Good afternoon. It's late in the day on a Friday. I'll try and keep the pace up and I'm here to talk about the future of ORTC with WebRTC and I'd like to thank Justin and Serge for fabulous segue that they gave me to To this subject now if I can get the clicker going here. I'll be golden I'm good here so Just a little bit about hook flash and who we are Hook flashes the founder chair and editor of ORTC. We're kind of the guilty party for Causing some of the confusion that has existed around this, but we thought it was a critically important issue and We're We've been focused on it for I Probably the better part of the last two years We're a distributed virtual team of developers and engineers with guys currently in US Canada and Serbia our technology focus is very predominantly on ORTC and We also have done extensive work on new web RTC signaling security and identity protocol with a Technology we have called open peer We work with large enterprise customers technology service providers and carriers on The new buzzword in enterprises digital transformation with real-time communications and Before I jumped into the remarks I needed to speak to you know What in fact is ORTC and if you go to ORTC org and as you heard from Google Justin and and Serge earlier ORTC is essentially an evolution of the web RTC API and and the definition is here at from ORTC.org But the way I wanted to share it with you was really in a top 10 format of 10 of the top Benefits that the developer community and customers will potentially enjoy as we we get the ORTC lie library finished and available to the world at large so there's a lot of text on these slides But I promise we'll get through it quickly and and have Bernard our guests from Microsoft join us We'll make this content available through cranky geek and web RTC hacks and whoever else wants Hook flash and ORTC or dot org So the number I'll start at number 10 and count down to our number one So the the number 10 benefit is it enhances direct program or control over the media pipeline So it gives the developers a greater degree of control Justin did a great job of speaking to access at the object level and you'll see a lot of the benefits kind of flow from that Number nine signaling flexibility. So ORTC does not require Offer answer exchange to be repeated every time you change the media it allows you to Not not deal with a round-trip exchange every time that a transaction takes place and this is valuable to an increasing number of companies and developers who are innovating away from SIP for over-the-top applications media forking is Really just allows ORTC to use the same set of ports and that'll that'll be a benefit We'll see with ORTC One of the number seven one of the core attributes of ORTC of ORTC and really the architect fundamental to the architecture is It's it can be asymmetric. So web RTC is originally Conceived was one mic and camera to one mic and camera and as we see the evolution of the standard We're opening up Symmetric applications. So you can imagine multi-cameras multi-mics multi real-time Media from one end without having to have symmetric connections on the other Number six simulcasting and scalable video coding native To the new ORTC application number five Capabilities exchange so this allows remote side to essentially, it's polling and interrogation So that I can get a clear Vision and understanding of what the other side of my peer-to-peer Connection is doing and you could imagine the valuable applications that we'll see with that kind of Mm-hmm capabilities exchange number four SDS SRTP transport and It that's really all around easier integration of legacy devices Number three IPv6 and mobile networks and this is Already available in Chrome. Thanks the kind of progress that Google shared with us in the previous session and It is also available to you in the ORTC library That is underway and and partially available now and as we get to the top the last couple of benefits and The Google guys referred to them It's obviously an incredibly mobile centric world and our ability to leverage something as exciting and powerful as web RTC for mobile is Incredibly important and the the founding vision around The work on ORTC has has been to optimize it for mobile to the highest degree possible So the ORTC SDKs for iOS Android and win RT are Optimized for things like backgrounding and all the challenges you have in mobile network conditions and Finally What my co-founder partner Eric logger way? I think is most excited about and is is The capabilities on mobile network handoff in ORTC and I've highlighted the ORTC live as a new technology called continuous nomination which allows for that really dynamic network management as as you're roaming between a variety of cellular infrastructure and Wi-Fi as You can certainly appreciate the complexities of Moving across networks on a mobile device and maintaining live real-time Communications and there's some incredibly exciting progress on ORTC relative to those kind of issues It's been great to hear the tone today and and there was some wonderful progress at the W3C meetings in Redmond this week and The industry has come together to try and collectively help address this question Do are there are these somehow competing standards? Are they in conflict? Do I have to choose and That web RTC ORTC road map is really getting increasingly clearer Hopefully you leave here today with that Clear understanding that that this is evolution and integration. I wanted to quote Justin updated this for us today. We had a similar quote the better part of a year ago. I think So web RTC 1 1 is our proposal for how we can accomplish the following two things new set of API's for direct control based on ORTC and Integration with the existing web RTC so that we maintain Backwards compatibility as an evolution of the existing API We consider web RTC at the time of the quote. It was one one. I understand now. It's nv Which yeah kind of like nv is good. So but you know the point here we see commitment and endorsement of This road map by Google In June of this year the W3C invited hook flash co-founder Eric loggerway to co-chair the W3C standards work and Their public announcement relative to Eric joining the W3C bore working group was As the new charter sets the path for convergence started in the ORTC community group We expect Eric essentially to deliver as much progress on possible as possible on the path to convergence So we see Google we see the W3C working toward Convergence of the valuable pieces of both these standards and and it's now I'm very pleased to introduce our friend from Redmond Bernard a Boba principal architect at Microsoft Skype to speak to Microsoft's