Hey, and I'm super glad that you guys joined me today I am here with Lisa Bronner and if you're looking at my picture here You're looking at a copy of her new book that just came out on Tuesday of this week and from what I understand It's already in the earth fares all across America and it's in bookstores as well So you can pick up your copy right now Well, Lisa Bronner is the granddaughter of dr. Emanuel Bronner who's the founder of all of those amazing South suds and all of the castle soaps that we love so much They're the magic soaps and it's the top-selling natural brand of soaps in North America And as we were just beginning to get ready for this show I was talking to Lisa and Lisa was telling me that not only are they in America but low and behold They're in 42 countries across the world. Holy smokes. So we're in for a huge ride today I'm really excited that we've got Lisa back she was on our show a couple of years ago and you guys gave me raving reviews and I was just so excited when she was willing to come back and say hello to us again. Yay This is like Christmas for me. So hello Lisa Bronner. How are you today? Thanks so much for having me Angela. I am great It's been a fun and busy week with the book launching and of course keeping up with all the other questions that come in About about soap and so I'm just great to be happy to be back here with you Well, thanks so much for your time and attention. I just I have so many questions now You just wrote a book called soap and a soul and I read it and it is an amazing book By the way, I'm curious to know why the title Well, I want people to see a big picture when it comes to how we care for ourselves and our spaces and The intangibles in our lives and I've talked for years about how to make cleaning products and routine For taking care of yourself, but I wanted in this book people to see a bigger more holistic picture What does it all fit into and it fits into this bigger life of simplicity of mindfulness of Being careful about what we bring into our lives what we allow into our lives not just in the products that we use But also in the influences that we have in our in our head and in our heart And so the book has lots of practical tips and if you pick it up just to get some recipes Then that'll be great, but it also has a lot about how you know the toxins that we allow into our lives Sometimes are ones that we we can't see they're not even chemistry. They're you know, their voices and their influences So it is about soap, but it's also about our souls Well, and it's a really overall reaching picture of a whole bunch of stuff I was really amazed when I read the book and I read it on an airplane I'm sitting there think saying to myself this is really phenomenal because I think it's the most thorough Account of all of the different types of labeling for different products Like we say this product is natural and I know from the house cleaning perspective when we go in a customer's home We want to say oh, we're using all natural chemicals on your your house And what does that mean? Right, right, and that's the thing as we as consumers when we go into a Store we are bombarded with messages from labels and there are words on there And it's really the only the primary way of communicating with us from manufacturers to consumers Is the message on the label both the words and the imagery the colors the fonts even the sheen There's all these factors that contribute to a label and to be a savvy consumer We need to know how to read those labels to decide, you know, are we going to believe this product? Is it making a valid claim? Does this word actually have meaning? Is it substantive or is it mirror? You know psychological imagery or influence? So you mentioned the word natural which has no meaning when it comes to labels Anything can be called natural. There's no regulation of it. And so that one's you know want to dismiss, but a word such as Organic if it has a USDA certification seal with it that one has some meaning so So there's there is a ton to learn. It's a big headache. I acknowledge that and I try in my book to give people a Bit of a guide for how to interpret it all but even I will tell you that it's a lot to take in And I've I've tried to digest it and make it a little bit easier for people, but it's it's a lot Well, I liked your visuals because you had like a little bunny for example And you're like if you see this bunny this one's fake this one's real this one's fake and I was like, oh my goodness I've probably been tricked by that myself. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah I mean and what what we're talking about is certification seal So, you know those nice little logos or symbols that that indicate something and there are Official ones that come from an actual certifier like leaping bunny that has a particular bunny in its Certification that a product is cruelty free and has not been tested on animals But if somebody just has a different bunny then and they're making the cruelty free claim They're not lying because they're like well, we're not saying we're certified by leaping bunny But they certainly are trying to imply imply. Yeah, that they are by using a different style of bunny That they do have a certification as cruelty free when they don't and what the all the consumer can do is familiarize themselves with With what the true certifications are so they can disregard the rest, you know It takes my mind to the idea of I don't know if this is true, but it's a great anecdote So I'll use it anyways that that People who are charged with investigating Counterfeit money that they prepare themselves by studying the real money and being so familiar with the real money that they can They can identify what's not that and it's kind of what we have to do with certifications and those seals is look study the real ones the USDA organic the Vegan action cruelty free so that you know what the real ones look like and then when you see others Those are just pretty little pieces of artwork that somebody in marketing designed Well, I know that the salsa is a big popular product for all the professional house cleaners That are probably watching us today and all the Airbnb owners and everybody else. That's a big fan of Your products. I know that South such is like one of the top products that we use for cleaning hardwood floors And it has the all one Let me see if I can show you this yeah all one tell us about this logo and how this came to be yeah, so that is a logo for my family's company and dr. Bronner's magic soaps and it's it's Other name is all one godfaith and that came from my grandfather's own personal journey, which is a story in itself It's in the end of the book actually of how he had a personal Mission to unite all people together to realize that they had a lot in common more than they had differences and so in that logo that represents that hands reaching around the world to clasp That indicating that We are all as he would say brothers and sisters Traveling together on spaceship earth and we are all one so he's trying to To capture that with both the earth and the hands He actually that logo like goes all the way back to when he was running the company We maybe stylized it a little bit differently, but But the logo was his I love that So that is a mission though that you have continued throughout your blog and throughout all of your Advocacies throughout all of your communications with the world for the last several I'm gonna say several decades 75 years we're celebrating this year as a this is this is so amazing. So share with me I don't know that you were always on this journey I remember there was a time in a story in one of one of the early parts of your book Where you were talking about that you just grew thinking like everybody is on the soap mission and everybody knows what it's all about When you're right, it's not quite that the case Yeah, exactly, you know So my grandfather was Dr. Bronner found at the company in 1948 and it was his thing it was Not something that my immediate family was involved with in the day-to-day way My dad who was who was also a chemist? He did oversee the actual soap making but as far as the business side of the company That was all my grandfather wasn't not only was it not on our radar, but it just wasn't even part of my like consciousness What he was doing what that was all about You know, I was I was honestly, I think just not interested and I went on my own journey pretty conventional and graduated high school went to college and It was honestly it was when I became a parent that I began to take a closer look at Things around me and realizing wait a second. I don't know what's going on here I don't know what's going on in these products that I'm using at my son had a scary exposure to cleaning products at one point And I kind of circled back and realized I think my grandfather was onto something here And so it was when I personally, you know, I had to travel my own road and come back To you know what he had been doing all along would have been easier and more straightforward if I just you know listen to him in the first place, but That's that just wasn't what happened and so I about you know, I realized that the idea of simplicity Back to nature with your with your ingredients as close to nature as you possibly can with a plant-based ingredients and such and And that he really was so far ahead of his time with advocating for all of that starting in the 40s And and he really was regarded as quite, you know, quite eccentric for his time, but he was right Well, not only just a book that's brand-new and it's out on the market that I think is going to be one of the coolest books Of all time as far as all of the green at yourself recipes that are inside But tell me you you also wrote a blog and have really been advocating this message for a long time Tell me tell me about how you started that and how that process has continued this message onto where you are today Yeah, absolutely It is I mean we are family companies that dr. Brauners is still family run run family own And I think it's pretty typical with family companies that when there's a task to do you just find someone to do it Whether it fits what they think their job description is or not and so people end up wearing very different hats And so at one point my brother Mike who's now currently a company president. He was doing. Oh my goodness sales inventory customer service And some product development like all of that was kind of in his wheelhouse and If you've if you've seen a dr. Brauners label up close, you know, it says a lot We have a lot to say my grandfather a lot say to people is a lot of words on there Well, we can't really be surprised that when we say a lot to to our customers. They want to say a lot back So I know my goodness the cast you'll soap has even more than the cell sets So our I have to say that you guys should get an award for the most words on a label ever Because every single one of these labels is just like all the words and then it has more words And then it has more words and you're like, wait a second. I've got rating glasses on Absolutely. Well, in the picture of your phone and blow it up, but this is amazing Well, there's a little magnifier app on on phones. It really helps In the court in the court size. They're all different too The five court scents that came out in my grandfather's lifetime The all that little writing is different on every one So you have to read all five courts to get like and he wrote all of that Or somebody who wrote all of that before chat gpt Yeah, right. He was like his own chat gpt Yeah, there you go And he went so he wrote that and and oh the label was just as important to him as the contents of the bottle The you know soap was the messenger the the label was the message And that's you know, that's its own story but he He he wrote it all I put it on the label and and he actually went blind Before I was born I never knew him when he could see and he had that label All in his head all the labels and he would make edits to it like because he could remember every part of it Yeah, so oh, I'm so sorry. He asked me about my own history So everybody's doing all these different jobs and my brother just said, you know, could you take over customer service? I had kids at home and he said you could do it in the middle of the night when they're asleep, whatever And we're just I can't keep up with all the email that's coming in and so that's how I started And people asking questions. How do I use the soap?  