It's me John Park another episode of John Park's workshop. Thanks so much for stopping by Let's see. What's happening here? I Want to first of all let you know that we'll be doing some audio things switching between some mics and stuff So if you can let me know if there's echoes if there's Sounds that are too loud and peeking out or so quiet. You can't hear them. Please let me know I'll be keeping an eye over on the chat Speaking of the chat. Hello over in YouTube chat. Hello there Charles Burniford and Dave Odessa Johnny Bergdahl welcome Thanks for joining us if you are somewhere else like Facebook or Twitch or somewhere and you're wondering where the chat is check out our discord page or our discord server rather you can head over to Adafru.it Discord jump into the live broadcast chat channel And that's where things are happening. Oh, yeah, I'm wearing my this shirt I just left it here and I picked it up. I'm gonna take this off because this thing Shimmers has a thin stripe pattern and it shimmers like crazy. So before I walk over to the workbench where it really Gets wild. I'm just gonna drop that off right there. There we go. Yeah, that's why that was there. I was wondering Yeah, yeah, hey, sure. I can throw that on Mike volume lower than usual. Thank you. I'll goose that up a little bit there Well, let's see what else have we got going on so packed show today I know I went kind of long last week We won't be doing as deep a dive into something as we did with the setup on GP2040 CE for the Pico game controller stuff last week So it won't be quite as long, but we will condense a bunch of what I think is neat stuff into the show here today We've got what I've got a coupon code for you so that you can save some money in the Adafruit store If you want to shop get some stuff, I've got a recap of the Tuesday show product pick I have a circuit Python parsec for you that I think is really cool one and one I think I'm gonna start using for certain types of projects quite a bit I have got a cool software tool recommendation and I have a retro gizmo to show you something that might spawn some project in the future and Then I've also got a little bit of a learn guide Recap I won't go into too much depth, but I'll show you a couple of learn guides that came out recently And then I've got this project that I'm working on which is named right there wave shape faders I showed off a demo of that last night on the Show and tell with Liz. Thanks for hosting that Liz by the way and today We'll get into a little more depth a little more explanation, and I've got a nice visualizer We can listen to and watch a waveform Change that that'll help us understand how all this stuff works and then we'll look at the simple example I have as well as give you a preview of the 16 fader full bore project that I'll be building Let's see. What else is going on over in our Chat looks like Johnny Bergdahl says they made a PR for one of the Adafruit Arduino libraries Are they're not discord channels for that kind of development? Yeah, I don't know. I think we we don't I think we have a Just to help with Arduino, but we don't have an Arduino dev channel. That's a It's a good question. Maybe ask around Maybe ask that during ask an engineer Or over in the help with a with Arduino Channel see if anyone wants to start up a help or a rather a dev channel for Arduino. That would be pretty cool So let's see first of all I said I would give you a coupon code This is our coupon code for the day wave fader wave dash fader or wave hyphen fader that will get you 10% off in the store today Throw that in the coupon code slot when you are shopping you can just go to Adafruit comm You can see we've got a nice little new products Pop-up on the main page is also this drop-down menu here for prop products Then you can click on new products you all or just go to Adafruit comm slash new if you want to see what the latest stuff is We have some pretty cool things here new in the store But anything you want to get pretty much if it's a if it's a physical good This doesn't work for certificates gift certificates It doesn't work for software or any kind of subscription services But if it's a physical thing you can buy throw it in your cart and then on the way out in the coupon code slot type in Wave fader and that will get you a nice 10% off. There are Some neat new things in the store. This one right here is actually what I'm gonna be using in the project Not in this iteration of it Because I'm using a seesaw chip, but in the final I'm gonna use a couple of these to deal with my 16 faders and You can Check out some of the other new goodies here on the main page Like I said throw them in your cart and then on the way out type in that coupon code and that will get you a pretty snazzy discount A Thin man asks what would you recommend for Windows PC synthesizer software? Well, if you are interested in Sort of one page Enough knobs to deal with the fundamental stuff. I really like a free open source piece of synth software called helm Helm Slightly more sophisticated synth that is by the same developer also free and open source pay what you like But it's free and open source is vital the it al and that's the one I'm gonna be showing today if you want to deal with little modules and patch cables and Fundamental stuff that you can turn into anything you like VC VRac also is free open source software And I believe that runs on Windows Mac And Linux and then there's a fork of it from a few years ago that'll run on iOS and maybe on Android I'm not sure about that one So those are worth checking out helm and vital So Let's Let's take a look now at the little one-minute wrap-up so Tuesday show I do is a product pick show I picked something from our Store sometimes it's a new product. Sometimes it's something that's an oldie, but goodie that has recently become available again. Thanks to Chip Availability that was in short supply and has has come looped back around and that was the case this week with This product pick the pie gamer and here's a little one-minute excerpt from you from the show for you to check out The pie gamer so this is a really great handheld platform for game development as well as Development of things that you want to screen some inputs on it runs Arduino it runs circuit Python And it's really great for make code arcade to develop games You kind of need this big framework with lots of stuff ready to go and Microsoft has really delivered on that to give you a really seamless experience setting up learning how to create games Getting them on to your handheld so I'll go ahead and turn this on you can see the little neopixels light up down there at the bottom and Made a nice little sound. This is a game that I found that was in one of the Microsoft game jams. Oh, it allows you to stop time and throw a throwing star. Oh, and that guy's good He doesn't want to get all right. Huh, huh. How about another one job? I'm never gonna beat that guy. Oh, you got me It is the pie gamer It is indeed the pie gamer Let's see so Moving on Let's dive into actually this is this I'm showing today's circuit path on parsec on a clue board But it would work great on on the pie gamer as well in the way. I'm envisioning visioning it But it'll work on pretty much any circuit Python board. So without further ado, let's check this out Okay For the circuit Python parsec today I wanted to show you how you can use Supervisor to set the next code file. What does that mean? That means at startup We can have a code dot pie running that is waiting for us to tell it a different Program to run so we can have multiple pie files. They don't have to be named code dot pie In fact, they can't be they can be named pretty much anything you want and at a press of a button We can say okay, let's go ahead and launch program a or program B in this case What I have is you can see here. I'm actually stand by one second. I just want to log My repel into this board Okay, let's wait for this to start up I'm gonna reset it Shoe away that mosquito. I don't know why it's not displaying in that repel You're gonna have to read this really tiny repel Let me zoom even closer in here and refocus. I was expecting to see some output there that I'm not getting so Adjust this in real time Okay So what you can see on the screen here the screen repel is printing out for me It says press a or B to run plant waterer dot pie or code to dot pie So if I press this a button it will Automatically reset the board and now it's running a different pie file instead of code dot pie It's running this clue project for the plant waterer if I reset the board it will Go back to that original code dot pie file that is waiting for me to decide. Hey, what do you want to run? So I'll go ahead and press the B button and this time it's running a separate program This one's called code to dot pie and it's just printing out some text and the time in time monotonic So the way this works is let me go ahead and reset We're in the way this works is we're importing supervisor And then I'm also importing board and keypad so I can use the buttons here I'm setting up the keypads and then in the main loop if I Press a button you can see here It says if that button is the first button button a Supervisor set next code file and then the name of the dot pie file I want to run if the other button gets pressed then same sort of thing supervisor set next code file code To dot pie then it will wait for me to release that button lift off the button And then it runs this supervisor reload so the supervisor reload is different than pressing reset or power cycling It has this notion of oh, I've been told a different code file to run And it will run with that until we either reset the board or power cycle it So this is a really cool way that you can set up a menu type of system to run multiple different code files on Your circuit Python board and that is how you can use supervisor set next file Inside of circuit Python and that is your circuit Python parsec All right, so I think that's super neat and For some reason now it did decide to start Printing out to the rebel will it not when I When I reset this one I might need to give it a little time a little pause there Yeah, for some reason it doesn't print that that message there. That's okay But this is like I was saying this could be really good on on boards that have a display in particular You can also just remember Which things you want to be able to launch on a particular device with some other kind of input for it But really cool if you have sort of multiple different uses for a little gizmo like a pi game or a pi badge And then you can use a button or other input to say okay Let's run run this program or that program of the other program Let's see Jeff asks in the check and you have the other programs return to the menu It's a great question. I haven't tried that, but I believe you could insert this supervisor set next code file and supervisor reload in any of your Code so we could be running something and as long as those buttons that we're using are sort of dedicated to that purpose Or key combos or something like that. I don't see why you couldn't say okay I want to relaunch, but this time into code dot pi and get back to that menu Or have all the options available in