work around ORTC. Thanks chat See if we can get Bernard here Yeah, oh, do you want me to turn the slides and I can So I'll do a do the screen share Yeah Okay, hold on Hopefully I can make it do that There we go, cool All right, so I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the Edge platform and the roadmap for that. Hopefully you can see the slide Okay, thanks Chad, I think we just found the screen sharing bug Okay, we've got to slide up where I understand you've had a busy week out there Bernard Yeah So let me let me just talk a little bit about the I platform So the dev.modern.ie website lists all of the features for the roadmap of Edge and Let me just talk through the way you can interpret this and also the way you can get access To the features as they become available So everything on that site that uses the term supported means that that feature has already Shipped within Edge on Windows 10 some of them are also supported down level on Internet Explorer But everything that says supported is in fact supported in Edge So if you get a copy of Windows 10 and Edge, you can use those features today Now where a feature says it's in development such as ORTC What that means is that feature will become available Initially through the Windows Insider Preview program And so if you're signed up for that program and I'll give you a URL for that You can get builds of Win 10 that contain all the features that are listed in development That includes currently ORTC as well as BP9 which Justin talked about so One question I've gotten is when will those individual features become available and so the answer is they become available When the features are merged from the private builds Into the main Win 10 build and then that build is in in turn pushed out through the Windows Insider Preview program ORTC has been merged into the main build So it shouldn't be too long before you will see that in the Windows Insider Preview program. I'm not exactly sure when BP9 whether it has been merged or will be urged But at some point you will see that also in the Windows Insider Preview program And then eventually in Windows 10 as those features get released So let me talk a little bit about what's in ORTC and what you should expect there so back in October in 2014. We actually had a blog Entry and you can look that up also on dev.modern.ie which talked about the features that we had committed to Back then and we've gotten most of that work done particularly on the audio side So in that blog we talked about supporting G711, G722 and Opus And so we have all of those codecs checked in in addition We talked about other basic audio things that are in the WebRTC audio requirements things like comfort noise And DTMF and that is there as well on the video side in that blog We talked about supporting H264 And we still have that is one thing that you will not see in the preview program interoperable H264 Because we still have more work to do to to get some of the basic video elements of the platform in However, we do have support for something we call H264UC Which is an implementation of RPC 6190 Which is H264 with scalable video coding and this is a codec that supports both spatial scalability Sorry spatial simulcast and temporal scalability Through H264SVC So that's kind of the basic video codec that's in there that you will see in the preview program And we will continue work on interoperable H264 so that we can interoperate with Mozilla and Chrome Going forward and that will require a little bit of more work on the video platform as well as On the video codec transport itself So I know there's going to be questions about VP9 So I just wanted to Clarify a few things. There is a blog that I'll give you a point or two that describes exactly what will you will see in the Windows Insider preview program as far as VP9 support That is currently a decoder Oriented towards streaming media. So it goes along with the the dash support And streaming support that you've seen in Windows 10 already So that's what will be there. There is not currently a support for VP9 encoder And the focus is on streaming media So you will not see VP9 supported within the preview program in ORTC But basically the decoder and the streaming support is there You will see it for VP9 Come out in the windows insider preview program, although i'm not exactly sure what what build that will be in And whether it'll be in the same build is the one in which you'll see ORTC so Also a few other little things. I think this has already been mentioned Get use of media did ship in windows 10 rtm And that is already supported in adapter.js. So you should be able to run all the Examples on github the web rtc samples and they should run at edge And if there are any bugs you can let me know or other folks And uh, we did have a skype blog a while back about skype for web And that basically currently depends on a plugin, but we'll be moving towards plug-in free support over time And so you keep your eyes peeled there probably will be something along those lines talking about Support for that as well I thought I would open it up basically to questions now and and try to answer the things that are on your mind Yeah, so um, yeah, so keep your eyes peeled Basically, our plan is when we release major new features it through the windows insider preview program There's typically a blog that goes along with it kind of giving developers an introduction to the feature what's there What's not there, etc And we already have posted blogs on Media capture functionality in may and then more recently on vp9 With respect to the support there are kind of clarifying what you'll see And what you should expect as a developer And I would expect a blog entry for or to see when when that is Coming out in the preview program as well We have you back up on the big screen now bernard. Okay. I think if you're ready It will start to uh, we'll take some some questions from the audience. Okay. We go out and we'll ask Trent to uh to To repeat for you if necessary UN interpreter Yeah, happy health. Thanks chat Questions for bernard or or for Trent Justin Uh bernard, do you have any sense you mentioned that vp9 won't be supported in webRTC? In this new preview, but is there any sort of sense when that would be supported? Yeah, so I think I heard the question about vp9 So, um, so let me talk a little bit about uh, the work that needs to be done to support h264 Interoperable issues who store because it's a lot of the same work that would be needed for any additional codec So basically what we have today is what we call the h264 you see Um, and that includes support for a number of feedback messages. For example, uh, but not all the ones which