I'm Ron Perry and the December What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for December 2017. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month it's Turban Month. We look at the new ScaleTrains.com turbine, two different types. We also look at all the other turbines available on the market, made by Atherin, both the Vranda and the SlabTurban. And we also listen to the new sound systems that are available on the market, the low-sound turbine sound system, and also the SoundTrack tsunami 2 turbine sound system. They both sound absolutely magnificent. We discuss making freight car loads from wrecked broken up freight cars and put this onto a flat car, and Daniel Coombs comes over and shares with us the process of installing the new Digitrax LNWI system. This is the Wi-Fi system that works with apps that are available on your cell phone, and Daniel takes us through the entire process of how to set this up on our layout. We also study and look at the magic of making a Christmas card using our model trains and then sending this out to our friends for season greetings. Also we got brand new drone footage starting a new segment again this year, and it'll run into 2018 with drone footage from Steven M. Conroy from beautiful California. And we open this December drone footage segment with some magnificent Cliff California Ocean. It is just eye candy, and this is all the answers to our modeling questions. If you want to model Southern California, the information can be seen in these drone videos. Also, we look at the scale trains Tier 4 locomotive. This is brand new on the market, and we do a quick expose and photographic presentation of that model. Now 2017 has been a fantastic year for the What's Neat shows. We're up to about show number 70, and also this year we've started the What's Neat this week weekly podcast to keep you updated on model railroad information through the week. And you can find a link to this in model railroad hobbyist magazine just down on the bottom of each page of my column. Also I've tried a lot of new ventures this year, now I haven't made any new videos this year for KenPatterson.com, but in 2018 I hope to finally have that tree video and Craftsman Structure Volume 2 up, and who knows where else I can go after that. Also we've done extremely well with the Fine Arts America website that I set up, and I've got about 60 or 70 photographs on that which would make absolutely perfect Christmas gifts. And these come framed, you can have them framed, there's all sorts of thousands of choices of cups, towels, frames that are available on this website. And I also want to thank the wonderful folks out at Caboose for sponsoring this show. If you're doing any Christmas shopping and you're in the Denver area, check them out and tell them that you've heard about their name on the What's Neat show. And also they will be launching a brand new website by the time you see this video, and it should be absolutely fantastic and extremely easy to make your purchases and have them shipped directly to your home. And with that, let's start the rest of the December 2017 What's Neat. Now I just found Chris Palomarra's in my backyard. Chris, what are you doing? Well, we've got some new lighting features on these locomotives, including class lights, number boards, and you can see a little bit of light right above the locomotives line. This is the new Amtrak STP-40F, and we're trying to frame up a shot that we're using in the video replacing a prototype shot for a model. I can't wait to see how that turns out. You know me too. It's kind of dark out here. Let's see what happens next. All right, let the fireworks begin. For this segment of What's Neat, let's discuss taking a beat-up old freight car as if it's been in a derailment and making a freight car load for it. There's a lot of ways to do it, and I just happen to know in the trash here we can find a nice tank car for just such a project. Now this tank car is a tank train tank car from Athern, and you can even rough it up more and make it look more wrecked by taking a heat gun to it and then pressing in the plastic sides as it starts to get soft from the heat, or you can do what Mike Buddy has shown us how to do in previous What's Neat videos, where he took the box car that he did and made a wreck out of it using aluminum foil. So in this case you would take the aluminum foil, put it along the side of this tank car, and then push it in, paint it, and treat it as if it's just the side of the tank car itself. Also take some silver paint and make some gash marks on the freight car. Then what you want to do is you've got to come up with a way to mount the freight car to your flat car. Now you're going to use railroad wooden ties here as the cribbing work to add a bit of cushion between the decking of the flat car and the wrecked freight car load, similarly to what I've got here. Now if you look in some of these other photographs that we've got, I've got videotape of one of Jeff Meyer's freight car load wrecks that he did, where he put the freight car's trucks on the flat car right next to the load and it made for a pretty convincing load on this box car. Joe Steinman did the same thing with his hopper car that he created a wreck load with, but he used chain to tie it down, which also works very well. Now if you go back to December 2011, model railroad hobbyist magazine, you will find an article that I did on how to take a sausage stuffing tube, part of an apparatus for making sausage, and I created a freight car load out of this, making it look like some sort of a industrial turbine type of a device. But in order to create the load, I took scratch built brass stock and built a framework that would then have the wooden ties set inside of that. That would be another way that you could approach a wreck load like this. In order to tie down the sausage stuffing load, I used fishing string. And in order to do that, I simply drilled holes in the flat car and it represented the tie downs that would then be bolted from underneath on the outside frame of the flat car. When I put it all together, set the tube on top of the wooden ties, strapped everything in place with a fishing line and glued it with super glue, I ended up with what was a rather convincing looking freight car load. You can see it from both sides here in these photographs, and it's another way that you can handle the situation for loading up a wrecked car onto a flat car. One other thing that I really like doing is I like using these inner-mountain ties that they've created and it comes with inner-mountain flat cars. I used them for these Volvo shots where I have equipment on top of flat cars, but I'm using the inner-mountain ties, these plastic castings that come with the cars, as tie downs. So as I've bought inner-mountain cars, I've saved these and used them for various loads. So it's just something to think about. If you've got an old wrecked up freight car in your collection and you want to give it new life, think about making a wreck load on a flat car. And that's this segment of What's Neat. This segment of What's Neat, I've got two ScaleTrains.com turbines here. And this is turbine month here in December, so later in the show we're going to go over all of the plastic turbines that are available on the market, describe a little bit of history on each one, and just kind of show the models and how they look and the ones that have sound in them will run those with sound. But for this demonstration, I have got two ScaleTrains.com turbines. One of them is number nine, which is from the museum quality that they offer with all of the details and full, low-sound sound in it. The other turbine that I have is number 26. This is a rivet counter series turbine from ScaleTrains.com, and this turbine comes without sound. So SoundTracks has installed their sound decoder, brand new, which is the Sonami 2 turbine sound decoder for this three-piece set turbine from ScaleTrains.com, so you can add that to your rivet counter series model if you prefer that type of sound.  I don't want to give any commentary or opinions on this segment. I just simply want to allow each model to start up and shut down by themselves with the throttle here as we go through this process. I will start with the low-sound decoder because it's set for number three and that's just what my throttle happens to be set for. And I've also got a professional microphone here. I'm not sure which camera what I'm going to take sound from, either this or that, so that I can get the best quality sound in this demonstration. So with that, let me hit the block switch and we'll power up the low-sound decoder. Now, if I hit F3, I can start the turbine.  It has a form of a current keeper in it, so it will remain powered for a few seconds. Okay, now I'm going to turn on the block switch for the Sonami 2 turbine sound system. Yeah, I've got to set my throttle. Bear with me here. I've got to set my throttle up for number 26. My mistake is going to cost us an extra 10 seconds here of video while I do this. And now I've got number 26 here. Let me see if I can turn on the headlights. Okay, good. And turn on the turbine. Right now it's just being powered by Desmond's motor and the lead-lock motor. And now you hear the turbine starting. It flamed out. That was neat. The decoder is set up with a lot of belay. I've got the throttle off and it's just slowing down now. And I want to shut this one down too. Next. I've got to shut this one to power itself down without hitting any buttons on the throttle as it's stopped. So that's the Scale Trains turbine with the Sonami 2 decoder in it and the loop sound decoder. And that's this segment for What's Neat. Merry cats and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. Merry Christmas. For this next segment of What's Neat, I've got these beautiful Tier 4 locomotives from Scaltrains.com. I've been out shooting them today. We talked about these once before on the podcast, but the photography that I had was on a cloudy day and today I wanted absolutely beautiful shots of these. So the first model I want to talk about is, actually I've got two here. The operator series is the less detailed model. It doesn't have its, if you look at the nose of the locomotive, it's grab irons and what have you. And that's because Scaltrains.com has offered this model to the modelers that like to add their own details to the locomotive. It's a lesser priced locomotive in the range of around $150 as opposed to the other locomotive that we've got is the Rivet Counter Series locomotive here. And that one's about $229 on the street price. They're both beautiful models. This model's got full sound in it. The Rivet Counter Series