every program seems plausible to me, but I haven't tried it So Yeah, really cool one. Thanks to Todd bot for suggesting this He had a couple of tips on his tips and tricks page related to this notion of Running a different program after you start up, which is really cool Right, so let me disconnect that just so we don't have any Conflicting Code dot pi things happening One other benefit to that by the way is as you know if you're a long time viewer every once in a while I will save my code file code dot pi file onto my camera switcher, which is a little Think it's a itsy-bitsy. No, it's a trinket M0. I have over there camera switches running circuit python I have not bothered. I should I should add a little jumper and and and a boot text file So that it doesn't load as a circuit pi drive, but currently it does so every once in a while I overwrite the code dot pi file on there by accident Be be nice if the code dot pi file was just the supervisor thing as a as a protection measure Okay, let's see. What else I want to show in the discord chat. Peacurry and a hurry mentioned Another virtual modular synthesizer plug-in. I haven't heard of this one, but it's distro distro cardinal virtual modular synthesizer Plug-in so it might be worth checking out for for people who want to get into Virtual software synth type of stuff on their computer Alright, let's see. So what what order should we do things in? I've got a few things to show Let's start off with this retro gizmo I'm gonna switch over To the bench here And ignore those bags of parts. That's not what I'm showing right now, but I'll move those off to the side and I got a really cool Old control box here That I think I'm gonna try to turn into some sort of controller You can see here. It was a video production Controller that was some in some studios studio five no idea who but a TV station probably And this would have been the late 70s early 80s. It is a controller for a Quantel DPE 5,000 if you've heard of Quantel, it was probably the paint box which came out in around 1981 And that really revolutionized digital effects in television in live broadcast in particular This Predates that this was from 1978 This was a box that could do Essentially had a frame buffer It could store some very limited number of frames of video in memory and then it could be manipulated for things like scale ratios rotation You could do picture-in-picture with the with the predecessor to this so you probably could do it on this one But I'm not sure and if you look at the kinds of controls on here There are some color controls for the border So you could set a border around things if you were shrinking them down and this allowed you to adjust the hue Luminate luminance saturation and width which I'm guessing is a uniform border size You could turn this on and off I guess is what this one did here there were these really cool Long joysticks here for adjusting the position of your video As well as the size of your video in a couple of axes and then you could adjust what was happening where you could Zoom in or out or not do either of those things Locking the ratio or adjusting the ratio Adjusting the width adjusting the height or I believe keeping them together and then auto pan I'm not sure how that would have that would have worked within all this. There was keying So I'm not sure if this was like a Luma key or a green screen or blue screen chroma key type of thing Has a little momentary switch for turning that on and off and then a couple of different effects and wiping and keying And then there were some presets here. I'm not sure what those did But look it's our friends the the cool little steppy switches there zoom in on that a bit more There you go Looks like you could do a freeze They had some digital noise reduction circuitry, which would have been particularly helpful for if you're scaling stuff and wanted to try to get rid of some of the noise and Then one of the really interesting things is I believe these are four Little bubble LED displays so I think these are like seven segment four digit seven segment or four character seven segment displays that have the little Lensing on top of them to make them look a little bigger than they are.  I think that's that's what those are and there is you you can see so the This came from apex sales, which is a surplus place electronics place and Clearly someone either scavenge some parts out of this or Or Used it as a prop and had it wired up In their own way, but I'll show you it looks to me like maybe that the board was just grabbed out of here for another unit It has three of the four screws on top so that's a start and give me one second. I just wanted to pop open my Chats so I can see if anyone has Any Questions or thoughts or if my audio goes out There we go Okay, so This looks like it was built into Maybe a sort of modular project box. I'm not sure if this was a custom box I mean it's got custom printing. Maybe these are Custom cut holes here, but some of this looks like maybe a sort of a Modular type of project enclosure thing So I believe we're missing the control board. I'll leave that that level of zoom pretty tight zoom here But there is One board remaining a couple of chips have been swiped out of here We have no connections to this Connector here, so I'm not sure if that was a An add-on that wasn't always in use or if that was meant to be plugged in But I'm assuming that this was how it talked to the the little not so little actually Computer that was running this Got some really nice Wire lacing for this big bundle beautifully made you can see here's like a custom Arrangement of this ribbon cable here running to some of the switches Got some nice big XY Joystick mounts here to potentiometers per with springs and They got some trimmer pots here with the big wheels on them, so some really cool Parts there it'll basically just have to all be rewired from scratch to use for something, but a Really neat find and a bit of kind of cool because it's a bit of graphics History there with with quantel and their history, so Looks like something got screwed Yeah, look at this we're missing a standoff so this thing is a little Listing up to one side there But that is the quantel dpe 5000 if you google that you will and are interested in this stuff you'll see some neat Old ads and history of the device. I've never heard of this one mostly. I'd heard of things like the Henry and the The paint box and slightly more modern stuff that was that was pretty instrumental in early graphics Computer graphics and broadcast graphics, so that is the the cool retro gizmo find and maybe we'll revisit that maybe I'll put a Raspberry Pi Pico in there and run GP 2040 or maybe a KB 2040. We'll need some analog inputs for What do we need eight eight potentiometers we got these four and these four so Kind of a cool Platform for something and I don't feel too bad about Giving it a new use because it's already been stripped of Its original chips, so it's not really going to be usable, but there you go. That's the cool Gizmo find for today Right jumping back over here Let's see you next up. What have we got? I wanted to do a Little tool recommendation, so In the world of MIDI there are a few applications that you'll run into when you're just trying to on your computer Figure out what messages are being sent around your system. I often use MIDI What the heck's it called if I look it up? It'll MIDI monitor And MIDI monitor is nice actually let me let me open it up and share MIDI monitor To give you a understanding of why I like this new Applications so let me Let's go to Put me over here Give me a second. I'm going to make a new screen capture with a couple of applications on it So here is MIDI monitor one moment There we go and I'll leave that there and Then I'm also going to add a second. Let me scale this down a little bit I'm going to add this second window and this is the new app called show MIDI that I wanted to share today Just released free and open source and show MIDI there you are Okay, right so I'm going to hide Show MIDI off to the side for a second Okay, so if you're looking here at MIDI monitor, I've got a little MIDI controller plugged in and I am turning one knob on the MIDI controller. So what I'm learning right now is okay. It is MIDI channel 2 is It's a CC and continuous controller control change on channel 2 and the data it's sending out is Actually, what is that see there? That's not channel. I can't remember what that is This is coming over sorry CC channel 103 104 105 106 some wiggling different knobs here 107 108 and the the values it's sending are these In the 60s Kind of values As I wiggled and I think that's because I have this set right now as as kind of a I'm using these MIDI knobs as like little switches little binary types of switches if I press Some of the let's ignore the Blarpy sounds there if I press some of the buttons here you'll see I've got Midi notes being sent as well as note on and note off messages after touch But the problem is it's this big stream of info that is really kind of hard to pick through if I'm if I'm Playing multiple notes at once they get lost. So right now I'm playing a chord I've got three notes that I'm pressing it gets lost in the shuffle here So sometimes you have to just scroll back and look for something So I found it very very useful for a lot of things over the years And I didn't really know what I was missing until this new app Came on the scene and I'm gonna bring bring this into view now. This is Show MIDI and I can leave them both up. You'll see those should be able to see them both So first of all you'll see show MIDI lists the two MIDI types of controllers or MIDI possible controllers that I have plugged in right now one is my camera switcher, which again I haven't turned off the the MIDI USB MIDI capability on it even though it's not being used in code and the other is this Arturia beat step this This thing I'm using I can just show you what I've been pressing. So this is the thing here. So now watch when I Go and twiddle knobs you can see Show MIDI will briefly bring on and as long as I'm adjusting it it will bring on so this is knob on CC112 And it shows the values that I'm sending it and then when I let go it just kind of will fade away as I do other stuff So here as I'm playing notes if I'm playing these chords it actually Just shows all three of those notes and it's either a zero or up to 127 of Velocity as I as I press those So really cool if you do MIDI stuff and sometimes are frustrated by a giant endless fast-moving stream of data going by In fact if I Since this thing can act as a sequencer if I hit play on it You can see the difference, right? I am playing a few Steps here and as those steps get pressed over on my Show MIDI You can kind of clearly see what's what's currently in play Those are the four notes that are that have been played recently Trying to make that out in and I don't mean to be mean to MIDI monitor because I love it And it's been great over the years But that is kind of how most of the MIDI monitoring programs I've used work which is a log a kind of streaming scrolling log So really nice this show MIDI. Let me let me show you where it comes from Right here. I'll go ahead and stop this now and switch To this view So this is