Hi everyone, Joe for jazby's casebreaks.com coming at you with a brand new release on a hump day 2023 tops sterling baseball. Pick your team number one. It's a four box break from a 12 box case. Very big thanks to this group for making it happen, appreciate you. So if you have a little rooftop next to your name, that means you won that spot in the filler. We pulled those teams out, kind of made it a random situation there. David, you ended up with last spot mojo before we pulled the remaining teams. What we got in here. Oh no, these are four box, well I thought there were more boxes in here. No, it's just four boxes with two hits each. It's not part of a full case. Anyway, next cases are in the store. I think these cases used to be bigger. I don't remember anymore. Anyhow, alright so let's pop this open here. This is fielding award winners, and then we got 2010 MLB All Stars. Yes, what was the hint? Yes, you can guess.  This is fielding award winners. Fielding award winners, so not specifically Gold Glove, I guess Nolan Aronado. Nolan Aronado. It is going to be Calrubican Junior. Triple Relic and Autograph 2 out of 10, nice, Orioles, Joe Pereira with the Oats, nice. He's pretty good with the glove, and these slider boxes will eventually go back to you. We'll recycle them. Alright, 2010s MLB All Stars. Nick Jaspy is trying to guess. It's so broad. Very broad, yeah. So I guess 2010 to 2019, David Ortiz, that's something I would expect in top sterling baseball. I'll let you guess again, it's a blue team. Blue team. In the AL? In the AL, actually yeah, same division. Only one blue team in the AL East. It's George Springer with the R. That's a 2 out of 3. So that's going to go to Tristan, who won the Blue Jays in the filler, and all aboard the Big Head Express. Woo-hoo! Nice. Next box, off of the category. I like the red boxes this year. The red boxes look a lot nicer this year. Alright, you got Tops All Star Rookie Cup Team, and Rookie of the Year Award Winners. Rookie of the Year Award Winners. This one I'll go with. Alright, so Tops All Star Rookie Cup Team, Bobby Witt, is Nick Jaspy's guess, and it's going to be Bobby Witt Jr. Yes! Woo! Look at that, Nick. Yes! Nick Jaspy's done. He's going to stop guessing. 2021, 33 home runs, 5 out of 25 Kansas City Royals. Nancy with that one. There you go, Nance. Alright, now we've got Rookie of the Year Award Winners. Rookie of the Year Award Winners. Who could it be? Does it mean multiple? No, they're multiple players. Dave's guessing Kershaw. Kershaw, believe it or not, not a Rookie of the Year. Woo! It's a big letter. Jacob DeGrom. One of one. Metz, that's going to be Brian S. I guess Brian, now your mission is to collect the other letters. I'm assuming D-E-R-O-M are all going to be one of ones out there? You can make the set. Nice, congrats. And all aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-hoo! Alright, two boxes to go. This is the kind of quality you can see in top sterling. If you're not familiar with it, this is four boxes, right? Yeah. Weren't there more boxes in a case, previously? That's what it was. I thought they were half case breaks or quarter third case breaks, and then I popped it open and it was four boxes of the case. Full case break. Pick your team two and three in the store right now. Get your teams before... People always say they want full case break. Before they're in some sort of filler. Next one. Stop with the half. We got Hall of Fame, Hall of Famers, and a 500 home run club. Not too many people in that club. It's a big hurt. She'll like it too. Jim Tome, maybe? Alex Rodriguez. David Ortiz. David Ortiz. Does he have 500 home runs? Yeah. I think he does, yeah. Babe Ruth. Could be Hammer and Hank. Alright, so Hall of Famers is Robin Young. Great penmanship here. Triple relic and on-card auto. That is eight out of ten. That's going to go to Peter and the Brew Crew. The original of the kid. Was he the original of the kid? The original. I thought that was Gary Carter. I thought Gary Carter was the original of the kid. I don't know. That's not my time, not my era. Alright, 500 home run clubs. Scott is guessing Poo Holes. Davey in the Twitch stream guessing Sammy Sosa. You can see both chats in the window above my head in case you guys want to interact. 500 home run clubs. James is guessing Griffey. We've got a Thomas guess. We've got another Griffey guess. It is Miguel Cabrera. Eight out of 25. Also highlighting his sterling season in 2016. Maybe he probably beat out Trout for a MVP there. That wasn't that either, was it? I don't know. It happened twice, I think. His triple crown here wasn't 20. Eight out of 25. Dual Relic and Autograph McGee. Miguel Cabrera. He's pretty good. That's going to go to Nestor and the Tigers. Scott is saying, Yacht and Gary Carter debuted in the same year so either could be the kid. But if you look at Wikipedia, the number one nickname is Robin Yacht, I think. Is it really? I did not know that. I always thought of Gary. He was also nicknamed Rock and Robin. Rock and Robin. Like the old Rock and Roll song. Gary Carter doesn't have that in his first sentence of Wikipedia. Not in his first sentence and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it was Robin Yacht. All right, we got MVP award winners. And we've got Silver Slugger award winners. Let's go Silver Slugger first. Trout. Scott says Carter only has one nickname, the kid. Kevin's guessing Trout for MVP award winners. I'm guessing Trout for Silver Slugger. I guess it could be Silver Slugger as well. Wow, double Trout. Do we throw one back? All right. This is Silver Slugger, Vlad Guerrero Jr. Dual Relic and Autograph, 11 out of 25. Blue Jays, Tristan. That wasn't a filler. Nobody wanted the Blue Jays straight up. Both of those hits could have been yours. About to fill out the next one. Last chance to get your teams in the next picker team. JaspysCaseBased.com. Go and get it now. All right, final one. MVP award winners. So Kevin's guess was Trout. I guess Trout. Nick Jaspy also guessing Trout. James guessing A-Rod. Davey's going for a Kershaw guess. I'm guessing a one-on-one with our guests. A one-on-one guess? That'd be a nice way to end the break with a train. Ooh. Is that a redemption? It's a redemption. It's a redemption. All right. Remember, you can get your next, your team next on JaspysCaseBrates.com. Good luck, everybody. Congratulations. You are due to receive a Sterling sets triple autograph relic? Is that trip three autos or three relics? Is it three autos or three relic pieces? Is it triple auto or triple three? But the text is kind of small. Relics and autos? They usually only do the small text. Of? Is it three? Are the redemption's bigger hits not necessary? The question is, is it three autos or three relics? I think it's three relics and one auto. I think so too. Or it's three autograph relics? Three autograph relics. No, I think it's one. It's just one. It's N. Is that New York? Yeah, but there's text above it. Is there really? Oh, there's an S up there. Now there's more letters. I think Jason's right. One's a New York Yankee or a New York man? Oh, no. I think that looks like Seattle. That looks like New York, right? Oh, no. Is this a randomizer? Oh, Tony. Oh, wow. Wow. It's Ichiro for the Mariners. Hideki Matsui for the Yankees. And Shoei Otani for the Angels. That's awesome. Who's not signing? Yeah, Kevin, you got it. Who's the one not signing here? I think it's Hideki Matsui. Because I feel like Otani signs and Ichiro generally signs. I feel like Hideki is jamming us up here. All right, well, that's a randomizer, folks. One happy person, two really sad people. Ichiro Mariners, that's Eugene. Yankee Steve Herrick, one that in the filler. Angels, Greg, also one that in the filler. Three different people, one happy person, one two very sad people. So let's go back to, so let's go to random.org. New dice, new list. Next case in the store, jaspyscasebreaks.com. Wish this was live. And we could really get the people going. But the redemption is still in eyes. Seattle, New York Yankees, LA Angels. One dice roll. Three into three, six the hard way. Team on top after six gets the card. Fingers crossed, U3, good luck. One, two, three, four, five, and six. After six goes to the Angels. That's Greg who got randomized. The Angels in the team random and ends up with the Sterling sets, triple auto relic featuring Ichiro Matsui and Shohei Otani. Congrats, Greg. Apologies to Steve and the Yankees and apologies to Eugene and the Mariners. Congrats to Greg and the Angels. I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us. I'll see you next time for the next Sterling break. Bye-bye.


