're gonna go back to default setups Start a default leave my tires how they are And we're gonna leave the gears and everything we're gonna run it on default setup So let's get the wheel cam and everything turned back on I'm gonna try to run this in default With my cars default settings And see what we can do See if we can get a full run without totally screwing up 28 psi all the way around on tires Definitely a very Stiff gear ratio right now is 39 And that 39 mixes have to go from third or fourth to third, but I mean other than that so far We're not doing too terrible I want to get that last sweeper down really well Left foot brake there into the Okay Yeah, these these walls don't forgive and you have to be On point so this layout is definitely going to take a lot of practice To get right and not smack into things See because I'm I'm trying to go too close to that wall and it keeps Not getting me out of angle So it's things that I'm gonna have to practice with and get ready So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode here on a set of course up big Thank you to hexer for hooking me up with the track I'm gonna be doing some more practice on this track and hopefully I can get a full run without any hiccups So as always thank you guys for coming back and watching. I'm evil rabbit. I'll see you guys on the track


That was an audio reconstruction of Book 8 line 267 and after by Georg Danek of the University of Vienna and Stefan Hagel at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. These two scholars have developed a technique of singing the Homeric epics which they say is appropriate for primarily oral tradition from which these poems emerge. Their reconstruction may not be exactly what the epic poems sounded like, but they can use the accentual structure and sentence intonation of ancient Greek to match that to the metrical structures to figure out how the words and notes best fit together in a way that made the poems sound like a song while serving the dual purposes for the bard, which was on the one hand to have something structured enough that it could be remembered, but on the other hand be open enough to allow improvisation as it's sung. That selection of a sample that they chose is appropriate because it's part of the song that would have been sung by a bard, but it's also a song about a bard singing another song. So it's one bard singing about another bard and it's a particularly relevant story that we'll come back to in a little bit. But first let's start off with the beginning in Book 1 of the Odyssey. We have the invitation or the invocation of the muse similar to what we saw in the Iliad. And instead of singing about the rage of Achilles, this time Homer is asking the muse to sing to me, oh muse of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. That term that is translated by the A.T. Murray translation I provided for you and maybe translated differently if you look at another text. But that term polytropon literally means many turns or shifts, someone who's versatile. And this, like most of the Greek words used to describe Odysseus, don't lend themselves very well to direct translation into English. But the concept that Murray's trying to get to is one that's kind of familiar to us, although there's not one specific English word. So his translation of polytropon as many devices is not very exact, but it does hint at this larger theme in Odysseus' character that is part of a more common epithet for him. Polytropon meaning many turns has sort of double meaning. Part of it is the number of turns he has to go through in this narrative, in his trying to get home, trying to make it home from Troy. He's knocked one way then the other. He can't go straight home back to Ithaca. He has to try one thing and then that doesn't work so he has to turn and then there's another obstacle and he has to keep turning. But the turns aren't only the turns in his path, they're also the turns that he's prepared to make, the ones that he chooses that he sort of thinks through. He thinks through several different options and then chooses one of those and if that one doesn't work then he has to adapt. So he has the turns in his path but he also has the turns in his head. Now this is different than heroes like Achilles or Ajax or Diomedes who simply run head on into whatever is in their way. In these cases heroism is determined strictly by strength, overpowering the obstacle. But Odysseus' heroism is his ability to adapt to the things that he can't directly overcome, not to give in so he doesn't sort of give up when he runs into an obstacle. But he's able to find a way around those forces that he would not be able to directly overpower. And this concept is one that's familiar to us. Of course we want to be careful if we import a personal context into this 2700 year old text. But we have this character type that is different than the usual sort of B movie action hero that sort of overcomes everybody by being able to out-shoot them and overpower them, being stronger than everybody else and tougher than everybody else. There is another type of character that is frequently referred to as the swashbuckler, especially in a sort of pirate context. And if you think of like Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you see that he's somebody who is always outgunned and always sort of in this inescapable situation. And yet somehow he manages to think of a way out. Of course Indiana Jones is very much this type of character. He's not the strongest and he's not the one who can shoot his way out of every situation. But he does come up with some sort of plan at the last minute. Also the Sherlock Holmes, especially the Guy Ritchie version with Robert Downey Jr. is this type of hero. And the term most often used for this, especially to describe Odysseus, is matis. And this is just like polytropon. There's not one single English word that's a very good translation of this. But matis is something that's written about by these two classical scholars, Marcel de Tien and Jean-Pierre Vernaut. And they're both cunning intelligence in Greek culture and society. And that title, Cunning Intelligence, is their attempt to translate that. But they say that matis, this thing that Odysseus has, is a type of intelligence and a thought, a way of knowing. It implies a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behavior, which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills and experience acquired over the years. And these, all of these, this combined characteristic is applied to situations which are transient. They're shifting, disconcerting, ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement or exact calculation or rigorous logic. In other words, there are things that you just can't plan for. And if you have matis, you'll be able to figure it out once you're in that situation. They say that when an individual who is endowed with matis, be he a god or a man, is confronted with multiple change in realities whose limitless polymorphic powers render it impossible to seize, he can only dominate that situation. That is to say, to enclose it within the limits of a single unchangeable form within his control. If he proves himself to be even more multiple, more mobile, more polyvalent than his adversary. Similarly, in order to reach his goal directly, to pursue his way without deviating from it across a world which is fluctuating and constantly oscillating from one side to another, he must himself adopt an oblique course and to make his intelligence sufficiently wily and supple to bend to every conceivable way and his gait so askew that he can be ready to go in any direction. And so this going in any direction is the mini-turns, the polytropon. But it's also more frequently Odysseus is described as Palu medis. And that Palu is where we get our word Pali, like multiple. So he has this skill, but he has multiple versions of the skill. And he can go one direction, but if that way is blocked, he can switch feet and go the other direction. Of course, we see this kind of thing in the adventures of Odysseus that is probably what you've read, if you've read the Odyssey before. And when he gets locked in the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus, he can't overpower Polyphemus and all his men together wouldn't be able to move the giant stone door that blocks the way. So they have to come up with this strategy of getting Polyphemus drunk, then stabbing his one eye out and then, of course, Polyphemus isn't just going to open the door for them then. So they have to cling to the bellies of the sheep that Polyphemus is allowing to go out in grays so that they can get out. All of this is an exercise in medis, sort of thinking your way around an impossible situation. We can imagine if Achilles or Ajax or Diomedes were in that cave, they probably wouldn't have made it out. They probably would have made a last stand and tried to fight Polyphemus and lost. Odysseus is regularly referred to as Polymatus, having multiple types of matus. And he above all, according to Dettian and Vernat, is the hero who is Polymatus as well as Polytropus. This was the first word of the Odyssey, having many turns. He's also Polymechanos, in other words, this is many devices. Literally Polymechanos would translate as many devices, which is what your translator used to translate Polytropon in the beginning. So they're different words, but they are kind of getting at the same multi-valent character. He's an expert in tricks of all kinds. Polymechanos in the sense that he's never at a loss, never without expedience. He has these Poroi, these Aporos is a way out or a way through.  