Hi all, welcome to the Jenkins Governance Board Meeting. Today is December 16th. We have several contributors on the call. And the today's agenda is to go through the recent news, process of the trademark usage request from Wish to Shlap, discuss new year blog post, take a look at the roadmap and at least edit the topic for Jenkins electronic book which we need to publish. Are there any other topics we would like to discuss? Is the new year blog post also covering the concept of the CDF newsletter? Is that the same topic Oleg? Or is that, does that need to be a topic? Not exactly, okay. Yeah, so we can discuss it separately but CDF newsletter is basically a summary of key events in the project we need to send to them. And the new year blog post is what we use to publish every year. And I believe that we should publish it this year as well. Okay, so let's talk. Oleg, just quick question. So that blog, is that the same thing as the, kind of like a year recap? Yes. Ah, gotcha. Yeah, so Marky is not able to join today. So, yeah, I'll just discuss it on a high level then. Okay, recent news. So, yeah, last week was relatively silent. Two weeks ago we had a major discussion about the autogies, about new releases, Jenkins, three proposal and other things. So, if you're interested to see news, please refer to the previous meeting. Are there any new events we would like to share today? I guess not. And none for me. Yeah, so maybe on a small note, we have started a call for Google Summer of Quota project ideas and mentors. So, it's in the developer mailing list. They will also be a blog post from Cara published today. So, if you're interested to participate in Google Summer of Quota, to have a student working on a project of interest this summer. It's a good time to think about the project ideas and maybe submit one, so that we can start accumulating the project list for the application we will submit in mid-February. There is still plenty of time, but there are students exploring the project and if we have ideas earlier, it also means that we have better chances of attracting students who will discover during the Christmas break. Yeah, I don't think that we have anything new to share. So, let's go forward with the agenda. So, trademark usage request. Yeah, there was a long discussion in the mailing list. So, the context of that on October 14th, we adopted a new policy, which is saying that we want to follow Linux Foundation's trademark usage guidelines as a default. Though at that point we made an additional disclaimer that if in exceptional cases, mostly in the case where there's a precedent of similar name being approved, we may accept an alternate beta, but we set a clear expectation that the trademarks would be that our recommendation is to follow Linux Foundation's trademark guidelines. So, here we have got a request from Virtus.Lab. They are launching a new product and they would like to use Virtus.Lab Jinkins operator service. So, the problem with that trademark that it's compliant with our previous policy, well, we should be using a couple of years ago and before we actually started adopting the Linux Foundation one. And if we take the decision we had in October 14th, then no, it's not compliant because there are other patterns recommended by the Linux Foundation's trademark guidelines. And there was a proposal for Virtus.Lab operator service for Jenkins. We discussed that, but yet the request decided to proceed with the original name, this one. So, we started facilitating feedback in the mailing list here with those we have. I personally casted zero because, yeah, although I don't feel strongly, I don't see particular reason why it would be an exception. In this case, we adopted the policy and we should rather start following that. Same feedback from Gavin. We have plus one from Mark and we have minus one from Daniel based on the process discussion. So, right now we have net zero in the mailing list. And, yep, we didn't get feedback from all both members yet. So, from those who are on the call, Alisa and William haven't voted yet. And, yep, it would be nice to get your feedback. I think for me, if we want to adhere to the Linux Foundation guidelines and we need to start somewhere. So, let's start with this one. Yeah. So, I'm for sticking with the Linux Foundation guidelines. So, basically it's minus one. And, yeah, I'll take in the conversation. I'm also leaning towards reducing my vote because Daniel is absolutely right if we adopted the policy. We should rather go for that. Yeah. So, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any exceptions, but I think exceptions make sense when the result would be weirdly inconsistent. So, for example, a sibling product to a previously approved trademark usage has a reasonable case for an exception. This one is just something completely new which is why I don't really think it's a good idea to just go ahead with allowing it. Okay. Okay, this is not the same discussion as in the beginning of the meeting or because I came a little bit too late. So, same discussion. Same discussion. Okay, sorry. So, it's fine. I think if we now have adopted the new naming convention, we should stick to it. That makes sense. So, minus one from me as well. Okay. Oh, sorry. Almost. Sorry if I confused you. Yeah. So, yeah, I still feel that we don't have quorum. I suggest that we wait for feedback from Marki and then close it in the million list. But, yeah. I think that we either buy the ballot with the policy and it feels like it's time to do that. Quick question, like that you mean to put a zero for Gavin or is he on the wrong line? Yeah, zero is zero. Yeah. So, are you fine with these votes or does anyone want to reconsider, adjust? Looks good to me. So, I think, yeah, waiting a bit in the million list and then just following the discussion. We definitely don't have strong consensus to approve that. Okay. So, should we move on? I think that I'll take action item or to communicate it back. Because, yeah, it was rather me who probably over-emphasized the possibility for exceptions. So, yeah, I will take action item here to communicate. Okay. So, for the new year block post. So, we need to post one. Last year, we posted it after the new year. It was something like January 7th. This one, yeah, January 7th. And this block was basically summarized key highlights. It included project updates basically once we had from the Lisbon Contributor Summit. And after that, there were some stats that we collected from different sources. So, this is what we've got. And maybe it's a format we should follow this year. When we had a discussion on two weeks ago, Marky wanted to take a lead on this effort and cut in the block post. We wanted to have a sync up this week so that we would start drafting that. But yeah, Marky might not be available for a while. So, I think we need to regroup. And if, yeah, so next week, we'll just, some of our submitted drafts so that we can create a new block post together. Does it make sense to everyone? Or should we speed up that? It makes sense to me. And to me. I think that's reasonable, I like. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And on separate notes, we have this. Just to confirm what's the intended publication date? We don't have a strict date for publishing. Obviously, it's better to do it around the Christmas New Year period. But if it arrives slightly late, it's also fine. So historically, it was rather a beginning of January. Right, okay. Seems like, I was just wondering whether we're targeting January 1st or what the intended date is. But to clarify, late next week or mid next week is the intended publication date. The very main forest, is that correct? Optimistic one, yes. But yeah. So it really depends on contributions. And maybe it's a signal that we actually should start it even earlier. Yeah. Same for the CDF newsletter. So deadline for projects is a January 12th. But it's again a summary of key events and we have some. So I think that it should be just another document we create and collaboratively update. So I do, yeah, I will also create one. Again, I will coordinate with Marty what is his availability. But yeah, both documents, I think should just go to the developer mailing list so that everybody can contribute a patch and we just review them and send off an advocacy or some way before posting. Okay. So do we want to do roadmap review? I believe, so last time we did it, it was in November, since that I'm not sure we had any major changes. So there were some items here and there, which we need to draw. So, you know, we have confirmation that change template in engine is now under development. We have pretty big gap in tools and service integrations because even if there are plugins happening here and there, contributors do not put them on the roadmap. And yeah, this is something you probably need to figure out how we do because there are services appearing. But we need to improve contributor outreach because otherwise we will always have a kind of gap there, this GSOC project ideas on the right. So Oleg, can you share some examples of tool and service integrations that are in progress but aren't on the roadmap currently? So we can just take a look at hosting requests. So there are new plugins being hosted and half of these plugins integrations with different tools. Got it. Okay, thanks. I have a question. Which of these plugin integrations important enough and address significant subset of users to be posted on the roadmap? But yeah, I think that we need to highlight some of these activities. Now, would we had discussed in Google Summer of Code officers this morning get plugin or a credentials binding topic? Is that under tool and service integrations as a GSOC project? Would that be somewhere else? No, it would be a tool and services section. That's for sure. So regarding, so roadmap still highlights key initiatives with major impact. So what we will need to do is once there is clear scope for this project, we decide where they should be highlighted. Because yeah, this year GSOC projects will be smaller. Last year, we added many of them on the roadmap. I'm not sure about this year. So I think we just need to discuss it on a case by case basis. But the plugin is definitely important for pretty much every Jenkins user. So it's rather a question of what we put there. Great, thank you. Thanks for the clarity. Yeah. So user experience, plugin management, UI UX revamp, it's in preview. The rest of the changes flowing in. But I would say that plugin management completely changed thanks to Daniel, thanks to team and to many other contributors. So I'm not sure whether we plan any more major changes there. I don't. I think it's only really major because it's a collection of many individually minor changes. And yet for me, the delight of dramatically faster, more attractive user interface, more intuitive search. Yeah, I agree with Daniel that they may have been individual contributions, but I think it's much, much better than it was before. That's been a significant improvement over the last year in plugin management. Yeah, I totally support that. And I think that we should keep it in preview and maybe move it to completed with the next little CS cycle. But yeah, it's a subject for UI UX discussion. Next item we have configuration UI tables to these. So this one is definitely in preview. This one definitely needs more contributors. And if you're looking for a way to contribute to Jenkins, this is something to consider. And you can see that