And so all of those questions eventually led me to write a blog Called going green with lisa brahner where I answer those questions and mass people keep asking more which I love and that was 13 years ago and so After writing the blog for so long like I have the blog in my head I know that you know of the hundreds of articles on there I've got one for you on that topic but I wanted to be able to give it to To people who are interested all in one spot, which is why I wanted to write a book that was that was all together comprehensive, you know, you can keep it at your fingertips Well, I love the fact that you were willing to go to places that you've never gone before Because in the process of doing that I'm guessing that part of your own experience came out I know that in reading your book There were things that made my heart dance with joy when I read them I was like, yes, there was a moment where you were talking about Cluttering and disorganization and you said as a new mom You are holding your child on your hip and you were just trying to keep him from fussing And you said there I was frustrated because I wanted my house to be tidier And you were having this moment I think that speaks to all moms that are kind of a little bit overwhelmed And they need a second set of hands and they're like, uh, how am I going to make this work? And you made a comment that really hit home with me You said I realized I didn't have two hands because you're holding your son with one hand But you said I didn't have none I had another hand that was free and I realized I could start tidying up with that one hand And that spoke volumes to me because there are so many people that are living a life of excuses They're like, I can't do that. I'm overwhelmed. I just have too much going on and you're like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa I can do what I can do where I am starting with the resources that I have available to me right now Which in this moment is one hand That's absolutely right. I mean personally I was I was paralyzed because I was so focused on what I could not do And you know that I had been able to do in my pre Parent days or that particular son was my second son So I could do some things with one kid that I couldn't do once I had two And I was so focused on I can't do what I used to be able to do I can't do what I want to do that I was doing nothing My house was a wreck. I mentally I was frazzled. I was so frustrated uh, little things would set me off and And it really was that moment of just shifting my focus from what I can't do To what I can and what is the next step? I can take whatever that next step is if it's you know a physical go here and do this And then after that what's the next step and don't worry about the distant horizon and the big goal Just take the next step and see what happens and eventually You know, I got somewhere and and I think anybody can too My grandfather's own story was very inspirational to me. He had every reason Not to do it not to have a full and productive life I mean anyone would have excused him for just like Trying to survive and sit quietly in the corner. He he he immigrated To to the united states from germany when he was 21 His family was uh was well established from germany that they were jewish And they were utterly destroyed by world war two his sisters escaped his parents did not They perish the concentration camps are the family soap factories in germany were confiscated by When they were aryanized and then in the united states his he married had three kids That was wonderful, but then his life had a breakdown and eventually died when my dad was was seven He had his own health issues He was arrested because he sounded so crazy talking about world peace and return to nature Nobody was ready to hear that in the 40s. He lost his eyesight I mean he had so many things to look at and say I can't do anything look at my life And yet and yet he kept moving forward and finding what he could do and he you know using his voice and making his soap and You know if he can do that and I haven't had nearly the the trauma that he had in his life Then surely I can find the next step forward in my own life Well, he's not with us today But he would be so proud of you for taking his message and spreading that to the world Because little did he know at that time that his products would reach 42 countries around the globe And then it would become the national best-selling natural soap in the united states I mean that's that's huge and how did he know that at that time? He didn't and would have no way of knowing that but to watch the legacy that he created Doing what he could do with the resources that he had available to him and then watching the family carry that message on Because right now we are in an era right now 2023 where people More than ever are very conscientious of what they're putting into their bodies They're like wait a minute There are so many chemicals that are in the air and people have allergies like nobody's business And the air is not getting cleaner all by itself And the water we drink is not getting cleaner by itself and the stuff that we're dumping Into the the lakes and the streams and the rivers and the it's not getting cleaner by itself And so I think everybody's becoming more consciously aware like hey, wait a second Maybe I can do my own little part and what is that? And I love this book because there are a lot of misconceptions about as a professional house cleaner. Oh, I'm going to go green And then what does that mean? Right, right. I mean that's almost the the What's the opposite of a silver lining like the the dark side of something becoming popular is that then you have a lot of People wanting to jump on the bandwagon who either intentionally are misleading or with the best of intentions are misinformed or You know aren't aren't educated in what they're talking about and so they're offering advice that isn't valid And as much as I don't want people to be upset with me I also I also need to debunk some of the common myths You know, for example, you can't just go mixing two green cleaners together and thinking you're you're making A better cleaner That like one of the first questions I ever wrote a blog about still one of my most popular I mean blog articles are not supposed to be enduring You know, they're supposed to you write them and then people read them for a little bit and then they stop reading them This one people still read and it's why you cannot mix castile soap with vinegar Those are both excellent products and that people can do a lot with in their house But they should not be mixed together because vinegar is an acid and it unsupportifies soap It may it breaks soap down into its original ingredients, which is oil So when you mix vinegar and soap you're you're getting a gunky concoction that is very oily. And so, um, you know People do that with the best of intentions But they need to understand that that one doesn't work and there are others like that Some are more dangerous. That one's just messy I'm glad you said the word dangerous Because you did something that you were willing to do in your book that I was not willing to do and that's become really unpopular You said, you know what? I'm going to tell you that this is dangerous And I was kind of like me if I say something I'm going to upset some some house cleaners that are trying to make a living Being a tick tocker or something But I see people mixing chemicals in a really dangerous sort of fashion And they're like, hey, wow, check this out and they're plugging 20 and 30 chemicals on top of each other And the colors are amazing and whatever and it looks like it looks like paint And I sit there and like my eyes turn red and my nose clogs up just watching the video and I'm like, oh, no, you didn't And I just want to pick up the phone and I want to call the person and say stop being so irresponsible This is one of the worst things that you could do in the name of entertainment Because there are people out there that don't know any better and they're watching this and they're thinking Oh because they did it and wow, look how clean the toilet came when they were done I can do this myself and my message has always been you are not a chemist You are not a chemist and chemists go to school And then they go into a lab controlled environment so that they can learn and practice what they did in a controlled environment Where if something malfunctions they've got eye wash stations and they've got people that can call 911 and all those things Do not do not in the privacy of your own home experiment with these things Right, right. I I hate it because in the professional cleaning world You walk down an aisle and you see all these things with fancy promises and house cleaners I don't know why but they erroneously think this worked so well on one thing if I mix this one over here It will work twice as good. No, it does not Yeah, I want to make a shirt like a shirt a hat a scarf that says chemistry happens Because I think people don't realize this chemistry happens you mix two things together And there's going to be a reaction And yeah, there is a section in my book I talk about dangerous cleaning mixtures and I've written about them online and people say Oh, you're giving people instructions on how to make dangerous things. I'm like, no I'm actually going after the people who think they're doing great things Making a great cleaner Taking care of their their house and making it better for the people living there They're actually doing the reverse there that they could actually hurt themselves or the people that they live with I mean mixing bleach with anything I think bleach and ammonia has had a lot of attention that that's a bad one that makes mustard gas But also mixing mixing bleach with uh with alcohol mixing bleach with vinegar like don't mix things together Yeah, we can can you say one thing right now for anybody that's watching and anybody that watches the replay and once and for all Please do not mix bleach with anything You can dilute it with water, but please do not mix it with anything ever under any circumstances And if you forget that please call me or text me and I will remind you Okay, because that's not cool or I'm glad you can write to me too because that's the thing I think people think yeah, as you said, this is good and this is good. So together they must be better That's that's not how it works. The other thing that I think people Are mistaken about is when they they see products that do the same thing This is a carpet cleaner and this is a carpet cleaner. Therefore they must have the same Ingredients in them. Um, so it's okay if I have a little bit of this one a little bit of that one To put them together that is not the case They uh manufacturer might claim that they do the same thing, but the chemistry involved The ingredients that they put in are different. You cannot mix them together. Um, so it's uh One of the messages I really hope people take away is is that chemistry Happens and even mixing with castile soap, which is a beautiful, you know Simple product, but there are some things that you you shouldn't mix with it vinegar as I've said You epsom salts. This is body care a little bit more than house care of it You can't mix epsom salts with castile soap either And bleach of course as we've said don't mix bleach even with castile soap. There's a reaction that takes place In your book, you have 85 green it yourself recipes and now tell us about that and tell us what is the difference between that And mixing two commercial cleaning products together Yes, what green it yourself is is uh, it's a phrase I came up with that obviously off of diy Thank you I forget sometimes that I made that one up and I use it people like what is giy Okay, anyhow, but it's the idea of take control of what you're doing take control of Your cleaners so you know what you're bringing into your house. You know what you're exposing yourself to You know what you're exposing your your housemates