Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32 Serial Peripheral Interface. The internal serial peripheral interface, or SPI, provides a simple communication interface, allowing the microcontroller to communicate with external devices. This interface is highly configurable to support many standard protocols. Applications benefit from the simple and direct connection to components, which only requires a few pins. Thanks to the highly configurable capabilities of the SPI, many devices can be simply accommodated in the existing project. The STM32 SPI offers various operating modes that are explained in more detail in this presentation. The communication speed can't exceed half of the internal bus frequency, and a minimum of two wires is required to provide the serial data flow synchronized by clock signal in a single direction. An optional hardware slave select control signal can be added. The data size and transmit shift order are configurable, as well as the clock signal polarity and phase or polarity and timing adjustment of the slave select signal. The crucial configuration and settings can be protected by locking. At the protocol level, the user can use specific data buffers with an optional automatic cyclic redundancy check or CRC calculation, and transfers through the DMA controller. There are a wide range of SPI events that can generate interrupt requests. The simplified SPI block diagram shows the peripheral's basic control mechanisms and functions. The separated clock domains are highlighted by areas with different colors. All the interconnection signals between the domains are synchronized. The PCLK clock domain has to be clocked when any access of the SPI registers is needed via the peripheral bus interface. The SPI master needs at least an active kernel clock, as it has to output the clock signal for the slave. The SPI slave can transfer data without any internal clock signal, as the serial interface domain is fully clocked externally via the SCK pin. All of the data passes through the receive and transmit buffers via their specific interfaces. The available features can be enabled or disabled depending on the peripheral's configuration. There are four IO signals associated with the SPI peripheral. If required, the peripheral can keep control over the associated IO signals, even when it is disabled, to prevent any unexpected glitches. The SPI master always controls the bus traffic and provides the clock signal to the dedicated slave through the SCK line. The master can select the slave it wants to communicate with through the optional slave select or SS signal. This stored in the dedicated shift registers can be exchanged synchronously between the master and slave through the MOSI, master output, slave input, and the MISO, master input, slave output, data lines. In full duplex mode, both data lines are used and synchronous data flows in both directions. In simplex mode, one node transmits data while the other receives the data. Data only flows in one direction. Depending on the communication direction, only one data line is used. Unused SPI pins can be used for other purposes. Half duplex mode integrates the previous two modes by sharing a single line for data exchanges and data flows in a single direction at a time. There is a cross connection between the master MOSI and the slave MISO pins in this mode. The master and slave have to alternate their transmitter and receiver roles synchronously when having a common data line. It is common to add a serial resistor on the half duplex data line to prevent possible temporary short circuit connection, since master and slave nodes are not usually synchronized. In the SPI network includes more than one slave, a star topology is commonly used. The master communicates with one slave at a time, since you can only have one slave transmit data back to the master through the common MISO pin. In this topology, a separated slave select signal from the master has to be provided to each slave node, so the master can select which slave to communicate with. Thanks to separate slave select signals, SPI data and clock format can be adapted for each slave if the multiple slave nodes do not have a common configuration. Another multi-slave configuration is the circular topology, where the inputs and outputs of all the nodes are connected together in a closed serial chain. A common slave select signal is used for all the nodes as communication occurs at the same time. All nodes must have the same data and clock format configuration. Microcontroller SPI nodes typically use separate internal transmit and receive shift registers, so the data transferred between them has to be handled by software in a circular mode. A specific underrun feature can be selected during the slave configuration to automatically handle these transfers by hardware. SPI networks can operate in a multi-master environment. This mode is used to connect two master nodes exclusively. When neither node is active, they are by default in a slave mode. When one node wants to take control of the bus, it switches itself into master mode and asserts the slave select signal on the other node through a GPIO pin. Both slave select or SS pins work as a hardware input to detect potential bus collisions between nodes as only one can master the SPI bus at a single time. After the session is completed, the active node master releases the slave select signal and returns back to passive slave mode, waiting for the next session to start. Several parameters are used to set up the data format. These parameters can define the data frame size and the transmit order of the shift register. The clock can be set to one of four basic configurations defined in the Motorola SPI specifications. The combination of two bits controls the polarity and phase of the clock signal. When the phase control bit is cleared, data bits are sampled on the odd clock edges and seven clock edges synchronize the shifting of the next bit onto the data line. This is the opposite when the phase control bit is set. The clock polarity bit defines the idle state of the clock signal and which clock edge is used for data sampling or shifting. The slave select signal can be used with both polarities and the functionality of the MOSI and MISO signals can be swapped. Several parameters can be used to optionally adjust the timing of the master transaction flow. Signal timings for the master node can be adjusted when needed. This is the case when a slave node needs a longer time to wake up from sleep mode following the setup of the SS active edge or when the slave is not able to handle a data flow that is too fast. Up to 15 additional serial clock signal period delays can be inserted by MIDI or MISI parameters. Data frames can be optionally interleaved by SS pulses. All SPI data transactions pass through the embedded FIFOs organized by bytes. A write access to the SPI write data register stores the written data in the transmit FIFO at the end of a send queue. A read access to the SPI read data register returns the oldest values stored in receive FIFO that has not been read yet. When the communication speed is fast and data frames too short, it can be a demanding task to ensure correct data flows, especially when the clock signal becomes continuous and full duplex mode is used. Slave nodes are more critical as they have to properly follow all the transaction timings provided by the master to prevent any data overrun or underrun conditions. The user can organize data into wider packets and handle multiple data read or write events by minimizing access to the data registers. The services are based on FIFO threshold events signaling packet ready operations. If FIFO thresholds are properly set, multiple data packet services can be performed upon minimum FIFO occupancy events. Read and write events can even be serviced together based on common dual events. These features efficiently decrease the number of services and so minimize the load of the microcontroller when handling data flows. This can be especially useful in low power modes when data is sent while the microcontroller is sleeping. When the DMA is applied additionally, it helps to significantly reduce overall loading on the system in run mode. In the figure shown, you can see the principle of how four short data frames can be written and read by a single 32-bit or 16-bit access of the dedicated data registers associated with the FIFOs in accordance with the FIFO capacity and maximum configurable data size of the SPI instance. The SPI peripheral features two FIFOs to handle the data flow. The capacity of the FIFOs and maximum data frame size depends on the product and the peripheral instance. The frequency of the FIFO occupancy events depends on the FIFO threshold setting which organizes data into packets. A single packet can include up to 16 data frames but its size may not exceed half of the FIFO's size. Possible combinations of data and packet size to fit into available FIFO space are listed in the table. Once room for a single packet is available in the Transmit FIFO to store a new complete packet of data or a single complete data packet is ready to read in the Receive FIFO, the corresponding TXP or RXP occupancy flag is set. The user can then perform proper write or read service of data registers corresponding to a single packet size. Both packets to be transmitted and received can be serviced by a common handling procedure when the dual occupancy DXP flag is set. The occupancy flags are evaluated dynamically in relation to the bus traffic and the current FIFO content so they have to be checked exclusively once the associated packet service is fully completed. Both the master and slave can apply either endless data transfers or handle a defined number of data to be sent within a single session. The number of data is practically unlimited as it can be extended on the fly as long as the transaction is ongoing. A cyclic redundancy check can be implemented automatically or the slave select signal can be handled by hardware on the master side during the session. The master can start or suspend ongoing communication