you would need for for good interoperability um, there's also, uh, with the work done in the video platform for things like bandwidth estimation um, and So forth and so basically we'd need to put that foundation in place Before we could have interoperability really with any codecs And so that the first evidence of that work having been done with the h264 and once we've kind of got that Then we would be able to add more potential video codecs on top of that The other thing is because I mentioned that we had a decoder in vp9 is obviously You would you would need to have an encoder as well. And then there are issues of the hardware support and so forth so That's kind of another element is supporting, uh hardware acceleration We do have that for h264 you see And so i'm assuming that won't be a huge work item for h264 But but that would be another thing we generally like to have hardware acceleration when we release codecs so that everything runs smoothly But I I have no idea when all of that work would Get done. We basically have to make the platform Functional before any additional codecs would come in Um, and we don't have a we don't have a plan for all of that work right now. So Um, I'm not giving any dates even for h264 Other questions I wonder if you could clarify just the overall time frame for The edge browser with a completely running web rtc already for developers, you know, what kind of time frame are we looking at? well for the for the windows insider preview like as I've said rtc has been integrated into the main windows 10 build so it's kind of more of an issue of Of build packaging and putting it up on the website and so forth. So I'm not going to have a bedding pool as to which day or a week, but uh, I there's no Particular reason for the delay which has anything to do with anything going on in in rtc land so I It's not I would not expect a long wait. Let me put it that way Other questions Fippo, I know you have questions Yeah, so while we're waiting for a question, I'll give an answer that maybe is to a question some people have been asking about but or maybe not Um, so one thing people ask is what are to see objects have we've been working on and the answer is the the core objects That are in 1o that you will be seeing hopefully in a 1o spec the ice transports the sender the receiver The dtls transport are all supported. We have something called the ice gather, which is a little bit unique to orgc And that is there as well So basically the core objects of orgc which are in both the orgc spec and Our rtc 1o for the ones that we've been focusing on Thanks Bernard Okay, um, so actually this is more of a general question for both the chrome parfox and internet explorer teams Just browser interoperability in general and kind of a commitment to that Like another is like i'm going to be an adapter jas and others have been on everyone's writing the same Files to make the you know, their particular app work across all the different browsers But uh, you know, I guess now the internet explorer is on board as well Like what is the commitment there to make it work well between all the browsers? Yeah, so I heard the basic question which was about adapter jas support so as Justin mentioned there is work Going on and I think that work is you could say it's largely successful Forget user media, but it is still work in progress for Uh rtc and I guess I don't want to predict the full outcome of that. I certainly hope it all works There may be some bugs here and there But I think basically keep your eyes peeled once the insider preview was out And people have had a chance to look at it work on a little bit more We'll get a sense of how how well We've got adapter jas working on top of rtc and if there are any issues of bugs or or not But I I do think that's an active area that a lot of people are interested in and so we'll have to see how it well It works Any comments from nils or justin or anyone? So that was a little question for all the browser vendors Uh generally speaking While we are trying to uh, you know snap everything to like the latest specifications adapter is a very good way To make sure you always get kind of the the spec behavior Even when the the implementations are not necessarily up to date So like for example, you can now use promises In web rtc and even though chrome hasn't been updated yet if you use adapter because adapter gives you that promise So I expect adapters still be You know sort of front and center and something you should be using in your apps to make sure you have like You know equivalent support across browsers and hopefully it'll work for Edge, you know just as well yeah, I guess I think Theoretically if we get like a 1.0 spec and everyone implements that one spec And the spec is actually accurate then we no longer need to adapt to jas Um, but that's probably like still some time out I would guess and especially if we add like or tc to it that will add like another variant to it So we're probably stuck with adapter jas for some time Um, but on the other hand if we if we don't then that probably also would mean that we don't have any new development going on anymore So Thanks I think we're we're running out of time. Thank you so much for for joining us bernard It's really helpful And thank you trend Thank you. Thanks very much chat Okay, thanks. Thank you


What is going on everyone? Welcome back to my channel. My name is Jocelyn J. I'm really excited about this video because I've been experimenting with desk setup videos and they've done pretty well. You all really enjoyed the two dual monitor desk setup videos that I've done. I also did like a minimal desk setup back in 2019. I think that was like the first video where I started experimenting with like apartment like setups. And since all of us pretty much are quarantined, desk setups are more important than ever. I know a lot of students are gonna be studying and working from home. A lot of professionals are working from home like myself, at least for the foreseeable future. So having a nice, inspiring, motivating setup that's also ergonomically friendly can make a huge difference. Before we start this video, I wanna give a special shout out to the sponsor of this video, Trend Micro. I made sure that for this setup, it isn't too expensive. Previous setups have been a lot more expensive than this one. For one, I have one monitor. It's really nice. It's made by LG. It's called the LG UL500 27 inch. It's part of their ultra fine series 4K. I will say for a 27 inch monitor you can definitely find cheaper options but this monitor is great. Especially for those of you who are gonna be multitasking, researching. It's still large enough for you to be able to have one window open for research, another window open with like Microsoft Word or Google Doc where you're typing up a paper or if you're someone like myself who was a computer science major and you have one window open up of like Stack Overflow or your computer science assignment and another window with the IDE you're programming in or your terminal.  