or pets whatever to just so you have more control because There is no required ingredient disclosure in cleaning products in the united states You have no idea what is in most of the cleaning products unless they have a really high hazard Ingredient in which case it gets the hazard warning on the label So green it yourself means you take control and you know what you're using And so that's where the 85 recipes come from a lot of them use dr. Bronner soap Castile soap and the sal sets And but then a lot of them are are unrelated to our products just Tips for ways to take care of your house You always want to use the least intensive means needed to do the job You don't you don't need to ratchet things up really high to get a job done So you always I mean not only for the sake of the surface not to corrode it or etch it or degrade it But also for the safety of of you. It's it's this risk-benefit analysis Something like soap or sal sets That those are are cleaners that remove their surfactants that will take care of most Situations most messes most grind most surfaces. We do not need to disinfect everything We do not need to sanitize everything because those have their risks and the risks are not Merited in most situations. You know, we're not doing for the most part surgery in our homes We're not eating off of our floors. We don't need to disinfect these things And so the recipes they're really simple sometimes. I'm like, oh, this is too simple I shouldn't even say it but no, I want people to know that these simple ways can You know can work and do work and are all that's needed and they don't need to make it more complicated It saves their Pocketbook it saves the space in their cleaning cabinet. It saves their time and it saves their health too So the recipes are all very simple and easy to do I want to stop for just a second highlight something that Lisa just said because this is really really important She said because it was so simple. I didn't feel like I should say it But I want to highlight the fact that there's a whole entire generation right now that has grown up on tiktok And what you think is real is what you see on tiktok And I just went on a little rant about what I see on tiktok and how angry it makes me because it's so incredibly Irresponsible people mixing chemicals that are toxic and that are incredibly harmful to the waterways and the earth Once they flush that toilet. Okay bad bad bad bad bad So what happens is that's a whole entire generation that grew up on electronics and watching things and they think oh, that's okay Okay, a lot of those same people have never been taught how to clean and every day in the cleaning industry We run a training company that trains house cleaners and maids And I can't tell you how many times a day embarrassed kids come to me And they say i'm in my mid 20s and I hate to admit it and i'm really embarrassed to say this But I don't actually know how to clean at all. I was never taught. I was never showed And so can you show me or can you tell me or how do I learn? And so we need to go back to the basics and I love lisa's book for this fact It's very clear about here are some recipes of things you can use Here are some tactics that you can use and she even goes into the decluttering end of things Before we clean you've got a declutter and here's the mind-body connection between the decluttering and the cleaning I'm sure with this a little bit if you will on that while we're on that topic because that was really interesting to me Yes, and this was something I stumbled into i'm not a naturally organized person And so, you know, I have really have to think about organizing and and decluttering I have to be very intentional about it. It's not something I do Involuntarily, uh, and so it was a journey I went on And the thing about clutter is that it gets in the way This is the this is the really the biggest issue about it It gets in the way of first of all being able to clean things if they're if they're inaccessible Because there's stuff on them, but it also gets in the way from of the things we really need in our day-to-day lives It takes longer to find them. We can't see them. We can't appreciate them We're distracted by what's there and what's unnecessary and Eventually for myself as I was looking at clutter. I'm like, what is this? What is this? I mean, I can identify it piece by piece. But what is it? I I realized that what my clutter was Were identities I have had that I no longer have Or identities I thought I might have but I don't and I bought stuff for those identities So I used to teach high school. I had some high school teaching stuff sitting around my closet blossom plans and various props and Things like that that were in my way. I used to do crafts that maybe I enjoyed at the time, but I don't anymore You know, and I I used to I used to have jobs that had various, you know Objects associated with them and all of these things and they were important But they're not now and so once I started saying, you know, I'm not a high school teacher anymore I'm not a quilter anymore um, it helped me to pull those identities out of my closets and off my shelves and Decide, okay, who am I today and where what do I need for that identity and once Once those identities were all that was there. It was just so much easier to To access them to appreciate them and then of course physically to clean around them because I just didn't have as much stuff in the way I'm still working on this because even now I'm shedding identities and taking off new identities I'm putting on new identities and so it's an ongoing process And that's not weird I'm glad that you brought that up That's not weird at all because if you look at a brand new baby a baby is born and they're like this big And that's an identity.   I must always stay that identity No, you don't we evolved we develop as humans and the more information we have The more evolved we become and I think right now this is a new evolution for all of us Where we're saying I don't need the fragrance in my cleaning chemicals right now. I understand That clean has a particular smell. Tell us about the smell of clean. What is the fragrance for clean? I'm curious Oh, yes. The smell of clean is nothing at all If something is truly clean, there's no debris on it.  We like smells I like I like scents of course, but to think that those scents are clean Is is is the opposite of what they are if there's a scent there that means there is a residue There is a substance there that's giving off the scent um, and so, you know and they're powerful our our our brains A recognition of scent is right there with its processing of emotion and memory And so that's why scent is so evocative and so transportive Um, but it's all psychological and so we do need to separate ourselves and our understanding from oh this smells clean because it's you know smells like Lemons or some fake lemon smell or even because it's scouring the inside of my nose and making my eyes run therefore it must be clean No, that's that that I mean think about that that doesn't make sense It means that there is something there that is On the surface or or in the air So fragrance is one of my One of my big topics with people you need to separate your understanding of clean from how things smell Laundry detergent is often sold based on how it smells, but laundry detergent is supposed to clean fabrics not leave things on fabrics And what we have in our air you were talking earlier about Our interaction with the environment The pollution inside our homes is is usually unless you live in a Extremely polluted urban place the pollution inside our homes in our air is far worse than what's outside We've gotten really good at sealing up our houses in the name of efficiency to keep them hot or cold or whatever It is they're supposed to be And so we've really gotten good at sealing up our houses where we also Are more and more comfortable in a very narrow Temperature range and so we shut the windows as soon as it drops, you know to below You know, I don't know 65 and we shut the windows as soon as it gets warmer than 75 and if it's if it's outside those We don't allow fresh air and we need to unthink that because we have got to flush out our houses Stuff gets in the air all the time from fragrance from cooking from breathing From all of these things from textiles outgassing We need to clean up our air and definitely the first thing is not to Pollute your air intentionally with fragrance ingredients. So what's wrong with fragrance? Why am I so keen on getting rid of fragrance fragrance ingredients are If they're meant to be durable, you know the the advertisement that your laundry will smell fresh for three weeks How is that possible the way it's possible? Is because there are ingredients that make the scent very durable very enduring It it doesn't break down. It it stays. That's what's happening If it goes into your body because you breathe it which is meant to be breathed Then it's going to stay there and not break down our bodies cannot process that now our bodies are incredibly resilient We can put up with a lot but day in day out repeated exposure This can add up to a lot and more and more people are acknowledging they're having you know Breathing issues maybe even full-blown asthmatic issues because of the scent of products And it's because they they do impact our bodies. They're not just a little thing that's right here in our nose that they penetrate um, and so we need to to To dial that back to reduce the fragrance to acknowledge that the smell of clean is the smell of nothing at all And i'm glad you explained that so well because when we go into a customer's house as a professional house cleaner It's kind of like when you have a headache if you've matched it with I don't know some kind of an ibuprofen or an aleve or a I don't know whatever the over the counter things are that make your headache kind of like numb to you It removes the need for you to take a look at wait a second. What did what caused that headache? Yeah, and so when we mask the the headache for example, I'm talking about a headache for a second What happens is instead of us saying wait a second. I didn't really cure it I didn't remove the the root of it. I just kind of numbed it for a little bit Then what happens is we're going to eat the same foods or we're going to not get enough sleep Or we're going to be dehydrated or whatever it caused it in the first place And then we are our go-to as we take more of the same and the exact same thing happens when we keep masking smells We're just masking it And so if you go into a home and you're cleaning someone's home and you walk in you know Something smells a little unusual in here. What is that because i'm looking around i'm not seeing anything Is there something that's dead inside one of the under the cabinets? Is there something that was left like in in one of the drawers or one of the bathrooms? And maybe it's like starting to turn moldy or mildew like what what is that smell and where is it coming from? And so if we don't keep masking the smells it's going to help us recognize things a whole lot sooner I know that one of the challenges that many homeowners have is mold in their homes And because they can't smell the mold they're like, oh, it's not there if I don't smell it It's not there or they're in denial if I can make it like not smell like that Then it's not there we've got these musty basements and you go in there and guess what?  