has got all the detail on it. If you look at these photos that I shot today in the sun, just absolutely magnificent detail on the tops, on the sides, just all the way around, no matter where you go in this model, it is just loaded with detail. And I also shot this model with the sunrise. You can see that the screens are in fact see-through screens and the wheels, the roller bearing, spin on these wheels. So it's a pretty neat model. The other model is just nicely detailed and it runs just like a Cattle locomotive. So don't discount the Operator Series. This is a great opportunity for the modelers that want to save money and add their own detail parts. Both of the models run fantastic. They run together. The loke sound in the Rivet Counter model sounds absolutely fantastic. So check these out. I wanted to show them to you first on this What's Neat Show. They're very nice models. Thank you, Scale Trains, for sending these to us so we can show them to all the folks out there. And we're quite frankly, honestly, after the podcast every night, we've enjoyed running these on the layout. So that's this segment of What's Neat. Booms. And in this What's Neat segment, we're going to basically take the Digitrax LNY device and hook it up to our Digitrax local net port for the layout here. What this is, Digitrax recently announced Wi-Fi connection. This module allows you to use your phone, whether it be an Apple or i-Android device, that you can use the Wi-Throttle app to run your trains on your layout. So now let's go ahead and get this mounted, get the app downloaded, and we'll demonstrate on what this does. So, all right. We do have to mount it right up here. As you see from my two screw holes, we're just going to use one of them because we've got all four corners of the module. Screw that up there. So now we're going to take our local net cable. After we got it mounted, we're going to plug it into either of the two ports. It doesn't matter which. Plug one into the cable, into one of the ports. Now we'll come up here to you. Let's come up here to UP5 and plug it in. Now the next step, take our power supply and get this plugged into an outlet. So you just take this, plug the barrel jack into the top of LNY, and then take the plug and plug it into an outlet. All right, Ken. So now we're going to install the Y-Throttle device here in the iPhone 6 Plus. I think that's what it is. The Android device will work the same way. You'll have some different apps, but if you have an Apple iPhone, go to the App Store icon. All right. You'll then go to the search. All right. Now type in YWI Throttle. And then you've got two choices. Y-Throttle light doesn't matter which one. But we want Y-Throttle light because that's the free version. There's a more expensive version for $10. That gives you other features, but we'll just fur it now. We're just going to do the Y-Throttle light. So you just hit get. And it should download right to the phone. And then you just install. And you need a password for this. We're going to have to cut it because I don't know what my password is. All right. So now we'll just click this icon, download the app. And I take it. Oh, never mind. So we're going to put in a password. All right. That just tells you the app was downloading. And bam, just like that, you're ready to go. Really? Hit Y-Throttle light. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to try to find some servers. I might have to back out. All right. All right. Let's go back to Wi-Fi. Now, the Digitrax LNY has its own dedicated server with the prefix of DTX and then random numbers. You hit that. We can go into throttle now. So we can now get to run some trains. All right. Select the DCC address. Hit the select button. Type in, for example, address three or whatever numeric address you need for your decoder. You hit set. When it shows green, you're ready to go. Go to your throttle. Now, this is a full 28 function throttle app. So you get all the 28 functions. All right. So now we're going to take the phone here. We're going to run the ScaleTrain's three-piece turbine. So it's simple. Just going to, you can hit the buttons, do several things, then increase the throttle and you're running some trains. It's that easy. So that was just basically how to install the LNY. Well, I mean, with this case, the LNY and then the Wi-Throttle app on your iPhone or Android device. So I guess that's this segment on DCC installations on What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, it's December. Merry Christmas.  And that's what I want to talk about in this segment of What's Neat. Why don't you take some of your trains and make a Christmas card to mail out to your friends? Not only do you get to share the season, but you also get to share your wonderful hobby through the experience. Last year at this time, I was shooting this photograph for Bachman using a trolley and some beautiful glass buildings. They was just supposed to be a happy, fun, colorful shot. Nothing prototypical. And this was a really nice little trolley set with lights and buildings, not prototypical. Today, I'm using prototype standards to create a Christmas card of the California Zephyr running through the Midwest on its way to the West Coast. And here you see a shot that I've got set up using a diorama with code 70 microengineering track on it. It's about eight feet long. I've got a couple of Walthers grain elevator set up in the background and lots of trees to fill out the scene so that as the camera goes down into position, you can see the type of photograph that I was trying to capture in this shot. I've got the locomotives powered so that the headlights could be lit in order to create a good effect for the photograph. I had to pick a gray sky, which is exactly what I've got today, so it would look nice and cloudy. And now through the magic of video, I can show you exactly how this Christmas card has come out for model railroad hobbyist magazine. Pretty neat shot. It feels very cold. That's exactly what I was trying to capture for that winter cold feeling, which is part of the magic of trains. It might be cold and it might be winter, but you know it's warm and happy inside those passenger cars. So that's this segment of What's Neat.  Create a Christmas card this year or next year and send it out to your friends and season greetings to all. And that's this segment of What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I had a beautiful sunny day going on here, but now I've got clouds. Today I'm shooting some beautiful super turbines from ScaleTrains.com. Now the super turbine, these are an HO scale and this is a three piece unit, whereas I've got two different models here. I've got number nine, which is represented in the ScaleTrains.com line as the museum quality locomotive. And then I've got number 26 here. And this is a rivet counter series locomotive in the ScaleTrains.com line of products. And the differences are two. Well, there are differences, but they're very subtle. Let's take a look at the boxes that these models come in. The ScaleTrains.com museum quality model comes as this fantastic leather box, which is a really nice packaging, all wrapped in leather and hardwood. The rivet counter series turbine comes in this box, which is equivalent to any type of quality brass box that we've ever seen in the past. Very large box, very good. So very interesting in how they've chosen these units. Now let's go back to the models here. Number 26 in the rivet counter series has got tons of detail. Both units in fact have got tons of detail. The differentiation between the museum quality and the rivet counter series is going to be on the inner workings of the model, whereas the museum quality model has got just more special effects, which I'm going to go into that in a few minutes. Both of the units have got just magnificent roof detail on the tops. As you see from number 9 right here, this one's got dynamic brakes and an H-H-H-I pattern, which is different from the number 26, which has got the H-I-I pattern. And it's just amazing that a manufacturer would get all of the different variations of these turbines correct. How much research, how much work went into doing something like that. If you look at the tenders here, this is a C23 tender, which is a smaller tender. It's riveted and non-insulated. But as we go on to the museum quality model here, it's got the larger C24 tender on it, which is smooth side, because this tender had insulation wrapped around it to keep the fuel oil on the inside warm. As it had to be at a certain temperature in order to feed through the units. On the museum quality model, you'll notice there are just tons of hoses in between the locomotive here. The rivet counter doesn't have all of that. The doors open on the museum quality model so that you can actually see the turbines inner workings on the inside, which is kind of cool. The museum quality model also has the rear turbine blades that spin when you turn the unit on. It comes with full sound from low sound. It's got three different color lights. It's got green. It's got white and red classification lights on the front. If you hit F5, it gives you the option of something called nighttime mode, where the internal dashboard will light up with all the gauges. You've got lights that come on underneath the unit right at the wheels. And a light also turns on between the units. So that's called nighttime mode and you access that on the museum quality model by hitting F5. There's just been so much amazing detail that went into the museum quality model. Again, the rivet counter model looks beautiful. It doesn't have sound. It doesn't have the doors slide and open on the sides and it doesn't have the motor, the spinning turbine on the rear. Just a few different details that I've got to tell you what, if you bought number 26 and you didn't know the difference, you'd be just happy as can be because it's just absolutely magnificent. The lesser price model isn't that short when it comes to the details. It's really quite frankly loaded to the bare with details, as is number nine here. Now also one other thing that I wanted to say about this is that the museum quality tender, or locomotive, when you start it up, you will hear the Bessemer 8-cylinder motor which simply powers the lead unit to shuffle things around. Because they didn't want to leave the turbine spinning or idling all the time, because it actually burned about 300 gallons of fuel per hour as it sat there and idled. So they shut down the turbine when it's sitting in a yard scenario and they just jockey it around with the 8-cylinder locomotive motor that's in there. And both sound effects are represented. So this has got the 8-cylinder