As a college student, you would like to think that you'll be as productive as possible studying as much as you can but the reality is you spend a lot of time consuming media and playing video games. Well, at least I did. Which makes this monitor a great option because of the 4K resolution at 3840 by 2160 and the Radeon FreeSync allowing you to match the rate at which your GPU produces.  If you are a creative or major in something that requires you to design or edit assets the LGUL 527 inch has true to life color keeping the colors consistent. Before we continue this video talking about this student desk setup, let's hear a word from our sponsor Trend Micro and how Cleaner One Pro can help you clean, optimize and speed up your computer. Cleaner One Pro is an all-in-one cleaning disk manager. With Cleaner One Pro, you can free up storage space in just one click. Along with removing unnecessary files in seconds and keep your Mac or PC in order by managing your apps. One of my favorite features that Cleaner One Pro offers is the identification and removal of similar photos hence duplicates. I reuse so many assets for my YouTube videos. I'm sure I have a lot of images duplicated and over time that can take up a lot of space. One thing I really appreciate about Cleaner One Pro is the ease of use and simple UI that is very easy to navigate and each screen tells you exactly what you need to do to clean and optimize your computer. For those of you who have Macs, Cleaner One Pro optimizes your Mac OS through the toolbar feature. This feature allows you to monitor your CPU usage, network usage and memory usage at a glance. The cleaning feature is probably the one I'll be using the most because it removes temporary files and hidden leftover files that have added up from all of the dependencies I've been importing. Also, I find myself losing storage at a more rapid pace than I'd like to and that's because of the large video files I've exported locally for my YouTube videos. The cleaning feature can filter and manage large files on your disk to free up more storage and space. You can also scan and delete junk files in just one click. I think we don't really think about virtually cleaning our computers because the clutter isn't physically taking up any space but it's important to take the time to clean your computer to optimize and enhance the overall experience. Once again, thank you to Trend Micro for sponsoring this video. Look fam, having a nice set of speakers can make a big difference when it comes to learning and consuming content. Thank you to Logitech for sending me these Logi Z207 speakers. They look even better in person and the sound quality is exceptional providing a rich stereo sound that really fills the room. You can be a dedicated iPhone 12 event likely sometime in October at all eventually but what I do have here for you is a first look at Apple. Easily pair them to multiple devices and I really like the easy controls making it simple to turn them on and off and connect them to Bluetooth. For Bluetooth speakers under $50, these are a steal, trust me. Funny thing is I didn't even really plan too far in advance for this video. What happened is I had two Lin-Man countertops. Basically I was going to replace the countertop that my wife was using with another newer or brand new Lin-Man countertop and then I was like, wait a second, we've got two Alex drawers, we've got four Autis legs. I have a countertop that I'm not using for this desk setup. I was like, I can create a really nice, minimal and affordable student desk setup. It's nice to be able to take what you have and to create it into your own thing. I had like these fake plants that I bought from IKEA that are actually gonna be on top of the shelving unit that I plan on installing soon for a video that I'm going to be releasing in the next week or so. So stay tuned for that. It's actually cool to unassemble the desk that we were using and to assemble a new desk setup. In terms of the mouse and keyboard, I decided to go with the Logitech M185 and Logitech K380 keyboard because of their Bluetooth connection, compatibility and small form factor. Spending hours while writing a paper, entering and lab results or programming can take a lot of time and typing so I wanted to make sure that the mouse and keyboard that I chose wouldn't take up much space in a backpack or be a hassle to keep up with while you're on the go. The typing experience is great. The keys on the K380 keyboard actually feel really good on the tips of my fingers and that's probably because of their circular shape. The M185 mouse is responsive and it fits in my palm pretty well although it's a bit smaller than I like for my hand size but will probably fit great for the average size hand or smaller hands. For the countertop, I went with my go-to which is the IKEA Linman 47 inch countertop. This size is perfect for a small dorm and looking back at it, I wish I would have decided to decline the desk that they offered me in college and replace it with my own setup. I will say if you have enough space, get a larger countertop because it can make a big difference allowing you to multitask more effectively, reduce clutter and it feels less cramped. I decided to place the countertop on top of one Alex drawer and two Otis legs. The reason being is because for one, I'm way too big to fit my legs between two Alex drawers and a 47 inch desk. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anyone to go with two Alex drawers for a desk that's shorter than 55 to 60 inches regardless, I really like the contrast of having these two legs and a drawer and it takes up less space. Also, in terms of the fake plants on the desk, you can never go wrong with real or fake plants on your desk. Adding some greenery to such a simple setup can really add a pop of color and improve the state of mind. So that concludes this video. If you're still here, give this video a thumbs up. I will greatly appreciate it and it also helps with the YouTube algorithm. Comment down below your thoughts and your desk setup or any other desk setup videos that you would like to see me create. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I greatly appreciate that and I'd love for you all to become a part of the fam. And with all that being said, have a blessed rest of your week. I'll see you all soon. Peace.