by a developer named Geert Bevin and I'm sorry for mispronouncing the name G Bevin So this is github.com G Bevin show MIDI. I'll just drop a link over in the chat right now And This developer had previously made a couple of Python based MIDI send and MIDI receive or send MIDI and receive MIDI which are really nice command line tools for Particularly during development to just say hey, I just need to like without hooking anything up I just want to send a MIDI message from my keyboard from a from a command line interface So that those are terrific Really helpful for certain types of development and this one is is a beautiful new Application that lets you See what's happening on a MIDI device or multiple MIDI devices without getting overwhelmed with data. So very cool If you do MIDI stuff, you may want to check that out Okay So next up Let's get into this wave form Fader wave shape fader thing that I showed yesterday. So this is I'll show you My current sort of prototype Version of the idea which is I got a microcontroller. I have some number of faders slide potentiometers running to it through a analog to digital converter and those values are adjusting the points of a single cycle wave form that is then being Run at audio rates with different pitches Through the synthesizer software through synth IO inside of circuit Python so Before I show that or where that's headed in hardware I wanted to give a little bit of an example and I'm gonna turn off my noisy fan here just so I can hear a little better. I Want to show an example of What? the shape of the single cycle wave form is Gonna do to the character of the sound to the way a sound the sort of the tone the timbre the Harmonics that we hear these are the things we're gonna be changing as we adjust the shape of one cycle of a wave form which is then being Repeated very very many times a second so that we hear hear a pitch in the audible range so let me bring vital up here and I'm gonna turn up This Amp and a microphone. Let me see if I can get it to make some sound now if I can I'm gonna get it to play from my Sequence here, and I'm just gonna initialize this so that one Add a few more notes Okay, so this is playing right now that is the shape of one cycle of the wave form I Want to take a moment before I proceed to ask you if you can hear Synthesizer at the same time. I'm just gonna wait for the chat to catch up because there's a little bit of a pause Jeff says yes, so that's good. Thank you both me and that sound well enough since the tad loud Okay, I'm just gonna pick a preset Sine wave, okay, so and that's gonna get quieter and that's just the nature of a sine wave because it has Just the fundamental tone so whatever pitch I'm telling if I tell it you're gonna play a C We're hearing just this smooth Fundamental tone without many harmonic Frequencies above or below that fundamental root note that we're playing so The shape of that wave form really influences this a lot So what I can do in and this is vital here The program is named vital in vital we can go and draw The shape of the wave form So now I've gone to sort of a triangle wave, it's not quite a perfect triangle That's got a little bit more buzz to it than that Sine wave, but not by much. It's just a slightly harsher version So let's let's listen to a square wave So square wave gets again even more character more harmonics Compared to the sine wave compared to the triangle wave let's do how about a Saw-tooth wave okay, so even more of that rich Buzzy kind of metallicky types of harmonics that you hear there. Let me see if I can shift the Root note just so you don't get too bored of that Now what we can do is start to draw arbitrary wave form shapes and There's a lot of care taken in creating wave forms Hard to do in analog circuitry much easier to do in digital types of synthesis and So you can see here It's just a certain character to the sound notice small changes in the shape will make big changes to the sound so watch this Okay, so something in that shape was causing Those cool harmonics and now it's kind of rounded up off the top end of that a little Right now we got we picked up a bunch of higher frequency stuff up there just by changing the shape of this wave form Now in I'm gonna pause this for a second and I'm gonna initialize that patch to get rid of that sound In Synth I owe we can do the same sorts of things so we can say I'm gonna use a Formula an algorithm that creates a sine wave or triangle wave for certain waves that are easier to describe as a Formula and other shapes these weird things. I'm drawing here we can Input them as points in a table essentially a sort of a lookup table And I'll show you that in circuit Python But what that means is if I want to in real time adjust the shape of that with my 16 sliders I'm gonna be doing something like this. Let me sorry one second. I'm gonna re-initialize that again. Oh It didn't make the terrible noise good so here in the vital Wave shape editor. I'm gonna change this x-grid to be 16 so that Is what it'll look like to have 16 faders that I can adjust the waveform with and then the number of points on why Here it just only goes up to 16. I'll have a Much much larger range as you know as we read a potentiometer a slide potentiometer We might have you know a thousand Points or 60,000 if it's a 16 bit Roughly, so this starts to approximate the amount of granularity You'll be able to do with faders adjusting those 16 points in our wavetable. I Don't know vital that one. I think it's a motor you can draw a little more just drag and draw We don't have to be too careful about hitting the points it'll interpolate it sort of now Keep in mind with this patch in the software. I'm not really doing much as far as Filtering or adding any types of reverbs and effects So this is really a dry sound, but it's the pure just what can I do with the waveform? Which is pretty interesting, so I'm gonna turn the volume down on that for a moment and Let's now look at What this same sort of set of points looks like over in circuit pythons so I'm gonna jump over here and Let me Adjust What I've got in camera view here. I don't know if I'll use that MIDI controller, so let me just unplug that and set that down Okay, so this is back to four points essentially Focus there and I'm gonna plug Just directly into this metro RP2040 that I have here and I'll talk a little bit about the the microcontrollers and where this is going so let's give this a USB-C cable and I'm gonna keep the sound off at first and then we'll go and adjust Just some parameters and listen to it later. So in Sublime text here and up the code pie file. There we go So I've taken a synth IO Example code from Todd bot, which is this 80s ARP synth IO So this will play these little arpeggios and it's meant to be controlled from like a MIDI controller So you press one note and it plays arpeggios little Cute sets of notes as you move around. I'm just having it endlessly. Sorry I'm just having it endlessly play. I should have added some random to it But it's just endlessly playing one arpeggio the place where we get to adjust our single cycle waveform is right here. I have object called wave user and This is a NumPy array With four points in it. So by default at startup They are just like that graph. I was adjusting in vital. Yeah, sorry. It's very quiet. I'm leaving that sound off Actually, I'll turn it all the way turn it all the way down. Thank you, Andy So I've got a point at zero, which is the center line Then I have a point at basically the top 64,000 Basically the bottom 64,000 and then somewhere in the middle 23,000 or sorry Halfway between zero in the top roughly So that Array is What it's gonna play it first and I'll turn this sound up So that's what that wave Looks like it's fairly saw-ish starts in the middle It's up to the top all the way to the bottom and then a little so the fact that we have This sort of mismatch between the last point and the first point helps to give us some of those kind of cool buzzy harmonics But what we'll do now is Start to adjust those points in sort of real-time. It's not quite real-time. I'll explain in a second So let's go to something that's kind of a Sort of sine wavey shape or we can get triangle Again how that balance of sound is a square wave cut some of those and sorry my my amp here is peaking a little too Which is giving me some buzzing Better gain my chat now says it's very quiet and then two minutes later loud All right, so again, we've changed the character of that in some ways. It's kind of like a filter, right? If you think of having a very rich harmonic Sound and then use a low-pass filter or a high-pass filter to take some frequencies out Shaping the waveform has some similar results but it's not It's not quite the same effect of just kind of muting things above or below a point is instead really Adjusting that the shape of the wave now if you think of these points as being How far away they are from a center line? You can adjust the amplitude and it gets really really quiet All right, so this is just some like little sort of triangle wave that's happening right around the middle And we can kind of add a peak to it so that's as much as we can do with just the four points But like you saw before in vital if I have a bigger table if I have 16 points now We can really get some interesting shapes to it Love the factory says show an o-scope. Okay. This is a great point. I don't have one set up, but the It's such a great segue to to the inspiration for this project. So I'm gonna jump back over to My browser here. This is a project by Mitza mitzela Michela, I don't know how to pronounce it. I'm sorry MIT X e la Who is a Who is an engineer? I believe who builds really amazing synthesizer projects that and other projects that I've seen online over the years And the idea here was to build what they called a hardware reverse oscilloscope so if you look at the set of 16 sliders Let me find a lit up picture There you go, okay, so it's at an angle, but you can see here they're using up some nice LED fader cap sliders The positioning of the faders becomes the same as the oscilloscope view of the thing So you almost know don't need a display because you can see right in front of you the shape of that wave form and they should if you were to Look at that with just a constant tone The with the period being just one one cycle then you would see a Oscilloscope view that looks just like the arrangement of your faders, which is pretty cool So shove them like this and you should see a square wave in fact Oh, yeah, so there you can see this will be a nice saw wave that goes up drops abruptly and just keeps hanging along So this is the inspiration for the project and they were doing I Believe audio out which is similar which is the same we're gonna do they also had some control voltage CV in so they could Work this into a hardware For you hardware modular synthesizer that someone they know Had so this version that I'm doing is gonna be much much simpler And it's just using circuit Python and synth IO to generate either monophonic or polyphonic Sound with a shaped wave form don't need filters and other things on it gonna keep it fairly simple If you look in fact at I would recommend I'm gonna put this in the Comments if you're interested