18 minutes We're talking about how fast jays every charges Welcome to the homelab show 77 this is exciting. We're gonna be talking today about content and mastodon and Yeah, you know, Jay just dropped a tutorial video that'll be linked in the description of setting up mastodon Which is of course important, but we this is a topic I think it's gonna be very relevant to homelab people because the reality is we're not working in bubbles We are communicating in a social way and how we communicate is really important and also the fact that you can Disfederate all these different social media ideas and run your own forums or run your own Federated instance of mastodon. It's gonna be a just interesting topic that we want to kind of toss around for people to give Some thoughts to chew on and everything else. So we are looking forward to this episode and thank you for you know patiently waiting while at me and Jay Sequentially because we didn't leave the same week. We both had places to be one week I had another place to be another week So we just had to take a little hiatus on here But thank you for all of you for sticking with us and coming back And thank you Linode, which by the way, I got to hang out with Linode while I was gone The people that work there that also engage in some of the community. It's always fun I actually spent three hours on a bus with the Linode people It was just a lot of fun But if you don't get a chance to spend time on a bus, you want to know how fun Linode is Go ahead and sign up using our offer code. They're a great place to host many of the projects We talk about they're a great service because some things are better hosted in the cloud and not necessarily in your own Office and you know, it's a fun place to host all the projects we talked about in here We thank them for sponsoring a show offer code down below the home lab show if you want to get signed up with Linode so thank for being a sponsor and You could run a mastodon and since Linode right Jay you sure can because I did Right am rather. Yeah, you are you did you drop the video on it? So I think first what what is mastodon? Should we probably define what it is besides something that became very popular since a megalomaniac bought a social media company Prehistoric creature that bones are being discovered. Oh wait not that one Yeah So, you know disclaimer, I'm still learning it but all of my focus and attention has been on building it that's usually how it goes I you know build something over and over again and Until I learned the setup process. So I built it destroyed it built it destroyed it like five or six different times until I had it down to a Pretty much a science and then I made the video about it. So it's a I want to call it an alternative to Twitter And you could self-host it yourself you could join someone else's mastodon server So you don't have to build your own server Because other people that have built their own server will sometimes allow people to register So basically when you build a server you could put it in single user mode So it's your you know your server nobody can register at all or you can leave registration open and let people register on there and There's going to be some feature Discrepancies between Twitter and mastodon. So I don't want to call it a one-to-one Drop-in replacement because it's totally not that it's very similar to it But there's going to be some differences like I've heard and again I'm still learning the user side of it The admin side of it is what the video is about because that's where I show people how to you know how to build it but there's going to be like Direct messages are going to be different as I understand it. They're not quite the same thing. So there's going to be some Differences, I'm pretty sure you can edit your toots as they're called which I still haven't gotten used to Whereas Twitter, you know You've delete the entire message copy and paste to repost it or repaste it every time you have so much as a typo Which has never been fun. So with all the craziness about the new evil overlord of Twitter Just basically burning it into the ground. I I've been trying mastodon off and on for a while And I figured it was time to just take it a bit seriously because I could never get it built I would always run into a problem and it would just fail And what I realized I did some more research well while I did the video What it ended up being is that Ubuntu 20 to a 4 as I understand it on open SSL 3 Mastodon as of the time I set it up did not support that so when you get to that step It would just fail and I couldn't find a way around it then I located that there's a bug report already that somebody put in there and they already put in a pull request and The development moves so fast that I'm I wouldn't be surprised if that issue I ran into on a budu 20 to a force fix now the pull request was there and they've already went up two versions since I recorded the initial footage and They're already at like I think four point zero point two or point three and I was a couple versions You know behind which were what you know current as of the time I recorded the video and in the video I even mentioned, you know when I download I'm like wow that was released four minutes ago So there was literally they released a new version in the middle of the recording process But the process for building it is somewhat involved I feel I feel like it's medium difficulty or maybe a little less than that But there's a lot of components and if any one of those components, you know, you don't get those set up You're gonna have a problem But but the video and the steps that I put in there, you know again, I built it destroyed it built it destroyed it So it's reproducible. I know that when people go through the commands are going to end up with the server it's going to work because I've already ran into all the problems and Made sure that that was you know, none of those problems were actual problems in the video. So It's all set up. It's learn Linux dot social. That's where it is right now and I'm just exploring it and I have to say I the more I look into it the more impressed I am there's there's just some, you know, really nice surprises that you'll find like for example I was curious about how to scale it out and then there's a Document in their knowledge base that tells you exactly the different ways that you can scale out its components if you ever need to do that and It's just a pleasant surprise the way that it's built and the different features that it has and I'm just scratching the surface right now So I'm actually quite enjoying it. Yeah, and to back up just a little bit of why it's compared to Twitter So the category it falls into in our social media landscape if you will is going to be It's a micro blogging service So you right you have an option to put a limited amount of text and attach a photo or a video to that and The micro blogging services actually there were many of them many people know Twitter But if you actually spend a few minutes reading the history of micro blogging services You're like wow There was a lot of players in that market and then you'll find an inflection point by which Twitter turned into the large company that it is and The reality though is especially with the homeland people and those you that are maybe new to homelab or the news of the concept The beginnings of the internet were really much more about a lot of small people running websites Whether it was, you know, these was a hosting platform It was really popular, but it gave a lot of people a way to run their own blogs run their own instances where they shared knowledge and I Really liked that a lot because once you hyper concentrate and put everybody in one place You end up with well all the problems that led to these current status of Twitter In your name of Facebook or any of these others once you do things at the hyper scaler size that these companies do There's just a lot of different problems. You may run into it but if you look at it as a series of Smaller microcosms or even we'll come back to my forums, which we'll talk a bit about later You're dealing with things in a very different way And I think this lends itself to homelab people especially because we want to run our own little Worlds whether that be a gaming server where we have chose to host it because we want to control the parameters around it and Control and moderate the people that come in here and have our friends Share within that and if you don't like that particular gaming server Well, guess what lots of other people have one too and it's the same concept with mastodon where you know, I think it just Became such a big mess with Twitter trying to figure it all out but the concept of running all of these servers, but then Leveraging the modern technologies that we have today To federate them so you can not have to create a login for every person's little Instance of mastodon you can actually I can log in with my instance on infosec exchange Which I'll tweet that at some point that I posted and yes, I'm staying with Twitter We'll talk about that later too, but the ability to then also log into jays and have it interoperable Interoperable with these. This is actually the beauty of a lot of the way we've thought about modern design is before they were just individual individual things now they can be Federated across these platforms so I can have a login I can be friends with the other people and if one of those little worlds one of Those instances of mastodon becomes toxic or not welcome we can unfederate them and say, you know what that community They really like not behaving well So we're going to not interop with that particular community if they'd like to be doing their thing over there Great, so this is the bigger design that is going behind mastodon now a few things about mastodon though It is a free and open source software that you can run self-hosted as jays talking about And it as I said is this is a micro blind platform, but it's actually if you really want to dig into it. They've um been Crowdfunded they don't contain ads. They're a Original author was Eugene Rocco. There's