Good morning or good afternoon and welcome to CMC markets on Monday the 16th of October and This quick look at the week beginning Well looking looking ahead to the key events this week and that there's quite a few we're certainly coming back off record breaking week for equity markets First before I get started and talk about them. Let's let's make a make a start with the risk warnings which are obligatory for compliance purposes So, you know, we'll look at we'll look at the record highs that we've seen Inequity markets over the course of the past few days and look at look to the possibility that we're probably going to see Further gains all be it on a fairly incremental basis. I certainly don't think that we're going to be aggressively aggressively pushing To the top side with with any degree of force, but what I think we will be seeing is in You know with the lack of any significant Drivers it's it's hard to really sort of make a case for a sharp decline in equity markets I got asked this question last week ultimately Given what we've seen over the past few weeks given the rallies that we've seen in equity markets and despite All of these concerns about north korea a whole host of other factors that could undermine The move higher in equity markets. They've removed they've proved to be remarkably resilient And last week's fed minutes do appear to suggest You know with last week's fed minutes do appear to suggest that ultimately The us central bank while it still remains on course to raise rates In december, I don't think there's any clear degree of certainty as to why They would increase rates by More than say two or three times in 2018. And I think one of the key reasons for that is uncertainty about The makeup of the fed board And the fomc at the beginning of next year. Let's not forget that there's no guarantee janet yellen Will be remaining in post beyond January 2018 stanley fischer, but the fed vice chair is already gone so Or is on his way out So he won't have any won't have any input Towards fed policy going forward and there are four or five vacancies on the fed board Heading into 2018 and so until we get some sort of clarity about What that fed board will look like in terms of hawkishness or dovishness I think it's going to be very difficult to establish with any degree of certainty Or us monetary policy will be In 2018 yes, the likelihood is we probably will get another rate rise in december And certainly I think the bomb markets are reflecting that uncertainty But if you look at the overall direction of the dollar and this is something I talked about the payroll's webinar Earlier this month. I talked about this inverse head and shoulders on the dollar index And at the moment it does appear that the US dollar does appear to be carving out What I would call a little bit of a base But certainly in the context of where we are here on the dollar index If we look at say for example This left shoulder here And then we've got a potential right shoulder here and we've got the head here and a neckline here around about 94 20 If we look at that neckline at 94 20 it roughly equates to euro dollar Of around about 116 70 and I talked about this when we talked about non-farm payrolls earlier this month There was a big big support around about 116 70 on euro dollar and a 94 20 resistance on the dollar index And I think when we're looking at euro dollar you have to absolutely have to look at dollar index Because 57 percent of euro dollar is dollar index. So there is a significant Balancing effect taking place with respect to that Now if we look at the left shoulder on the dollar index it currently comes in around about 92 92 and a half that sort of area which roughly I think when you work it through euro dollar Probably comes in just below 119 And that's pretty much where euro dollar topped out at the end of last week and And it's probably near near near the highs around about this week. So it's around about 118 70 So I think for a move on euro dollar and the u.s. Dollar overall We need to be looking at these two levels the 94 20 on the top side A break of which would signal further dollar upside and further euro downside or The right shoulder around about 92 92 14 92 30 random there or there abouts on the dollar index Which will sing signal further gains in euro dollar back to the eyes at 120 so let's look at it from a euro dollar point of view There's been a number of factors that have contrived to put downward pressure on euro dollar and we've we've seen some of them over the weekend the loss The the regional election loss of Angela Merkel's cdu party to the spd It's going to make it much more problematic for Angela Merkel to form a brand new government In a fairly speedy manner. I think the earliest we can expect some form of Jamaica coalition if you'd like it's probably january 2018 And that means that ultimately any german government is likely to be a fairly weak one And ultimately they're not going to be they're not going to be able to be particularly flexible when it comes to further euro zone integration There's been an awful lot of chatter out of France as a result of that And I think what that means is that we're going to continue to get the muddle through In terms of euro zone politics that we've seen over the course of the next over the course of the last five years We've obviously also got spanish constitutional crisis as well so spanish constitutional crisis um and the catalonian The catalonian standoff there I think basically the the catalan president carls pujdemont Is doing his best vicki polard impersonation in terms of he doesn't want to make a decision He's going. Yeah, but no, but yeah, but I haven't called independence But I might have called independence But I don't want to make a final decision Because you might we might come and arrest me and if if I do declare independence. That's probably what will happen Um, it'll please my own side, but ultimately it will it will result. I think ultimately In the fall of the catalonian government new elections And really then it's a question of how those get implemented Do they get instigated at the at the behest of the catalans or do they get implemented at the behest of the central government in Madrid, so I think further I think Further deadlock there. We've obviously got the brexit deadlock as well Theresa may flying to brussels to have dinner with Jean-Claude yonka What I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that particular meeting I would imagine that's going to be very very interesting indeed, but ultimately I think in the wake of Jean Sorry, I'm getting me frenchman mixed up in in the wake of michel barnier's Admission last week that um The brexit talks are deadlocked Ultimately, I think it was always unlikely that we get any progress at the october EU summit, which is due later this week But ultimately, I think we could get some movement on the subject of trade because ultimately irrespective of what the EU say about trade and the divorce When it comes to the Irish border the two are interlinked And I think that's important if the EU don't move on that then it's to suggest to me that they're not serious about arriving at a deal Because ultimately the type of bill that is paid with respect to the Irish border Will be directly correlated with the type of trade relationship that you get um You know if you have a completely closed border then ultimately it's going to be that much different to Maintaining an open border Maintaining single market access and maintaining the status quo with respect to the customs union the work the bill The final bill will be different and the EU really do have to acknowledge that if these trade talks And these divorce talks are going to move forward because money and trade Ultimately, there is a distinct cause and effect correlation there, which the EU really would be You know a little a little will be wise wise to sort of bend on so with respect to euro dollar We've got a nice top here around about a nice resistance here around about 1910 and again What we've got here is a potential head and shoulders reversal. We've got the left shoulder here We've got the head here and we've got what looks like the beginning of a potential right shoulder forming here now We could easily break higher towards 119 up through 119 10 towards 120 It's not something the ECB is certainly would welcome But ultimately it's something that could well happen But ultimately what this chart is telling me is completely different To what the interest rate correlation is telling me with respect to the spreads between say for example European two-year bonds and us two-year bonds and it's the same sort of thing as it is for example The for for us treasuries. I've just showed you the wrong chart there. I'm trying to find the right chart here Let's look at this one here. So we're going to look at the spread differentials between us 10 year us two year even us two year treasuries. We're going to find them And this will give you an indication as to why I think euro dollars too high Because at the moment what we've got is us two-year yields And at the moment they're around about 1.5 percent Now if we compare them With german two-year yields, they usually has a decent correlation in terms of the exchange rate movement between two but what we've got here is The correlation has broken down Because this is where euro dollar was In february march. It was around about 103 104 When the correlation between the two-year us treasury and the two-year german bond Was at its highest level for quite some time That correlation has completely broken down. We've got euro dollar at 120 or generous dammit 120 And we've got two-year yields in the dollar's favor of around about 2.238 So there's something not right. There's something really significantly undermining the us dollar And it's not really hard to figure out what when you actually look at this state of politics in the us And at the moment the dollar is lower because ultimately the us administration wants it lower They don't want a strong dollar and a weak dollar is what's helping push obviously us equity markets higher as well Hopefully you're following me at the moment So in terms of where we go to next it's a little bit undecided with respect to where the dollar's going at the moment We're range bound until such times As we break with respect to the dollar index either up or down or We break out of the euro dollar range that we're currently in It's going to be very very difficult to establish where the dollar goes to next But what I would suggest is it's unlikely in the short term for it to strengthen quite considerably and that is why Dolly Yen has found it very very difficult to rally with any significant With any significant Aggression because ultimately we are still in a range now I've just been asked why what the correlation is between dolly yen and the dollar index And honestly there really isn't that great a correlation because the yen only makes up around about Five between five and ten percent of the overall dollar index is a very very small amount And as such the correlation is fairly weak now There is a better correlation between the dolly yen and the nikkei 225 And the weak a weak yen is obviously fairly good for japanese stocks And obviously that is why when the yen has weakened since september and gone from 108 to 113 We've seen the nikkei hit its highest levels in 21 years. So whenever you get a weak yen You usually get a strong nikkei and vice versa So ultimately I think there's a better correlation between the dolly and the nikkei Then there is between the dolly yen and the dollar index Simply because the yen is a much smaller component of the dollar index Having said that when you do get bouts of dollar strength They do tend to generally get manifested in the dolly yen More than say for example any other currency, but for the time being We're in a range in dolly yen The top of that range is anywhere above 113 20 113 30 We're probably looking as if we could drift lower on dolly yen And that would that would sort tie in with a slightly weaker dollar scenario over the course of the next few days Where the yen also suffers is when equity markets go risk off so essentially You will have a risk sorry When when you have risk off the yen strengthens and the dollar and the dollar weakens is what I meant to say So ultimately the yen becomes a bit of a safe haven play in episodes when you have risk off And as a result dolly yen generally tends to drift low. So while equity markets are going higher Generally the dollar tends to strengthen against the yen And