Some very interesting launch-related things happened in November. In 1957, history saw the world's first biological traveler, Leica, orbit the Earth. In 1963, NASA started testing its launch escape system, and in 1969, three astronauts almost had to use it when Apollo 12 Saturn V was struck twice by lightning. This month, in space history. A mutt from the streets of Moscow, Leica was trained by Soviet Air Force doctors along with nine canine companions. They were subjected to centrifuge runs, launch simulations, and kept in increasingly small cages to prepare them for flights in small spacecraft. Leica was chosen from three finalists for her even temperament. Her short hair and long neck were also deciding factors. This allowed doctors to move a portion of her carited artery close to the skin, where a special collar could then easily monitor her blood pressure and heart rate during the flight. Leica launched on November 3, 1957, after sitting on the launch pad for three days. She survived orbital insertion, but things weren't all well on the spacecraft. The environmental control unit malfunctioned, and Leica's cabin cooling system failed. She finally succumbed to heat exhaustion before doctors could administer the lethal injection already loaded into the cabin. Leica's ride to orbit on an R7 rocket was rough. It took longer than doctors anticipated for her heart rate to descend back to its resting rate. But it could have been worse. Less than 100 feet tall, the R7 was far shorter and much less scary to ride than the 363 foot Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the moon. Even early in its construction, designers knew the Saturn V would be deadly if it exploded on the launch pad. Engineers estimated an explosion we'd yield a fireball 1408 feet in diameter that would burn for 33.9 seconds at a peak temperature of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. To give crews an escape, NASA included a launch escape system on the Apollo capsule, the same type that was used with Mercury. The launch escape system used three separate solid fuel rocket motors. The first and most important was the launch escape motor. This was the main system, delivering 155,000 pounds of thrust to pull the command module clear of an exploding Saturn V. That's a lot of power. 155,000 pounds is almost three times the 52,000 pounds of thrust the Redstone rocket had. That's the one that sent Al Shepard and Gus Grissom on their suborbital Mercury flights. The other two systems were the Tower Jettison system that separated the whole launch escape system during a nominal launch and the pitch control motor that gave the separated capsule directional momentum. The whole system was first tested on November 7, 1963. A boilerplate Apollo capsule, a test model, sat on a launch pad with an armed launch escape system. An abort signal was sent to the spacecraft, triggering ignition of the solid rockets. The solid-fueled launch escape motor fired, pulling the boilerplate Apollo off the ground for 15 seconds. Then it separated, leaving the capsule to fall on a ballistic trajectory. The parachutes deployed and the boilerplate Apollo landed at a leisurely 16 miles per hour. Aside from some soot on the capsule, the test proved the system worked like a charm. The crew of Apollo 12 almost had to use their launch escape system when they launched towards the moon on November 14, 1969. The Saturn V lifted off and launched through overcast skies. After 37 seconds of nominal flight, all hell broke loose. The crew saw a flash of light and felt the rocket shutter. The control panel lit up with warning lights like a Christmas tree and the master alarm sounded. It looked like the spacecraft had lost all power and was using its re-entry batteries. If that was the case, they would need to use that launch escape system and abort the mission. But it wasn't possible. To be using batteries, they would have had to have separated from the rocket and none of the astronauts had felt the telltale acceleration of the launch escape system, pulling the capsule free of the Saturn V. Things weren't any better in mission control, as the data on the consoles now reflected the chaos inside the spacecraft. Flight director Jerry Griffin was as confused as the crew. But one man recognized the messy data from a launch test months earlier, 24-year-old John Aaron. He knew it was an electrical problem and that somehow the signal conditioning equipment had been knocked out. The signal conditioning equipment, abbreviated SCE, was responsible for translating information from the rocket systems into the signals that fed the spacecraft's display panels and those in mission control. With the SCE switch in the normal position, low voltage would mess up the signal. But the SCE had a second auxiliary position. John Aaron knew would restore data. So he told Griffin to turn SCE to AUX. Griffin had never heard the command before. At first he'd thought he'd heard Aaron say turn SCE to OFF. Aaron corrected Griffin, who passed the command on to Jerry Carr, the launch Capcom. Carr, an astronaut, was equally confused, but continued the chain and passed the order up to Apollo 12's commander Pete Conrad. Conrad also had no idea what the command meant. He called back down to Carr for confirmation. Try FCE to AUX?  No one but Aaron seemed to know what or where this SCE switch was, which worried Griffin. What good was a fix if no one knew where to find it? But lunar module pilot Al Bean did, though command module pilot Dick Gordon has claimed he was the one that actually pointed the switch out. Bean flipped the SCE switch into the auxiliary position. As, one by one, the systems all came back online, Conrad suggested that they had maybe been hit by lightning. In fact, they had, twice. The rocket powering through storm clouds had acted like a lightning rod, creating two separate strikes that rode the Saturn's contrails all the way down to the launch pad. After almost aborting the mission 37 seconds after launch, the rest of Apollo 12 went off without a hitch. See you next month!


Good morning, everyone. Merry Christmas Eve. It is 10 a.m. on Christmas Eve and I'm running to the store because everybody needs something and someone's got to do it. So I'm the volunteer to run to the store. My car sits outside so I'm dealing with frost on the windshield. You know, first world problems. Anyway, I figured while I had a minute to sit and wait for the car to warm up that I would just wish you guys a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday and a wonderful winter. And just thank you all for the support here on the channel and for all of your amazing kind words and blessings over the last few events in our lives. And I know that this is like, you know, in the car and stuff, but as a working mom, sometimes sitting in the car by yourself is the only time you get to yourself. So I'm gonna use it as much as I can. My husband is working today. If you guys didn't know, my husband is a law enforcement officer in this area. And so he works a lot of holidays today being one of them tomorrow, another day of work for him. So it's always interesting every year with holidays, we have to kind of like adjust how we do things and how our traditions work out. But we always manage to figure it out. So at some point today, I'll be delivering him some breakfast and hopefully getting, giving him some holiday joy. So I'm headed to the store. I have a couple things I need to grab and then it is family time. We're going to go home. We're going to make a big family Christmas Eve breakfast. We're going to decorate sugar cookies. We're going to make gingerbread houses. I believe we're going to be having, we're going to be attending our church's Christmas Eve service today. And then we're going to do some reindeer games like minute to minute games and then watch our coveted holiday Christmas Eve movie, which is national lampoon's Christmas vacation. It's what we watch every year on Christmas Eve before it's bedtime. And then Santa comes. So anyway, the point of today's little snippet of vlog was to just thank you guys for being here and being a support on the channel. I absolutely love like making content and filming it and putting it out there and just connecting with you guys. And I know I haven't for a while, it's been kind of a roller coaster of like being able to like get motivation to film and edit and post things, but just know that it is in my heart and I do, I do miss it and I do enjoy it a lot. So anyway, thank you guys for watching. I hope you have a fabulous, fabulous holiday. In fact, you're probably watching this after your holiday. So I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and holiday with your families. And I will see you in the new year. So today is the official like first day after Christmas and like real winter break. Like it's not Christmas anymore. It's the day after and we're just gonna roll through. So it's really early in the morning at seven o'clock and I'm actually headed to my doctor's office, my baby doctor's office. I have to get my glue close, my glue close test done today. And then we're leaving town. So Scott and I are kind of like running around separately, getting things done. I have to have this glue close test done before my next appointment, which is Friday, but we're going to be out of town until Thursday evening. So I have to do this today. Otherwise, they'll be real mad at me. So he is actually while I'm going to the doctor, he is heading over to my sister's house to pick up a trailer because while we're down in the valley visiting his mom and dad, we're going to be picking up a few things from our old neighbor's house, Sarah. They're giving us this really amazing garage rack. And then the buyers of our house actually are giving us our barn doors back, and we're going to use them in our new house. So we're going to pick those up too. And it's our first time driving a trailer, like towing something. Scott has driven plenty of like big U-Haul trucks before, but it's our first time towing like an actual tow trailer. So it's going to be interesting. It's going to take us a while to get down there. And then we're going to drop it off out in Queen Creek where we used to live at our friend's property, so that we don't have to drive around the valley with a trailer on our car, because we're going to be down there today, Tuesday, all day tomorrow and then most of Thursday. And we don't really want to be driving that around and like parking it in neighborhoods. So we're going to drop it off there and then go to Scott's mom's house for the next couple of days and celebrate Christmas with them. And then Thursday before we come back, we're going to spend the whole day with our neighbors, our best friends, Sarah, Matt and the kids, and do our own little friends Christmas thing. And then we'll come up Thursday night. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing all of these really important people. But first things first, let's go get this blood test done and over with. So I am driving the Tacoma today because Scott is picking up that trailer. We're going to use the forerunner to pull it. Not that this one wouldn't, but we have a little bit more indoor space in the forerunner. So we're going to take that down to the valley today. Look at this glorious windshield break. I think it looks like Playboy Bunny personally. But anyways, so I'm driving the truck today. We actually really want to trade this truck in. It is paid off. That was one of the things we were able to do when we sold our house. And we still owe quite a bit on the forerunner. But we're thinking when the house is done, we might trade this in for a bigger family car. We are investing in our own like tow trailer. Just a little flatbed one so that we can like tow things around when we go camping. We don't need to like use the truck because this truck bed is small. It's a short bed Tacoma. And so the truck bed doesn't really do much. I think we can honestly fit more stuff in my car. But so we're thinking maybe a Tundra or even a Sequoia as an upgrade. But we would sell this like by owner before we did that.  