at any time. The current data frame is finished when the transaction is suspended. A specific CT size counter counts the number of data frames remaining in the current session, end of transaction or EOT and the transmission complete TXC flags indicate the end of session and bus idle while an additional specific TXTF flag indicates all data submitted for transmission and its event disables interrupts from transmission occupancy events. Transmissions automatically stop when the session is completed at the master side even if there is additional data in the transmit FIFO. All the FIFO's content is flushed when the SPI is disabled. The user has to read out all the received data before the SPI is disabled. Except for occasional errors, the software has to take care of FIFO occupancy events only while the session is ongoing. Once the session is finished and the remaining received data is not aligned with the packet size, the last RXP occupancy flag is not set but the RXWNE flag is active and the level of the current FIFO occupancy is signaled by the specific RXP LVL level counter that depends on the data size. The counter value signals how many data frames remain to handle at the received FIFO. Nevertheless, application software can still perform full packet reads without any drawbacks as the only consistent data will be popped from the FIFO. Similarly, full packet writes to the transmit FIFO can be applied in this case as only the consistent data will be pushed into the FIFO while redundant writes will be discarded. When the DMA is applied, such non-aligned data is handled automatically. To prevent overrun conditions and the loss of any data, the master can temporarily suspend ongoing transactions when its received FIFO is full. The slave can be configured to detect and react to underrun conditions when no data is ready to be sent in its transmit FIFO and when the master continues or starts a new session. During protocol level communications, the DMA controller can be used to automatically handle the data flow events, the CRC calculations and the updating of the FIFO threshold. In case of threshold control, the last odd data frame is correctly applied in packed mode when the number of frames is not aligned with the packet size. If the CRC is enabled, separate CRC calculators are used for the transmitter and receiver. The CRC calculation result is automatically appended at the end of each transfer by the DMA controller or by software control. Both CRC polynomial pattern and CRC frame length are programmable. The size of the polynomial is defined by its most significant non-zero bit and it always has to be longer than the data size. The CRC frame length has to be equal or a multiple of the data size. The CRC calculation is frozen during the CRC pattern transaction. Results from the transmitter CRC calculator register are loaded directly into the shift register and the received CRC value is stored in the FIFO and compared with the receiver CRC result. Redundant CRC information are automatically flushed from the FIFOs. As the CRC registers are automatically initialized, the CRC can be used in DMA circular mode. Initialization patterns for the receiver and transmitter can be configured either to zero or to all ones. By this flexibility, a wide range of protocols is covered. The slave select signal is commonly used by the master node to select the slave node for communication. The signal implementation is mandatory in multi-master and multi-slave topologies. Though it is not mandatory at a single master slave pair, it could be helpful for data flow synchronization regardless of the topology case. The slave select signal can operate as an input or as an output depending on the SSIOP control bit. The SS input can be managed by hardware or software depending on the SSM and SSI control bits in either master or slave modes. As an input slave, it is used to identify itself as the active slave for communication. As a master input, it signalizes a potential conflict between masters in a multi-master system. The SS only works as an output in master mode and is managed by hardware in a standard or specific control mode. Additional slave select outputs can be provided by the GPIOs under software control. There are a few enhanced modes when the slave select signal is under specific hardware control. The slave select signal can operate in a pulse mode where the master generates pulses on the signal between data frames. The duration of the pulses is programmable in steps of SPI clock periods. The clock phase and polarity are configurable in this mode. Another enhanced mode is the TI mode where the data flow is synchronized by the SS pulses provided by the master on the last bit of data. The clock polarity and phase configuration is fixed and the slave data output is automatically switched into high impedance when the bus traffic stops and on a specific configurable timeout. Here is an overview of the SPI interrupt events. There are FIFO and error detection events to handle data flows. DMA requests are triggered internally by FIFO threshold events. The EOT event raises automatic control of the last incomplete packet when the overall number of data sent is not aligned with data packet size. Here is an overview of the SPI instance status in specific low power modes. This status depends on state of MPU or MCU subsystem domains and to which of them the peripheral instance is allocated. Every instance is divided and handled by three separate clock domains. The PCLK clock domain has to be clocked when any access of the SPI registers is needed via the peripheral bus interface. If the bus clock is stalled, the peripheral registers content is retained. If the peripheral kernel clock is enabled, the clock generator can control the SPI master operation too. Otherwise, the peripheral is able to operate in slave mode only because the peripheral serial interface is then clocked by the external clock signal via SCK pin exclusively. A peripheral event with wake-up capability can be configured to wake up the system. No SPI instance can operate when its domain is in low power, low voltage, stop, standby or shutdown mode. That is why it's important to ensure that all SPI traffic is fully completed and the peripheral is disabled properly before the peripheral domain enters one of these low power modes. The SPI performance depends mainly on the applied clock. At a minimum, the clock frequency should be twice the required communication frequency. The actual rate of communication can be decreased by application factors. The user has to consider SPI bus loads such as the number of nodes, the connection distance, the input capacitance, as well as the GPIO settings. Fast GPI mode should be applied on the data and clock signals. Lower power supply voltage and extreme ambient temperatures slow down edges. Sometimes slower data hold or setup time requirements have to be respected between nodes. Applications can't always manage the fast data flow due to frequent servicing of exceptions. The DMA capacity has to be considered as well as the number of DMA channels used by the system, frequent interrupt services or execution of non-interruptible instructions. The SPI can be used in a wide range of applications where a simple data transfer is required without the need for a complex communication protocol. Secured transfers are also supported when used with smart cards. Here are some helpful tips. The user should be aware that traffic on the bus may still be ongoing even if the DMA transaction is completed or the transmit FIFO becomes empty. That is why the user has to carefully check the peripheral status and follow the suggested procedures before disabling the SPI or placing it in standby or shutdown mode. Use the data size control if you need specific control like CRC or slave select signal handling by hardware. The use of the DMA, data packing or handling dual event at full duplex mode can increase the system's overall performance. These features can help especially when data frames are short and a fast continuous communication flow is required. Hardware management of the slave select signal is not quite necessary for the SPI master single slave pair, but it can help synchronize the data flow and prevent conflicts in a multi master system. When the SPI master has to be disabled temporarily for any reason the user can prevent any glitches on the associated outputs working at alternate function mode by keeping them at forced under control. Then the GPIOs are kept at the state corresponding to the SPI idle configuration. The user should keep all the configuration and settings locked to prevent any accidental changes. There are some additional specific aspects which should be taken into account when designing an SPI network. Evaluation of FIFO occupancy flags is dynamic and depends on the bus flow. That is why the event service has to be applied when the complete data packet which corresponds to the FIFO threshold is finished. When the complete packet service is finished either read from or written in the FIFO the occupancy flag can be tested again. Slave internal logic is clocked from an external SCK pin. Certain flags need a few periods of SCK signal cycling to be evaluated and can't be evaluated as long as the SCK signal stays at idle. 42 MP1 devices embed six SPI instances and each support all the features presented so far. SPI2S1, SPI2S2 and SPI2S3 are multiplexed with I2S interface and have double extended FIFOs and data size registers. Optional sources and so maximum frequency of kernel clock provided by RCC differ instance by instance. More details are available in the product reference manual and associated data sheets. Refer to these other trainings which are linked directly to the SPI. Users should be familiar with all the peripherals that can affect the behavior of the SPI. There are some dedicated SPI application notes. To learn more about general SPI connections and interface issues there are many web pages as well as SPI bus monitoring tools available. Many digital oscilloscopes support direct reading and analysis of data and clock signals on the SPI bus.