Bessemer sound effects, and this has got the full-blown jet engine of the turbine sound effects when you turn them on. Just an absolutely amazing series of locomotives. Union Pacific had 30 of these super tenders on their railroad. And I got to tell you what, ScaleTrains.com put a lot of research and a lot of effort in giving us and providing us with a really cool model to play with. The check them out. Great for Christmas. Buy somebody this gift. They'll love you forever. This is a Super Turbines from ScaleTrains.com, and that's this segment of What's Neat. So I've brought the ScaleTrains.com turbine inside to run it on the layout, because there's a feature about the sound system that I want to show you this truly magic. First of all, let me turn off the turbine just so I can hear what I'm thinking right now in the room. But this model has got sensors in the wheels. And what the sensors do is they pick up the frogs and your turnouts. And then the model gives the appropriate sound that correlates with the sound you'd hear of a train going through frogs and turnouts. And this is not automatic. This is all due to a sensor in the wheel that actually senses where the locomotive is on the layout and then gives you the sound effect. So let me show you how to do that. Now that the turbine is off we can just run the locomotive with the 8-cylinder Bessemer motor which is the sound you hear right now. Here are some turnouts right here on the layout. So let's listen to what happens when the model gets right over those turnouts. Both units do that, each unit. Here's another turnout right here and listen to that. It's like magic. So just another cool feature on this model that I couldn't show you outside. I wanted to show it to you inside on the layout. Sensors with corresponding sound effects. That's pretty neat. And I think that wraps up the super turbines. And the next part of the show we're going to look at all of the athern, slab, and veranda turbines next. Continuing now with our turbine segment I've got the ScaleTrains.com turbine in here and I've also got the other turbines that are available in the market. But before I go into the turbines, other ones, I want to talk about the ScaleTrains.com One more detail that I really want to emphasize is, again, how much research went into building this model. The first 15 of these units of the 30 were different from the second 30 units. So the first 15 and the second 15 that were delivered each were different. They had different tenders, different types of dynamic brakes and variations in the models and ScaleTrains represented this very well in these models, including number 30. Number 30 had different air intakes on it, experimental air intakes and ScaleTrains.com represented these on number 30 just like the prototype. So now let's talk about the other turbines that are available on the market and these are made by athern. I've got two models here, two variations of the standard turbine. And the standard turbines were also known as slabs. They were built between 1952 and 1953. Union Pacific had 10 of these models in their inventory at the time. Number 57 here in fact was the first Union Pacific locomotive to receive silver trucks on it, which is kind of of historical reference. It's kind of a neat little thing that I discovered in doing the research. All of these turbines took in their air to supply the jet engine through the sides of the locomotive, as you can see. Five of the units had these far grills on them. That's those metal grills that you can see on this athern unit. And these lasted for about, I want to say just a few years as they were an experiment, but most of them were removed by the mid-1950s. UP added fuel tenders to all of these turbines which are represented right here by these models that also come with the athern turbines. And these fuel tenders were essentially a way to give the turbines more long range. They were added around 1955 to all of the turbines, and in July of 1958, for six months, Union Pacific ran a set of turbines back to back. How cool would it be if you could actually double head turbines? I'd put three of them in a row, but that's not how they ran them. But Union Pacific ran a consist like this where they were a two a units and the tender in the middle. And this produced 9000 horsepower, but they only did a consist like this for about six months. And turbine number 59 and number 60 were used to do that consist. And pretty much all of these standard turbines were retired by 1964. After Union Pacific created the standard turbine they then introduced, with all the research they learned from the prior turbines, they introduced this veranda turbine. Now this turbine had all of the research and everything done which made for almost the perfect unit for them at the time. These were all rated at around 4500 horsepower and were numbered 61 through 75. Around 1956 these turbines also received fuel tenders, constructed from retired steam locomotive tenders, and the air takes were then also moved from the side of the unit to the roof of the unit so that they could get cleaner air. And they also added walkways to the veranda turbine so that they would have easier access to the inner workings of this turbine. All of these verandas were essentially retired by about June of 1964. Now you've got to ask yourself as most modelers do, what if I want to be able to run all of these turbines together on my layout at the same time? What year or what era would I have to run these for? And after doing a little research I've came to the conclusion that between 1958 and mid 1964 all three different types of turbines, the standard turbine, the veranda, and the three piece super turbines were of course all run together in that period of time. So if you're a modeler that wants to be able to run all of these or play with all of these on your layout, that would be the era that you would want to depict. Now of course when these were retired they sent the units to GED and they created these beautiful or ugly, however you look at it, these U50 locomotives, by taking the trucks off of the tenders, off of the veranda turbines, and then creating these models right here. So that's essentially a real quick history on all of the turbines that are available on the market, and that ends this segment of What's Need. I have one additional thing to say about the turbines. I've just received two of the brand new tsunami 2 decoders that are designed for the veranda and for the athern slab turbine. Now the athern turbine, the slab comes with a standard tsunami 1 decoder in it, factory, and these are still on the athern website, and there's plenty of these available on ebay. These verandas are no longer in production and these units did not come out with sound in them. But it's very easy, this decoder's got a plug on it, where you can just take the screws out of your turbine, take the top off of it, and where I've got this digitrex plug here, you plug in the tsunami 2 turbine decoder right into that, and then wire your speakers into the floor of the turbine, and you can add sound to your veranda, or you can upgrade your athern slab turbines from tsunami 1 to the new tsunami 2. We just got all the new features that tsunami 2 offers. So I had to add this additional segment real quick to What's Neat, because I think it's pertinent and new information to tell you about a new product from soundtracks that's only going to enhance and make our turbine experience that much better. So this truly is the end of the turbine segment for What's Neat for December. All of the model railroad products seen in this episode of What's Neat are available through Caboose in Denver, Colorado, or order online at MyCaboose.com


Cynllun. Hy, rai ydych chi'n cael y cwnteg. Rwy'n mynd i'n ddweud y cyfraith o'r syniadau a'r cyfraith. Rydw i'n mynd i'r ysgolio ar y last 18 mlynedd fel gyda'i gofyn o'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio i fi'n ddangos cyflwyno a'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r gweithio, a'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno ar y byddai'i gwellain o'r cyflwyno. Roedd yn hoff y wneud unig o'r data i'r ffordd yr oedwch yn gyfer o'r hyn yn drwg. Roeddwn ni'r uchydig i'r gwaith cyfraisi gweithio ar oedwch yn gyfer y bwysig ac mae'r gymryd hyn yn cyffredigog ni'n dda i'r ddatat o'r cael eu cyfrifio ar unig a wes i'r dddur i'r cyfrifio y dylau'r ddechrau. A ydych chi chi'n 10 oed yn gweithio ar hyn o'r ddweitrreid ac rhaid i'r dylau. Roeddwn i'n gymryd neu ynghylch gan gweithio ar y cyfrifio? is we asked them two questions. For Fix My Street we asked them if this is the first time reporting a problem, making a problem, and if it's the first time, and if the problem was fixed after about a month. So this sort of gives us information in two directions. One is what kind of person is making this request, is this someone who is already reporting lots or is this someone who is being activated by the service? And the other is sort of a measure of the responsiveness of the authority. So the first question sort of gets at the sort of old debate in sort of general the civic tech in the internet sphere is, does the technology mobilise new people to take advantage of it by lowering the costs of accident services, or does it reinforce people who already had greater access but now lowers the cost in general? And the answer we generally find by subdividing this data is of course it's both in different times. So to look at the, so in this question I'm not so concerned about the authority question, I'm going to look at just if a person has previously responded. So just to give some context on Fix My Street, this is the number of reports going on by year. So generally it's clearly a bit towards the present day but the early years are very, very insubstantial compared to the present day. So the next graph shows us how many for each year people report, sorry respondents to the survey said they had previously reported. So in the first few years we have massive amounts of people, 60% of people are saying they had previously made a report and then as the number of people increases we are getting more and more people who have never made a report get into the system and that slowly creeps back up. So in general I tend to ignore those first few years because they obviously stand out and say between 15, 60% of people have never made a report before. That's not just for Fix My Street but that's to their councillor in general, that's how the question is phrased. We can separately examine if they've used Fix My Street reports. So essentially roughly speaking half of the people in any year have not reported a problem to the council before. But this is sort of unevenly