we landed this change more than one months ago. There is still many incompatible plugins which we need to address. And the clock is ticking because the next LCS cutoff is in a bit more than one month. So by this time, we will definitely need to take a look at this dashboard and decide what we do. Either try to deliver all these fixes or find the alternate solution. For me, it's rather push forward and try to get it done. But yeah, still it requires significant time because most likely this list is not even a final list. Most likely there are other plugins we still don't know about. So definitely something to consider and maybe you'll still need to come up with whatever compatibility layer in JavaScript. Though I'm not exactly sure whether we can implement that. We can do previous discussions. Okay. So, modernized mirror infrastructure, I believe it's done or not. I think it is done, Daniel. Any insight you have on things? Oleg, I bet if you click that, you'll see, if you click the link there, you'll see it will open for us. And I think most of the tasks, yeah. I think it, and we're now working again on Azure file storage. So we're back running the way we were before the outage. So I think that one is justifiably done. Okay. Then probably we should close it. Yeah, and is it okay if I submit that poll request? Yeah, that's fine. Great. Okay. Let me make myself a note. Okay. Then items in progress, more UI, UX, look and fill updates. We still have some stories flowing in. Definitely the scope defined by UX C hasn't been fully delivered yet. So we should keep it as is. Plug-in documentation, migration. We still have a lot of plugins to migrate. Well, last time I checked, we had around 600 plugins. So it's a big number, but we still have a lot which haven't been submitted or which haven't been released. Yes. And we did actually on that topic, we did have a conversation raised in the Jenkins info meeting from Olivia Bernin asking what our plan is for Jenkins Wiki. And so we've started a plan there in first draft talking about where we go with the Jenkins Wiki. It's going to stay read only and eventually we need to probably decommission it. Yeah. Eventually we definitely need to do that. Let's see what would be the implementation but now, yeah, there is still a huge gap to, I feel. Right. Yeah, maybe we could just archive these pages. So we don't really need confluence to display them. So let's see. Okay. Then documentation migration to Jenkins. I was still in progress, a lot of things happened, but yeah, there is a lot of documentation. Same for terminology. And pull requests get merged, but everything is in progress. So these columns remains the same. Management administration, do we want to go through the entire list today or do we want to stop at particular areas so that we cover other topics? Mark, you're muted. Packaging and platform support is one that I would like to be sure we touch on. Other areas are less of concern for me and Jenkins on cloud maybe is one that you want to touch on. Okay, so I think that they are all in the right state. They are, okay. Management's preview, remote preview, our plugin compatibility is still a work in progress, although I would say that the vast majority of plugins are compatible. So probably we could close it as an initiative. There will be still long tail, but whatever. The review services and script security, basically they're in the same state that a pull request suggested, but they haven't been fully integrated. For cloud platforms, Jenkins, fellow runner and the development that there are changes here and there, not ready for 1.0. I didn't expect it to be ready for 1.0 anytime soon. So just there is still things here and there to be completed. External fingerprint storage, it's in preview. It works, there are adopters. So we rather need to move it completed, but firstly we need to move the APIs for GA, but I think that the story is solid enough to call it closed. Tecton pipelines will step under development. There are some changes going there. There is a new roadmap, but it's in alpha. So the state is correct. Plugable built log storage for Jenkins pipeline, basically the same. So it's in preview. Everyone can evaluate that. At the same time, it's fully operational. So if you want to, you can use it. There is a plugin and a few other implementation attempts. Plugable unit test result storage. Again, it was shipped in the JUnit plugin. It is possibly a scale implementation by team. So we need team to comment whether it's ready for GE or not, but yeah, the implementation is definitely ready for preview. The command Jenkins on Kubernetes, I think we should move it to done once the last pull request is implemented. There is still a lot to do, but... But that project as a project has concluded, Xenob is actually continuing to write and we have office hours tomorrow with her. Okay? That's good. And yeah, basically no other changes on this list. So packaging and platform. I suggest that we close here and finish other topics after that. So Mark, would you like to summarize? Yeah, so for me there, the summary is that I need to be sure that I get updates made there and we've got significant work going on in the Docker image generation, trying to get towards these multi-plot multi-arch images like S390X, PowerPC, ARM64, and the pull requests are in progress, we'll continue making progress on them. I also owe the organization a JEP proposing a Docker image deprecation policy or a Docker image maintenance policy. And that I hope within the next, well, before the start of the new year. There is consensus, so JEP is, well, it would be nice to have one. Yeah, the platform SIG wants the JEP very much because we're behaving oddly right now and that's the benefit of a JEP is it'll get us more consistent document to refer to for our behavior. What do we do? How do we choose things? Okay. So, any other updates on platforms? None from me, but. So, yeah. I think, yeah, this is a good summary for now. We can discuss governance, but for governance topics, it definitely makes sense to have more governance both on my own bus and we need to plan our activity for the next year. So, I think that in January, when all the holidays are over, we will give discussion with William, Mark, Key and Gavin and Key, Tyler and all other contributors who are willing to split in the governance area so that we could prepare the roadmap for the next year. Because currently, yeah, we completed all major items to be planned for the year. Yeah, there are some items like funding which still needs to be addressed, but ultimately, we need more content there. It's a good time to think about that. Well, like, can I also add? So, when we were in past, in-person Jenkins user conferences and our DevOps world, we had a lot of people who comes to the booth and say, wants to know what's the latest and greatest in Jenkins. And then for this year, DevOps world, the virtual event, we also had, well, one of the top presentation or session was about people wanting to know what is the latest and greatest in Jenkins. And I think that was your session and, oh my gosh, partly. Oh, I'm so, I'm spacing out. Yeah, so there was a presentation by Jeremy about UI ads. There was a presentation by Mark about documentation and there was a top level overview by me. Yeah, I think it was yours that was at a very, that was very, that had a lot of views on it. So I'm wondering, would it be worthwhile for the project to maybe do a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly update of, you know, the stuff that's going on of the roadmap and so that people can see what's the latest and greatest or what's going on with the project. And maybe, you know, that's an opportunity for us to ask for contributors as well. I know we're always asking for contributors, but that's just a suggestion. Yeah, bye Daniel. Yeah, I think it would be nice. So it basically boils down to the bandwidth to prepare that. Yeah, if we can do that, let's do that. Because all this material's help, we submit the monthly update to continuous delivery foundation. So maybe we could have collaborative version every few months on the Jinx.io website. Yeah, yeah, and CDF can also help us with, you know, the webinar, podcast, whatever we want to do. Yeah, right. So let's keep talking about it and yeah, let's try to find some time. Okay, I can help drive that. Cool. Okay, so the last topic in the agenda is for Jenkins e-book approval or to proceed to this governance but members as signers of the e-book later, right? Yeah, so a little bit of the background is we took about six Jenkins is the way case studies where we do have approval to use their logo. So we shorten it, very short and sweet into six very brief stories with solutions, challenges and what was the outcome? So my ask, so at the beginning of this document, can you click on the attachment? Yeah, so at the beginning of the document, there's a letter that it's kind of like a welcome letter and I was asking whether we could use the governance members as the signer of this letter underneath where it says the Jenkins project, right? But Oleg, I think your suggestion is great as well. I'm totally okay with, I actually think, I'm okay with putting my name on it as the events officer for 2020 and the outreach SIG. So whatever this team approved for me to do, I'm okay with it. Personally, I would prefer to give credit to you because it's all thanks to you and to sponsors that we've got Jenkins is the way program that we have got so much content and that we've got so much user feedback. Yeah, I would be happy to sign that but my contributions are pretty much zero. Well, for me, I'm happy doing it. I don't need the credit to be honest. Just glad to be able to help out and contribute. You totally deserve this credit. I think that it would be the best outcome. For me, I think it has heavier weight. It has more weight if it's by the governance board. But I'm totally fine with what we decide here. Other opinions? I like the idea to have Alisa's name there. I think it's really a good idea because you made the work and now you are the responsible person who is not responsible but everybody sees that you've done a lot of things and it's really good to see you there, I think. All right, Nody, thank you. Mark? What's one to Alisa's name? I hadn't considered that. I think that's great. I all in favor of that. And for all the reasons you mentioned, all like, very good. Yeah. So my suggestion is to just proceed with that then. Okay. All right, I'll proceed with that. Thank you. Thanks to you. Do we have any other topics? If not, let's stay for a second after the recording. And yeah, thanks to everyone who is watching and see you in the new year. Speaking of that, do we do a meeting con 30s? I'd prefer not personally. I would like to be out of out on the 30th. Plus one. No meeting. It's easy to find consensus on this topic, right? And I think that's a topic where you don't even, we have quorum by definition at those present in the meeting. So it might make sense to have maybe out of the meeting one week later, but yeah, let's discuss it when we get there. I think that's not an unreasonable idea. We did something like that with a doxig where we skipped one meeting, shifted the next a little later. So instead of doing December 30th, do it exactly one week later and then be back on track the following week, right? That sounds fine to me. Mm-hmm. Okay. So thanks everyone. Again, I'll stop the recording and yeah, let's give it up quickly. Bye.