Like you can see the car seat back there is very crammed. So when someone cash is sitting back there, whoever sits in the passenger seat is actually very squished. And then I can only imagine what's going to happen when we get a second car seat in here is just going to be tight. So we're thinking when the house is done, which should be hopefully this summer, we can like sell this like by owner and then go and get either Sequoia used or a Tundra. So a bigger truck just so that we have kind of a bigger vehicle for family life. So we're going to have two kids pretty soon. Friday the 29th of December. And I'm heading out to Brighton Early. It's eight o'clock. I have a doctor's appointment this morning with my actual doctor. And it's in one of the like neighboring cities to Prescott. So I have to drive a little bit farther than normal. But that's fine. I have some gift cards that I need to spend over there anyway. So I'm going to go to the doctor and then I'm just going to run a few errands. I can go to the gym today. Cash is going to winter camp with his Auntie B. So he'll be gone until three o'clock in the afternoon. It's so great that he gets to go and spend time with her and like they have a ball just adventuring in the forest. So I'm taking advantage of having the day to myself and I'm just gonna like just to be and do the things that I want to do today. So that's my plan. I'm going to go to the doctor. Then I'm going to go to Ulta. Possibly TJ Maxx. And then I'm gonna go up to the gym. Work out for a little bit. Maybe take myself to lunch and then come home and just lay in bed for the rest of the day until cash gets home. Because that sounds glorious. I haven't done that in a long time where I just like laid in bed and watched TV and like had a snack just doing nothing. I might do that today. It's so nice to actually be in a vehicle where you can listen to the music that you want to listen to because those of you that are moms out there, you know that when you get in the car with your child especially if they're old enough to have their own opinion that the music choices in the car aren't really up to you anymore. Cash is pretty good taste in music but it's still very like, you know, he's the DJ and I don't really get much saying what we listen to. So it is nice to be able to sit in here and actually listen to music that I like and I'm the DJ. All right, so I got here like 25 minutes early which is very like me when I don't have a kid around. So I'm just gonna hang out in my car and watch YouTube videos while I wait. Anyone else do that? Like you get there early just so you can chill and like. All right, doctor finally came in and I passed my glucose test with flying colors. I think my level was, I don't even know like what these numbers mean but my level was 79. He said my levels were 79 and they don't have concern until they're above a hundred something so he was not concerned at all about my glucose levels. And then he did like check the heartbeat and all that stuff explained that I won't really have any more blood work until like like way further away. The strep B and all that stuff to come. And then he measured my uterus and said that it's measuring a little bit bigger than he expected so he wants to do an ultrasound just to make sure that everything's good. He said it could be like more fluid. It could be the position of the baby. It could be the size of the baby so he just doesn't like surprises and so he wants to schedule an ultrasound which is actually really funny because Scott and I were just talking about scheduling a 3D ultrasound down in the valley so that we could just see him because we haven't seen him in seven weeks which doesn't seem like that long but we want to see him. But now that my doctor's going to do an ultrasound we can cancel that one. So and I was like is that like a bad thing? He's like no he's like I just don't like surprises. He's like I'd rather know everything that's going on so that I can make sure everything's good and and do my job better. I'm like okay well I appreciate that you know like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna argue with a doctor that wants to like cover all the bases and not have anything surprise him. So I appreciate that and then he said that it's now pretty much time to start coming in every two weeks so we scheduled out my my next like three appointments and so it is it is starting to pick up here. We're at 27 and a half weeks and so we're entering the third trimester so yeah things are rolling. Scott was actually sitting outside of the doctor's office. My husband's got in his work car because he's on duty right now and I was at the doctor's office in his area. So he showed up and was just waiting out front because I told him the doctor wanted to do an ultrasound. He was like he's like should I be scared? Should I be worried?   So it's nice that I get to go and have a little breakfast date with my sweetheart. You want everyone to see up your nose? Guys so I just went into Target which was my next stop. I went to Ulta already. I'll show you guys what I got and then I ran into Target because I really wanted to get a shower caddy like one of these because right now living with my family we share a bathroom with my nephew and his girlfriend and there's a lot of stuff in there and it's all over like the bathtub like rim and it really bugs me because it gets like all gunky there and so I really wanted to have one of those to hang all of my like put all my shower stuff just so that it's hanging instead of sitting there. So I got one of those and actually my gift card that I received from a student covered that and then I also got a new cup. I refuse to pay the price for a real Stanley. I just can't do it but like I was saying earlier this cup that I'm using right now it's one of the reuse ones um it's this guy right here and it's 40 ounces and I love it because I like having more to drink like more water I like having the 40 ounces but the cup holder portion is just a little thick so I got one of the um geez I forget what they're called but they're like the new Target I don't even think I'll show you guys when I get back to the house because I'm driving but um it has a thinner cup holder portion I guess if that makes sense so I grabbed that and it was considerably cheaper than a Stanley would be. I do have a Stanley it's just a smaller one and like I said I like having access to a little bit more water so I typically use the Stanley for like coffee um or tea so anyway I got the new cup um and so I'm gonna head home I'm actually really tired I haven't had any coffee or tea today I try to do like some days where I just don't drink any caffeine because I know it's better for me especially days where I'm not working and if I can handle it without getting a migraine or a headache then I will so um today I'm just running errands so I don't I didn't really feel the need to caffeinate um so I'm feeling really sleepy so I think I'm just gonna go home get in my jammies lay in bed and watch Outlander for a few hours until it's time to pick up cash at 3.30 it's only 11.15 so I think I'm just gonna do that I'm just gonna go home and like relax because I never do that I never get to just lay in my room all day and watch TV so I'm gonna go home and do that um okay so we just came to our storage unit and put this new rack in to get all the stuff that was on the floor here up and then now we have our barn doors back from our old house the buyers decided they didn't want them so we took them back they gave them back to us we'll have to do fresh paint and stuff they got a little bit scratched but hey I would rather sand and repaint these bad boys and have them rebuild them so we got oh that's a cute look so yeah we have a lot more space now if we end up buying like just furniture or appliances we can store it in here until the house is done careful


It's kind of a metaphor for life, you know.  Even though the Maramolli program is built around these core values, that's sort of the thing that underpins it all. There's sort of other things that come with the Maramolli program, which is like these amazing friendships that sort of just happen very naturally. My country, so we're at One Mile, we've got the surf crew here, Maramolli surf crew. And we're to sort of escape Newcastle a little bit from all the study and hard work that we do, just to relax and cleanse ourselves in the ocean. I've been surfing for two years and my relationship with surfing, I think, is more about the friends than the actual surfing. We're not A-Class professionals on the World Surf League Tour, you know. If you can surf, if not, we're ready to introduce you and get you out there on a board and to have fun. I come off a lot, I'm tumbling around, but once you get that good wave, you look like, yeah. I think it was upon meeting the 2021 scholars, we kind of made a bit of a main group chat for all the scholars and friendships the glue, I think. So having those friends around you that are also like-minded, it's a pretty strong feeling, it's very empowering, very inspiring. To me, the ocean means a place of regeneration, rebirth, I think. So you dive in and cleanses away all the tensions, the bad stuff and even just from diving into the water to coming up. For me, I just feel so relaxed and recentive.


So the Fed came out and raised rates by 25 basis points. Everybody's talking about how great this is and there's maybe a reversal, but in all honesty, this is not the real story. This is just a temporary little footnote and it's not like it'll make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. We just saw that Drone Powell came out and the Fed rates said, yeah, we're gonna raise it by 25 basis points. And the market responded in the crypto and digital assets base as we saw a drop 0.7% because the whole narrative lately has been, as the Fed keeps screwing up and making those mistakes, it actually makes everything stronger for crypto and digital asset spaces. People start to see that banks are collapsing and maybe they get into an alternate investments and maybe there's little things that can shore up all the misgivings that is happening in traditional finance.


There's a bolt missing out of there. I was right. Was the rear end making any noise? Yep, busted the tail end off of it. The transfer case. It had split the whole side of the case. I can't rebuild this one. We're gonna have to put another one in it. All the way up in through there. All the way around there. Oh, that's why that bolt fell out. Right there.   Probably that lower frame unit. Well, let's get off of here.  It's interview time. Was you four-wheeling? Told you not to go without me. Last time I seen a transfer case break like that was in my Dodge. Yeah? Yeah. I was in 36 inches of mud. I wasn't that mud. What we're gonna do now? I don't know. Put new transfer case in, though. Well, what would you do? Junk it? How? You actually thought about that? No. $10,000 CORE, you're gonna junk for $300. And I can get a transfer case for $135. So, you know, it's up to you. Right. Smile. I mean, it's done. It's over with. Made it loud. Bang, I'll tell you that. Okay, yeah, well, I'll show you in the video why it did that.  When at the end of the day and tomorrow morning, it's still gonna be sitting here on this jack stand. Or you can just say, well, it's something that needs to be done, right? It needs to be done. So, do you know a good mechanic that can do that? Me. I never changed a transfer case in one of these before. I'm a good video. Yep. All right, guys, well, you know, there it is. Quick update for you. Great. All right, I got to close the garage. Thanks for watching, guys, Mom. Yep. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right, guys, we'll see you soon. Bye-bye, take care.