Okay, this is a little quick tip here. You may know that you can LSBLK to list your block devices, your hard drives and other storage devices like so. But did you know that you can add dash dash JSON to that and get a nicely formatted JSON output, which is great for using other applications, especially if you want to create something like a GUI interface for this. You could take that one command, run it on a server and create a simple HTML with some CSS interface like this. Now, I know this is really ugly. This is something I just threw together myself and I'm not much at design, I usually use templates, but with my knowledge of CSS, this is what I came up with pretty quick. You can view this at filmsbychrist.com, forward slash scripts, forward slash 2021, LSBLK and you can look at the code right there. It's not very long, half of it is the license, a little bit of JavaScript to grab the information and a little bit of CSS to format it. Now again, mine is pretty ugly, but you can easily find some templates out there. I quickly just did a Google search on fancy div tag templates and this is the first page that came up and scrolling through here, there's definitely some better color schemes than I was using, but I especially like this one. You could definitely use this circle here, maybe put the drive name in there, the device name and then the partitions in blue here and then do the horizontal line and list the information, the rest information under there, something like that. Just throwing out ideas. I hope you found this quick tip useful and I hope that you have a great day again. Looking for a link in the description so you can see my example. Have a great day.


Age-related macular degeneration, AMD, is the most common cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50. It is estimated that 11 million people worldwide suffer from this condition. There are several known risk factors for AMD, including increasing age, smoking, previous cataract surgery, and a family history of AMD. Other risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity have been found to be less consistently linked to AMD. Physicians and ophthalmologists can use this information to assess patients' risks for developing AMD and take steps to reduce their risk. This article was authored by Evans Christopher, Pio Elizabeth, Fletcher Astrid, and others.


I'm the Matsuki host of International Hawaii, showcasing Hawaii's import and export businesses to help others new to the industry, and also planning to grow. Today, my guest is Patrick Lau, founder and president of Saber Brands Local Package and Print House, also FTZ ex-tenant. Hi Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Could you briefly let us know what Saber Brands is? Sure, Saber Brands, we're a local company. We've been in business for 18 years and we supply, I guess, packaging to many food manufacturers here locally and on the mainland and also internationally. Wow, so 18 years, how did you how did you get started in this business? We started basically, I guess in, I guess say early, was that 2001, moved back home to Hawaii from Hong Kong, was in the finance industry previously, but wanted to move back home and then actually got a job with a hedge fund here managing, I guess, some funds here, but it's a lot different managing funds in terms of what I used to do, which was basically index arbitrage, discovered that the middle of the Pacific isn't the best place to do these types of things because the latency on the, I guess, putting in the orders digitally, we're always going to be late compared to being right next to the exchange. So moved my cell phone back and essentially was not in position to make the types of trades that I wanted to do and then 9-11 hit, so everything kind of fell out of the bottom and was forced to figure out what we needed to do. We have a young family and we said, hey, you know what, packaging is something that I had family in China and decided to work with them and check things out and kind of stumbled on to it and it's pretty good in terms of helping businesses kind of package themselves and present themselves and to look better in the market. Definitely. Was that your goal in the beginning when you first started? The goal in the beginning is to actually just pay for health care.  The expectations weren't very high, but it's all about kind of trying to make something and do a little bit every day and building. So when you were first starting, what were some of your biggest challenges and then do you think some of these challenges were unique to Hawaii? I don't think the challenges are unique to Hawaii when you're starting up.  Essentially, I had a rolling desk just looking for places in the house that I could actually work, you know, with kids and things like that. I guess that you could say these are the types of challenges, but in retrospect, when you look back at it, it's all about believing in yourself, believing in, luckily, I had my wife, me was also a co-founder of the business and it's working things together. For me, I guess, because we both have each other, it's a lot easier because you can actually have someone be a sounding board or share ideas and that is actually a huge help. And I had read and you actually mentioned that you kind of started off and stumbled a little bit on as far as like what you were going to import and try and sell. Could you explain that whole process and how you pivoted? So learning about, I guess, logistics and supply chain, that is something where sometimes it's trial by fire. You think that something's a great idea, it's inexpensive and you think that everyone needs it, but I guess the devil in the details with respect to logistics and you probably right now supply chain is a very big deal because people are starting to get a better understanding of it. In terms of how much Amazon does or e-commerce and things like that. So in the very beginning when we kind of were, I guess, in going through the school of hard knocks would bring in items that were bulky. Although they were a common use items for every day, it just for a young entrepreneur just starting out. It was probably a little bit more than we could chew because when you bring in something bulky, the dollar value of that product is probably going to be not able to withstand the logistics costs. So automatically your costs of doing business in that product will go up. So that's kind of how we first started. We would bring in all sorts of different things. I guess the thing that sticks out the most was like bento boxes because you know it's a great product. People use it every day, but with respect to delivering, you can't deliver a thousand bento boxes. I mean, it takes up a huge amount of space. You've got cases that are like two feet by two feet by two feet. So it's kind of large, whereas if you did a thousand packages in terms of what we've been doing, you could essentially just kind of fit that in your trunk and not have any problems.  So there's a lot of things that you're going to have to kind of roll up your sleeves and do, and you want to try and minimize self inflicted pain. So that's why thinking, thinking something that can actually from a logistics standpoint, ship very well. Wow.  Right, right.  That's practically half the, half the battle. But for those that don't know their suppliers, you know, nothing, nothing is better than just kind of hopping on the plane and visiting if you believe in what you're trying to do it. You need to actually do the research. You need to go learn about your suppliers. That's why there's there's a lot of horror stories about kind of buying stuff online and, and, you know, they pay their money and you don't get what you want to get. But you have no one else to blame except for yourself because you have to put in the work. You have to go visit the factories. You have to understand how they can help you and how you can actually work together. And that is, I guess, especially in China or in Asian countries that it's more than just visiting do you actually need to build a relationship where you're visiting. Yeah, so times or it is, it is more than visiting, I guess, in the first time when we, when we did work with with with plants there, you do set the email and you do actually go visit. When you visit, it's great. You see everything. And then you actually kind of have to trust what you've seen, meaning you have to go in and start doing business. And then after you do that, that what we what happened was a year afterwards, you go visit again. And you recap exactly everything that's happened, whether it be a lot of orders or one order or if they didn't do something to spec or if they did something really well. It's just communication helps to build that relationship and it doesn't take much it just takes picking up the phone talk into them or, you know, doing things like zoom nowadays. It helps. So that's that's all the little things they all and to build a relationship. Oh, I forgot to ask you one thing as we're rolling along. How did you come up with the name saver brand? That we were we know you want it we knew we wanted to go into food packaging. At the same time, we wanted to have the word represent us kind of helping the food products that we're protecting. So I think that's why we came up with the saver. All these different brands so that we can actually savor the, I guess, flavor or whatever was. Yeah. That's awesome. What is one of the worst things that you remember happening, like either the worst decision or the worst outcome that has happened during your business experience or actually, I can't say that there was a worst. But what what you have to kind of take everything in stride is that when you run a business or when you build a business it's I really truly believe this it's a series of buffooneries. And, and how you actually bounce back from mistakes. Sometimes they they cost a lot of money and they hurt. But the only way you can get over it is to kind of think about and see what you did wrong. And then, from there, you move forward right. It's when it's kind of small. When there's only like two or three people. It might be a lot easier to overcome. It gets harder when you have more and more people working with you. But then that what that comes along with that is of being able to trust. Right. And those are always the challenges but you know when you surround yourself with great people, then things just do get easier. So in the very beginning, it's just being able to overcome whatever catastrophic errors that you make, because in the in, I guess, in the big picture wise, as, as massive as that error may seem in the long run it's actually kind of you look back and you really do laugh about it.  Can you give us one specific example.  