in this I would recommend checking out the The project and the page I'm just gonna show some of their examples where you can see They also have a knob to say okay How how many of these sliders are actually making up the single cycle wave form? So someone asked a question about how many points in the period it in this case could be anything from 1 to 16? In mine, it's just been the 4 and in my final one. It'll be the 16. I don't plan to get as fancy But there you can see the shape of that single cycle wave on the oscilloscope is is gonna match the The shape of the faders there As you can see as they're playing Notes on a MIDI keyboard. They're adjusting the fundamental so it's gonna move the thing around but a Single note just held should just look like your your faders, which is pretty cool So Jeff asks you'll print the box. I'm not gonna copy this project I This quite the same way I'm gonna do probably a PCB and a laser cut acrylic thing But that you can 3d print those as layers if you want or make an enclosure whatever you like so Let me Let me jump back over to the workbench for a second just to show you The Main parts of this so this is gonna be One of these right here actually two of these right here So this is the 80 s 7 8 3 0 it is a 8 channel Analog to digital converter So I'll have 16 of of my faders So I'm gonna have two of these a second one right here So I have two of these so these will be running over I square C To my microcontroller, which I believe is gonna be either an itsy-bitsy M4 or an itsy-bitsy RP2040 and I'm planning to make the project so you can use either one And that is so we can get audio directly out of the DAC There is actually a stereo DAC on the it's a bit Cm4 We can send out over a 0 and a 1 and be able to then take that Audio into Other systems I'm gonna bring mine as audio into my modular synth and then be able to use effects and things on it you could alternately with the RP2040 use I2S audio and plug an I2S audio amp into it and just go directly out to speaker That's an amplified speaker that'll sound nice and loud if you want to make a Sort of self-contained box that that makes sound Here are The faders it's gonna be 16 of these guys I'm gonna keep it a Little simpler and a little less expensive by not using The lit faders those are really cool, but I'm just gonna use Sort of these these normal Slide pots that don't have the extra pins necessary Necessary and cost necessary to have the the lit up ends there, but I'm gonna pack them in Pretty close almost just edge-to-edge, so it'll be a denser Board then the the sample I have over there for my four faders because those have I'm just using the little neo sliders. So those have individual PCBs per See here these are quite far apart because there's little PCBs on each fader that are Keeping those from from budding up to each other So this this will be a bit more compact as a result, but there is a whole bunch of faders and fader caps right there and Then I'm gonna use one of these TRRS breakouts to Send the audio out over either a mono or stereo patch cable I think it'll send mono Without shorting the wrong things together, but I'll test that But that's what the audio will come out so that can then go plugging into another powered speaker or amplifier or into a Synthesizer effects box and so on What else so I've done a proof of concept of that design Over in fritzing that I wanted to show you So here you can see I've got it's a bit see I've got the A zero and a one going out to left and right on my audio jack I will probably add a little RC resistor capacitor circuit here just to D-noise it a little bit and that'll be particularly helpful if you are using the RP2040 and PWM out that light that's a little aliased so it likes to get a bit of smoothing on it And then you can see here. I've got those ADC's eight channels and then a whole slew of Slide pots here this is what the schematic looks like and I'm not going to be able to use this because that part there that's that fader part is not actually accurate to what The faders I'm using looks like and I don't actually feel like making a fresh Footprint or editing the footprint in fritzing because it's a little frustrating so I'm going to rebuild this in key cad and While I'm at it I think as Lamora asked if I could see if I could make it work with a socketed Arrangement for the microcontroller so that you can pick whether you want to have a RP2040 version or the M4 version in there as well as a probably breakout pins for I2S amp if you're using the the version that can they can use that and maybe some little jumpers that you can slice or or put a little Jumper shunt on to decide if you're just taking the DAC audio out to the or the PWM or a DAC audio out to the Audio jack or if you're gonna do maybe some screw terminal for the speaker So that's my hope is to make it kind of a nice little self contained gizmo and then it'll be kind of a cool platform for writing your own unique synth IO synths which can just use a USB MIDI To run the thing or it's maybe it's generative or you could maybe I'll put put a Classic serial MIDI on there as well Or you could kind of do Non music projects with it because in the end of the end of the day, it'll be a microcontroller with 16 faders on it So I will I'll make the board available for you to print it's not gonna be an a different product or anything like that It'll just be something you can go and order Online from JLC PCB or somewhere like that So yeah to answer Jeff's question. This will not be a product. This will just be a project and a learn guide and Something that you can Riff off of if you want to So that's my idea with that. That's where that's headed Let me know if you've got any other questions in the chat. Let's see love the factory asked Switch over the discord here Anything good for slow like motion control sub one Hertz period See Grover said they've played with synth IO oscillator frequencies less than point zero one Hertz So seems like you could use potentially use synth IO to generate those Oh Yeah, see Grover said you could maybe say I'm gonna use 12 of these faders for the wave shape and four for the envelope shaping a DSR There's a lot you could do with that and I think there's a chance that Liz and I are talking about Also making a provision for this to do control voltage and gate So we'll collaborate on that and I'll put the necessary Traces and pins out to do we have a 16-bit DAC That came out recently that might be a cool tool for for sending out CV and there's a really great Playground, let me show this Post from see Grover Let's see playground see Grover on doing CV your rack control voltage signal from synth IO So this may be Part of part of the plan here and this is news maybe to see Grover But listen I were talking about With a more doing some CV out as sort of a secondary project, but again using just the one Hardware design if that makes sense, so if you want to check this out, I'll drop a link in the chat. Hope you don't mind See Grover, but there it is for everyone to check out and You're welcome Jeff just said even I could understand well if I can understand it and I can help you understand it fantastic Let's see any other questions did DJ MJ are not too many parts. Yeah, this is a pretty you can get away with With pretty few parts, which is nice if you're using some of these breakout boards You can you can get pretty minimal with it, you know the The fact that we can read in eight analog ins on one of these little breakouts And if you want to and this is something I'll If you look at my design here I'm not using stem of Qt Cables because it doesn't need it if we're on a on a PCB like this we'll just Slot those down in and solder them, but you could potentially run To stem of Qt cables to different devices if you wanted to adjust how things work So you can definitely prototype really quickly with with the stem of Qt cables, which is nice All right, let me grab a sip of water and Jeff asks are there too many wires for clean sound on a prototype board sometimes on like a breadboard That can get pretty noisy We're not doing too much with audio in this circuit The audio is kind of all happening on the microcontroller and I'm then running it out to You'll notice I put the Audio out the little TRS jack pretty near the microcontroller Audio circuits can be really tricky. They can get really noisy. There are things I don't know much about it But there are things that you can do to try to separate ground planes between audio things and power things and Filter stuff and put off opto isolators. So there's a lot of things you can do to try to keep things from getting noisy Sometimes just having things like neopixels on the board doing their thing can make your audio noisy So yeah, they're it's one of the reasons. I'm kind of keeping it simple. I think I'm resisting the temptation to add an OLED to it So Yes, audio stuff can get really noisy on a PCB We're probably better off than if we're doing this on a big breadboard with lots of you know wires everywhere But it is always a Consideration with audio stuff. So that's a that's an excellent question. We'll see crossing fingers. We'll see how this comes Let's see I Think that's gonna do it. So thanks everyone for stopping by This is our coupon code for today. I'll mention again if you want to go to store pick up some cool stuff Throw it in your cart on the way out Type that in wave dash fader that will get you 10% off in the store And we just have a bunch of freebies so don't forget if you if you want to know what they are just go to a fruit comm slash free Like I'm about to do now And that will show you the deals we have if you spend 99 or more you'll get a PCB coaster very cool Adafruit logo PCB coaster the gold variety If you spend 149 or more, you'll get the coaster and you'll get a KB 2040 If you spend 199 or more, you will get the coaster the KB 2040 free continental You ask ground shipping from UPS and at 299 or more You get the coaster the KB 2040 the free UPS ground shipping in the continental United States and a circuit playground Express So those are all Perks if you spend a bunch, but no matter what if you want to get stuff and save a little bit You'll save 10% off today with that coupon code right there wave fader wave dash fader All right. Thanks everyone for stopping by I'm gonna Sign off now for Adafruit Industries. I'm John Park. This has been John Park's workshop Tune in all sorts of other days of the week for things like deep dives with Scott and Tim We have 3d hangouts on Wednesdays. I've got my product pick show on Tuesdays We have show and tell on Wednesday and ask and you're on Wednesday and Usually on Sunday a desk of lady Ada at various hacker hacker mom and dad times So lots of stuff for you to come by and see Just go to a fruit comm and click on the live link and you will find out what is happening now Thank you everyone for stopping by. I will see you next time. Have a good one. Bye. Bye


Pull out of the tree line. 300 meters to your direct front. M.A.B. Way up, Virginia Ski. You're good. Take back blast. Lift. Right. Back blast is all clear. Rocket! Back blast is all clear. Rocket! Go from point A. Team objective one. Machine gun hill. And lamb. Right side of the element. Yeah, sir. I'm about to.