among categories. So certain categories are more likely to report it as a first time problem and others are more likely to come up by repeat users. So first looking at people who are... Yes. So similarly by sort of analysing which ones were more likely to be reported by first time people, parking problems, abandoned vehicles, dog graze, street lighting problems. So these are sort of things that people are likely to encounter and report once with parking standing out absolutely enormously. So that's like issues with parking being blocked, parking being inaccessible. That is the number one thing people who are reporting for the first time. And then often because of the power drop off never reporting again. The average across the site is about two reports and that is mostly a normal number of people are only reporting one thing ever and it will likely be one of these. The next thing is that certain things are reported quite serially by graffiti, litter, flytip and strictly. And these are people who are often reporting these quite a lot. So they sort of have it in there. One of the interesting things, the jobs at the data set is like there is a ability to report a miss bin collection. But actually look at the data. It's a small amount of users like reporting. So you're bin collection every week. If you report it when it's missing like five times a year over 10 years, it stands out in the data. But that's because you as an individual are reporting your bin being missing. A lot to that can stand out in the data quite a bit. So basically people who are new to the service, new to reporting problems act in quite a different way. So using the same sort of thing looking at right to them, we can sort of, in this case we can look at both questions. So the first was, so just to give you an example of the scope of right to them. It's hard to get a rough idea of how many people write to their MP in the UK. The Hansard Society sort of estimate in the last year 12% of the out of population wrote to their MP, which seems very high to me, but that's the number we have. And so working from that, write to them accounts for just under 1%-ish using incredibly rough numbers. So almost all people write to their MP are not doing it if we write to them, but enough are that it matches to an extent and we get a reasonably wide sample on it. So we asked them if their representative wrote back, and that gives us a measure of responsiveness on the representative, and they asked them if it's their first time writing, which gives us again a look at how they're approaching, if this is their first time engaging with the system, or if we're just capturing people who were already writing all the time and now migrating to digital ways. So one of the first things we can do is sort of break down this by different institutions that certain things are more likely to be first contacts. People writing to the Lords are very unlikely to be the first time they're corresponding with a representative. They tend to be people like 70% of those people have written to their MP before or written to a councillor before. These are engaged people by the time you get to writing to the Lords. On the other end of the spectrum, most people who write to their local councillor are contacting for the first time, and there's similarly sort of, no, that's the only one where that's the majority. Everybody else, most people have already contacted in some way with MPs and then the Lords being at the bottom of that thing, including roughly in there, the MEP, which sort of works in a strange way in the system. So the other way of looking at it is the other question, asking if your representative wrote back. No, I'm still looking at that. Sorry, I've missed the slide. So the other way is approaching it. Within those systems, there are different kinds of representatives. So the Scottish Parliament National Assembly for Wales and London Assembly get two kind of representatives. One elected directly through constituencies and the other elected via IPR lists. And these, it's a bit different behaviours in the, in terms of, in response in this communication. We've got a paper exploring this out shortly. Hopefully it's just been approved. But essentially people who are representing constituencies rather than areas and so are elected directly by voters rather than indirectly through parties are more responsive to communication. And in the area in the Scottish Parliament where we have enough data to isolate that from other factors. So we can written say it's not a factor of being part of the government. It's not a factor of various things about tenure of the representative that still stands out as a factor. So there is different kinds of representative are communicating with the constituents in different ways. And this isn't necessarily a judgment on that they're in a good or a bad job. It's simply that they see their role differently. Certainly in the Scottish Parliament, the regional representatives tend to sort of see their role as being more on policy, more on committees, and so de-emphasise the constituency nature of their work. So this sort of validates the aspects of the political system can be extracted from responsiveness, which is an angle you usually get. You have to usually start the other way around. Similarly, we can apply the idea of deriving gender from name to the right to them database. And we can extract roughly speaking demographics. Again, it's vague, but it's good enough that over a very large set of data we can make judgments on it. So when we look at the when people write to their MP, we can see this is roughly speaking the story we usually tell about civic tech. There is a balance, but it is a mostly male thing. And similarly, when we apply, because for writing them data, we have postcodes, we can map postcodes to the low super output areas and get measures of deprivation. And similarly there, generally speaking, there is a gradual increase in more deprived areas. There are less people writing to their MP in well-off areas. There are more. There is a spread. It's not completely one way or the other, but you can see the increase in the data. So here is a sort of weird thing. I haven't quite got a good theory on this one yet, but look on the hour of the day people are reporting, are writing to their MP and then splitting it by gender. You get this weird effect that women are simply more like less likely to write to their MP during the night, which means men are simply more likely to write to their MP during the night. Obviously most people are writing during the day. It's just an odd thing that popped out of the data. So not entirely sure what to make of that yet, but there is clearly a sort of this will speak to a certain pattern of people writing to their MP. And this will sort of be explained by that sort of difference in the two genders. These will in turn be breakable down into different kinds of behaviour when people want to contact their MP. When we look at the local councils though, there is far more equally balanced. So roughly speaking, this is still very slightly more male, but it's within the fuzziness of the gender analysis that roughly speaking we can say when people write to local councillors roughly speaking we get an equal number of men and women writing. And when we look at the demographic breakdown there are more people writing from more deprived areas when they write to their local council. And when we move away from the index multiple deprivation which is combining multiple different kinds of issues and look just at crime, there is an incredibly clear pattern going down once that this is the kind of thing. I mean obviously this maps against other issues as well, but roughly speaking this seems a quite clear pattern of not just that this is perhaps one of the issues people are writing to their representatives about. That is a leap beyond which the data can really support, but it's quite suggestive that people are concerned with their local areas and that's why they're writing. So this is generally speaking getting at some of the issues we're sort of finding with civic tech websites is that when we sort of survey our users and sort of find what kind of people are taking part in them, if we don't subdivide by use we might end up with the wrong answer. For instance if you write to them was just about writing to your local councillor we'd be very very happy in general with the demographics of the websites. The fact that you can also write to your MP skews it the other way and so we had to sort of think about the different uses, the different kind of patterns of use we can get out of this stuff and similarly to sort of backtrack that it's difficult to work out how to resolve some of these demographic issues. So for instance the fact that I don't fix my streets different genders report different kinds of problems. We sort of consider it as a bad thing that the site is not demographically balanced, but that sort of reflects that our different genders encountering different problems at different stages in their day and are they willing to encounter some problems more than others and if so the genderedness happens far before they ever reach the website and so what can we do to correct that problem at that stage? It's not entirely clear if there's an easy answer to that, it's a more general social problem that we then pick up as a result on several bits down the way. So this is just to talk a bit about how I'm approaching investigating this at the moment. So one of the things essentially I've been building a series of data exploration websites that allow me to sort of pour all this sort of demographic data in and then various other factors in to quickly tell me what areas are and are statistically significant to sort of get a bit of idea of where we should go do more quality of investigation of what's happening. So in this case this is looking at yes the different kinds of interactions in the variety of them data, I've got a similar thing for Fix My Street that covers a lot of the same ground as your talk and it's sort of a very nice way of being able to click around a lot and my hope for these is we published one last year looking at the RFOI website, what do they know and essentially the hope is to build these exploration sites to a quick report on what we're finding inside the data, what we're finding that's interesting and then release these sites alongside their reports so mostly so we can explain the weirdest stuff where the interpretation, the office interpretation might be slightly misleading and then have more of this data available publicly for people to draw conclusions from and further research to happen on and that's that, thank you.