I guess you can go back to like the bento boxes. I mean, we wound up actually sitting on a container of those types of packages for forever and we want just giving them away. Perfectly fine they were like awesome. But you know it was it was a great lesson in terms of knowing that from a logistics standpoint or from shipping, there's things that you can bring in that are probably be a lot better. Thankfully, we worked with that we're in the foreign trade zone and we still have product in the foreign trade zone so it wasn't. It wasn't in terms of managing inventory, I mean we don't have those types of issues, it made the pain a lot easier, but it's just things like that where you kind of think about and reflect being able to reflect is very important. In terms of what to do the next time or what not to bring in again. Wow. And then you're pretty I mean considering for white businesses you're pretty good size and from starting with just you and your wife, how many people are in your company now. We have around 30 people. Wow. Work with us and it's it's great. Now we have a great team. And that's how important surrounding yourself with good people is is because when you have everyone kind of you know they in the same canoe right you go places. And I know it might not be, you hope that it's faster but at the same time if everyone's in the same belief, you get there with greater certainty, right. Because with, I guess with business, starting out it's not about how quickly you grow or how, how much you can can do it's it's about the achieving consistency. And for most being able to help customers. Because as long as you can help customers, then everything else falls into place. But once you start putting your needs in front of customers, then we start making decisions that probably aren't in the best interest of the company and the customers as well. And so you have a large distribution like nationally. How did you know when your company was ready to grow and take that next step. That it's that's something where you put a lot of effort into everything that that you do and whether it's it's a if it's something that's kind of a small project or a big project, you're going to put the same type of effort into it so for us. We've got the factories to at a point where we thought okay good this is this is a very very high level that we're doing things that we have great processes and we have a great product. So, instead of limiting ourselves just to the Hawaii market. It's something where it was probably a good evolution to say like you know what we put all this work into it. Let's kind of grow it and expand it. And kind of understanding whether when you're ready to go embark on the challenge. I guess if it was just Hawaii we would have been just as just as happy and I think every person is a little bit different, where it's whether they want to go out and explore or they just stay home and just kind of figure out things from there. So it's it really is each person has their own different kind of journey and it's just whether or not they how much they want to kind of push themselves and challenge themselves. So for us it actually took like 12 years before we said okay let's do. So that's a long time. Wow. So you've been like distributing nationally for about six years. Right. Yeah. And how did you grow your market like how did you find your customers. Oh, it, you know, for us it's it's all about word of mouth, even locally in Hawaii. We know that we can take care of and it's just referrals. We're not really out there. Because I think our philosophy is a little bit different we just as long as we help someone, we know that someone else that they can refer us to someone else. Right and then at that pace that also gives us the ability to take care of those that work with us as best as we can. We don't have a timetable on growth. We just want to make sure that everything that we do is we do well. There's more organic growth. Yeah, it's a lot more organic growth. And what we found that worked well for us is that we only needed one salesperson on the mainland. But when you have only one salesperson, that's one voice, right. So long as they're a surrogate in terms of, and they believe the same things that Mia and I believe in, then it makes it a lot easier for everything else to kind of fall into place. So what we did was we had one salesperson and then we have a lot of customer service people that take care of customer service. And that really helps a lot so that each customer feels that they're being taken care of and they're not a number. And your customer service team are they in Hawaii or the Oh, yeah. It's Hawaii's home. So we're, we're never going to move. And we just figure out how to do things here. It's a lot more difficult. It takes a lot longer. But it does get easier. That's the great part. And now with technology, that's what we were proponent, the user of technology and that helps kind of bridge everywhere and makes the work smaller for us. Wow, so one salesperson, so that one salesperson, like that word of mouth is just as effective as well. And then like once you have like one or two customers. That's, that's really that's great. That's all you, that's all you really need if, and then we also participated in shows. But I think in the, the, I guess the digital age. We just really did it old school and we canvassed the US by visiting people. So we would take sections of the country and he would just drive and visit. And bring product samples and yeah, so that's Paul. That's his name. He used to just, he just get in the car and drive and visit a lot of coffee. We visit cafes and because we do, I mean, we do a lot of majority on our mainland. We just always focus on his coffee, coffee packaging and things like that. So that's another thing too is focusing on one thing, a niche. As an entrepreneur, it's very easy to kind of get sidetracked. There are many different things and it winds up kind of taking you away from your focus. Right. So as long as you can kind of do something really, really well, that's essentially, you know, all you need. And you focus on that. Yeah. What did you, what was the biggest challenge and when you started to scale logistics or but we figured that out pretty good, pretty well. It's communication making sure that we don't slip up in tending to customers needs. That that is always the most difficult portion part of scaling is being able to understand the needs of the customers and because this it's it's exponential right so you get more and more referrals the more referrals you need more people to kind of respond and do things like that so that's that's always going to be the biggest challenge. Anything that you would do differently. Oh, would you know now. No, not, you know what, not, not really because I think that trusting the process. I mean, we hear that all the time. So as long as you believe in something and you trust the process and if you're patient with it then it normally as long as you put your head down and you work hard. It does, it does work out. But you have to have that conviction and that belief. And sometimes it takes longer I mean sometimes it takes it's, it's, it's quicker. I mean, for us it took us 12 years to decide to go make that leap so that's a long time, but it's, but that was the process for us. Yeah, and you mentioned like I wanted to ask you how this whole pandemic in this environment has affected saver brands. Yeah, so from, I guess the Hawaii standpoint it's real tough. The companies we work with locally, some have went under some basically aren't doing any business. But what we try to do is we try to support as best as we can, in terms of, you know, just, just finding out and calling and talking to them and trying to figure out what they, what they need. But thankfully everything is going to just be temporary, although I'll be it, it'll take longer to recover, but it is temporary and the new normal is something that we just all have to adapt to. So the only thing we can do to change it other than just kind of working every day and, and, and kind of help in whomever we need to help that time, understanding what people the needs of our customers are on the mainland for the coffee packaging, it's a little different because we find that customers can't really go or our customers customer can't really go to their cafes to go hang out and drink coffee so what they want to do is they brew coffee at home. So as a result of that, they're going to need coffee packaging. And that that's been kind of keeping us busy and on the flow during these crazy times. But it's still we still got to go long way more. But slowly but surely, as long as we just kind of take one day at a time, things will always work out for all of us and it's that's just to stay positive. That's so important. I think right now for everyone. I mean, it was a good decision for you to go nationally, since it's helping you survive. Yeah, it helped. It helps it. There's a lot of cardiac that that goes into it. But as long as your patient, then it'll, it'll, it'll sort itself out. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when we were talking you had said, you don't fail until you quit, which is I think it's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Entrepreneurs need to hear that. Yeah, as soon as you throw in the towel, then all that work that you put in is evaporated. Right. So, and if you believed in something in the very beginning to start with then you either pushing all where you keep on pushing it right or, but evolution innovation continuously learning is that's that's always going to be key. Yeah, so in on the know what's next for your saver brands.  One is, you know, from a packaging standpoint, we've been working on an industrial composable product. Bill 40. So we have a barrier product that actually can help manufacturers food manufacturers with the environment. So single use plastics bill 40, we're ready for that. So in terms of kind of helping our customers. Just to be a little bit more earth friendly. What we do as well as we are developing a reprocess and repurpose type of program where it's it's called our plus our so we set up, I guess receptacles and boxes to be able to collect the packaging that we make, and basically upcycle it. That's something that's that that we've been working on it's been a lot of fun. Done a lot of fun. Awesome so it's constantly innovating and. Yeah, to coming. Right, right, right, right. We have to. Yeah. One last. This is our random question of the day. What is your favorite movie. Favorite movie. That's that's kind of hard. I guess you could say the favorite series or whatever we've been watching a lot of Marvel so I guess Avengers would have to be there. Yeah, all of them. Yeah, they're all good. Yeah. Very cool. Thank you I think all of this advices and just hearing your story is going to be good for people that want to start their businesses and start importing and figuring out what what they should be bringing in and how. So, thank you. Thanks for joining me in for sharing your story. So this, this has been international Hawaii and your host Cindy Matsuki and my guest today is Patrick Lau founder and president of saver brands they're an awesome packaging company packaging and print house. Thank you and we'll see you next time on international work on think tank.