Hey Audrey. Hey SLP. Sorry, I'm about to make you a co-host. Yes. It's five o'clock. It's five o'clock. It's time for Watch Me Work. It's the 20th of April. And we're back. We've been doing Watch Me Work for like 10 or 11 or 12 years. I haven't written down somewhere when we started, but anyway, we used to do it live in the lobby of the public theater. Now, since COVID, we've been doing it Zoom. We thank the public theater and we thank HowlRound for helping us make this possible. Watch Me Work is all about you and we work together for 20 minutes. And then you ask me questions about your work and your creative process. While we don't have time for you to read your work or present your work as such, we do have time to talk about process, your process, your way of working, our way of working. And we'll share tips, ideas and strategies with the whole community. So that's the deal. Audrey, if you want to tell us how to get in touch, ask you about it. You go. So there's a couple of ways to get in touch. If you are inside of the Zoom, all you need to do is click on the raise your hand button, which is in a reactions tab, likely at the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top, if you're on an iPad or a tablet. And if you're watching the live stream, you can ask us questions by tweeting it at Watch Me Work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound, H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. Or you can tweet at the public theater or write to our Instagram. Those are the ways. Those are the ways. These are the days. Here we go. And here's 20 minutes. Yes. Oh, hello. Hello. Do people have questions? Or answers? Yes. I see Melania has a question. All right. Hello. Hi. I have a question. Answers. Complicated. Sometimes. There is an opportunity that I am having of presenting a synopsis of a story that I have. And. It's been a long time since I present someone asked me for a synopsis. And I would like to know. What should I include? And what, what should I tell? And what not. There is, I know that it has to be something short. But I am wondering. For example, that the end has to be there. Or not. How to prepare it. A good synopsis. Right. Oh, it depends who you're giving it to. Do you know these people well? Or who are they? Yeah. I mean, it is an opportunity. It's a kind of a fellowship and scholarship. Yes. They are here in Miami. And they are asking for is to, is to write a novel. I never write in my life a novel. And what I am trying to do. Is following what I am learning here. Is to give myself permission. To try new things. Yes. So. So I say, I said, okay. This is something new. There was a person that I trust a lot that said, I think you can do it. And I said, okay. So I am trying. And to me, the success is showing up. It's doing the work. And I am following. I'm following. I'm following. For example, when I get very scared or something, I write, I write very fast. Right. His voice is on a slow. So I. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am thinking about uses and learning a lot. Yes. All your, all your words and everything. Because what I, I am trying to do with this. Is to show up. And do the work. Beyond any results. The success for me now is to. I said permission to know that. I am, I am worthy to try it. Right. Right. Right. But now they are. Synopsis. Yeah. I say, okay, maybe you can help me a lot. How to. Yeah. It depends. I mean, that's what I mean. So. I mean, if you were to tell. A friend, the story of your novel. Right. Just write it like you're telling a friend, you know, and you can tell when the friend is like, the friend is listening and the friend is like. Maybe too much information, too many details. The friend might begin to fade out a little bit.  You don't have to tell every single. Idea for every single chapter. You don't have to tell the story of your novel. You don't have to tell every single idea for every single chapter. You don't have to tell every single twist and turn, but you want to tell enough of the story. So that your friend will get an idea of the story. They'll get interested. But you don't want to tell them too much that they're going to get so bogged down and all the details that they're going to sort of get. Oh, see, that's a lot. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, so maybe, I don't know, but you could, you could probably tell it in. I mean, think of the. What's your, think of your favorite novel. Maybe this is a way to do it. Think of your favorite novel and say, if you were to write a synopsis of that novel, how would it go? Okay. That's a good way to do it sometimes. Okay. So maybe I don't know. I'm trying to think of.   How would you tell a synopsis of that? Would it take maybe a page? You know, would it take less than a page? No, would it take two pages? Think of your favorite novel and try that and then work backwards and maybe that's the right form for you. I like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Melania. We don't have another question at the moment. We can just sit here. Oh, go for it. Hi. So my question has to do with dialogue. If you have like just a stream of consciousness, do you like, and this could be your technique or what you think is best, but I don't know, like, is it, is it best to like just spit it all out and then like try to find different voices in it to give different character, like different characters. The parts of it, like, what's the best way to parse out. Like a grand idea over a conversation through a conversation. Right. Right. Right. That's a good question, Phyllis. So I'm, I'm trying to guess you're writing a play of a dramatic work play screenplay. I don't really know what I'm really know. Okay. Okay. That's okay. You know, you have the subject of what your characters are talking about. Yeah. Like, I feel like the knot or the ball of wax is kind of when I'm starting. Did you say the nut or the not like the knot or the tangle or the ball of wax, like they're trying to tease apart is what I'm starting with. Right. Okay. So you have like, I'm trying to figure out what that means actually. You have a general idea of the thing that they're talking about. Yeah. Like the problem. Like who owns that house like that, for example, I'm just like, if there, there's a house on a hill and they're like, I mean, everyone is like, my husband drives me crazy. Then we can, then we can tease apart like all of the, like in what way and is it what you're doing? Is it, you know, the algorithms that are feeding into us? Is it the exterior world? Like, I feel like, you know, everyone has different angles on what. Great. Great. What you said everyone has different angles. So I'm, I'm led to believe that you have characters. It feels like that. I'm sorry. No good to me. I'm so sorry. Okay. We're hearing voices. We're hearing voices. That was funny. I was like, okay. What is that? I'm guessing, I'm guessing that they're characters. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They seem to sort of be, sort of evolving and sort of revealing themselves to me. And it sort of feels like a film, but I don't really know. It's okay. You don't have to decide that just yet, but it would, I think it would help you to decide kind of sort of generally who your characters are. Okay. What is their relationship to the ball of wax or the knot? Okay. Right? Yeah. I think that would, that would help you distinguish them. Yeah. And you don't have to even, at this point, you don't have to even think of names. You can give them numbers or letters or whatever. You don't have to think of, you know, anything, how they identify what it doesn't, that doesn't have to, you don't care. Just what is their relationship to the thing that they're talking about? Okay. Okay. And that will help you discover who was saying what. Okay. Does that make sense? Cause like if you were having, some people were talking about, um, if there were, again, just someone knockers a house on a hill, you know, but one person has lived, uh, in the town for their whole lives. They've seen that house every day. Another person is new in town. They don't know what they're talking about. Another person, you know, so you can get different, different, different takes on the subject. And that will help greatly. Um, so you, and you'll start to distinguish who's saying what about the subject. And that's the way to start. Okay. And then it will evolve from there. And then check back in after you've sort of gone through. A couple of passes of that. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Does that make sense? I appreciate it. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Hold on. Hold on. Okay. Hey, Carol, were you trying to raise your hand before? Carol.  How's that go? There you go. Hey, Carol. Hi for you. It's so good to see you again. Likewise. I know you've been here. I've seen your, your Carol's iPad. It's just a wonderful sense of normalcy just, just to be all together again. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to see you. Yeah. Good to see you too. What's, what's happening with your work? No, it's that it goes. What's happening with your work? Okay. Seem to be writing poetry. Oh, beautiful. Gorgeous. Home every day to get through the pandemic. I have quite a collection now. I have no idea what to do with them. Fantastic. But it's been enjoyable. And I guess that was my question at any good ideas on where to send poems. Yeah, that I don't know. Depends what you want done with them. If you want to see them in print, I would start thinking about places that publish and print poems if you want to read them aloud. I think that's a whole, that's a different, that's a slightly different track. And off the top of my head, I don't know. I used to know places, you know, that had, you know, places where you could do like slams and stuff, but I don't, I'm not, I don't have any off the top of my head right now. It's, it's, it's such an interesting process. I don't hardly feel like I'm writing them.  