And yet, even when he is an Aporia in this kind of trouble, he has some sort of Poros. He's able to find a way through the impossible. When taught by Athena and Hephaistus, the deities of matus, the artist also possesses a Technapantoi, an art of many facets, so a type of art that has many different elements to it. Knowledge of general application. The Polymatus is also known by the name of Poikilometus, or Iliometus. We've come across these terms before, although you came across them in translation. Especially these last two terms, Poikilometus and Iliometus. These were terms that Hesiod used to describe Prometheus, who's the middle part of his name. His name means forethinker, pro being ahead, and the mythos seems to be an old version or a cognate of the word matus. Hesiod describes Prometheus as poikilon, which means working in many colors, and it was usually used to describe embroidery. So you're interweaving. You're weaving together these different threads, these different colors. He also used the term Iliometus, which means full of various wiles. In that word, Iliometus, the Ilo means moving quickly, shifting quickly. So birds and insects that would dart back and forth in the air, they would be described as Ilo. As soon as they're going one way, all of a sudden you see them change course and go the other. Combine that with matus, the strategy. So quickly changing strategy, and the type of strategy that is woven together with other types of strategies, or can weave its way through the difficulties, the troubles that the hero with matus finds himself in. But remember that Hesiod condemned this. He said that this poikilon Iloometus of Prometheus was inferior to the power of Zeus, that this matus just wasn't enough. You might think it would be enough, but it was overwhelmed by Zeus. But because Hesiod seems to dislike this sort of irregularity. He doesn't want to acknowledge a world that is not well-ordered by a strong god who can force everything to fall into line. If Prometheus was able to get out of line through this Iloometus, then that's something Hesiod clearly doesn't want to engage with, doesn't want to admit is possible. And yet Homer very much respects this characteristic. And the same terms that Homer uses to praise Odysseus are the terms that Hesiod uses to condemn Prometheus. As Detsian and Vernant point out, Athena and Hephaistus are the deities of matus. Athena's mother was literally named matus. She was the one who Zeus loved, and because Zeus was afraid that matus would give birth to a child who would overthrow Zeus, Zeus turned her into a fly and swallowed her. And this is why, if you know much about Greek mythology, you probably remember the story, that Athena was born from Zeus' head. Hephaistus had to split Zeus' head open with an axe, and then Athena came out fully grown. This is because her mother, Matus, was turned into a fly while pregnant. Zeus swallowed her, and that's why Athena was inside the head of Zeus. So she came literally from the head of Zeus, but also her mother was the nymph whose name was Matus. And also Hephaistus is the god of Matus. And with this we return to that story from Book 8, that the blind-barred Demoticus sings before the Phaistians and Porodysius. In this song, Demoticus sings about Hephaistus, who was the husband of Aphrodite, and yet Aphrodite was having an affair with Ares, the god of war. Hephaistus suspected it, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Aphrodite and Ares kept it secret, but also Hephaistus couldn't just sort of catch them in the act and challenge Ares to a fight. He wouldn't be able to take him. Also, if he just told the other gods about this, they could easily deny it. He has to come up with some way to both catch them in the act and do it in such a way that Ares would not be able to physically attack him. And so he comes up with this net. He creates this mechanism over his own bed that he shares with Aphrodite that would trap them while he pretends to be gone in Aphrodite and Ares. They meet up with each other, they go to bed, and then the trap falls down on them. And then Hephaistus brings all the other guys to see them there trapped together. So through his intelligence, he's able to come up with a solution for a problem he wouldn't be able to solve, or to point out at least a problem he wouldn't be able to do if he fell back on the conventional means of either confrontation or accusation. And that's probably why this tale is in the Odyssey at this point. At this point when Odysseus is on the island of the Phaeacians, this story isn't maybe as relevant as we might expect it to be when compared with Demonicus' song about the Trojan War, specifically about the Trojan Horse. That's very ironic because Odysseus, whose idea of the Trojan Horse was, is right there. He's in disguise, they don't know who he is yet. So that story, you might say, oh well obviously that's relevant to this point in the narrative. But the incorporation of Matus, the reminding of the audience of the skill of Matus is just as much a reference to Odysseus at this point, even though it's a story about Hephaistus. But the Odyssey isn't just a story about Matus, this unique sort of swashbuckling, crafty intelligence that Odysseus has. Although this is definitely part of the thematic structure of the narrative. It is primarily one of the Nostoi, one of the stories about the returns of the Greek heroes. And remember that in some of the stories about the Trojan War that we've lost, there is one part of the epic cycle called the Nostoi, which is about the return of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon goes home from the Trojan War directly, although once he gets there he's killed by his wife Clytemnestra. At the same time his brother Menelaus, who is reunited with his wife Helen, they end up down in Egypt and it takes him seven years to get home. And if you read Book 4 of the Odyssey you'll read Menelaus and Helen describing a little bit of that return voyage. But there was a whole series of stories about the returns of the Greeks, individual Achaean heroes coming home after the end of the war. And this is Odysseus's Nostos, this is his attempt to get home. And of course you probably remember all the adventures he goes through on his attempt to get home, having to escape the Cyclops Polyphemus, having to sail between Scylla, the sea monster, and Charybdis, the whirlpool, getting stuck on the island of the Lotus Eaters, or getting stuck on Circe's island. And eventually after he loses all his men in the ships, he ends up on the island of Calypso. It's there he gets stuck for seven years. And when we first see him in the beginning of Book 5, we see that he's spending his days sitting on the shore of Calypso's island wanting to return home. There's tears in his eyes when Hermes comes to tell Calypso that she has to let him go. The narrator describes this beautiful paradise where Odysseus has been living, and a goddess, this nymph, has offered to make him immortal if he will stay there with her. And it's clear that she has kept him there as her lover. And he tells her how beautiful she is and how that he can't really give a good reason why he wants to go, but he clearly does want to go. When he's not there satisfying her needs, he's sitting on the shore looking at the ocean, wishing that he could go home. This is an interesting parallel to the situation of Helen in the Iliad. Remember that Helen seems to have gone willingly with Paris, leaving her husband Menelaus. But by the time we see her in Book 3 of the Iliad, she clearly wants to go home. She clearly wants to be reunited with Menelaus. She wants Paris to lose this duel with Menelaus, and she tells Paris that directly. Aphrodite has to coerce her, has to threaten her to go to bed with Paris at this point. Helen has clearly been part of this adulterous relationship and been treated as a queen in this powerful city, but she is ready for this to end. This is not what she wants for herself. She's being held captive by a goddess. Similarly Odysseus is participating in this adulterous relationship with this goddess, and he has the option of staying there. He would be happy and be made immortal, but clearly he needs more than this. He wants to go home to Penelope. After all this time, this is the one thing he wants. He wants to complete his nostrils. He wants to come home. Now, speaking of Calypso, you may have noticed if you've read the later parts of the Odyssey, you will remember that Odysseus was also trapped in the Isle of Circe, a sea nymph who also wanted Odysseus to stay with him. And Circe turned his men into pigs, and he had to use magic in order to turn his men back into men, but then he still ends up staying with Circe for an entire year. In two cases, he's stuck on an island with a sea nymph who wants him to stay there as her lover, and he has to come up with some way to get out of there, and he needs the help of a god in order to do it. It's very likely that this is a doublet. It's very likely that these two stories once existed independently, and then later Homer, or whoever redacted all of these stories into the epic of the Odyssey, had to come up with a way to integrate the two. Had to decide, do I just go with the story about Circe, or do I tell the story about Calypso, or do I do both? And clearly Homer chose to do both, although the similarities between these two stories seem to indicate that you may have divided at some point, been different ways of telling the same story, now they become two different stories that are integrated into two parts of the same narrative. And besides the nostos, this situation that Odysseus is in with Calypso, he is her guest, and there is this bond between guest and host that was considered very sacred by the Greeks. It was protected by Zeus. If you were traveling, you would go to the home of someone who was about your economic status. So if you were royalty, you'd go to the palace. If you were a farmer or a herdsman or something, you would go to a farm. And you would ask people of your same social status to make you a guest. You would be a zenos. And just like Metis, this is a word that does not have a single English word that will allow us to translate it easily.  So the guest and the host and the friend and the stranger, all of these things are one term, zenos. And that doesn't mean that there are different definitions for this one term.  