Yeah, it's cured. It's not cured You're just masking it And so I'm really glad we had this conversation today because well, don't get me started because that's my rent too Yeah, but you're absolutely right You've got to get to the source of the problem because sometimes, you know, it's not just a bad smell It's actually something harmful. I mean if it's old if it's um, okay So one of my current identities right now is is cat wrangler. I I'm having an issue with my two female cats They're not happy with each other So I end up cleaning up some cat issues If I just you know mask that smell that would be like extremely unhygienic You have got to go and figure out where it's coming from and clean it. Don't just cover it up Um, I've got a couple of questions that have come in. I want to say hey to everybody that's jumped in and joined us here I really appreciate your comments today. Thanks for being here Ceto sky says I have multiple chemical sensitivities with cfs Slash me so I I'm always just used baking soda and unscented holistic cleaners. I'll be it Expensive so excited to learn new ways with old basics. I know that you have a whole Section on cleaning with baking soda and other things like that share with us a little bit about What some of the sensitivities are that we can remove by Cleaning with holistic or natural products and I say natural tongue and cheek I shouldn't have said that word, but you know, that's okay Safer products label. Yeah, exactly. Um, absolutely. Well, the thing is and it's it's funny because well, I I did write a new book A lot of this is old wisdom soap itself is a very old substance Mankind has known how to make soap for millennia. It's one of its oldest Like intentional chemical reactions And so so it is new but it's it's returning returning to the old So the the issue here is that a lot of cleaners You can actually be guided by hazard labels on them if they say they're harmful to the skin like that that means that that even accidental exposure or slight residues on surfaces that sort of thing is going to be a problem for somebody who's already sensitive Whether the sensitivity is diagnosed with a specific name or just they've noticed Something's not right there. Um, and so once again, we want to dial things back One of the reasons why I do Recommend, you know, keep it simple use natural soaps or or very mild detergents And your cleaning and things like baking soda vinegar is because they they Breakdown so easily not only in the environment, but also when they're exposed to our bodies And one of the problems with the more complex synthesized ingredients is That our bodies can't process them and they're very durable so a very very common ingredient in conventional cleaning products is Formaldehyde and you will not see this on a label. Nobody's going to say they put formaldehyde But there are many ingredients that are called formaldehyde releasers. They release formaldehyde into the solution Uh, the longer they sit in the in on the shelf and formaldehyde is Very irritating to the skin. It is a known cause of allergic contact dermatitis And so anybody who suffers from reactions easy reactions needs to look at whether their ingredients contain formaldehyde releasers And these are super common ingredients. We're talking quaternion compounds ureas that super long A preservative the mesoethylocythazolinones, which are the words that are this long. I know But you know, they're And it's only up to the consumer to look for them. There are no regulations against them Formaldehyde is also a known human carcinogen. That's a problem too, but honestly what you will notice first Uh is actually the allergic contact dermatitis. Um, and so, you know, keep it simple dial it back Don't use these complicated things that, you know, first of all, you might not have known that these ingredients release something like formaldehyde But if you if you dial it back to things that are closer to nature Things that are, you know, a mineral like baking soda and sodium bicarbonate It's a it's a very simple ingredient that Our bodies know what to do with and and when they come into contact with us, uh, that That don't cause this, you know, flare up of, you know Our body is trying to tell us that there's something wrong when it flares up when we have an inflammation or a reaction It's saying I don't recognize this and I don't know what to do with it. So do something um, and when we ignore those by you know, just Carrying on and doing what we've always done.  So to keep it simple There's no reason to use things that are really really complicated. Um, I am going against so much advertising and saying this I I have it a little easier. I live out in the country. We don't have cable We can't have cable and so I don't get, you know, television advertising Um, it's really hard to ignore the advertising that's telling you how easy it is to use this product How much you ought to use this product because it gets rid of all the germs um That that needs to be ignored and you need to look look at the ingredients, you know, learn for yourself Uh, unfortunately, there's nobody that's going to learn it for you And make your the decisions that are best for you and for your household And I want to add one thing to what Lisa just said because this is really important The words and it's true when you try to read the ingredients on the safety data sheets The words are like really long words I'm going to call them 20 words because they're huge and they're very hard to understand But they do have what's called a pictogram and the pictogram is a little tiny red triangle It's more or less a little warning label and it's usually in section two of the safety data sheet And so when you look at the safety data sheets and there's a little picture of like a guy and he's like choking to death That's like not a good sign and if his heart is exploding That's not a good sign and if they're like little dead fish that have popped out of the water That's not a good sign And so most of the pictograms will give you the hazard warning and you look at the picture like well Not good. Not good. Okay. So keep it simple But read the safety data sheets and what's really cool right now Is the safety data sheets by the globally harmonized system are pretty much available everywhere And so if you're thinking about a new cleaning chemical and you type in the safety data sheet on google because we all have our phones at our fingertips, right It will pop right up and you can look at all different 16 Sections of that and you can see exactly what the safety hazards are and you can see look at the storage and disposal Because that's a dead giveaway If it says something like Of this can't be thrown away in a regular trash can and you have to take it to the landfill Guess what? That's a safety concern because it can't be disposed of like a regular ph neutral chemical, right? That means it's got to go down there where there's somebody that's licensed and they're trained to separate that into a hazard chemical A chemical category So there are things like that that you have to be aware of and I I love the fact that we're having this conversation We do have a couple of questions. Uh, somebody asks Can I mix Don and Sal says And don is a dishwashing soap Yes. Yes. So, uh, as I said earlier, um ingredient There is no required ingredient disclosure of cleaning products across the united states California does have one And I do live in california. So it's a little different for me here but across the country there is not and so not even I as a manufacturer Of salcets knows what is in dawn So I can't speak specifically to the interaction of dawn and salcets, but honestly, I don't know why you would want to mix the two There's nothing that dawn can do on its own that salcets can't and there's nothing that dawn will benefit salcets By mixing the two together. So best to use them separately There is no secret database that I have access to that tells me what's in dawn unless they choose to disclose it Which you know other companies like like dr. Ronits have done. So and so But best don't mix cleaners and you don't need to mix dawn into salcets I have a personal philosophy and i'm glad that you brought that up I have a personal philosophy about safety data sheets and what the disclosure is If I see a product and there's a really popular product on the market right now And I won't use it and I won't use it because I don't know what's inside and they have a really vague Safety data sheet and it's like it's got good stuff in it and like how much of what we won't tell you And i'm like oh and i'm not going to use it because I don't know what's inside And that to me is really scary and if you're not scared, you should be because we live in an era right now Where they're starting to make check this out soda pops that are crystal clear They're removing the colors from them and they're removing the dyes And they're removing a lot of the stuff that has been known to cause angst in our bodies We are becoming more consciously aware as a society that all of the chemicals stacking on top of each other on top of each other From laundry soaps to shampoos to deodorants to all the different stuff we use in our homes It's becoming a toxic world that we live in and I say it's becoming it's already a toxic world But please and this was this was great that lisa brought this up if if you don't need two soaps Don't don't use two soaps if you're going to use them use them individually But don't use them both together not necessary But I do want to say something about cell suds since I got it right here And it happens to be the house cleaners favorite soap of all time for hardwood floors And literally and i'm not kidding one drop one drop in your mop bucket Do not use a squirt or you'll have suds everywhere But tell us why this is so effective and why it makes hardwood floors shine Yeah, absolutely. So cell suds was a was a product that my dad came up with in 1975 My dad was a chemist a self trained chemist he's he went to the school of curiosity and trial and error and he developed cell suds as A result of his frustration with hard water in los angeles and castile soap all soaps react with hard water They're fine. You it's the harmless reaction that doesn't cause any problems except that it leaves water spots And it can make fabrics stiff or anything that's supposed to be absorbent like a towel Would be stiff. And so he was he was really frustrated with the hard water in LA and so he wanted to come up with a cleaner that was super effective no matter how hard your water was And cell suds was the result of that. He's still he's still wanted it to be extremely mild extremely Concentrated so that it was valuable And a little bit goes a long way And so he's very careful about the blend of surfactants that he put in it. And so it is a it is a detergent But it's not I mean you never can make a generalization that soap is good detergent is bad because there could be good and bad of both But it's a detergent which means the molecule is much more stable. It doesn't react with hard water And that it um, but that it's also still extremely mild and it's not it's not too aggressive on on skin or On your surfaces and so the ingredients that he He put in there are just the right blend that they grab anything any oil And they are extremely clean rinsing and they leave no residues behind so hardwood floors It's fantastic on them all floors. I have a blend of hardwood and tile in my house I actually also have carpet and just this morning I was using my carpet cleaner with that one Drop of salsas. I promise you do not need more. You will have And you never want to leave a cleaner on your floor because a cleaner a surfactant like uh, Like salsas or castile. So it holds on to dirt. That's what it does. That's how it works It holds on to dirt and then when you rinse it it rinses it away But if you leave it there and you don't rinse it away, then you've just got the the cleaner holding onto dirt sitting there And if more dirt comes along it's going to hold on to more dirt and then the surface actually will get dirty or So you always want to make sure you get all the cleaner off of it So salsas is all I use for laundry for floors for my car for my dishes Anything in my house that needs washing I wash it with salsas my painted walls All of that Yay, and that's not what this conversation was about but because I know there's so many people that are so In love with salsas. I had to bring that up And so somebody asks and it's myra and she says is this something I can use to clean floors that may not cause harm to my dogs Absolutely. Yes. I mean first of all, it's it you need so little of it to clean your floor So there will not be very much uh very much there. Uh, and then it is extremely clean rinsing That's why it was a feature my dad was most concerned about And so it does not leave a residue there. Uh, the scent of salsas is from two essential oils spruce and fir And it makes a nice light pine scent, but there's nothing in it that makes it Enduring like I was talking earlier. Uh, it also rinses