a lot of good information you can Follow I believe it's they started out of germany and it's a very active project And of course as we say the beginning it's become substantially more popular with the Recent events, but the recent events were just in an inevitable thing that happens when you have large concentration of singular monopolies trying to control Sections of the media it just doesn't work out for everybody. We're all kind of individual unique and being able to form our own groups Is actually a better way forward I think this is part of the evolution of the internet in general. I This is just my personal opinion. It's not like I've uh spent a lot of time analyzing this But I you know work in this space every day It's the mentality that you know if the companies don't solve the problem Then we will solve the problem And you could apply that to so many you know so many different things Like back in the day when people were ripping dvds using handbrake to put them on plex when that first became popular because we're going to Take that into our control and Nintendo being against Emulation when all we want is to play our classics. So if they don't solve it then we'll download retropie And if twitter's going to make you know fools of themselves or itself Then we'll roll out something of our own to fix it So it's either the companies bring their a game or we will bring our a game and host it ourselves And then they're out, you know, unfortunately, you know, I have to think about the employees that are laid off So i'm not trying to make it sound like a completely good thing But unfortunately, that's something that's happening as a part of this but at the same time um It's just about owning our data our services and being in control of our online life rather than Someone else because I think these companies are proving again and again that they're just horrible stewards of our personal information and online presence so If the companies keep doing doing this the way they're doing it then it's just going to get worse from here I hope it gets better, you know, I want to be an optimist But then we have solutions like mastodon that might be an alternative if we just don't want that drama Yeah, and it says bench news comes down to so kind of walk us through What are some of the dependencies or why you would want to run your own instance of it? And by the way for the detailed tutorial, yes, it'll be linked down below I'll make sure update description j has a walkthrough video that just got released Probably what half an hour before this show started So it was something like that I was actually going to time it for 11 Which is my normal time, but then I'm like I should probably get it out early Otherwise, I'm trying to scramble to do some last-minute things as we start recording Um, so the process so first of all you asked why would you want to do this? Um, right? Why would we want to self host anything right? I feel like it's fun And it's a good project for and I wish I mentioned this in the video It's a really good learning project and I feel it's one of the best ones next cloud is another one That's really good. But what's what makes this really great is you could just install it and run it as is If you want to explore load balancing and clustering and scaling it out Then you can explore that with the same solution So that way, you know, if you're new to this for example, and you roll this out Then you get to learn about security, which is true of anything And then you start going into the documentation You might look at how to scale it out how to load balance it Which is another thing you get to practice that's used in the real world And I feel like there's a lot of joy for a lot of people including myself when you're learning something that is used throughout The internet you have wordpress for example, which does not scale. Well, it's not it's not built for that And that's done is so this is a better example than than wordpress is for getting started now As far as why you would own your you know run your own server versus joining someone else's that's a Personal thing for each and every individual because they just might want to host it because it's fun to do that Or maybe they just don't really like any of the servers that they know about and they just want to go their own direction or something Which is fine. So there's going to be multiple different reasons I think for me it's always about learning and and having a good project to maintain always makes it a lot more fun So that's why I would recommend doing it. It's just so so much fun to do As far as the setup process Um in the video I actually combined a lot of package installations into one command because you know, I had postgres for the database engine x for the proxy Some, you know ruby packages and a bunch of other You know dependencies and libraries and it's just a one liner and then you install yarn So you need those dependencies and then from there You download the git repository and i'm super simplifying this And when you do that and I thought this was really great Um the mastodon repository when you download it It'll have the system d service files in there in a in a special folder as well as the engine x config in there as well so I think that's pretty cool because you don't have to Invent the engine x config file from scratch You do have to make some changes because it's going to be referencing some paths And though if those paths don't match then of course things don't work Same is true of the system d scripts But for the most part they're 90 there just change some paths put them in the right place and then you have those installed and Once you get it installed you have to have some kind of a proxy in front of it to expose it to port 80 and 443 Use the let's encrypt certificate recommended to get that going The install script is going to ask you a bunch of questions It's going to ask you like your redis password, which there isn't one by default your postgres database info is going to be asked for The domain so you'll need a domain. I think this is one of those where I don't really mention You should have a domain. Otherwise use an ip address if you you know can't get one But domain is going to be the ideal way to do this I don't even know if you can um, I mean you probably can I'm just assuming that but It's going to be like at username at ip address, which is not very memorable So I mean if you could do that, I guess you wouldn't have very many followers because who's going to remember that So that's why it could be a bit of a cost, right? So you get a domain for however much money that domain cost a year You need your hosting Linode or whatever it is you're using so you're going to have a monthly fee for the instance plus Monthly fee for the backups too If you use the built-in linode backup system, it's pretty inexpensive but you have to factor in domain and The cost of hosting and all that in factor that into whether or not you want to do this But if you're if you're just looking for a fun project I feel like it's a really good one and I highly recommend it and I think It's possible. I'm not trying to create more work for myself But there is a big possibility at some point I'll revisit this and talk about more advanced things that you could do with it Which I think would be a lot of fun when I get caught up with all the other things that are in the queue But I would like to do that because there's some really good things about scaling out. I think it would be a lot of fun yeah, um, I think Far as hosting goes in in low down the system What what kind of an instance does someone need for this? How much storage are you thinking and how much processor? I mean, I'm assuming it can run on a pretty You know depending on how much traffic you get for a relatively lightweight instance I had trouble finding Like the minimum requirements, but for my experience. I would say I wouldn't do it on anything less than two gigs so But then again, I mean we're getting like a lot of the vps providers will know it and otherwise the one gig instance one gig One cpu is pretty much the standard, but we're getting to a point now where just the You know linux distribution itself is already using half of that. So I think You know if you want anything serious two gigs is always probably better, but there's a step where um It when you compile the assets It's the documentation tells you that you need more ram for that kind of thing for that step Even going as far as to say, you know, you could if you're using a vps Change it to a higher instance while you install it and then lower it back down to two gigs So I would say four gigs is what I went with and everything worked I don't have to change anything But possibly if you go down to two gigs you might have to temporarily go with a bigger instance just for that Step and once setup is done you can go down So that's one thing one way you could do it But if it's affordable to go with four gigs depending what your budget is I would just do that because I I think You're probably gonna have the best experience if it gets super popular then you're covered if it You know never the baseline is always low you can lower it then I think but I think that's probably a good starting point At least two gigs minimum Yeah, and I will admit this is one of the problems because like the I I believe it's infosec.exchange is one of the instances I joined Where a lot of the infosec twitter people are setting up a option So they have a place to Share information and I know there was some joining problems They have with a mass inflection of users so that is something to consider on there So you have to think about the scalability of your project and that's Going to be a little bit of a challenge when you're setting this up If you're someone who has a large following or plans to build a large audience on your mast on Make sure you're putting it somewhere that can handle the extra load That's and then I believe how is it for tuning retention because If someone uploads a lot of pictures and hey, we share a lot of pictures on these social platforms How does it handle all the storage