Save that thought, save that thought. Oh, welcome to CCTV Channel 17, live at 525, Preservation Burlington Show. Preservation Burlington's a non-profit, 501C3 organization whose mission is to preserve and protect the historic architecture and livability of Burlington through education and advocacy. Thanks everybody for tuning in. This is our first episode of the year, January. We're lining up guests, but as you know, Lisa and I don't need guests, so. We're entertaining all by ourselves. So for this episode, we're just gonna talk largely about what we're doing and what's upcoming for Preservation Burlington this year. I know Education Committee member Bob Deveno has been working like a crazy person, getting the newsletter out, scheduling cemetery tours already and walking tours. He's got some great stuff coming up. Yeah, we've got walking tours of Church Street, the waterfront, and I can't remember them, which is why I'm looking at my phone. We have to look at our minutes, right? The old North End. Ramble is gonna have a walking tour, Pine Street and Art Hop, and we're gonna have at least two cemetery tours this year, right? Like Green Mount and Lakeview. And then some specialty tours. Right, all the regulars, plus we did, I know we've done an Italianate tour last year and I think the year before. That's sort of random whenever it fits in and we team up with the Italian group or club or members in Burlington. I just gave myself an electric shock. Don't do that. Yeah, so I think it's gonna be a busy, busy season. Yeah, I was digging through some of my files today and I found an old little booklet that we did on the John Roberts houses, so a little walking tour. It'd be fun to bring something like that back as well because that's a really cool little one. Yeah, with Karen and Britta coming back on is kind of filling in toward givers because they're both really naturals at it. That's Bode's well. I know Bob is in talks with Bill Mars, who's a brewer, he's a beekeeper master in Burlington and he's gonna be doing a talk for us, probably a con toys auditorium either late April or early June.  Brewing and the history of that in Burlington and Vermont. So that's gonna be a good talk. That's gonna be very good talk. What else have we got planned? We'll have our homes tour. Homes tour. Tour again. Yep, the committee's kicking in soon. It's gonna be really tough to beat last year's tour, which was probably one of the best we've ever had. I think it was the best we ever had as far as the tendency. And maybe there's a fair amount of pent up demands and missing it through COVID. But I know that Matt Viennes, our board member who steers that entire committee, he's already got, we like five or six homes. I think he has two or three that are committed that are really pretty interesting. I don't wanna do too much foreshadowing until, we don't like to get excited because then if one or the other falls by the wayside. But that's also Bode's really well and speaks to the success of last year's program because we have traditionally found ourselves scrambling sometimes, right? To get it pulled together. So it's great that it's starting off so strong, so early in the year. Yeah, Bode's well. It bodes very well. We have good guests coming up. I think we're gonna get Bob McCullough back on. Because now that he's got the HP program at UVM on pretty solid footing, he's gonna wanna tell us what his plans and thoughts are and what that whole thing looks like moving forward. So I'm looking forward to that, because he and I have met a couple of times behind the scenes talking about what he wanted to do and you know, parts of that are me having the opportunity to lecture, guest lecture. I was gonna ask her, like I should have asked beforehand, like is it public knowledge yet? Can we say something about it? You're gonna be teaching at UVM this semester, right? Yeah, I guess, yes, it's very exciting. So it hasn't been public knowledge because I didn't really wanna talk about it because I didn't wanna jinx it and I still feel imposter syndrome. But then thanks to you helping me fill out like things I've done in the past that are teaching basically. And then looking back, it's 36 years I've been doing this. Working with plaster and decorative finishes and every little something with old houses from New York City all the way to Burlington, Vermont, you know, and all over Vermont. So what are you gonna be teaching? So I get to team teach Architectural Conservation One and that'll be with Elliot Lothrop, friend of mine and co-preservation contractor and Alex Tolstoy, who's also now a preservation contractor, fairly recent grad from the program, six or seven years ago. But he's doing consulting and his focus is energy efficiency in older homes and how to, all that that encompasses. So I think the thing I like about this team teaching idea, you know, Elliot's got that whole framing, the timber framing and the traditional building all wrapped up, that's all he's done for 20 plus years now. I've got all the other bits and pieces but I've purposely ignored things like the energy efficiency aspect. I don't have, you know, we each bring something different and interesting to the table for the students this year to hopefully, well hopefully get a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts. The thing that I'm finding and that the three of us have talked about is, it's difficult, there's so much we wanna talk about and share, it's hard to get a deep dive when you have, what is it, 16 or 17 classes or something like that. We definitely want four field trips, field visits. And those are important, yeah. And then, you know, a lecture can be boring but there's so much to talk about. So, and we're gonna try to meet, there may be more. We do assigned readings, lots and lots and lots of reading and that's actually really good sort of segue to something that we're gonna talk about in a little bit but before we go there, you know, Elia is a graduate of the program as well. Yes, I do know that, yeah. So that sounds really exciting. I'm really happy for you and the students are gonna get a ton of value out of the three of you, so. It's funny, so the last thing I'll say about it though is the other thing that I started thinking about and that Bob was making me think about, you know, I've been in Vermont 25 years working on old homes and for probably 15 of those years, every summer I've had one or two historic preservation grad students work for me. So I've been doing this for one or two of them a year forever. You know, like currently right now I have one at the student at the Shelburne Museum and one in our shop working for us who just recently graduated. Nice. So that's exciting. It is, it is. They always have really interesting student research projects and we've had them on the show before and I'm hoping that we can convince a couple of them to come down and talk about their projects and findings this year as well, because that's always, it's so good to see, well, you know, not that they're all young because some of them were old like me, but it's just so exciting to see people still interested in preservation and learning more about it and then sharing their findings and their stories of what they found is really great. Yeah, that was, that is always fun and I remember I went to see Will Gansel's working for us now and just recently I went to see his presentation for that he was doing with the other students, you know, and it, I was kidding with you know, he's so mature and well-spoken, you know, because we're shoulder to shoulder in the shop. Yeah, right, we're just goofing around trying to get things done and his presentation was really his, in both the presentation he did and his presentation of the presentation were just really mature and really spot on and thorough and it's cool to see that. So yeah, we'll do many updates once a month just to let you guys know whether I'm crashing and burning or if it's working out. Well, if you don't show up for the show, there's my answer. Yeah, there you go, that's right. I've moved back to New York. No, don't you dare. So one of the things that we talked about for this show too is something that has come out of conversations from our own board and onboarding new board members. We still have room for more board members and volunteers and we'd always love to have people interested come down. But it was sort of a, what buildings should I know in Burlington and what should be on my preservation bookshelf? So every show from now on, I just decided to this, you don't get a vote, but every show from now on, we're gonna showcase two books that should be on people's preservation bookshelves and two buildings in Burlington that they should know, right? You should have been clear about that because I brought 15 books. You get to choose one, but I think I might let it slide and go two today because you're just so excited. I've had people at the museum say that that's what they wanna see. They wanna know what we read and what sort of thing. So it's good, we'll get to it now, thanks to you.  I am pushy and I own it. So where do you wanna start? Where do you wanna start with books or buildings? Let's start with buildings because you were shooting out a couple of pictures and I think it'll tie into the book you brought, but how do you wanna do that?  Or do you wanna practice it? Let's throw a picture out there. So let's have a complete surprise and show one picture of one building in Burlington. And I'm looking at that, there we go. Okay, so Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Yep, so the reason I think, I spit this one out there. I'm like, hey, let's get that picture because it's, I'm not even sure if brutalist architecture is historic yet, but it's historic in its importance in the movement. And it's one of those, so many people have an underappreciation for modernist architecture in general, I think. And we've seen that with the Cathedral Immaculate Conception and just all over the place, we had that super popular home store which was all modernist architecture in Burlington, which is really some of our local firms that are still practicing our hotbeds for modernist architecture. And then the least favorite of people's modernist architecture happens to be Brutalist. And I'm a big fan of Brutalist architecture. I love that sort of otherworldly functional utility of it, you know? Yeah, so, and this particular one is really a massive example, which is kind of interesting for Burlington. And it's got all these really cool angles and shapes. And it looks like a cold, stark building, but it really isn't. Inside is pretty beautiful and the worship space is really cool. And to your question of, is Brutalist architecture historic? Well, absolutely. And this one turns 51 this year. So this was built in 1973. Incidentally, it's the original church or original cathedral of St. Paul. It's an Episcopal cathedral was built in 1832, burned in 1971, which is similar to another church that we're close to. And so this was built to replace it in 1973. Again, the original one was markedly different design, right? Gothic, I'm imagining. Yeah, and this style didn't even exist back then. So it's really interesting to see this. And this has a prominent location in Burlington, right on the corner of Pearl and Battery Streets, right at the top, overlooking the lake. And it's just a really cool building, I agree. Yeah, and it's like, I think we're lucky for now to have two really good examples of that transition. You know, when these congregations would lose, it's horrific to lose an 1830-something Gothic cathedral church, you know, have it burned to the ground. Or your church in general, right? I mean, true. That's your community space, yeah. Not even, right, I'm just looking at it from like a nuts and bolts point of view, you know, but you're right, I mean, just the impact on the community. And then to have those congregations come together and be so forward-thinking, say, what are we gonna do now? We're looking to the future, you know? And that was brand new, it wasn't historic, it was brand new. Concepts and yeah. Concept and architecture, and they're like, yeah, let's try it, let's do this. And you know, 51 years later, it's still functioning for the community the way it was meant to.  