I take my paper and pen and they fall onto the page. Oh, fantastic. It's really fun. Fantastic. If anybody in this group knows of places where they do like, where you, where one can go and read their work aloud that. I mean, they used to call my poetry slams. I don't know. Nowadays people aren't gathering. No, no, no, but I think people are, are kept. I think just gathering again, you know, really, really like just in the city. So this is, this is going to be a back page of your work. You never know. Yeah. It's really a new year week. And yeah, thanks for putting that. That's true. Okay. If the new year we can still does that kind of thing. Who doesn't. The new year weekend. That's a cool. A cool place to, to, to, it's like an open mic base. Open mic for, for poetry music. And maybe it's, there's some open mics that combine music and poetry and, and things like that. I'm not sure. I guess I was thinking more in print. Oh, St. Mark's Open New Year's. Yeah, that's a good one. What is it? St. Mark's Church Open New Year's reading. Yeah, that's a beautiful event. Also in print.  Just to start with magazines rather than a compilation, a collection in the book. I think so, but I don't know for sure. That's okay. Yeah, I'm just, I think so. I mean, I think that's pretty much how you do. You do like one at a time. You can also, you know, self-publish online and lead people to your website, which is also a lot of fun. If you want to do bunches of them at once. But I think one at a time. And I think reading them aloud in front of people is a great way to sort of, I don't know, try them out for much better. Well, that would be a good way to get back into the world too. It's been very isolating. Uh-huh, uh-huh. It's so wonderful to be back with all of you. Yeah, likewise, Carol. It's great to see you. Thank you, Carol. Thank you. All right, we're going to go to the MS. Come here. Yeah. Hi. Hi, how are you? Hi there, Lori. This is in Lori Parks. I have a question, please. And that is something that I've noticed that has repeatedly come up. And that is those subtle shifts. I have a story in my head and the shifts to me in my head if I were reading all of the characters make perfect sense. And then I see, as I read them, as other people are reading them, that there's like a skip and a jump and a jerky kind of a connection and it's not flowing organically. And so there's, the chunks all are wonderful, but then there's, I need somehow invisible bridges or connecting subtle links. I don't know if that's too vague, but it's just, yeah, that's my question.  So I hope this wasn't too...  And when other people read them, I'm guessing aloud? When you hear other people read them, we do a staged reading or we do something. Then the question arises, well, I'm confused about this or then I go back and I read it and I go, that is a bit of a jerky progression. Yeah, yeah. So it seems like you need to provide more connective tissue on the page. You know what I mean? Nicely said it. So the writing that you do, the first draft or second draft or third draft, however many drafts you're writing before you hand it off to your actors to do a staged reading, whatever, it seems like one more pass might be necessary before you hand it off to provide more connective tissue or when the actors bring it to your attention, that's what you're looking for. You're looking for the thing that's going to create that those bridges between what the characters are saying.  And that's great that the actors are giving you those notes and you go, no, when you read it, you go, yeah, that makes sense. So does that make sense? It does. It's just, I guess the only way I will learn it is by doing it, I don't know, a hundred times or something. And there's no way that I can skip that connective tissue of myself growing into finding it sooner. I just have to do it so many times until it happens without having to do, I don't know how many rewrites. Yeah, well, it's if you're, you know, sometimes maybe when you're talking with somebody and they go, I don't get what you mean. And you go, oh, I didn't explain it fully. It's just, it's just realizing that the person you're talking to can't read your mind. So you say a little more. Yeah, so you say a little more, you know, you just, you can just use the work you're working on right now as practice, just make sure that the things are connected a little bit more. You don't, it might not take forever. It might just take one work where you learn how to do it. You know, the word that you use, connective tissue, really, really, really makes a lot of organic sense to me. So it's as if it's one body and there are no holes, but you can see a whole body without shadows. So I see that so clearly in my mind that I'm just going to write on the ceiling, connective tissue. Ha, ha, ha, there you go. Oh, great, I'm so glad, I'm so glad. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, we've got about 20 minutes left and we're gonna go to MC. Hey. Hey, hello. How you doing? Great to see you again. Thanks for doing this. Yeah. I know each answer will be different, but how do you decide when you're gonna start the beginning of your story? Does it have to be like a novel inciting incident or Hamlet or Macbeth, someone is died, someone is killed or somebody loses a job or somebody, like right in the thick of things, how do you, does it have, do you have to sort of, anyway, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, you mean not how do I, but maybe what's a good way? Yeah, and those inciting incidents and, you know, in the thick of things.  Just think of Cinderella and we know the story of Cinderella. So, you know, once there was a little girl who went and collected firewood and she collected firewood every day. And then she made the fire and then she cooked the food. And we're like, yeah, okay, we're all like, kind of like, what's the story?   And that's why people say, what's the inciting incident or how does this day different from any other? Or, you know, they use those techniques, which I think are good.    But at the same time, I think if they're good, then why can't we employ them? And we also are told to use a hammer if you wanna, you know, ground a nail, that's okay. You can use your fist, but I'd rather use a hammer. You know what I'm saying? That's okay. Just think of all the inciting incidents that you like, all the, you know, any, you know, think of novels that you love that start with really interesting things happening.  Yeah, I mean, that's not the very first line of the play, but that is the first kind of thing that happens.  Oh my God. You know, that's exciting. It's interesting, it's not gimmicky as much as it's effective.  You're feeling like... Oh, no, I mean, now that I think of, it does make sense, it has proof. Sometimes I like to, you know, like, amble into it, but that's my, I know now, that's something that I should do sort of prep, but then find the time, why now, what's happened and get people in. Sometimes I like to give the backstory too much. No, no, no, backstory is great. You just don't have to give it in the back. You can put backstory wherever you want. You know what I mean? Backstory is fantastic. I've been thinking like the Wizard of Oz. She's just amble it a lot and the tornado comes. You know what I mean? Yeah, correct. But no, but backstory is great. We need backstory. You just don't have to put it in the front of the book, which will soon become the back after we flip to 50 pages, you know? And that's the trick. You have to become a smart writer and it's not what you choose sometimes. It's where are you gonna put it? Yes. And backstory can be in a little sentence at a time. You know, I'm thinking, this has maybe nothing to do with anything. Mrs. Dalloway, not Mrs. Dalloway, to the lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsey. She dies in parentheses. And Mrs. Ramsey died the year before, parentheses. I'm like, what? But there you go, you know? And that's great writing to take something so meaningful and to couch it in just parentheses. And you go, wow, what is Virginia Wolf trying to tell us? So yeah, it's just backstory is great. You just don't have to lead with the backstory. Got it. So that's why it's story, not backstory. Yeah, yeah, true, true, true, true, true, true, true, true. But you can, I mean, you can put backstory. You can start the backstory on page 150 if it's a novel. Why not? You know what I mean? Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. In parentheses. All right, we've got about 14 minutes left. 14 minutes. And now the best amount of minutes. Mm-hmm, it's pretty great. Yeah. I don't think we have a question right now. It's okay. Just hang in, check the weather. Oh, Phyllis, go for it. With one day. Hey, it's okay. It's all good. I mean, with all this space, I thought I'd just ask. There you go. You go. Another question. So there's this children's book that my sister wrote for my daughter. And it's really great. And she did all the illustrations. And I thought it was so great that I scanned it and made sort of a book in plastic of it. But I think it should be published. Do you have any idea how, I mean, I don't know if it's self-publishing or how a children's book might get in front of the eyes of an editor that would be like yes or no or this is the waste of my time or anything like that. Oh, I don't know, Phyllis. I don't know. It's so, the publishing world is so much more exciting these days because you can put things online and gain all kinds of excitement and traction. Where, you know, years ago you had to like send it to one editor and the editors of these publishing houses were very much the gatekeepers, but now the field has opened up so much. I don't know how to get children's books published. I would just put stuff online and sort of drive people to the website.  