And when you refer to another person as zenos, this is someone who is accepting hospitality or giving hospitality, but even if you don't know who they are, you are bonded by this sacred relationship protected by Zeus where a guest is not supposed to abuse or steal from or threaten a host, and a host should not steal from or threaten or abuse a guest. Frequently, there was an expectation that you would have a gift for your host as a guest, and a host would have a gift for his guest. And we see this relationship, different versions of it, throughout the Odyssey. So Calypso is not being a very good zenos as host when she will not let Odysseus leave.  But also back home, we have a very good example of bad guests. The suitors who are trying to court Penelope, that's maybe a little too easy a term, they're trying to coerce Penelope to marry one of them so that they can have a share in Odysseus' wealth.  And we see this in Book 1. Book 1 introduces the concept of Zenea, the guest-host relationship, and points out how badly it's been abused.  So they are being bad Zenoi. They are not following that relationship. And this seems to be the justification for later toward the end of the Odyssey when Odysseus has to kill them all. It becomes clear that these are the worst of the worst kind of people because they abuse the guest-host relationship, which is a sacred bond. Now besides Book 1, I asked you to read books 5 through 8. And this is not the usual reading. If you've read the Odyssey before in high school, you probably read books 9 through 12. Books 9 through 12 have the story of Polyphemus and the story of Circe turning the men into swine and the story of sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. And these are what most people think of when they think of the Odyssey. These are the things that show up in the movies, movie versions, cartoon versions, video games, that sort of thing. And books 9 through 12 and all of these stories of adventures are important. They're familiar. But that doesn't mean that they're more important than the rest of the Odyssey. If you'll notice, I've divided the story chronology from the narrative order. On the top, if you imagine this line going from left to right, the blue line, the story chronology. This is the story, the things that happens, the events. The fall of Troy to Odysseus' returning home and killing all the suitors. At the bottom is the narrative order, if you imagine it going from left to right. And you read book 1, you read books 5 through 8. And then I didn't ask you to read books 9 through 12 or the rest of it. But the familiar elements, the books 9 through 12, notice are just a small part of this much larger narrative. They also describe events that happened in time before the first 8 books. So if you read all of the first 8 books, which you didn't have to, I just asked you to read books 1 and books 5 through 8. But if you read up to book 9, suddenly at book 9, the story goes back into, or the narrative goes back in time. And that is because Odysseus at that point begins to narrate his own adventures. So within the story or within the narrative, we have Odysseus narrating his story. And what he narrates is something that happened much earlier in time than anything. You may have learned in high school, this is later, do we call it in Latin, in medias reis. They're in the middle of things. So the narrative of the Odyssey starts in the middle of the action. It actually starts much closer to the end. So if you look at that story chronology at the top, you see that when we first meet Odysseus in book 5, this is at the end of his 7 years on Calypso's Island. So this is that fourth dot from the right. This is where we pick up. And all the stories about his adventures we're going to hear later, all this happened much earlier on. And also that story of his adventures only takes up these 4 books, books 9 through 12. And after that, books 13 through 24 are about Odysseus's return to Ithaca and his having to use his matis to go in disguise to find a way to take his kingdom back from these suitors who are destroying his kingdom and violating these sacred laws of Zinnia and threatening his wife and his son. So while the adventures of Odysseus that you probably read about before this class are important, they're not the only part of the Odyssey. They're not the part we want to focus on and forget everything else. And I asked you to read books 5 through 8 for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is because those books are going to become, they're going to be very relevant to us when we move on to Virgil's Aeneid. You're going to see some very familiar elements. Things happening, Virgil describing Aeneis going through certain narrative steps, certain events happening that sound a lot like what you read in books 5 through 8. But also, books 5 through 8, especially books 7 and 8, introduce us to this blind bard, Demoticus, and start to focus not just on the events of the story of Odysseus's adventures and his journey home, his nostos, but also the role of the storyteller. The role of the narrator, not just the narrator of the Odyssey, but narrators within the Odyssey. First of all, the blind bard, Demoticus, telling us the story of Hephaistus, tricking Aphrodite in areas. But then he also tells the story of the Trojan War itself while Odysseus is listening, and that provokes Odysseus to then narrate his story, narrate his adventures, when he says, I am Odysseus whose klios, whose fame reaches the heavens, when he finally reveals who he is to the Phaeacians, and he tells the Phaeacians his story. And after he narrates that story of his own adventures, the Phaeacians are sort of, they are now more his allies than ever. They were good Zenos, they were good hosts before this, but now they are his accomplices, now that they know his story. At the end of book 12, they will take part in the continued adventures of Odysseus once they know what the previous adventures were. So in books 7 and 8, Homer, or using Homer in general sense, whoever this bard was that takes these story elements and puts them together into this narrative and orders them in this way, is putting a lot of attention on the importance of storytelling, of the continuation of a story in order to continue a hero's klios, but also the way people's understanding of their world comes through narrative and how narratives shape what they are willing to do, what they are able to do, and to influence others around them. One thing that does unite the first four books, which are frequently referred to as the Ptolemyche, the story of Ptolemychus, because Ptolemychus we need to know something about, we know Odysseus from the Iliad, so the audience of the Odyssey needs to know who Ptolemychus is and what's going on in Ithaca. This is being set up for when Odysseus finally does return. Those two stories, the story of Odysseus and the story of Ptolemychus will then reunite. But notice through all of this, the goddess Athena is playing a very important part. As one of the goddesses of Matus, so the daughter of the sea nymph named Matus, she is obviously someone who we could count on to empathize with Odysseus. Athena, though she's a goddess, she can't just make anything happen she wants, especially because as we learn later with the story of Polyphemus, the god Poseidon is angry at Odysseus, wants to punish him for blinding his son, Polyphemus. So if Poseidon wants Odysseus dead or at least wants him to spend more time suffering on the sea, Athena can't just directly overrule him. She has to come up with a way to rescue Odysseus and she has to do it at a time when she can get around the opposition of Poseidon. And that's exactly what happens. Poseidon is off in Ethiopia. Remember from the description of the epic cycle that the Ethiopians took part in the Trojan War after the Iliad. And they're very much a part of the periphery of the Greek world. The Greeks knew of Ethiopia as a great civilization to the south or to the east because to get there by land you would have to go east before going south. But Poseidon is off in Ethiopia accepting sacrifices there and Athena uses this opportunity to then try to persuade the rest of the gods to persuade Calypso to let him go. And so she gets the gods, especially Zeus, to agree to this and she goes down to prepare Telemachus to sort of take his place in manhood and in opposition to side with his father. She goes to sort of become his mentor. And this is where we get the word mentor. Athena takes the guise of a man named Mentes and one way to translate that is instead of Mentes, is mentor.  