away In fact, some people say I wish yourself said let's stick around and we're like it's designed not to stick around It's designed to be clean rinsing. So, um, so it would be it would be excellent for Not leaving any residues that could harm dogs or cats or babies or Anything that would be in contact with the surface afterwards And speaking of babies, I remember one time inside a lethal store I'm walking inside the lethal and I see that in the baby section They have some castile soap from dr. Bronner's and I got so excited took a picture and I sent it to Lisa And I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys are in my lethal and she's like, I know we're everywhere I love it. Well, my grandfather made the the unscented at the request of the uc la maternity ward because they wanted an unscented castile soap um for use uh with their patients and And so he he already had the peppermint lavatory eucalyptus at the time I think and so he just pulled the essential oils out simple simple soap very simple And there was our unscented. So it was returning to its home by being in the baby section I wanted to go back to the topic of ingredients He just mentioned because another thing that uh is out there is this sort of faux disclosure It's like a fake disclosure. You see an ingredient list. So you think oh, it tells me the ingredients But then if you read it, they're not ingredients they're categories. So it'll say ingredients surfactant preservative fragrance But it doesn't tell you which surfactant or which preservative and there there are Of range huge range within these categories. So what are they not telling you? Why are they not willing to tell you what? The specific ingredients are and why are they trying to fool you into thinking? Oh, we're disclosing our ingredients when they're really not even if that says natural surfactant Not even quite sure what that would mean, but um, you know, it's just another thing that consumers have to be savvy about And in your book you talk about something really interesting You talk about longer lasting chemicals and washaway chemicals as in shampoo for your hair For example, is it something that i'm going to put in my hair that i'm going to wash it away? Or is it something that like conditioner or a leave-in conditioner or something that i'm going to leave on for a long period of time? Tell us a little bit about that because that was incredibly fascinating When you talk about the different chemicals that linger in your home Right exactly. Well, when when you're just getting started, especially in looking at your products and your ingredients It can be really overwhelming. Where do I start? I always want people to start with the products that they're exposed to the most and those are For personal care our leave-on products the ones that we put on and they stay for the day our deodorant our lotions our makeup Uh sunscreen things that you know, it's not just we're washing with soap You know, we can barely make it the 20 seconds to wash our hands and and then we rinse it off I think it's important to look at those too, but but more important to start with the ones that are leave-on all day uh, and then as you talked about uh earlier talking about the layering and the um, the cocktail effect of our Of our chemicals, uh, so you may look at your deodorant and say oh these all look just fine You may then look at your lotion of these all look just fine. Um, but there are some ingredients that are fine Unless they're combined with other ingredients and if you don't look at how those two are going to interact Then um, you know, you could be thinking this is fine and this is fine. Therefore, I could put them together Just like we were talking you can't combine cleaning products. You just have to be careful I'm not saying don't wear both lotion and deodorant, but you know pay attention to both And and how they might interact with each other. Uh the same thing with what we have around our houses The things that we use the most that's where you should start with Cleaning up your products take a look at them. What's a product to use the most it might be your laundry detergent We are in constant contact with our with our fabrics. We wear them. We sleep on them. We try with them Most of us are contacting fabric at every moment of the day So laundry detergent is one that you should look at our is it leaving residues that are constantly touching me And is this you know, is this is this residue going to cause a problem with my body? Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but every day over the years The constant exposure is your body someday going to say enough So look at those ingredients do a little research There are some great resources out there that'll help you break down all the complex Ingredients the environmental working group has a great healthy cleaning database A lot of people know their skin deep database, which is for personal care But they also have a healthy cleaning database which will help Breakdown you can put in a product if it's a popular enough one They have about 20,000 products in there now. It's pretty big They'll specifically tell you, you know, what the concerns are with the different ingredients And then, you know, of course learning from people who have already dived into this already Angela your your stream if you yeah itself is helping people to To just dissect all of this crazy information that's out there Well, it is crazy, but the cool part is in your new book soap and soul You have lab code experiments. Tell us about that Oh, this is where I was having some fun. And so I thought well, you know I know I'm a complete nerd when it comes to chemistry But maybe there'll be somebody else out there that would like to know I don't just like being told what to do. I like finding out for myself Why and how and so I put these lab coat moments in the book where you can do experiments That with very normal stuff around the house to teach various And understand the various chemical concepts that I'm talking about For example, don't mix ingredients There is a lab coat moment where I intentionally have you combine castile soap and vinegar I want you to see what it does. I want you to feel it. It's not dangerous.  Not dangerous just messy and really really bad for your pipes Because functionally what you're creating is what we call soap scum except you're creating it in mass From the reaction between the magnesium in the epsom salts and the castile soap And so but these are controlled experiments in which I have you do these things I have the reader do these things so they can see for themselves what's happening and understand The greater impact of these, uh, you know, I do all of these in my kitchen I've actually got one going on in my kitchen right now. I'm looking at the various Cloudy points of the soap where the soap turns turns white My family doesn't even question when they find, you know, mason jars of soap in the fridge As long as I've labeled them which I did this time sometimes there's Lisa again Yeah, did you know that graded bar soap looks a lot like cheese? It's awesome. Yes. Oh, that's funny We've got so many questions here you guys and our time is running out So we're gonna have to come back and I'm gonna ask Lisa if she will jump in later Whenever she gets a chance and answer some questions that are coming through here I'm gonna go back through this stream and I'm gonna answer as many of them as I can in the notes below There are some really valid questions that I want to pay attention to Can the salcettes be used on fake wood and laminate floors the answers? Yes, absolutely Somebody says can I use it on laminate flooring? We got a lot of the same kinds of questions Somebody said I never heard of salcettes. Where is it sold? It is available and I believe all of your online retailers So check them out. It's available in all of your health food stores. It's now everywhere and like I said It's in 42 countries. So even if you're across the pond and you're our friends from far far away You can find it as well. I've seen it. I've taken pictures in stores over in london and I sent them to Lisa I'm like look you're everywhere. She's like, I know it's really awesome. So Is it available online? Yes, it is and so if you are in a rural area like my mom and dad You can have it shipped to you as well And so there you guys have some fantastic questions And I really appreciate that you've asked those questions of us here today because I want to make sure that we do get those answered So I do want to highlight the fact that Lisa's book is now available And it is let me see if I got a picture of it here. Yes, there it is and that is um I got a comment here. I'm trying to minimize Hang on one second But I Lisa will you tell us where people can go to get a copy of your book? Yes, so soap and soul is sold in in booksellers everywhere. So your favorite one Barnes and Noble amazon books a million Target.com is also selling it. We're selling it through the dr. Bronner website as well And it is available in a hardcover an e-book and an audiobook And I got to read the audiobook for it myself, which was super fun too. Oh, that's so awesome I'm so proud of you for that. That's fantastic. That's where I learned to pronounce. I wrote I had to read my own writing I was like, who wrote this and I'm having to say in a mess. So I thought science all alone I got um, well, there you go for writing it But I'm so proud of you for writing this book This is a book that is long overdue And I want to highlight the fact that it's got a bunch of really awesome personal stories in there that make you go Oh, wait a second That's me and it tells a story that I think many of us can relate to at the different phases of our journey And lisa said one thing that I want to leave you with today She said start where you are today and make a tiny change and then make another tiny change You don't have to change everything at once But as you're starting to pay attention to changing a fragrance or changing out a particular cleaning chemical For one that doesn't have the dyes or the formaldehyde or whatever start out with one Remove it and change it and then go on to the next one start small start where you are and then move out That's right. That's right. It's the best we can do start where we are with what we have and then Take the next step after that All right soap and soul book dot com. This is lisa brawner. You guys i'm so excited Thank you for joining us today and thank you lisa for your time and attention. You are amazing Well, thank you so much antelah. It was a my privilege to be here