So there are all kinds of ways to get your music out there or your books out there, your stories out there that are much more exciting and much more interesting than the old traditional ways of doing it. But I don't have any at the top of my head. But maybe someone has in the chat. Anyone else wants to, that's good. Yeah, anyone can chime in in the chat, that would be so helpful. Cool, cool. Thanks again. Thank you. All right, Danielle. Go for it. Hey, yeah. Hi. I've been a long time lurker. I guess first time talker. And I recently got over like a writing block. I'm a copy editor by day, but for like marketing content. And I didn't realize it was having a terrible effect on creative writing. Wow. But I sort of figured it out and I wrote like 4,000 words in one week. It was amazing. Wow, amazing. I know. And I had written only 6,000 in like six months. So like it was a crazy difference. But I have like a little writing class I'm taking and I submitted my work for workshop. And it's really the first time I've been like proud of a creative writing endeavor. It's the beginning of a novel that I want to venture on. And I'm feeling like so nauseous, like so terrified of what they're going to say. And I just want to know, like, does this happen forever?  Like I imagine that, you know, it's my first time really being like dedicated to my work and then having people like read it. So. Right, right, right, right. Right. Well, first of all, congratulations. I mean, I hope you're throwing yourself a party and doing a happy dance. And the color of your hair is beautiful. Oh, thank you. By the way, it's gorgeous. You know, so I hope you're doing all those things to celebrate yourself because I think one of the things that happens is when we just rely on the opinions of others, you know, to feel good, to feel extra good about what we've done, that can get tricky. Cause then we're, you know, it's sort of, we're at their mercy, if you will. I don't know if it ever goes away, but maybe you care about it less.  You know, what we do isn't for everybody. You know what I mean? The most important thing is to keep going. So since you sent your work in to your writing group, I mean, how much of it did you send in? I just sent in those like words, like the words I wrote. Yeah, so it's about 10, I think. Okay, so, okay. So you've sent in 10 pages and what have you done since then? I took just a break. Just like not think about it for a second. Fair enough. And how long, when was your break? When did it start? I submitted it on Saturday, so I finished on Saturday and they're gonna, I'm gonna receive the feedback on Wednesday. Great. So today is Monday, is today Monday where you are? Yes. So write some today. Okay, perfect. Cause again, disconnect, decouple, your writing process and practice from the feedback of others. That's a pro tip, right? Because if they praise you to the skies, hooray, you might feel so elated that you write a million words on Thursday. Or if they praise you to the skies, hooray, you might. Oh no, how can I ever match that? We don't wanna connect what people think with what we're doing, right? So write today, yeah, write today, you know, write tomorrow. And what time on Wednesday are you gonna hear from them? Like in the evening. Great, write Wednesday. If you have to write in the morning. Yes. Get in three writing sessions at least before you hear from them. And schedule a writing session for Thursday or Wednesday night after you talk to them. Okay, I will do, that's great. Okay. That's very actionable too, which I love. Okay, thanks so much and congratulations again. Good for you. Thank you. Good for you, yeah. Thank you again. All right, so it's 5.52. 5.52. Sorry, I've got some commotion going on behind us. This is excitement. Yes, praise the town. It's a family night here tonight with a vagrant trilogy. Very exciting. That's right. Yeah. Well, maybe now is a good moment. Let you know that I'm actually here with a friend. This is Sitlali. She's a new associate line producer here at the public. She's gonna fill in in every once in a while. So, I don't want you to work. Hello. Hey, Sitlali, how are you? Great, how are you? We're good, good to see you. She's the best. Wow, very nice. Did we exchange emails earlier today? No, yes. Yes, we did. Yay, welcome. Welcome to the family. Very good. She comes to us from Willi Mammoth, where she's actually living in D.C. right now, but she's visiting for the week. Yes. Are you gonna move here? Are you gonna... I'm moving at the end of June. All right, all right, all right, very good. What's that thing? This is our exciting watch from work. What can I tell you? I'm Twitter from actually from a couple of weeks ago, but maybe they're watching. Okay. So, what is the best way to approach writing a character with issues that you don't understand? Mental health, physical, economic, et cetera. Issues that you don't understand. Yes. Well, I'm guessing that you're writing about a character with issues that you don't understand so that you will create an understanding about those issues. I hope that you're interested in developing an understanding about those issues. It's tricky for me to suggest that you write a character with issues that you don't understand. I would say develop an understanding about the issues, either through the writing of the character or through extensive research about the character, because there's a lot of, as we all know, there's a lot of appropriation going on and we don't wanna do that. But that doesn't mean we have to, quote, stay in our lane. We should be moved to write about who is gonna, who moves us. Like, wow, I wanna really write about the people who live in, I don't know where, let's say, who work at the Willy Mammoth in Washington DC. I don't know what they're going through, but I'll do some research and I'll find out and maybe then I'll be informed in my conversations and my writing about them. I'd say research is a good way to get familiar with, yeah, research, capital R. That's a tricky one, that's a tricky one, but maybe that person will come on and we can have a conversation about it. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, because it's hard, you know, Twitter and now that it's just been bought up, oof, well, what will happen? Oh God, oh God. All right, Nancy, go for it. Yeah, Nancy. Okay, hi. So I love Thornton Wilder. I used to give Bridges St. Louis Ray as gifts every time someone had a death in the family and I love our town and everything. I thought I wrote Picnic, I don't think he did, but I went to see A Skin of Our Teeth never having read it and I wonder what I need to do to get over the struggle with Absurdist Theater. I liked the third act because I could, I could really see the humanity. I don't know, the whole circus, it's difficult for me to get to the meat through the circus and I know I'm missing something because everyone loves it. So I wondered how you, what do you think about Absurdist Theater? How do you sort through it? I just take it, I mean, every kind of theater, every kind of anything, I just take it for what it is.  I cannot speak intelligently about any of Thornton Wilder's plays. Sorry. I'm not that person. I can talk to you about your creative process, but if your creative process involves you sort of embracing a kind of art form that is, it seems like it's bumping you, I would say just open your heart a little bit wider because that person, Thornton Wilder, who I think is a really fine writer and thinker is speaking to you and there's resistance in you that is not allowing you to hear what they're saying. So just open your heart a little bit wider because I think he's got a lot to say. And that's, I'm not a Thornton Wilder scholar though, so that's all I know. No, I mean, it's not the only Absurdist Theater that I struggle with rhinoceros and things too. I just wonder what, you know, because I'm sure that my writing would benefit from freeing myself up in that direction. There's constraints that I put on myself so that even when I'm watching it, I get constrained and I don't know, it was, I was also very tired that didn't help, you know, I love theater and I'm always saddened when I don't seem to get it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't get sad when I don't get stuff. I just go to the next thing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, not everything is for everybody at every time. We just, you know, take what you like, leave the rest, move on, you know, if opening your heart a little wider doesn't work, maybe that play ain't for you. There are people who watch Shakespeare and go, meh, it's okay. And there are people who watch my plays and my whatever and go eh, whatever. No. We move on, you know, it's okay. Yeah, I don't know. But Skin of our Teeth, who directed it? I, was there a wonderful production out there? It's big. Cruz is her last name. Oh, oh, LBC. Yeah, Liliana. Oh, great. Oh, great. Oh, definitely got to catch it. No, to catch it. It's a great production. I just, it's me. That's all. Wow. Yeah. Well, thanks for going to the theater though. Oh. You know, it's a lot to get out. Nah, these special days to get out of the house. We must do it. Yes. Yeah. All right, all right. Thank you, Nancy. All right, friends. It's six o'clock. Yeah. It's six o'clock. All right, all right. All right, we'll see you next week. Okay. Yeah, that's the plan. Have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for all your questions. Have a great week. Nice to meet you all. Yeah, you too.