When we parted we had just mentioned the word products from the candle for when the candle burns We found we were able to get various products from it There was one substance which was not obtained when the candle was burning properly Which was charcoal or smoke and there was some other substance that went upwards from the flame Which did not appear as smoke but took some other form and made part of that general current Which ascending from the candle upwards becomes invisible and escapes there were also other products to mention you remember that in that Rising current having its origin at the candle. We found that one part was condensable against a cold spoon and another part was Incondensable we will first take the condensable part and examine it and strange to say we find that that part of the product is just water Nothing but water on the last occasion I spoke of it incidentally merely saying that water was produced among the condensable products of the candle But today I wish to draw your attention to water that we may examine it carefully Especially in relation to the subject and also with respect to its general existence on the surface of the globe Now having previously arranged an experiment for the purpose of condensing water from the products of the candle My next point will be to show you that this water and perhaps one of the best means that I can adopt for showing its Presence is to exhibit a very visible action of water And then to apply that test to what is collected as a drop at the bottom of the vessel a Small piece of potassium shows the presence of water by lighting up and floating about burning with a violent flame You see a drop of water a condensed product of the candle hanging from under the surface of the dish I will show you the potassium has the same action upon it as upon the water in the dish in the experiment We have just tried I will take a drop upon a glass slide and when I put the potassium to it You'll see it once from it taking fire that there is water present Now that water was produced by the candle water is one individual thing it never changes We can add to it by careful adjustment for a little while or we can take it apart and get other things from it But water as water remains always the same either in a solid liquid or fluid state And now to go into the history of this wonderful production of water from combustibles and by combustion I must first of all tell you that this water may exist in different conditions And although you may now be acquainted with all its forms They still requires to give a little attention to them for the present so that we may perceive how the water when it goes through its Protein changes is entirely and absolutely the same thing whether it's produced from a candle by Combustion or from the rivers or ocean first of all water when at the coldest is ice now We scientists speak of water as water whether it be in its liquid or solid or gaseous state We speak of it chemically as water water is a thing compounded of two substances One of which we have derived from the candle and the other which we shall find elsewhere Water may occur as ice ice changes back into water when the temperature is raised Water also changes into steam when it's warmed enough the water Which I have before me is in its densest state and although it changes in condition and form and in many other Qualities it still is water and whether we change it into steam by heat or whether we alter it into ice by cooling It increases in volume in the first case very largely and wonderfully and in the second very strangely and powerfully For instance, I have this metal bottle into which I poured a little water into it I'm converting the water into steam for the purpose of showing you the different volumes Which water occupies in its different states of liquid water and water vapor or steam See what a stream of vapor is issuing from this bottle You observe that we must have made it quite full of steam to have it sent out in that great quantity And now as we can convert the water into steam by heat We convert it back into liquid water by the application of cold and if we take a watch glass and Hold it over the steam see how soon it gets damp with water It will condense until the glass is warm it condenses the water which is now running down the sides of it I have here another experiment to show the condensation of water from a vapor state back into a liquid state in the same way as The vapor one of the products of the candle was condensed against the bottom of the dish and obtained in the form of water And to show you how truly and thoroughly these changes take place I will take these bottle which is now full of steam and close the top Which will see what takes place when we cause this water or steam to return back to the fluid state by cooling it in water You see what has happened if I had closed the lid and still kept the heat applied to it It would have burst the vessel yet when the steam returns to the state of liquid water the bottle collapses There being a vacuum produced inside the condensation of the steam I show you these experiments for the purpose of pointing out that in all these occurrences There is nothing that changes the water into any other thing it still remains water And so the vessel is obliged to give way and has crushed inwards as in the other case by the further application of heat it would have been blowing outwards and What do you think the bulk of that water is when it assumes the vaporous condition a cubic inch of water will expand to a Cubic foot of steam and on the contrary the application of cold will contract that large amount of steam into this small quantity of water Let us now take the case of water changing into ice We can affect that by cooling the water in a dry ice Acetone bath and I should do so to show you that when water becomes ice it changes in volume in an extraordinary way These bottles are made of cast iron. They're very strong and very thick I suppose they are each a third of an inch in thickness I filled this one with water to exclude all air and I'll screw the plug in tightly We shall see that when we freeze the water in the vessel It will not be able to hold the ice and the expansion within will break it into pieces No communication will take place you observe between the water in the bottle and the ice in the outer bowl But there will be a conveyance of heat from one to the other The cold has taken possession of the bottle in its contents all the iron was thick the ice had burst to the sunder You see some ice partly enclosed by the covering of iron Which is too small for them because the ice is larger in bulk than the water You know very well that ice floats on water Why because the ice is larger than the quantity of water which can produce it and therefore the ice weighs the lighter And the water is the heavier To return to our quiet philosophy We shall not in future be deceived therefore by any changes that are produced in water Water is the same everywhere whether produced from the ocean or from the flame of the candle Where then is the water which we get from a candle? I must anticipate a little and tell you it evidently comes as to part of it from the candle But is it within the candle beforehand? No, it is not in the candle and it is not in the air round about the candle which is necessary for its combustion It is neither in one nor the other But it comes from their combined action apart from the candle apart from the air and this we have now to trace So that we may understand thoroughly what is the chemical history of a candle when we have it burning on our table How shall we get at this? I myself know plenty of ways But I want you to get at it from the association in your minds of what I've already told you I think you can see a little in this way. I'll use electricity to pull water to pieces This power supply makes it as though I were applying heat to cause the water to appear to boil When we separate or electrolyze water into its parts we get two volumes of one gas and one of another The gases produced are not steam steam is condensable into water And when you lower the temperature of steam you convert it back into fluid water As you know water is liquid at room temperature notice that this gas which I've collected it does not become a liquid I will take another test and apply it to this gas If I now apply a light to the mouth of the test tube it ignites with a slight noise That tells you that it is not steam steam puts out a fire It does not burn, but you saw that when I had in this test tube Burt We may obtain this substance equally from water produced from the candle flame as from any other source Here is a vial full of the same gas. I will show you something most interesting It is a combustible gas, but it is also less dense than air Steam will condense this body will rise in the air and not condense Suppose I take another vial empty of all but air if I examine with a flame I shall find that it contains nothing but air I will now take this vial full of the gas that I'm speaking of and deal with it as though It were a light body. I will hold both upside down and turn the one up under the other And now what does the vial contain that had the gas procured from the steam you will find it only contains air But look Here is the combustible substance which I have poured out of the one vial into