Hey everybody, how are you today? Oops, let's see. I gotta refresh my picture. Hmm. Hmm. It says I'm broadcasting YouTube hasn't quite caught up with what I'm seeing yet or what I think you guys are seeing or hearing. Let's see. Oh, there we go. Now I'm red. Red is good. Okay. Seeing an ad. Hey everybody. Ian, Josie, Eve. Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. How am I? I'm okay. So I, as you know, was not here last week at all and there will be at least one week coming up. That I won't be live maybe two weeks. I don't know yet. I don't have any details yet, but this is what happened. So we were in the midst of doing some light remodeling and redecorating for the holidays should have been a quick and easy job. You know, it's always should have like when you're doing home improvements. There's always a but there's always a but. So we got the project that we wanted to do done and it looks fabulous, the public front side of the house. But as we were going over things and moving stuff around, we realized there was a massive shower leak in the master shower, especially the door and it was leaking onto the floor. And yeah, so we have to get the master shower probably right after the holidays. We're in the midst of getting estimates on that and measurements for that. So yeah. So how am I a little stressed out? And when I can't do art because there's a work meeting in my house, I have no way like of working out the stress in a healthy way. So yeah. So there's that. Welcome, Artzology Muriel. Welcome. Okay. So this morning, though, we're going to work out some of the stress from last week. In some art, I've already filmed a few quick little videos. I've done the two giveaways. I've closed the giveaway videos and marked them closed. Those emails have gone out to the two people for the giveaway. That was a Rafflecopter and the other one, the videos will go out shortly. I'm not going to delay them. I'm going to edit them hopefully this afternoon and upload them tonight. So look for them sometime tonight early tomorrow morning. There's also a haul giveaway, a haul video coming. And yeah, I've got catching up to do. So anyway, hey Cindy, Ian very nicely this morning said, when I said to him, when he asked, are you going to be live today? And I said, yes, but I don't know what I'm doing. He very nicely sent me this really great photo. So we're going to just work from that. Because yeah, I had no idea what I was going to do. I'm going to put it back here so I can see it. All right. So I'm trying to see. I have a palette knife, a regular pencil. I'm sorry, it's a 4B, but a pencil, any pencil. I have a charcoal pencil and my Stabilo pencil. I think I'm going to use some of them. I don't know if I'm going to use all of them. I've got a mixing plate. I do have some modeling paste because I do think I want to thicken up some of our paint a little bit. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I really don't have any. More than normal, I have absolutely no plan. I've got my rag and we've got some Americana paints. I did pull out a few of their metallic paints that I happen to have in my stash of Americana stuff, Decor Decor Art stuff. I have these. They're a little different than the Americana gloss enamel. These are the dazzling metallics. They're more metallic if that's possible. This is the Americana Glorious Gold and this is the dazzling metallics splendid gold. You can see just in the bottle that there is a little bit of a difference in the color of the paint. I don't know if we're going to use these, but I thought they might be interesting. We might just do something painting again. I have no idea. Hey, Me Bear Creations. Hello. Yes, we did get our Christmas tree up this weekend. 90% of the boxes unpacked. But if we're going to be gutting the bathroom after Christmas, I have a couple of cabinets. I'm going to have to repack into boxes because they're right on the other side of the bathroom. If they're going to be repairing the subfloor and banging on things, that's going to have to be repacked in boxes. No worries. Ian, if you could put the picture up on the Facebook group, that would be wonderful. Let's get going now. As usual, I always start with the background. In this case, a blue sky. There are some trees in the background, but I think we're going to just do kind of a blue-ish sky because we're going to do an artsy interpretation of the background. We are going to do something a little bit different. I'm just getting the impulse to do, and I'm going to grab some makeup sponges. Try not to throw them on the floor. These are different kinds. This kind doesn't matter or size really. You can get like bags of these, big giant bags of these at like the dollar store, like Dollar Tree or the Japanese dollar store. Or if you have a five below, they probably have them. All right. Let's get a plate. Let's get some colors for the sky that we think we want to use. I have one of these that's open. This is Bahama blue. It's a pretty, pretty blue. So let's put some of that on our plate. We probably don't need a ton. I am just happy to be back to Artie today. I have to tell you. I'm not ready for the holidays. No, gee, Josie says no too. I've been so busy with everything else that's going on around here. I've done a little bit of shopping, but not too much. The husband is off for two weeks starting Monday. Next Monday, not today. So I am hoping that means that we can do some of these contractor things together and we can get some Christmas shopping done. But, you know, we're not buying each other or the kids a lot of stuff. You know, I don't need stuff. So I need a new bathroom. I'm not even doing a lot of cooking, although I am doing a little bit. So I do have to go get some things for that ahead of time. All right. And I do think I want some white. So we use whitewash. I think my other white empty. I think I had to throw it away. Okay. Yeah, we tried to get the kids to let us not put a tree up yet this year, Deb, but they wouldn't go for that. Damn it. This is a weird question. Does anybody remember a while back? I think it was a Facebook live event I did where I did a brief little tour of my house and showed you the paintings around my dining room and stuff like that. Does anybody remember? Was it Facebook live or YouTube? And can you help me find it? Because I want to do a before and after video for you guys. And I can't find it. Okay. So we're going to start with the darkest blue. And of course the gardeners are next door. So my dog is just going crazy. I did get my sponge wet and then ring it out. Yeah. See, I would love that, Josie, to have a friend who I know who I can trust to help me with the bathroom because. Yeah. And you know, it's been a boner contention this bathroom since we bought the house. So this time we're going to just bite the bullet and pay somebody to do it right. Instead of doing another DIY project and just get it done because it's driving us both crazy. Every few years we get a big leak. If we have to redo the subfloor and the joists and stuff and like repair replaced wood. This will be the second time since we've owned the house. You've had to do that. So it's a little depressing. So it's acrylic paint. You can start dark and work your way lighter. You don't have to worry about, you know, what paint you're putting where because it's acrylic paint. It'll cover the other up. And I kind of like the scratchy marks. The sponge is leaving. And these are not paper.  See, I can't find the video now. I was going to, you know, I think it was Facebook live, but as the creator, I should be able to download it. And I can't find it now. So I don't know. Maybe they don't keep them on there. I don't know. I can't find if you guys can help me find it. Send me a link to my own video. I know that sounds ridiculous, but.  You know, we're painting an impression of the photo. We're not looking to do realism. We're just having fun and being expressive. And this is not a super fine sponge. This is kind of a coarse sponge. It did come in a bag of makeup sponges. So I'm not sure makeup wise what you'd use a sponge for. Because it seems a little rough in my opinion on your face. Yes. Thanks. Because yeah, I can't, I don't know. I can't find it. And you know, between not finding the video and the home improvement thing in the bathroom, I was getting a little bit annoyed. Be honest. So I want to go down far enough that when we put the flowers in the photo that this, that we don't have a white line. Great. Thank you, Ian. It's a really great photo. He was very sweet to help me out this morning. I'm just getting back into the swing of things in my house. I don't do, I don't do workman in my house well. It's not something I do well. I'm going to stick that in the water and I'm going to go with a different kind of sponge. I think it was Facebook too. I just can't find it.  And I got to tell you, he did not like having the painters or anybody at the house. So I'm literally just swirling that white paint on and I'm dragging it across, doing a thin layer of paint like this, which is what Diane Rievoli does. Those of you who have seen her paint or taken her classes, because you're just getting a thin coating of paint, it dries pretty quickly. So there are some advantages to doing it this way. I'm just here trying to use up my paint. I'll look in there, Deb. And Sidney, I did find because I had you and Bob telling me to breathe. That's why I did find. I did tell Bob though, Bob is my husband. For those of you who don't know, his name is Robert. We call him Bob. That I would like it when we do the bathroom, depending on when that is and how busy he is at work. Maybe he can work from home. That would be that would be nice. We'll see. I'm hoping that we can use a contractor friend of ours who's actually done work for us before who I trust. And he'll not only give me the straight poop on it, but I know he'll fix it and he'll fix it correctly. And or and or Lowe's because I'm not, you know, I'm not going to Mickey Mouse around again. Oh, thanks, Cindy. So I'm just I'm continuing layering paint on my sky. I'm just working on my sky, layering the colors until I get something that's interesting that I can live with that I think will be cool in the background. Now you're putting thin coats of paint on here. So if you get the wrong color in the wrong place, you're going to have to go back in there with another color because you're probably not going to be able to erase it. So that's just going to be the way of things. Whoops. Well the front of the house what we did looks fabulous just FYI you guys. And and and honestly we knew we were going to have to do the bathrooms again we were just not thinking it was going to be right this second. But you know, sometimes life has other plans for you right now you could if you're doing something like this and you want to journal out your feelings or you want to journal out your impression of the photo you could do. Do that now and like start in the sky and work your way down. You could do it before you start painting. I actually kind of like the idea of doing some writing in here and maybe some of it will show through the flowers. I'm actually kind of really digging that idea. And I'm wondering if instead of doing it in any of the pencils that I picked, I should do it in a green or blue pencil. So I'm going to pick some of these coin or tricolor pencils. Now these are not, you know, these are like a hobby pencil. They're not an artist pencil. I'm pretty sure they're not like faster anything. They're just fun. We're mixed media artists. We're not picky.  