Eric, thanks for asking how do we make our Zoom video sharper? Now let me just share a couple of tips and then I wanna get more clear on your situation. One is that of course the camera matters a lot. If you're using the default built-in camera on your laptop, you could probably get a 50% upgrade in sharpness by getting an external webcam. Before the pandemic, I should say once the pandemic started, the webcam companies like doubled their price. It's really, I don't know if it's price gouging or if it's just supply demand, maybe a little bit of both, but yeah, now a webcam, I don't know what it is these days, maybe the post now, it's been three years since the pandemic, so hopefully the prices come down, but you might need to spend $1 to $200, maybe 300 on a webcam, but I would basically go to Amazon and search, Mac webcam or PC webcam for Zoom or whatever. Yeah, you put in some of those words like Zoom even and I would just go with the Amazon's choice because there's like a billion options and you'll just analysis paralysis and to be able to choose for all this one, this one has a few bad reviews. No, all of them have bad reviews, all of them, even the best one having some bad reviews, you can't help it. So you just go with Amazon's choice, whatever the popular one is, should be just fine. One's with thousands of reviews and it's at least four stars, maybe four and a half stars, just fine, just don't worry about the one of two star reviews is gonna drive us nuts if you do that. So number one, webcam. Number two, internet speed does matter, well, okay, actually number two I would say is this, make sure you're recording the Zoom call on your record locally rather than record to the cloud. I think that does make a difference. Now, those of you who might be a little more sophisticated about this, please let me know, comment below. Do you see a difference when you record locally to your computer versus recording to the cloud because Zoom gives us just two options.  So record, number two, record locally. Number three, actually number three is kind of a silly but not really silly, make sure you wipe your webcam because a lot of people just forget, like sometimes they mess with their webcam and don't realize they're putting a bunch of fingerprints on it or oil or whatever. So wiping the webcam actually sometimes makes a big difference. Number four, lighting matters a lot. Okay, so let me give you an example. I'm gonna turn off this light I have. That's not fuzzy. That's a little fuzzier, but obviously you could see how dramatically the lighting makes a difference. So number five, there is a Zoom setting if you go into your video settings on Zoom, which I cannot show you right now, unfortunately, because we're on Zoom, I don't know if Zoom allows me to share Zoom, let me go ahead and try this. Well, I'm gonna read it to you. Basically, before you start recording, look below where it's a stop video, next to stop video, there's a little arrow, click on that and then go to video settings and basically check the box that says HD. So maybe that's it, right? Like a lot of people aren't even recording in HD. Okay, it's like, whoa, really? That's an option, yes, that's an option. So check the HD box and the under my video, there are two check boxes. One says touch up my appearance. Now I'm vain, so I do that, but let me tell me if it gets sharper or not. It's definitely got sharper, you see more wrinkles now, right? Sorry, you didn't know I was, I actually look pretty good for 94 years old, so it's not bad, but now I look only 78 years old. Much better, right? Okay, and then adjust for low light is the other setting. I'm gonna go ahead and check that and see what happens. It's brighter, but I don't know, does it look better? I don't know, you could tell me.  It's slight, slight difference. And then what other settings I'm gonna go to advanced and oh, optimize the quality of the video I send with D noise. Okay, that's checked, I think by default. I'm gonna uncheck that. That's under video settings and then under advanced. Optimize quality of the video I send with D noise, D-E-N-O-I-S-E, let me uncheck this. Okay, I don't see any difference locally. Maybe you see a difference. I don't see a difference locally. I'm gonna check that back, because I think it has to do with the video that's transmitted to the other side, to my participants, not when I'm recording locally, like I'm doing right now. And then use hardware acceleration for receiving video, use hardware acceleration for sending video. Again, those are internet issues and not the local recording, so that's it. I think those are all the settings. Again, if those of you who have more experience with Zoom settings and video stuff, please go ahead and chat below and give us your suggestions as well. Okay, one more thing I'll say is that once you get a webcam, or it doesn't matter whether you get a webcam or not, there are webcam softwares on your computer. So on the Mac, I used to use them actually. For whatever reason, it started messing, because I'm so impatient with software that I downloaded webcam softwares, I messed with it too much and it started making my image not as good. But if you're patient enough to download webcam software, which even works, even with not having an external webcam, even just on the default webcam that comes with your computer, the webcam software can adjust that stuff.  So try the webcam softwares. There's probably a couple of them for whatever computer you're using and obviously pick the one that's well rated in the app store and then mess around with it. If it's messing around with it too much, you might wanna uninstall it and try to set it back default or something like that. But I decided to uninstall it because I was too impatient and I messed it up too much. So what you're seeing right now is, I think it's the default, whatever the default webcam setting that comes with Mac. So anyway, I hope that helps. Looking forward to seeing any other comments below for how to increase video sharpness. Oh, one more thing, one more thing, sorry. Your computer's processing speed probably does make a difference as well. So most computers within the last, if you bought it within the last seven years, it's probably just fine. But if it's more than seven years old, you could probably do better with the processing, processor now. Okay, and then the last thing I'll say is, we're just talking about Zoom videos, right? So when you upload the Zoom video to different platforms, they will automatically compress. So YouTube automatically compresses your video. Now, if you get a 4K webcam, which I don't have, and again, I'm not tech savvy enough to know this, I'm not video tech savvy enough to know this stuff, please folks who know comment below. If you get a 4K webcam, I'm not sure if you need to set up something in the Mac settings or something else to like record 4K, you might need to. 4K is like beyond whatever the best is that we usually use. I think there's a Zoom setting for 4K, you can look into that. So that makes it like ultra-sharp, like television, whatever television, like professional quality, I don't, my videos might be too fuzzy for you, I don't know. And lastly, when you upload it to YouTube, it automatically compresses, lowers the quality of the video for the typical viewer, most viewers don't realize they can change the quality of YouTube videos, maybe you don't even realize that. So let me just go to YouTube right now and show you. Let me go ahead and go back to my computer. And when you go to YouTube and you watch any video, you can change the quality of it, same thing on Facebook. When you watch a Facebook video, you can change the quality of it and most viewers don't know that. So I don't know, you can educate your viewer on that and they probably will be grateful. You make a video on YouTube channel. Hey, did you know that you can change the quality of my videos? And they'll be like, oh, I didn't know that. And then they'll thank you for it. But so let me go and show you both platforms here. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and show you a couple of things here on my screen. Okay, so this is a YouTube video, just randomly open one. And then here on the bottom right, you can click on settings. This is for every YouTube video and you can change the quality. And auto right now says, auto says, says 1080. So I'm actually already watching the highest quality. I think maybe I changed that somewhere on my YouTube. Maybe once you change it, it changes for the other ones. I'm not sure. So folks who know this video tech stuff, please comment below. I could change it to a lower quality if I want to. But right now I'm already on, look, it says 1080, right? 1080p, which is the highest quality that's available for this video. If this person had recorded or had uploaded a 4K video, I should be able to change it to 4K, but that's not the case right now. You could search 4K video, right? 4K video. And hopefully whatever we're watching here, let's say this one, 4K video, right? So let's take a look at this. Wow, look how sharp that is. That's incredible, isn't it? Right, so this is the difference between 1080 and 4K. This is like, I'm like, I'm there, right? But look, you change it auto, 14, oh, I'm not, see, YouTube doesn't want me loading 4K. Do you notice that? So YouTube automatically puts me at 1440. That's good enough. But let's check out 4K and we're gonna get ready.  Oh my gosh, right? Like, look at that. That is like, I wanna reach out and grab some of those leaves, right? Okay, so that's YouTube. And then let's go to Facebook, right? Facebook, I just recorded this today. That's true, I wear the same shirt every day. So it doesn't matter if I said it was today or not. Okay, let me go to settings and I'm gonna quality. And because this was a Facebook Live, so I think the highest quality was a 720 for my webcam, but I'm sure if I got a 4K webcam and if I knew, if I messed around with the Facebook Live settings, I could probably make it 1080 or 4K even. So anyway, I hope that helps. I think that's enough. I look forward to seeing your comments below, especially those who have messed around with these kinds of things. Let us know your tips. Thanks.


Hello, I'm Governor Tom Wolf and today I would like to wish all of our troops happy holidays. There is no greater sacrifice than the one you have made in dedication to your country. For that, we owe you the deepest gratitude and most profound respect. For those of you who are away from home, I know that it must be deeply difficult for you to be apart from your family and your friends all year round, but especially during the holiday season. I want to let you know that all Pennsylvanians are thinking of you and praying for you and for your families. Thank you for serving your country with distinction and honor. You make Pennsylvania proud each and every day. From all Pennsylvanians, we wish you a very happy holiday season.