on that for the back end? So Basically you could do the standard Extra volume right now the server I build everything's on one. It's 80 gig I mean, honestly people might go crazy. Who knows? Yeah, but they also support Object storage as well, which is really good because then you don't have to worry So much about a ceiling you you have to keep your eye on it though because if it's endless storage Then it's an endless bill apparently But I think that might that's not what I did but I might do that because then you know, I don't have to worry about resizing the lvm Volume if that day ends up coming. So it's a little early days. I do know that There's potentially some issues with how many post-dress connections you have that if you're super popular it could be a problem But as you're talking I was reminded though if you're doing a single user instance I probably couldn't justify a 4 gig instance at that point because then you don't have to worry about user signups And and all of that and sure you might have to up the instance to 4 gig to build it and then lower it down But if you're the only user then I I feel like you can get away with a lot less If you're just the only person using it which some people that might be what they want They don't want to Manage users. They just want, you know, their own server for their own use case Yeah, your own instance and then you federate that instance with the other ones for the interactions Exactly, right exactly because because it's your server For your username essentially Right, it's either for your username or your username plus other ones You know, that's really what it comes down to that you manage and in our responsible for But then that network but right you federate it and then they're twines with other nodes and then That's when you start to see more activity Yeah, and that's what's interesting is it's giving us back to the fact that we want to control our own data We should be able to and Be high switching costs and I've actually followed Cory doctoral for a long time or a lot of his books And I recommend people if you want to understand What interoperability really means or what the future looks like he's actually Did a talk at def con recently that you can find online And if you type in like Cory doctoral Com com def con you'll find the talk on there. I'll see if I can throw a link in there But com com refers to interoperability with other services Being able to control your own data and be interoperable. I think that's one of the really good points And it's also what a lot of homeland people really believe and as they should like they're coming back to the concept because For me years ago There wasn't even a way for you to have someone else own the media you use in the same way there is today You know, it it's almost like we just buy media as a subscription service But then that subscription service can lose that media because of back-end licensing So I think a lot of the homeland people go. Well, how do I control being controlled this? Jeff Gehrling, by the way, did a really good recent video on this topic of managing your own media And controlling all that he's got a lot of great topics on that But this is the same thing with any of the social content you create being able to be in control of that It's really what master on means now The answer a couple other questions though about like twitter we talked about it And you know, I feel bad for anyone that's getting laid off. That's not what we're uh, right You know laughing about so to speak It's just kind of the grab the popcorn and what's going to happen today at twitter Are they going to break 2fa again or what but the reality is And this question has come up even though i'm looking at mastodon jay's looking at it And i'm looking to join some of these the other side of it is I will stay for the time being on twitter and it comes down to audience and the same reason people ask is why we Publish on youtube and it comes down to audience We want to get information out me and jay both care a lot about the tech community And so we look at ways we can engage at scale with the tech community and have our content discovered Those ways are still despite uh, the I don't know if they're best or worst efforts by a particular individual twitter is still where We garner attention for a lot of these things and I do have about Close to 18 000 people following me on there the same thing with YouTube is youtube the perfect platform Of course not, but it's still the best platform at the moment doesn't mean we don't look at other options So for now, I will continue to stay on there, but It but it's always good to be exploring and thinking about other options that are available to us What about uj? I completely agree and that's You touched on a lot of reasons why I I stay there so You know, it's it's less of a recommendation for me like my being on a platform Is not the same as someone else being on a platform because to them they're Recommending the platform. They love the platform. They want to be on the platform But being an education company you have to be more careful because if I was to make a statement like um, you know twitter's bonkers and i'm off of that Um, the problem there is the people that don't agree with me The people that don't have a problem with twitter that would benefit from the educational content that I produce Will then not be as likely to see that content So it's almost like a conflict of interest for an education company now granted if it gets so bad Yeah, of course, I would have to make a company decision But I want to be where the users are and sure there's going to be fewer users on twitter But there's still users on twitter So if I you know get off of that platform then it's like I'm saying I don't care about you know The other fans that I might have there So I try to be mindful of that But then the other reason too is it's still early days And we really don't know what's going to happen So I I think it's it's fine to keep a pulse on twitter even if you leave it I wouldn't like delete your account in my opinion You could I don't know if you could pause accounts or whatever you could do there But I feel like Elon just doesn't want twitter at all and he's just this is just one big oppositional I'm so angry that they went along with this purchase that I'm going to show them and run them into the ground as a result of my massive oppositional defiance disorder that everybody knows he has But you know, he's only had it a week. I won't lie. It feels like he bought it a while ago But the fact that it's only been a week has been impressive And yeah, it there's going to be a course correction that mostly And I don't know if you're up to date with this shape, but he hired people back and I'm not trying to make this Layed off people again the I guess the point I was trying to get to is um That we don't know what's going to happen because I feel like with the way he's acting But the next opportunity for someone else to own twitter and deal with it Obviously, there's a lot of money tied up in this But if he's able to to you know, get that money back or find some way to I'm not saying I know he's doing this but I feel like if there's ever any way that someone else takes over twitter Then he's going to be happy about that and then the people that stayed on twitter as long as the the next person isn't Terrible, then I think the people that are there would probably be glad that they're there. However Depending on how long, you know, the time passes if it's months and months and months and nothing has changed Okay, then it's not looking as likely that anything is going to change at that point We've got to draw the line. Okay. This this circus isn't changing at all So I think at least give it a couple of weeks and we'll probably have like 15 more headlines about this and who knows What's going to happen and and our plan is to drop it here By the way, because we didn't want to make this a twitter news channel But we are addressing the elephant in the room the mastodon in a room Yeah, which brought us brought us to this as a discussion topic point because there is a conversion some of the large-scale things that are happening and the things that directly affect people Who use platforms how we disseminate knowledge now one of the other things I want to discuss is I did a post on linkedin and I'll probably repost this Maybe on twitter as well But it's one of the reasons I run and j does as well We both run our own forums and the reason we run these forums is so we can maintain our own Control of those platforms. We both use discourse. We both maintain it We both maintain it so to speak out of our own popp pockets as an extension of the Content we produce and the reason we do that is because one of the things that bothers me is when you build on someone else's platform You never know what may happen or when Someone may purchase that platform and change the rules or simply I know there was at least one it's happened a while ago Wasn't there was it called expert exchange? There was a forum that got very large that then got bought and they started putting all the answers behind paywalls For forums that used to be public Yeah, I remember. I mean there's all kinds kinds of controversy around That site especially when they you know before they had the hyphen in the name, which I won't get into that was pretty embarrassing but Yeah, the you know, it's actually I actually haven't thought about or even seen that so long That's actually it's just one of those things that remember the thing. Yeah, I actually kind of do that was a while ago It feels like a while ago And it's one of the reasons that we both run and host our own platforms And it's it's a really good way to eat whether it's your knowledge base because I seen people suggesting things is when I had mentioned mark text of When me and jay were talking about different tools for managing notes and things like that on your computer It's weird that the comments and messages I got from people to use third party managed platform for it I'm like, why would I put all my data in their platform? Like especially from a