So, the new adventure book just dropped and everyone is losing their minds over it because it was written and sponsored by God's Gift to Dice, and it represents some people's only chance to live out the fantasy of being on Critical Role that's been perpetuating the scene since 2015. Even I'm a fan of Critical Role.  For me, Call of the Netherdeep represents Matt Mercer's ability to write a story that's completely inflexible and doesn't revolve around the players so much as they revolve around the book. So, does it manage to capture that tabletop whimsy sponsored by D&D Beyond? Yeah, I think so. Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion and that the cruel mistress of the YouTube algorithm forced me to upload a video immediately after the book's release or else it'd be lost in the maddening sea of irrelevancy, but from what I could skim, I think that this is a refreshingly normal tale about heroes and villains set in a very cool setting where humans are considered an exotic race. For all you Grognards, Call of the Netherdeep keeps to the D&D formula of an epic scale, Call to Adventure that makes you feel like a real hero by the end of it. But modern D&D fans who want something new will distract themselves with the monstrous race setting and the new rival system, without needing to dedicate 4 hours of your life to a single podcast episode in order to know what's going on. The book actually throws a lot of pregame lore players to get them up to speed on the world, so you'll know you're marquise from your menagerie coast before you even put pencil to paper, and the locations are places that the cast either never went to at all or spent so little time in that only the most hardcore critters will pretend to remember it. Breaking the mold of typical 5e adventures, Call to the Netherdeep starts players off at level 3 instead of level 1, and it's balanced around 5 players rather meaning unless you want your DM to go through major revisions, you'll need to use an extra dose of sleepy time tea if you want to kidnap a full party. The book says that it goes up to level 13, but I hate it when books do this because you hit level 13 by completing the adventure. So really, you just go through levels 1 through 12, and level 13 is for the closing credits and players who want to homebrew further adventures in Wildemouth. The story is broken up into seven chapters, one of them being a traveling chapter that gives me caravan PTSD, but the majority are just sandboxy cities and dungeons that are really easy on the DM to run, but like all modules, don't allow players to wander off the beaten path too much, and players looking to travel the whole continent of Wildemouth just like their favorite voice actors will be very disappointed by both the linear storytelling and the few locations presented. However, if that's what you're looking for, the Explorers God to Wildemouth already has everything you want, and it's definitely not necessary for this adventure, but it helps expand on the world if you're looking for after-class activities. Also, despite not being the officially sanctioned seafaring adventure, Call of the Netherdeep has multiple water levels, and water plays a surprisingly big role in the atmosphere. So, if you've been wanting to break out that Triton or Water Genasi, or hey, even a Simic Hybrid, now would be a good chance, even more so given that Xhorhas is a hub for non-traditional monster girls. The overall story, like I said, is linear, but not anywhere near as linear as some books on the market. Obviously, the broad strokes are going to be the same because this is a book and books aren't your friend, but several sections have multiple pages of what-ifs to describe the consequences of previous actions.  If the party steals from the old lady's muffin wagon, she will hunt you in the night and strike you down with the might of Zeus. Besides that, every location is its own little sandbox where walking to a shop activates a minigame to count all the bellhop's beans before they explode and kill everyone inside, and they even throw in some fancy little factions, a la Dragon Heist, to give you more sidequests to follow, ensuring that, like Leroy said, there's always something to do. It's kinda like Order the Dragon Queen, but with actual content. So much so that they included an actual caravan chapter. Luckily, it's only a quarter of the time, and it doesn't have a self-destruct button hidden in one of the carts, so I won't have to make a 14-minute rant this time to warn people of the impending danger. You can just spend the time mingling players with their rivals as they sing campfire songs into the next city. Speaking of rivals, the rival system is what you would expect from hearing about it. You've got five NPCs that make up Rivals Incorporated LLC, who will show up to cause a big stink and give players a punchable face to look forward to.  In terms of story, they're fairly indispensable, constantly getting new flavor texts to describe how they respond to the player's actions, and I can see my players losing their minds over trying to one-up the rivals, which kind of makes them better antagonists than the actual villains of the book, which range from creepy cult of bad guys to the conceptual idea of evil. Despite their canonically being five rivals, they're always supposed to be as many of them as there are you, so if your game only has the classic four players, you can erase a rival as well, and if you end up with a massive six players, the game suggests that you give one of the rivals an identical twin. I guess if you have seven people, you should just make rival triplets. I do really appreciate that the book takes time to give you goals for the rivals and things for the rivals to say offhandedly during a fight, which isn't necessary for veteran DMs, but it just helps add an extra layer of personality on characters that this book is trying hard to get you to care about. No matter what, though, I am going to spend my entire life hating that this water genasi pirate girl born of orcs on the sea isn't the spawn of Ford and Jester, because of course that would be too much fan service. I'm not mad, I just want to put something in your eye. The ending of this adventure does something that I absolutely love and wish more campaigns would take to heart, which is that it provides multiple full endings for the players. No spoilers, but most 5e adventures have a few alternate endings that get like a paragraph at most, and then one canonical ending that gets art and flavor text that the writers obviously wanted you to read. Call of the Netherdeep instead goes the route of Undertale by titling its endings best, worst, and natural, based on what the party did up until this point and how the rivals reacted to the party Fortnite dancing on them. None of the options are presented as better than the others and one leaves the story open to further adventures if the party is looking for a reason to keep playing, but it makes me feel like I'm not fighting to get to the real ending, I just get what I get. Honestly, the entire story feels like it has way more to say about the nature of being a hero and having something to say is more than 5e has given in a long while. Overall, I'm excited to run Wet Boys the RPG and while I haven't even started yet, it looks like an easy adventure to run for DMs looking to rope their critter friends into and I plan on starting every session by asking who can give a recap for Call of the Netherdeep. But that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, be sure to click everywhere and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can afford to pay for some rivals of my own because everyone else is too scared to face me. But yeah, Davi out.