But every action that I'm performing has a purpose, it has an intention. I'm trying to do something, I'm trying to achieve something. And this is what Aristotle calls a good. Every action is aimed at a good. Every human endeavor is aimed at a good. We always do something for a reason, for a purpose. Well these goods are going to be a central part of what Aristotle has to say about morality. As you remember, morality very much involves decisions. If you're making decisions, you have a moral theory. Well for Aristotle, if you're making decisions, you have some kind of good in mind. You have something that you're trying to achieve. The question is, what is a good? So we said that you perform actions for a purpose, you're trying to achieve something, you're trying to accomplish something, you have a goal, you have something that you want to happen. And Aristotle calls these goods. Now you might pretty often realize that goods are often done for the sake of something else. So we asked everybody in the class why you are taking this class, and most of you had the very honest answer that you're taking this class for a requirement. So the idea is that you're taking the class for the sake of something else, namely you're required to take this class for a degree. Well when a good is performed for the sake of something else, we call that an instrumental good, an instrumental good. It's a good accomplished for the sake of something else. We can also think of this as steps towards a final goal. So you're taking your courses for your goal of a degree, but the degree isn't even the final goal. The degree is to get the job. The job is for the sake of something else, it could be for a paycheck, it could be for a living, it could be for the sake of supporting family. There's quite often when we have a goal in mind it's for the sake of something else. Now you might ask yourself, you might wonder, is there a good that is good simply for its own sake? Is there something that we try to achieve simply for the sake of achieving that thing? And it's a really big question for error stop. So what would this be like? What would this be? What would this mean or can we even show that there is this good that we work for simply for its own sake? So we've been talking about goods as what we're trying to accomplish with action. And a question, and we were talking about instrumental goods, and these are goods that we accomplish for the sake of something else. So a question that we can ask ourselves really quickly is, is there a good that's simply good for its own sake? We perform this thing simply for its own sake. Well, is there a way that we can show that there is even such a thing without necessarily knowing what it is? Well, Aristotle thinks so. So think about this. Suppose that whatever you're doing, suppose we're working out, suppose I'm working out, and trying really hard, I'm swimming, I'm exercising, I'm eating right, but I'm just not losing any weight. In fact, I'm still gaining weight. My blood pressure is rising. My pulse rate is rising. My resting pulse rate is rising. My cholesterol is rising. In fact, it seems like nothing that I'm doing is helping in any way to make me healthy. So ask yourself, if I'm swimming and exercising or working out for the sake of being healthy, swimming and exercising is an instrumental good for the sake of being healthy, and if I'm not actually being healthy, is swimming and working out actually any good? Well, if it's just an instrumental good, meaning it's good for the sake of something else, and that something else is not happening, then no. For the instrumental good, if what you're trying to get isn't happening using the instrumental good, then the instrumental good is not good for that at all. So it has no goodness. But what would it mean to say that there isn't a good for which everything else is good? Well, that would mean something like this, that whatever good you have, whatever you're trying to do, it's always, always, always just good for something else. So exercise is good for health, and health is good for increased life, and life is good for fun experiences, and if fun experiences are good for memories, and memories are good for a story to tell, and a story to tell is good for hanging out with friends, and you just keep going and going and going and going, and there's always just something that's good, I mean, that whatever good you have is good only for the sake of something else. Is any of that ever actually any good? So you just have this infinite hierarchy of goods. It's always just something that's good for the sake of something else. Well, that would mean something like this, that no matter what you're doing, if everything is just an instrumental good, no matter what you're doing, it never, ever accomplishes that final goal. It never gets to what it's good for. Well, that would be like working out and not ever actually getting healthier. If there's just always something else that it's going to be good for, you'll never get what it's good for. Well, so then that means that nothing is ever any good. Well, we don't think that's true. We think that even our instrumental goods were the good for something. The good for something. Well, if they're good for something and this goodness means that there can't be this infinite continuing of good, well then there's going to be one good that's good for everything else. The exercise is good for the health. The health is good for life. The life is good for a fun experience. This fun experience is good for good times of good friends and so on and so forth. But you keep following up that hierarchy and eventually you're going to hit the highest good. Aristotle thinks this is true, that there is this highest good for which all human activity, all human endeavor, every last thing that you're trying to do is that good that you're trying to accomplish. Well, what would that be? So we've been talking about goods and instrumental goods and Aristotle thinks that there's this highest good and the reason why there has to be this highest good is because if it's not there, then nothing is ever actually good for anything because it's just always good for something else and you never actually achieve this goodness and it all just falls apart. But what is going to be this highest good? Aristotle thinks it's happiness. This is what he gives us in the selections for the Nicomachean ethics. Now, just to be clear, for Aristotle, happiness is not just, you know, that's not just what happiness is. Happiness is not just good times. Happiness is not just feeling giddy or anything like that. Happiness, rather, is something like completion, fulfillment of being. Being which is supposed to be. Fulfillment. These are better synonyms for happiness. Happiness is that state of existence for which you have accomplished what you're supposed to be. You've accomplished that goal of all goals. Exactly, figuring out what happiness is, well, that's tough. How are we supposed to figure out what makes us happy? Well, we're going to look at some ideas for that. This is what Aristotle thinks is the point of morality. When we want to know how we are to live our life, we want to know how we're supposed to guide our decisions. We figure out what brings happiness.  No, it's about happiness, it's about happiness. So what is this happiness? What is this going to evolve? How do we be happy? Well, we're going to look at that through the course of the semester.


Welcome, in this video we're going to go through whether you should buy or sell iRO stock, this is another electric vehicle company, this is an interesting company and you know what, I actually I really like this company from what I've looked at it, now it has been taking a bit of a beating on the stock market recently, I mean it went up exponentially and now it's trying kind of dropping exponentially, so it's slightly volatile at the minute, it's trying to find it kind of what the overall kind of finding, it's finding its feet on the stock market I would say in where it wants to settle that, it was previously slightly like three or four and then it went up to like I think it's like nine, ten, eleven or something, something like that and now it's coming down slightly, but we'll go through in this video the long-term potential but also the mid-term potential as well, what we're going to go through is some research on the company, why it's potentially kind of stands out as an electric vehicle company and it's kind of going under looked in the longer term side of things and we're going to look at some other information about iRO and we'll go into this, now I've actually done some swing trades on this company, I bought it when it was like three or three or four and then it got to you know to its historic highs and then I sold some, so I made, I took profit, I held some still, I sold some then held some and then it's you know kind of dropped a little bit but I will go through it in this video and we'll go through all the information, I respect your time so I'll get right into it okay, so who are they, so they are a Texas based, they're you know a Texas based iRO designs and delivers compact emissions free electric fleet solutions for use within urban and short haul markets, capable of accommodating a broad range of commercial and consumer requirements, iRO vehicles are the emerging leaders of safe affordable efficient and sustainable logistical transport, iRO is founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs, investors and executives with a passion to create a sustainable urban electric vehicle solution with campus management, last mile delivery, urban commuting and closed campus transport, so right off the bat there it seems that you know they've got a good team of of individuals that are involved in this company but also they're very differentiated in terms of what they're trying to do, they're trying to meet different needs of consumers with electric vehicles, so you've got your electric vehicles which brilliant brilliant stuff, brilliant stuff but they're more focused on you know obviously the consumer side of things in terms of you know just your customer kind of business to consumer side, whereas this is focused on vehicles that are best for like college campuses, vehicles that are good for delivery drivers, so they're focused on specific needs for these areas and these are growing needs that customers have like for example delivery drivers you know they want to reduce their operating costs on their vehicle, a great way to do that is to go electric but they need an affordable solution to that and they've got a car designed for particularly you know delivery drivers that is going to reduce operating costs and that's going to help restaurants out there or you know food places out in terms of reducing costs as well, so and the takeaway market is set to grow as well and there's research out there that'll say that you know takeaway market is always gradually increasing so if that's the case then you know in terms of takeout market then there's got the you know if you can get a purpose built vehicle that's best for them into reducing operating costs there's a potential big market there, okay but that's about IRO as well so just to go into this in a bit more detail, so it's a purpose built and that's interesting so ultimately they're working back from the consumer's needs what are the needs of an individual whether it you know is someone on the college campus or someone as a delivery driver they're looking at what are people's needs and then working back from that to create a vehicle rather than creating an electric vehicle and then trying to find the needs of whatever customers so they're doing it the right way around by looking at what the consumers want first and then working back into producing something that does that there, so it's purpose built versatile and all electric vehicles by the way I've got to say I'm not a financial advisor or anything like that I'm a business teacher in my day-to-day life in my daily life but I'm not by no means an expert on the stock market I'm just