homelab show perspective There's a reason we suggested things that you can self host that you remain in control over that you control the data And you don't have to worry about companies Um that you know, they always do what was referred to in the market as a land grab Here's my free tool where you can get free storage on you know, uh some usage of my product and later and this was Comments that come up videos I've did several years ago on services that I mentioned that the service had a free tier And I would say a picture of the free tier like hey Did you know this offers up to 25 users free and of course immediately someone replied? Yeah, they change it to 10 users now like They've reduced it and that's why I always you know And this is why we encourage so much of looking at the products and projects you use What can you self host? What puts you at the least amount of risk and keeps you in the most amount of control of all of your data That's a lot of what drives a lot of this and like I said I think this is the complete alignment with the audiences we have here at home lab. So I I agree and I It's I feel like it's becoming more frustrating and more and more frustrating for us this time goes on because Um, you know, I mentioned earlier that we're solving problems that companies themselves can't solve I feel like we're finding ourselves solving more and more and more things And then at some point there's going to be too many things to solve. I mean the other day it's like I'm driving and I just get this random thought I want to hear this song And the platform just dropped that particular song.  Sure Then that becomes Let's go watch a movie tonight So long as the movie we want to watch is actually there at the time that we set down Like like is that how is that the disclaimer? We're gonna have to give our friends now like yeah Let's watch that new movie as long as it's there. It was there earlier today. I think it'll be there tonight And yeah, like I don't even know it's it's crazy and it's a very different time than what I used to say I know it's in my book of dvds Exactly we and that's why, you know, blu-ray sales might and I hope goes back up because You know, I just because of Jeff Kearling Exactly I bought the whole blu-ray set of the new battle start galactica It's like I'm not taking any chances when I rewatch that and the same with firefly I buy that like every single time they put it out Um, but part of that too is because I want to know that when I want to enjoy something that it's there waiting for me When it comes to these, you know companies. Yeah, I mean We might like a online service today, but tomorrow we might not and that's just the reality of it There's still some issues when we self host things that are similar. For example Um, you could have a maintainer of a project step down and then it's not maintained anymore not updated You could still have an issue But it's not as likely to be as evil or as common as Yeah, we have a google graveyard for crying out loud. So yeah in any large Open source project for some reason if it gets dropped There's always someone that picks it up if it's a large popular open source project Uh, generally someone picks it up and for anyone just make sure i'm referencing the right video The jeff gearling video if you have not watched it is called time to unsubscribe from netflix disney plus etc And jeff talks about ownership or your own media and I think that's completely Uh, a legit thing to really, uh, think about so Uh, definitely definitely a strong consideration Um, yeah, I agree now a couple other things and I seen people mention this and this is also, uh, great I seen people thank me for my true dance videos. Yes. I have more true dance videos coming out because Just recently the new update to true nas, uh Well, a man was it called it's going from angel fish to blue blue fin I think But I will be doing a new video on that pretty soon because true nas with the scale version of true nas is getting more and more Um mature with all of its docker images. And of course this means running your own media is going to get simpler and simpler to do So I'm definitely be following up on that and these are great ways to consolidate and control all of your media The next cloud installer actually works pretty well I've talked about that in some of my recent videos and jay's got if you want to run your own next cloud instance Um Separate like build it as opposed to using a docker image. That's another great option as well So all these are ways that of course that we have uh topics on for owning your own media That's a little that's a lot of our a rally cry. I guess you could say out of today Yeah, and if you go to you know, if movie night is canceled all of a sudden well Don't blame us. We told you to we told you to self oh Um And you know, I think that's just the way the world the companies are but but the internet itself is is always going its own direction And then the companies have to reverse course and follow along eventually So we'll we'll wear them down a bit. I'm not saying they're going to be perfect And there's going to be no problem because companies are companies and people are people But yeah, I think like you said things are going to get easier And there's probably going to be we already have you know, you know, we could buy a nas that has this stuff built in True nas is one we can buy synology as well or whatever it is But um, I remember there was a I can't remember was it western digital that made this media specific Uh thing that you hook up to a tv it was made for that and I think this product came and gone I almost wonder if that's ahead of its time and something like that needs to come back because Someone just wants a what looks like a portable hard drive with an hdmi cable and just load your media on there I think that the market is huge for this right now. So Uh, if somebody wants to you know tackle that that's one thing, um, you know for the people that Don't aren't necessarily us. We could you know run pledge and we're good with that But the other people in our family That's you know, not quite as technical as we are That I think that there's going to be a big market for things like that because people are just going to get more and more annoyed that their leisure time Is being messed with here because that's really ultimately we work hard We want to watch a movie. We want to play a game whatever it is. We just don't want our own media. It was coming back Just own your own media so you don't have to worry about that being the case and I think we're gonna see that more and more Yeah, um, I think that's pretty much all me and you have for today, right jay. Yeah, I think so Yeah, but well, we want it we want to do another q&a episode So throw those questions at us about some of the projects or some of the references you like us to make or some of the topics You like us to cover or things you like us to dive deeper into on the topics of owning your own media Owning your own data and being a good steward of that and I will throw out there because I've done a video on Synology, I know it's not everyone's favorite solution But this is where I keep all my photos and things like that So maybe I'll do there's a lot of updates to change it to came to Synology I'm always might even myself I'll admit mixed on it because I know it's not fully open source But boy does it work good and I do get to own my own I have a methodology way which to own all my own media in a pretty Changeable way, but I'm also interested if someone has a project that they've used in the photo management space That they really likes I I'm willing to explore it because I do have and as is jay We have a lot of personal photos and so far Uh, Synology has been my best place for it, but that's another topic I think we want to dive into but we me and jay are both kind of going we haven't found the solution Maybe someone knows about something I feel like there's never one solution It's almost like there's just um several individual solutions that together equal the solution that we are looking for And everyone's solution is a little bit different than another which is fine But uh, that's just something I seem to notice. There's like I'll use volumio for music, for example and Also plexam, but there's others out there for music. That's not the only one those aren't the only one So it's just like you look at the features at this point and usually You know I said earlier open source solves problems the companies won't But we solve it several times Yeah, and there's several variations and different solutions for it So you just choose the one that resonates the most with you and then that is your um, you know Your overall system Yeah, there's there's a lot to it and we're always learning about new things because uh, I think with the AI stuff That's what I'm actually I should probably expand a little more what I'm looking for Is something that has good object recognition to be able to index photos Google's is the old standard by which to do it Uh, but reality is we take a lot of photos and being able to have a way to index it now with all these different AI things And you actually can do this with a well relatively moderate processor Uh and be able to index and add metadata to photos to be able to find them later based on what is detected in them I think that'd be a fun project to dive into it's been on my to-do list for a while to find Something where it says hey, here's all the objects. I think I found in this Um, and then you can always go back later and readdress I know there's a few projects like that out there because we had discussed it before but Uh, that might make a fun topic because it kind of gets into that Understanding how machine learning works. It's a fun learning project. But if someone knows a good one, please reach out to our forums Uh DM me on twitter. That's the easiest way Uh linked in or wherever you find me. I'm I'm pretty simple personified So Yeah, too easy finds was j and we both have forums That's another great place to engage with both of us and me and j own the forums So the uh, the data is within those forums and you know, we maintain and control all that so All right, well, thank you for joining us and thanks. Uh, we will be uh back next week with another episode We don't know the topic yet, but we're catching we're catching up because being gone for two weeks means ideas have been flying Spent a bunch. Yeah, we have we have a handful. Yep. All right. Thanks everyone. Take care. Thank you


