Hello there! My beautiful, lovely, talented, and delightful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Cakes would like to welcome you as well. Thank you so much for joining us here today. Though I do have a furry guest for the intro of my video, I'm going to have a real human guest for the rest of this video, and I'm really excited to bring it to you. If you know me or you've watched my channel, you know that mental health and mindset are things that matter to me greatly. As many of us have, I've experienced a great deal of trauma in my life, and I've gone through difficult things like losing my leg, hence this channel name. And I came across a YouTube channel not that long ago that talked about some fascinating stuff when it comes to mental health and theater and prison. Now while this video does not relate directly to amputation as many of my videos do, I would highly encourage you if you have the time to listen to this full conversation. What Dominic has to say about mental health and how he's seen it play out in prisons with the use of theater, which is just a fascinating combination to me, is really eye-opening, and I learned some really cool things throughout the course of a conversation, like for instance, why it really is okay to cry in a way I'd never thought of before. You'll understand what I mean later on. And I'm really excited to introduce him to you guys. Also, we did do a video on his channel. There may or may not be rock climbing involved. It was a pretty fun time. So when you're done watching this video, check out the link down below to check out his video and his channel. I also want to note that as we dive in, this video is sponsored by my patrons over on Patreon, and an extended version of this video, kind of the full conversation will be posted over there later today. So keep an eye out for that. Check it out if you're interested. Link on the screen and down below. Without further ado, let's dive in. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, intelligent, talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. I'm in a new and very bright and sunny location with a good new friend of mine. Welcome, Dominic Syracuse. He's also a YouTuber who I met very randomly and it has been such a gift to get to know you and learn a little bit more about you also, but then also what you do.  And I would love for you to tell people what it is. Sure. So thank you for having me, Tom. I love your channel. I created a business called Cognitive Behavioral Theater, which is where I use theater and improv games to teach the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy. So I'm not, I'm in no way a licensed psychologist or anything like that. Yeah. But I've been using acting games and improv techniques to teach cognitive behavioral intervention in maximum security prison. That's so, so, so cool. That was one of the first videos of years that you clicked on. I think it was like, like, should I learn in prison? I was like, interesting. All right, let's check this out. And talking about how you use theater to help people live and process life is absolutely fascinating. How did you find yourself doing that in maximum security prison? So I went to prison. I mean, my favorite thing is to go is to talk to people, you know, like when I was in prison, you know, get some odd reaction. So what I, the way I fell into it was I have been acting my whole life. Yeah. So ever since second grade, it was, it was the place that my parents made me go because I had crazy ADD. Oh, yeah.  But you have to behave in school. And I said, okay, deal. And I started doing theater and it was just my life. I was president of drama club and middle school. So forever for always, basically. Always. And then, and then I ended up going to college for it. And I went and I ended up getting a master's degree. The woman who created the program, she believed that growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous, which is fascinating. I would never, that would never cross my mind. Acting such a solipsistic art form, it's everything is about me. Yes. My face, my voice, my, which is odd, but very accurate. Yeah. It's very look at me. Yeah. Look at me. It's all about me. And as much as I loved it, I had this burning passion to do it. Yeah. There was a little bit of guilt there. I was like, well, what am I doing to help others? You know, and so that's what I would do to kind of to balance it. I would go and help others and the two fed into each other because the more I learned about the brain and how the brain works and people in different situations, the more I kind of had to draw on right as well. And then when I go to my master's program, I find out, Hey, this is a way you can actually do both at the exact same time. You can teach acting to people who are in extreme situations. I realize is I can use these acting techniques that I've been learning my whole life to teach behavioral therapy. And instead of building a character, I would help people build their character. Interesting. And what I found especially in prison where it's people who are chained up, constantly told to sit down, shut up, behave, you know, spoke only when they're spoken to and then to borrow a lot from my favorite poet and then are never spoken to. What this did was we created the free space for people to express themselves in a way that is nonviolent, is completely safe as in you won't be judged for doing it. And in fact, you'll be praised for just the polar opposite of probably what I think most people have been told their most life. Anyways, unfortunately, in our society, we start at argument. Yeah, like argument is where we, I am right. It just goes to fight in a second. So that was one of the first things we teach people in jail is listen, anything in this room is up for discussion. So if you have a different point of view, that's awesome. Yeah. But the goal is always to learn from one another. Yeah. And whenever you want to speak your opinion or your mindset, you have the floor and you get to share with us what you think and why you think it. And that just creates a environment where people can go, okay, so I'm able to share this thought without one, afraid of having to battle for it. Right. And then two, it creates an atmosphere of learning. Yeah. So that everybody goes, oh, I see why people do that. I think you told the story on your channel, I think it was one of the first videos I listened to, but I think that has a lot of power when it comes to seeing people as human beings, which we kind of don't do a lot in our society. How have you seen that play out with people telling their stories or hearing other people's realities? I mean, have you seen good things or bad things? Absolutely. So the story that I love the most was we went into a women's prison in Los Angeles. Yeah. Start by just playing these fun games. Yeah. Like, all right, let's get everybody loose. Let's get everybody laughing. Yeah. A little more comfortable looking weird or whatever. Yeah. I mean, even that, it creates this explosive energy. Yes. Because they're like, oh my goodness. Then what happens is once you're opened up with laughter, you're open. Yeah. You're open rather than closed. Yeah. And so once you open up, then we start being vulnerable and encouraging others to be vulnerable. As in, I'll start sharing something about myself and my life and all of that. And then what we do is we teach people how to take their life story and turn it into a one person show. Oh, okay. Yeah. So they can stand up in front of the cell block. That sounds terrifying. Right. Really cool, but terrifying. They get to share their story. And coming from a psychological component, what I've learned now, learning about cognitive behavioral therapy, is that when you are listened to, when somebody's just engaged in listening, like you're listening to me right now, it's the same feeling in the brain as being loved and comforted. Oh, that makes sense.  Right. So that's the cool thing is that when, so for them just to have people listen to them. Yeah. Just listen is making them feel loved even in that moment. Yeah. You know, which is huge. We're doing these shows and all these women are sharing and there was this one woman who just really took to the exercises. Okay. It's kind of like my star scene. Yeah. And she wanted to tell her story and we practiced it for a week and then it was time to come up live and share. And she came up to me and she went, I can't, I can't do this. And I said, well, why not? And she said, we're like, we practiced all week. Yeah. It's time. My director brain's going like, go Sage. She's like, she's going, she said, listen, this has been really, really great. She's like, I feel so great doing this. Yeah. But she's like, you're going to ask me to go up in front of all the inmates in this prison and perform this.  There's one person specifically who's, I mean, actively tried to stab me before. And so you're asking me to go up in front of them and being vulnerable. Right. Like show weakness. Right. The stakes are much higher. Yeah. It's not just, I'm afraid to speak because people are watching me. It's, I'm afraid to show any chink in my armor because I'm just going to give them ammunition to, you know, that they can use against me. Yeah. And I said, okay, I completely understand. I said, here's the thing. Her whole piece was about how she lost her daughters because of her meth addiction. The state took away her, her daughters. Yeah. And she said that, and it was this beautiful piece about how meth, she thought meth was, was helping her making her feel better. It ended up being a thief. It took away her daughters. It took away her life. It took away her freedom. Wow. And I said, I could go up and do it for you, but it's not going to be the same. That's not your story. Right. And she said, no, no. She said, I'll, I'll tell my story, but you have no idea what I'm, what I'm, what you're asking me to do. Yeah. So then she gets up, she performs it, and there was not a dry eye in that. Yeah. There was not a dry eye.  The other castmates were crying. Yeah. The warden was crying. Everybody was crying. And after the show, we did a Q and A and we let people stand up and talk. Yeah. And, and this one woman stands up and she kind of looks at me like, that's the woman that, you know, that I've had this beef with. And the woman is crying and she goes, listen, I know you and me have had our differences. But she said, I had my kids taken away because of meth too. I know what you've been through. Wow. And so anything between us is over now.  