giving you my research my views giving you another perspective so if you do and sort of enjoy these videos or you know find them not even not massively helpful they might not be because I'm sure you're well informed and know about all sorts of stocks as well but if they help you out in any sort of way all I ask is I'm not selling any courses or anything like that all I ask is a like on the video and to subscribe to the channel so let's go back into this area designs and manufacturers compact purpose built automotive grade electric vehicles our best invest versatile sustainable vehicles are used as part of a fleet on university and corporate camp campuses and for commercial and urban delivery delivery in terms of delivery drivers but but also many other applications as well so it's very specific here this isn't in terms of business to consumer this is kind of veering towards more business to business kind of a vehicle that which is a massive industry so so the industry is here that they're looking to try and get involved with to with their purpose built electric vehicles one of them's education so go anywhere on and around the campus with our versatile line of utility transport and street legal vehicles reduce your cost of ownership and carbon footprint so so yeah so um you've got to think in terms of the economic climate that we're in it's not fantastic so any way that we can reduce costs and and with these purpose built electric vehicles that's going to play into that in terms of the education sector there as well and you've got corporate campuses as well in terms of reducing maintenance costs because there's less maintenance costs with the electric vehicle compared to other maintenance costs for it for a for a different type of truck they've got hotels and resorts and ultimately you've got to think in the travel industry is going to be booming in six to nine months as you know as the vaccines come out and as we start to recover so the hotel and resort resorts section is going to be a booming industry and there could be a huge potential market for some of these sorts of vehicles for certain activities so it says here satisfy guests and staff with our versatile utility maintenance and custom hospitality vehicles flexible bed options let you cover most tasks in your properties then you've got government in terms of boosting performance and the really big one here is the food beverage and retail sector in terms of as i've said on the go delivery of food so that's a potential huge sector there now so just to look at the car here this is one of them so use cases it can be used for parcel meal delivery cargo delivery parking enforcement personal use food delivery and public service so in terms of using it in a government set kind of sector for public service and public safety as well um so this is one of the cars here is it going to skip past i can't skip that so if you want to rewind the video a little bit so i'll look at the car at the vehicle so it's compact electric and versatile designed for your work dear equipped to handle your needs and it can be a part of your or smart your smart fleet so they've got a gps locator and a management system with with this car which is which is very useful and so there's a lot of benefits to this to the vehicles um there and if you want to look into more of the vehicles on the website as well just to go through a little bit on the balance here i don't want to go through this too much because you can look at look at this in detail yourself if you're interested in the stop obviously in the cash in terms of december to september their cash in assets has increased um so some positives here so there's a variety of models that are available in terms of the electric vehicle loads of different ones to choose from the electric vehicles as we've mentioned have a variety of uses you know and the more uses that they have the higher the potential target market there's a lot of diversification so it's trying to get involved in a lot of different sectors where they can sell the cars uh it's a us-based designer and manufacturer okay which is is a positive there especially at the moment um and then it as i say it's differentiated in terms of it's trying to meet the needs of majoratively business to business at the moment rather than just focus on business to consumer okay so there's a lot of positives but there is some negatives okay and i do want to be you know honest with some of the negatives here so the impact on stock the stock price due to other ev companies reducing in stock so this has a knock on impacts on this stock and it is gone down by quite a decent chunk recently because of this kind of knock on impact because of other ev stocks going down in the sector this one has had an impact whether you think that's rightfully should be happen or whether it shouldn't happen uh but the fact is it has happened um and then you've got high levels of r and d so naturally with an electric vehicle company particularly with this one we're trying to create purpose built vehicles for takeaway drivers for for campus for for all those areas as we mentioned there is a lot of research and development costs involved with that um so there's a lot of initial capital that's needed there and the need to raise the capital so whether they do um you know direct offerings or whatever it is they they need to raise the capital um so but it's not necessarily negative because obviously you do want them to put money into research and development so that they develop these fantastic vehicles however you know there is a lot of initial costs there so so that's why I kind of he's kind of a bit of both if you like and there's a lot of volatility in the industry the stock is trying to find its feet in terms of where it wants to kind of sit at in terms of the level uh the stock price level so you got to bear that in mind you really want to avoid buying this stock at the peak okay that's that that's why I would say you need to monitor the stock regularly to kind of assess where you think it's it's heading we all don't have a crystal ball we don't know do we but we can only so it's currently sitting around 661 and as you can see it's had a massive dip just even a day here and it used to be sitting on it from the six months area but we used to you know and you look at the other area it used to be sitting on about two three four and its highs were like around eight to twelve eight nine ten eleven-ish so um ultimately you just need to assess the stock because it's very volatile think of when you want an entry point if you're thinking of looking at investing in this but I think um volatility obviously in the short term but I think in the long term this stock's got a lot of the potential to reach much higher levels than what it's currently at um just because of what they're trying to offer as a company uh you know the background of the company um the strategy the diversification all of these aspects you know there is a long term potential for this stock um you just got to obviously monitor it and try to find an entry point that you feel comfortable with maybe try and see if it drops to around four and maybe enter then and see um you know we don't all have a crystal ball um I know I think if it drops to around four I'm gonna enter again four four thirty something like that if it drops there again but I'm I'll probably hold for a longer term uh here um as as well so thanks for watching the video don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you're new to the video to the channel and um I'll post more stock market videos with you know this sort of research on this and as I say not a financial advisor I'm a business teacher but I'm not an expert in the stock market um but thanks for watching give the video thumbs up it really helps out um as a small channel to really try and get up in the YouTube algorithm and hopefully I'll see everybody in the next video


Tom, how are you, mate? Yeah, all good. Thank you, you. Yes, yes.  Yeah. What's the colour? Is that any special colours? I've just briefly glimpsed it then. Was it red, white and blue or something? Yeah, that's right, yeah. And you had a cutaway yesterday? Yeah, I did. I was doing some canopy formations with the team I jumped with. And yeah, my canopy got torn on the front and had to cut away, yeah. Not ideal, but part of the job, I suppose.  How many cutaways have you had in your skydiving career? Or your jumping career? Probably about six or seven now or something like that. That's a lot. Yeah, none of that's due to packing either. That's mainly canopy formations stuff, because you end up crashing into each other and all that good stuff. Yeah, so you're on your old nine lives then, mate? Yeah, I'm using them up pretty rapid. And do you worry when you cut away that maybe the reserve, that's buggered too? Generally, you don't really have time to think about that. But I did once on my first reserve ride, actually, cut away, pulled the reserve and had a pilot shoot in tow. I literally had to reach over my shoulder and yank the bridle to get it out, so that wasn't ideal. But yeah, I think I'm past thinking about that now. It's just automatic reactions when you've been doing it for a while. And sorry, how many jumps did you say you've done? I'm on about four and a half thousand now. Bloody hell, that's a lot, isn't it? It's not in comparison to a lot of people out there, but I'm not a full-time skydiver, so it's not too bad. I've heard full-time guys with about 12,000. Is that about right? I get a lot more than that too. Yeah, my brother's on about 10 or so. He was a full-time tandem instructor for about 10 years.  I only ever tried to do group work once, and I partnered up with this lad. He was a Swedish lad.  Off we went, and he just went... And I went... And I watched him go down, and I didn't even have anywhere near the skill. Even to Delta Track, there's no way I could have caught up with him. Yeah, it takes a little while to build up to that sometimes, especially if you're not compatible on your full race and weights and stuff.  Watching me from about ten foot underneath. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a mental world, isn't it? It's an insanely fun sport. Yeah, it's expensive as well, but it is good fun. Yeah, expensive, and also in this country, the weather can be an issue. Yeah, you're better off doing it overseas, but then again that's more expensive, isn't it? But yeah, it is an issue in this country, because even in the summer you can be blown out by the winds and stuff. Yeah, I did mine in Florida. It's funny actually, I took my pilot licence in a place called Fort Pierce, and then they gave me an aeroplane to fly up to a place called Sebastian that you may have heard of. Yeah, you're up in there, yeah. Yeah, to do my skydiving course, and I remember flying up there thinking, they've trusted me with a whole aeroplane. I wouldn't even trust myself with a skateboard. Yeah, I love skydiving the States as well, North Carolina. Oh, there you go, so you can get loads, you literally get down, pack your shoot, get straight back up again. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, I love it. And so, you've had an illustrious career, mate, haven't you? I had your email up on the screen a minute ago with the notes you sent me. Bum, bum, bum. I might as well just put it here. So, 25 years in the parachute regiment. Yeah. In one para, the par finders and the Red Devils. Yeah. And then another eight years in the reserves, seven operational tours.  