And this is exactly what Athena is. She is the original mentor. So she's acting as mentor to Telemachus but also she is trying to help Odysseus get out of this inescapable situation and she has to use a bit of matis on her own. She has to wait till Poseidon is gone and then get Calypso to let Odysseus go. And so when Odysseus leaves the island of Calypso think about what he's been through. He left Troy with all of his ships full of treasure that he got from his victorious role in the Trojan War and he lost all of it. He lost all of his men, lost all of the ships, lost all of the treasure he'd gotten from the Trojan War. He ends up on the island of Calypso. Then when Calypso has to let him go she outfits him with or at least lets him build this raft and gives him these sort of splendid treasures to take with him but he's going to lose all of that as well. His raft is going to be smashed against the rocks once Poseidon realizes he's on the sea again. And so he consistently loses everything he possesses. He can't depend on any object to get him through. He has to give up even the sash that the sea nymph I know gives him when he's stuck in the water and he's going to drown. He's lost his raft. I know tells him jump off the raft that's not going to get you where you want to go. He has to think about this. He has to think of two potential outcomes and he tries to hold onto that raft as long as he can but eventually he has to give up even that. He has to give up everything. All he has with him are his wits or his matus. And I know gives him this sash that allows him to stay afloat for several more days until he washes up on the shore of the Phaeacians and even that he has to give back. So by the time he gets to the island of the Phaeacians he has literally nothing. He's completely naked. He's covered in sea rime and grime and mud. He's sleeping under these bushes and yet he still has the most important thing for our hero, for Odysseus, is his matus. And he's also of course got the patronage of the goddess Athena. And so Athena in book five has to sort of help him set the stage. This is a rather humorous besides sort of reminding us that Odysseus is able to get by on nothing but his matus and Athena's patronage and protection. We're confronted with that when he shows up sort of naked, lying in the bushes, when the princess of the Phaeacians, Nausicaea, because she's been sent a dream by Athena that she needs to take all the clothes and go down to the river and wash them. Athena is sending her directly to where Odysseus is. And we have a rather humorous scene where this older naked man is lying in the bushes and he needs help from this young woman. But of course what's he going to do? Just walk out and reveal himself. And he thinks for a minute maybe I should run up to her and grab her knees and beg for help. But of course that might not be taken very well. So he has to think, how do I handle the situation? Here's a young woman who could help me. I need help. I have nothing else. So he has to understand how he appears or would appear to her. He's not going to look like this king of Ithaca and hero of the Trojan War.  So he has to approach Nausicaea in a way that will communicate that he is safe, that he is not a threat, a sexual threat or otherwise. And he does this by very carefully choosing the way he describes her. So he grabs these branches to cover himself and you may be thinking, well all the Greek art, the statues, the pictures of men on vases, vase paintings, this sort of thing, they're always naked. Why is this really a big deal that he's naked? Actually yes. The reasons for artistic nudity, what's frequently called heroic nudity are that in art the heroes are portrayed this way but that doesn't mean that they were just hung around naked all the time or fought naked on the battlefield at the time. Probably the best way to describe it in modern terms would be to compare it to comic book heroes. For some reason comic book heroes are always wearing these skin tight outfits so that you can see every single muscle, not everything, they're usually nicely ambiguous around their extremities. But we want to see the hero's muscles, the hero's sort of physical importance and stature and prowess visually represented. Same principle in Greek art but that means that Odysseus, having no clothes with him, is going to appear at best as some sort of crazy beggar and at worst a sexual threat. So he has to come up with a way to approach Nesika in a way that does not scare her away. So he has to keep in mind the way she thinks, the way she will see him and he has to say something that will cause her to see him one way instead of another. But he needs to get her to think of the way he is thinking of her as the way someone would see not only a goddess but specifically he compares her to the goddess Artemis. And the goddess Artemis choosing her, you might think well Athena's done so much for him, if he's going to praise Nesika as beauty shouldn't he compare her to Athena? Given what we know about the decision of Paris, Athena did not seem to be too happy when Paris awarded the apple of Eris that said to the ferris awarded that to Aphrodite and so you might think that Odysseus would say you're as beautiful as the goddess Athena. But he chooses Artemis for a very good reason and that is because Artemis was well known through other myths as someone who was not only a virgin goddess but protected her virginity violently. So even one time when a hunter saw the goddess Artemis bathing naked in the water he saw her by accident. She was so enraged by this that she turned him into a deer and his hounds, his own hunting dogs tore him apart not knowing who he was. That was how fiercely Artemis protects her chastity. So when he compares Nesika to Artemis he's specifically choosing a goddess who is known to be protective of chastity. In doing so he's showing that he is someone who respects the virtue of chastity and therefore not a sexual threat. So what he's doing is using theory of mind. He's keeping in mind not only what she may or may not think but specifically what she thinks about him and what she thinks about the way he thinks about her. So we've got three steps here. He's just thinking, his made us, his sort of craftiness but his thinking about her thinking about his thinking about her. Fortunately Athena has also taken a role in shaping Nesika's theory of mind, the way she thinks, the way she responds to Odysseus. We're told that Athena gives her the courage to be a good Zenos, to be a good hostess. So there's a stranger in her land and she wants to help him come back to the palace because that is what a good Zenos does. That is what a good host does. Whenever there's a stranger we want them to feel welcome. But she doesn't tell Odysseus to go straight back to the palace with her. She doesn't want to guide this naked grimy old man back to the palace herself. And it's not that she's being a bad hostess at this point. She is also pretty crafty as far as theory of mind goes. She knows what the other faicians would think if they saw her leading this man back to the palace. They're going to say, oh, I guess Nesika has her new husband because keep in mind she is now a marriageable age. She's looking forward to being married soon. She doesn't know who. She doesn't have a husband picked out. Her father has not chosen a husband for her. But she is very excited about the fact that now that she is of age, a husband will be chosen for her. And if she comes walking back to the palace of the faicians with Odysseus, people are going to assume number one that this must be her new husband. And number two, who is this guy? Clearly she has not chosen very wisely. So she doesn't want to get people talking. So she has to keep in mind how the faicians, especially faicians who might be her potential husbands that have not, whoever it will be, not being chosen yet, will not get the wrong idea. So Nesika tells Odysseus, come along a little bit later, go this direction. When you get there, she gives Odysseus something to wear and tells him how to get to the palace and says, don't go straight to my father. I'll send him us first. Go to my mother, Arite. And she will be the one who shows you hospitality. Ask her first. And so she does help him get back. She doesn't want to be the one to lead him directly back and have people talk. But she does tell him how to get there, how to get the hospitality, and Odysseus does, he, you know, unbeknownst to him, Athena puts this veil of mist around him so that the faicians don't see him as he goes toward the palace. And he's unseen even when he gets into the throne room until the very moment when he goes up to Arite, the queen, and asks for hospitality for Zinnia. And she, of course, helps him. He talks to Alcinois, the king. The king, of course, says, of course, we're going to show you Zinnia. We're going to show you hospitality. And they notice that they don't ask him who he is.  Then Arite asks him who he is, and he doesn't tell her yet. And even though he doesn't tell her, they still, they not only show him this hospitality, they also want to put on this great performance for him. They want to have this athletic contest, this feast in his honor. And this feast involves athletic competitions. It involves this blind bard, Demonicus, singing as entertainment. And once he hears this blind bard, Demonicus, singing about the Trojan War, he starts to remember who he is. He starts to become Odysseus. So it's not just that he hasn't been, that he's been hiding his identity. He hasn't been acting his identity. He hasn't been Odysseus. Not only has he not named himself as Odysseus, he's still in this position where Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War, has been, he has not been able to play that role in quite a long time. He is still this nameless Zenos, this stranger, this wanderer, who is dependent on help from other people right now, because he has nothing left of his life as the hero, or one of the heroes of the Trojan War. And yet once this blind bard, Demonicus, begins to sing of the Trojan War, then that identity starts to come back, starts to return to Odysseus. This bard, Demonicus, is a very interesting character for several reasons. We have three, Alcindus describes him as the greatest among bards, most beloved by the gods. Odysseus later describes him as the greatest of bards, and then the narrator also describes him. The narrator tells us that he was, quote, the good minstrel whom the muse loved above all other men, and he gave him both good and evil. Of his sight, she deprived him, but gave him the gift of sweet song. In other words, the muse of epic poetry gave him the ability to sing these epic poems, but took away his sight in the meantime. So he's blind, he has to be led out to the gaming area where Alcindus and Odysseus and the Phaetians are. And once he's there, at first he sings a story about Odysseus and Achilles, where there's this quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles. Now this is not something that's in the Iliad or apparently anywhere else in the epic cycle, but it's, this is the two people, or the only person that Achilles hasn't had a quarrel with, seems to be Odysseus, but here apparently Demodocus knows this story, and as he