we certainly see we certainly see we've seen that in the past couple of weeks with the dolly yen rallying from the Loads of 108 But at the moment to try and pick a direction on dolly yen is very very difficult to do because we've been stuck in a range for so long now That the sensible trade with respect to that is to just play the overall range At the moment what we're looking at I think for the dolly yen is for it to drift back down Probably to around about 111 111 30 Because that's pretty much been the way of it for most of this year And at the moment I really don't see any evidence that that is going to change certainly in the context of central bank policy going forward. So Hopefully that will answer your question moving on To the pound Because the pound despite all the concerns about a brexit deadlock. That's particularly against the dollar More than anything else has held up fairly well. We can see that with respect to The price action so far this year if we go back to january the pound is up against the dollar I'm about 7.7 percent. So For me that tells me that the trend overall for sterling is up Irrespective of the political headlines and all the political shenanigans that are going on at the moment the shambles that is the brexit negotiations Ultimately If you're a trader you trade with the trend you don't trade the politics The politics for me are largely irrelevant in terms of the price action until such times as I see some evidence Of a price breakout. What this is telling me Ultimately is the trend for the pound is up against the dollar. So that suggests to me a slightly weaker dollar That sort of does bear in that does that is supported By the way the spread between the two-year UK guilt and the two-year US treasury is going interest rate differentials at the moment are pointing to A fairly decent decent rise rise in sorry. That's the that's the UK That's the q that is the uk eu I'm not paying attention to what i'm looking at. It's the uk german spread So uk uk Two-year guilds are outperforming quite considerably german bonds and that should be broadly supportive of the pound particularly against the euro over the course of the Next few sessions and I think that's probably why we started to see a little bit of sterling strength Euro weakness always helps if I actually look at the Actual graph to see what i'm actually looking at. So i apologize for that That I was looking at the spread differential between uk guilds and german bonds two-year bonds. So uk two-year guilds and uk and and german bonds and that really sort Supports this particular move that we saw at the end of last week And have seen since we saw the peaks in euro sterling in late august We've been trending lower. We rebounded just above the 200 day moving average But what we've seen here is actually quite significant. We tried to break back through the two Through the 50 day moving average This resistance level through here But what was more important and this was something that I paid particular attention to I made a note of in my morning note Was this key reversal day? Right here This really big negative down camel here. So what we've done is we've gone. We've traded higher From the lows that we saw in september We pushed higher here made a brand new high weren't able to consolidate it and closed Below the lows of the previous day. So that's a key reversal. It's a key day reversal A bearish engulfing day whatever you want to call it It's a very negative sign because he's tried to make new highs wasn't able to consolidate them and closed Below the low not only of the previous day, but of the day before as well Which suggests to me that ultimately the current upward move in euro sterling has probably run its course And we and we could well start to drift back down as long as We stay below this resistance line here. So at the moment that line comes in around about 89 Around about 89, which is basically equivalent to this peak here and here Now I would build in a little bit of fat to that. So I'd say the resistance level is around about 89 10 89 20 so while we're below 89 10 Then I think the downward move that we've seen from the middle of Last week is likely to continue and we could well head back towards the 88 20 level. So for me This little move here has changed the game a little bit in terms of the rally off the lows And we could well be set for a move back down now if it goes back about 89 20 then stop out And reassess it but ultimately given what we've seen here The way that I would trade this would be to sell into strength With a stop loss above the previous highs So going quickly going back to the sterling theme again And it's important that with respect to the pound What we've got to look out for this week because we've got a big week of data Notwithstanding obviously the political risks and everything else. We've got a big week of data Which starts tomorrow We've got uk cpi Now uk cpi the bank of england has been very concerned that inflationary pressures are starting to become Much more entrenched and we can look on the market calendar for that here These are the numbers that we're looking out for uk cpi Looking for an increase to 3% now the bank of england does not want that to go to 3% mark carney Governor of the bank of england does not want to write a letter to philip hammond Basically saying sorry chance. Well, you know that rate cut I did last year.  He doesn't want to do that He doesn't want to do that But I have a feeling that he may well do and if that number does come in at 3% Then I think it makes it that much more certain That the bank of england will push rates up Interest rates up base rates up From the current 0.25 to 0.5 in other words reversing last week's last week's last year's Rate cut now Will that be negative for the pound or will that Be a mistake on the part of the bank of england. Well, depending on who you talk to I don't think Putting rates back to where they were Just after the june referendum the june 2016 referendum is the end of the world if you look at where UK government bond prices are they're pretty much back where they were When base rates were 0.5 so moving the base rate back to where it was Prior to last year's august rate cut to my mind won't make any difference whatsoever All it's doing is correcting a mistake that was made 14 months ago so And ultimately has has helped actually drive inflation to a higher level than it would have been if they'd done nothing Because I think it's debatable as to whether or not the pound would have actually gone as low as 1 1980 At the end of last year In the wake and earlier this year in the wake of last last year's rate rate rate cut so Looking for cpi, but more importantly We've also got cpi out of the EU But also we've got wages data out of the uk And this particular item is something that I will be particularly keeping an eye on Economists are estim estimating that inflation wages wages pressures will probably decline Um, I'm not convinced. I think there's potential that wage wage pressures could actually start to increase um, certainly the The forecast is for a decline from 2.1 to 2 percent We shall see I'm not totally convinced about the accuracy of onus data at the best of time. So I certainly think there are wage pressures starting to build in the economy And ultimately I think what we won't want to see is wage pressure starting to decrease because that would appear to suggest that maybe the bank of england is making a mistake, but We shall see we saw wage pressures Coming at 1.7 in may this year They have now jumped to 2.1 percent and I still think there's potential for us to go even higher from there So the wages data will be important the cpi data will be important But what will also be important tomorrow Is testimony from the two new policy makers on the bank of england monetary policy committee david ramston And sylvanar ten reiro They are the two they will basically be voting for the second time Um on the monetary policy committee, but more importantly we'll get to hear from them about their views on the uk economy. We haven't heard from either of them Um As to how hawkish or dovish they are likely to be when it comes to monetary policy We'll also get to hear from mark carney as well. So You know the big question I think the big thing that i'll be looking for mr Carney is to whether or not the bank has co gone cold on the idea of pushing rates up between now and the end of the year Obviously the november we've got the inflation report as well So the favorite of the moment is for rates to go up in november It will be a significant. I think surprise And be bad for the bank of england's credibility if they do not move on rates By the end of this year and if they are going to do them the best time to do them will probably be in november when they publish the inflation report So it's a big week for the pound We've also got uk retail sales on thursday and we've also got public sector borrowing So in terms of the pound it's going to be a big week looking at this particular chart here There's a significant resistance area on the pound around about 133 20 133 30 But decent support around about the 50 day About around about the 100 day moving average at 130 20, which was the non-farm payrolls day low But overall I still remain structurally bullish on the pound against the euro And against the us dollar Moving on Looking going to be looking At the german dex now quickly look at that because ultimately we've all broke. We've broken to the top side On pretty much all the major indices And ultimately I think while we remain above this key support level here Which was a which was the area of recent highs Then ultimately the the outlook continues to remain positive But we can still drop fall all the way back to 12 900 But while above that I think it's very much a case of by the dip. It's pretty much the same for the s and p 500 We can see that too there The term the outlook continues to remain positive. So looking at here Round about 25 40 We can see that it looks fairly positive there Um got asked about canada yen. I will quick. I will look at that right at the very end Just make a quick note of that Canada yen I'm being asked about platinum Um is platinum closely correlated with gold The thing with platinum is that it's an industrial metal as well as a precious metal So you're going to get a little bit of crossover between the two What I would say with platinum at the moment. We've seen this decent bounce But ultimately I'm not convinced as to how much more it's got to go When it turns when it comes to the next resistance level if we look at this if we look at this level here I'm slightly misdrawn that But if we look at this low here It also Coincides with the 200 day moving average. So the moment with respect to platinum We're moving into a very significant Resistance level and the same is as true for platinum as it is for gold We can we can see a similar sort of move unfold here And this is obviously correlated with dollar weakness But if we look at what gold prices have been doing since the beginning of the year They have been trending higher. So ultimately with respect to gold prices. We've got decent resistance around about 13 10 And that's likely to be the case So in terms of looking at gold prices, I would be looking to again Buy weakness as opposed to buying strength because if you're buying strength You could actually be buying the top of the rally and it could actually start to drift back Is there a correlation between them? Absolutely there is But you've got to be very very careful because the drivers of gold And the drivers of platinum in the same way the drivers of palladium. They are different. They are precious metals But an awful lot of say for example platinum And palladium have industrial use that say for example gold gold doesn't have to the same extent and one of the reasons that We've been seeing I think a rebound in prices in terms of commodity prices. There's been a rebound in Palladium prices a rebound in copper prices and a key and a bit of a rebound In oil prices and that is fueling inflation repression now jannett yellon over the weekend The head of the fed suggested that she was concerned About why inflation continued or was continuing to look fairly benign when it comes to say for example the us economy Not so much here in the uk, but there are exchange rate effects to take into account there But also in the european union But one thing I have noticed I think with respect to inflation Is that last week us ppi numbers were much stronger than expected this morning Chinese ppi numbers were