Yeah, for sure. Anything else you wanna say about that one? No, so if people don't know that one, go visit it. I believe that obviously check with the management, the Episcopal church, you know, don't just like show up and wanna go in, but I'm sure they'd be happy to show their space. They're pretty proud of the space. I know I've been through there a few times when they've asked me to come and look at things and consult and you know, and it is, you get in there and you're like shocked at how cool and interesting it is and the woodwork. And how warm it is, right? Because on the inside there's so much woodwork. There's a lot of woodwork inside. Yeah. Okay, so then the second my pick for today is the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, which I love. And what I brought is a historic postcard, I think, of this building. Of a Carnegie Library. Of the Carnegie Library, yes. One of four in Vermont. Carnegie or Carnegie? I say Carnegie, you say Carnegie, like tomato. Tomato, I think it's gonna be the same thing, but here it is in its original form. You can see College Street wasn't even paved yet. Right. And you know, there's nothing around it yet. Now it has a big addition on that left side. What year again, was it built? So this was built in 1904. Okay. And you know, the story behind it is really nice too. Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie, Carnegie, who came here as a Scottish immigrant penniless and apparently, you know, he became a wealthy industrialist, industrialist, I can't say things now. But he apparently had a really cool philosophy about life, that you should spend your first third of your life learning as much as you can, your second third of life earning as much as you can. And then your last third, giving back as much as you can, whether that was through philanthropy or civic service. So he built all these libraries around the country to really further learning. And this one was built in 1904. Like I said, there are four in Vermont, five if you can't, the academic library down at Norwich University. Okay. He funded that one as well? He funded that as well. And it's just a really cool building. The original one was in City Hall, in the original City Hall and was donated by the Fletcher family, Mary Martha Fletcher Hospital, family. But then it outgrew the space and they needed to build a bigger one. And so this is what happened in 1904 with funding from Andrew. Yeah. So I really like this one. What's really interesting about this one to me is something that's really relevant to Burlington history now. In 1974, it fell into disrepair and almost came under the wrecking ball. And the community rallied around it. It was slated for demolition. Really? Yeah. The community rallied around it, got it nominated to the National Register and got it expanded, restored, rehabilitated. And now it is, I can't imagine Burlington without its library. Can you? No, not at all. I mean, I love the Carnegie Libraries, the architecture of them and just that, it was aspirational, especially for the time, obviously, for what he was trying to provide for the communities. So, and ours in particular has that footprint. I didn't realize it was slated for the wrecking ball. That's frightening. Right? So it can be done. It gives us hope. It does. And the other part of it that I like about that library is that addition. And there's that constant debate about adding to historic buildings, how to do it right, full sense of history or not, or too modernist or a weird modernist work on a building. Yeah, right. So, and I think ours is hugely successful. You know, the original library is still the prominent architectural gem on that piece of property. And then it's got this gigantic sort of wing that comes off at an angle to the side that provides all this other program space, you know. Right, right. Yeah, I haven't studied it in terms of, you know, how it meets the secretary's standards for additions to historic buildings, but it's set back, it meets, it's really different. There's no way you would interpret that as being original to the building, right? No. Right. And it really functions for the community. And that whole block is now historic too, right? You've got the fire station just south, south of the library. Right, behind the south of it, yep. So, which is another historic building that I think we're gonna talk about soon here as well, and Ryan's got a fire lit about that building and the architect in general. So, that's really exciting, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot to watch in the, I mean, we have Memorial Auditorium, Kitty Corner too. Yep. And it's a very interesting block and I know there's lots of hopes and dreams about a major development of that block and it'll impact, it's almost like, maybe then next to or behind the library, if you will, or besides the fire department, isn't that little, the tattoo parlor in the Queen Anne Victorian? Sort of where the old modernist motel used to be.  It'll be interesting.  I've heard you use that name before. To talk about her today, but. Is she buried in Lake View, San Matin? She is. Okay, yep, yep. And so her father's insurance agency, T.S. Peck, was up on College Street, so it's really cool to know the stories of these people and she probably, because she was such a bookworm and such a prolific writer. She probably walked down from her house to the library. Well, no, yeah. I was gonna say maybe she lived in a different time. I'm having a brain fart, but yeah, she probably spent a lot of time at the library. All right, should we talk about our books? Well, so right, yeah, the segue from the Brutalist Architecture to the Modernist Edition that's subservient to the historic building and I'll go first. Okay, what did you bring? Because I know you said one book, but it's one author and Donald Friedman. I'm a huge fan of his writing, try to get it like that. This one, and Turn of the Century Architecture, Historic Architecture, this is his second book, I think. The first book I got was the investigation of buildings by him and especially as it pertains to architectural conservation, this is, he's an engineer. He's an engineer who loves historic construction and this first book, The Investigation of Buildings is all about deterioration, the things that destroy a historic building and what to look for, how you go about looking for those, documenting them and not that we're gonna get into a lot of that in the class because again, it's a deep dive, but this book talks about field work, documentation and all sorts of things, sort of the nuts and bolts of how you go about studying an old building and figuring out what's wrong and why it's wrong. So I've always, that was one of the earliest books I stumbled on and at the time, I mean, I'm not an engineer, so at the time a lot of it was like, man, this is really complicated stuff, but as you get more familiar with historic buildings and it becomes, you're like, oh right, that's what Donald Friedman was talking about. You get to see him speak. Yeah, I wonder if a few years ago, the engineering department at UVM actually started taking a track into historic buildings and maintenance and understanding them. So I wonder if they have any of these on their curriculum, but... What's really cool is, and this one's more turn of the century. This is steel and concrete and spans and roofing systems and all that sort of like the things that led up to the Empire State Building. And so it's a little less pertinent to Vermont, perhaps, but it's, like I said, it's another book by him that's just a really interesting view into how they started, how they went from late 1800s to the elevator to concrete to stacking buildings and getting bigger. Well, I mean, we just saw with the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, we've got pretty big modern buildings here. For sure, yeah, yeah, and this really lends itself to that. And then back to your other question, it was kind of fun and interesting. At the very last minute, we had five students that are in the HP program doing our course at the first of the two. And at the last minute, this young woman who's an engineering student, she didn't have the prerequisites for it. So we had to figure out how to do an override so she could take the class. Oh, awesome. She's really interested in, she's an engineering student, but she loves historic architecture. I mean, it makes so much sense, right? I mean, at some point in your life, unless you're doing just new construction, you're gonna run into an old building at some point. It's really funny that you brought those and we're talking about brutalist architecture and your concept basically did not coordinate at all. This is quite by coincidence. I brought one of my favorite books, which is 20th Century Building Materials. It was a collaboration done by the National Park Service and Thomas Jester editor. And it's really fascinating because it talks about things that you don't necessarily think of as historic, like a glass block or cast stone, cast concrete, stamped concrete, perma stone, all these things that were just new and innovative at the time and that are now deteriorating. Some because they weren't meant to ever last forever, right? And some that just people ended up loving more and wanting to keep. And what's really great about this book is that it's directed at, yes, preservation professionals, but also normal people, right? So it's not overly complicated, it's not a lot of jargon in it, it's really beautifully laid