So after working nearly 70 hours in the medical ICU this week, I thought I'd share my favorite resource to help you crush it on your critical care rotation. Let's get into it. Hey friends and welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. And here on the MD journey, we make content to help people like you succeed on whatever journey you're on, but doing it with less stress. Now I know for me personally, whenever I was a medical student as well as a full-time physician now in residency, the most stressful rotation in my experience has to be working in the ICU. And that's due to a combination of being in a stressful environment where there's a lot to know and the patients who are dependent on you for this knowledge are very sick. So it feels like there's a time element to it. And so in today's episode, we're going to talk about some of the best resources on how to prepare for an ICU rotation so that what you can acquire that knowledge you need, but doing it quicker, as well as how I go about learning and preparing myself as a full-time physician. And after you're done with this episode, I'll link down below another video on how I learned medicine in general as a full-time doctor, especially with my schedule is so full. So if you're interested, go ahead and check that down below. And while you're down there, you'll probably also notice a lot of free resources, including our free study rehab courses, simple three steps that we put all of our students through to help them get better grades, but with more free time. So if you're struggling with that, definitely check it out. But let's get into some of the best resources for your ICU rotation. Now, I don't know about you, but for most med students, including myself, as well as residents, one of the things that is just the most difficult to master has to be ventilators. That's simply because as a med student, you may not have a lot of experience working with it, much less making adjustments and changing them. But on your ICU rotation and definitely as a full-time physician in residency, when you're on your ICU rotations, you're definitely going to have to know how to look at a ventilator, know if it's working the way you want it to, as well as evaluate the results, and be able to know how to make adjustments based off those results. So one of my favorite resources to learn really the basics as well as some of the advanced techniques to doing better on ventilators has to be the ventilator book. That's exactly what it's called. I will link it down below. It's very cheap. I think it was like $14 on Amazon. It's also very, very short. But the beauty of it is that if you guys can see, if you're watching this on a video format, is that they'll have diagrams basically of what type of things you'll be seeing on your ventilator and basically gives you a troubleshoe manual. So things are going in the right direction on certain settings and make these adjustments. If things are not going well, think about these things. And after going through the book a few times, like I mentioned, it's a really quick read. It's very conversational. I do find myself holding on to a lot of the principles that he talks about in this book to when I look at the ventilator. Just a few days ago, I was admitting a patient who was found down, they had lost a pulse at their home. And we had no idea why. And simply listening to their lungs and looking at their ventilator, I could quickly just tell, I think this person is having a COPD exacerbation. They probably didn't have their inhaler. And sure enough, I called their husband who was at home and they said, yes, they haven't had any of their medications for two to three days. As soon as we started treating them for a possible COPD exacerbation while they're on their ventilator, all their numbers on the vent, on their labs, they got better. And that's kind of a beauty of knowing what patterns to look for. So if you guys are interested in mastering your knowledge of ventilators, make sure you definitely check out this book. Definitely saved my life a few times in residency. I'll link it down below. Now resource number two also helped me a lot in terms of both ventilators, as well as other ICU concept. And that has to be MedCram. I talked about MedCram a lot more on our episode about the best YouTube channels for people on their medical journey. So if you guys are interested, I'll also be linked down below. But MedCram was great for explaining some of those basic concepts. Even before I had went through the ventilator book itself, I'll link down below the ventilator playlist that you can find on MedCram. So super effective. It's also very easy to follow. If you go through their channel, you'll also be able to find other very ICU friendly topics, including things like acid bases and halers and more. And so if you're on an ICU rotation or if you're in residency and you just don't have time or attention span to read a book, I'll still recommend it. Definitely consider checking out free resources like MedCrams on YouTube. I'll link them down below. Now in addition to resources like the ventilator book, MedCrams, I have tried other books, things like the little ICU book.  It is very dense, so it's not going to be something specifically that adds to this list. But if you're interested, I'll link it down below in case you just want to reference the material to have to the side. Later in today's episode, I'm going to talk about the resources that I go to the most to help me learn. But I do want to first talk about what do I do in the situations where I'm asked to come evaluate a patient. You know, currently I work at an 800 plus bed hospital on any time I get paged to evaluate a patient. And sometimes I may get asked to evaluate a patient for a problem that maybe I still have a lot of experience with. So what do I do in those situations? Well, typically because time is so limited and those patients tend to be critical because another doctor has already deemed them to be, hey, I don't really know what's going on or I feel like they need more acute care than usually I use a lot of resources on my phone. And so I'll go ahead and share on the side. If you're watching this on the video format of different resources I like to use. So one of my mobile resources that I've kept on me for quite some time has to be MD on call. It's something I paid for a per once, but essentially it's a big reference material of any problem that I may be a counter. But so for example, if I have somebody that's hypotensive and I don't know how to manage it because I'm a brand new intern, then essentially I can get an idea of like, what are the reasons somebody could be hypovolemic. And as I walk into the room, I can already start to say, okay, like what labs should I be start ordering? How should I manage them? What type of things should I be doing? Or what my nurses know of? Who do I need to call and console? What imaging things do I need to order?  