Like I've heard this story before and I still want to cry. So, so like I said, it was after that, that they came up and said, Hey, we got an anger management program. Yeah. We'd love for you to come because you get, they get time off their sentence for doing this. Oh, cool. Yeah. You know, you go through this program, but we're not having a lot of success having them open up emotionally. So, so then I just went cool. And I started learning a lot about the brain and psychology was just great because, you know, I've dealt with depression and I've dealt with anxiety. I've dealt with trauma and I really, I fell in love with it because I was able to understand why I felt the way I felt. So much, so much that I thought was like a powerful force over me. Yeah. It ended up being like my depression, for instance. I, for 10 years, I just thought depression was this force. Yeah. That just took a hold of me, grabbed on and didn't let go. I used to think about it as like just a cloud that would come in and I was at its mercy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. Do anything until it passed. Yeah. And sometimes it didn't pass. Yeah.  And then I found out, wait, no, this is, not only are there ways to control it without medication or anything like that, a lot of it is just stemming from the way I think. Yeah. And so working on just changing the way you think is enough to, you know. Coming back to CBT. Coming back to CBT. So that was, that was the cool, amazing part about it. Are there any, are there any, be it acting, exercise or something else you learned in your study that you use to help people begin feeling something or work through anxiety or depression or something? Yes. Is there anything that our audience listening today could employ? Yes, there is. You'll notice my entire team is tuning out because they hear me say thousand times. On their phones. They're like, if I have to hear about in monkey one. Okay. So, this is my favorite thing that to kind of explain to people is your stress. Let's talk about stress. Right. Stress. Everybody feels stress. It definitely exists in prisons, exists everywhere. Yes. Yes. Right. It exists everywhere. We are a high stress society. Yes. So here's kind of the origin of stress. What we call stress is you have this part of your brain and it's called the amygdala and its whole purpose is to actually, is, is to save your life. Yes. Really. And so what it does is it gives you emotions. Yeah. Your emotions are not a weakness. They are literally your brain's way of saving your life. Yes. So things that make you, that are good for you. For instance, eating food. Yeah. Or sunshine or exercise. Yeah. That will make your life prosper. That make you feel good. Yeah. It will give you the good chemicals, the happy chemicals. But then the things that are bad, anything that could threaten your life or bring you pain. Yeah. Anyway, it's released the bad chemicals, cortisol. Yeah. You know, these things that make you feel tense and stressed out. And the reason for that was, you know, back when in the day, if there was something threatening our life or could cause us pain, we needed a way of knowing that we had to get out of there. It's called fight or flight. Yes.  And then once we did, we were good. Like, you know, the cortisol purge. You do the thing. We can take a deep breath. We can relax. Yeah. Right? So now that we have cortisol in the body, the hard part is we as human beings, we register emotional pain the same as physical pain. Right. Yes. So the brain doesn't know the difference. So things that could just hurt our feelings, that's pain. Yeah. So the brain will, you know, release cortisol over something that isn't going to physically hurt us. So for instance, I'm afraid I'm not going to pay my bills. Right. I'm afraid. My boss hates me. My boss hates me. My significant other is mad at me. Yes. Oh, yeah. Right. Right. These are these are things that it's not going to kill you. No, but it's sometimes it feels like a well, right? Because it causes emotional pain. Yes. Got it.  Yeah. And there's nothing to fight or run from. Oh, right. You're just stuck.  And the worst part about it is we have this amazing thing called an imagination. It's our most incredible superpower. Yes. Right. It's the thing that that we can envision solutions. It's where creativity comes from. It's what put us ahead of every other animal on earth. But the issue is imagination means to picture oneself. When we picture ourselves in a terrible situation. Yeah. When we imagine our spouse being mad at us. Yeah. And you know, the pain that would cause or we imagine not being able to pay the bills. Yeah. When we imagine failing, our poor amygdala doesn't know that that image isn't happening right now. Oh, right. And you feel it. Like, yeah, you think about, I could think about something in your body almost like reacts to it before you know what you're doing. Precisely. Yeah. So what ends up happening is we end up getting all stressed. Yeah. This cortisol is coming. And the more we think about it, the more we, the more, the more stressed we get. But there's no way to purge it one way or another. It's just building up. It's just building up and building up and building up. And we call that feeling stress. Oh, okay. I'm sure it's all basically. Yeah. That's what it is. Now, here's the exercise that I love to illustrate this.  Okay. So imagine a chimpanzee. Okay. And imagine that he's missing all teeth, but he's right. Now, once again, you're laughing right now. Why? It's a funny picture in my mind. It's funny.  Yes. And you're laughing. It doesn't know the difference that it's not in the room. It's funny. So now let's, let's get more specific with it. Let's say that this monkey has a hairdo just like Elvis. Okay. So the monkey's got a good looking guy. He's wearing a tuxedo, like James Bond, like chimpanzee James. Tom Ford and fitted. Yeah. Exactly. And he's got a, he's got a cane and a top hat. He's doing a little dance for you. And he's doing a top dancing thing. And now imagine he's got a red sparkly bow tie. Oh, nice. Good choice, man. It's just like, it's shimmering. And he's got red sparkly shoes, like the Wizard of Oz. And they're dancing, right?  Okay, great. Sparkles and all. We've just built a picture. And the more that I give details about that picture, the more vivid it becomes. That works the same with stress. So if you're imagining the worst case scenario, you can. Yeah. I'm imagining I'm going to get fired from my job. I'm imagining my boss hates me and is going to yell at me. The more details you give it, really become. All the imagination of what, like, what could happen in that situation that you bring in.  And the more specific you make it, the more cortisol starts to flow. Oh, interesting. So now here's how people handle stress and it doesn't work. Okay. They try not thinking about it.  It's all in your head. Yeah. Stop worrying about it. Stop being stressed. Okay. So now let me show you how ineffective that is. Okay. Ready? You can think about anything. Just don't think about a monkey in a red bow tie. Just don't think about that monkey. Stop thinking about that dancing. But I am. Definitely. But I am. You can't get it out of your head, right? What happens every single time I say the words? Don't think about that monkey. I'm thinking about the monkey. There it is. It's very clear. Okay. So now to show the flip side of it about how it works the same with happy thoughts. Okay. It works the same with joy. Just thinking about something that makes you happy. Yeah. Will give you that happy juice. Yeah. Those happy chemicals. So, um, what's your favorite place in the world? The cornfields of Indiana. Don't judge me. It's peaceful. I love it. So I want you to imagine you're in the cornfields of Indiana. Okay. Okay. And I want you to imagine you're walking through the cornfields. Okay. And I want you to imagine you can, you can feel the big old corn husks in between your hands. Okay. Okay. And you can feel the, the, uh, you hear that sound of the leaves. Yeah. The corn husks. Yeah. Right. And you feel the sunshine on the back. You take it a deep breath. You can smell that fresh farm scent. How's it feel? It's, you feel something. Yeah. Like, I feel something that releases. Right. It's just a pleasant thought. Yeah. And so you can kind of relax and just enjoy that thought. Yeah. At any time, did you think about a monkey in a red boat? No, he was not in the cornfield. It was just me. Right. So here's the point. With any, if you are in actual danger, like if there's something actually, then you got to deal with it right now. Yeah. But if whatever you're dealing with is imaginary, if it's in your head. Yeah. Then instead of giving it mental energy and building that picture up more specific and causing more stress, you can flip it and you can start thinking about something that's more hopeful, that drives you, that inspires you. Yeah. And so when there's a challenge facing you like, oh my gosh, I got to film this video with Joe. And I'm so worried because what if it's horrible and what if it's boring and what if I don't do a good job? The more I think about that, the more I'm stressing out or I flip it and go, man, Joe's so awesome. I have so much fun whenever I'm with her. I'm going to come in and I'm just going to have a good time. We're going to laugh like we always laugh. We're going to crush this video. People are going to see us and just love everything we have to say. All of a sudden this thing that hasn't come to fruition yet, I'm building myself up for in a positive way that I can just grab and tackle and conquer rather than building up all this unnecessary stress that at the end of the day, you know, it's going to ultimately end up dictating how it goes anyway. No, talking about cortisol build-up, you and I had a conversation about this before that I thought was fascinating because though I may seem like I'm emotionally okay on my channel or like I have things figured out, shocking surprise, I don't. I sometimes have a really hard time like actually being okay with emotions or crying. That's a really difficult one for I think a lot of people. And you told me something about cortisol that was fascinating that gave me more permission to cry, which was a good thing. Would you mind sharing that? Absolutely. So we're all stressed out, right? We all got things that that causes a ton of stress and that feeling of stress is cortisol. It's a chemical in your body that's making your heart beat fast, that's making your neck tense up, that's making you irritable. One natural way to get it out is just being active, you know? Things where I like being active. Exactly. It's a tall fight or flight for a reason. It's giving you the energy to move around, to do something physical. So I always suggest working out, exercising, going for hikes, rock climbing, whatever. Do something physical, whenever you're in that state, because that's, you know, one way to get it out. But let's say you just can't. Let's say it's buried you so much, because you get trapped by it. I don't feel like doing that. I don't feel like anything. That's just terrible. Your body has two built-in mechanisms to get rid of cortisol, right? And the first one that I love talking about is laughter. Yes. Yes, because, you know, it's, it's, it's dull. It's like, of course, nobody's sad when they're laughing. No, right? No, at least for that split second moment. Yes. And think about it. Isn't it weird that we make a noise when we laugh? Yes. Isn't that crazy? Laughter in general is weird. It's weird. It's weird. I do it a lot, but it's weird. Right. We do it a ton. So when you're laughing, what's happening is that noise and that shake is purging, is that physical release for your nervous system? Hating. There's the physical release. And then when you're actually joyful, that feeling of joy, yeah, is the feeling of that, those happy chemicals flooding the cortisol. It's the kind of purge it. Yeah.  