Yeah, I suppose so, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently 25 years wasn't long enough, so I had to keep cracking on. I've literally just left the reserves in February, actually. Yeah, so what are you looking for? Like the reserve reserves now. So I'm doing some work with cadets now, but also doing other bits and pieces, projects and stuff. Yeah, we'll come on to all that. And I mean, to serve in the illustrious Red Devils, that's one for the bloody tell the grandkids. Yeah, had a fantastic time there. So I was in the Red Devils back in 2003 years. Had an absolute fantastic time, but I decided to get back in the green kit because the rack was coming up. So I'll get back in the green kit and actually do the job for real again. Yeah, that's where a jolly can go seriously wrong, can't it? If you're stuck on sports and all your mates go off to war. Exactly, yeah. Just talking about that, I did a podcast this morning with an oppo of mine, Jeff Williams. Hello, Jeff, if you ever get to see this. And he was for two commander in the Falklands and they didn't want to let him go because he was on a senior command course. Oh, man. And I think like a lot of people, we went, no, I'm not. Yeah, yeah. You don't let me go with an arm leaving and... Yes, especially the Falklands. Falklands was a one-off, wasn't it? You know, it wasn't like Iraq and Afghanistan where it was rolling deployments, it was a one-off. And the guys that missed out must have been pretty sore, I reckon. Must have been traumatising in itself to miss it. Yeah. You know? Just the whole... I mean, we were... God, it was quite an emotional podcast because I was actually... I was 12 years old, but for some reason we were driving back from a holiday somewhere and we were going through Portsmouth or coming back down south at least. Yeah. And all the cars were packed with service the moment their families had, you know, come to collect them and we were just waving out the windows and they were saluting. It was just a monumental time in British history. A very historical, big moment in time, yeah? Gosh. And it inspired people like me and you, didn't it? Yeah, well, massively. The chap I joined up with, my neighbour, his dad was the Sergeant Major of Lima Company. So he was well, you know, well in the thick of it. Some, yeah, full on. It was... Kind of they picked the wrong theatre of war there for us, didn't they? Because it's what we train in. Yeah. It's like identical to Brecken, isn't it? Yeah. I remember watching one documentary, it might have been a lecture we had in the Marines and the chap said that they were on a fighting patrol one night and they came across an Argentinian patrol and they spotted each other and the Marines went to ground in a stream. So up to their necks in water, in a Falklands winter and the patrol leader for the Argentine said, you know, come out, British soldiers, you will not be harmed. And he just said, we ain't getting... You know, this is... We're in our element, mate. We ain't going nowhere.  Yeah, mecca. Yeah. Just unreal stories. Yeah. All my instructors in depo were Falklands veterans so, yeah, they had some good dits, as you'd say in the Marines. So what was all your P company in your jumps course like, Tom? So I joined the Army at 16. I joined up with Junior Para when it used to be just Junior Para as opposed to Harrogate that it is now and that was tough. That was hard, really harsh, really controlled. I actually had to go through P company twice. I got injured on the first one. Went over an ankle, wrecked my ankle. So I got back squaded, had to do it again. But to be honest, you know, I didn't have any problems as fit as you like at the time. Flew through it other than getting the injury and then flew through it the second time, no problem. Jumps course. Yeah. Again, I got injured. I broke my leg on the jumps course on my seventh jump. And this was when you had to do eight jumps to pass the course. So, yeah, not ideal. Broke my leg, six months later, got tabbed again and then passed out of training. So I had a couple of hiccups, a couple of injuries, but absolutely, you know, wouldn't change anything. Absolutely.  And I joined up the minute I could when I was 16 and I left the minute I was told I could stand any longer because I've been in all the time. Mate, you broke the golden rule of jumps training. Is land on a gerker? No. We had gerkers on our course and they were around, yeah. I'm not joking. Interesting. Oh, my God, we come so close. Yeah. I love it. You nearly take them out and then they stand up and say, I'm sorry, sir. You haven't done nothing wrong. Yeah. Oh, I had him steering towards me in all sorts. I went straight into the rig in lines of one of them because he was steering at me as my canopy was opening. Did you still have the balloon when you did it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did my wings course in, sorry, 18.9. And they didn't get me the balloon until 94. So, and I did a handful of balloon jumps after my course as well when I was in battalion. Mate, how old are you now if we're allowed to ask? 50. God, you don't look it. Cheers.  That's all I can say. That's not about me. The balloon, that was a test and a half that because you haven't got the noise, the movement of the aircraft. And you basically just, it's all down to you. It's perfectly still. It's quiet. You stand on the edge of the cradle and they just say go. There's no pushing. And it's all down to you. It's cold, quiet and calculated. And you just drop for about 300 feet, or a couple of hundred feet at least.  But it was mega. I think it'd make a great, I come stag weekend thing, you know. Yeah. You and your mates go and do the balloon jump after 12 points. I've since went over to Belgium and done their balloon a few years ago when I was in for power. Actually went over to Belgium and did the balloon over there. And it's the same balloons we used to use. So that was a bit of a blast from the past. That's a pretty cool thing to do. Got the Belgian wings out of it as well. Wow. Yes. Yes. I remember they drum it into you, don't they? 1000, 2000, 3000. You're not allowed to deviate from that. The PGI come running over to us when we're on a deck and he said, Throw.  So I'm here corporate.  Geronimo. I'll tell you what though. It was because I could feel the shoot coming out and I knew I was all right. Do you not mean I could feel how safe it was and I could feel that it grabbed the air and I was just like, I'm all right now. So. I was just having confidence in the kit and just getting out going for it. So, gosh mate, so much to talk about. I don't know what to talk about first. Oh, I'll tell you what we can do. We can say hello to Steve Brown, can't we? Yeah, Steve, how you doing, Mucka? Yeah, hello Steve. Steve, you're being your fellow power finder who very kindly came on the podcast and we talked a lot about scrapping and writing books. I think Steve didn't we? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Steve's a top bloke. Served in the same times as Steve. He joined a couple of years after me. But yeah, top bloke, Steve is. How have you dealt with the old fight anybody mentality now that you're civilianized? Yeah, I'm pretty all right with it until somebody kind of gets me rubbed up the wrong way. But yeah, I'm pretty good with it to be honest. I've managed to adjust pretty well. So far so good anyway. Yeah, Steve and I were saying it, it borders on criminal the aggression that you have when you're a young soldier. Oh, yeah, yeah, when you're younger for sure. I mean, the people that must have got a smack in the mouth probably didn't even say anything wrong. Probably misheard them in the pub or something. Yeah, shouldn't laugh. But again, it's all part of the role, isn't it? It's all part of the conditioning. It is. Yeah. It's the mindset, isn't it? To breed that sort of aggressive young soldier. Yeah. So what's it like then as a young para when you rock up at your first unit? It's quite intimidating, obviously, because you're the newbie, you're the newbie. Again, after being the sort of like getting towards the old sweater depot, you're then suddenly the newbie. And yeah, I mean, I was only just 18 when I passed out of training.  I don't know this, but I think I was a little bit what would they call a chopsy crow at the time. I wasn't kind of going to back down on anything. I kind of think got a bit of a reputation for being a bit chopsy at the time. Within six months of being in one para, I was in front of the CO on the CO's orders, believe it or not, for the destruction of Airborne Forces Day. Oh dear. How did that come about? Airborne Forces Day is a massive, massive piss-up in all the shop. Thousands of people, well it used to be, thousands and thousands of people, beer tents, Red Devils jumping, you know, military displays and all that sort of stuff. People come from all around the world. When I first joined up, there's loads of veterans coming in. People from Germany, America, and it's just one big massive party. Well, there's a friend of mine whose dad had served for 22 years. He said to me in the evening, come on Tom, let's do this, it's what you do on Airborne Forces Day. We climbed up the side of these tents, ran along the top beam, and on the way back, I mean these are massive big beer tents, you know, and on the way back I fell through because we've been drinking all day and just about managed to grab just as I fell through, and it ripped the whole tent open. And I've got literally hundreds and hundreds of people looking up at me going, ooh, ooh, it's going to die, but I climbed down the rope and it all split, fell on a table, and then everyone else copied what me and my mate had done, and the whole place just got decimated. Absolutely and utterly destroyed and decimated. There was people falling, there was a band playing, people fell on the band, smashed up people with broken limbs and all sorts of stuff. It was mental. The other guy didn't come back off leave, we went on leave shortly after, and he actually banged his head by climbing on top of his roof doing so. He obviously had a thing for heights, and I basically took the brunt of it and I got put in front of the CO and luckily for me, I got what's called a regimental entry. So I didn't get fined and I didn't even know what that meant at the time. And when I got out, I said, well, what does that even mean?  Well, let me just join with Tanya, and he gives it down. So that was a bit of a scary moment being in front of the CO, 18 years old, six month in battalion. Yeah, like your career is almost over before it begun. Yeah. I'm just going to pop my headphones on. We've got some, in fact, we've got some, apparently our live stream is buffering. Friends, how is it doing now? Can you let me know in the chat? Apologies. Perhaps, Greg, you could give us a running commentary on how we're doing. It's not an issue, Tom, because I'm recording this anyway, so we can always upload it again. So, yes, and what was your first deployment? Right, so we, at the end of my first year, we were actually getting ready to go to the Gulf, 1991 Gulf War. We've done loads of NBC training, as it was called then, loads of AFV recognition. We got issued extra weapons. So we had two GPMGs per section, and we had two M79 grenade launchers issued. And we've thought, I thought my Christmas had come early. We thought we were going to war. And then all of a sudden we revert back to plan A, which was meant to be doing, because someone decided they weren't going to send power edge anymore. And we went to Northern Ireland, January 1991, as the Gulf War was kicking off, and I was gutted. Not that I was going to Northern Ireland, but because I wasn't going to a conventional, proper war sort of thing. And yeah, we did two and a half years in Belfast, basically.  