much stronger than expected and they tend to be leading indicators of future inflation repression And if you look at oil prices If you look at copper prices And this is this is a key case in point here. We've got a strengthening oil price here. It's broken to the top side It's still below the peaks that we saw In september But ultimately since june we've been in a fairly decent uptrend If you look at the bloomberg commodity index if you look at the thompson reuters crb index They've all rebounded strongly from the lows that we saw in june So there is inflation starting to build up in the system and that suggests to me that Ultimately while central banks are puzzled about the weak inflation re outlook Ultimately it's probably coming and it's probably coming as we Get into 2018 the big question is is how much can producers absorb that inflation? And as opposed to passing it on to consumers because at the moment consumers I think remain very price sensitive And as a result you may find that if To say producers raise prices you may find that that actually chokes off demand for consumer products. So You know, that's that's the catch 22 situation, but certainly with respect to Brent. We are moving higher And that's likely to manifest itself into a similar sort of move with respect to west texas And we did see a decline in the rig counts In the us at the end of last week, but we are approaching a very key resistance line In in wti in the same way that we are with Brent closing on the september highs So keep an eye out for a test of the september highs and if we get a multiple break there We could actually move quite a bit higher. We're also seeing that played out in copper prices highest level since 2014 So there is from what we can see here A definite move or a definite a definite demand for commodities And I think that is driving some of the gains that we're seeing in equity markets at the same time Investors are pricing in the prospect of higher demand Pushing prices high obviously the weaker dollars not helping and that's helping push equity markets higher as well Over optimism about the global growth outlook going forward now. I said I'd look at Canada yen I will look at Canada yen. Let's see if I can find it And we can try and establish why Canada is declining against the yen when oil prices are Pushing higher. Well looking at that. I don't think it's too hard to understand why it's broken out We've broken below those lows that we saw in a 9 62 It's been in a range for quite some time. So we've probably seen a little bit of stop loss selling going on here 947 89 62 So that's around about It's just around about 100 points So we look as we're probably going to head back down to around about 88 62 on the basis of this move lower in the overall scheme of things it's probably Going to take us back to around about This series of lows through here as for a fundamental driver I it's hard to say what would be driving that Canada yen move lower Let's look at the dollar CAD to see if we can derive any clues from that And again with the dollar CAD the Canada is slightly weaker the dollar's stronger Probably going to head back towards this trend line resistance from the May peaks That we saw all the way back at around about 138 So this looks to me a little bit of a technical move in Canada yen more than anything else The triggering of stops and I'll break out of that range that we've been in For the past few weeks. I can't really think of any other reason as to why the Canada yen would have dropped Apart from the fact that we've had a bit of a technical breakout of the recent range Okay, what else have we got to keep an eye out for this week? We've got we've got some more China data coming out on where's the third quarter GDP? That's likely to come in around about 6.8 percent We've obviously also got the chinese communist party congress And we could get some indications as to whether or not President Xi will look to continue his crackdown on corruption And what his five-year plan is for the chinese economy going forward Certainly what we've seen thus far From the chinese economy is a much better economic performance than it had previously been penciled in for 2017 And I think that's helping I think boost boost risk assets going forward industrial production and retail sales Are another a couple of other key indicators that could well Put lighter fire under commodity prices going forward As we as we look ahead to the rest of the week. Here we are chinese GDP expecting 6.8 percent industrial production 6.2 percent retail sales 10.2 if you want to set alerts for them just basically Select this option here And just before the alert comes out It will allow you You can make it a single alert or you can make it a recurring alert. It's entirely up to you And obviously it'll only generate that alert when the platform is open. It'll pop up on the screen obviously that's three o'clock in the morning and You'll probably be asleep if you're anything like me When that number comes out, but certainly with respect to any of the other numbers It's always a very good idea to just select that So that 15 minutes before the numbers are due to come out you're getting an alert to warn you that they're due to come out and It will give you the option of whether or not you want to basically square up your position Or or anything else like that So that's um, I think I think that's pretty much it for this week. Does anyone else have any questions before I wrap this up? um If anything occurs during to the meantime always drop me a line on twitter m hueson underscore cmc at m hueson underscore cmc um Otherwise, um, we'll wrap it up there. Um, I think I'll answer that question offline that you just put to me I think it's slightly more complex um With respect to the chinese zixing ping put As soon as congress over I think I think markets generally are always a little bit concerned about um Unexpected outcomes from these sorts of things. I think in terms of the politics is nothing much changes Then ultimately I think it's going to be business as usual for the chinese economy Going forward. This is really I think a question of president g Um reinforcing his power base than anything else rather than changing policy to a any greater or lesser extent um So I think that for me is the key takeaway that I'll take away from the chinese communist party congress. It'll be President Xi reinforcing his power base by bringing in his own people Um, I mean most of the people that he's got there are his own people But it'll be reinforcing that power base so that he can be a little bit more Radical and implementing any further reforms Um Anything else ladies and gents otherwise. Thanks very much for listening and um, have a good week and um We'll speak to you all the same time same place next week


ld not support that I'd support it if you said put it in this location but that's just me I think what we have on the table we've had a lot of discussion so I'm a little unclear Sue what you actually have written down but I think you're yes but the original motion was to open JC Dog Park as a template not on a permanent basis which was David's addition that is what's been officially moved can we add to that pending the work of the subcommittee coming back to the council with a recommendation one way or the other so can we do that so can we do that make the subcommittee come back to the council without going through the parks and rec committee again I don't see why we can't can we do that so that would make sense at what point can the subcommittee come back with some more specifics pick a time three weeks end of the month I think that's too fast I think it's going to be July 1 just with a couple not with all kinds of locations just with some specific criteria that would be interim for opening this park yeah there were I don't know there were two different things proposals that you would have been able to select from which wasn't recommendations it was okay if you do these things they won't cost money to implement them theoretically and then there was a list of when you talk about template no we're not going there we're not going there okay well I guess my concern is saying it would be a template without doing those other amenities that need to be in place or to be a template so a template is a missing you decide to open this but I don't think you want to be referring to it as a template or some experiential testing I think since dogs are currently using the space anyway I'm fine with opening it whenever whenever you feel comfortable making the amendment so July you said June 15th let's go June 15th and see if we can get a few more specific rules in place by then that won't cost money and can and can be and we can test it see if it works I see the biggest problem now the community can step up I like the South Burlington dogs only sign absolutely how are you going to force that people don't like breaking the law if you said no more than eight dogs in the park right I don't know how you govern them you have a neighborhood committee you have to have somebody there well Tim there's a whole lot of rules we have where you just have to figure out how to get along with your neighbors and not everyone follows them but the rules that apply to the whole city Helen I'll amend the resolution to open the dog park on June 15th with the recommendations to address is that friendly any other discussion nothing's going to be great on this one probably not okay all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed moving on to I was really item 13 so moving on to item 14 council discussion can you please take your conversation out in the hall thank you this is discussion of possible action related to the recommendation of the bike and head committee to establish a penny for pass program so we have pardon me so are you coming up with the penny oh we're just discussing it you are presenting we've presented it to us before okay you do yeah August 14th okay is there any further discussion on this I think I think we need to put it in front of the voters yep I do too it's an investment in our community's health future okay I'm with that I mean we'll never know unless we ask but actually this is not quite for now no August you just kidding you said $100 assessment plus or minus it's $300 over 10 years I guarantee if we can if we connect and make more if we connect all of our all of our facilities within the city people's property values are going to go up more than a few hundred bucks in 10 years by a long shot probably several thousand I think it's a good investment my only caveat is that I wish that the bulk of that money weren't spent on all the scoping and planning we are meeting with Kevin and Justin on the 15 to start that discussion of how do we cut through all that so that we can reduce the cost yeah drain that swamp I call it brown tape brown tape a list of how even residents can help in doing some of the work my understanding your recommendation was also for a time certain like 10 years is that right so the ballot item needs to reflect that would it not so these aren't this isn't probably the exact wording I would correct so we should have we should have Andrew draft that but we can certainly vote on provides for the penny for paths item to be added to the ballot in August for a period of 10 years I'll second that okay for another voted later date and so that vote on the wording would have to take place the second meeting in June I believe to 45 days so we would have to see the wording by okay well hopefully we can see it in May I mean it's not going to take them a month and a half to be terribly complex oh so it's almost all done okay we've got some proposed language so we just have to get in front of Andrew if Andrew's working on the wording and we're in support of it just bring the wording to us when you're ready okay so that's everyone is agreeable yep we can start putting it in the other paper and start from they want a motion that's fine well you made the motion that's fine all in favor okay 5-0 great thank you item 15 consider and possibly approve a resolution that would establish an economic development committee under the council this is something we all talked about we met with SBBA and Megan offered to pull something together and she did I just want to thank her for doing so and I'll move it as presented unless you'd like to present it as well I'll just say that a lot of the language is based on our comprehensive plan and it hopefully will get to the issues that the members of the SBBA that were present at that meeting last month raised with regard