It's like a happy bath. Let's say you're not in a mood to laugh.  Well, then we have this wonderful thing called crying. Yeah. Right. And if you think about it, laughter and crying are very similar. Sometimes I can't, like sometimes you're not sure if someone's laughing or crying for a second, right?   Right. Absolutely happens. Right. They're very similar. You make a noise when you cry. Yeah.  Right. Think about it like a rag. Yeah.  Twist it, shake out, shake it out. And guess what? Those tears have cortisol in them. Which is insane. Your tears contain cortisol.  Yeah. Because you're getting it out. Oh, yeah.  But we live in a society that says, first of all, be serious. Don't play. Yeah. You play. Stop being silly. Yeah. You don't, you don't, you don't take it seriously. Yeah. Well, playing, moving around, being active, jumping up and down, giggling. Yeah. Just getting your mind off of what's stressing you out. Yeah. These are ways to purge the cortisol. Yeah.   You're laughing right now. This is serious. Is this funny to you? Exactly. Okay. So we're not allowed to laugh. So we don't have to play. We don't have to laugh. What are we left crying? Oh, but you can't do that either. You can't do that.  Right. Or for men, be a man. Oh, seriously. And we're so afraid that, oh, no, if I cry, they're going to view me as weak. They're going to view me as vulnerable. They're going to view me as unstable. Oh, sure. Right. So we don't have play. We don't have laughter. We don't have crying. So what do we left to do? We're left to just be stuck. Just stuff it all deep down until you die. And then you have any excuse you can to lash out. Yeah. To have that argument on Facebook, to, you know, push somebody to leave that YouTube comment. We're looking at you. No, you've got to get it out in some way. Yeah. Here's the big discovery I made is that being playful is literally the heart of acting.  And if you're good enough, you get old, you become professional.  It's make believe. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. If you're good enough at playing, make believe, playing pretend, then you can go pro, right? Yeah. But that's why it's called a play. You go see a play. Yeah. Or a movie is a screen play. The word is play. It's meant to be fun. It's meant to be joyful. It's meant to get your mind off of whatever's It takes you out of the world. stressing you out. Yeah. And you have this outlet, right? And then you have the two things that first stress, which is laughing and crying, which are the theater. That's right. Which is nuts. Crazy. What would happen if there was more play? What would happen if there was more laughter? What would happen if people were, were, you know, okay, with just crying? Hang on. I need to have a really good cry. Yeah. Real quick. You know, like I just need a, sorry, I'm built up. Yeah. Give me just 20 minutes here. It's hard. It's hard for people because we've trained ourselves not to. Yeah. When we first had this conversation, I was like, Oh my God. I mean, I've learned through years of counseling that emotions are there for a reason that you're supposed to feel them. Yes. But, but learning more about like the physical ramifications of like the, some of the largest expressions that we have, like laughing and sobbing. They literally are there for a biological physiological reason. And it's not just Yeah. Seriously. Why else would we have them? Yeah. And I would also go so far as to say that emotions are one of our greatest assets. It's not our greatest asset as human beings. I think so. Because, you know, there are guidelines, whether, whether it's for protection or safety or they're kind of like a guideline we're up, but there's no good or bad emotion. Yeah. There's no, we do that a lot. We go, Oh no, I'm feeling a bad emotion. Yeah. I'm angry. That's bad. I'm angry. I shouldn't feel that way. That's bad. Or, or I'm, I'm, I'm sad or I'm jealous. Yeah. I'm scared. Yeah. Or I'm insecure. You know, we go, we go, I can't feel those things. That's not me. Yeah. And then what we do, Let's think positive and sad. Yes. And then what we do is we put on a mask. Yeah. Right. So that's what I do is I offer people an outlet to take their emotions and purge them in a way that's constructive and a way that helps people in a way that's artistic and fun and joyful and joyful. Thank you for sharing with us about what you do. I have such respect for it more than I respect you as a person. You're fantastic. I love, I love that you have passion for what you do and that you're willing to share it with us. Well, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. So if you don't know, as I said in the beginning, Dominic has his own YouTube channel and we did a video over there that may or may not involve some rock climbing and a rock climbing race, which I may or may not have won, you'll have to watch to find out. Who knows? Who knows? But links in the description. Don't check that out. And we also have, instead of me, blabbering the whole time. We got Joe. Blabbering the whole time. And thank you so much for, oops, I just hit my mic. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you again, Dom, to everyone watching. I love you guys and thinking about you and we'll see you in the next video. Bye, guys.


Alrighty, I have a construction update for you guys today. There's gonna be a little bit of a delay with knocking one of the coasters out of the lineup. My work has been so insane lately. I've been pulling 11 hour days. So the Patreon's didn't end up getting it last night because I was so busy yesterday with Valentine's Day sales. So it's just gonna be a day late. I'm gonna do Patreon today the day of this video and then you guys the next day. But over at Front Gate, Brickwork is moving along really quickly. Some pre-work is going on and on Leviathan. Obviously we all know that there's gonna have to be some sort of netting installed on Leviathan as guests will be walking underneath here. But yeah, not too much else going there. Again, a lot of new tech has been installed on the north side of the Front Gate building. So work still continues on that side of the building. Nothing new at Extreme Skyflyer. Still a lot of work going on on the exit slash gift shop. Everything else, what else is going on? Oh yeah, some weird electrical work going on on Swings of the Century in World Expo. It looked like they were removing some electrical but I can't confirm that. Obviously flying so far away. It is really difficult to make out what they are doing on some of these things. But yeah, they had two guys in there what looked like removing the speaker systems is what I think I saw. So it looked like they were removing some of the speakers. If you were walking around the park and it's playing music. Again, I've been waiting for signs about where the station is gonna be located. Is it gonna be located in the mountain area? Or is it gonna be located here in World Expo? And this ugly building, I know that might be a popular opinion for some, but this is the ugliest building in my opinion at Canada's Wonderland. I hate it. And the only person that liked it was Norm. And now that he's gone, I hope they get rid of it. So I'm kinda hoping that that ends up being the station. So we'll have to see. But yeah, I mean the station can be in like three locations. It's either gonna be international show place, this ugly arcade building or Extreme Skyflyer's plot of land. So we'll have to see. But yeah, not too much going on outside of that. It just was a lot of electrical work. And then they ended up doing some electrical work to the actual swings of the century ride, which confused me a bit cause I thought I had it figured it out with the speaker system. But I guess this is just an area of the park that I'll have to keep a really close eye on and see if that progresses in any sort of way into signs of maybe they're disconnecting some things in this area cause it's gonna be ripped up and there's gonna be some changes in there. I mean, it could be as small as just some enhancements to World Expo period. Nothing going on in this specific plot of land for the 2025 coaster, but the drive piles are on site. So right there at the tunnel, they're there. The machine to hammer them in is not there yet. So they have not begun hammering those in. Again, based off of what I'm seeing even there, it is very difficult to fit certain rides in that tunnel, but nothing is confirmed yet, obviously until the actual tunnel gets driven into the ground and then we could safely make a prediction based off of that. Although I do, I can already rule out one model. I think you guys all kind of know, but yeah, over at Moosehorn Falls, construction continues, not much else going on. They're just leveling out the land obviously to start the actual construction project over there. So we'll have to see if any waterslide parts start showing up. It's a little early, again, waterslide can start in April, May. But yeah, anyways, that's all. Hopefully you guys enjoyed today's construction update. I sound exhausted, I worked 10 and a half hours, but yeah, have a good one guys, bye.