out and it talks about the history of each building material, what contributes to its deterioration, like what makes it stop working and then how to conserve it if there is a conservation method that has been found. Some things just, you gotta let go or replace. A lot of these things can be repaired, restored, reused. Replicated, yeah. If you know how it was originally done, right? I know, my buddy Nancy at the museum told me about this book because she had a copy of it and I immediately bought a copy because I love to joke around that Formica is historic. Yeah. It was invented somewhere in Texas, I think. And yeah, it's like 75 years old or something crazy, you know. Yeah, I learned something today. We have so. Happy birthday Formica. Yeah, right, exactly. I know, I was at a conference in Florida actually and Evergreen Arts, the conservation studio. I'm a big fan of their work here out in New York City but they work all over the world and he was there talking about cast stone because a lot of these fountains that were built in Florida in the early 1900s, 1920s, 1920s were built out of cast stone with no real intention of it lasting forever. And they've had to do a company, he gave a big long talk about a bunch of these that they were hired to restore and it ran the gamut sadly of replicating because they had been let go too long and in addition to the rebar basically, the steel infrastructure inside being too close or allowing water in and then it spalls and it cracks and it destroys. So it was just a really interesting talk about things you don't think about when you're working with redstone and lime mortar. Things that have been around forever and ever. And it also depends on the environment too, right? Like so if it's an assault air environment versus here. So one of my favorite restoration or preservation projects was actually out at Shelburne Farms and the formal garden that beautiful balustrade in the garden that oversees the lake, that's cast stone. And that had gone in various or in different degrees of disrepair based on when and with what materials, which aggregate, which compositions of stone or materials that was put together, right? So I spent many a week out there when we had, when we got some of the new stone, we had to make it look like the old stone. So there's a lot of in painting and some of the stuff had to be sent back because it was just not the right aggregate size or ratio. So it's really fascinating to see all the little elements that go into it. It's not just like concrete is concrete is concrete. It's not at all. Not at all. I mean, especially with the older stuff, we've been doing a lot of projects at the museum and my friend of mine, Dave Ocaleta, was with List Restoration for years and he's hawking trial now and he's working for himself. But yeah, I see him, he's almost like a fancy artist. He does stuff, they do mock-ups and he stands back and he looks at it like his hand on his hip, trying to, is that good enough or, you know? And the longest part of the process, plus with mortars and cements like that, you have to wait for them to cure, you can't tell. I know I've recreated some concrete elements for buildings that do not, you could see now because time has gone by, they got soot and dirty so it's better, but they just stood out like a sore thumb. The shape was the same but that was it, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was really difficult. And you bring up a good point too about mortars, right? Like you could have the stone could match, it could be beautiful, it could be perfect and if you screw up the mortar composition, you can actually cause new damage, right? It's too hard, it's too soft. So there's just so much that goes into it. Yeah. So again, a great- We could be here forever. So this is the Bible of modern materials and, you know, from a conservation point of view, if you wanna- Fiber boards in there, like who thought fiber board would be historic? Fiber board, I know, homo soap, right? Yes, yes. What is homo soap? Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's pretty fun to have these things get some, it's nice to know that there's people out there that are nerdier than us that actually work and put this together so that nerdy people like us can really enjoy it. Like, that's good by the way, too. Yeah, bedtime reading, yep, I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those, we're right, we could talk for a half an hour, easy. But I think we're out of time. No problem, right. I'm hoping there's the author, oh no, I forgot his name already. Mark? Mike? Mark? Mark Bushnell? Mark Bushnell writes for Vermont Digger and he does a bunch of articles on the hidden history of Vermont. And he has a book out and we just got his book and I'm hoping we can line him up for next month. So I'm looking forward to talking to him because he does these snippets of different people in Vermont and groundbreaking. Amazing stuff that happened in our little state, you know, in the turn of the last century or during the last century. Cool, I hope he can come in. I look forward to locking that visit down. But I'd like to thank everybody for putting up with us and thanks for tuning in to CCTV Live at 525 and Preservation Burlington. This is the beginning of the new year and we're hoping to have a lot of good guests and a lot of stuff to talk about. And a lot of great books. Books and buildings. Books and buildings. Books and buildings. So people know what the heck it is we're doing, why and how we find out about it. How they can help. So more information on Preservation Burlington as always, our tours, events, sort of get a marker for your historic house. Go to preservationburlington.org and see our new website. I think it's up and running yet or not yet. No, soon. Very soon, very soon. Very soon. And then we'll see everybody next month. Thanks for tuning in. Bye.


My name is Divya and I am secure at 3-2-3-in-1. I am a student of Shankar. I am from Kalyanayi. So I have been promoting Shankar for the past 4 years of my preparation. And it has been very helpful in my brilliant preparation, especially my main test series. And I have given two of interviews in Shankar A.S. Academy. They were very good panellists and they helped me in my draft analysis for the verification. So it has been a very good journey for Shankar A.S. for the past 5 years. I am very grateful to all the faculty and the team here. Thank you so much, Raktasar Vaishnavika and the whole Shankar A.S.


Hey guys, welcome to snow break containment zone, and we have here dispute of the towers We're going to be starting off with wave 30. Why wave 30? Because when you get your rewards Wave 30 is going to give you lucky coin the waves after that 31 to 42 You're only going to be receiving silver bucks So I would leave it up to you if you still want to continue to clear all the waves But importantly you need to clear up to wave 30 for you to get all of the lucky coins So for this showcase, we're going to be discussing team composition the position where you should be in and The purchase strategy which comes first Okay, so for purchase strategy since we don't have a healer the only thing that you should buy is reset all supply sites This is this is at a 900 currency currently. I am at 360 So this one is going to be your purchase the only purchase that you're going to be needing since you have Most of the damage within your operatives usually I actually have Life wild hunt. I have Chen Xing ethereal cloud and I have Kaguya Akasha as My main team so both will give you both Chen Xing and life will give you aoe damage While Kaguya will be giving you lower elemental resistance. So let's continue this and see how this goes So this is already Wave 31 the beginning of wave 31. This is the area where in you should position yourself At this point. This is this has a bottleneck in which you only be defending two sides So this is very important because if you move to the other places of the map It's going to be you're going to be defending a lot of sides and it would be difficult for you at this point So please make sure that you choose this side to defend your Your squad so this side here. This is an L-shaped squad So you all you have to do is basically lure everybody here if they are not coming to your position You actually have to inch closer and see if they will be going to you so again I'm actually very careful at this point because the enemies are getting tougher and tougher But all you have to do is inch by inch Take them out. You cannot take them out as a whole So we only have two enemies left There you go. So we have One more to finish up So at this point, I'd like to use Theo cloud for multiple damages she is actually Already on the danger zone in terms of HP so it would be a risk putting her out I'll have to finish the stage with life in mind but again if you still have time and you have one enemy left and you think you have Other HP sites then go to that first before you take out the last enemy Right now. I don't have any more HP sites So basically what I'm doing is that I'm just waiting for the other stages to drop So that I could reset my supply sites So we are at wave 32. So again the team comp that I have is ethereal cloud We have we have wild hunt again. This is a very good area to defend you have cover here installed and Most of the time you'll be okay here There there might be some instances that you need to withdraw from your position But it would be manageable because there are a few escape areas here So wouldn't be a problem as you can see there I escaped but I need to go back If it's too much of a heat then oh So there you go. I was trapped But again guys that is the position that you are going to be you know Positioning yourselves You can actually use a revive and once a station is up But definitely you won't be getting any HP anymore Depends really on how much currency you have So at this point you may reset this if you're not satisfied with clearing wave 31 so right now I'm in dire straits already But I managed to pull that one out So again, this stage is one of the best defensive sites If too much pressure is actually placed on top you could actually go down if you exit this You can actually resume where you left off Okay, but again, you're still at 360 so and you're down to Okay, so we are at wave 31 Sorry, you can actually reset it and go back at full strength and Probably skill it out There you go. My point is you can actually just reset if you're not satisfied that your Your operative died you can actually reset a certain point Where in that operative goes back then you can Revisit that stage and clear it better probably just want to you know emphasize that if you cannot if you think that your run Isn't really that good. You can actually reload As you can see here, I'm at level 30 still, but I cleared 31 and 32 So basically if you cannot clear Up to certain stages, then you can still go back to where you Initially were you know where we're good at at 30 then you can restart everything from there So thank you very much guys for staying this far. I hope this helped and Again, if you're don't have to a OEDPS you can actually bring others particularly Y'all five star If you are interested in shooting from afar if you are not being harassed anymore Then you could eventually use a what they call this use y'all five star also guys This scenario stage is not limited to a no healer team. You could definitely bring a healer just in case you Feel the need to bring a healer. So y'all four star. I think is the best healer for this day So again guys, thank you very much for staying this far. Take care. Stay safe. That's the warden and I'm out of here