sings this story, Odysseus, who is still in disguise, who still or at least isn't known, he begins to weep, and he tries to hide it, but Alcindus, the king of the Phaetians, notices. And then after the games, Demodocus sings the story of Hephaestus and Aphrodite, and Odysseus asks him immediately after this to sing about the Trojan horse. And the story of the Trojan horse is the story of Odysseus at his best, showing his matis, the thing that made him every bit as important to the Achaeans as Achilles' skill in battle and Agamemnon's leadership. This is what essentially won the Trojan war, so Odysseus is asking Demodocus, without referring to himself, saying, tell me my story, the story of my chaos, of my glory. And he does, he sings the story, describes the construction of the horse and the bringing it to the gates and then the whole strategy. And at this point, this is Odysseus in disguise, nobody knows who he is, hearing his kleos, the story about him that will live after his death, the thing for which he will be remembered, the thing he should feel this sort of eternal pride. This kleos was the thing that motivated Achilles, it was the thing that motivated all the warriors and all the Achaeans, all the Trojans were motivated by kleos, this memory of you that will last after your death. And he's got it, he's now got proof that in this far away land that few humans have ever been to, this blind bard is able to sing this story about his stratagem that won the war. And yet look at what happens, he's not only weeping now as he was before, when he first heard Demodocus sing about his quarrel with Achilles, he wept and only Alcindus noticed it. But now, we're told that, quote, this song, the famous ventral saying, but the heart of Odysseus was melted and tears wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids and as a woman wails and flings herself about her dear husband, who has fallen in front of his city and his people, seeking to ward off from his city and his children the pitiless day. And she beholds him dying and gasping for breath, she clings to him in shrieks aloud while the foe behind her smite her back and shoulders with their spears and lead her away to captivity to bear the toil and woe. While most pitiful grief her cheeks are wasted, even so did Odysseus let fall pitiful tears from beneath his brows.  So in other words, not only is Odysseus weeping as if he was one of his own victims, as if he was one of the Trojan women, but he's weeping as if he was one of the Trojan women at hearing the story of the fall of Troy, which he himself enabled. So this is a very ironic simile. This is a Homeric simile where Homer stops and explains this comparison at length and it's very ironic because it's almost as if he was one of his own captives. Something about this, the way that Demoticus sang the story, put him in the mind of the very people whose defeat enabled his own victory, his own kleos. So if his kleos comes at the defeat of the Trojans, now he weeps as if he was one of the Trojans. So it's this very cathartic moment, very unusual moment, but very conspicuous moment where the hero is sort of becoming himself again at the same time coming to terms with how he became who he was. And of course this is what leads Alcindus to finally say, you must have a name, who are you? We want to know why it is you cry at hearing the story of the fall of Troy. And Alcindus says, but come now, tell me this and declare it truly, whether thou hast wandered and to what countries of man thou hast come, tell me the people and of their well-built cities, both of those who are cruel, wild and unjust, and of those who love strangers, the Xenos, and fear the gods and their thoughts, and tell me why thou dost weep and wail in spirit as thou hearest the doom of the Argyve Denaeans and of Elios. This is the gods wrought and spun, the skiing of ruin for men. That there might be a song for those yet to be born. In other words, Alcindus is not only saying, please tell us who you are, but tell us how you fit into this story, because this story, all of these events, this tragedy at Troy, this victory at Troy, depending on which side you're on, this Trojan War, the gods caused this to happen for this reason, that there would be a song for those yet to be born, that there would be something for people like Demoticus and for Homer to sing about to the next generations. And it's at this that Odysseus, at the beginning of Book 9, finally says who he is. He says, I am Odysseus, son of Lertes, who am known among men for all manner of miles, and my fame, Cleos, this is the word he uses here, my Cleos reaches unto heaven. In other words, now that my fame has been validated, has been shown to me, I will say that I am this person that you were just singing about. And it's at this point in Book 9, and from Book 9 all the way through Book 12, all the adventures about what has happened to Odysseus, all the Polyphemus and the Isle of the Seercy and Isle of the Lotus Eaters and Skil and Charybdis, all of this is within Odysseus' own narrative of what he's been through since the Trojan War, since this is something presumably within the narrative that Demoticus would not have known of, could not have sung about. But now, all of this, Odysseus follows Demoticus' story with his own story, or Demoticus' narrating of the Trojan War with his own narrating of his adventures after the Trojan War. And it's at this moment that Odysseus becomes Odysseus again. He sort of reclaims at the beginning of the very first line of Book 9, he is described again as Odysseus Polymetis, Odysseus the man of many types of metis, the many strategies, the many solutions. So who is Demoticus? Demoticus seems to have a very important role even though it's a very small role. And not only does he have a very important role within the narrative of the Odyssey because he provokes Odysseus into revealing himself into telling who he is and to telling four books worth of adventures, but also in the historical context of the Odyssey and the centuries that followed the Odyssey, it's this character that seems to have led later Greeks to presume that Homer was a blind bard, that Demoticus was actually a self-portrait. And it's possible, although it's very speculative, but what we know about Homer, the legend of Homer being this blind poet that composed the Iliad and the Odyssey seems to be based on this portrayal of this bard. Now he's not the only bard described in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Book 1, Penelope and Telemachus had their own local bard, and this one is the one that is described as being the favorite of the Muse and the favorite of the other gods, who Odysseus and Alcinus both say is the best. Odysseus says that he sings of the Trojan War as if he was there. So this character sort of has fused with the historical character, if I can say that, of Homer. We don't have any other sort of contemporary historical evidence of a poet named Homer, and we don't have any autobiographical information within these texts the way we do with Hesiod. Hesiod describes himself directly. Homer doesn't unless Damodicus is a sort of self-portrait. So in the character of Damodicus, Homer turns the attention of his audience not only to himself as a storyteller, but he turns their attention to themselves, the audience themselves, as the recipients of the chaos of the heroes, whose stories he's telling. And notice that Odysseus is, in books 8 and 9, the first part of Book 9 that I read to you and, of course, 9 through 12 when he tells his own story, he acts three roles. He's one of the heroes in Damodicus' story. He's also the audience listening to Damodicus' story. And hearing his story awakens his identity, and it will set him back again on his path home, on his nostrils. But first, in Book 9, he will perform the third role, and that is the storyteller, because his own story, his chaos, the thing that he fought for on the battlefield of Troy, cannot survive without being retold. And there are two, maybe even three, necessary roles that must be performed in order for chaos, the glory of the heroes that they've won on the battlefield, to be won and to survive. First, there are the people who strive against each other to do the things which will be remembered, and whether they win or lose. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the characters fight not just for Time, that is, the treasures that are given out that signify their success on the battlefield. But they fight for glory, for chaos, by which they know that they will be remembered after they're gone, whether they win or die on the battlefield. But the fight is only half of chaos. It's just the first part.  