Welcome to another Optoplanar video. This time we won't be talking about a use case, but I'll be talking about the Optoplanar benchmarker. The Optoplanar benchmarker is a toolkit you get with Optoplanar, and you don't put it in your production class pad. It's a jar which you only use during development to find out which optimization algorithm is best for your use case. So for example, let's suppose we have a number of data sets, data sets A, B, C, and D. In this case, it's for the cloud balancing use case, 100 computers, 300 processes in the data set A, twice as many computers and processes in data set B, and so forth. And then we benchmark this against a number of different solver configurations. So we try tab with search, which is a methodistic, similar thing, which is not a methodistic, and so forth. And what the benchmarker will do for us is he will take every data set for every solver configuration, and he will run those for the amount of time he specified. For example, let's say five minutes, or maybe just one minute depends on what you prefer. And then it will tell you the score results of those, and it will tell you which is the best one to use in production. And it will tell you, give you a lot more information. That's just the tip of the iceberg of the information that it will give you. So if you run a specific benchmark, he will give you this nice benchmarking report, which gives you all kinds of information, couple of statistics. As you can see, a couple of tables with information. And with this information, you can actually get to understand your use case better. And most importantly, you can easily decide which algorithm you want to use in production, because it also will tell you which algorithm is the best, actually. Okay, so how does this work? Well, first of all, you need to configure it, of course. So what you do is you normally have the solver configuration, right? As you see here on the left, the solver config, which has a solver root element. Now, instead of creating that, you create a new XML file, which has a planner benchmark root element. That planner benchmark root element has multiple or one or multiple solver benchmark elements. And such a solver benchmark element is just basically just a name and a solver configuration. So you can copy paste your solver configuration inside the solver benchmark element, basically. Now, because you will have multiple solver benchmarks, here's one, here's one, as you can see. And you don't want to repeat the same information all over again, every time for each solver benchmark, like the solution class, like the score director factory and so forth. You can have an inherited solver benchmark, as I've shown here, which has this general information, which applies for every single solver benchmark. So in this case, I'm setting the score factory and so forth. Also, as you can see, very important here, setting the time limit on five minutes. So every solver benchmark has five minutes. That's what it inherits, that's what it gets. Furthermore, we also need to specify our data sets. So where can it get those? And this isn't the problem benchmarks. So as you can see here, I have five data sets, which are over here, input solution files. Now, in my case, they're coming from an Xtreme to XML file, but you can easily get them from your own format or from the database by implementing the problems files file IO. So the problem file interface just has a read method and a write method, but you only have to need the read method in this case, and to be able to read the data sets into memory. Furthermore, what I also do is I can enable and disable certain statistics. So the summary statistics are always there, but the problem specific statistics, they might influence the result of the benchmark. So as a result, that's why they are disabled by default, because they create some overhead, right? And, but you can, as you can see, there are many here and you can enable them all if you want to and get more information. So when you do this, it will write this benchmark report and then more information in the output in the benchmark directory, which you can specify right here. So you can see I'm writing it to local data and then the use case. So when we go there, so first of all, this is a local file because I've run many benchmarks and I don't want to check these in and to get our subversion because they would take up too much space further. And here are all the different use cases I have, all the different examples I have, each one has their own benchmarking directory. And then if you take a look at, for example, the cloud balancing benchmark directory, for every time I run a benchmark, the benchmarking framework automatically creates a new timestamp as you can see here and writes it's the information in there. So, and sometimes as you can see, I suffix it to just to remember what it exactly does. Now, if you then look at one of these benchmarks that we ran, we can actually open it and we can see there's an index HTML file in there which is the benchmark report. So that's the one I'll be showing you earlier and I'll be showing you in a minute in detail. Now, furthermore, we also get for every data set and for every algorithm that we ran, we also get the, if it had these problem statistics, we get a CSV file. So we can actually post-process those and we get the graphs which I'll be showing in the report too. So there's lots of information in there. Okay, so let's take a look at the benchmark report. So the first thing we have is we have the best score summary. This is by far, this one is the most interesting graphs. What it shows you is for every data set, so you can see the data sets on the bottom here, all five of them, it shows every algorithm. So every color here is a different algorithm and it shows you the result of that and higher is better. So you can easily see that if you compare these algorithms that the red one is terrible, the blue one is less terrible and then the green, yellow and pink one are competitive and they're pretty much the same, but of course, one is as likely better on average than the other, right? And if you actually look at that, the actual, here we also get the same information but in the table format. So this is data set one, right? And each line is one of the solver configurations. So data set one against, let's say tabu search is this score and against similar leading, then it's this score. You can see that this score is actually better. It's in the cloud, but this is for cloud balancing. So to present the maintenance cost, we have to pay for our cloud, to our cloud provisioner. So the less computers we use, the less we have to pay. So this is of course more interesting. Here we have to pay 930 less than over there. So that's interesting. But you can see that the big differences, of course, with those two other algorithms. Now to quickly explain the difference, these three are the meta heuristic algorithms, the things which opto planar, the real interesting algorithms in opto planar and these two are the first fit construction heuristics. So first fit decreasing one. So what you will find in most companies who don't use opto planar yet or who have human planners is that the results will basically be similar to first fit or first fit decreasing. So yeah, this is of course, this is playing, these algorithms play in a different ballpark, right? So what the benchmarker here tells you is that if he would have a choice, he would say, I recommend you to use similar needing in production because if you look at the average score, that's actually the best one. Now do notice that it's not always the best on every single data set. As you can see here, it's the best on four out of five data sets. Well, on this particular data sets in those five minutes, tabo search is the best. Still, I would be using similar needing in production because yeah, we cannot predict in advance, which because there's a little bit of, the algorithms takes on random, randomness into account and that's just the way meta-horristics work and that there might be supplied differences and it might be a little bit better or a little bit worse on a particular data set. What you do have to know is that they always start from the results of the first fit decreasing algorithm. So they will always be better than that. So you will never see that these meta-horristics are worse than the blue ones. So the three last colors will always be at least as good as the blue one. And as you can see, in 99.9% of the cases, if not more, they will be seriously better, right? Now, we have many other statistics, but not interesting one is to show this relatively. So what we can do is we can take the worst algorithm, which is the first fit decreasing algorithm and then compare the other algorithms against that relatively how much percent it's better. So how much percent are we basically saving and maintenance fees for our cloud provision, right? So if we do that, we can see that over here, the green one on the first data set is 90% better. The yellow one is 20% better. So we can then average that out again and we can see that similarly is on average 21% better than first fit. So if your company is currently using first fit or maybe they're probably not using first fit, that most companies actually go for first fit decreasing, then you can easily see that it will be 21 minus 4% is about 17% better. So which is a nice gain, right? If you can save 17% on your cloud costs, if you're a big company, that can be a lot of money. So it's definitely worth investing in these, in using these algorithms and a solver such as an opto plan, right? Now on top of, so this is, now on top of that, we also have performance summaries, performance graphs. So what it does here is it prints how fast it's solving, how many scores per second it can calculate. So what is the score per, so every time opto plan changes something, it calculates the score. And if you have a good score calculation, so if you're using the rules or the Java, the incremental Java one, what you will see is you will see no degradation as the problem scales out. So on the X axis, we have the problem scale, which is the number of entities times number of value. So as the data set gets bigger, we get more over here. So let me just show you that. So for the 100 and 300 processes, the problem scale is basically the multiplication of those, of the number of computers, number of times the number of processes. So we get 30,000 here. And for the bigger cases, we get a much bigger number of course, right? So that's what we see on the X axis. And on the Y axis, we then see how fast, how many scores per second we can calculate. Now, interesting thing to note here is as the problem scales out, the degradation in score calculation is actually not that big. It actually, as you can see there, we don't lose, it doesn't get a lot slower if our problem becomes a lot bigger. And that's a good thing, because if we, for example, using EZ's Java score equation, which doesn't do incremental stuff, which doesn't do deltas, you would see that it actually, it's terrible, it basically goes to null as the problem becomes bigger. And that's not a good thing, of course, because that means we cannot scale. So this is very important to be able to scale. If you wanna be able to scale, you have to have a good, this graph needs to look good. And if you use rule score calculation, then you will probably, then it should be looking good in the form of this thing. And if you use incremental Java score calculation, you can actually go a little bit faster, or actually, you can go, quest scalability is about the same, but performance-wise, you can actually go faster. But there is a lot more maintenance work to make that happen and to keep that up to date. So we definitely recommend to stick with rules, which is the best option. Now, what you can also see is that some of the algorithms are actually a lot faster. That's not, that's because it's unfair because the first fit and the first decreasing algorithm over here, they are faster because they calculate the score of partially solutions instead of entire solutions. So they're cheating. And I'm not really cheating, but that's just the way they work. They just, they construct partial solutions. So it's not a fair comparison to compare them with the others. In this particular case, the tabu search one is also better. And that's an interesting thing here. That's because we enabled all of the problem statistics and they actually take some, they have some overhead and they have a much, much bigger overhead on the similarity and late acceptance that they have on tabu search because the tabu search is a slow-stepping algorithm and the other are fast-stepping algorithms. Again, this is the detail, but what you will see, like I can show you in another benchmark I ran is that normally tabu search, you can see here, tabu search late acceptance that they do have about the same speed if you don't enable all those extra problem benchmarks. Now, so what are those problem benchmarks? Okay, so we have a couple of other benchmark, summary benchmarks, of course, but they are not that interesting. Shows you how much time we spend, like for example, we spend on all algorithms five minutes, you can see that on the construction statistics, they cannot, when they are finished, they are finished, they cannot use that extra time they got of those five minutes so they finish up, finish early, but you can see that all the metrics nicely stopped at five minutes. Now, what we can, so what I spoke earlier about is the problem statistics. So for one particular problem data set, like for example, for this data set, we can generate also statistics. Now, if we, okay, shown before, we actually have to enable those, right? So you see here I've just enabled the best score for this one, but you can enable all of them. In this case, they're actually all enabled, as you can see, while in the other, and this