So I'm going to take these and maybe the regular graphite pencil too. We'll see. I'm going to start with the blue one. It's not about anybody reading it except you. Thank you so much. It's in the group or in my page. Hey, Lisa. It doesn't have to be anything more than that. It can be scribbly. It's not about anybody reading it. And you're really, you're just giving your painting texture group page. Okay. Thank you, Ian. I'm going to go look for it when we're done here.  There we go. Alrighty. So now we're going to let's pick some greens. I want to use like this foliage green. I like this green and I like maybe little touches of citron. This again is our inspiration photo. And it's over in the group page. It is a sky. Thank you. So again, we're going to take our plate and this is pretty dry. I'm going to put some of our two colors on here. We haven't used a paintbrush yet. And let's see. Thanks, Ian. I am going to also grab some asphalt, which is a purpley kind of brown color, which I love. We had all those metallics out. Let's see. I think I want to use the metallic berry color because I, oops, I should mix. I should shake that up. My memory is horrible Eve, especially when my anxiety is getting the better of me. My memory is really like Swiss cheese to be honest with you. Which is not a good thing. I'm going to grab some melon. I'll try to put these colors in the description below if you guys want me to. We haven't yet got out the modeling paste. I thought it was a good idea, but I don't know that we're going to use it. We'll use royal fuchsia, which is a similar color to the berry. In shade of the berry, the metallic berry is a little bit darker and of course metallic, but the fuchsia is in that same family. Let's see. Do we want anything else right now? Maybe a little bit of zinc. You need to cut one or two neutrals. It'll make the bright colors really pop. Okay. Let's keep going. I'm not on any medication, so I can't speak to that. I'm trying to deal with my anxiety without. So far, so good. I have my bad days. So I'm going to mix the foliage green with a little bit of the modeling paste and it'll just thicken it up a little bit. I like the DecoArt modeling paste because it stays relatively flexible. So you can use it on things like art journal pages and not worry about it cracking later. The DecoArt modeling paste is also the one that's been used to mold in silicone like cake molds. I think Anne Williamson's done a lot of mold videos on her channel. Okay. Very much. You saw it was just a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to start with this one and I'm literally just going to do this. I'm just, you see, I'm just scraping. Again, we're using the photo as inspiration to create a page. Right. And you don't have to be a painter. Just blend perfectly. Just express how you're feeling and what you think about the photo in your art journal.  But, you know, you can work out issues with composition in your journal and or potential problems with it or you get it on a canvas. So now I've just got a little flat brush and I'm going to go in here and I'm going to use the lines that we, you know, we kind of made some marks here that could be considered flowers. I'm going to put this over here. Some of my colors are mixing on the plate. I don't mind. We're going to work with it. Just work with it. I do think I want a darker green. And I think that's the one color that's kind of missing from my collection. I do have Desert Cactus. Let's try that. Hi, the D. Hi, Stacey. You know, we have our year long journaling program coming out. Actually, the first video comes out this weekend. And I have, it's a group of us teaching it. Ian and Cindy are both teachers in this program. We also have a few others. It's going to be showcased on four Facebook groups, including mine, Cindy's artsy endeavors, Jerry Bellini's, My Arts and Parts and Anne Williamson's Annalise Creates and Jerry, I know, is doing bullet journaling as part of her journaling process for next year. So for those of you who want maybe ideas for your bullet journals or you want to know more about it, I suggest for sure joining the program and joining Jerry's group. Cindy started bullet journaling recently after talking about it with Jerry. I don't have a plan. I'm following the marks that I got with the palette knife and adding more marks with the paint, different colors of paint. Let's start putting some flower shapes in. I think this one. This is by R&F. It's an acoustic paintbrush, but it's got these short like Philbert style stiff bristles, which I kind of like. Can you see what I'm doing? I'm just nothing super complicated. I'm letting the brush make some marks for me and suggest flowers and it's kind of mixed, my two fuchsia colors brush that's supposed to be for encaustic doesn't mean you have to use it for that. Lord Almighty, I'd be in big trouble. I think most of my brushes are not really intended for what I use them for. The texture of the writing back there, I'm not planning on covering it all up, but it's going to show and just give it an extra feel, interesting feel. I shouldn't have put that there. I don't like that one there. Well, it's there now. And our melon colored paint. I'm barely touching the brush to the paper. I'm just tapping it in some of the wet paint that's on here. That's cool. The nice thing about acrylic paint, right? You all know, right? If you don't like it, you can go back and cover it up and do layers and make something super interesting because what's one of the beauties of acrylic paint. It's not horrible. So I have this wide. This is some kind of a Japanese or Chinese like brush. I don't know. It's very abused. It's a little bit rusty. It's not. It wasn't expensive. I think it was like two bucks or something. I'm going to dip it in my brown and green together. And yeah, I kind of had to stand up for this because and we need more of that foliage so that everybody remember what that is my old standard. A filbert. Oh yeah, making your own paper. That would be fun. I've done that in the past. I had for those that don't know I had a daycare business for a long time and the kids and I used to make paper. Very messy projects. We did it outside in the summertime because yeah, messy, messy, messy. So I'm going to dip it in the middle and I'm not going to clean my brush. I'm just going to wipe it on my rag and leave it messy. And I'm going to grab some of this brown color. I have the alfaltum on here and I do really like this one and I want to put it like right around here. So I'm going to do the flower center just dabbing it on. I'm going to grab some of the metallic color that I'm going to have on the palette. Yeah. I'm going to take this color and let's put a stamp. No, not that color. Let's do the gray. I'm not looking at the chat for those of you who are like if you're asking questions and wondering why I'm not answering. Okay, we're going to let the base of that dry a little bit more. I'm going to go over it and put it in my brush and just just grab some of it and transfer it on things I can't remember. Oh, thank you, Stacey. This is just, you know, I'm just literally I'm just playing. I'm not I'm not doing anything else. I'm just playing. It may turn out like poop. I have no idea, but I'm just going to play And one of the things I love about the photo Ian sent me this morning was that there are like layers of flowers and greenery in this photo. And I love that, that was wet, do you see that? And I love that. And so I wanna try to create like layers of marks and flowers like, and I don't wanna have them be too thick. I wanna like, if I go over this flower here, I wanna be able to see it through their other paint that's on top of it. So it kind of mimics that idea of a field of flowers off far in the distance. And the farther away, the more kind of abstracted they would be, blurry they would be. And it's only really the ones in the foreground that would be perfect for lack of a better word. A video editing program, Lisa. So this is the light green that I have on my palette. So I'm just giving the flowers a little bit of a pop with this lighter green. And I'm literally, I'm not doing any special brush strokes. I'm just dabbing it on. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect. Okay, let's go back over here. Let's see, hopefully that's dry. And let's start back here. Okay, there are these like seed heads in this photo. And you could do a way, you know, more precise job at this if you wanted. Let's just have fun, play.  Let's see, I want to kind of put one down here. We're going to go in this and we're going to give it a pop because we're, you know, we're not done yet. You know that. Just kind of picking places that I think we can use a seed head to kind of add to the composition a bit. Again, I'm not looking at the chat, let's see. Yeah, so you can, yeah, I totally will. Some brown, this is that asphaltum. That was too much brown, but that's fine. And see, you know, now it's like starting to come together. Now I'm thinking, I'm looking at going, okay, okay, I can see where it's going. And I'm really, I'm using a dirty brush. I'm not, I'm not cleaning it. So I'm getting these secondary colors, but that's okay, I like that. I see you all talking about video editing software. So I have used lots of different software in the past, but I currently either use Premiere Elements, which is an Adobe program, or iMovie, I like iMovie. Let's use, I don't wanna use the palette knife. You know what I wanna use? I'm gonna take a baby wipe. I know you're like, oh my God, what did you do? I can tell you, I can tell that without even looking at the chat. So I'm just making, I'm making marks with the edge of the gift card. That was too much marks. There's a million video editors out there. You guys use what's in your budget. You don't have to have anything super fancy to be on YouTube. Okay, I want to take, I think my Filbert and some of my Melon color and like I, my Filbert's pretty wet. That's, I mean, not Melon color, fuchsia color. We're gonna hopefully do this and get, hopefully some paint splatters on the, need more water. Hopefully less paint splatters on me and more on the page. Now, you know, I got splatters everywhere. That's okay. This sky is dry. And so I can come in here with a baby wipe and I can take away some of the splatters that I don't want in the sky. Just like that. I can still see the writing in the background, which I love that. I'm gonna go in. I've got, oops, neon yellow. And we've got a neon green and we maybe a neon, where's the orange? You know, that's my go-to color is the orange, right? Okay. Let's try the yellow. Can you tell me, Filbert? And let's see. Oh, thanks Deb. I got splatters on the iPad, by the way. Don't tell my husband. Thanks, Lisa. Yeah, don't tell the husband I got splatters on the iPad. Poor guy is stressed out enough between dealing with me and me calling him and saying, honey, we have a problem with the bathroom.  