Without somebody to tell the story and hopefully tell the story well, there is no lasting glory, no chaos amphithon. Remember this term from the Iliad. This is what Achilles and Diomedes and others are striving for. This very old concept that shows up in other Indo-European literature. It shows up in a nearly identical word in the Sanskrit Mahabharata, the epic of ancient Hindu. They're striving for lasting glory, not just the things they win on the battlefield. That's why they fight in the first place. And Alcindus articulates this point when he tells Odysseus, or asks Odysseus to tell his own story. And he says, Alcindus says, Tell me why you weep and wail in spirit when you hear the story of the doom of the Argyve Danaians and of Elios. In other words, you hear of the fall of Troy and the victory of the Greeks. Why does it make you cry? This, the gods wrought and spun the skying of ruin for men that there might be a song for those yet to be born. So all of this destruction, all of this death, the gods had a purpose for that and that is to create this story that will be passed on to future generations. So it's not just about the storyteller, but about the audience. We are the ones that are yet to be born. For whom Odysseus and his comrades, the Achaeans and the Trojans, earned Klayos, created a story that we could hear and examine and learn from. Klayos serves them with glory that will live on when they're dead. And their Klayos serves us, the audience, in all the ways that a narrative shapes our individual and cultural development. And of course, in Homer's time, the development of writing was just arriving in Greece or at least just becoming more widespread. It was being applied to things like recording narratives rather than just recording official documents of high-ranking members of society. And we don't know if Homer was able to write or if he had someone write his songs down or if generations passed between the composition of the Illyad and the Odyssey and the time it was finally written down. But the fact that it was written down lets us know that the continuation of the story and of these heroes Klayos was as important to those subsequent generations as it was to the individuals whose glory these texts were supposed to amplify. How many other stories have been lost because their tellers didn't have the technology of writing or the form of writing, whether it was papyrus or some other perishable medium did not survive the ravages of time. But it also reminds us that the motivations for the Trojan War, like so many other human actions, would not have been merely the achievement of immediate goals, like the return of Helen or the accumulation of wealth on the battlefield from the spoils of war. In these narratives, at least, the heroes fight in order to earn their place in the story and it doesn't matter so much in the end whether they win or lose. That's a point we're going to see in our next reading which is Virgil's Aeneid and yet one of the losers of the Trojan War becomes the hero of his own epic as well as the hero of a new European empire that of Caesar's Rome.


This is literally a follow on. I think he was asking the question and I'm trying to give an answer in a silly way. So we have, you know, we have things like this, they fly around and they crash and sometimes they're going to planes as well. So what do you do? How can you actually control them? So people have been thinking about it quite seriously and there's a lot of money to be made. So if you look, you know, the first one, Airware is an XMIT guy. He used to be a pilot. He left his job and he raised serious amounts of money from ECs and I think now he has like 20 or 30 people working for him.  That's true of Skyward and Drone Deploy as well and of course NASA, the guys in MS has actually got like a project looking at airspace management. So for me the question was can you actually try to do this? We thought much money and limited amount of hardware. So like our previous speaker, I've been thinking around quite a long while and I got into this business like really early when 8 p.m. came out and used to be on the other company for a while. So I have things lying around the house which is like GPS light poles and stuff like that and I thought okay, can I actually try using first GSM and somebody in the audience actually gave me some vets to connect it back. I want to say who it is and if you recognize the person, you know who it is and I tried that and it failed. Then I went okay, this is the next iteration. I should try doing a bit more bandwidth. Essentially it's like I don't get the data back and it's just dropping off so I don't know what the hell is happening and then suddenly it goes somewhere, disappears and reappears. So how can I actually improve that a bit? So I went okay instead of actually having a GSM kind of thing, maybe I should try a bit more bandwidth. So I went 3G. Okay then I was tinkering around with my choice of flight controllers and initially I was thinking of 8 p.m. mega and then I went okay. It's a bit harder. I mean as more later versions came out, the space left on it was pretty much none. At 2.8, I mean 8 p.m. 2.8, you could only run like other copter 3, 3.1 wouldn't even run. So I went okay, if I need to allow other people to tinker with this, I need to use the platform that supports whatever that's available. You should be able to download it straight and then play with it. So I went okay, I'll do big shock. Yeah, this is the picture, kind of what he was kind of describing. Essentially it's the same stuff. All the things he was describing in very great detail. I was trying to describe it in slightly less detail. The bit in the middle is the bit that actually controls all the map in there. The extra bit that Gavin didn't have where the XP bit essentially is sending the data out and taking it on the other side. I mean I'm not really using that. What I'm trying to use is like a maverick kind of thing where I can send the data out and I can actually receive it somewhere. Okay, so this is a standard thing that we tend to use as in the as in the people from the other copter community and other people to just plan the flights. So I took this and I went okay, can I actually take this apart and then make it into like three two or three pieces and then use that to actually control multiple drones. This is an experiment. Okay, so everything is an experiment and sometimes it fails. So this is the attempt that was done. So this was what I actually talked about like a long while back when I was given the thing by the person. So I took a big shock. The next iteration, the first after the first failure, I connected it up. I put some way points, send it out. The offense debt, it failed. And I came back and I went, okay, can I do this slightly better? So when back to big shock, change that, I got a 3G modem. So I can send some data out, plug it into a Raspberry Pi, connected it back to big shock and then send it across IP to something, which is like a server, which I'm going to show and had some head into it. So there you are. So it's like in a real, if I had lots of time and nothing else to do and lots of harder lying around and if I had the ability to write whatever code I wanted to write, it doesn't exist. I would really like to have like security mechanisms. What essentially what that means is like I should be able to bootstrap a firmware and then check, is the firmware valid? And then check the positions as I'm way starting. And then I should be able to either prove to a third party where I am and my calculations are right. And at the same time, I could even prove to a third party that I am within a, if I'm within a geofence, I can prove that I'm within the geofence or if I am outside a geofence, I should be able to prove using the normal protocol that I am outside of it, that I haven't entered the space. It's just kind of interesting. Both cases are interesting. If you are inside, you're not leaving. It's kind of interesting where you won't actually bound it. If you are saying, you know, you shouldn't go into an airport or any areas like that, that the other way around is important. And the thing is like, you know, if you reveal information about, you know, where you are, then there could be lots of instances where you could reveal information about what you're trying to do when things like that. It might or might not have implications. As a Psyphepank, I would really like to have, you know, as much control as possible. When somebody wants to know exactly where you are, give them the information. You don't have to tell them what you're doing. That's the whole idea. So, yeah, that 3G link is kind of a tricky thing. The problem is that it's, how could I say? You can only try it in places where there are proper connections. So it's kind of tricky. You can't go to some place where, you know, you just have GSM, more stuff like that, and try to fly it. Oh, if you fly it really high, it just fails. It straight fails. And it's really, it doesn't have a backup plan in that sense. You can do an RTL, a return on land, but beyond that, you don't have much of a backup plan. So, yeah, so the survey, I really wanted to implement that bet, but I never got to it. If somebody gets really interested and wants to implement, I'm happy to help. Come talk to me. I can give you the source code. I can give you some bits of hardware, so the known broken bits, and you can go give it a try. So, okay, so this is how I set it up. So, okay, I'll show you the thing. So it's literally, you know, bind, okay, then the next thing is like literally bind it. So literally bind the whole thing app. I have the whole thing, essentially I created a whole set of steps to how to bind the whole thing up. Then you can create boxes, and once you have the boxes, and when you fly it, you can actually prevent them from going into bed. That's essentially what it was. What I can't do right now is like a failure can actually make this thing go into the bound. What I mean by that is like, if my hardware fails, I don't have any mechanism to prevent them from, you know, taking a path into the thing rather than out of it. How do I describe it? So I don't have graceful failure. That's what I would describe. My failure is real failure. If it fails, it fails, and it goes wherever it goes. Right, so yeah, that's essentially what it was. It's like I took the other copter thing and put it into the hardware, and then, you know, ran this bit. Well, this is how you bind it. So this is like a Raspberry Pi that I was stuck in, and I just wired it up backwards.  So it's, you can talk to the pick sort directly. As if you have a, you know, telemetry link. That's essentially what you're trying to do. And then what you have is like, from your platform, you're sending out the messages.  So yeah, that's the picture. Somebody help me with this one, okay? Literally, I can't do anything. This isn't looking. Okay, that's all the rubbish bit of code. Yeah, that's more or less what I did. So I have the source code. It works. I've done simulation, most of it. Done couple of flights. Again, I always have a human at the end of the loop because the code is written by people like me. I don't trust it. There you are. Feel free to ask any questions. I'll try to answer.