This is Fuzz He's got a Elegant tail and he has four paws or sorry four fingers on each or sorry six fingers on each paw Okay, so We are in Canada and I'm just gonna show you the art resin Canada office and do so just show you some art Last time I was on here. I finished the 100-day art challenge Which was really great. Okay So this is our office So here is where we Test things and make things with resin and shoot videos and photos and like we have like packaging development and Had products and things right all set up So that's this space and then of course a coffee This thing is so wonderful It's always evolving but so we have some products here here's some Wood stuff we're working on there was a book for we made a book for Working on wood what else hi everyone This is the restores some stuff and I have a sanding cart, so I'm sanding all these pieces of wood And inventory and products and colors and things so so this is for Canada And the products made in Texas Where we have our manufacturing place so this area is the industrial clear side so it's more black and orange and It's similar to our resin except it's two to one mixing ratio, so it's much harder much much harder when it's cured What you want for stuff like this, right? Like you want to be really really hard for that But art resin it was actually better to have a bit of flexibility so it didn't ever snap or crack so Sir, I want to start resin art Hey, Zinnia Yeah, um well Ask me any questions. This is Art resin Okay, let me finish my tour. These are just other pieces of wood playing with Put resin on wood and this is tool storage and pro projects and film equipment for filming and These are refilling all these cracks of colors see and sanding them This is actually copper dust You can kind of see it gets kind of foggy through there. It's cool. Hey So yeah, this side is more wood where this side is more art over there Okay, let's go upstairs. Look at this. Oh, I forget her name. Her last name is lamb LAM. She uses our resin Isn't that beautiful? Lamb I love resin art me too Okay, fuzz. Can we go upstairs, please you go first? Right behind you. Go ahead. Good boy So there's another cat here. I can't find right now a little bit. Well, my name's father. She's somewhere so this is um Computer space working space printers and printers and computers and then look at this We just get to be a nature. It's so nice There's a Okay, we're just redoing this area point. We're putting more art up here. We want this to be a little gallery space And then we have all the wonderful Wonderful art resin people go here. Yes, resin art is fun. Okay That's the tour I'll show you some art. We're gonna be putting up. I love this piece Rebecca did that one. Just a nice color palette And if they're wrapped that means they got rented to movies I just want to ease This is very much a remembrance day one coming up. Oh, I like that one. It's pretty cool That's the Mona Lisa, of course, Rebecca's. Oh, I love this one. I just love that one Clean simple. We got to put that one up. There's some COVID masks From a distance it just looks Soft and nice, but Yeah, we're never gonna forget that color mask blue, right? Okay This is a piece from Walmart. I think Just to show you know if you resin the pre fab art This and this Circles That's good. Oh beautiful. I forget her name. What's her name? What's her name at least? Okay, everyone. Hello. Does each work have a special quality of resin? well, the art anything that's artwork I use art resin on it because it has It's has a lot of things to help with discoloring over time and So it's the clearest our reason is the clearest for the longest and industrial


Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chitchat Across the Pond. This is episode number 777 for November 2nd, 2023, and I'm your host, Alison Sheridan. One of the great joys of Mastodon is that I'm meeting new people with a cross-section of interests that overlap with my own by following hashtags like programming, technology, knitting, and crocheting. And it turns out I can find fellow nerds who are also into some of the crafts I enjoy. I discovered today's guest, Angela Preston, also known as Angela Preston at Toot.Site, through these hashtags. It turns out she's a knitter and she created a website by hand. And the website explains how she built a font for knitting using an open source font creation tool. Now, this is such a crazy crossover of crafts and tech, and I'm just super excited to welcome to the show Angela Preston. How are you doing today? Great. Thanks for having me, Alison. So this is definitely going to be a weird show. As I was saying to Angela ahead of time, how many people on earth will ever have this conversation? But then it makes me wonder, are there like three people on earth who want to listen to this conversation? But we don't care, because we love the subject, right? All right. So before we dig into the tech of what you've done and even talking about why anybody would care about knitting in this context and tech, just a little bit about yourself. Well, how did you get into coding this website and what's your background? Well, I learned to knit around the end of 2005. So that's how long I've been a knitter. And it was around, I would say 2008, 2009, that I really fell in love with cabled knitting patterns. Those really beautiful kind of Celtic knot looking fishermen sweaters who might have even seen some of the Viking patterns for knitting by Elspeth level that are just gorgeous. And I wanted to make those. And I found that reading those patterns was a little bit tricky for me. And I discovered that there is a way to chart them in a grid that made me very excited about learning a new way of getting into the knitting patterns. And I wanted to create a way for myself to make that easier. So a lot of people listening will only be into tech. They're maybe not even sure which one is knitting. So let's talk about what a regular knitting pattern looks like. A regular knitting pattern is written in a very specific type of language, just like when you're programming a computer. And a lot of it will boil down to basically ones and zeros, right? You have knits and you have pearls. And what a pearl is is the opposite of a knit. So if you're looking at the front of a sweater where it's all smooth and it's got lots of little Vs on it, you turn it around and it's all nubbly on the back. Those are the pearls. And so if you're knitting something, you need both of those because if you're knitting one direction and you get all the Vs and you knit back the other way from the back of the fabric, you're going to want a pearl on that side so that all the Vs are on the same side when you're finished. So that's a really good way to describe it. Even if you're wearing a t-shirt, even take out a t-shirt and kind of stretch the fabric.  And the other side is the nubbly side. That's right. And by the way, knitting is the one with two needles that maybe stuck together, but not the one with hook. That's crocheting. That's crocheting. Yeah. And so with knitting, it's made up of a combination of knits and pearls. There are other things you can do, but that's what it basically boils down to. So it is kind of binary when you think about it. And when you write a traditional knitting pattern, you read it like you would read anything else. You read it from the top of the page to the bottom of the page, from the left side of the page to the right side of the page, and it's all abbreviated. You have a lot of K2P1 for knit two, purl one.  Sometimes they're contained in brackets, which tells you that this is a section you need to repeat. And it tells you how many times to repeat that particular section. Yeah, that's a subroutine, right? That's a little subroutine. So you're going to loop back through it. But if you're lucky, you get brackets around it. A lot of times they don't. And they just have a little asterisk. And then they say, repeat from star six times. So now you're going back. And how are you going to designate how many times you've gone through?  Okay, did it once, did it twice. And now you end up backing up and you're like, oh, shoot, did I back up three of them? Two of them? Was I halfway through one of those? It's a nightmare. It is. And I find or found that and still more as I as I age, that it's a lot more difficult for me to keep track of all those little K's and P's on the page. And I discovered that there was a better way for me, a more visual way. So I guess that would be like instead of programming with old machine language, you're learning a different programming language that makes things more simple. There you go. So these are diagrams that are basically a grid of marks. And instead of having to keep track and repeat, you'll just see I'm on this one, this one, this one, this one going across. Yes, exactly. So each square in the grid represents a stitch. And it tells you what to do when you get to that stitch. It could be a knit, it could be a purl, it could be a combination of stitches where you have to cross perhaps three knitted stitches over three other knitted stitches. That's how you get that beautiful not work over a background of purled fabric. And what I liked about learning the the the symbols for knitting was it was much more visual for me, much easier to keep track of where I was much easier to see where I was in the pattern. Because you could look at the page and see the representation of the not work that you were working on depending on the font that it was that it was composed in. It was sometimes easier, sometimes maybe a little harder to get a grasp for what the finished product would look like. And that was part of my inspiration was I really loved the knitting fonts that made it easy to see on the paper what your finished product was going to look like, because that helped me stay oriented. Would it also be true that by creating your own font, you could make the font size as big as you want? Yes, so well within the limits of a piece of paper in the width of the pattern that you're working on, I suppose. Part of the reason I wanted to make my own was because at the time I fell in love with cable patterns and the idea of knitting from a chart, there were about three free knitting fonts available. This was back in 2008, 2009. And none of them were exactly what I was looking for. And I was thrifty enough that I wasn't crazy about buying a whole knitting font, which in retrospect seems a little funny to me.  I don't think I knew how much time it was going to take. But I realized that there would be a way for me to do my own. And I thought of several different approaches. I was thinking maybe I would do the font where you can do your own handwriting. And then you send it in. They scan it for you. They create a font from it. And that's the product that you end up with. I thought I could draw symbols. I could get out some engineering paper and go to town. But then I found out about font struct. And the idea that I could create each of my symbols from the ground up was so attractive. And it was free. They just let you go design a font. And I thought, well, that doesn't sound too hard. Good. Let me stop you there real quick before we get into font struct. Because that is really kind of the meat of what's awesome here. But what are these diagrams, charts, fonts? What do they look like? Like what does a knit look like? Is it a little V and the pearl is a little bubble thing? Well, that's really dependent on the person who creates the font. I've seen lots of different varieties actually. There are certain similarities that you'll see. Some people will use just an open blank box to represent nits. And they'll use a box with a dot in it to represent pearls. Some people will use a box with an upright line to indicate a knit. And they'll use a horizontal line to indicate a pearl. So there are a lot of different flavors.  