to being able to work with other boards but also in our comprehensive plan putting forward strategic economic development plan so those were the two things it's great thank you I appreciate it so we have a motion and a second second motion all in favor signify by saying aye great March financials Tom so on Friday you received in a separate email the narratives for March which again we're pretty thorough and I'd be happy to take back any questions or comments you have for any of the department heads but other than that basically tell you we're the boarders of the way through the budget in this fiscal year revenues in the general fund currently at 73% and expenses at 70 enterprise funds in sewer revenues 62% expenses 61 and in stormwater the revenues are at 83% and as you know the expenses are over they're at 121% because of the carryover of projects from 17 to 18 any questions are you saying things are in pretty good shape we're in good shape no concerns like we had last year we don't have to vote on anything here right electrical inspections are doing well better better yeah I don't think we're ever going to get to where we hoped we would be there but fire inspections are tracking well right okay which was a big issue last year another nice permit report to okay okay thank you item 17 consider convening as the self-rolling control board second all in favor okay you didn't tell me we were the liquor control board is there a problem with that there's no trading on it I'll breathe into a breathalyzer date that's right I would just note that the pizza putt did not check off whether there's any convictions and so I think we should I would suggest that we withhold pizza putt until they complete their application fully and move Farnham ale and lager Gonzo's indoor golf backyard Dave's cosmic subs no relation echo bean and greens Dave's cosmic subs I had a really great sub there I just wanted to know oh good it's first class that means wine, beer and alcohol liquor I thought yeah liquor it's everything second class is just beer and wine I think isn't that right we ought to have training on this so does this all I don't know these places pizza putt strikes me as a place that has got tons and tons of kids we really want them serving the parents go there too so it's been a running joke for four years I've been on this I don't know what our function is I don't know I don't know well maybe first class is just beer beer and wine and then second is serving it versus selling it versus something else I really can't vote responsibly on these because I don't know our liquor laws I appreciate that I've been struggling with this for the last four years I just don't step up to it I don't quite know what I'm approving they're licensed for what though the formality what this says is the police and fire have reviewed their applications and the taxes have been paid or up to date so that they're a reasonable business and you know if the police said oh my god you know every other Saturday we've got a brawl going on there good thing you're here you almost forgot that's why the liquor law is not the first and second class and the state of Vermont is responsible for third class and the third class has to do with hard liquor so beer bar and you want to sell the vodka and all that kind of stuff that's the separate one issued by the state you guys don't get involved in that what you have for first and second I apologize I don't remember which one is first which one is second one of them is the ability to sell as in a convenience store so it comes in for just sitting beer and wine the second the other license is for beer and wine to be consumed on premises so that must be first class because all these places are first class so first is serving second is selling and it's beer and wine well it's good we answered that thank you David good enough and then our process is we get the police and the fire and the tax department to review this and say they're up to date and they have training and all that kind of stuff while we're on this topic and you have this here why do we convene as a separate board and what are we losing by not having a separate and distinct liquor board from the council if there was a committee of individuals that knew liquor laws and liquor license do other communities in Vermont do that and are we not doing something that board would otherwise do and hold for so if you don't want to be is Madam Charter saying turn off that might not be a bad idea it doesn't happen very often it's not easy to make a charter change I know I think it's good that we're looking I don't have a problem when we did 85 of them some of these renewals I think they all are renewals they probably are so we're opting to pull out pizza putt and asking them to answer the question about motor vehicle offenses they never checked it off I do want to note that some applicant social security numbers were disclosed they're not supposed to be whiteed out before they go out it hasn't happened in a long time so pass that on okay thank you all to accept all as presented except for pizza putt second any further discussion shall we drink to this all in favor signify by saying aye aye second all in favor aye school okay other business we had two items I have a third item too you're from Weinberger right and then the library I mean I think we need to have our legal counsel look at it okay I mean that's what I would recommend I was just curious what the next steps were yeah that needs well I think the next steps are for Winooski and South Burlington to respond back but after our legal counsel well I think it would be smart to have the legal counsel look at it I think it would be smart for all of us to read it really carefully and say I sort of like the way it's organized because it says what each community is going to do but it really doesn't do what we want and that is to have exactly so I think we need to put our you know I guess maybe we need to direct Andrew to say well we really want it to be on an agenda then for us before it goes to Andrew I think Andrew can be here so here's our conversation should that be an executive session why? I don't know possibly I can talk to him find out from him yeah I mean if he feels that it should be you always can ask for it anyway I can go either way it just sometimes I want to blur that question and then the library I wanted to know what the timeline was I had an interesting conversation with a community member who's done some fundraising so I just wondered what the timeline was for that moving forward are we the timeline and the library for what they're fundraising or the bond vote yeah have we gotten any have we had any communication with the subcommittee working on fundraising with Jay Patrick and Margaret Ann okay I think it would be they haven't I mean I've sort of asked that and I haven't gotten any concrete anything except that they're working on it I think at this point you know not to harp on the school board but until we get a decision from them we either have a good sense if they say yes of what the cost of the building will be and then that helps drive what the library needs to raise and all that kind of stuff and what we need to ask the public what I would recommend that we think about is seeing for any leftover funds in our operating budget and putting that into an escrow account for the library community center city hall I think oh to add to our the TIF what do we call that reserve the TIF reserve yeah specifically for the library yes and city hall and community center and with community member who would prefer that I not say the name in public really thinking about this you know in terms of an anchor for the city center and for the businesses there and really having fundraising look at potential businesses who would be willing to contribute as well and I think that's oh to the whole building yes so fundraising not just for the library but potentially senior center but specifically as an anchor for city center and for economic development which it would be we might want to think about relinquishing the option on that piece of property yeah it costs us $5,000 right the first year is free and then it costs all grand was it one year free one year free and then after that $5,000 which piece of property is this right in front of the rickmark this isn't the property where the city center where the city hall and library is supposed to go I thought we owned that we have an option on it self-reliant oh it's really Snyder Braverman we bought it well we should know I think the school board has three meetings in May and the last one is the 18th so potentially we will know what their decision is like May yeah our next meeting and then we'll know whether we need to continue the option or and then I think we'll also have a better idea of what the numbers look like because I I have heard from the development committee for the library that they have a set amount that they think they can raise and it's not just 30% of the cost of the library so that's the question that comes back to the council when we put the bond issue forward and the sales we need to make for the community that it's not just library funds and TIFF that are building a third of the building or whatever it is a half of the building it may very well be some public dollars do we have the money to buy the land or really TIFF dollars but we're on the line we have the money to buy the land so the bond is for the building the land you can already buy what's the price on the land 800,000 880 0.7 0.7 it's small wait that's not the school piece no they made school pieces in additional 0.7 yes but some of that's behind Allard Square right we've already agreed to the price we can get out of it before November with no fee or charge after November-ish it's a $5,000 hit 800,000 for 7.10 of an acre it's not developed we should go into executive session 1.1 per acre is that right yeah yeah no it's very expensive I don't know if you know real estate maybe we should go into executive session but your concerns are valid and there are other perspectives I would offer well let's get the final numbers because there's a whole lot of perspectives that we're going to have to discuss in terms of you know if we go high and deep what that costs and is that even doable do we just go with the library and senior center and stay right here that's another good option I mean that is an option it's an option I don't see if the school board says no to go smaller and taller I don't see as a sensible option they have to say yes I don't understand why they haven't yet and if I can help with that I will but it makes no sense whatsoever there's history and I can give you my thoughts on it but it had taken an hour and I don't want to keep Tim here he gets upset okay and you had a question for Mr. Hubbard what is going down at the corner of Swift and Farrell all the digging and there's a new entrance to the jail on Swift's is that part of Justin's project with the Hadley sewer oh yeah I know what you're saying I was wondering the same thing the other day I had an email complaint about traffic congestion that's right can't you do it at night I didn't know there's a new driveway entrance to the jail on Farrell street it's not a clean driveway though it's kind of like a maybe a temporary construction entrance but it's paid it's paid with asphalt so either I or Justin will give back to you I was just curious because I didn't know if it's part of the they've laid sewer pipe along Farrell which may be part of the reconstruction of Eastwood's neighborhood yeah that's how they connect to the other sewer places they have to rebuild part of the pump station there's a a muffin grinder at the jail right there's a machine there to grind the sewage that comes out of the to remove anything that could that could clog the pipes so maybe they have to add the pump there if they have more fluid coming down from the I don't know but when he was presenting to Eastwood that's what it is but I will confirm it all seems logical for a sewer project to me install I saw the pavement what's that piece of it it's not an entrance or exit that anybody general public could use because it's not wide enough big enough yeah it seems like an emergency something maybe it is that's a good question but does the state need to apply for permit to create a driveway from onto Swift street from the jail find out what it is find out that would be great thank you okay is there any other business five or six times let's not have two conversations is there any other business okay motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor well David you joined us fifty five minutes pass fight are you going to come to the next one I'm going to think about it I'm going to go home and have dinner second time