Income tax 2021-2022, Excel worksheet. Create a tax formula worksheet using Excel part number four. Get ready to get refunds to the max. Diving in to income tax 2021-2022. Here we are in our Excel worksheet. Continue it on with the work to our income tax formula. We started in prior presentation starting out with a blank sheet. If you missed those, you might want to go to those prior presentations. We're now taking a look at each of the line items in our formula adding at least a precursor to some of the other tabs that will feed into the summary sheet. The summary sheet, this first sheet, and essence being similar to the form 1040 as we have here in relation to other schedules that feed into the 1040. The 1040 being a little bit more expansive, but the general idea is the same. And this is the way that I think it's gonna be easiest to visualize the actual forms and how they all fit together so that you can make projections into the future and answer questions people might have, like what if this happens, what if that happens, and so on and so forth. And it's also a good worksheet to kind of double check the numbers that are being input into the software, given the fact that we do not have a double entry accounting system here. We don't have debits and credits. We don't have a balance sheet tying ourselves out. Having a double check on the data input is useful. Okay, so now we're going down to, we're on the second half of the formula now. We double checked all these top line items, looking at different tabs that we'll feed into. For example, the cash line item, the adjustments to income, the above the line adjustments, then the adjusted gross income is of course a subtotal here. Then we have the greater of the itemized or the standard deductions, the itemized deductions being pulled from a schedule to the right, the standard deduction being pulled from a schedule below. We made the standard deduction blue because although we're not hard coding this number here, we are doing some data input and have to manually choose which of these items down below will be applicable, single, married, and so on. And then we've got the qualified business income, which we haven't done anything to yet. We might take a little more detail on that later. And then we have the taxable income calculated with just a formula. The average tax is calculated using a formula, so it's not going to be data input. We're going to be picking up the actual tax then from the tax, from the actual tax return because we can't figure the tax in Excel without a pretty complex set of tables to do so because it's a progressive income tax system. So we'll double check this number, we'll implement the tax. So for example, if I went to my tax return, I entered the same information for my Adam Smith single taxpayer living in Beverly Hills 90210. We've got the 100,000. And then I've got this adjustment down here. Let's take that adjustment out. Take that adjustment out, it's on schedule one. So I'm gonna say adjustments. Let's remove that for now and make it as easy as possible. And so that's gonna give us the 12,550 in the standard deduction here for the 87,450 on the tax return for the taxable income. Then I'm gonna get the tax calculation actually from the tax software page number two in this case. And that's going to be the 15,015. So there's the 15,015. Now we're down to the other kind of things, the credits and the payments that are down below. The credits and payments can get a little bit complex because they have phase outs and you've got all these kind of random types of credits that can be taken into place. The payments are too bad, the payments are pretty straightforward, but the credits are a little bit confusing. You might try to put like a bunch of credits onto one worksheet, but they all have different kind of phase out types of items and they're on different line items sometimes on the tax return. So we'll take a look at that in more detail now. We'll give an idea of what's gonna happen and then we'll add to it as we dive into some more detail about those particular credits. So for example, if I go on over here, now we're gonna say, okay, this is where they actually calculate the tax. You would think then after that you would just have how much you paid, how much you withheld from your W-2 for example, and that would be it to give you the refund of the amount that you owe, but no, we got all these other kind of credits that are involved.  So if I look at schedule two and three, then we've got the added taxes. So this is the other taxes that would be involved, including an alternative minimum tax and then we've got the self-employment tax. So if I go back on over here, we've got the taxes and credits and then we've got the other taxes. So let's add that. I'm gonna add another one over here. I'm gonna grab it. I'm gonna pull it to the right. Pull it to the right. And I'm gonna double clip on the name. I'm gonna call it schedule three. Let's call it other taxes. Other taxes on the schedule three or additional taxes. They call it, let's call it additional. Let's call it other taxes. Let's also like the whole thing. I'm gonna go up there and make additional. I don't know. I'm going back and forth. Sorry about that. Additional tax. I'm not sure I can spell additional correctly. There's two D's in it. See, there's two D's. Two D's in additional. Add is the root of the word. And add has two D's. Okay. So I'm gonna select the whole thing with the carrot up top. Right click and let's format this thing. Let's format it. Shall we? Currency, bracketed and red numbers. Hitting the dropdown. We got none on the symbol. Taking down the decimals. And okay, let's make the whole thing emboldened. Going to the font group and boldifying it. Holding down control, scrolling up a bit. So that we can see more detail on it. I'm not gonna get into the detail of these credits right now. We might talk about them more later. But the main two items you would have here are the alternative minimum credit. So, and that could get confusing. So if that's gonna be applicable, then it could be a confusing component. But for now, alternative minimum credit. And so we might have a calculation that would be involved with it. So I'll leave a little space with the calculation. It could be a fairly in depth calculation. So let's leave some more space. I'll make that the brackets and put some color on it with the blue. The blue is right there. If you don't have that blue, it's in the more colors here. Standard and then blue. And then maybe I should have another heading. I've been putting another heading. I'm gonna add some rows above it by selecting row one and row two. Right click on it and insert. And I'll call this schedule three additional taxes. And I'll make that black and white, which is our header thing, home tab font group making it black and white.  And so let's just pretend we had something here. We'll calculate it, what we might go into calculating it more in depth in the future. But let's just, for now, just say that's gonna be the total. Total, we'll say a total, total alternative minimum tax. And this is gonna be summed up on the outside. Sum it up. So there we have it. And then the other big one is the self-employment tax. So self-employment tax. And we could get into some detail in terms of how we're gonna calculate that. We might wanna recalculate it, or we might kinda just wanna note what it is and basically pull it out. So we're gonna go ahead and do that. And we're gonna go ahead and do that. And note what it is and basically pull that from the tax return. We'll talk more about that later, but let's leave a bit of space here in case we wanna do some calculations on it. And we're gonna put some brackets around that. Let's just pretend it came out to one six, for example.  Employment tax. And I'll sum this up. Equals the sum. And sum that up. So when these things take effect on the tax return, for example, when I'm filling out the taxes and I say, oh, schedule two's been impacted and that's having an impact on page two of the 1040, I can then go into these sub-schedules and see if I can recreate what is happening in Excel to get an idea to myself what is the tax return actually doing so I could talk to someone about what it's doing. And so this is gonna be, I'm gonna call this the addition, let's call it total, total additional taxes. And let's sum it up on the outer column, sum it up, sum it up in the outer column. 