You could, of course, use any bright colors, but the neons won't necessarily scan well if you're gonna scan your page. You'll have better luck photographing them than scanning them. Guess how I know that? Okay, and then let's see, where's the green? Oh no, you know what? Where is the orange? I love the orange. I'm really, I'm just, again, I'm just tapping it on the painting. I'm barely touching the brush to the paper. And I'm just using the shapes that we made by making marks with the other brushes as an indication of where I should put my little highlights. Yeah, it doesn't scan well. So some of these things don't scan well. You really, really, really have to photograph them because they just don't scan well. So I'm gonna take my gray. I could, of course, get a different color out, but I'm gonna take my gray and my green and probably this color. I'm just gonna mix them all together. I'm gonna get a weird neutral color by just using what's on the palette, using it up and I'm making some marks with my brush, just to extra interest down here at the bottom. Again, barely touching the brush to the paper. And I'm not going in straight lines. I'm going in all different directions. If you're doing grass or plants or weeds, they don't, if you look at the inspiration photo, they don't grow in a straight line. If you just paint them that way, it's just gonna look like hair follicles. Won't look like what you want it to. And this is a small number four. It says comb brush, simply Simmons comb brush. It's a small filbert style. Type of brush. Just a little tiny one. Put this color in a few different places. You can create your own neutrals by mixing opposite colors together on the color wheel. And you can practice and experiment with making your own colors, but just mixing together what you have. That's pretty cool. You know, I didn't think that that was gonna end up that way. Okay, let's see. I have a scanner mouse, maybe our creations, and it does help. You do sometimes still have to like Ian is saying, play with the light settings, but your straight flatbed scanner won't scan neons very well. There's something meditative about doing, like grass and weeds like this.  Just paint your grass. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit so you all can see exactly what I'm doing, hopefully, let's see. As much as my program will let me. I should say not my program, my camera. So now we're doing a green, and you know, do your marks in different colors because nature's not, nature's grasses and bushes are not all one color. So I think it's just about done. It's looking pretty good. You know, I didn't plan it, but I think it looks pretty good. Only planning I did was, does anybody have, you know, I don't know what to paint. Saying it out loud, I didn't know what to paint. To Ian, you know. So I'm just gonna go in. I have a little bit of paint on my baby wipe, and I'm just gonna, I wanna cover up a few of the really white spots where you see the paper. There you go. I can catch up on some of the chat now. Did Ian and Cindy answer your questions about editing software and scanning? Okay, see you later, Deb. See you later, Cindy. I got my scanner mouse from Amazon, just FYI. I'm just, I'm gonna mess up the chat a minute on my iPad and get the paint off my iPad. Hold on. Yay. I got a little messy. Hold on. That's better. All right, let's get back to the chat. All right. Oh, thank you so much. Me bear creations, thank you so much. You know, a surprising amount of depth. And I didn't plan it, you know, you guys know by now, if you've been watching me for a while, I rarely plan these things.   You know, I, yeah, planning art is the last thing on my mind. I want to paint and I just want to have fun with you guys. And I got paint everywhere, so I must have had fun. It helps relieve the stress. I feel much better now than I did last week when I couldn't do any art. That was just not fun. Alrighty. I know we had a whole conversation there in the chat on bullet journaling earlier. We are doing bullet journaling in a, bullet, blah, blah, blah, blah. Bullet journaling in our My Year 2017 program in Facebook. It's a Facebook-only program intended as a benefit for our Facebook members and not that we're trying to, you know, alienate you on YouTube. We love you guys too, but we would love to encourage you to go join our community on Facebook. We have a really great one. And even if you do nothing else on Facebook and they're going to be doing bullet journaling in it. So one of the reasons I have a group of teachers is so that we can get different voices. I think we've got eight teachers, including my, which includes myself. And you'll get eight different voices on the same prompts and things every month. So it's going to be a lot of fun. And it starts this weekend. The first prompt comes out this weekend. Oh, thank you so much, Stacey. I really love the way this page turned out. I didn't expect it to turn out like this. Just, but it turned out great. So just, you know, simple tools. Nothing complicated. You don't need fancy stuff. Sometimes you want fancy stuff, but you don't need fancy stuff. That's two different things. All right. I think that's it for today. I am going to have some lunch and try to tackle the next thing on my list for either the art or home improvements or something. I don't know. I don't know. All right. So that's it. Go and download the picture Ian sent me this morning over in my Facebook group. The link should be in the description below this video. A life of art and self-expression. Paint your own piece from the photo and I would love to see it over in the group. I would love to have you all post. Yeah. Just put a little piece of wadded up tape in the back and stick it down flat and then take a photo. Then you don't have to worry about the curly edges. I use painter's tape. I have painter's tape around here. I use that. I'm just catching up on the chat a little bit. I use that a lot because it won't rip off the surface of the paper. If you just have masking tape, put it on and off like your clothes or some fabric a couple of times to reduce the tackiness of it and then use it to just hold it down just enough while you take the photo. Oh, you're welcome. And I'm glad you guys, I'm glad you guys had such a fun time and just don't forget if you are like me, you have anxiety issues, you have trouble dealing with Christmas stress, home remodeling stress, whatever it is. Make sure that you allow yourself some time to do some art or something because it really does help. Whether you're on medication or not, working it out in your art really, really does help. All right, that's it for today. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. If you can support my channel by either hitting that fan funding button on my channel's main homepage here on YouTube or shopping in my Etsy store. We do have a design team challenge for my rubber stamp line coming out this week and this weekend starts our My Year 2017 year long art journaling program over on Facebook. So think about joining the Facebook groups, My Group, the link's in the description below and you can get information about the other groups from My Group and it's gonna be a lot of fun. All right, that's it. I will be back for Watercolor Wednesdays, 10 a.m. and we will continue with our journey into watercoloring without watercolor paints. We will probably do some work with pencils this time and maybe we might bring a little bit of the other crayons in. I have lots of watercolor crayons. All right, that's it for right now, everybody have a great day, the most important thing.  Take a deep breath and relax. And I say that knowing full well, I'm the worst person at doing that, but just try. All right, I'll see you all later. Bye guys.


The kid is now meme gold is he now nice He's man. He's gold the video.  They're treating Children right an example of this is in Quebec Right the province of Quebec in Canada. They have 8,000 teacher shortage There's the they're lacking 8,000 teachers to fill spots This year starting next week when the school kicks in right? Shorters 8,000 people and I listen to CBC news right? Propaganda arm of the government right talking about why there are shortages of teachers and stuff like this Here's the reasons they said they said oh the teachers are overworked which they are Classrooms are full to full which they are There's violence in school which there could be depending on the school that you're in right? There's too much pressure on From the system which there is right?


The Scottish Parliament's main hall, given over to the spectacle of laser light, as a major exhibition for families and science enthusiasts officially opens. The centrepiece, a replica of one of the world's most powerful lasers, a stunning demonstration of the display's theme, the incredible power of light. So the Vulcan laser is used all across the UK and by some universities across the world and some industrial partners come in and do their high intensity laser experiments. But largely it's to look at how the research that I do indeed is to look at the transport of electrons as they travel through these little tiny solid foils that's there in the laser area which has relevance to fusion, particularly a form of fusion whereby a fuel is ignited by laser that hits the outside of a fuel pellet but the actual energy is transported to the very centre and the thermonuclear burn is caused by a beam of electrons so how electrons travel through high density materials is very important. Scottish Parliament's presiding officer, the right honourable Trisha Marwick MSP, joined pupils from Horry Family Primary School in Kirkntillic in the opening of the event which is part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. This exhibition is very good at telling us in specific on how lasers are being used to interact with our daily lives. So we've got demonstrations here that can discover what's inside sealed plastic containers that you don't know what's inside, you can't see what's inside but you can put your container inside this interactive machine that we have here and then you can work out what's inside using this particular scientific method. The exhibition runs through the month of April and the Scottish Parliament is getting into spirit of the event with the Parliament cafe and shop carrying a theme inspired by science. A major component of the exhibition will be evening science talks and for families and younger visitors a laugh of holiday and weekend interactive workshops. Like the exhibition itself these will be free of charge and drop in on selected dates in April. I wasn't interested in this art but now I've read all the information and it's quite interesting. It's really cool. It's really fun. It makes you feel like a mad scientist. It would be really great to think that you know somebody you could see here may be the next person to crack the fusion problem you never know. So it would be really good if we could get even just a few people to take up an interest that maybe wouldn't have previously. It's a really really worthwhile thing to do and hopefully they'll have fun doing it as well. The incredible power of light runs through the month of April. Access to the exhibition and all associated events are free. You can find out more on our website and join the conversation on social media.