So if somebody is hypotentremic, that's a very common reason that I get called to emergency room. Somebody has a sodium of 118, 140 is normal. And so if I forget on how to treat that, I can quickly just look to say, okay, let's evaluate this patient. Do they need to come to the ICU? Is their sodium really real? What type of diagnostic tests do I need to order if I do admit them and how do I want to start managing them? Having a quick reference material, you know, MD on call is something I've been using since my intern year. Don't use it as much now because there's a lot of problems that I've seen over and over again. But things that I haven't seen, it's a great reference material. So you can use this app, you can use another one that is very similar. And they all seem to do the trick as long as you can quickly find what you need. Now in addition to MD on a call, most medical doctors and medical students are experienced with up to date. And you can essentially look up any problems. So again, hypotentremia and I can actually use their algorithms and pathways. So sometimes I may not have a lot of time to think, read about something, but I can ask myself, how do I want to evaluate it? And essentially go down the various different trees and then start a pathway and say, yep, their sodium is, you know, normal, they're not getting any of these types of things. Or they don't have any kidney problems. They're not on a diuretic.  You should fix that problem first. If I click no there, it's going to keep asking me problems to help me evaluate. It essentially gives me a nice train of thought. Now in addition to having those pathways up to date is also obviously great about having very long Wikipedia style evaluations of somebody. So I can essentially look at what type of things I should be doing, what medications they may need, what type of labs I should be ordering. So really good resource. Again, it's on my phone. So easy to refer as I'm walking down to the emergency room to evaluate a patient who I may just not be as experienced at taking care of. And the last resource is something that I've shared throughout multiple different videos, but I really do enjoy the Human DX app to really help me improve my critical care function. Because often in ICU, the cases that give us the most head scratchers are the ones where we just don't really know what to do or what type of things we should be considering and our diagnosis. So for example, this is a case that I did not that long ago. It's a 61 year old that shows up with shortness of breath and he has all the symptoms of somebody that I'd get easily called off to evaluate for the ICU. He has a fever, is not really responding, he's been up to date on all his COVID vaccines, etc. But still having shortness of breath, even despite being on oxygen. And the nice thing about this case is that you can essentially walk yourself through what type of things you would want to know on a patient. What labs do they order? Should you also think about ordering for your future patients and then what happens in their hospital course? And ultimately, they show me chest x-rays, I can practice the chest x-ray, for example, if I'm not really good at it. And ultimately, you will get a diagnosis. Now this patient had human rhinovirus, which is something that doctors often forget even in the ICU, because nowadays we're used to looking for diagnosis like COVID, pneumonia, other infections, but viruses and other common viruses like a rhinovirus, you may have forgotten. So doing this case really helped me say, oh, maybe you should order a respiratory viral panel on a patient who may not have a bacterial infection, may not have COVID, may not have heart failure. Just adding another diagnosis to my repertoire really helps me become a better physician for these patients as I continue my ICU rotation. And next, I want to transition to where I really get a bulk of my knowledge. Now, initially, when you're starting an ICU rotation, you want to learn the basics. You want to go through the ventilators, you want to learn basic management of patients who are crashing and how to treat things like sepsis and shock. But then you're going to have a certain phase where like, what is the right research-based, evidence-based things to do for a certain patient, and have those in your repertoire and have those growing over time. And so online resources like the ones I'm about to share with you really have made the biggest difference in terms of my confidence of taking care of any patient in an ICU setting. Number one has to be the EMCRIT project. So if you go to EMCRIT.org, I will link down below. It's a resource that I use just to learn medicine in general, but it's great for things like emergency medicine as well as critical care rotations like ICU. Every few days, you're going to have great breakdowns of major topics. But my favorite place to go is this Palm Crit area. So if you click up here, it's essentially going to take you to a big, big database. And just like before, you can essentially read about any topic. So if I wanted to learn more about pericardial tamponon, I can go ahead and click here. And this is actually what I do on some of my ICU rotations where, you know, it may be a quiet hour or two, and there's nothing really going on. I want to help myself learn something. I'll show you in a second how I do this. And the part that I really enjoy is that not only is it easy to follow, but the recommendations in terms of what type of things I should be doing are very evidence-based as well as helps me understand what's not important to consider and what is important to keep in mind to take care of these really sick patients. Now finding pericardial fusion is something that you may just come across as you're reading across the first two to three blog posts that are posted. But one of the things I really enjoy is their table of contents. Because let's just say, for example, I am struggling with topics in gastroenterology where I can go into gastroenterology and understand, okay, what blog articles do I already have? Maybe I should know how to manage a patient that has cirrhosis, or remember how to take care of SPP, or know, you know, how to look at a CTA, which is really cool for a patient who may have a GI bleed, or how I should be managing patients nutrition-wise, something we forget all the time in ICU and looking at these guidelines, how to look at a patient who shows up a