the other It still preserves its quality and condition and independence and therefore is the more worthy of our consideration as belonging to the products of candle This is what we get from water the same substance which are contained in the candle Let us now trace distinctly the connection between these two points This is hydrogen a body classed among those things which in chemistry we call elements because we can get nothing else out of them A candle is not an elementary body because we can get carbon out of it We can get this hydrogen out of it or at least out of the water which it supplies And this gas has been so named hydrogen because it is that element which in association with another element generates water This hydrogen is a very beautiful substance. It is so light that it carries things up It is far lighter than the atmosphere and I dare say I can show you this by an experiment Here is our tank of hydrogen and here are some soap suds I have a rubber tube connected with the hydrogen tank and at the end of it a plastic pipe now I could blow bubbles with my breath or Blow bubbles by means of the hydrogen you observe how the bubbles fell downwards when I blew them with my warm breath But notice the difference when I blow them with hydrogen It shows you how light this gas must be in order to carry with it Not merely the ordinary soap bubble, but the larger portion of a drop hanging to the bottom of it I can show its lightness in a better way than this larger bubbles than these may be so lifted up Indeed in former times balloons used to be filled with this gas Water also contains oxygen oxygen as you will immediately imagine exists in the atmosphere For how should the candle burn to produce water without it such a thing would be absolutely impossible and chemically impossible without oxygen Now as regards this very property of oxygen supporting combustion which we may compare to air I'll take a piece of candle to show it to you in a rough way and the result will be rough You see the combustion in air. How will it burn in oxygen? I have here a jar of oxygen for you to compare the action of this gas with that of air See how brightly and how beautifully it burns. Is it wonderful how great the supporting powers of oxygen are as regards combustion But it does not affect merely the combustion of hydrogen or carbon or the candle But it exalts all combustions of the common kind. We must now for a little while longer look at it with respect to hydrogen I'm now about to set fire to oxygen a hydrogen mixed in the proportion in which they occur in water Here is a vessel of soap bubbles made with one volume of oxygen and two volumes of hydrogen Exactly the same nature as the gas we obtain from electrolysis I will take a bubble in my hand and you will perhaps think I'm acting oddly in this experiment But it is to show you that we must not always trust to noise and sound but rather to real facts This oxygen united with the hydrogen as you saw by the phenomenon and heard by the sound with the utmost readiness of action And all its powers were taking up in its neutralization of the qualities of the hydrogen So now I think you will perceive the whole history of water with reference to oxygen in the air from what we have said before Why does a piece of potassium decompose water because it finds oxygen in the water? What is set free when I put it in the water? It sets free hydrogen and the hydrogen burns but the potassium itself combines with oxygen and this piece of potassium And taking the water apart the water You may say derived from the combustion of the candle takes away the oxygen which the candle took from the air And so sets the hydrogen free and even if I take a piece of ice and put a piece of potassium upon it The beautiful affinities by which the oxygen and the hydrogen are related are such that the ice will absolutely set fire to the Potassium it produces a sort of volcanic action It will be my place when next we meet having pointed out these anomalous actions to show you that none of these Extra and strange effects are met with by us that none of these strange and injurious actions take place when we are burning Not merely a candle but gas in our homes or fuel in our fireplaces So long as we confine ourselves within the laws that nature has made for our guidance


The national chairman of the People's Democratic Party, PDP Uche Secundus, has urged Nigerians to continue praying for the country to overcome all of its challenges. He said a lot of prayers are needed for the nation, adding that there are storms everywhere in the country, and it's now pathetic. Recently several leaders have given similar admonitions, talking about this situation. But my question now is, are prayers the new solution to issues plaguing the country? Well, joining me to discuss this is Dakhwa Dara Mullah, a Reverend and a Political Analyst, and Ken Okolubu, who's also a Political Analyst. Thank you gentlemen for joining us. It's my pleasure. Okay. I'm going to start with Dakhwa because you are a man of a cloth, obviously. And we're talking about prayers here. Nigeria has been faced by, with all sorts of things, I mean, name it. I always say that our place is literally full, including that of Mr. President. But when we say that we ought to pray, you know, for solutions to our problems, why do we need leaders if prayer is truly the key? Once again, good evening, and to all our viewers, a good evening. As people of faith, you know, a country like Nigeria is predominantly saturated with a lot of religiosity. So it's not strange when everybody calls for prayers.  So it's very easy to always talk about prayer, about God, about faith, and religiosity when it comes to addressing the problems of the country. But I think in all of this, it's mere distraction. You know, we pray, yes. And what are the people who are praying more?  So these are the things they end up praying for in church or in mosque when ordinarily a commonwealth is sufficient to provide all of this. But because of the corrupt nature of our politicians, we have come to this level where everything has to be a prayer. So that's number one.  They were in government in 1999. How many of our schools were functioning or were functioning under them? I mean, how many of our hospitals were functioning under PDP? How many of our refineries were functioning, ultimately, under PDP? So you can go on and on, you know, what exactly was, what kind of foundation did they lay for the future of this country? I remember even under PDP government in the world by Good Luck Jonathan, this country sold, I mean crude oil, we projected to sell at 65 dollars, we ended up selling at 100 and something dollars. Now, what exactly did we do with the money? What kind of future did they build for ourselves? So these are the issues, you know, so we cannot use prayer to keep distracting ourselves. Whereas as a man of God, I would say, yes, we must pray everything good and everything, you know, that is on the contrary, all requires prayers, yes. But God has endowed us as a nation so much that all we need is a leadership that is thinking. A group of people who are supposed to be leaders who should be, you know, considerate in terms of how they deploy the resources that God has endowed us with. But this is, I'm sorry to talk over you this and that, but I'm so sorry to talk over you. But let me put in there. You have, of course, laid out all of the mistakes that the previous leadership had made. But this is the reason why the APC won the election. They campaigned on all of these ills, all of the loopholes that the PDP had created. And here we are again, it's five and a half years, if not six down the line and we're still dragging blames and trading it when we should be actually dealing with the situation and giving answers to the problem because this is what the people were promised. So what makes, what's the difference between the APC-led government and the PDP that you're comparing them to? No, I agree with you that we should not be in the area of excuses anymore. I am one of those who believe that fundamentally this government should be doing something and in terms of tangibility, we should be able to place our hands and say, this is after we have come. I mean, not at the time when they came on board, we remember Boko Haram was everywhere.  