Thank you Hi everyone What a presentation. Thank you very much So good afternoon. We are we want you to chill out a little bit So it's not going to be a technical talk with we are here to tell you a short story This is a story of a plug-in our plug-in, but it's also the story of the two of us the plug-in we are talking about is called black studio tiny mca and it's a free plug-in and It is simply a Widget that allows you to use a visual editor inside the widget areas Perhaps you have heard about the butterfly effect and The beating of a butterfly swings can turn into an hurricane in our story our beating of wings was the development of this plug-in The first version was built in alpha day, but over the years it had an unpredictable evolution over our personal and professional life and after a few years it literally Brought us to the other side of the Atlantic and by the way It's also the reason for which we are here today at work on bureau As you can see Marco and I were friends since high school in the early 90s We were born in a small town in Italy in the northern part of Italy We get graduated together, but we separated and went to study in different city very far away and University and we could met me. We could not met us again At that time the web was still in their infancy Google did not exist and then for social network. We had to wait some a decade maybe and we want to But I discovered by chance Marco personal homepage we which is recently created So I discovered that we both had a passion in common was there the new creature the web Despite these commitments in the in the in the university and study we we started to collaborate together to building website for for clients. Yes, of course and When we finished that university and we graduated in 2002 we founded our web agency. So we started working together Marco took care of the development phase and and they took care of the design and the customers At the beginning of our activity. We tried several different approaches for a website building either Developing everything from scratch or using existing CMSs at that time workers did not exist yet But we were not satisfied with any of those solutions. So in 2007 We created our own CMS That was called black ray and that we used it for a few years to build lots of websites and by the way That CMS was already embedding the tiny mce editor. So we Were used to it way before moving to WordPress but unfortunately in 2009 at the PHP framework that we were using for bill this The CMS was discontinued. So we were forced to look for a for alternative better prospects Over the years we kept an eye on the evolution of the open source is CMSs and in the end our choice went to WordPress, of course What we appreciated the most about WordPress What is it was for the of the content management system for for clients and The fact that it that there was a huge availability of teams and plugins, but more over Thanks to our previous knowledge. We were able to extend the system to meet our specific needs Developing plugins for our internal use After realizing in few sites that we identified that for us was a big limitation the lack of Availability of a taxi widget with with visual editor Because client you don't understand how to do things with html So we looked for a plugin to solve the problem, but we discovered that very few existed But none of them was really working So we decided to develop a new one and within a half of a day This is an email mark wrote me On one afternoon where he says okay, so I buy I built a plugin that does that and Okay looking online. We saw that many other people were looking for something working So we we had so much from WordPress that we decided to publish for free this plugin in the in the in the repo But was not so so easy for us as what not so easy journey because for first We took a wrong step giving the plug in the name one of the most simple things But we wanted to incorporate our brand in the name But we wanted also to include the word tiny mca as a tribute to the editor that we greatly appreciated But unfortunately the average users of WordPress didn't know what tiny mca is for her So the widget was often Overlooked in the in the widget list the ones installed So after sometimes we decided to change the widget name and we are naming it the visual editor Why keeping the name of the the plug-in because in the repo you you cannot change the the URL but That caused us further problems because people that were used to use our plug-in now They were not able to find it anymore in the widget list in there in their website So we had a lot of support requests of us that by the way Few years later we met the real tiny mca guys they were from Sweden They are really nice guys and and we shall some beers in World Camp Vienna in 2016. Yeah And with increasing number of users of the plug-in we had to face several challenges starting from the Support for all the different ways WordPress has for managing widget apart from the standard way There's also the customizer and the accessibility mode and also we have all always Ensured the maximum compatibility With other plugins and with all the different version of our press Basically, we had to face scenarios that we did not consider it at the beginning and by the way during the Development of the plug-in. We also found some bugs in WordPress core So it was a good opportunity to provide some patches our focus on compatibility As led us to create synergies with the other plugins and it allowed us to further improve the popularity of the plug-in But it's not just coding We put a lot of effort also on other aspects of the plug-in such as providing Technical support for the users Writing documentation for both users and developers Get the plug-in ready for translations That we got a lot of people translating and providing translation in their languages we also focused on Providing an ideal and smooth user experience Avoiding banners ads or other annoying stuff another important aspect is the Responsibility that the author of a popular plug-in has towards the users A simple mistake on our side could potentially break Hundreds of thousands of websites, so it's really important to be careful and same thing if our Account on WordPress.org was stolen By the way, we also add some offers to buy the plug-in, but we have a whole waste refuse them and Here's a few figures In almost seven years of life of the plug-in there were There were more than seven million downloads of the plug-in but So it became pretty popular But it also required a lot of effort as you can see from the Number of support requests and releases that we made Yeah, and Something more happened because in 2014 thanks to the popularity gaining with the plug in we decided to receive requests from various parts of the world from people that needed development of custom plugins, so And a real brick through went into in 2015 when we started working with our quality outsourcing platform specialized in WordPress and We built a strong relationships with client all over the world in 2017 we flew in the United States to work on an important project but Beyond the conquest of new markets. We start also to participate more in the community Attending some work camps and meeting some nice people and But as in every story Also in this one there was a ton of events last year WordPress introduced the WordPress text widget inside the core The first version was very limited but the following version Introduced some improvements in example the ability to use the short codes and insert images and videos At the moment, however our plug-in still offers more features than the native one and As you can see in this slide to Recap We tried to imagine The possible future scenarios for our plug-in if the native widget Doesn't get improved we plan to maintain our plug-in active and by the way, we are also working on a new version if the native widget will get better and Could be a full replacement of our widget. We probably dismiss our plug-in, but we will provide a way to Migrate the existing widget and finally the last scenario which is more a long-term Future is where all the widgets will be replaced by Gutenberg blocks Yeah, so thank you We hope that this short story will let you to be embarked in in contributing work in WordPress because your bit of Of like a butterfly can change your life. So for us WordPress was a life changer. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Again, we have time for just a couple of questions I'm going to ask the first one and I've not heard Gutenberg described as an asteroid before that's an interesting way to look at things having had the experience of core Taking over the role of your plug-in How would you describe that experience to someone who is worried about Gutenberg doing the same to their plug-in? Well, it's something that I've read Yeah, I know it's not official, but I think that the plan of the developers in the long term Is to use Gutenberg for everything not just for post content. So this is a Possibility, I don't know But it sounds like you've been quite Optimistic quite pragmatic about it, you know, this is this is the evolution of the platform and and if your plug-in Has served its purpose and you move on that's okay. Yeah, I Think that people Get benefits for six and more years in using our plug-ins. So if the time is come to And it that's it. I think they it's the natural evolution so And of course, I'm a bit sad if the plug-in dies, but yeah, you know, all things must pass as they say Yeah, do you think that? There's any clash between Open source as a as a as a community thing and business I was very interested there about how you how you showed Your business had been improved by doing the open source work Oh, yeah, I think that the core of the there of the of the talk is That that one so you can benefit in your business from the open source So we all we all know but we wanted to demonstrate with this short story So I don't think there is a clash.  I Don't believe we do guys. You're off the hook. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's go on. Thank you Cheers guys. Thank you