Yeah. Yeah. And that's another thing that was kind of getting in my way. They all contain a key, which is very handy. So you just print the key and have it handy for when you get to that symbol. So you can remember what it is they want you to do. But you're right. It's like different dialects. And yeah, that's what I was thinking. It does get a little, yeah. I mean, I would say that they're all related in the way that bromance languages are related. But just because you speak Spanish doesn't mean you're going to be fluent in French. I knew a woman who was a friend of mine in college was taking Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish back to back to back, like eight to nine, one language, nine to ten, ten to eleven. She couldn't speak any of them by the end of the day. It just all scrambled up. Yeah, I don't know. I really admire people who can be in the polyglot and speak several different languages. I'm doing good just to master the one. I took German for a while and enjoyed that. It's, you know, closely related English. Well, you speak NIT also. So that's two. What about programming languages? Are you a programmer? Well, I was a software tester for a while. What I did mainly was black box testing, the user acceptance testing. So mimicking what a user would do more than doing any coding. I've done some light coding here and there. Like you mentioned, I put together the website. So I've done, you know, some light HTML. I've done a little bit of CSS. I've done Visual Basic. I really like to get into Excel and make my own macros. I like to make things faster. So a little bit of that. Okay. Okay. So we now know the problem to be solved is you're trying to make your own diagrams. You're going to be translating. So you're not inventing the pattern, but taking a pattern and translating it from this Cyrillic that you're trying to read into something that makes sense to you. So now you've got to decide what you want each type of stitch to look like and create that key and create this font. And what was the name of the website you found again to create the font? I went to Fontstruct.  I mean, it's got everything you love about open source. It's got that Soviet era UI that you would expect. Yeah. And I hadn't been out there for some time until you had asked me about the font. And so I went back out and it's a little different now than it was when I originally went there, but it's not as much different as I thought it might be. So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And what I loved about it was also the thing that got a little bit tricky. It's really open. You can do almost anything you want as long as you use their little pre-programmed pixels.  And I had to figure out the best way to draw a diagonal line, the best way to make a circle, the best way, you know, how wide did I want these to be? Because I knew immediately that I wanted it to be a fixed width font so that it built its own grid with each character being exactly as wide as every other character. And then the first time I tried it out, I realized that my edges were too thick and my grid didn't look right. And I needed to make the edges half as wide so that each character next to each other created one whole line between them. Things like that were kind of a learning curve for me in constructing the font. But yes, picking my favorite version of each symbol, determining which symbols I could include and which ones I was going to have to leave out, because there are so many. If you are mainly a lace knitter, the symbols on the charts that you're used to may be very different from the ones that you see mostly as a cable knitter. And I tried to do my best to be inclusive and use all of the characters on the keyboard and the little alt plus numbers to get some of those alternate characters in there. But I'm sure there are still some that I didn't get to. You were just making a font for you. You were making a font for all of us. Well, yeah. So I thought one of the things that I thought would get in my way if I was a designer and I'm not a knitting designer, but I see a lot of really nice patterns. It seemed like a lot of them had gone the root of the engineering paper and drawing their own chart and then scanning it in, and that was part of their finished pattern. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it seemed like a lot of work, and it wasn't very standard. And like you said, every time I opened a new pattern, I had to learn how they had constructed their own font or how they wrote it out. So I thought, there's only three knitting fonts that are available for free. What if I did this one? They're letting me create it on font struct for free. What if I just release it into the wild for free and tell people that they can use it in the patterns they make as long as those patterns aren't necessarily for profit? Because there are a lot of really great free knitting patterns out there. And if I could help those designers give their users or their customers a little bit better experience, that was something that I thought would be really cool. I mean, it's kind of what we would. Okay, so the work you were doing, you were going to give away for free, and that meant that you wanted the people who used it to give their work away for free. So it's the chain of happiness. Yes. And so that's why I put it under Creative Commons license. I did make exceptions to it. If you are going to sell your pattern one time, like to nitty, and then nitty provides it to free for all of their users, that's still within the realm of what I'm trying to get at is patterns that are available for free. Okay. Okay. That's interesting. So one thing I didn't take into account or even think about when you describe this, you've got some examples on your website that show the, you've got dots and diagonals and such. And I didn't think about what if the shape was not a dot or a diagonal? What would you have to do? And when I started playing around with font struct, I realized, well, there's like a little curve that's concave in the upper left, or it's concave in the upper right, or it's convex in the upper left and the upper right, and that's going to make a smoother shape on an N, for example, when you're trying to build a font. If you got into a lot of the different symbols, that's, that's crazy. I mean, that's going to be a lot of work to make all those. It was a labor of love. I was so excited about it. I tend to hyper-focus on new things that I get interested in. And I found that, you know, parking myself in front of the TV on the coffee table working on my font every night was a really good way to kind of blow off the stress of the workday, completely change gears mentally, get into something creative, something I was really excited about. And it was, I mean, I had some setbacks. I had some things that had to go back and redo, which is never my favorite. But it was the immediate gratification. You know how when you're mowing the lawn, you immediately see what you did. It's satisfying. You can see what you've accomplished right away. Real big fan of instant gratification. And that was something I could see with my font. I could see the symbols I'd already created. I could see how they work together because I could download it even when, you know, I wasn't completely finished with it and keep test driving it as I went and, you know, looking at other patterns and maybe changing the way that I thought these needed to mix together. I really struggled with some of the cable symbols. I mean, the whole reason I wanted to do it was to write these cable patterns in a way that I could read them more easily. But when you're talking about taking, you know, three stitches and crossing them over three other stitches, how do you design three characters or, you know, two characters that will mesh with each other, what will play well to finalize that kind of recipe for the crossing of those two cables. And I really struggled with getting the angle right for those crossings, making sure that it made sense in the context of a whole grid full of these symbols. But eventually I got something I was happy with. So are you inventing that symbology? Like you had to think it up or were you mimicking stuff other people had done or starting with that as a template and then making it your own? A lot of it is derivative. I mean, like I said, there's different kind of dialects, but there's also a whole lot of similarities. There are a lot of crossings where you'll see two diagonal lines going one way with kind of two diagonal lines kind of hidden behind them going the other way. And that will indicate a cable crossing. So that sort of thing is very common or like a dot for a purl or a line for a knit. Those are all very common things. Actually, that's a good description for people listening who don't know anything about knitting. Think of cable stitching as being like a freeway interchange and you're trying to draw a symbol to say, what does that look like? And if you're lucky, it's just two. Some of them get very exciting. I read an article so long ago about unventing a cable. And I think it was by Interweave and they said you could take a picture of a cable pattern and then you could kind of draw each cable in its own color and make sure that you didn't cross the color. So you had to have one color go over the other color. And then by the time you were done, each cable had its own color and that told you where it wove through the pattern and you could keep track of it that way. And then you could write your own chart based on how those colors meandered over your grid. It was really fascinating. I didn't go the color route with my font. But it's just a different road to madness. Yes. Well, but it helped me think of it. It helped me to frame it in my mind how I could put these crossings together. I never thought of the freeway thing though. That's really good because that is exactly what it's like. Yeah, as you were describing it, you were holding your hands up and I could see what you were doing. I talk with my hands a lot. That's probably not going to come across well. I'll translate. Thanks. So how does fontstruct work? What is it? Because what you're telling us could apply to not knitting, right? Right. Oh, yes. And there are some really great fonts on fontstruct when I was in it all the time. You can get it from there too. Yeah. You can just go out there and find what other people have created and download it for yourself. There were some really neat, I think I found one that was kind of a Klingon font, to one that was kind of like a mimic of the Star Trek font. Just some really elaborate ones, really graceful ones. The hardest part of my font was actually creating the numbers because when you make a charted knitting pattern, you generally put the number next to the row and you have to invent every character in your font.  So could you use the font, the numbers from somebody else's font? I think that I could have used them, but I couldn't import them into the font that I was producing as far as I know. Oh, so these are open source to download, but not to modify. And then change midstream and be like, you know, this I'm going to use six from this guy. Oh, I see. Okay. But I don't know, maybe 10 now. I don't think I could then, but that's something maybe I should check into. There are some beautiful fonts here, some crazy ones. Like, I don't even know what that one says.  