I would use the language that they were, they were eliminated, they were decimated and their capacity was reduced. Unfortunately, we should have consolidated on that as a gain, but we didn't. Somehow, you know, we lost direction, we lost focus and, you know, they gained strength again at the moment, you know, they became fractionalized. So, and of course, we are still, you know, what we're arguing is that we're in another deficit and that is why a lot of boys that are taking place, a lot of boys, you know, that were down under the pretty big government, were not utilized properly. So whatever money they are looking for now, they are not having, what they have to do now is to do what those governments should have done. They are having to redo all of, I mean, these things all over again. But we need to move into the area of tangibility. You know, we must begin to see investments. The, whatever investments we have done in the last five years, we must begin to see results. So I agree with you totally. That we cannot, you know, we cannot wait by the side of excuses. We must begin to see results. You know, and that is what the boy government needs to show us. But we must look at, you know, all the big ones to look at the background to the story and then look at the fact that PTP are not the ones stabilizing. You know, so that's what I said. I went back into the past. I, you know, I try to lay a background for the present. All right. Let me go to Ken Okolokbo. Today we have banditry. We have kidnappers. We, as I said, some days ago, 20 people were killed as bandits attacked Zamfara State. I saw a man who was, you know, almost, he was almost crying. You know, it sounded more like the government has failed them, that they have been left to their fate. And so I wonder why in that situation somebody would tell us to pray, whether that person be in power or not. Again, I ask, why is it seemingly so difficult for these issues to be addressed head on? Well, prayer, first of all, I'm a knight of Saint Christopher of the Anglican Company and apart from the fact that it happened to us to be a politician. But we all know what the efficacy of prayer is. At this critical point in time, you see, you look at the situation and you know this has gone beyond just criticism. I wonder who your guest was that was speaking, what you referred to him as a man of God and I doubt if he's a man of God because he spent all the time politicking. The first thing he was embraced when somebody talked about prayer is because the situation has gone totally out of hand. You don't start talking about the blame game when we are in this kind of situation where we find ourselves. In the southeast we have, they call them unknown government but as of yesterday they almost ran over the police headquarters in Oka. As of the last time they said 95 policemen have been killed. INEC has lost over 25 officers. In the north, like you have rightly said, the banditry situation has gone beyond. The governor of Niger has said that there are two hours from Abuja and over 50 villages have been overrun. These were areas that were hit out to not being occupied by Boko Haram and the fact that the service teams were changed at the time they were clamoring that the service teams should be changed and suddenly the chief of army staff, not only the chief of army staff, the provost of the Nigerian army, the army, the directorates of army intelligence, I mean the three most top people in the army are dead and you say we shouldn't be talking about prayers now. It's not the time to start even criticizing the government of Boko Haram because this has gone beyond the ordinary because it looks as I think we are doomed or we are an autopilot to crush landing the government in terms of the security situation. So at this time we really need to pray, we really need to seek the face of God because what is happening in this country has gone beyond just criticism. We are seeing something that is beyond the grasp of our leaders. Let's have our religious leaders lead the country then so we can all just be praying to God to lead us. That way we can just get direction from above and I'm not in any way trying to make fun of the idea of praying but leaders are elected to those positions for a reason and if they are unable to deliver and then we all have to say oh let's go and pray then it means that those leaders have failed, doesn't it? Certainly. But there was a king that was told that he was going to die in the Bible and when he went to pray he was delivered.  What I'm seeing here is that when you hear that to the general of the federation tell you that spare parts markets can be banned and compare this to ban on open grazing and that is one man that advises the president. Don't you think you need to pray for God to touch his mind? You remember the way the heart of Pharaoh was hardened until God touched him and the Israelites were allowed to go. What I'm seeing here is that the leadership of the APC is torn between itself. So I'm trying very hard not to criticize at this point but where you see a situation whereby you have tried to offer solutions and those solutions. Oh I think we lost that connection there with Okolubu but let me go back to you Mr. Dakwa. Mr. Okolubu, can you hear me? Yes I can hear you. We lost you for a second, go ahead. So when you have leaders who have refused to listen and look at the economy the misery index 33% is unemployment, inflation is 19% and we know the misery index is unemployment plus inflation and the leaders are doing nothing about it. They have told us that they're going to employ over 7,000 and 4,000 Nigerians and pay them 20,000 for three months which can reflect the economy of this country. That is almost at a snail's speed. We really don't know if people are even getting their last over six, seven months we have been on that. We are told about the empire that they have registered the 500,000 that they've had. Oh dear, the connection there is gone again. Back to Mr. Dakwa. Mr. Dakwa, you did hear what Mr. Okolubu said that you were rather politicizing the issue other than addressing the issue. But I asked you the question that I asked him earlier on why is it seemingly difficult for our leaders to address the issues that we're facing head on. I'm one of those people that does not really care if the president addresses us. But Nigerians are asking the president to address them. They want to feel a sense of belonging, a sense that they want to be sure that the president understands where they're coming from and does sympathize with them and not his personal aids. Of course Nigerians also don't want to hear lip service paid to anything. They want to hear that government is doing something and see it. Why isn't that what we're supposed to be experiencing right now? And why are we not experiencing it? The question I'd like to say, and I hope Mr. Ken is listening to me, I'm very politicized, number one. I spend over years my other life as a journalist on television interviewing people. So if you understand that it's alright for any guest to come on board and begin to challenge whether I'm a man of God or I'm politicized or whatever. If you agree with me, when you want to disagree with me, you don't need to delve into where I am or who I'm not or none of that. You know, 40 songs are not permitted on television. Number two, let me say clearly here that you are very correct when you say that what we want are results. I'm a man of God and so I do pray as every minute of my living, of my existence. What I'm saying is there are some things that we don't need to begin to pray about. We don't need to if we have done what we ought to do. There are clearly things that are expected of us over the years as an addition that we're failed to do that is haunting us today. So for me, I think whatever the government is, it will only government must understand that people repulse confidence, you know, in them. And the reason why they did that is because they want results. People have focused so soon that we have been at this level before. Even the likes of Michael Zekoume and many work it now. Even the likes of Michael Zekoume and many work it now. You know, we've been at this, we've been on this for many years. And that's why some people, I mean, in Pudungyadi, you know, in your best case, some school students were bound to death. You know, we're bound to ask history. So, I mean, we've been here, we've been here before. What we now want to begin to hear and begin to see, we want to begin to see a level of change, a level of progress. And that's why I understand that it's been years of investment. If this government is saying that what they've been doing is investing in the critical sectors of their company, now let's begin to see results.  Let's begin to see that the insurgency, I mean, they have been totally, even if not completely eradicated or, you know, we should begin to see that they have been totally disbanded. It's launched. You know, not see token of progress. Let people have some measure of safety. I mean, some assurance that they are safe. This is what we should be doing now. Now, I don't want to focus on the federal government, what the countries of security. Let's talk about the state government also. The state government is getting what is called security votes. They do not declare it to anybody. They don't know how much is worth after that. You can see at the end of the system, the country and the whole state. Okay. Now everybody is looking up to Abuja. To Daribullah. There's not the issue. I can tell how passionate you are about this particular topic. It's very sensitive, Mr. Daribullah, but I want to thank you. I don't know if we have Mr. Kolowo back quickly for his final statements. Okay, you're here, Mr. Kolowo. In closing, because he said that we need to see action. We need to see things happen.  