Is the Google IT automation with Python certificate from Coursera actually worth it? That's going to be the topic of today's video. So we're going to start with an overview of the course. Then we're going to move on to the time that it takes to complete the certificate. Then we're going to talk about the cost. We'll talk about the demand for the types of careers that you would go into. We'll talk about the salary for those careers as well. Then the production value and the engagement of the course. Then the course's chances of landing you a job. And finally, we'll talk about the overall value of the certificate. And we're also going to rank all of those criteria from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. And at the end of the video, I'll give you a final score. And then I'll also talk about the pros and cons of the certificate and whether it's worth it or not for you. So if you appreciate me going through these certifications talking about whether I think they're worth it or not and going through hours and hours of research, go ahead, gently tap that like button and let's get into it. Alright, so first of all, this is a course that has 29,000 ratings and a 4.8 star average rating. And it says that you are going to learn in-demand skills like Python, get an IT automation to advance your career. At the end of the course, you will earn a certificate that you can put on your resume as well as your LinkedIn profile. It's a 100% online course. It's totally flexible. You can take it whenever you want, whether that's your lunch break, morning or evening. It's also beginner level and does not require any previous experience. Let's just start at zero, level zero. Now there are six total courses that you'll have to take in order to get the professional certificate. Course number one is going to be a crash course on Python. Course two is using Python to interact with the operating system. Course three is introduction to Git and GitHub. Course four is troubleshooting and debugging techniques. Course five is configuration management and the cloud. And course six is automating real world tasks with Python. And all of the courses have either a 4.8, 4.7, or 4.6 star rating, which is excellent. All right. So first of all, let's talk about the time to completion. So they say this is going to take about six months to complete. They say that on almost all of the Google certifications. And that's with 10 hours of study per week. But remember, you can take it at any time. As this person says, he was able to, quote, learn whenever it fits my schedule and mood. However, almost all of the self reporting actually indicates that you can finish the certificates much faster. So for instance, this person says, I did it the whole way through. If you're a system admin, it is totally worth it. But really, it's great overall. It took a solid three months to finish. I recommend having an introductory knowledge of Python before starting as they really dig in quick. So from my research, it did seem like you could relatively easily finish the certificate in about three months. And if you compare that to a coding bootcamp, which is often 10 to 12 months, or you can compare that to a college degree, which takes 5.1 years on average, that's really quick. But with that being said, it is one of the certifications that does take a little bit longer. Obviously, you're learning kind of a high level skill like coding. So it is going to take a bit longer, especially if you have zero experience. So for the time to completion, I'm going to give this one a nine out of 10. All right. So next, we're going to talk about cost. And obviously, college degrees ridiculously expensive these days, especially in the US, they cost anywhere from $80 to $100,000 on average bootcamps oftentimes cost $10,000 or more. And these are the obvious comparisons to this certification because there are other ways to get educated in order to land a high paying job. Well, it actually depends on where you live, the price is going to change depending on what country you live in. And if you click on the link below, which I'll put in the pen comment as well as the description, depending on where your geo located, it will tell you how much they cost. But with that being said, there is typically a seven day free trial where you can try it out completely free. So definitely check that out. Now, at the time of recording this video, Coursera costs about $39 a month. So $39 a month, three months time to finish it. That's about $120 or so, not bad. And it's actually really good when you compare it to the alternatives, which are a bootcamp or a college degree. Now, is the certification an equivalent for a bootcamp or a college degree? We'll get to that later on in the video. Now, I'm not a big fan of the seven day Coursera refund policy. But with that being said, if they didn't do that, there'd probably be a ton of people that just abuse the refund policy. So I'm guessing that's why they do that. So when you compare it to basically any other way of getting educated to get into a high paying job, there's really no comparison. This is the cheapest possible way you can do it. I'm going to give this one a 10 out of 10 when it comes to cost. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about the demand. Now on the certificate homepage, it says that according to analytics software company Burning Glass, more than 530,000 US job postings currently require Python proficiency, including 75,000 entry level jobs. Now, some of the common jobs that they say this certificate will prepare you for are going to be advanced IT support specialist and junior systems administrator. Now, if you look up IT administrator on LinkedIn at the entry level, you're going to see about 14,000 results. And there's probably a ton of other IT related careers that you could potentially go into. So I believe the numbers that they're showing on the homepage. So you could of course go into an IT related position. And also because of the fact that you learned Python, you might go into software development as well. Although that is much more difficult to break into. But software developers according to BLS make about $109,000 a year, they're growing at 25%, which is much faster than average. And there's already 1.6 million jobs available. So these are very valuable skills, whether you go into IT, or you try to get into software development later on, there's tons of jobs out there that are going to have a ton of demand, and they're going to be really high paying, and they're also going to treat you really well too. So this one, I'm going to give a nine out of 10 when it comes to the demand score. Next, we're going to go ahead and talk about salary. So according to BLS software developers make about $109,000 a year, as I mentioned before. And according to Glassdoor, you know, one career path you might go into is an IT software engineer, they make about $110,000 a year. Then of course, an IT admin, which is a lower level role makes about $72,000 a year. And then an entry level role like IT help desks makes about $49,000 according to Glassdoor. But one thing that's really great about IT is it's actually almost an industry standard to be able to break in without having to get a degree. So it's very common in the IT industry for people to get jobs without getting a college degree. And so IT is one of those industries where it's very likely that you can land yourself a job without a degree. So when you see that entry level, you know $49,000 a year number, it probably doesn't sound all that good. But I think you should think about it like you're getting paid to learn, right? Some people go to college and they pay $50,000 a year to learn. Other people will get paid $50,000 a year to learn. And by the time you get to that three to four year mark, you might even be past the six figure mark. So overall, I'm going to give the salary a nine out of 10. Next one on the list is going to be the production value and engagement. And I'm going to be honest, there are quite a few negative comments about this certification as a whole. And I think one of the main reasons is it gets compared to the other Google IT certification, which might be the best one. So this person says I've gone through it. It's a bit of meh. The project environment is sometimes buggy and won't register your progress. And I was in the initial batch where the final course in the series was not released until many weeks later. It doesn't teach Python. It's mainly about automating some stuff. This person says it was definitely all over the place. They try to teach too much in one course. It was basically like getting an international relations degree, classes in law, politics, business, diplomacy, culture, etc. You're left with a broad knowledge of things, but no one expertise. This person says I signed up for both and dropped out of Python four weeks in. It's not for beginners at all. It's definitely for someone who is very proficient in other script languages. IT support is detailed and it's easy to cram weeks worth of modules in one week. Sometimes I'm able to do a full week and one night do have a notebook though. That's my biggest help. So this kind of goes back to what I was saying before a software development is a pretty high level skill to learn in a short period of time. Typically, it's going to take people six months to a year to get really proficient at software development. However, IT on the other hand, honestly, especially if you know exactly what job you're going for, you can learn