Quite a quick way for growing up, I think. Yeah. Our tour was 89, but I wouldn't have wanted to do two and a half years of it. Yeah. So that was a residential tour of Palace Barracks, just outside Belfast. But when they say residential tour, it's meant to sound like it's nice, it wasn't. It was, we was either deployed on the streets, we was training or we was on stag. It was pretty much that. We was very, very busy. If we weren't in Belfast, we were deployed in other regions and stuff. So yeah, very sort of busy tour, stagging on off looking, you know, patrolling basically. Yes. Friends at home, if you pull your bar back a bit, your progress bar, it'll buffer better apparently. Thank you, Greg. And did you do any more deployments Tom active service before you volunteer for the Powerfinders? Yeah, we went back to Northern Ireland the following year for another six months. So within five years of being in one part, I spent three years in Northern Ireland. So we did another six months of back in the Belfast as well. And that was it. So my next one was with Powerfinders after that. Where were you on the second tour of Ireland? Back in the Belfast. Oh, back there again. Yeah. So back in Belfast, I know Belfast quite well, especially the sort of Western areas of it. Yes. The Ardoin and the like. Leonard Doome and all that good stuff. So from my chat with Steve, we ascertained that the Powerfinders is bloody hard to get into. I mean, I don't know if you class it as a special force, but it's on that. Yeah. It's not classified as special forces, but you work along with special forces quite a lot. And on special forces lines as well. Had you managed to get many jumps in before you went for your selection? Well, I did my AFF course the year before I went to Powerfinders because I was gagging to learn the skydive anyway. I've done a basic course, Cyprus, where you do the static line, you know, three second delay, five second delays and all that sort of stuff. And I loved that. And I didn't really get the opportunity to go back again because of Northern Ireland until 94. And then myself and a bunch of the guys, basically we didn't do an army expert. We went and paid to do it for our own backs in North Carolina. Loved it. Probably done about 55 skydives before I went to Powerfinders within a year. And I don't know, probably 30, 20, 30 static line round canopy jumps as well. But I could have saved myself a whole lot of money. I'd just wait until I went on pier selection, but I wasn't waiting. I couldn't wait to do it, to be honest. I think you probably did the right thing. When we went to Norway, me and my mates, we took ourself off down a dry ski slope and we learned to ski. It's a completely different type of skiing, as you know. But I mean, at least we could do one kind of skiing. So when I got out there, it wasn't all so alien. In fact, I came, I think I came eighth in our first company ski race. So all these old sweats and people that have done like nine winters. And I'm... Drag!  I'm coming through. And yeah, I came eighth for that one. So I was quite pleased. Where it did benefit us is at the weekends, we went down to the actual proper ski slope. I think we went to Lillihama.  Yeah, yeah. You're almost like doing 360s on your first day. It's... If it's easier, it's not proper slope. Yeah, incredible. Incredible. But anyway, skiing's for sissies anyway. Real men snowboard, everybody knows that. But we all make mistakes. Yeah. Yes. So when you did your AFF, how nervous were you on your first jump? I don't think I was too bad, to be honest. I was kind of mad for it. I was quite young anyway. I was only 22. And I'd already done that Cyprus basic course. Done my military jumps. And I was gagging to do it. So, yeah, nervous, but not, like, terrified nervous. Like I see some of them, you know, these heads. Yeah, I was pretty... I was really up for it. I was first out on mine. Everyone behind me were doing tandems. Yeah. I actually did the very first jump in New Zealand.  It's a very different thing to jumping up. Was he? We jump out in the military? It's quite low, isn't it? It's 800 feet statically round. And for train troops, they go down to 600 now. Yeah, which is a big difference from, like, 10,000. Of course it is, yeah. Massive. Yeah. I remember looking around at all these tandems, you know, doing their birthday jump or whatever, and they're just shitting themselves. And I thought, I am not going to let them see my fear. Yeah. So I was a tandem instructor as well for quite a while. And yeah, it's amazing to see people's raw, sort of emotions, raw reactions, because you can't cover that stuff up. It just, it's just automatic reactions. And yeah, it was a great thing, though. Have any mishaps to people really screw it up for you? Yeah, it's a few. I had a couple of people pass out on me, and I managed to just about wake them up before we landed. I had a couple of people puke on me. Nothing worse than that bodily function wise, but I had a couple of people puke on me. I had a couple of people just going crazy as you leave and kicking around their legs, which obviously sends you unstable, which means you've got to flip and wait until you see the ground pool and pitch the drone. Yeah, the only actual proper malfunction I've had, where it was something to do with the parachute that wasn't packed properly, was on a tandem as well, actually. So it wasn't my packed job. Someone else had packed me a dodgy pack. I had a line over on the canopy, which means it's rotating. It rotates, pump the brakes. Nah, I'm still there. I just assisted a passenger. Right, you ready to go again? And they're like, what?  Pull the reserve. Yeah, that's the only actual malfunction I've had. I've had six or seven actual reserve rides, but that's due to doing canopy formations where things go wrong once the canopies are actually open. Did they have to pay twice? No, but somebody had to pay for a reserve pack job. Obviously it wasn't there, though. Gosh. And tell us a bit about the path finders then. What's the, well, to tell us anything, Tom, I'm sure everyone will be fascinated. So once I've been in the Italian a few years, I wanted to kind of look to the next level and do something a bit more challenging. And also I was getting sick of going to Northern Ireland, as I mentioned earlier. So I looked at the path finders. I knew a couple of people that had gone there that I really sort of looked up to that were really, really good soldiers. I knew from the Italian give it a go. And yeah, the selection, as Steve Brown mentioned, was incredibly, incredibly hard. It's only six weeks, but it's tough as nails. It's straight in as well. It's not like, I say, a selection where it kind of builds up. It's day one.  And it stays at that level for the whole time. And because it's so compact, you don't have time to really recover from anything the whole way through it. So it is a very, very tough course. And the instructors, you know, they're perfectionists. They're watching it every move again, because it's smaller course and selection as well. Then they can concentrate more on individuals. And they know you pretty much from day one, as opposed to selection where they've got hundreds of guys. I'm not saying it's easier. I'm saying it's different.  Because everyone's super motivated. They want to be their professional soldiers. And the job is just fantastic. You know, working in small teams, big boys rules and all that. I just loved it. And how long's the course, Tom? So the course was six weeks. I think they've extended it now to seven. And then you do see it after that as well. So you don't do it as part of the selection course. But when the courses are available, they load everyone on the next available course.  And I did that three times here as well. Just for a treat. And see what's that? Survival, escape? Survival, evasion, resistance and extraction. OK. Where do you do that? So it's R.E.F. St. Morgan down in Cornwall. Hey, I'll tell you what.   Mate, it's just it's over. It's literally five minutes over there. I should know. So what? And how many blokes started and how many blokes finished? On my course. I think it was something in a region of 30, 30 something, 35 or something. And we actually had a very, very high pass rate. We had 10 guys pass the course, which is very unusual. I mean, normally for that amount of starting, you probably get five or so pass. But we had a very strong course. We had a lot of guys that were incredibly fit, very strong soldiers. And to be honest, a lot of them went on to SF as well later on. And the jumps bit, was that included in that six weeks? No, no, no. So later on, basically, again, when the course becomes available once you've passed, you go on to your Halo course, what's used to be known as Military Freefall. It's now known as HAPSI, high altitude parachute course. And it's a week at Bryce Norton, followed by three or four weeks in the States over in California. So that was amazing. Obviously, getting to go to California, you go skydiving, jumping at night, Halo oxygen, 25,000 feet. Fantastic. You're carrying a lot more kit though, right? The parachute alone weighs up to around about 50 pounds. Then you've got a weapon. Then you've got oxygen kit. Then you've got a Bergen. And your Bergen is going to be weighing 100 pounds plus. So anything up to 120 pounds or so, you know. So you're carrying your own body weight at least. And I guess you're carrying a lot more. I mean, the history of the Pathfinders, by definition, they lead the way, don't they? So you've got all your advanced technological equipment, I'm guessing. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of it's to do with comms, isn't it? The old saying, no comms, no bombs. And your job is to find out the information, reconnaissance, sand information, back hundreds of miles sometimes. So you've got HF radios, the HF radios, your HF radios to talk to aircraft, all the batteries to go with all that kit. Then you're carrying a minimum of seven days rations plus all your water plus your OP kit.  So yeah, it's a hell of a lot of weight, an awful lot of weight, a lot more than I carried in one power. And there's Hey Ho and Hey Low. Yep. Do you do both of those techniques? Yeah. So Hey Low is your freefall, high altitude low opening and Hey Ho is high altitude high opening where you exit the plane. It's on a static line. So the canopy opens straight away. So you're opening up to 25,000 feet and you're basically gliding for miles and miles and miles at night navigating using GPS compass and sometimes above the clouds. So that was a pretty amazing experience as well.  Yeah, it's pretty cool though. It's pretty cool experience. If you're in a parachuting, you know, you can't pay to do that. You can only, if you pass a selection course, basically SF or PF, that's the only place in the UK you get to do that kind of parachuting. And it's fantastic, really is.  If you don't get it right, even if the battery in your GPS go, you could be coming into water, trees, mountains. Yeah. You could lose all your bodies, especially in a real life scenario. Yeah. We did one that springs to mind. We did one in the States once. We was on a training trip over there. Once we qualified, we used to go over there once a couple of times a year and that. We did an night jump from 25 grand, hey ho. And the REF had got the calculations wrong. So basically what they do is they calculate the wind and the speed of the canopy, the distance and stuff. And the idea is to get your target, they drop you off a certain distance. And that can be 30 miles or more, you know. Anyway, they got it wrong on this particular one. And it's a night jump and coming in and we've seen a couple of lights in the distance and we thought, all right, that must be it then. They put normally just a couple of little minimal lights to mark the TZ. And as we're getting closer, it turns out it's a wagon trail thing, you know, like the circle of wagons, vehicles. And these Americans are sat there having a barbecue out in the Ulu in the desert on their own. And we landed just outside of their circle of vehicles and they hadn't even seen or heard us. And basically we had our weapons with us and stuff. So we were carrying them, you know, non-threateningly, walked over to them. And they didn't even see us coming because they're sat there having a barbecue with their flames so they're blinded by the light. And we literally walked up with a couple of feet of them and had to say hello before they could restart with them.  We thought they thought we'd been invaded by the flipping Russians or something. Oh, it's looking hilarious. But you've got to be careful because they're all carrying weapons over there, aren't they? So you don't want to turn around and flip a slot here. Well, yeah, there's always that.  