pink or a Titus, and so many more. And they're super, super, super helpful. And so having these articles that are really easy to follow and you feel like, okay, cool, like I actually understand knowledge and evidence-based of a specific topic without reading a big textbook, this is knowledge that I haven't been able to find anywhere else. And I definitely don't have to read a bunch of journal articles. It just kind of presented nicely, cohesively. And I can essentially look at whatever I want to learn next, and add those to my to-do list. In a similar fashion to the EMCrit website, I really do enjoy the OG life in the Fastlane. This was a website that really taught me a bunch of things, including chest x-rays and EKGs. And it's still kind of the resource I love using for that. So if you're struggling with EKGs and chest x-rays, chest x-rays has to be like the staple of something you'll have to master in a pulmonary ICU. You can go through anything. So if we look at just EKGs, you can essentially look at the EKGs by a diagnosis, but you can also just make yourself do practice the EKGs and seeing if you pick up on what they consider to be important. And so it's a great tool to both teach as well as practice. In the same way, if you go up to here where it says CCC, you can essentially find their entire compilation of everything that's considered to be critical care. And you can go through it or you can search it. So if I wanted to go through AA gradients and forgot exactly what that meant, I can go ahead and read this really quick and easy to understand, kind of break down of it. And then keep this as a reference material. And again, I'll show you in a second how I go about doing this. Now lastly, I want to share not necessarily a resource, but kind of a method of how I go about learning everything. So I've shared in that video, an episode about how I study as a doctor full time. I'll link that down below for full description. But one thing I do and I see a lot is that there's going to be topics that I want to learn more and more about. So for example, recently, these are just the topics that I focused on this week. So things like LVO, you know, obstruction, capnography, a tips, I had a patient who down went for a tips procedure because they had really bad cirrhosis. And reading more about those, adding those notes, and I can always continue to fill those up. So I was reading the Pulmcrate website, for example, on a recent call day, where the schedule was overall okay. And so essentially, I just opened up my notion, I pull up the topic. So in this topic, we're talking about LVOT obstruction, something that's very common in cardiology, but just in ICU in general. And not only does it give me a breakdown of what an LVOT obstruction is in the first place, but also kind of little frameworks of how to understand what's going on, both anatomically, physiologically, and what situations I may find somebody with an LVOT, what it looks like on an ultrasound, what clinical findings I should be using, as well as what type of things I should be treating. So what kind of pressure should I be using, how should I be treating them with fluids or not fluids, and making these notes and adding extra pictures over time. Now I know that if I have a patient in the future that may have an LVOT obstruction, I can just go to this chapter that I've made for myself in notion, pull it up my phone. Again, speed is the matter of the game in ICU. And as I'm going to go see a patient, if they have LVOT on a recent echo or found something I'm concerned about, I can quickly just go through my notes as if it was like my own personalized up to date, then I can quickly say, Oh, okay, this is what you need to do. You need to use phenyl ephrin, you can use norenephrin, maybe use consider using a beta blocker to possibly help. So all of those kinds of things I've picked up through learning these chapters and putting them in my own storage kind of second brain as a physician and are super, super effective during my time in ICU. But those my friends are some of my favorite resources that I love to use in ICU. Now if you did enjoy this, a few resources that I do recommend checking out down below. One, if you're still on what you're studying, definitely consider checking out our free three step study program or our free eight step study program where I show you exactly step by step how is able to go from 10 hours a day to five hours a day in medical school. So if you're struggling with your studying, that's where you should go. Now if you're on your rotations in medical school and you want to do better, including things like your ICU rotation, definitely consider checking out our crushing clinicals program where I show you essentially how to become an honor student and be on your way to get the residency of your dream.  It's the same strategies that I use during residency during my intern year to feel like not only could I learn medicine, not only could I do well as a patient care, not only could I be efficient and doing things like, you know, pre-rounding and taking notes and getting out of the hospital on time, but also having balance in my life while I felt like my career was going the right direction. So if you want to make sure you become a superstar physician without all the stress that comes from being a brand new doctor, definitely consider checking out those programs, which I'll link down below. But as always, my friends, hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Hopefully this gives you a little bit of light of simple resources you can use to really make a big difference in terms of your knowledge base for an ICU rotation. But without my friends, if you guys do have any questions, make sure you comment down below. And while you're down there, go ahead and hit that like button to help support this video on YouTube through the YouTube algorithm. If you're new to the channel or if you haven't joined the community just yet, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and notification bell to get more videos like this on a weekly basis. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, all I ask is a quick thank you as you go to your favorite platform, hit that follow or subscribe function, as well as going to iTunes and leaving a quick honest review helps us get in front of more people and help more people just like you on their medical journey. If you did enjoy this episode, definitely consider checking out this episode on how I study medicine as a full-time doctor, as well as this episode right here on how I use Anki like a pro to really just help me change the game. Hopefully you guys enjoy those and I will see you guys in the next one. Peace!