I thought they were, they were a fair amount on this page, but I looked and it didn't look like that many. And it said page one, two, three down at the bottom. But then it said last, and when I hit last, it was 146 pages of free fonts. Yeah. And some of them are very similar. I mean, I made two, I made one with my knitting symbols that don't have borders around them, and one that does have a border. So one set has a box around every symbol. And if you type with those, it builds its own grid. But for some people, maybe they already have a grid, maybe they're putting it into a spreadsheet or some other knitting program that they're using. And they would like a font that doesn't have the box because it gets in their way. So I did both of those. And it was really easy to just use the same font and take off the boxes that I had added. Oh, okay. Okay. So the boxes are actually part of the font? Yeah. On one of my font. Hopefully you could replicate that. It's like serif, sans serif, right? One has boxes, one doesn't. So. Well, please tell me there's no sans serif or serif on the, on the knitting symbols, right? No, I did not go that far. That serifs are supposed to lead your eye to the next one. And in this case, that wouldn't really make sense. But. Okay. Okay. So you've built your website, and I do still want to get into why you did it the way you did it, where you did it. But I want to ask a question about the fonts themselves. When you download the font, you get a whole lot of files. Yes. I wanted to try and make it really user friendly. And that might go back to being a software tester. That was the job I had when I was building the font. One of the things I had to do in my, in my role at work was help the users understand what was changing with the release that I was testing. I had to provide, you know, notes for them, maybe some helpful hints about how things would be different and how they could, you know, use this to their best advantage. And I wanted to do the same thing with the fonts that I was creating, because it's one thing to go and install a font on your computer. It's another thing to go in and use it. And the disadvantage with this font was that on a normal keyboard, the keys tell you, this is A, this is B, this is C, this is QWERTY, or Dvorak, whichever you use. And oh my gosh, I just realized maybe I need to make another map. For Dvorak. This one, without a map to interpret where the symbols are, it's very difficult to find what you're looking for. I tried to map it in a way that made sense to me. So symbols that I use commonly are on kind of home row or close to it. And sometimes I try to map cable symbols to keys that mimic them, like the brackets are kind of the beginning and the ending of the cable symbol recipes. So I made keyboard maps to show people where the symbols were located. And then I also provided a sheet that showed kind of some common combinations that I was going to use when charting cable patterns to show what the symbols looked like all in a row, and then gave kind of the recipe for creating that same symbol combination, so that people would know how they could mimic it in their pattern. Let me make sure I understand which one of these you're talking about. So one of the files is suggested uses. It's a PDF. Is that the one you're talking about? Yeah. Or you're talking about additional symbols, because that one's serious. Suggested uses. Okay. Additional symbols is really for the things that aren't commonly used by me. So they got put other places. Okay. We'll come back to that one. But so suggested uses, you show, I would suggest using the letter H, which makes an empty square box, which means knit. G is a dot. That one's going to be pearl. And then it gets scary after that. Interesting. Maybe it gets interesting. Interesting. There we go. So that's kind of, so you're just suggesting people don't need to use the symbols you've created to mean the things you've created. They really don't. So they could do a different dialect with this. They could. I think it might be hard with the options I gave for them to get too far, but they definitely could. There's a lot of options, and it's not really set in stone how to use it. Okay. Now, one thing we should mention here, we discovered through our budding friendship that Angela is a PC user and that I'm a Mac user. And the way I figured this out was she had a page on her website that said it was a Q&A or an FAQ thing, and it said, does it work on the Mac? And she said, I don't think it does. I've been told that it doesn't. But this was quite a while ago, and I figured out how to install the font and make it work quite easily. It doesn't actually show up automatically. Like if you drag the font into font book and then you just go into word or pages, which would be more reasonable or text edit, it won't be in the dropdown. It just doesn't exist. So you would think, oh, it doesn't exist. But if you bring up the font viewer that the little, I don't know what it's called, if you command T in just about any program, but brings up this little floating palette for fonts, you can select it there. And as soon as you select it once, it exists everywhere. It exists back in the regular program. So it's just a little tweak that you have to do to get it to work. There might be an easier way to do it, but that's how I got it to work. So I'm going to help her rewrite that section to say, well, yes, it does. And here's a fellow nerd to explain it to you. And I'm so excited about that I cannot tell you because that's probably the question I've gotten the most that I could not answer. Because I was pretty sure that font struct said that it should work on a Mac, but as a non Mac user, I didn't have a solution. So there's probably a nerd listening who will tell me why it is it's not immediately recognized that it's probably some sort of blessing thing that needs to be in the file. But this is a quick workaround to get it done until somebody tells us how to make it work more automatically. And if somebody does tell you that, I'd love to know. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not going to tell you charge you. By the way, the podcast is Creative Commons open source as well, just so you know. So you've got this additional symbols thing. And this is where it kind of folds into being a PC is you've got some symbols, like you've got one, it says purl through back loop. And but to the left of it, it's got words that I only see in PC land alt, which I know is like option. But then it says 0192. Yeah, what is 0192? The the the letter that comes right before alt is kind of optional letters that other languages use more commonly than we do in English, right? So you have an A with an accent over it or an A with a circle over it or an A and E combination to easily get those on a PC. Well, I don't know if this is the easiest way. I guess I'd say what you said, there's probably someone who knows better than I do. But this is how I do it. If I want to insert one of those when I'm typing using a regular like Times New Roman font, I would hold down my ALT key. And while I'm holding it down, I would type, you know, 0192. And then when I'm done, it will pull in that letter. So I mapped those extra symbols that I created that I didn't have room for on the keyboard to those alternate letters. And that's the best way that I know to get them while you're typing inline. You can also go into Character Map and copy it and paste it from there. That's the way some people do it. But there's a special way that you get those on Mac. I can add that to my additional symbols as well and make it even more accessible. Well, I've just done an article this week on launching something called the Keyboard Viewer on the Mac, which is also known as the Accessibility Keyboard. And it just gives you a little on-screen keyboard, then you can hold down the different keys to see where they've hidden the funny symbols. And it turns out Option Shift Y is a capital A with an accent to U, which is the one that's up into the right. So I tested it out. I opened up TextEdit. I switched to Cari Knitz, which is the name of her font. And I held down Option Shift Y and I got the little double, I don't know what you call those, like half an infinity signed upright with dots under them. Anyway, I got the right symbol. So there is a way to do it on the Mac too. Wonderful. I am learning a time. This is my favorite. This would be fun. Yeah, I think I could figure all of these out for you. So we could have a column for the Mac version and the PC version. You're pulling me into your madness, Angela. Well, but you said you knit, so aren't you already there? And I've also made my own font, but I did it by hand. So I created a handwriting font where I can now type out a letter and I can make it look like I wrote it by hand. Nice. Yeah, that one's kind of fun. So I do want to get back to how you created the website. So it's a Google site and I didn't know Google still let you make websites. So they had an original version that does not work anymore. And I used that to start with. I did it because it was free, because I already used Google and it was fairly easy to do. It let me do what I wanted to. I wanted to have a site where people could go and download the files. I thought about trying to put it on Ravelry, which is a really popular knitting, crocheting, fiber arts site, but they don't consider a font a pattern. And so that's not something that you can put on their site as a downloadable pattern. I wanted to make it available and I wanted people to just go out and be able to self serve without going all the way to font extract and looking it up. And so I went out and created a Google site and put both versions of the font and a little bit of explanation like that FAQ that you saw. And I think that there had been people from all over the world visited that from the analytics that Google sent me. I was getting light ups from countries in Europe. I was getting some from South America. I had somebody from Japan who wanted it. And it was just really gratifying to see how many people at least took a look. And I got some really good feedback mostly through the email that I set up for the font and also through Ravelry because I put it out as a as a project even though it can't be a pattern. I did put it out as a project so people could see it and then they could find out how to get it. And I got a lot of really cool ideas. That's when I decided to do a German keyboard map to make it easier for people with German keyboards. Somebody asked for it and it was not hard to do. And I got some feedback on originally when I released it. Some of my cable recipes were wrong and somebody told me they test riveted it and they pointed it out so I had to fix that. I had some people on Ravelry help me with it too.  Think how much easier that is to fix if you've just typed it in symbols. Right? So you've posted patterns that you've created with this as well? Well I didn't. I'm not a knitting designer but I put the font itself as its own project which Ravelry doesn't seem to have a problem with as long as I don't try and post it as a pattern and I post it as a project that I did. But that's what somebody found mistakes in? Well they went out and downloaded the font and the accompanying documentation and they said hey I tried this and you said it was this and it's not. Oh you just had mixed up or something? I had a typo so which was you know a little bit embarrassing but I was glad they said something so I could make it better. Yeah did they find it early? I hope not like three years later. No. I had some people on Ravelry who are credited in the font. They helped me test drive it. Some people who were on the cable knitters group who were interested in it and I really appreciated them because they caught a lot of things too. I mean as a software tester I was going to say that was my friend better at the time have somebody else take a look at it and they did agree. Isn't it funny how you can't check your own stuff? I mean you can but up to a limit and then you just can't see it anymore. That's exactly right. It stops looking like anything different. I mean sometimes even today I all of a sudden this word doesn't look like a word anymore so same thing with the font. I can see a typo in type text across a table upside down facing the other person but I can read my own stuff and nope it's perfect and I think I have always thought it was like an arrogance bit in me that I was like my stuff can't be wrong but it's all it's like it's invisible to me but I can see it in anything anybody else writes. Yeah I have the same I don't know if we want to call it a gift or a problem. Yeah but yeah there's I mean there's things you can do with regular writing you can have your computer read it to you you can put it in a different font and sometimes that will alert you to weird errors that you couldn't see originally because you were so used to it you were skipping over it but with this I didn't really have a way to do that very easy. Yeah yeah that would be really hard. I looked to a WordPress conversation or talk once where somebody said um I wasn't WordPress it doesn't matter it was a programming thing and one of the things they said when you're trying to find bugs change the font size because it makes a word wrap differently and all of a sudden your brain