Thank you. Completely unnecessary. All I did was walk from there to there. It's not difficult. So as this part of the slide says, my name is Steve, and as that part of the slide says, I'm a little bit of a geek. This bit is not as simple as you think. Home automation is actually quite simple. You do a thing, a light comes on. Simple. What I'm going to talk about is the bits which are a little more difficult which sit around that. So if anyone wants some pithy thing to tweet, that's your tweetable phrase for the day. Home automation is just something your house does for you, blah, blah, blah. My homes have actually been automated for the last 15 years. It's really interesting and it's really annoying. It's not something you can just do. My home is special to me. It's mine, it's not yours. Even if I give you all the software, and it's available, it's open source, you wouldn't be able to take it and just stick it in your home. We all have different lives, they all handle different ways. So we look at some of the context and the problems that that brings about. Now, this is a basic system. We don't need to read anything. All you need to realize is there are inputs, there is processing things, and there are outputs. So you might have a message that comes in via text that says, I want to record this program later. That was one of the very first things I built. Now, this is 15 years ago, so it was an infrared LED that would actually fire signals to the video recorder via a text message to say, I'm in the pub, someone's told me about this program that's on tonight, I can't get home to record it, I don't have a TV card, there's no drivers for Linux, I'll send a text message and record it. A little bit overkill just to watch TV, but I don't have a life, so it worked. Inputs, process, outputs. This stuff is very easy to build. But that's not the difficult bit. Hardware, also not the difficult bit. We can go away and we can buy plugs and sockets and light bulbs that we can connect that have their own IP. Light bulbs having their own IP address. Who'd have thought that would ever happen? But it's not difficult. We go around, we spend our 30 euros and we buy something. Not difficult. E-mailing a light switch. Also not that difficult. Little prock-mail script. Bang, done. Has anyone emailed their light switch? Yeah, fair enough. But you can do it. It's really quite simple. This is all it takes. You have a little basic script that just says, OK, switch light on, switch light off. But that's not where the difficult bit is. The difficult bit is what comes after. Are you then authenticating this email in some way? Although we probably should all PGP sign our emails, we probably all don't for most of the time. If you are sending it, if I'm sending that email, the server picks it up and goes, oh yeah, this is obviously from Steve. I'm allowed to switch this light on. Well, that can be faked. You can spoof those email headers without too much trouble. What if my partner wants to send an email to the light? Would it work for them? How do I implement that bit of the system? That's another thing to handle. I showed you three different sockets just then. I think I've got three light bulbs coming up on another slide. Well, the thing you need to do to make the Philips light bulb turns on is different to what you need to do the LIFX bulb and so on. So you need to add an extra layer of abstraction in that says, they've said turn the bedroom light on. What type of light is the bedroom? Is that a hue one? Is that a LIFX one? Is that an X10 one? So you need to add an extra layer into there. So it's code. It's a little more work, but you can get there. And then you have the problem. What is turning it off? It seems simple. Turn the light off. But the important thing which is sort of the crux of most of this is what is the context for turning that light off? If I say turn the light off and I do it via my phone, does that take priority over the light switch on the wall? If I say turn the light off, does that have priority over the person that might be in the room? Am I turning it off for my phone just because I happen to have my phone out? Am I doing it because I am in another location and I've forgotten to turn the light off? And I'm using it that. Am I turning the light off because it's the kid's room and the kid should not be up at that time at night and I'm forcing them to turn the light off? Or am I turning it off because I just want the light off? Consider that timeline. Human comes into the room, they turn the light on. They obviously want the light on. They're looking for something. They want to do something. The machine says, oh, right. My schedule says we should put the light on now. We tend to scale off burglars by putting the light on exactly the same time every single day. Fair enough. The machine turns the light on. The machine says, oh, my schedule says turn the light off now. It turns the light off. At that point, should that light be on or off? The machine says, I've been told to do this. The machine has been told by a programmer that is moderately sensible, me, that it should turn the light off at half nine every day. But if a human has turned it on in the interim, should that human have priority? And which human? If it's me, if it's a kid, if it's the partner, which one of us has priority over which lights should be on or off depending on the schedule? And the answer is there isn't an answer. It changes for every single person's house and situation. Sorry about that. No answers. So media playback. This is one of the very first things I did in home automation. It was very simple. I couldn't hear the TV from the kitchen, so I ran some cables. I then started running network cables and AV cables, so the whole house was media rigged. I've got big media server, all the music's on there, play it anywhere. Who needs a sonos? I can do this with a Raspberry Pi and a mini ITX box. But I connected a few things up and the doorbell. When the doorbell goes, the volume goes down on the music just so I can hear the doorbell and work out if I want to answer it. You could also change that so that if the doorbell goes, the volume goes up so you can't hear them so you don't have to talk to your neighbors. But how do you code changing the volume? I'm serious. How would you code changing the volume? Get volume, do something in some way and then set the volume again. But that doesn't work. The volume is always going to be capped. I'm using 0 to 100 just as a simple percentage thing. You start at 95, you add 10. That's 105, but it's capped to 100. And then when you lower the volume again, it goes back down to 90. Two operations that should be reversible are not. The same is true when you underflow. It's quite a low volume, say it's at 5. You subtract 10, it's at 0 now and cropped. And then when you increase it again, it goes to 10. That's not what's expected. You could say, well, let's go above 100. Let's have a temporary store in like VALOG MyMixer. It says, even though the actual mixer itself is capped to 0 to 100, I want it to be whatever you can be. So it's like volume up 10, volume up 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100. 110, 120. Now you've got to press down three times before you hear any difference whatsoever. That's also wrong. So there's two possibilities of doing volume and they're both wrong. The answer is there isn't actually a right answer. Volume itself is a logarithmic scale. You've probably heard of decibels being used as just like a thing for loudness. That's logarithmic. So a volume increase of 1 at 80 is not the same as volume increase of 1 at lower numbers or higher numbers. So maybe you write code like this. Depending on how loud it already is, volume up will be a different amount for the actual volume. And that's fine some of the time. Because volume up is not volume down and it's not symmetric. No way near. These are all the problems because there is no context in you pressing volume up or volume down. Why are you turning it down? If it's too loud to the last track, it's just a case of if you've got a lot of music and you're jumping around, they're all mixed differently. All the songs are mixed differently. They've got different loudnesses. So you might just say, well, that one was mixed in a way that is too loud for me right now. I want to turn it down, but the next song you want to turn it back up. But again, because it's not symmetric, you might find the next song ends up being too loud. You're turning it down because there's an advert or the doorbell. All reasons for turning it down are different. But you're certainly not going to make it remote control that says volume down because of doorbell. Volume down because this is a loud song. Volume down because I don't like this advert. They're all different. They technically should have a context, but we don't have a way of getting context into the system. The same is true for turning it up. Again, hiding the noise from the washing machine. That is a real world life case where my washing machine would basically make a racket and trundle on the ground. I wanted to wipe that out with some music. That's the different meanings of turning it up and I really want to rock out to this bit in the middle about who mean rapidly. And again, we still have the problem of what user? Is this me turning it up? I like loud music, so sue me. Actually, technically you can sue someone if they're playing loud music and you live next door, but don't. I like loud music. The other half? Not so keen on loud music. So when I say volume up, I mean volume up, rock on. They mean, can we just have it a bit louder than the washing machine, please? So it's, again, depending on the context. Me wanting it up is different to them wanting it up and so on. And if the computer has been controlled to say you can turn the volume up, the computer has no idea about that context. It doesn't know if you're turning it up for whatever reason. So what about the song itself? I have fairly obvious music tastes. So which of these three options do you think we should use?  Do I pick a random directory? Go into the subdirectories until I find only songs and then play a song at random from that list. That'll be a nice way of playing a random song for me. Just shuffle play. Do I do the same as before, but if there are songs and subdirectories, I pick one randomly? Or do I just list all the songs throughout the entire hard drive from one to a million say and then pick one number from that and play that song? Which is the best way to do a shuffle? The answer is A, B and C. They're all brilliant and they're all broken. Whichever way you do it, there will be a bias to some way. So I've ordered all my music in alphabetical order. A through to Z, which means there's a 1 in 26 chance of having an artist called A. That's pretty good. A is my toyamos. There's lots of toyamos in there. Happy for that. But there's also a 1 in 26 chance. I'm going to get Z, which is Zuccaro. Happy with Zuccaro, but I only want to listen to that album once every 10 years. But there's a 1 in 26 chance on an equal chance of hearing that and there is toyamos. In my cue directory, I have Queen. I have Queen's wife and quite right. Not a lot else. So I've got 1 in 26 chance of finding something by Queen. That's not a very good shuffle algorithm, particularly when you realize I've got 20 Queen albums. I've got everything they've ever done. So it's not a very random shuffle. But you can't do it any other way because if you say, well, I'll, you know, using example B from there, it's biasing on some minor tracks. Even Queen wrote some absolute rubbish occasionally, which means there's an equal chance of you getting Sweet Lady being played as there is another one by Stardust or something. So if you do that other algorithm, you're going to end up with some complete junk and you're thinking, why on earth am I letting the computer choose my music for me? And the last version, it bars towards artists with a lot of songs, using the Queen example. So we can do that, but we also want to ignore certain songs. Again, I'll use Queen as example. I do like the Hymn Rhapsody. I just don't want to hear it. It's been played so much, it's gone. It's five minutes, 53 seconds, it's great, but don't want to hear it too long, too worn out. I want to ignore that song. But how long is long? How do you specify that? What about the Adagio in, I have a lot of classical