It's not the right country to do that. Everyone's talked about it over there. You've got to be careful. Yeah, and they're all egomaniacs as well. And people who are egomaniacs don't like being made to feel small. Tom, I've just flashed up there your online moniker logo prepared power finder. Yeah, yeah. There's that thing there on the head. Yeah, folks at home, Tom's got a Blossom in. Hey, do you see the parachute reference there? Blossom in. Blossom in YouTube channel. And also on Instagram. I was just going to flash it up again. Prepared power finder. Just have a look at some of your photo series. Is that you all...  You're all pointing. Yeah, that is you. You told me that, didn't you? Yeah, that's the exit shot. Yeah, that's the most walk with picture ever.  But genuinely, that is me. Yeah, that's how we got in contact. Because my producer used that picture for one of our clips of Steve. Steve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we didn't want to put Steve's face on a video, do you know what I'm saying? If you want to scare the kids away, mate. Yes, mate. While we're here, tell us a bit about your bushcraft training. All right, yeah. Yeah, so separate from this here, really, I've also got a company called First in Events. And the idea is, well, first in was the motto of the Pathfinders. So the idea is to base things on military-themed stuff, particularly about what we do in Pathfinders. And as I said, I did the seer course three times over, just for a treat. And I run, actually, I'm actually running one this weekend, the survival weekend, down in Evesham, near Worcester. And we also run the fan dance. We've got that in May. And tandem skydive days as well. Again, you know, like the halo type, it's that kind of thing for people. So we do military-type events. And again, yeah, I've got a website, FirstInVents.com. And basically, it's helping people get out of their sofas and go and do more interesting stuff rather than sitting there and watching telly all the time. Yes, got you. And bushcross become really popular, isn't it, in the last 10 years? Yeah, it has. It used to be one of those things that was seen to be a bit of a weirdo thing, a bit geeky. But actually, it's good life skills, actually, you know? Getting out there in the wilderness, apart from the fact that it's good for your mental health, isn't it, getting out of the woods and doing stuff, rather than, again, just being locked in and watching telly all the time. But it's good life skills, you know? Learning how to build a shelter, learning how to build a fire, how to purify water, all that good stuff. Yes, I'm just going to flash up your bushcraft knife here. I'll take it that's yours, is it? It's got a... Is that the logo on it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wasn't really intending on going down the route of selling things, but after being on YouTube for a little while, people were asking for merchandise, things like hats and stuff. And someone I know runs a company called Hangar 39 in Colchester, and he just suggested to me, I can make you up logo knives for your company if you want to, and they've become really popular, actually. So, you know, fair play.  The one I've got is a hell of a sturdy knife. So, yeah, cracking bit of kit. Yeah, you can see that. I don't know if you're aware, but I've just made my first bushcraft knife. Have you really? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, well, it's sort of a stroke between bushcraft and sheaf knife type... Yeah. ...type affair. Yeah, I went to a bush... Do you know the bushcraft weekend? It's held on a bison farm somewhere? Yeah, I've been to it before. I haven't been to it for a little while. It's been sharp because of COVID, hasn't it? For the last couple of years. I have been to it, yeah. Yeah, I went there, God, 15 years ago or something, and the buddy I was with, we stopped at one of the knife makers, and after, you know, watching his lecture and everything, I bought some antler horn. All right. And some kind of, I don't know what you call it, these phony fake material discs. You use a lot of... Yeah. I don't know what you call it, like these prefab sort of material you can use for knife making. Yeah. And my idea was right, I'd go home and make a knife, and of course it's not that simple. Yeah. But over the course of the next 15 years, I managed to get all the equipment together to actually be able to make it and to temper it in an oven that I built. Yeah. And that's how I managed my logo on. And it's amazing, it's pretty smart. People say it's actually... Is that sort of definition of a long-term project right now? Oh, well, yeah, it is. But I'm just one of those people I'll never say no to anything. You know, if I want to do something, I'll store it on the back burner in my mind and... Yeah. And funny enough, I seem to... It all seems to come... Yeah. To come good. Getting back to your military career then, Tom. Yeah. Did you... In terms of action, did you see much action? I mean, obviously you saw action in the Power Finders, but did you see active service type action? So the operational deployments I did with Power Finders was Kosovo, Estonia, Iraq during the invasion and then a couple to Afghanistan. And in particular, yeah, Afghanistan once, yeah, they were hectic. Both tours, very busy both times. I actually missed Sierra Leone. I was pretty good about that, to be honest. I went to the Red Devils in January 2000, I think it was. And literally a couple of months later, the guys got deployed to Sierra Leone, P.F. and Steve Brown was with those and I was chin. I was absolutely gutted. I actually tried going back, but the deployment was so rapid, I missed it. But yeah, Afghanistan in particular, it was hectic, really hectic. We was the first time, 2006, we were stuck in a place called Muzaqala for a couple of months and we was under siege there getting shot at, mortared, you know, and all that good stuff every day, bringing in airstrikes to right up to close by the edge of the compound. And it was one of those things where it was like the best time of your life, but the worst time at the same time, you know, because there was the opportunity to get wasted and badly injured every day and the living conditions were absolutely horrendous. But at the same time, you'd get to do the stuff you always wanted to do, you know, get the drop bombs off looking at aircraft, watching the A-10s doing strafing runs just outside, you know, bracing the enemy up, all the good stuff that you always wanted to do if you're really into soldiering, that's the stuff you want to do. And can you tell us about the firefights you've been involved in? Yeah. I think the first big one was the Taliban tried taking out the compound basically, that we were staying in, they kind of softened us up a little bit with bits and pieces. And the first big one was they tried to pull on a saw onto the compound and they'd overrun it before we got there, or partially overrun it before we got there and we went there to reinforce it. And yeah, there was one particular one that was just, it was bedlam. I mean, there was an RPG, we went through the top of a building where we were all stood firing and it smashed a bamboo cane, but carried on going with that exploding. If that had exploded, it probably would have took us all out, at least with shrapnel anyway. They just literally just missed the OC's head, because the OC was kind of walking from one point to another to give fire control orders or whatever. And that was pretty hectic. And you know, like that scene out of the full metal jacket where they're all firing onto a building and all buildings just like covered in dust and strikes. That was basically, it was like a remake of that in reality. Blocks on 50 cows, giving it big licks.  It was flipping amazing. One of those things, it was just like shit, we should have a video camera to film this because it was fricking awesome. But obviously pretty scary, but awesome at the same time. Did you lose many colleagues? So during that deployment, we were quite lucky. So 2006, we got away with it. There was a couple of guys quite badly injured that were attached to us, that were engineers at the start of the tour. But we basically were very, very lucky not to lose anyone on that tour. 2010, we was on the BRF roll that time round. And my platoon actually got hosed down by an American F-18, obviously accidentally. And one of the guys in my platoon was shot straight from the chest, killed instantly and a couple of guys injured. His name was John Howard, nicknamed Jack Howard. And he was a Kiwi, a really good guy and really sad loss. And I was one of the people that kind of attacked him, well, took him to the vehicle. Just after that, and it was like something like the First World War, we were up for our knees in mud, carrying one of our dead mates. And it's not the sort of thing you expect to be doing in this, 21st century soldier. Everyone thinks it's all about digital stuff, not that crap, but it's still about that First World War, going through the mud, fighting the enemy at close quarters, as we know now in Ukraine. Nice. And when you're not teaching the bushcraft and throwing yourself out of planes still, what do you do with your days? Well, I'm pretty busy. So we've got those two things there. I'm also heading up the local parachute regiment association. So that's a veterans association. We represent the regiment at things like funerals and stuff. We've got a big thing organized for August, a big party as well. I've also got a full-time job. So I'm working as a school staff instructor at the Kamai Cadet Force now at school locally. And I'm in a parachute team, as you mentioned as well. So I'm doing parachute displays into events and stuff like that. So pretty busy. I don't know many minutes to spare in a day. I've got to say. Well, it sounds like from your history, mate, you're not a man that would want spare minutes in a day. Yeah. I tend to fill it up with busy stuff.  That was just lockdown project because you couldn't get out of the house. And then that's got kind of grown arms and legs now. So that's become pretty successful. Never saw myself doing things like YouTube. You know, weird things happen during pandemics, I guess. Yes. Yes. Tom, if you could do me a favor, if you could email me just all the links to all the things we've discussed that you want to promote. Yes, yeah, we'll do it. I can give them to Luke then and we can get them promoted below the video. Roger. Anything big on the horizon you'd like to talk about? Well, the main one really is we've got, you know, the events going on with first and events. So this weekend is the bushcraft weekend, bushcraft and survival. And the next one's the May fan dance on the 15th of May. So going over the SS selection route that you do as part of selection, basically taking people through that, you know, and making a safe event. That's the next big thing on the horizon really. Incredible. Tom, I'm going to wish you all the best there and thank you massively for coming on the show. Cheers, mate. Second power finder we've had on the show now. It's like buses, isn't it? You wait four years for them and they all come along at the same time. Yeah, mega. But mate, I wish you all the best. Good luck with the jump in. Good luck with the bushcraft. Good luck with all the cadets. Let's chat again at some point. Cheers, Mucka. Appreciate it. Yeah, no worries. Just stay on the line, Tom. All our wonderful friends at home. I didn't see any. I'm just going to flash up the chat here just to say thank you to everyone who's who's who's bore with us. Sorry, it's been buffering folks. I think it's because I had stuff uploading to YouTube, which is silly me, but I can only remember so many things in this aging head of mine. Thinking about crayons, weren't you eating crayons at the time? That's it. Down slightly easier life, just eating crayons. But hello to Paul, Jed, Never, Darren, Greg, Diamond, Doug and Jane. Good old Jane's always support. Always supports the podcast. And, yes, and to everybody at home, much love to you all. Please look after yourselves and we will see you next time. Thank you.