2,600, we're gonna put that to the first tab now. First tab will bring it on over to the other taxes. So instead of hard coding zero here, I'm gonna say that that's gonna be equal to the additional taxes of the 2006. And then I can go into that sub-ledger for more detail and that'll mirror kind of what we do, what we're gonna do here. And we'll get it, like I said, we'll get into more detail in that when we start to look at like self-employment tax that usually comes into play with a schedule C, for example, but just to get an idea of it. So this is going to be the... Also note, this is where it gets a little bit confusing because this item is from schedule two line three and you also have then the self-employment tax which is down here, other taxes including self-employment schedule two line 21. So they're actually calculated on two different components and you have different subtotals that are happening. So I could have made, for example, my tax formula a little bit longer to kind of add these subtotals where it says add lines 16 and 17 or I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do now which is basically kind of combine those together so that the whole schedule flows into one line item on our formula, which I think would be easier to visualize just in general than having more line items on the formula. So I'm gonna go back on over and say, okay, so we've got that and then we've got add lines 16 and 17. These are the non-refundable child tax credit or credit for other dependents from schedule 8812. Now this one's a little bit confusing because you have a refundable portion of it and a non-refundable portion. So you see it's here on this form 8812 and you can see down here you have this refundable item here. So if I was to add a dependent, so I added a dependent here on page one, then you could see how that will flow in and I can flow through and say, okay, now there's a child, now there's a refundable child tax credit. Now it's a little confusing this year because in 2021, I think they made the child tax credit totally refundable, but the dependent, other dependent might have a non-refundable component to it still. So the point is that you got these two items for that schedule 8812. So how do you basically fill that out on our worksheet? So if I was to reconstruct that, I'd say, okay, well now I'm gonna make another tab over here. I'm gonna pull that all the way to the right and say this is gonna be form, let's call it form 8812, double click. So we're gonna say form 8812. And so we're gonna say child tax credit and dependent credit, something like that. Child tax credit and child tax credit and for other dependents. So we'll keep it at that. I won't get into details on the calculation, but let's just format this and see how it would pull over so I can then select the whole worksheet. I'm gonna right click on it, format this thing. And then I'm gonna say currency, let's put brackets in red for the negatives, no dollar signs, get rid of the decimals and okay, make the whole thing emboldened. The page hasn't been emboldened. It walks with its head up proudly, it's bold, it's been emboldened. And then we're gonna say that this is going to be the form, this was form, what was I looking at? Schedule 8812, it should be schedule 8812 or form 8812. And let's go to that form, 8812, which is called credit for qualifying children and other dependents. So I'm gonna skate 1812, so we'll call it schedule 8812. And then it'll be called that. So I spared you the typing of it. So I'm gonna make that a little bit larger here. We'll make it black and white on the header. So black and white for the header.  Let's say this is the refund. Well, we're not gonna have, well, let's just do this for now. We're gonna say child tax credit. And I don't think there's a refundable portion at this point in time, so we'll have that. And then the other dependent credit. So this is gonna be other dependent credit. And so let's give it a little bit more space. There could be a lot of children. There might be a lot of children. Some families have a lot of children. So I'm gonna say we'll pick up at least that many.  So then we would get, you know, I'm just gonna put a random number of a thousand and this will be then the total child tax credit. And it's all refundable at this point. So I'm gonna sum that up equals the sum. And so we have that. And then the other dependent. Let's add a couple of these. I don't think this is refundable at all. We'll go into it in more detail, but we'll just say that the other dependent credit. And let's just put like 500 for practice. And I'm gonna say this is gonna be the total other dependent credit. And we'll say that this is all non-refundable equals the sum of these items. So then if I go back to my first tab then, and I might wanna make this black and white, that's what we've been doing, hasn't it? For the subheads down here. So if we go back then to the first page, back to the first page, we're gonna say that we've got the other taxes. And then we've got the tax credit. So we're gonna go back to the subheads. The tax credits, these are the non-refundable ones, because the refundable ones, they added down here along with the payments. So I'm gonna go up top and say this equals then the non-refundable ones. I'm gonna go all the way to the right. And I'm just gonna include this one, the other dependent credit at this point. And we'll get more into it later just to get an idea of it. And then this one down here, notice that I've combined these two together, taxes and payments into one item. So I'm gonna have multiple things feeding into this.  Instead of a refund, it'll be a benefit type of thing. So they're kind of equivalent to payments in that way. So I'll pick that one up here. So there we've got that. So that's that little calculation between breaking out the credits can be a little bit confusing and it can be a little confusing to tie into the subtotals that we see on page two as we get down here for the non-refundable and refundable. So we got the non-refundable child tax credit and then we've got the subtotal add the lines together. So we got a subtotal subtract line 21 from line 18 if zero or less enter zero. Then we've got the other taxes which is schedule two line 21. We already looked at that schedule too because that's gonna be things like the self-employment taxes. Then we've got the total tax at the 15, 15 still in our case. So if we bring it back on over here we've got the total tax different because we've added a couple of things in. And then we've got the total tax and then you got the federal tax withheld from W2 1099 and so on and so forth. And then you've got the estimated tax payments that are gonna be down here as well. So in other words, there's two normal ways that we make payments. So we make payments to the government either through withholdings or we make payments through actual quarterly payments which you might do if you had a schedule C, for example. So I'm gonna say, okay, now I'm on this line now looking at the payment side. So I'm gonna put both those things on one worksheet. I'm gonna make another worksheet and then I'm gonna grab it and drag it. Get over here worksheet. I told you to go to the right side and you went in the middle. Get it, so you gotta drag it over there. Make me drag you all the way over here like that. So then I'm gonna double click on it. These are gonna be the payments. So the payments, I'll once again highlight the whole thing. Right click and format this thing. Format numbers, brackets and red. And then we're gonna get rid of the decimals and enter and let's embolden the whole thing again. Holding control, scrolling up. So we're gonna say these are gonna be payments, tax, payments. And let's make that bold or let's make that black and white because it's our header. So then we've got, we'll say these are gonna be the W2, W2 payments. So these are payments that we would get from the W2 forms. We could have multiple W2s. So let's say we got multiple W2s. When you have the W2, you're gonna enter the income side on the income line over here and then jump on over to the payment line at the bottom of the tax return. We'll see that later. We're gonna go up top and say this is gonna be blue and bracketed. And so we might have different W2 incomes. This is on the payment side of things, the withholdings. And also just note that you could have social security and Medicare and so on. But really, hopefully those things are calculated properly and we're really only concerned with our recalculation of the actual federal taxes. Although you can overpay, say social security, for example, possibly if you have multiple jobs and so on, we're not gonna get into that now. Just, we're not getting into it, man. I told you, we weren't getting involved. So in any ways, you could have two of these or more and then we're gonna go down. This is gonna be the total W2 payments, summing it up in the outside, summing it up, sum it up. And then we're gonna go down. How come that's not the right proper formatting? I'm gonna select the whole thing. Something's wrong with my formatting. And I want it currency, currency, brackets, no dollar sign. I need the comma, much better. Mucho mejor. Then we've got the estimated tax payments. Usually there's four quarters of them. So you need maybe four cells, but let's give it one more in case something funny happens. People are doing crazy stuff and have to make more payments or something.  Summing it up on the outside, sum it up, sum it up. And let's say we paid like 5,000 estimated payments. Then we'd have the total payments. Summing up the outer column equals the sum of the outside, sum of the outside. There it is. And then we're gonna pull that over to line to our formula on the front page, which is gonna be in here. So something's already in there because the refundable credits are in there too, which is kind of funny. Those refundable credits are kind of funny. Credits in general are funny. Refundable more so than most. So then we're gonna go to the payments and say we're gonna add that in there too. And so there we have it. So there we have it. And again, if our payments were large enough, like let's say our payments here were 20,000, then we'd get some of the money back. Then we'd get a refund. So that would make it green at the bottom. So you can see our formula now, we'll still keep on building these other pages to support any of the calculations that are pulling into the front page of the 1040. You can see how that could be useful. Hopefully when you're trying to imagine this in your mind, this is the structure you would think about in your mind.  Like box one is gonna be adding line 6A, 6B, and so on in order to get right. You're not gonna imagine that way. That's how you see it in the tax form. You're gonna imagine a formula and then the detail expanding on that in like another schedule that feeds into the primary formula, which is similar to the 1040 and the other schedules that will be involved. And then when we actually do the tax return with tax software, we'll do the data input, we'll let the software compute the taxes, the actual forms, and then we can go back and recompute some components of it in our Excel worksheet more transparently, more intuitively, and see if we can better understand helping us to double check, fix any data input errors, and basically be able to understand hopefully what is happening so we can explain it to someone, someone such as the clients.