stuff, really don't want to hear that most of the time unless it's in the context of the symphony. So how do I say I want to ignore that bit most of the time? Again, this is a context thing. It's about me and my relationship with the machine rather than what the machine thinks it should be automating. Also, if I'm saying, give me a random shuffle playlist, I don't want it to start going, oh, there's a comedy file in here, I'm going to play the comedy. I have lots of recorded comedy, fine. But that's not a music shuffle thing. I don't want to suddenly be rocking away to something or other and then all of a sudden I get, yes, I am El Westi, it was a very, you know, it's just not going to work. Does anyone ever remember Peter Cook and Dudley Moore? Just, just, yeah. I wasn't going to say it. But for the purpose of the recording, he said just old people. So you want to ignore the comedy. You also want to ignore Pink Floyd most of the time. Pink Floyd, no. Careful, I'll tell you when I'm doing the funnies. Pink Floyd, I do have most of their stuff. I like most of their stuff, but it's the sort of music I want to sit down and listen to. It's not something I want to hear in the background. It's something I will make in concertative effort to say, like, no distractions, I am now going to listen to Pink Floyd. I want it on my server. I want it being played to whichever room I happen to be in, but I don't want it to be randomly picked in the middle of a Queen thing, a Torrie Amos thing and a Pet Shop Boys thing. It's a particular thing. But that's my taste, which means I have to program very specific things to a very specific system to ignore particular songs in particular circumstances. There might be a reason home automation is not as popular as perhaps it should be. Too much right. So you also should rant this stuff. One thing that you think random is random. It's not, we've seen in the previous talk, using the audio to do a proper randomness. Randomness is pseudo-random. And I've accidentally stumbled on the fact that the Linux random number generator is awful, and I ended up getting the same four or five songs in the same order despite the fact I was using random to try and pick random songs. So you've got to add extra randomness in there.  Oh, and also skip the songs that have been played recently. You don't want the same thing played four times and the random number generator happened to do that. So all these things have to be added in to something as simple as pick a random song. It shouldn't be that difficult. The code isn't difficult. It's the using it, which is difficult. So I also need to think of mood changes. Again, this is another real world case because for some reason, my random number generator and my system thought that eight o'clock in the morning was a really good time to play skinny puppy, which some people who are laughing will know is industrial music with lots of clanking and ranging guitars and lots of other stuff. It's not an eight o'clock in the morning thing. So you have to program this sort of understanding into the machine. And as we're saying, the distribution of artists and letters, lots of people sort of queen. So when I say ignore song because it's too long of that, again, you need the context. A simple interface that says, don't play me that song for a while. It has to be based on who is doing it. Am I saying don't play the song? Am I saying don't play the song? Why am I saying don't play this song? Time of year. Yeah, fine. If it's Christmas time, let's hear Naughty Holder scream, it's Christmas. But not February. Not July. But it's something else you got to code into the system, which you probably won't code into the system when you're writing it. It's something that comes afterwards, you know, situation. Yeah, I certainly don't want to go home or something and it suddenly starts playing break up songs. I need some way of tagging this stuff. And similarly location. So, you know, yeah, no loud, crunchy stuff eight o'clock in the morning. So, yeah, we can't, the problem is we can't get context easily. We can try and we can try and infer it, but it is still a hard problem. In home automation, the biggest problem in my humble view is the multiple occupancy problem. If there are two people in a room, how do you determine who those two people are and which of them is in control? Who there is actually trying to do the thing? You know, you can do motion sensor. You walk into the room, motion sensor puts on lights. Fine. But when that person walks out but another person walks in, how do you keep the lights on? You know, the clues in the title, motion sensor. I walk into the room, I sit down. It spots my motion, it puts the light on. I sit down for long enough, it turns the light off. It has to wait for someone else to walk into them before that comes on again. That doesn't work. You can use Bluetooth to detect users. One thing I tried a while back was having the Bluetooth on my phone on the whole time and it could work out where I was and it would control the music according to where the Bluetooth signature was. Fine, but it wears your battery down. There's no good solution. And the ignore list that I had earlier, you know, do I ignore this song because of who I am, where I am, what time of day it is, is it a Christmas song or not? Is this an all or an and relationship? And how complex is that and an all relationship? It could be don't do it if it's Steve and it's Christmas or don't do it if it's that or don't do it if it's eight o'clock. That logic is very specific to each person and each home. So it would have been nice to have some answers. It would have been nice to end on a nice positive note saying home automation is great and we should all be doing this and this is the future because we have these computers. We might as well do something useful with them but there are no rules. There are no solutions to this. We were talking earlier and I call it the configuration calibration problem. At one end, you've got things like the Mac. You press one button and it does everything for you and it's great if everything it does is the thing you want it to do. On the other end is the Linux side. If it doesn't do what you want to do, there's a million and one configuration options and if you still don't like it, you can recompile the code and put the configuration options you want in. Somewhere in the middle is your life. Your life is complex. Everybody's life is complex. It's quite astounding how complex and different everybody's life is but when you're building these home automation systems you end up having to build it for yourself and even if you give people the code it's going to be very difficult for them to configure it in the way that is suitable for them. I really haven't finished on a positive note. To be on a positive note, but with open source we can because with open source we can make it do what we want. We are in the technical elite. The very fact that you're here means you're in that group. Whether you like what I'm talking about or not, it doesn't matter. We're all in a position where we can recode these things. We can make our houses do what we want even if it takes us 27 lines of code to ignore the right song at the right time when we don't want to hear it. I've probably got five minutes for 51 seconds for questions but before I do I'll update this scorecard. There we go, done. Time for questions? Yes, absolutely. That's one at the back. Okay, so the question is how much effort is required to keep up with changing external APIs? And the answer is not a lot. I've got a number of APIs. I've got weather ones. I've got train timetables and that sort of thing. But there are comparatively few of them. There are a number of APIs. I've got weather ones. I've got train timetables and that sort of thing. But there are comparatively few of them. When you start home automation stuff you think I'm going to do all of this thing. And after a while suddenly realize actually I only use about four features. Yes, I'll use the train timetable. I will use the weather thing occasionally. I don't really notice it. I have something in my house called a window. And if I look out the window I can see what the weather is like. I've got the weather API. It does its thing but I generally don't notice it. If it broke and it just put the default sunshine picture up, actually I live in London so the default picture is rain. So if it just put the default picture up I probably wouldn't notice for a year. So I wouldn't have to update it. But it's a comparatively small amount of work. By the way, the books up there, they do have my name on it but I get so little involved I don't bother buying them. Buy me a beer and I will tell you everything that's in the book. It'll be cheaper for you and I'll get something good out of it. So I just do them to prove that I have done something in my life. By the way, I hope the publisher is not watching this. They'll hate me for it. It's recorded now. Right, what are they going to do? So we have... No, that wasn't a question. Yep, we've still got a couple of minutes for questions. Because if not, I just start talking. Yes? Did you try to automate the part of the groceries ordering so that you can come on the list when you ultimately are supposed to do the grocery order So the question is have I automated grocery ordering? And the answer is I actually did that as a day job a while back. So if you see on BBC Good Food, you sort of see a recipe you like, you click buy and it puts all those things into your shopping cart. Yeah, I ended up part of the team that built that. So there's no way I was going to do it in HA. It's actually quite a complex problem, not because of the technicalities of doing that API. It's the fact that it isn't an API. So you end up screen scraping and having to force stuff in. The better way I found of doing that is to not worry about the shopping part of it, worry about the procurement of the list. So you have a thing which says this is my shopping list and you have... I use slack of it, I also use Trello. So I'm able to send a message to a Trello card which is called shopping list and every time I send a text message to my special number it adds it onto the Trello card. So at the supermarket I bring up the card and it's there. Something I did a while back which is not in the current implementation is with barcodes. Everything now has got a camera in it. It's very simple to have a tablet on your fridge. You scan the barcode and because you generally only buy a set number of things, you know the type of milk you buy, you know the type of bread, you can program these things in quite simply. You scan the barcode, it says, all right, they've taken this out of the fridge, they haven't put it back, therefore need more milk. And that barcode goes to the same Trello card. It's a very simple thing to do and it gets you a lot more home automation for a comparatively short amount of time. Yeah, you could spend months and months and months working with the external API, waiting for the external API to change at your grocery store. But all you actually need is just to know what those things are. So the question, what are my plans when I'm on vacation? Oh, I don't have plants. The reason I don't have plants is because they all died when I was on vacation and I forgot to water them and I didn't build an Arduino to water them for me. But if you invite me back next year, maybe I'll build a plant watering system instead. I also don't have any cats. But that's because they all died because I didn't feed them when I was on vacation. Question, Deb. So you mentioned all these problems trying to pick up the perfect song which I made with my friends. There's no solution to them. How far did you manage to take it? So how was your automation for picking the best songs when they were daylight? So the question, how far did I go with the algorithm for picking the best song? And I stopped when I got board coding. As you might have noticed, I could probably spend the next few years trying to build the perfect algorithm to find the perfect song for the right situation given time, time of day, time of year, people in the house and everything else. I ended up doing a basic randomization. I put in an extra couple of rules just saying don't do too many things in the queue directory and ignore Zocero and everything will be fine. I could have spent a lot more time at the end of the day I have a button that says skip. It was easier to implement a button called skip than it has been to try and better that algorithm.  Thank you for your attention and good night.