like these different characters above and below each other and your brain can see things that it couldn't see before I thought that was that was a really strange way to do it. That's a good tip though and I um one thing I noticed on this is when I'm typing up a chart for myself because I do that all the time whenever I get a new cable pattern I recharge it myself in this font because I'm very used to it and so it's easier for me to read it but I always have to remember not to let word spell check it because word doesn't know that I'm typing and didn't find word thinks I might be trying to type words and it's really concerned that I'm not well. It's like you're typing gibberish right now turn off the spell check. So what app do you type in on your PC? I use word a lot for this I thought when I created it that I would be doing it in Excel making my own grid and typing in the grid but I found out that I really prefer to type in word because the way that I built it it builds its own grid and you don't have to worry about it. Why bother with that yeah because you probably spent a whole bunch of time changing the size of the little squares and all that um this reminds me of when my son was little I wanted to make him a a pillow uh with I do cross stitch too and I wanted to do rug rats um yeah it was rug rats and I I there weren't any patterns with rug rats that they didn't exist so I went out and I took pictures from the internet this is 30 years ago I got pictures can't have could have been on the internet anyway I found pictures somewhere and I put the pictures in Excel underneath the grid and then changed the grid to like the size that would be whatever it is 12 for 14 stitches per inch and then went through and picked out colors that matched with all the different colors of it and built my own pattern but with this I could have used your font uh could you make me a cross stitch font now you know I've seen those I don't know if anyone's got one for free I mean the ones I've used most have color but a lot of them do have symbols that you know take up each little square don't they yeah yeah I haven't cross-stitched for a long time but that's an interesting idea I like it I like it um let's see was there anything else really important I wanted to make sure not to forget to ask you well you know one thing I do want to do is I'd like to take your font and take some I haven't knitted uh actually I'm going to hold up for her I'm going to show a little baby blanket that I just knitted recently actually adorable it's not a baby blanket it's what I call a baby baby blanket so you knit a blanket for the baby but then you knit a baby baby blanket and they can use it later when they grow up to put it on their own baby dolls and the babies the little kids love these so I'm making I'm crocheting another one for another grandchild I've got three of them I had to make there that is such a good idea but and then they don't mess up the real one I mean those get a lot of love is what I'm saying and their parents are really like no no no we have to pack that away so when you eventually have a real baby you know you could do it too um but I I'd like to go back through some old patterns and just try to create the pattern in the font and see what whether my brain uh could think that way I sent you a link to an article I did uh the audience probably knows about this in case they haven't don't remember it it was called knit like a programmer and that's where I read that routine thing yes it was so exciting when you sent that to me and that was back when we first when you first made contact and I thought this is one of my people yeah the problem I was trying to solve in that that you've already read it recently but to the audience is is it was a pattern of of when you looked at it in the picture it was these blocks like a like a woven thing like there's a square block of this and then a square block of that square block of this and it looked really good but then they were staggered row to row but then there were staggers within the staggers and so there were subroutines within the subroutines and when you saw it from the the big picture you could tell what they were trying to do but as you were going just stitch to stitch across it was baffling when I was supposed to be changing and I simply couldn't keep track and I think that uh having a knitting font on that would have been would have been genius well I hope if you try it it works for you and if you run into any snags I hope you'll let me know so I can go back and try and fix them I definitely would well if people want to connect up with you and and talk about this and get all nerdy out and maybe even give you more information on this font thing with for the mac is the best place to talk to you on mastodon yeah that's definitely a great place I'm really active on mastodon right now I'm really enjoying it there and so I'm I'm frequently checking mastodon that's a great place for people to reach out they can also reach out at cari nits at gmail.com I have that linked so it forwards to my main account and I check it too but honestly mastodon it's going to be a better bet because my email account has gotten to the point where it's pretty clogged up so okay one last really important question here the name of the font is cari nits k a u r i where does that come from I got the name cari from a series of books that I read back when I was in university I had a roommate who had an amazing bookshelf and I tore through everything she had and one series she had was the Dancing Gods series by Jack Elchocker River of Dancing Gods Demons of the Dancing Gods and it was about a couple of humans who got pulled out of earth and into another world that had been created using a few shortcuts and so instead of the natural processes that we would see here on earth they would use fairies to take some shortcuts to make sure that things still worked okay and one of the races of fairy was called the cari and I just love that name I thought it was really cool so 19 year old me caught it onto that name and I started using it as my online persona here and there and it just stuck I love it well from a woman who names herself pod feet I am not going to mock anybody else for using their 19 year old favorite word I see it's also a name for a plant in Maori the native language in New Zealand yeah lovely tree as it turns out look what I've learned today well this has been great and now if people want to talk to you is the best place to find you on mastodon yeah definitely yep Angela Preston at to dot site perfect all right well we'll get together and talk about how to fix up that part about the apple font but for everyone else we're going to say goodbye here thank you so much for coming on the show this was super nerdy crafty fun I loved it thank you so much for having me I had a great time I hope you enjoyed this episode of chinchat across the pond light did you notice there weren't any ads in the show that's because this show is not ad supported it's supported by you if you learn something or maybe you were just entertained consider contributing to the pod feet podcast you can do that by going over to pod feet dot com and look for the big red button that says support the show when you click that button you're going to find different ways to contribute if you'd like to do a one-time donation you can click the paypal button if you want to make a recurring contribution click the weekly patreon button you're only charged when I publish an episode of the no silicast which let's face it it's every single week so I don't charge patreon for chinchat across the pond light or programming by stealth episodes another way to contribute is to record a listener contribution it's a great way to help the no silicast ways learn from you and takes a little bit of the load off of me doing all the work if you want to contact me for any reason you can email me at alison at pod feet dot com and I really encourage you to follow me on mastodon at pod feet at chaos dot social maybe you want to talk to the other no silicast ways you can do that in our slack group at pod feet dot com slash slack thanks for listening and stay subscribed


What's going on, everyone? Sam here with Layton Sports Guards. We are doing 2021-22 Penini Mosaic Road to the FIFA World Cup Soccer Hobby, three box break, number seven random teams. Here is the look at your results again. As always, you can find these on the website under the results tab, as well as the link in chat. Yeah, so for tonight, we just have three boxers. Forrest did like a couple cases worth of release day today and he did a couple six boxers. What's up, Neeks? So yeah, we're just doing three boxers tonight, though, Dean. All right, box number one. Good luck here, guys. I'm so happy YouTube Chats were getting cannot restream so much easier this way. Empty. Empty. Let's do it, guys. Good luck here, everyone. See if we can pull an overdrive or another stained glass. We've got Karim Adayemi for Germany on the Mosaic. Red Vinny Jr. for Brazil. Red Ace and Emile Forsberg. Nine to go on the next one. Those are our last soccer breaks until I'm assuming tomorrow, probably. So if you're interested in seeing soccer broken tonight, if you want to spot, that is your last chance. Harry Maguire. Camille Piotowski for Poland. Rookie. Red George Bale for the U.S.A. or Bello. Pitch Masters, Purvis Estupinyan. Kevin De Bruyne. Prado Papi. You got Daniel Bachmann for Austria on the Mosaic. Silver, Piero and Papi. And Pitch Masters, Ochoa. Ochoa is kind of my guy. I'm not going to lie. I like Ochoa. Brendan Aaronson. Artega. We got Edinson Cavani Mosaic for Uruguay. Roberto Alvarado, Silver for Mexico. Rookie. Pitch Masters. Giorginio. That guy. That's one I can't really get my tongue to do. Wijnaldum. There's Gavrielda, Gavridal. That's Ronaldo base. There shouldn't be maybe a Holland in here too, then. Nope, I lied. Carlos Rodriguez, Rookie for Mexico. Red Christian Romero for Argentina. Lanier and Hassan Al-Hidos for Qatar. Wijnaldum. Wijnaldum. Thank you, Neeks. Neeks is another one of our soccer guys in here. I'm kind of happy about that. Literally, the more soccer collectors we have in chat, the easier this makes my job. We've got Matthew Hopp upside down. Luke Shaw. Timo Werner. That's George Bellow for the United States. Silver Leon Goretzka. Angolo Conte for France. What's up, illegal? I haven't seen illegal in our chat for a while. I always see him in Forrest chat, but he doesn't like us as much. Understandable. I like Forrest more than I like myself. Julian Timber going for the Netherlands. Silver Matias Vigna for Uruguay. And Raspidori. What's going on, brother? Nuno Mendes. Jeremy Doku in there. That's a Polisic base. Danny Ward for Wales on the Rookie Mosaic. Combo spot there. Edison Kivani Uruguay. Red. Suarez Lukaku. Auto coming up here, guys. Hadri Lukaku. Mason Mounts. Neeks, that's so sick. Carlos Puyol. He was a legend in Barcelona. Puyol for Spain, dude. That's so cool. Who's got Spain? That's going to Chad E. Congrats, Chad. I loved him. FIFA 10 that he was my guy. Literally would use him in FIFA 10. Because it was like him, Messi, Gerard Piquet was there. There's a few others. That's sick, dude. Congrats, Chad. Paul Pogba. Nice. Christopher, a year for Norway on the red. Oh yeah. Do I still play FIFA? Not as much, no. Because I stink at it. I stink pretty bad at it. Ibrahimovic. Killian Mbappe, base for France. I used to do like back in FIFA. I used to do like the my team. There's a Vinny Jr. Neymar Jr. Silva for Brazil. Nice one there, Brazil. That is Brazil. Laura Kaye. And Alexander Sorloff. So back in FIFA 10, my team was literally like, I would just play as Barcelona. Then I would literally just do buy all the best players. So I'd have Wayne Rooney. I'd have Piole, Piquet, Ibrahimovic, Kaka, Messi, Ronaldo. I'd have everybody on my team and it was just super unfair. I put Tim Howard at goal because he was American. New in the field. What is the table with the countries they have done in the beginning? That's so starchy. That's the random. So this is a random team style break. So basically you buy a spot in our break and then we do a random via random.org with all of our names and all of our teams before the break starts. And then whatever team, whatever name your team is, or whatever team your name is matched up to, that is, you get all of the cards from that team in the break. Lizzy base. Denzel Dumfries for Netherlands. That's a fun name. Jocheem Anderson. Yeah, no problem, Starchy. We have an FAQ that pops up in chat every now and then and we have an FAQ on our website as well. So if you ever, ever have any other questions, you can always feel free to check there. That is Leonel Messi. Thanks, Dean. We're down to seven now, guys. Thanks, six. Carlos Rodriguez. Six doing your job better than you over there. Ben Beretson for Chile. Alexander Sloth. They're literally like Hamer Tocque are always being made to drop in links or stop and chat when I'm top loading. Yeah, as always, feel free. Everybody feel free to ask any questions. Paul Pogba. Hey, there's Tocque. Joe Penila, or Pao Hinha for Portugal. Is Gerard Piquet Shakira's husband? I did not know that. That's impressive, man. Romero. Gustavo Cullar for Colombia. Hugo Loris, France. Was. Michael says was. Everybody's saying, Nieks and Michael's saying he was. Strykira's husband. Ferran Torres for Spain. Nice one there. Petor Zelinski, silver for Poland. Got the words. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Lawandowski. Danny Ward for Wales. Roberto Alvarado for Mexico. Men of mastery, and Ochoa on that one. Oh, Piquet cheated. Oh, geez. Pretty good chicken. No complaints, man. It's been a fun rip so far. Just cool to see guys in their country colors, you know. Cerdans Shakiri. Oh boy. Sasa Caledgisic. That's a tough one. Who is that for? Sweden? Austria. Austria. Oh, Lord. Giovanni Reina. Then some cream out of Yemi for Germany. Red, Leon Goretzka for Germany. Pitchmasters. Don't believe any Genesis today. Just one stained glass. No overdrive yet, Michael. Neymar Jr. There's an Erling Holland base for Norway. Rats Norway. Quarta for Argentina. Blue is going to be Jackson Irvine. That's going to Australia. One out of 99 on the bookend. Congrats on that. Leonel Messi, only in Playmaker Auto. Owen, hold on. Neeks told me how to say this. I have a scroll up. That is Owen. Neeks, where is it? Wajnaldum. Wajnaldum. Wajnaldum. There we go. And Trico should have an auto in this pack here. Believe we do. Ronaldo base. Nice. Right on top for Portugal. Ferran Torres. Harry Maguire. We've got Jorge Campos going to, that's sick. That's going to Mexico. Ryan D. Nice one there on the Jorge Campos. Not numbered for the goalie. That's sick. Throwback. Then we've got a pink behind that. 29 out of 49 for Denmark. That's Pierre-Amel Hoijberg. Hoijberg. Hoiberg maybe. That is, Denmark I believe is going to be a combo. That is Anthony S. There you go Anthony. Heck yeah. Red Albert Sambi Lokanga for Brazil. And that is it. Right on to box number three. Good luck here everyone. Again guys we've got seven to go on the next one. That is breaking right after this. Last soccer breaks of the night. We're sold out on our first baseball break of the night as well. We only got two baseball breaks tonight. You guys are interested in that. Take a look as well. Chrome Dust just getting everywhere on this one. There you go Anthony. Yeah nice hit on the combo there man. Ansu Fati. Phillip Lionheart. Okay Luca Madrich. Madrich. Madrich. Polisic. People in the comments will be like wow that's cringe. Nice. There you go. Argentina. Wenchen W. Lino Messi Mosaic. Red Gianluigi Donnarumma for Italy. Pitchmaster Zardez and Sabitzer. Yeah she is for sure. Killian Mbappe base for France. Alexander P. Kai Havertz. There's a name R. Nice. Really good mosaics back to back. Laura Kay on Brazil. Tapia Simone and Bentancourt. Nino Mendez. Doku. Kimmich. Ricardo Pepe. Daniel Malin for Netherlands. Silver. Thibaut Courtois. Brasovic and Baudyaf. Okay she's. Yeah Preke is old, isn't he? Yeah. Preke is an old dude. Yeah. Hotop. Well like old in terms of like sports, right? Yeah yeah yeah. Stadis Mosaic. Ricky for Peru. Louise Abram. Florian Wertz for Germany. Del Maria. Marcus Rashford. High 30s. Yeah. Tua Badal. Baumgartner. There's a De Bruyne for Belgium. Robin Gosens for Germany and Red Edan Hazard. Matteo Pacina. Did I upload the last video? I don't think I did. I'm a fool if I did not. Once that guys, check my channel out really quick. Videos. I did not. Of course. All right we got Anderson Benzema. There's an Erling Holland base for Norway. Pedri on the mosaic for Spain. Silver Joshua Kimmich. Florian Newhouse. Fanny Olmo. Ram. That is Matthias Wiener for Uruguay. Silver Cháver Schlager. Harry Wilson. Harry Kane. Got Antoine Griezmann for France on the mosaic. Nice. Followed by a Red Sasa, Kala Gizic for Austria. Pitchmasters Ginzer and Adiyami on the montage. I think we got our auto coming up here guys. And we got blue as well. Nice. We've got auto Ruben Diaz going to Portugal. There you go Portugal. Who's got that one? That is Hano B. Congrats Hano on the Ruben Diaz auto. Nice one there. Ruben Diaz. We've got a blue Guillermo Maripon for Chile. For Chile I should say. That's on the combo. Jeremy W on the Uruguay. No, no, that's sorry about that. That is Michael A on the Chile and Ecuador combo. Red Gareth Bale. Gareth Bale. Gareth Bale. Thank you. For some reason I always say in ball. I don't know why. Foolish of me. Foolish of me for sure. Laconga. That is a pink Jacob Modur for Poland. 33 out of 49. Dean I, congrats Dean. Lamello Bale. That's kind of what it sounds like. There you go Dean. Congrats man. 33 out of 49 on that one. Angolo Conte for France. And that'll do it. Gonna do a quick recap here for you guys. We've got some numbered stuff. This isn't only all the numbered in it. This is a few of them. Guillermo Maripon for Chile. Jacob Modur for Poland. We've got autos. Ruben Diaz for Portugal. Jorge Campos for Mexico. And Carles Pioll for Spain. Love this guy. One of my favorite guys in FIFA 10 right here. Got one more numbered too. No, you're good. Jackson Irvine. That's one out of 99 for Australia. Might have one more pink somewhere. That was a numbered but here. Oh, is this a numbered? Yeah, it was 29 out of 49. No, you're good. Pierre Amile Hoiberg. That is for Denmark. That'll do it for the break guys. Next up, more mosaic soccer.


I've been quiet for a little too long now, and I feel like there's something we need to talk about. All right, so I just got back home. Today is Friday, my fifth day of work this week and my final day of work this week. I was just in clinic all morning, but I don't wanna talk about that. I do wanna talk about something I've been putting off for a while now. Now, I am not an expert in infectious disease or epidemiology by any stretch of the imagination. That is not my forte, but I am a physician. But as of recent events today, I do feel compelled to say that I don't think the US is quite ready or quite prepared to handle everything that's about to come in terms of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. I don't mean to scare anybody. I just don't think we truly have a grasp on what is yet to happen. A lot of things have unfolded today. Tons of clinics are closing, schools are closing, outpatient facilities are closing, non-emergent procedural areas are closing. We are rescheduling outpatient procedures or non-emergent procedures for up to 90 days now. We have officially locked away all of our personal protective equipment or PPE. They're in an office that no one has access to and we are only allowed a certain amount of masks and protective equipment at a certain given time. And that is because people will steal them from the hospital and I wanna say this as kind of a public service announcement is, do not steal masks from healthcare workers or hospitals if you are visiting there or whatnot. Healthcare workers need these masks to take care of not only the novel coronavirus patients but also other sick patients as well. And if we don't have this equipment, we can't do our job and take care of patients in a safe manner. And again, I'm not trying to scare anybody but I just don't think we are well-prepared and I think we are going to be reactive instead of proactive like we should have been. We have been warned by the Chinese, we have been further warned by the Italian physicians and Italian critical care physicians who basically have told us to get ready and we have it. I worked at a very large academic tertiary hospital and we still don't have tests for the virus. So we still to this day don't know exactly how many people are walking around with this virus or how many people have been exposed. We have no idea. So I think once our tests become available in my state, I think the numbers of coronavirus patients will skyrocket exponentially. To all the healthcare workers out there, keep being safe, wash your hands, wear masks and PPE whenever you can or whenever you're around isolated patients. This is not a joke anymore. It is a serious matter. And for those who think that you're young and nothing's gonna happen to you if you get infected, yeah, probably true. Statistics say that the young people will probably have just a minor illness and move on. However, that's being a little bit irresponsible because when you are young and infected and carrying a very contagious disease or contagious virus, you can transmit it to anybody along your path or anybody you come in contact with, a patient who is elderly, a patient who is immunocompromised, a patient who is immunosuppressed or any of the above. And let's not forget, I mean, you may come in contact with a 30-year-old with cystic fibrosis or a 25-year-old who is on immunomodulator drugs for their Crohn's disease and these patients can be immunosuppressed or can have really poor outcomes if they are exposed to this virus. A cystic fibrosis patient who is exposed to this virus can be put over the edge very quickly and it is not a joke. So please wash your hands. If you are exposed to the virus, do not go anywhere, quarantine yourself, follow the rules, follow the guidelines. You do not wanna spread this virus to people who can be affected very poorly by it. I don't wanna be the dead horse because so many people have talked about this before but I feel like I should do my part as a physician and give this kind of public service announcement. Again, I'm not trying to scare anybody, I'm just trying to inform people and make them a little more aware if they're not already. Leave a comment below. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them. Make sure you smash that like and subscribe button. Follow me on Instagram, turn on post notifications so you are notified when I post a new video which is usually about once or twice every week. Otherwise, I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.


Religious program specialists serving with First Marine Division attended an Urban Leaders Course aboard Camp Pendleton July 8th through 12th. The week-long course focused on various urban warfare techniques, including room clearing and military operations on urban terrain training. The Urban Leaders Course is pretty much, of course, designed to provide Marines with instruction and basic knowledge about military operations in urban terrain. Everything from convoys to football patrols to clearing buildings, anything that falls in between that realm. RPs are often assigned to infantry battalions, making training offered at division schools, like the Urban Leaders Course, another useful tool for their tool belt. Shoot, move and communicate. You know, that's the three things that we harp on and that we ask that they take away of anything. You know, as long as you can shoot effectively, communicate effectively, and move fluently, you should stay alive. RPs are responsible for protecting and unarmed chaplain. The Urban Leaders Course provides high-quality infantry-level training to the sailors, an advantage to any RP who is about to deploy. I think this course is actually beneficial to anybody that's actually with a division or better yet even a victory unit because anybody can really benefit from this training.  If you're with a victory unit and you're deploying, I highly recommend this course. Reporting from Camp Pendleton, California, I'm Sergeant Alfred Lopez.