The 1990s made great leaps forward in digital sound technology. In 1992, GI Joe's talking battle commanders had sound players that were shrunk down to fit in a backpack that was only as large as the figure. And it could play four whole sound clips. I guess that means my backpack is running out of things to say, so we better play the theme song. Looko here, it's the final review before Joe Fest! I hope you will be joining me in Augusta, Georgia next weekend! Before we get started today, I have a new patron and I need to give him a codename. His name is Andrew Creech and my network of spies inform me that he is a master of ceremonies and a nightclub DJ. And even though his initials are AC, he can be adapted to direct current. So Andrew, your codename is... MCDJACDC Thank you so much for your support. MCDJACDC For the last review before the break, I wanted to look at something from the 90s, but also something that's important to me. Stalker is my favorite character. I have the most sentimental attachment to the 1983 Stalker figure. This portrayal in the comic book captivated me as a young reader and it still does now.  It's not a name a character would be given if he were released today. It would be easy to start this video with a bunch of Stalker jokes, but that would be a bit obvious and the character Stalker deserves better than that. The figure we're looking at today is not the Stalker of my youth. See, that sounds bad. This is a Stalker of the 90s when Hasbro had the boldness to produce figures with non-removable backpacks that were so large the figures couldn't fit in any vehicles. Hasbro was really thinking outside of the box. The figure is literally bolted to the outside of a box. I love Stalker, but will the 1992 figure meet the standard of the first? HCC 78 presents Talking Battle Commander's Stalker. This is the 1992 Talking Battle Commander's Stalker, version 3 of Stalker, the Ranger from that series. This figure was introduced in 1992 and it was available in 1992 only. It was discontinued for 1993. This figure was part of the Talking Battle Commander's set, which included four figures, Cobra Commander version 5, General Hawk version 2, which was really the fourth version of Hawk, Overkill, the Cobra Bat leader, and Stalker. Excluding the 12 inch Talking GI Joe figures from the 1960s and 70s, the first electronic sound making GI Joe figures in the real American hero line, the 1990 Sonic Fighters, a series of figures with oversized removable backpacks that made sound effects. That series was followed up in 1991 with the Super Sonic Fighters. Despite the name change, the Super Sonic Fighters had basically the same gimmick as the Sonic Fighters. Then came the 1992 Talking Battle Commanders. They had two major differences from the Sonic Fighters and Super Sonic Fighters. Number one, they played a few spoken phrases as well as sound effects. And number two, their electronic backpacks were bolted to their bodies. They were not intended to be removed. There is a way to remove the backpack though, I will show you later. This talking mechanism reminds me of the old 12 inch Talking GI Joe's. A talking mechanism was added to the figures in 1967. If you pulled a dog tag, the figure would speak. I think they were trying to recapture that magic with talking three and three quarter inch Joe's. But the technology was too big to fit in the figure, thus the giant backpacks. In 1993, Hasbro was planning to release another set of talking Joe's with new technology called battle scan. The figures were going to come with battle scan tapes. That plan was changed. The talking mechanism was scrapped and the battle scan figures were rolled into the battle core series. This is the third version of Stalker. The first version was introduced in 1982 with the first series of GI Joe action figures when the line was relaunched that year. That was version one. In 1983, Stalker was reissued with new articulation. That release is referred to as version 1.5. 5 versions of Stalker released in the vintage line. If you followed my channel for any length of time, you probably know Stalker is my favorite Joe. And version 1.5 is my favorite Stalker figure. There wasn't a new version of Stalker until 1989. Version 2 was an Arctic themed figure. Version 3 was from 1992. That's the figure we're looking at in this review. Version 4 was from the 1993 male away Arctic Commando set. And it was a recolored re-release of version 2. The final version was from 1994. The final year of the vintage GI Joe toy line. Obviously, the name Stalker has not aged well. In 1982, it didn't have the same connotation it does today. Now the word is used almost exclusively to mean a person who harasses someone with unwanted attention. Stalking is even a crime in many places. It's not the image you want to evoke with your toy army guy. Since Stalker is my favorite character, I'd love to see a live action version of him. But I know they would never call him Stalker in a movie. I would propose they simply call him Ranger. Stalker was designated a Ranger in 1982. That means he is a graduate of the US Army's Ranger School. Ranger School is a grueling combat leadership course that focuses on small unit tactics. It is the perfect training for a GI Joe. At the time Stalker would have entered training, the Vietnam era, the course was 59 days with classes training for 20 hours a day. The Ranger motto, Rangers lead the way, embodies Stalker's personality. Other Joes who completed Ranger School include Beachhead, Repeater, Scarlet, Flint and others. For an elite unit like GI Joe, Ranger training would be a big asset. I have the full card back for Talking Battle Commander's Stalker, which I don't usually have, so let's look at it. We have the GI Joe logo up here and a yellow background over blue. Not a big fan of those colors. We've got the Talking Battle Commander's logo and we have a price sticker. Looks like this thing was $7.99. That's pricey. That's like twice as much as a regular GI Joe figure. We're going to pay that much for a single figure that Talking gimmick had better be great. We've got some artwork of Stalker here and I think it's okay, but it's hard to tell because it's partially obscured by this block here where the figure and the accessories were glued onto the card and this sticker for a free Hall of Fame collector card. Everything is just kind of in the way. This is a very busy card front. We've got three of the phrases that the figure says with the electronic backpack. Let's party, attack and blitz them. Down here it says three battle commands and electronic combat sounds. Push buttons on back. They have a hole in the card, so you could push the buttons and test the Talking feature. Then we have this gray area. This is where the figure and accessories actually were packed on. We have some instructions for changing the battery on the backpack. As it happens, the backpack on my figure still works, so I won't be changing the batteries out, but I will show you how to open up this backpack. Flipping the card around to the back we have the cross-sell and here are the other Talking battle commanders. There's Hawk and Cobra Commander and Overkill. Then we have some of the other figures that were available that year. Here it says it really pushes my buttons and that is correct. Here it says watch the new TV adventures of G.I. Joe. Check local times and listings. This is referring to the Deke animated series and you will see this stalker in that series, but not very much. We have the file card and of course it is a 90s style file card, so it is a rectangle with rounded corners and a very unfortunate yellow background. And we round out our look at the card back with our single flag point. We will look at the file card later in this video. Let's take a look at Stalker's accessories starting with this really big machine gun. This very long thing, it's in black plastic, it's got a grip on it and it's got just lots of detail. And it's very long. It even has a little tab here on the bottom that looks like it should fit a tripod, but no tripod comes with it. The file card calls this a 30 caliber M19 combat rifle. A M19 is a real designation for some military equipment, but that includes mines, mortars, grenade launchers and other such things, but not machine guns. With the curved stock it looks similar to the MG series of German machine guns, but it's not exactly a copy of any of those. The machine gun is so long, if the figure is a bit top heavy for you and you have a hard time getting him to stand, you can use the machine gun for extra support. His next accessory is this smaller weapon, this black, what looks to me like a submachine gun or a submachine pistol. It's got a magazine, it's much shorter than the machine gun. It's got a little scope on it and a grip. It does not look to me like it is based on any real world weapon. His last accessory is the figure stand. It is a black figure stand. I'm really glad a lot of 90s figures came with figure stands. And good luck getting this figure to stand without it. But that is in fact his final accessory. And you may be saying, what about the giant backpack? Well, the giant backpack is not an accessory. Alright, let's talk about that backpack. This backpack is not an accessory. It is part of the figure. It is screwed on and semi-permanent. It is possible to remove, but it is not easy and it takes several steps. It is a bright yellow sort of marigold color. It has some technical detail molded onto it. Looks like it has a normal sized backpack sculpted onto the back. And it has four gray buttons. Each of those plays a different sound. Given the size and inconvenience of this backpack, I'm expecting the sounds these buttons play to be crystal clear. Let's play them one at a time. This one says...  This one says... Blitzem. This is probably referring to the football term, not the Blitzkrieg. This one over here says... Let's party. I can't imagine Stalker saying that in battle. He's not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. And finally this button over here makes a sound... A machine gun sound. For less than one second. Is it worth it? Is it worth having a giant backpack like this bolted to the figure? The backpack is very large for the limited range of sounds. I didn't have this figure as a child, but I was never fond of noise making gimmicks. I could give this figure a voice and make him say anything I wanted. I could make more sound effects with my face than this thing can with its four buttons. The backpack makes the figure top heavy and he wants to fall backward. You need to lean the figure forward to make him stand, even with a figure stand because if he stands upright he will fall over. Let's take a look at the articulation on Talking Battle Commander Stalker. He sort of had standard articulation, but it was somewhat hindered. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down, not that it's easy to do with the backpack in the way. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and he would be able to swing his arm all the way around, but the backpack is in the way. He had a hinge on the elbow so he could bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around. This was still an O-ring figure, so he had that O-ring that allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color on Talking Battle Commander Stalker starting with his head. And on his head he has a black beret with a yellow band and beret flash. At the time this figure was released, the black beret was worn by Rangers. They didn't have the yellow band though. The first version of Stalker had a green beret, which is usually associated with special forces. I do like the black beret. I think it's appropriate for Stalker. He is African American with a mustache and he's sculpted with an expressive face with the teeth painted in. And that is a nice touch. That's a good extra paint application. There were some figures that had the teeth exposed, but the teeth weren't painted in and that always looks weird. But the expression on his face is either a smile or a snarl. I think it's more of a snarl, but there is a bit of a Lando vibe to him. On his chest, and we can only look at his chest right now because his back is covered up. He's wearing a black shirt and on that shirt he has crossed yellow bandoliers. And on the bandolier that goes over his left shoulder there is a knife with a gold handle. And on the right side of his chest he has a gold pistol and a yellow holster positioned for a left-handed draw. There have never been any indications that Stalker is left-handed. The file card calls this an FOA1 pistol. And I can't find a reference to a real FOA1 pistol. But the pistol itself is undersized compared to the grip. Is this a starter pistol? On his arms he has long black sleeves and yellow gloves. And the gloves have some additional detail sculpted on them. The sculpting is pretty good. I can't complain about the sculpting at all. On his right forearm he has a couple yellow bands that go around his arm. And on the inside of his forearm he has a small Derringer pistol. Again, this is positioned for a left-handed draw. This is the second indication on this figure that Stalker is left-handed. On his waist he has a couple black belts. We can't see them very well in the back. But they are overlapping and he has an X-shaped belt buckle. So he may be in the X-men. And he has a gold grenade. On his legs he has cream-colored trousers and a black blotchy camouflage pattern. I guess this would be good camouflage in a bowl of cookie crisp cereal. On the right thigh he has a black magazine sculpted over an unpainted pocket. And it looks like that's supposed to be the magazine for the submachine gun. That's a nice detail. I do like that.  He has black combat boots and those are sculpted really well. I like them a lot. And then on his left shin he has multiple magazines strapped to his leg. Again, it looks like the magazine for the submachine gun. So he's got a lot of extra ammunition and this is another detail I like a lot. The color scheme obviously is confusing. Stalker is not combat ready. He's a professional soldier and he would never wear this into battle. Yet I have to admit the colors go well together. They don't clash. They provide a sharp contrast and they are aesthetically pleasing. I just don't think Stalker would be caught dead in this. The sculpting is mostly really good. I am desperate to see this figure in more realistic military colors. Despite the bolted on backpack this is still an O-ring figure. And as you may know all O-rings will eventually dry out and get loose and break. So O-rings have to periodically be replaced. That's a problem on this figure because the screw in the back that you would normally take out to replace the O-ring is covered up by the semi-permanent backpack. But never fear, Joe fans. I will show you how to take this thing off. You will need a small Phillips head screwdriver. I use this old one from Land Tech Incorporated a voice and data products distributor. I wonder if they're still in business. There are four screws to remove. One on each corner of the front of the backpack. If you need to change the batteries these are the screws to take out. So let's go ahead and unscrew those so we can open up the backpack and get to the inside of it. Those screws can be a bit tight but once you have them all out this one is just being a little bit difficult. There it goes. Once you have them all out you can open the backpack just split it right in half and the talking mechanism comes with it. There's the little speaker. And there are the batteries. Three batteries. They're pretty standard watch batteries. You can replace those if you need to. But as you noticed we unscrewed those screws but the half of the backpack is still on the figure. We still have to go through one more step to get that thing off. There are three more screws here that you have to take out in order to remove this half of the backpack from the figure. Those screws are smaller than the other four. So make sure you keep track of those. They would be easy to lose. So just take these guys out and once you have them out you can actually take the backpack off. And there it goes. Okay, so now this thing comes off and it does have a peg on it that goes into the screw hole and that is the normal screw hole that we're used to seeing on GIJO figures. You can go in there and take that screw out open up the figure and replace the O-ring. So that's what the back of the figure looks like without the backpack. It has the screw holes and the straps don't go all the way and it's kind of just flat there where the backpack was attached but even so it looks a lot better without that giant yellow box on it. The figure without the backpack is such an improvement.  I am not going to put it back on. So for the rest of this video I'll just use a spare stalker. Let's take a look at stalker's file card. His file card is very yellow. We have a portrait of stalker here and we can see a little bit more of the artwork. It's not obscured here and it looks pretty good though there are some differences from the figure. There are descriptions of some of the features listed down here and in fact I've already referenced a couple of them but I won't read through all of those. His codename is stalker. He is the ranger. He is Vincent. His primary military specialty is infantry. Secondary military specialty is medics slash interpreter. First place is Detroit, Michigan and his grade is E7. This is mostly the same as the version 1 file card though on the version 1 file card he was an E5. On the version 2 file card in 1989 he was an E7. So he got a promotion and I think that's good. Generals may win campaigns but it's the sergeants who win the battles mostly by yelling and kicking butt. Stalker served in the LRRP's asterisk long range recon patrol with snake eyes and storm shadow so he's no stranger to kicking butt and any GI Joe who has heard him call out let's party in the thick of a firefight knows he can yell. Loudly. Also sometimes known to say party on dudes and cowabunga. Stalker has clearance to operate the GI Joe patriot and brawler battle vehicles during top secret covert actions. The patriot was a 1992 vehicle so that would have been available at the same time as this figure but the brawler was a 1991 vehicle and was discontinued by 1992. This file card does recount some of the comic book continuity where Stalker served in Vietnam with snake eyes and storm shadow but otherwise this is very sparse. Looking at how Stalker was used in GI Joe media he appeared in the very first episode of the very first cartoon miniseries in 1983. He wasn't the most prominent character he took part in the infiltration of General Flag's base to test its defenses. Although he had numerous appearances in the Sunbow series he didn't do very much. As a 1982 character he had to make way for a lot of characters action figures for sale. He returned in the Deke series for their first miniseries Operation Dragonfire. He was in his version 2 uniform. He did appear in his version 3 uniform later in the Deke series but he only had a few seconds of screen time and no lines. Stalker was much more important in the comic book series published by Marvel Comics. He was in the very first issue of the series. After that he was in more issues than nearly any other character. He was part of the core cast of the series. He continued to appear in the comic book even when he didn't have any action figures to sell. Larry Hama the writer of the series apparently liked the character. In the interview with Larry Hama in Toy Fair magazine May 1998 Stalker was number 3 on his list of favorite Joe's. Larry based the character on someone he knew in real life. A real LRRP veteran was part of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow's backstory. He served with both of them in Vietnam. He brought Snake Eyes into G.I. Joe. Stalker was a team leader on numerous missions. He appeared in his version 3 uniform late in the series. By that time the quality of the series had declined. The art was not up to the standard of earlier eras. To me he embodies what it means to be a professional soldier. Based on how he was written in the comic book I've always admired him. In combat he would always be the calm one. He would always know what to do. Everyone could rely on him. Looking at Stalker overall I love Stalker. At a very young age Stalker made an impression on me that has never left. Growing up in a neighborhood that was not very diverse Stalker was an African-American character that I looked up to. I would not be exaggerating to say reading the adventures of Stalker in the G.I. Joe comic book influenced my view of the world. That being said, this figure is weird. There are some great things about it. The sculpting is pretty good, the details are sharp and some of the colors are excellent. The yellow is of course much too bright. Stalker would never wear this into combat. Maybe he wears this around the base but not into battle. And the lower half of the figure is camouflaged for your cereal bowl. This figure in military colors would be superb. It would easily be a top tier figure. This mold was later released in 2003 but it was in a Tiger Force set. We never got this figure in Stalker's camouflage. And that's a shame. Other than that I guess this figure is okay. Oh that's right! He has a giant box bolted to his back. This of course is a huge problem. It severely interferes with the normal play of the figure. It's difficult to even stand the figure up in a natural pose even with the included figure stand. Earlier sound making figures had removable backpacks or accessories with the sound making electronics. You could use it or not. It was up to the kid playing with it to decide what to do.  With it the figure can't fit in any vehicles. He can't fit through doors. The inconvenience of the backpack is not worth the few crappy sounds it plays. The best thing about it is you can with some effort take it off. There are still 3 vintage versions of Stalker that we haven't looked at yet. Maybe they'll be better. That was my review of Talking Battle Commander Stalker. I hope you enjoyed it. This is a reminder I will not have a new review next week or the following week. Next week I will be in Augusta, Georgia for Joe Fest. Please join me there on the 21st and 22nd. I will have a table there. I hope you will come and see me. I will have some things at my table including code books and some drawings if you'd like to buy some. After Joe Fest I will also not have a new review because I will be preparing for the biggest event of the year, Cobra Convergence. This is our fourth year and it is bigger than ever. We will have new Cobra Convergence content for every day in July. If you like G.I. Joe and you like this video please consider giving it a thumbs up on YouTube subscribing to the YouTube channel hitting the notification bell and sharing this video with your friends. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter and I have a website HCC788.com You can get Cobra Convergence for updates there. Thank you to my new patron MCDJACDC for your support and thank you to all my patrons. I could not do these videos without your support. If you like my videos and you like to support the channel in that way please check out my Patreon. You can get some special perks and find out how to decode these secret messages. Thanks everyone for watching even though I don't have a full review next week I'll be sending plenty of content your way. I'll see you soon and always remember only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.