popular truth. There's no secret to God's power. Everything we need to know about walking in the power of the Holy Spirit is clearly given to us in Scripture. The reason many believers lack power is because they lack practice of the basics. Daily prayer, holy living, devotion to the Word and worship. Do these things and you'll walk in power and spiritual victory all the days of your life. Now, many neglect the discipline of these basic spiritual practices and instead search for a shortcut. But it's simple daily obedience that brings forth true power. The key to the power is time in the presence. Don't forget to subscribe.


Okay, for the real number set, I've set up some exercises. I want you to go on there and define which group a certain number belongs to. So the symbols that you're gonna be using is this. This represents element. Now what it means is, which number group does a certain number belong to? Is it the natural numbers, the whole numbers, the integers? So for example, I'm gonna give you a number. I'm gonna say which group does this belong to? What you're gonna do is say, well two is an element of the natural numbers. Which group would negative two belong to? Well negative two is an integer. So what you're gonna do is say two, negative two is an element of the integers. Now if you remember the real number set, we have the natural numbers, the whole numbers, the integers, and the rational numbers, right? Each one is a subset of the previous one. So what you're gonna have to do is take it down to the lowest value it can go. So two, now two belongs to the whole numbers set, the integers and the rational numbers. But what you're gonna do is take it down to the lowest set belongs to which is the natural numbers. So for example, if I give you the number zero, zero, the lowest it goes to is the whole number set. So you're gonna go zero is an element of the whole number set. And you also have the irrational numbers. The symbol for this is Q with a bar up top. Sometimes they use I and this one switches over. But I'll explain all that stuff on my website, okay? So if I give you an irrational number which is a square root of a prime number, any prime number, let's say square root of five. Now this number doesn't repeat and it doesn't end. It's two point blah, blah, blah, blah, continues on and the number, the pattern changes. So square root of five is an element of the irrational numbers set, okay? Now do the exercises, if you're getting them wrong, make sure you look at the video again and try to figure out how the real number set works. If you're still having problems, send me an email or post a comment on the website and I'll try to clarify any problems you have, okay? Good luck.


So let's talk about my favorite part of the hiring process. It's whiteboarding. Also known as Live design challenge.  There could be designers, there could be one or two representatives from product or engineering. A whiteboard challenge is where you're given a live design challenge as a part of the interviews. You usually have 30 minutes to an hour to complete the challenge. Nothing else comes close to demonstrating how a UX designer thinks and behave than a whiteboard challenge. That's why it's my favorite. From an interviewer's perspective, it's not about how many ideas you come up with or how beautiful your sketches are. It's really how you approach the problem and how you work with other designers or the group in general in this session. How you work during whiteboard challenges is how you work with the team. And that's what the interviewers are really evaluating. But what else or what specific things are we evaluating as hiring managers? There's a lot of things. And some examples are here. Do you ask questions to get clarity of the goal? Do you focus on the user and their context? Do you make valid assumptions and ask the right questions? Do you go beyond UI and think holistically about the whole scenario? Do you understand basic principles and patterns? Do you mention weaknesses and improvements in your solution? Do you take feedback and suggestions gracefully? There are some bonus points that you can get by understanding the whole product development process. Do you suggest ideas outside the scope of the exercise? Do you have suggestions for user research, roadmap and execution? Do you understand potential technical constraints? And these bonus points are really geared towards the whole product or engineering but also shows a more strategic level as a designer. So you've learned about the potential of how you'll be evaluated. But let's give you some good and bad examples to make this point really clear.


In 2022, Mollie kicked out the French ambassador in the country. The following year, in January 2023, Burkina Faso also kicked out the French ambassador. This same year, following the coup that occurred in July in Niger, the French ambassador to Niger was kicked out in September and now, just a few days ago, Tunisians are demanding the withdrawal of the French ambassador from their country. France is indeed in trouble in Africa. It's pretty much understandable why Mollie, Burkina Faso, and Niger are angry with France. First, these countries were former colonies of France, and after suffering through the colonial period of exploitation, they continued to suffer post-colonial periods. France found ways to maintain control over their countries in certain aspects, including politically, economically, and militarily. For decades, the interference of France in their countries contributed to the fact that these countries are among the poorest in the world. So, when the coups occurred in these countries, which led to the removal of puppet leaders who aided France in their policy towards the countries, it became easy to stir up the resentments that the citizens of these countries have had against France. Anti-French sentiments spread, French ambassadors got kicked out, and the defense agreement with France was dissolved, which led to the eventual removal of French forces stationed in these countries. However, for Tunisia, a country in North Africa, the situation is a bit different. Like Mollie, Niger, and Burkina Faso, Tunisia is also a former colony of France, but some would argue that the effect of colonization on Tunisia is not as bad as that of Mollie, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tunisia did not pay any colonial debt, nor did they sign a colonial pact that ensured that France had the right to interfere in their military or economy. Tunisia does not use the CFA franc, a colonial currency that has kept Mollie, Burkina Faso, Niger, and 11 other francophone countries on a leash. Tunisia does not keep 50% of its foreign exchange reserves at the French public treasury. So, you can see that although Tunisia was a former colony of France and still suffered through its colonization period, the effect of colonization on the country cannot be compared to that of Mollie, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which currently have widespread anti-French sentiments growing so strong in the countries. And unlike these three countries, Tunisia has a fairly stable relationship with France. Now, the question is, why are the people of Tunisia, a country whose relationship with France is still very OK, demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador from their country? According to reports, thousands of Tunisians gathered at the French embassy on Saturday, October 21, in the capital, Tunis, to demand the departure of the French ambassador. The reason for the protest and their demand was that France was part of the Western powers that supported Israel in the current fight between Israel and Palestine. The protesters condemned Western support and by extension France for Israel, which they blamed for a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital. Some protesters waved Palestinian flags, while others urged the ambassador's removal, accusing France of being one of the Western allies of the Zionists. The protesters also called for the criminalization of any normalization of relations with Israel. We are here to support Gaza and Palestine. We, all the Tunisian people, are always with Palestine, said demonstrator Marwan Maghri. Another demonstrator, Teyib Bouaycha, also expressed his support, saying that the people of Tunisia expressed their unequivocal condemnation of the massacres and genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people. This protest by Tunisians to express their support for Palestine and demand the withdrawal of the French ambassador comes as Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, launched a deadly attack across the border on October 7. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has had devastating consequences. In the Hamas attack on Israel, it's reported that Hamas militants killed 1,400 people, primarily civilians, and took 212 hostages back to Gaza. Meanwhile, Gaza has borne the brunt of Israel's retaliatory air and missile strikes with at least 4,741 Palestinians killed and 15,898 wounded. Over a million of the 2.3 million people living in the densely populated enclave have reportedly been displaced since the war began. Israel has also imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, preventing food, gasoline, water, and medical supplies from entering the territory. Tunisia, however, is not the only country in Africa that has expressed support for Palestine. Algeria and South Africa have also expressed support for Palestine. In South Africa, hundreds of people in different cities have held protests to denounce the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many South Africans say they support the Palestinian cause because they believe what is happening to Palestinians under Israeli control is comparable to what they suffered during the apartheid era. In Algeria, its foreign ministry expressed concern over Israel's attacks on Gaza, saying they violate international humanitarian law. Currently, France has yet to respond to the request of the Tunisian people. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this video.