Foods can be the pro or anti-inflammatory. In other words, they may contain compounds that enhance the inflammatory process or they may contain compounds that blunt or reduce the inflammatory process. Yeah, so if people don't really know what inflammation is, it's important to understand that it is a function, essentially, of the immune system. It's not typically the immune system messing up. It is actually going after something that it sees as pathogenic in the body or we consume a food that's highly inflammatory that then causes, and these are the symptoms that people should look for, brain fog, fatigue, groggy-ness upon waking, that exercise and tolerance that I spoke about before. You shouldn't be sore all the time after every workout.


So, having just completed the new takedown at The Guardian Breach on May 10th, I've decided to put together a guide on how this thing is completed, guiding you through all encounters until the very, very end. How's it going guys? My name's DPJ and today I bring you another VL3 video. If you do enjoy living a life, really helps me out and subscribe if you do want to see me more. So, The Guardian takedown has not long landed and today I guide you through the entire thing, every stage and every encounter. Now this will be done with no mayhem levels on, just so it's easier for me to explain what's happening and I ain't getting mounted in the background from every single angle. So, within the first part here, it's literally straightforward, kill all adds in the area. Once you are done here, you then have to go and stand on said pads to generate power to open the door by these crystals. For some reason though, when doing it on a low mayhem level, or it could be because I'm doing it solo, when I did it on mayhem 10, I was in a team, I'm not too sure, but when I'm doing it solo, the door's already open. But if your way is blocked and these crystals are glowing, you do need to stand on these plates, activate the crystals and the door will open. Going through the way, you will come to this part here with a few adds we'll spawn with you, which you can ignore, that's up to you. On higher mayhem levels though, you may want to take them out. Then you need to jump across to this path right here. And using this boost pad, wait until the spinning platform up in the air is at an angle where it's on its side, biggest from left to right. Waiting for this, we'll see you fly straight over and land on a platform behind it. If you don't wait and you hit the platform, there's a good chance you'll bounce off to your death. Jumping down the next few platforms, you now have to take out all these adds. Careful though, one of these enemies who you will encounter throughout this whole encounter can only be killed via you shooting the orb above its head. These enemies get close to you and can explode if that happens more or less, it lights out. So as soon as you see them, shoot that orb. So once you take out all the adds, you then have to activate the three crystals within this area. Once activated, you then have to stand on each pad, free in total until they charge up. With each pad there are a couple of locations enemies will appear from. Try your best not to move off the pad though because it is important and if you take too long, you will die.  It happened to me numerous times and you'll see it later on in the video.  So you do have to stand on every pad using the same method for each. Once you are done here the path will open up for you to continue on. Next up you have to make your way across a tight platform again just clearing out enemies that spawn in. Pretty straightforward if I'm honest. Once you have done this a door will open for you to continue on and onto a mini jumping puzzle.  These spawning will jump on that invisible platform which you need to get on and get across to progress further. But as soon as you jump on that first platform you will notice adds spawning out of a cube in the centre of the room. That's where you have to get to.  But once you are add 3 and back up it's quite easy to navigate 3 moving platforms to get into that centre cube. So just follow the simple path I take to get into the cube. Okay so next up we have the first boss encounter of Anathema the relentless. This encounter requires your full attention due to you having to keep moving around getting to and from individual platforms so in total there are 5 platforms. It's centre 1 and 4 others on its corners. So the mechanics here are quite simple. The boss will spawn in and move around following you to different platforms. On each platform there's a little time for you to lay down that damage for the boss becomes immune. Now when the boss does become immune it will start a kind of dome phase where a dome will appear around her and grow. It grows up until it eventually explodes so you have to get out of there before that happens. And you do this by jumping to a different platform using those boost pads. There becomes a stage in this encounter where the boss will spawn like shadows of herself who copy her mechanic of spawning those deadly domes. But this will happen on different platforms to the one you are on and the one she will spawn on.  If you are too late and jump to a platform where a dome is about to explode it's lights out. What I was doing was looking to the centre first if a shadow was spawning within the centre and look left and right. And there will become a stage where there will only be one platform 3 so you have to time it right and get to that platform quite quickly. Now you can survive in the domes but if you are in there when they do explode it's over. So quickly passing through one dome growing you should be fine. And that's basically this encounter people. Pick a 3 platform get across to it the boss will spawn on it with you lay down that damage. When that dome phase starts get to a clear platform and just keep repeating this process until she is dead. This if I am honest is the hardest part of the raid just due to the jumping and the platforms. Okay so when you are done with this encounter move to the teleporter in the centre of the room. Where we go to the next stage of killing all adds which is what you have to do. Kill all adds. When you are done you will get a little screen shake and then you are ready to move across or manoeuvre across these platforms. Again they will be careful they can be quite tricky for sure. The next stage is to make your way to the very top of the set of platforms to activate the 3 crystals in which your next job will be to power them up. So travel to the very top and activate the crystals then make your way to each and power them up. Be careful because if you take too long like I said earlier they will explode and you reset and I experienced this first hand and had no idea what was going on. So activate each 3 platforms at the same time kill all enemies that spawn in and I do believe they are coming from 3 different angles left right and above where you will see them flying adds too. Kill them all. So once you are done here people and once you are done activating all 3 crystals it's time to move on. So moving on again and again people it's about killing to progress so that's what you have to do. Once you have done this again you have to jump across platforms which again you need to be very very careful doing. Once you are across these platforms it's about killing all again to progress. There's a lot of this in this radar as you might be aware here they'll be careful as you can easily be knocked off the edges so stay away from enemies and just shoot them from afar. Once you are done destroying all enemies it's again about those invisible platforms to progress. Once you are over you are onto the last boss of Scorch. So with this boss there are a few different stages to it the first stage obviously being the easiest where you just need to shoot him until a third of his health bar comes off then kill all the enemies he spawns in. Those enemies with the orbs above their heads in which you have to shoot these orbs also spawning here.  Do this until you take off all three of his first health bars.  Once you do look for a teleporter to get back to that bar. Okay so the second phase of this boss starts with you having to jump off onto a platform he is on via this boost pad and melee that purple crystal he is tethered to. Once you have meleeed that crystal you then enter the second stage of this fight. Well similar to the first one with these three stages of health so shooting him and depleting his first he enters an immune state where enemies will spawn in and he also shoots lightning around a room so don't get too close to him and be careful of it. Always using the transformer here so it didn't affect me at all.  Once you do find that teleporter and get through it.  Then with these third phase with every immune stage of his final health bar he slowly produces an orb which when at a certain size explodes and seemingly kills all within a certain radius all what can see it. Here I was literally hiding behind pillars just making sure I couldn't see the orb upon it exploding and this happened with all stages of that third and final health bar so once he becomes immune hide behind a pillar and just take out those enemies and then when you can simply shoot his ass and guys you will be done it is as simple as that but it sounds simple but actually on a mayhem turn it is pretty hard. To be honest I was getting many many destiny fuels from this thing and that isn't a bad thing in my opinion but all in all I won't say it's as hard as the melee one raid but in saying that I am running a much better setup now with this raid than my zane. People who are wondering the setup I am using I am using my chaos and build with the OPQ system mainly. I will link that build within the video description if you do want to check it out but yeah guys that's my guide on the takedown at the guardian breach raid. If I were you I'd run it on a low mayhem first get used to it get used to the mechanics and then try and run it on higher mayhem levels and on that note we have come to the end of the video if you guys enjoyed it leaving a like really helps out if you're new around who want to see more borderlands be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video I upload can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button also if you want to support me directly and become a member to my channel do go ahead and click that join button I do appreciate that support but again thanks as always for stopping by hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one