that stuff really quickly. This person says I tried this program and I think it's a pretty terrible explanation on programming. If you get stuck, there really isn't anyone to help you. I have talked to many others and none of them could get past the first section due to not understanding the language and there really isn't much help. This person says I finished Google's Python cert last month. You will need some Python or at least programming skills to work through the course. I didn't find it basic at all, even though I have been working with Python occasionally over the last year, but it's a very good course regardless, lots of stuff to learn. This person says I am taking it and oh my gosh, it's so hard. It's almost like they are trying to turn people away from programming with the way they sneak incredibly challenging problems into the lessons and quizzes that aren't even a fair reflection of what you learn in the modules in quite a few instances. And then at the bottom, they say I don't know how they can consider this a beginner level course I'm about to throw in the towel. This person says this is a perfect description of what those guys are doing. Basically discouraging people from programming. I regret getting started. They're not effective in teaching and applying Python for a whole bunch of unnecessary but difficult exercises. This person says I have taken both. If you are a beginner, start with Python for everybody. It is designed for beginners with no coding experience. In my opinion, the Google course can be a little fast-paced and daunting to deal with for beginners, but it is a good course nonetheless. You can take the specialization after completing Python for everyone. So yeah, I think you see my point here. When it comes to production value and engagement, they didn't necessarily do the best job teaching in this course based on the feedback. But with that being said, if you already have some Python experience, it seems pretty good. But you might want to learn that separately. Because like I said before, software development is no joke. It's not an easy skill to learn. So I'd maybe recommend checking out free code camp or something along those lines to learn the Python side of things before you get started with this certificate. Or if you're already starting the certificate, go ahead and learn on free code camp if you ever get stuck. Overall, I'm going to have to give this one a six out of 10 when it comes to production value. Next one on the list is going to be its chances of landing you a job. So like I said before, the career paths that this certificate leads to do happen to be high paying and in demand type career paths where they're going to teach you very valuable skills. And companies are becoming more and more comfortable with hiring people that just have certifications rather than college degrees. The reason for this is very obvious if you've been following my channel, the value of a college degree has been going down for decades, and the cost has been going up. And inevitably at some point it will reach a tipping point. And I would argue for many degrees it already has that combined with the fact that when it comes to skills that are rapidly changing colleges are typically five to 10 years behind. And so it's actually much better to learn these skills in many cases from something like an online course or a certification. Now, after you finish the course, you will get access to a private job board, which will allow you to connect with over 130 companies that agreed to hire people with this certification. So that's definitely a great perk to have. And on top of that, the certificate that you get can be displayed on your LinkedIn, which is a great way for companies to find you. I can't tell you how many comments I've actually gotten on the channel from people who have gotten found from Coursera certifications through LinkedIn. This is actually like a massive cheat code right now, because people oftentimes aren't even having to apply for jobs with the right certificate. Now, I do think that you will have to supplement this with a great portfolio. You want to make sure that you actually know Python as well. You probably want to do some stuff outside of the course, like I mentioned before. But with that being said, this certificate might get you like 50 to 80% of the way there to getting you a job. However, it likely will not get you 100% of the way there. So overall, I'm going to give this one an eight out of 10 when it comes to your chances of landing a job. Next, we're going to talk about what value it offers. So the overall value of the course itself. So whenever you're talking about value, I also like to talk about risk and reward. What are you really risking when you take this certification? Well, it's $39 a month, right?  So you're probably not going to be spending all of your day on the certification. So that's really not a lot to risk. So if you get like a month into this certificate, you realize the careers not for you, Python's not for you, something along those lines, you can very easily just switch to a different certificate. So you're not risking all that much time, effort or money. And even if it turns out you don't like it, you'll probably learn a lot about yourself and you'll figure out what you actually do like. So instead of going to a college and then three years in figuring out you absolutely do not want to have anything to do with that degree, or you don't want to go into the career path that that degree leads to, or going to a boot camp and realizing after you've already taken it that you don't want to go into that career path, you've already spent $10,000. These certificates are a nice breath of fresh air because you really don't have to risk all that much to figure out what you actually like. And I think that's the true value of the certificate. They are an extremely affordable way to learn in demand skills and also figure out what you like and what you want to do with your life. So if you don't like this one, you can move on to the UX design one. If you don't like that one, you can move on to the data analytics one, or you can move on to the other IT Google certification. So even though I don't think the certification on its own will get most people a job, when it comes to the value that this offers at $39 a month and just wasting maybe a few months of your time at most, this is incredibly valuable. I'm going to have to give this one a 10 out of 10. So the overall score here is 8.71 out of 10. This is still pretty good. It's on the lower side for the Google certifications though. Now the Google certifications in general are really good. Even though this is on the lower side for the Google certs, it's still really good overall. I do think you should do your research on this. Make sure you're prepared for the Python portion. Again, all that information will be down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. You can just click on that. It'll take you to the page and they'll tell you everything you need to know. But this is still going to get a thumbs up from me for the right type of person. This is definitely worth it. Just make sure you do your research and look into it. And while you're doing that, make sure to check this video out right here where I go over the top five Google certificates.


If you ask the average Army National Guard soldier what annual training entails, he or she is likely to reply that it's a two-week yearly training period conducted at a unit's home station. For Army National Guard soldiers participating in Joint Readiness Training Center Rotation 2108.5 at Fort Polk, Louisiana, their annual training looks a bit different than what they're used to. I'm sure all of you guys have heard a lot about it being humid, hot and miserable. Yes, that's going to happen, but it's a good training event and it's something that's important to all of us. For Sergeant Frankie and other artillerymen of the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, their focus is on training and preparing for the simulated battlefield, more commonly referred to by soldiers as the box, which they will be entering and operating in for approximately two weeks. In May, we went through and we did crew drills, which is where you don't have any ammo and you just repeat the motions of firing the howitzer over and over. We did convoy movement training, react to ambush, react to contact, security, all of that. We spent eight days just going over all of the tactical side of things. And that training and preparation will be put to good use when the 39th Infantry Brigade passes through these gates into what Fort Polk residents refer to as Tigerland. So they'll get a better idea of just how well they're able to operate as a brigade during combat. I'm just really excited to see how my unit functions based on the training that we've had over the past year or so. The combat effectiveness of the 39th will be evaluated as it maneuvers on the battlefield and must overcome whatever obstacles are thrown at them. Hey, they're pushing, get ready. That includes reacting to direct contact from opposing forces played by role players. It's very important to be able to know what it's like to have a force on force. It's very important to know what your mind is going to be thinking in that instant where someone is attacking you. I think we're going to learn a lot and come away with a much better force on the backside. Reporting from the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, I'm Specialist Patrick Gillum.