Good morning people of the internet! It is surgery day. I just got out of the shower and I'm rocking my Team No Kids shirt from Kristen. I've got my nightstand all set up and ready. I've got my humidifier. This is an electric blanket that's not on so don't worry. And then I've also got a little fan and my coaster and this is like food ready as I like to call it just in case. But anyways it's pretty early in the morning still. I am gonna be logging in in just a moment and start working because I can basically get almost a half day in because it's like 4 in the morning like 4, 4.45 somewhere in there. But anyway and I do have some work to do so be nice to just get that figured out. And I already have my out of office reply going so people know to not contact me even though I'm kind of online but I'm kind of not. I'm working on a special project anyways. I just want to check in say hello. I'm gonna give the camera over to my mother and she'll probably vlog me in like recovery or something. But yeah that's that's it for the moment and Doyle is contemplating. Come on up. Wow. Yeah so anyway hi buddy. Hi buddy. Oh oh I smell clean. Nice okay um but yeah next time you see me I won't be able to have kids. But Emily how do you feel? I'm excited. Okay let's get this over with. All right she had to take her special shirt off. Yes I did. It's in oh the nurse took it off. Okay all right tell them about your shirt. Well I already talked about it a little bit. Oh oh okay my friend Kristen so sorry. I ate it and I love it so I'll be rocking that later. Okay all right all right well we're just waiting for the medical staff to come back in. Yeah we're gonna hook me up with the the good drugs and all that stuff. Oh you don't have that yet okay. I don't have my ID yet. Okay not yet so all right all right sounds good. We'll both check in later. All right she's got a hat and she's got she's got the I got the things she got the stuff. This thing's gonna stick me in the eye. I know she's got her no more eyeballs in so those things are gonna like blind her but she's gonna be going in a couple of minutes and doing the procedure and getting ready to move on with the rest of the rest of the life. Yeah they're gonna give me a good cocktail. Yeah that's what they said. I promised it's it's gonna be good. Yep I said I like Prosecco and I said okay well we'll do that. So there's been a lot of people in here visiting with her so there'll be a bunch more so yeah but things are things are moving along very much so. All right so see you on the flip side. All right okay bye. So Emily's all done with her procedure and everything went well. Hi. I'm thirsty and I have to pee. She's trying to put her contacts in but getting getting it out of a plastic bag has been it's a she's on a struggle bus right now but she's gonna make it. If you are even trying to do it there you're doing better than and I'm gonna wait till he gets out of that bathroom because that's what I'm doing. I hope it's not turd Ferguson. Oh I don't think I can sit up here. Okay. Nope. I might need a little mirror. Let me see I think you have one. Thank you. Struggle bus. All the more the hot bastard spirits. Yeah this is difficult doing it under anesthesia and yeah well I mean it could wait until you know later on too. I know but everybody looks like blueberries. Well and like Smurf blueberry. Well the Smurf blueberry thing is consider it as part of your surgical oh oh you might have to edit that part out. No. Keep it in. Do you have one in? No. Hey look I'm the same person. Kind of. Oh. Zansphalopane James. Oh man. This is entertaining. Dyches stick into your fingers. I know. She is having so much fun trying to do this. Do you need more gel? No. No. But I need it. You're slipping backwards. The first time I've ever worn contacts before. Awesome. Did you get it?  I can see. Well that's bad news. Maybe just half. Okay so here she is. She's in a much better shape now. She's got her eyeballs in so she can see stuff. That was a challenge. Yeah she's gonna get a piece of toast pretty quick and she's moving around pretty well so all in all. It went good. I don't remember playing. A good day at the at the hospital. They're gonna give me all the pain meds. I know. She's got some good stuff but mom is monitoring them so yeah.  I know. That's why you have that designated adult. Adult? Yes.  Yes. Is that like last time? Well when you tell me to go away it's been this time to go. Probably. But we'll see. 48 hours this time baby. Yep and they said everything went well. There was no scar tissue so they did everything exactly as planned. So things are good. Yeah. Life is good. Yeah. So we're moving on to the next thing now. Yes. I gotta make an appointment for a couple weeks. Yeah. Follow up. Make sure everything is going good and I have three incisions. Okay. I already felt them. They're small. Okay. So it's like we. Sure. All right. Okay so things are good at the at the hospital and procedure went well. So everybody's happy about that. Yes. I'm very dry. I feel more dry on the inside because they had to like put a tube down my throat. Yep. They put a tube down your throat. I don't remember any of it. And your throat's gonna feel kind of scratchy for a couple days. All the soup. That's right. All the soup. Yeah. All right. Nice. Okay. Good job. Good job. I am home now and the only thing that hurts is my throat really hurts because they had to like I don't know if it's called intubate or whatever but they had to put a tube down my throat. Anyway but I am not super tired but I feel like I'll be tired after this but I am gonna have some of this. This is an Aldi brand. It's the Extra Noodle with Chicken Broth and yeah. I haven't had this before but it was like a dollar for a two-pack and this is just like I mean it's packaged just like the Lipton Extra Noodle which is like I think at my store they're like $2.89 or like $3 or something.  I just make something else and then I am replenishing with a Gatorade so that's what's going on but my voice is going to be hoarse for the next couple of days. But I've got my little soup packet here and water is thinking about boiling so yeah and then mom's over there eating a salad or attempting to eat a salad. She's thinking about yeah she's she's got to get get in the zone. So anyway figured I'd check in but I'm probably gonna take a nap and I will check in with you guys later. So it's now dinner time and surgery's over. However unfortunately I did have to make a pit stop to the ER. TMI one of my incisions wasn't completely clotted so they just had to do a couple of things to it but it's fine everything's fine. I actually didn't take very long in the ER at all which was awesome but Doyle is begging for food and there's the favorite mama. She is making grilled cheese sandwich because that sounds kind of good and soft enough and then she's gonna have the tomato soup and I'm gonna have this like it's the same thing I had for lunch. It's like that generic Lipton packet thing from Aldi because it's just easy. So yeah that's that's what it is. So that's what we're having for dinners. We stopped we stopped for ice cream. It was really good because Emily's throat is kind of it hurts kind of scratchy and hurting.  Yeah shoved it down and then pulled it out. I'm most sore in my throat than anything else like the incisions aren't that bad it just feels like a really bad cut whatever so yeah we had to stop for a cement mixer at Culver and it felt really good it's it's awesome. It was it was tasty. I might need uh you know I might need some more ice cream tomorrow because I was a love girl today. But yeah we're gonna eat all this deliciousness and don't comment on my grilled cheese pan it's it's gross I know but what do you do it's white I can't I can't do it guys I just can't do it and then just doil oh there he is there he is just waiting for the grilled cheese to be done I'm sure yeah yeah that's what you think too cool all right I'll check in with you guys in a little bit so my mom and I have a heated debate going more not heated more I just think she's gonna be a serial killer one day but so cutting your grilled cheese sandwich if you decide to cut your grilled cheese sandwich how do you cut it I just cut it down the center or I'll do like corner to corner or if you have like a little kid you know in quarters or triangles or whatever would you gonna see how my mom cut sandwiches I feel like I have failed her as a daughter so this is the way I cut my sandwiches all the time I know but just all sandwiches just show how you're gonna do it and then people can like voice their opinions in the comments to see like how horrible this is well I like to have my sandwiches cut who does that like this not corner to corner and not straight that's like you're so I don't like it this way I don't like it that way I don't like it that way I like it like this I think she's just having a midlife it's the best it's the best way no it is not it's the worst way I especially like it this way why it just adds I don't know it just adds to the flavor I don't know I always eat my sandwiches like this I think she's a little nuts yeah probably I don't know you're weird well weird is that weird it tell me tell me in the comments if it's weird guys okay all right is it any weirder than separating your food so it doesn't touch no because that's the only way to eat it oh duh right they know that yeah yeah you have to have a separate plate and yeah yeah yeah duh I know oh all right well she's gonna eat her cereal killer sandwich and I have my normal sandwich yeah well hello I am officially team no kids now and uh I am in bed I have my heating pad I just turned it on I got from target so yeah um kind of sucks I had to go back to the ER for my incision issue but thankfully it's not infected or anything and the um the ER doctor that I saw is also a surgeon so he said that um really wouldn't tell if anything is infected for the next like 72 hours so he's like just keep an eye on it and um he got it he got it fixed back up so that's good I'm like out of breath but he's like walking upstairs oh my gosh um I my throat still hurts more than anything um but uh I just took three Advil so hopefully that will help and uh more TMI I stopped or my mom and I I didn't drive don't worry um stopped at Walgreens I got some stool softeners because they um were telling me that like all the meds and stuff I was taking like all the anesthesia and all of that and then the prescription medication that I have um sometimes like back you up so I got some stool softeners so I put that in my pill regime for the next couple of days so hopefully that'll help and um yeah I think I'm just gonna sit here with the heating pad on and go on the internets maybe watch a little youtube or something I'm not in the mood to edit so I'm not gonna do that and then um my plan is I have a big project at work um tomorrow or anytime really it doesn't require a lot of brain power so I'm gonna do that but I know today's the last day of vlogtober um but I'm gonna keep you guys posted on like social and all that and hopefully this weekend if I'm feeling better I will probably have a plethora of the rest of the vlogtober is up for you guys but yeah I am glad that this happened I am so happy and um I think I said this before in the vlog but I've been