is another benchmark of the, where only one of them is enabled. Important to note is that if you enable them, they will influence the benchmark. The best score one won't influence it much, but some like the memory use and so forth, they will definitely influence the benchmark and will give, and will basically make it slower. And that's also what you saw in the performance for earlier, and this affects some algorithms more than it does others, right? So by default, they're not enabled. That's the main reason why they're not enabled by default. So, okay, what does the best score one show? Is the best score one shows us how the best score evolves over time. So as we give it more time, how much does this best score improve? And this is how this graph should look like, because what you see is, if in the first few seconds, it increases a lot the score, gets a lot better, right? And then it flatlines as we get to the near optimal, to the near optimal solution or to the optimal solution. So, and at some point, it flatlines up to the optimal solution, of course. Now, it's important, so that's interesting to note, that if you would give it, let's say 20 minutes, this is a score which you would get with top research, and this is the score you would get with similar, with late acceptance with similar annealing, you might actually get even a better score because that actually projects itself to the amount of time it is given, but the others are more what you see here is what you get. Now, an interesting thing there is that, so you could say, I can just run it for 20 minutes in prediction, but if you have five minutes, why not run it for five minutes and you get a slightly better score, without, if that extra time doesn't really, if that extra time, if you have it, why not use it? Interesting thing is that, if your graph doesn't look like this, if it looks like a line is going up, is that there's plenty of room for optimization that you've not even reached started flatlining yet. And as we actually go to bigger and bigger data sets, you will see that we are less flatlining already, right? So, this is less sharp, that's an interesting observation. Then you get a clue, okay, maybe I need to spend more time in this or I need to find ways to speed this stuff up and we have a couple of ways to do that. And then we will get, we will flatline earlier. Well, once you've started flatlining, you basically know that it's really not worth investing more time to get this better and better because this is what we'll get, right? Okay, furthermore, we have many other statistics I won't go into them. Some actually show the particular constraint type. So if you have multiple constraints type, all of the soft constraints, for example, you can actually show how they, their score related to each other and how it evolves and so forth. We have many more statistics. On top of that, we all, so those were the problems, statistics and the problem data sets. Then we also have for each solver configuration that you configured, we actually out print, we print out what you, how it was configured. So that allows you to easily copy paste that into your prediction solver configuration. So in this case, it's telling you, you should be using similar data in production. So you can copy paste this one and put that one into your solver configuration, right? And you can ignore the other ones. Furthermore, we have some benchmark information which tells you on which kind of machine it run, which kind of Java and so forth, which version of opta planner. This allows you to easily check if two benchmarks, if you ever have two benchmarks, if they were, if they are a fair comparison or not, right? Okay. So that's what the basic benchmarking tool could basically gives you. But on top of that, we can do a couple of other things, right? So maybe you've seen it or maybe you haven't, but no, you haven't, but let me show you. So this is our data there. So where I have the curriculum course, right? And as you can see at some point around the curriculum course on JDK6 and JDK7 and also on JDK8 actually, although I didn't suffix it here. And I want to see how they compare against each other. Another problem is that in one particular benchmark, you run one against one particular JVM against one particular code base. You can configure different solver configurations, but you cannot tell them to use different code bases or different JVMs or stuff like that. So what you can, but how did we solve this quite easily? Well, you just run both of them. And then after you've run them, you take the aggregator, the benchmark aggregator, and you can basically, and what this allows you to do is, it's just some local app you can start up. You can select two benchmarks, right? There are two different benchmarks and you can generate a report of how they look against each other. So I'm now taking these two benchmarks, which both of them have only one solver configuration regrettably and then I'm generating it. And once this is done, I can show this in the browser, right? And then it will show me in the browser as you can see how they compare against each other. And apparently they, in this particular case, it's quite clear which one is better and which one is not. I don't think they ran long in this case. So that's one thing you can do, right? And then the second thing you can do is, the second thing you can do more than just use the benchmarker is use the templating support. So how does that work? Well, let's say you wanna try, you wanna tweak a particular value, right? So let's say you wanna tweak, really tweak the taboo value, right? So you're saying, okay, the default is good, but if I can tweak it and get 1% improvement, well, my company is actually quite big, so spending 1% less expenses for a particular planning problem will save a lot of money. And it's really worth spending that extra time to tweak it a little bit further. So for the power users, what you can do is you can tweak these particular values and instead of using the default. What you can then do is, with the templating benchmark, what you can do is you configure a planner benchmark as you did with an XML file, but this time we do it in a free marker XML file. And then you just configure one solver benchmark, as you can see here, but we put it in a for loop. Actually, it's in two for loops in this case. We have a for loop for different entity taboo values and a for loop for different account, accepted account limit values. And so for every combination of these two lists, it's going to add another solver benchmark. And so we get a lot of solver benchmarks, right? And then for each of those solver benchmarks, it will run them against each of the input solution files. So it will be a lot of benchmarks, right? So you definitely wanna run this during the night. And then if you come back in the morning, then you'll get a large report with lots of information. So and it might look a little bit like this one, where as you can see, we ran a lot of, here it was only five data sets, but we ran a lot of different solver configurations. You can see that we're actually only, there was this one with where we had the 10, 20, the 30, which was used by a free marker variable basically. And you can then see which is the best one. Now, luckily we have the graph, we have the table because in the graph, it becomes too, there's just too much information, nothing becomes readable anymore. But in the graph, what we can then easily see is, okay, this one is the best one. This is the one which I'll keep, right? Furthermore, with the AccurGator, we can actually throw out, filter out the non-interesting ones. So we can actually get a graph which will be readable again, except instead of this one, right? But so the templating benchmark is very powerful to do power tweaking basically, right?  You just be careful not doing that then, to avoid doing that, the best remedy for that is just to add more problem benchmarks, data sets, they make sure that you don't over tweak, okay? So that's my video for today. So I hope you enjoy watching and if you want more information about Autoplaner, just go to the website autoplaner.org.


Hello, I will talk again about the Yocto, but not really for a product for some specific tools we can use additionally on an image. I am a CTO of Smile ECS, Smile is a French company in Paris and several towns in France and some place in Brussels. I am a teacher and long term user of open source software. I am teacher, writer and bad English speaker. This is my favorite competence. I will talk about using build system for our industry all. There was several Yocto presentation today, so I will be very quick about the introduction. I will try to do a demo. It will be the third demo today and maybe the third demo will fail or I don't know because the two previous demo failed. Not for me, but no. The robot was broken, maybe the pie will work, I don't know. We will create a recipe, not for creating a recipe, but to use, in order to use some tools on the recipe to modify the recipe to update the recipe. We will try to build a kernel module with Yocto, inside Yocto or outside Yocto. The last part, maybe the most interested part is about CI, for example testing packages or testing functionality on an image. You can write some scripts to test functionalities.  When you have an industrial project, you have some necessary tasks, but costly tasks such as installing the VSP from Yocto, for example, or BuildWoot or PatexDist, which is the next conference. You have to create the SDK for building apps, it should be done with the same tool. You have to develop your applications, which is your job. Most of the time, nobody wants to sell and to buy a Linux system, it's not interesting at all for the people. They want the system to work and the application to work. And then you have to integrate and maintain the system in the long term. It's strange because it's not the last version of the slide, I think, but it's not programmed yet. So a build system, such as Yocto, is not a development tool, but it's a tool to generate the SDK, to create the VSP and to create tools in order to manage the system, the image and the install system. And I will show some tools to debug, not debug, but develop inside Yocto. But most of the time, Yocto is not a tool for development, it's a tool for integration and development is done outside Yocto. But it's still possible, for example, to compile kernel modules and to test to remote debug applications inside Yocto. And the developing application needs some additional steps, such as CI, to test packages and to test an image for complex systems. So some, the most tools are Yocto, B-root, OpenWRT, P-TXD, etc. But Yocto is the most famous. Today, all the conference, they spoke about Yocto. And the next one, except the next one, we will speak about P-TXD, but there are lots of Yocto users around. So Yocto is based on Open Embedded, it's a prefix for our international system of majors. And the Yocto main concepts are the metadata, the recipes, the extended recipes. So we will create the extended recipes with tools during the conference, the configurations, the classes includes. And the layer, which contains the metadata. And for building a recipe, you have to do a bit bake. Bit bake my recipe and we create a package you can install. So you can integrate the package directly in the image. Or you can install the package using package system, such as IPK, RPM, or DEB.  