Bond here. Good morning, 007. I know we promised you a week's holiday after Athens, but we have a situation developing that requires immediate attention. Are you free to speak? Yes, I can talk. I'm in a hotel. I should be online in a moment. There you are. How much do you know about Midhurst Laboratories? Biotech, firm, publicly traded city of London military contractor. But not just any military contractor. Two years ago, Midhurst Laboratories signed a contract for some mission-critical biotechnology for our defence forces that's so secret, I'm low to discuss it even on this link. I understand. Good. Last week, one of their senior researchers, Malcolm Tedworth, went missing from his yacht in the English Channel. At first, the Royal Navy presumed he was dead. His boat was discovered capsized after a squall off the coast. But this morning, we received a tip that he's alive and about to sell that research to a buyer in Istanbul. How reliable is the information? Doubtful. An anonymous caller from a cell phone purchased at a convenience store in Madrid. The phone went dead. But soon after, the US echelon system picked up another cell phone transmission near a construction site in downtown Istanbul using the key words, researcher, buyer weapons, and password. Might be a trap. A setup. Any chance that it's the researcher himself hanging up conscience second thoughts about selling out the UK? That's why the helicopter is landing outside your hotel. There'll be a jet waiting at the airport. And when you arrive in Istanbul, do whatever you have to by any means necessary to find out who's behind this and make sure that research doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Hey guys, welcome to part two of Let's Play 007 Bloodstone. So we're in the city of Istanbul right now to look for Professor Tatworth at this construction site here. So let's check out what adventure awaits Bond over here. You! Stop! Where do you think you're going? Not for Bond. British Museum, Architectural Heritage Foundation. Here to study your preservation efforts. Nah. You can call the Turkish Ministry of Culture. I don't care. Nobody goes down there. Without a hard hat. Of course. Safety first. Always like when he throws the helmet away. This construction site marks the point we lost Tedworth's signal. We need to find out if he's still friendly or working with our enemies. Use your smartphone to search for evidence. So that introduces us to the smartphone. Bond can use it to swipe for chicks on Tinder and post tweets and stuff. Nah, it shows points of interest and Bond can also use it to hack into systems and stuff like that. So right now we see a piece of evidence here so what we want to do is scan this just like that. Oof. Imagine being able to scan an entire hard drive in a manner of seconds just like that. It's actually quite scary. I mean the amount of nudes that would leak. Second piece of evidence here. Gonna scan that too. Please wait for him in the far cabin. Come this way. So we're just gonna follow this guy along to the next cabin. That little intro cutscene we just saw at the beginning again really reminisce of Quantum of Solace especially when the mission briefing gets explained and you see all the graphics on the computer that's completely taken from the movie. I enjoy this game a lot more than Quantum of Solace though. Alright, scanning number three. BAM! He was on an action scene. Right, let's get out of here. How did these guys not see me go out of there though and just land right behind them? Oh well, I'll take care of this dude. Obviously they're completely oblivious. Gonna shoot the other one. Actually, you know what? It's more fun to just do this. Got another focus aim for it too. Right, now if you're new to this game and you want to collect the eight pieces of intelligence let's see, here they are. Intelligence, they're scattered in every level. In this level there are eight. You can find number one over here. I already completed all of them in my game but you want to scan this little briefcase here. So using your smartphone obviously and then you can scan it just like you did with the pieces of evidence earlier on. Those are the collectibles in the game basically. I'm gonna try and show you the other seven as well just for the sake of completion. Right, now we want to be stealthy here cause I love to be sneaky bond. The smartphone also shows you the locations of the goons which is pretty neat and they always seem to walk right towards you. So we're just gonna grab this dude like this and there we go. See if we can make our way into as silent as possible. I always like that challenge. Right, now we can pop this dude right over here but I think I'll run into the risk that the other gods will see his body so we're just gonna do it even more safe just like this. There's another guard coming so we're gonna go around the corner. Sweet dreams, looks like we're safe. Now with this dude, I can aim for the gas canisters and wreak havoc but I want to be quiet so I'll just pop him in his head like this. Okay, that guy might see the body so let's just take him out. Be quiet. I think I'm still undetected. Yeah, you can always tell by the music. Another one.  I may as well go for the focus aims. I think there are like three goons here and there we go, there we go, there we go. More gas canisters that you could have shot here if you wanted to. So the phone tells me to go there even if you look this way the phone will automatically point you towards this point of interest so we're gonna just jump there and we're just gonna shoot in and out. Classic Bond. Right, so we have to find our way into the catacombs. I actually always really liked this level. Most of the levels in this game actually, they're all pretty fun. You get to use the stealth or just wreak havoc. It's always cool to control Bond too.  Number two, by scanning that little piece of, what is it, like paper or notepad right over here on the floor. Scan that one. There's also a free gun here. Alright, so we're gonna continue and try and remain on the path of stealth. Because I always prefer that to wreaking havoc to just try and get in sneakily without being detected. So the smartphone shows you where you need to go mostly. There's some more guards here so you want to be quiet.   These guys just keep on talking though. Takes forever.  It awards you with the focus aims too. So let's see the other one. There we go. Now you want to scan Mr. Dead dude too. That's the third piece of intel here. Imagine just being able to scan people and get all kinds of info on them. How useful would that be from people you forgot about? Like yeah, you used to go to high school with this chick and you had biology class together and she borrowed your pencil. You occasionally banged her in the cafeteria too. Stuff like that would be really useful to remember with your smartphone. Luckily Bond's phone is able to do it. We're going to continue the sneaky Bond stuff. More of the goons will be coming here. And again, in this game they always just seem to go right towards you and be completely oblivious about it. What's up buddy? There we go. Let's go for the other guy now. You want to take the other guy out there too. Yeah, focus aim. There we go. Okay. I don't think there's anything here. Again, I'm still getting in sneakily but you could have also shot those gas canisters and set off some explosions if you want to be the loud guy. What I like about this game, it depends on your mood. Right, we can take out these two guys as well. Just want to sneak up to them. First the guy with the crane. Ha! Awesome Connery job Craig did there. Here, you want to scan this laptop in the corner for your piece of intel number four.  I better take these guys out then. There we go. Screw it. Let's do it this way then. More gas canisters here. There's also a piece of intel here that's very easy to miss. It's that tiny phone on the ground there. You want to scan that one. That's number five. Okay. Now we're going to continue our objective which is to change the reel. Like that. Right, so obviously you can't be sneaky barn from this point. So we're going to have to jump into some action. You can aim from the canisters up there cause a huge explosion in the pit. I think that awards you with an achievement or a trophy too. Depending on what console you play on. Let's die little man. Okay, that guy doesn't see me. Let's sneak up to him at least. Little Roger Moore judo here. Any more guys coming? Looks like we're safe.  This time we're going to aim for the gas canisters just like that. Let's just pop another one. Okay, let's take care of these guys. We're still nowhere near the end of this mission though. This is a long level. So let's see what awaits us. All aboard the hype train. There we are. It's very quiet down here. Too quiet. Tana, I'm in the catacombs. See if you can patch me into Tedworth's signal. We'll give you Tedworth's position. Should lead you right to him. Right, so if we checked our phone we can see that that word is pretty nearby but we still got a long way to go to reach this dude. I've always liked this bit of the mission. I remember the first time playing this and I was just being really surprised with what is about to come up here. It's a true silence before the storm kind of thing. Now you want to be fast here.  Jesus bond, climb! There we go. This thing is getting close. keep arm running and we got to jump onto this ledge quickly make our way over there we go we're almost there now jump to this window and there we go I would have completely been killed had that been me luckily we're playing as Bond though wrong expectations buddy you want to scan this laptop for your piece of intel number six okay let's continue don't think there are any goons out here but there are over here though now this is a section of the level I never really got through in a stealthy way I mean I'm sure it's possible in some way but yeah even if you shoot this guard here with a silenced pistol the guys will notice it may as well do this start doing this I think sometimes guys can appear from behind here I remember playing this years ago and some guy would always sneak up to me here I would miss someone I don't think someone's out there though just gonna move forward take care of these dudes keep getting the feeling someone could appear from there but maybe it was the other difficulty settings I don't know but it looks of the music there's still more guys around oh yeah there's a bunch of them on the corner here shit I could go for the focus aims actually but don't want to waste too much of them crap where did that come from shit you see there is a guy from behind here sneaky bastard there we go yeah that takes care of these guys still moving forward still making our ways to the catacombs oh yeah there's no corner there right so we're reaching that word here so they're taking that word around the corner before you go there though another piece of intel here another dead dude you want to scan lots of dead dude scanning here in this game love the music here when that guy walks up to you just quickly taking care of him I'm always so surprised how these guys just don't notice that stuff lucky me though more guys there two more bless you don't get reinforcements we should still be safe so here's another prisoner this is not that word yet but some other guy that we want to talk to who did this to you burn in his name is burning he wanted my research my formulas for bio weapons we've got to get you out of here I'll never make it the only way is to climb out but it's not too late maybe you can still save Ted we're all right not saving him then so we can make our way out of here through that bed so he was talking about some burn in dude and in this game it's really confusing who the main villain is like every time I think oh so that's the main villain and then it turns out to be someone else and I'm like oh that's the one no don't someone else it's really confusing in this game again very reminiscent of Quantum of solace where fair enough I do know who the main villain is but he's far from memorable some chatting going on about burn in there's quite some build up to this dude too but I honestly I can barely remember him or any of the characters in this game because well the bond girl sees memorable but other than that all the other people are very forgettable still a good game go love the gameplay to this come on bond you're wasting time yeah I'm really in better safe than sorry mode here for no reason this next section coming up I'm not sure if you can do this undetected maybe you can do it but I've never managed it like you can take these two clowns down but all the other people will notice so last mode it is right definitely aiming for the gas canisters here there we go need to reload then it right this one another guy coming it really should have aimed at the gas canisters if they wanted to get me but luckily they're not that smart Jesus right we want to take out the grenade launchers whoever it was one of those two okay oh another one how does that guy take care of this guy let's keep going this is the grenade launcher I'm not picking that one up I think is there's only one grenade in there and can't be bothered to use it we're gonna go up here let's see any goons coming this way yeah they are left still got one magazine there we go okay now coming up here is your final piece of intel for this level number eight that laptop over there another grenade launcher where is this guy he is see that's a cool trick you can do you can use your focus aim without actually shooting it just to know where the guy is at and then you use your regular shooting without wasting your focus I remember doing that trick a lot back in the day there we go we're reaching the end of the line now finally this is a long level 30 minutes great another grenade launcher got him really need to take cover here gonna regenerate here oh Jesus he's next to me take him out all right any more enemies good looks like I took care of them we've made it through the catacombs now to get to the final bit what do we have on a man named burning doing the search worth research he probably won't be holding on to it for long right this should be the end of the line for this level guys I'll finish this video off with the cutscene coming up please like and subscribe follow me on social media and if you want to go the extra mile please take a look at my patreon page for early access and that kind of stuff okay guys what is the password for the USB drive tell me the key to crack the cold stop stop I'll tell you