like waiting for almost a decade for doctors and surgeons to take me seriously when I said I don't want kids and I'd like to completely prevent it 100% and have surgery you know being turned away at 31 years old because I was actually engaged at the time but I wasn't married and I had had no other kids or any previous pregnancies you just felt like for me I felt just like really defeated like I couldn't make decisions about my own body which made me really upset clearly um and don't get me wrong like I love kids I just don't want any for me and the funny thing is like I always felt that way there was a time I think I've said this before but there was a time in my like mid 20s where I was dating somebody that really wanted kids and we had mutual friends that were getting married and having kids and all of that and I thought well maybe it was like 26 or something 27 and I said well maybe it has said to myself well maybe I just haven't like felt that urge yet you know and um as soon as our like mutual friends started having kids and getting married and everything I was like oh no I don't want this for myself it was like more of a validation that this wasn't the path for me um that's one of the many reasons we broke up but um you know I wanted him to be happy I wanted him to have kids and all that and now he has two um amazing daughters so that's awesome for him um but anyways but yeah I've I've known my whole life I've known since I was a little kid that I didn't want any but um the other benefit to it is this is gonna hopefully help with my migraines which will be great my migraines are hormonal so um I'll have a better treatment plan with my general doctor about my migraine problems so but that will be later on down the road once I heal and once all my stomach issues get taken care of so it's probably gonna be like next year unfortunately but you know you gotta take care of the bigger problems first so anyway I think I've rambled on a little too much Doyle is down there somewhere I don't think you can see him I don't know got my little setup over there and um anyway I'm gonna go and thanks for hanging out with me in vlogtober I really appreciate it I'll be back with more regular content videos very very soon and um I'll just I'll just see you soon all right thanks for watching bye guys well folks it's time to kick it old school so you can feel cool


This week, members of the Kidney Cancer Association are attending and exhibiting at an important cancer meeting taking place in San Diego, California. The Conquer Cancer Foundation of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, has announced the first-ever recipients of its Quality Care Symposium Merit Awards. This year's recipients will be recognized at ASCO's inaugural Quality Care Symposium that goes on through December 1st. The ASCO Merit Awards are designed to promote clinical cancer research by young investigators, a category that's extremely important to the Kidney Cancer Association. This provides them with the opportunity to present their research at the Quality Care Symposium. It brings together researchers, patient advocates, health system administrators, and practicing physicians to share results in measuring and improving the quality of cancer care. These recipients are selected based on the scientific merit of their abstracts, and they receive funding to help with travel expenses to attend the meeting. Reporting from San Diego, California, I'm Bill Brough.


Let's say you and your friend are in front of this building and both of you want to get from the ground floor to the top floor which I have marked by points A and B and let's say one of you decides to take the lift and the other person takes the stairs. So in this situation let's say we want to calculate two values and these are we want to know what is the vertical displacement as you both go from A to B using different paths and we want to know how much time is taken to go from A to B in both of these cases that is by the lift and by the stairs. So in the first case it doesn't really matter if you take the lift or if you take the stairs. The vertical displacement is going to be same because what we're doing is if we think of this ground as our point of origin we are simply calculating the difference that is yB minus yA and in both cases the displacement is the same you can take the lift or you can take the stairs but you both are starting from the same initial position and you're both ending at the same final position. So if you think of vertical displacement as a function it is only depending on the initial and the final states and it does not depend on the path that you have taken to get there. Now let's look at the second calculation which is the time taken and assuming this is not a particularly slow lift we know that the time taken by the lift will be less than the time taken through the stairs. So here both you and your friends started from the same initial position went to the same final position but the time taken was different because you took different paths to get from A to B and so if you think of both of these quantities as functions the first one depends only on the initial and the final position whereas the second one is dependent on the path that you took to get from A to B. Now let's see how we can use this idea in the context of thermodynamics. In the situation that we saw just before we had an initial and a final position that we called A and B and if you are studying a thermodynamic system we need some ways to define these initial and final positions. So for that we use some thermodynamic variables which are things like pressure, temperature, volume and number of moles. So these are some of the most commonly used thermodynamic variables and how we use them to describe the state of a system is that we can say that the system went from some initial state with pressure P1, temperature T1, volume V1 and N1 number of moles to a state 2 where the pressure then became P2, the temperature was T2, the volume changed to V2 and the number of moles was N2. So these variables describe the initial state and these describe the final state of the system. Also it's not necessary that all of these have to be described to define the initial state. We could just describe let's say the initial volume and number of moles and the final volume and the number of moles or even just one of these. The point is we could be using a combination of any of these variables to describe the initial state of the system and the final state of the system which was like identifying the points A and B in the example that we saw before and just like we saw before we can also have thermodynamic functions which are either state functions or path functions. The difference being that the state functions will depend only on the initial and the final state. And the path functions depend on the exact path that we take to get from state 1 to 2. Let's go through them one by one. If we think of a system which is going from this initial state to this final state and let's say we know that the initial pressure was P1 and the final pressure was P2. If we look at the change in pressure which is the delta P that will only depend on the final and initial pressures because the delta P will be P2 minus P1. So this is an example of a state function. Similarly, we can also look at the change in temperature or the change in volume or number of moles and all of these are state functions. Another state function that we have is internal energy which is denoted by a U and if you think of a box with some gas molecules in it, the internal energy is a sum of different energies like the rotational energy of the molecules or the bond energies. So this is one catch all term that we use for all these different energies. Then there is also entropy which is denoted by S and entropy is a measure of how the order in a system changes as it goes from say state 1 to state 2. State functions can also be a combination of other state functions like we have enthalpy which is internal energy plus pressure times volume or Gibbs free energy which is enthalpy minus temperature times entropy. And don't worry if all of this seems a little bit unfamiliar right now because you learn more about them as we go through more thermodynamics. But the point is all of these quantities the internal energy, entropy, enthalpy, Gibbs free energy, all of these are state functions which only depend on the initial and the final state. And on the other side we have path functions. The most common examples of path functions are things like work and heat which is basically the work done by our system or the heat added or removed from the system. So to see how these are path functions, let's take an example. Let's say we are going from some initial state p1 v1 to some final state which is p2 v2. So for this change if I draw a pv diagram which is basically a graph of pressure versus volume, it will look something like this. So here we have our initial pressure and volume and this point corresponds to the initial state and this point is the final state where the pressure has now become p2 and the volume is v2. So as we go from 1 to 2, you can see that the pressure and volume both are increasing. And in this situation I can think of two ways to get from 1 to 2. So let's say I first start at this volume v1 and I keep the volume constant and I only increase the pressure. So I go from here to here and after increasing the pressure to p2, I then increase the volume from v1 to v2. So what I've done is I've broken this into two steps. So apart from this, another way to get from 1 to 2 would be to first increase the volume from v1 to v2 and then increase the pressure in the second step. Via both these parts, we got from our initial state to our final state, but we took different approaches to get there. So now if we were to calculate the work done on the system as we go from 1 to 2, it will depend on the path that we choose because we know that the work done in this case where we have a pv diagram is the area under the curve and we'll see later how we can derive this. But for now, let's just take it as a fact that we know that the area under a pv diagram is the work done. So in case of the yellow path, the area under the curve in this case will be this portion, which I've shaded in yellow here. Let me just separate this out. And now in the second path, if we were to calculate the work done, it'll be the area under this green curve, which is this shaded region. Let me just separate this out as well. So just by comparing these areas, you can see that the work done in case of the yellow path is much more than the work done in case of the green path. Although we are getting from the same initial position to the same final position, which is why we know that work is a path function. And right here, you can also see how pressure and volume are state functions because irrespective of the path we take, the yellow one or the green one, the initial position is at one and the final position is at two. So as long as this is the initial position and this is the final position, the difference in pressure or difference in volume is going to be the value at two minus the value at one. And unlike the work done, it does not depend on the path we take, which is why both of these are state functions.