Ok, this is the principle of Yocto with the layers. And you have the in yellow, the Yocto layers, and then you have to add the BSP, example for the Raspberry Pi, etc. So if you want, for example, if you want to build a Yocto image for Raspberry Pi, you have to download Yocto, actuellement, the pocky sources. You have to get the Raspberry Pi hardware layer with the same branch. You have to create a build environment. You have to add the necessary layers for the first test. The only necessary additional layer is the Raspberry Pi layer. And you define the machine and you create a very simple image to test the board. And you put it on an SD card in case of a Raspberry Pi. You see that's an example of a very simple recipe, a very simple program based on CMake. We can build with the distribution. So I will show the build for example. I will remove the build to show there is no problem, but I will build it again. Ok, so if you build the recipe, you can see the package created with a single binary, which is on the board. I was afraid about the demo so I put it on the board before. Ok, well. In Yocto, there is a very interesting feature, which is a bbappen. With a bbappen, it's a quite extension of a recipe. So you start from a bb, a recipe, and you add a bbappen with a data, for example patch, etc. Or configuration for BuzzyBooks or Linux kernel or anything you want. And you can generate a different package with different data based on the same initial recipe. So the most famous example is the splash screen. So the standard splash screen provided by Yocto. You update the logo and you get a new logo. For example, with Yocto logo or Raspberry Pi logo based on the... If you start with the open embedded logo. Ok, the first very simple tool is DevShell. DevShell is just a shell you can start from Yocto to modify source code. So for example, it opens a new terminal so we will start with a recipe. And so we type bitback-devshell by Paximake, for example. You get a new terminal, very small. And you can edit the code, for example. And you don't use bitback tools, you use the standard tools. For example, you can copy the binary to the board in order to do a small test, for example. Yes, no. Yes, start. Problems are starting. No, it's not 4. It's 3. So there's a new example modified by the simple tool. Simple, but it's not that very interesting, but it's a possibility to do a small test. Ok, the next tool, which is much more interesting, is DevTool. So DevTool is a way to modify a recipe, not modify the sources inside Yocto. So you start DevTool on an existing recipe, for example. You can create this recipe with DevTool, but... And it will create in another layer, it will create a BBAPen, to, for example, to apply a patch to the initial recipe. But you can do that by hand, for example, if you create a new layer and you edit, etc. But if you want to do in a simple way, you can use DevTool for that. There are lots of functionalities in DevTool, but this is a very simple, example I can do in some minutes here. So for example, instead of this shell, I use DevTool, not with BigBake DevTool. Modify. Ok. So when you, it has a local directory, which is workspace, which is called workspace, where the DevTool copies the sources of the recipe. And you can add, and it's automatically add the new layer to the list of the layer. Ok? So you can go to the workspace. And the main difference is that the sources is managed by Git. So you change the source, DevTool, instead of the shell. You commit the modif. DevTool demo. Ok? And you just have to create a new layer. For example, create a new. Metaphos.dem menu. It exists. I will remove because I want to be honest. Ok? I create a new layer. I add a layer. But it's an empty layer. Ok, 3. Ok, there is nothing except some small example, which is not useful for us. And then you can DevTool. Finish. MyPack CMake. And you just give the path of the new layer. Or the new layer. Ok? So it's a bit... It creates everything to create a BB happen for the recipe. Ok? So as I said, you have to remove the workspace, which is not this one. It was the wrong line. You remove the workspace because it's not useful anymore. And now, you can build the recipe again with BigBake. And you should notice, if it works, that the version of the release will not be upgraded. Ok? But it's not a problem. Yes, because... Ok? I forgot something. So you have the... You have the result of the... of the modification. And the best way is the following, is to create... to change the version of the recipe in the... to force it to compile again. So with the package system, you can update the package much more easily. Ok? So you have a new package with the R1 version instead of R0. Ok? With Yocto, you can create... It's a very interesting feature of Yocto. You can create SDK, which is called Extensible SDK. You can install very easily on another PC Linux system with quite the same distribution. It creates a shell script, which includes the SDK. And you just have to run the shell script to install the cross compiler. And the SDK is mostly the cross compiler, a cross debugger. You have an Eclipse plugin. You can use emulator if necessary. And you don't need to know Yocto to use it. And it's very interesting because in most of companies, you have a team integrating and testing the packages with Yocto and system knowledge. And most of people, they don't know anything about Yocto. They build their own pack system. They build their own programs with their knowledge. And they give the sources. And once they test it, they give the sources to the Yocto team to integrate the new version as a package. Ok? So there is a specific documentation in the Yocto documentation about the SDK. A simple way to create the SDK is to use a big-peg mit-at-all-chain, which creates a basic SDK. And you just have to execute the shell script to install the SDK as follows with sourcing a script which is provided by Yocto. For example, I can do it. It's already installed, but I can do it. So you source the OPT, OK, 3D environment. And so the $cc is modified. So it's not a .co. Ok. But most of the time, you may have to integrate some specific libraries or scripts or anything you want. For example, when you use Qt, you have Qmake, you have some scripts. If you use Xenomai, the real-time extension for Linux, you have some tools and specific libraries. So you want to integrate the libraries in the SDK. And for that, you create an image, for example, an image including Xenomai. And you use the populate SDK function to get the SDK, which includes the same libraries as the image. And you can also include the kernel sources if you want to develop kernel modules with SDK. So you can do everything outside Yocto. Ok, so for example, if you want to compile a module, you do make kernel SRC equal, etc. And you give the pass to the kernel sources used by the board. Ok, for example, with a simple module, it's a kernel, it's a still yellow, and you copy the module to the board. And you load the module, for example, in smode.hello.q. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. So you have the module in the board. And there is a functionality to do the same with inside Yocto. And there is a directory which is used for the kernel recipes. If you integrate a module in the kernel in the recipe. But it is in the Yocto directory, not outside the Yocto directory. You can use it from Yocto. But I think it's not a good way, but you can use it if you want. It's a TMP workshop, etc. Kernel build artifacts. Exactly the kernel source necessary to compile a module. Ok. So the last part is to try to use some CI functionalities. So when you add functions or you modify a system, you want to check there is no regression on the system after an upgrade on the standard components. And on other application, you develop with SDK. And then you add packages, for example. So you have lots of methods and tools for that. It's very famous. And I don't want to talk about it again. And there are two functions provided by Yocto, which is a ptest to test a package. And test image to test an image. And of course it's possible to extend. There are lots of examples in Yocto for standard packages such as Busybox, Bluezy, etc. But you can define your own test for ptest or for test image. Ok, so we try to, for example, for ptest. In the local.conf you have to add some distro features and image features to include the ptest functionalities. And once you create a specific image with this modification, you have also a package including the ptest strips in the USR, Lib, etc. ptest. So my distro is my image in USP test. So for example you can see there is in USR Lib. You have, for example, in Busybox, you have ptest for Busybox, etc. And you have a command to see what are the packages including a ptest script. Ok. And you can test a package with a ptest runner command inside, on the board, or from SSH, which is much easier if you want to have an automatic test. So as an example we develop a small program which converts Celsius to Fahrenheit, which is very useful. Ok. And we want to check if the program is ok. So with the program we give a script with some script which is called one ptest. It's a simple shell script. And a list of data which is simply temperature in Celsius and temperature in Fahrenheit. And we run the test to see if the program gives the right value for Fahrenheit. So for example I do the ptest for. For. Ok. And you begin the test. And you have the result of the test. And of course you can do that from SSH.  But it's very long. I will not do this. And another one is the global testing. It's quite different because instead of testing a package on the board, for example you want to test some functionalities. For example the network, for example SSH. And basically it's designed to be run by QMU, by the QMU target. But if you configure your CTO, you can make it run on a hardware board already running, for example. But there are several ways to test. You can test a booting target, you can test an already running target, etc. But what we will do with running target is much more simpler. So you add an iterate on the test image and you define the test suite. And there are lots of examples of test suite for example on the network with ping SSH, you can check the size of the disk, the remaining size on the disk. You define the way to test already finished. Oh, it's quite finished. And then you can do the test. For example, you can do that from the build environment, bit back minus C test image. Yes. Ok, you are at English time. Ok. So I will be slower. So you can run from the PC, you can run bit back minus C test image on the image you want to test and it will run the test. So for example, no. I will first try with a standard test. So ping and SSH are standard tests. Core, image, minimal. Ok. So of course the board should be... So I modified the local.com, so there is a smaller indexing of the packages of the recipe, sorry. But the most interesting, of course, you can add a new test. The standard tests are in meta layer, Libo, QA, etc., and time. And you can add your new test in your new layer and you write the test with the API provided by Yocto. It's a Python. And I just wrote a simple test today to show you. It's a test we check if the kernel modules are loaded. It's very simple. But first we will test with the standard features. Ok. Do test image. So all the two tests are ok. Then I add a new test. For example, I want to be sure that the module is loaded. So my sample module, I want to test on the board that the module is loaded. So I wrote a very simple test which use LS mode and say LS mode size should be more than one line. It's very simple. But well, why not? And the test is here. META, FOSDEM, Libo, OQR, etc., and it's called LS mode. You know. So this is a very simple test. You run a command from SSH, LS mode pipe, you see minus L and I check the result is greater than one. So I have to add the test and first, if I remove the module, there will be a failure, of course. So sorry for my old PC, it's a bit slow. No, it's not that slow. So there is an error, but because there is an error in the test. So you can see in the file, of course you can do some additional stuff that you will get a message. You will get a message, Karnel module is not loaded. So I insert the new module and I run the test again. And of course it will work. Ok. So, that's very simple, but if you have some additional components around, you can do some interesting things with some tools such as test image, ptest, etc. Do you have any question and you speak slowly, please, in English? Or you speak French with a south accent? No, I understand a little bit. Is there any way to flash the image after the building process and then test it? Yes, of course. I think so. Well, the answer is with Yokto you can do anything you want. You have to write, you can write a class to flash an image and to test the image and you can combine any tools you want. I don't know if there is, I think there is an existing configuration for test image for that, but I'm not sure, I never used it, but I think there is. Thank you. No more questions? Merci.