If these leaders who we have given a job to do seem to be unable to do this job, and we keep waiting at the expense of more and more people dying, dead bodies are piling up, the toll is going higher and higher, and more and more people are feeling unsafe. And you know, before now, when it's happening in the north, we feel like, oh, it's very far from us. So we don't really understand how serious it is. But now people are being picked up in Lagos. Kidnappers are everywhere. We see and hear stories every other day. What if the government fails again to come to our rescue or do what it needs to do? Where does that leave us? And what do we do in closing? Well, I think quickly what we need to do is we have the constitutional hearing conference starting from the 26th and the 27th. We quickly need to devolve, there should be devolution of powers quickly. We need state policing. We need restructuring. We need to make the sense are very weak at this point and make the state stronger. Because you talked about the states and the fact that the government is the chief security officer of the states. But that is only on paper. In actual sense, the commissioners of police don't take instructions from the governors. The director of SSS for states don't take directives from governors. We need to actually carry a devolution of powers. We need restructuring. We need to remove the powers from the center, give more powers to the state. Then we now have lookouts, policing their territory. There we can give more measure and sense of security. Without security we cannot be in this state. We cannot move forward. We need to secure our lives first. All right. Ken Okolubo and Dachwa Dairamala. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. All right. Thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a short break now and hear what Nigerians have to say on prayers and the country. And when we return, I will give you my take. Prayer without work is nothing. So even Bible made it as a priority. Prayer without work. So looking at the predicament and the circumstances that have surrounded Nigeria now, we just need to get out of our comfort zone and do something about it. Because when we look at the government, it's a kind of recycling from APC to PDP. Just normal people. They are still the same people that are managing us from ages. So what we need to do, what we pray, we youth, we need to go out and take the mantle. Prayer can solve Nigeria's problem if we are praying hard and praying for God to answer our prayers so that this country will change because we are suffering. Things are getting hard every day, more and more. Prayer can change this nation. Is it really prayer can solve Nigeria's problem because what is going on now? Nobody, nobody has any time to do this. Anyway, Bible said with God all things are possible. So I trust God when you pray, understand and your prayer will be answered. So by prayer, I believe Nigeria will be a better place to go. Well prayer is a very essential tool for a change of every country. But likewise, Bible makes us to understand that faith without work is dead. So keep praying for Nigeria to be better and not taking step while praying is another religious exercise. So when we are praying for the country to be better we have to take necessary action or steps in making the country to be better. Even the Bible says faith without work is dead. So when you pray, you work. You pray to God then you move and do the action. If you pray and without doing what we need to do it amounts to nothing because everybody prays and why are we still having corrupt people on hierarchy of places? So even those people they pray as well and yet they don't do what they ought to do. So it's personal. So when you pray at the same time guide yourself with that prayer and do the needful. Here's my take. Nigeria is at a point where its leadership needs to be clear and succinct specific strategies enunciated and acted upon in order for us to move this country away from the troubled waters that are raging within security with ethnic and regional tensions, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism shaped in different forms. What Nigerians need is a government that is alive to its responsibilities not one that would politicize issues instead of addressing them. We are getting set to roll out the drums very soon to celebrate 20 years or more of what we call a democracy yet can the average Nigerian say they've gotten good governance nor the dividends of democracy? So dear Nigerian leader what we want is for you to provide clarity and leadership can you at least give us that? Is it within your grasp? Because we are tired of the talking. Well that's my take. I'm Marianna Cole. Thank you for watching.


How does a shot make you feel? It's a shot that somehow tugs at your emotions, yet not a word was spoken. This is the power of visual storytelling. Surprisingly, I found films and videos to be more impactful when there are fewer spoken lines. To me, it's like how blocking one of your five senses make the other four stronger. To dive deeper into this, let's shoot a bite-sized film both with and without dialogue to compare their impact. And in the process, let's discover how you can convey an even more powerful narrative with visual storytelling. When your visuals are skillfully combined with other cinematic tools, such as music and sound effects, your story comes across even stronger. Now, I'll be using high-quality assets from Artlist to help me out with that today. So, where do we begin? Visual storytelling starts even before you press the record button. It begins with the script. In our mini film, we'll explore the story of a woman who loses a cherished bracelet given by her late partner. Here is where it gets a little bit tricky because it's so much easier to just say what's happening. Now, you may have noticed that directors often use back and forth over the shoulder shots to spoon-feed information through dialogue. But each time that I want to convey a piece of information to the audience, I have to ask myself, how do I show this and not tell it? When I have troubles forming visuals in my head, finding music right from the start is my creative hack when I need inspiration. It sets the mood for writing the script and how I want the viewers to feel when they watch my film. In the non-dialogue version, the story starts with a woman sitting on a bench looking at her empty wrist. Now, how can we show that she's melancholy without her just saying she's sad? Well, let's do a little experiment. How does this shot make you feel? What about this? Now, before you start feeling like I'm making you sit through an eye exam, I want you to tell me which one of the two shots make her seem more vulnerable and small. If you chose the high-angle shot, you got the instincts for visual storytelling. Where you put your camera and how far it is from your subject can change how your audience feels about the character's emotions. The shot you saw at the very beginning probably made you feel like she was deep in thought and a bit lonely with how far away she is because I went with a high-angle shot here, I saved the low-angle shots for the flashbacks with her partner showing a happier time when her heart was strong. But how do we visually convey a sense of happiness? Definitely not like this. That's more like it. Color has been a fundamental way to convey emotions across any art form. Whether it's through lighting, wardrobe, or color grading, you can set the tone of the scene by choosing your colors carefully. That's why I decided to go with a cooler tone in the woman's home when she discovers that her bracelet is missing. But the first thing I usually do when I lose something is panic. Other than asking your actor to act panicky, what if we couldn't make the camera reflect her state of mind? A shot like this conveys how important the moment is because it's like the world is revolving around them with literally the camera revolving around them. Whereas these shots screen chaos much better than a smooth orbiting shot. It's not about just capturing motion, it's about using motion to tell your story. While the key difference between a photo and a video is motion, they do share a common language. Just like color, the use of contrast in lighting will convey different emotions. Filming a gritty noir movie have the shadows darker for a more dramatic atmosphere. Want to film something a little more lighthearted? Fill in those shadows for a more gentle look. In this case, the only time we don't see much contrast is the only time that we see anyone happy. Now our focus has been on visual storytelling, but the age of silent films is long gone. So let's talk about an element that's strong enough to hold its own as an art form, music. Music is crucial in setting the tone of a scene. You can entirely change the context of your story just by using a different song. Here's another experiment. What do you think this character is about to do? What about now? That's why I carefully went through artless filtering options to find a song that reflects our character's contemplative mood. But it doesn't just stop at music when it comes to audio. How about revealing plot points with sound effects?  With so many tools at your disposal, visual storytelling is one of the most creative ways to communicate your ideas to the audience. It treats your viewers with respect because you lay out all the dots for them to connect instead of spoon feeding them information. Let's put it to the test by first watching the little story that I wrote, but the version which includes dialogue and totally ignores visual storytelling. Hey, it's me. I lost the bracelet. You know the one that he gave me before the accident? I looked everywhere. I just, I don't know. I feel like I'm losing him all over again. But I guess I'm starting to see that he wasn't just in a bracelet. He was in every moment we shared together. So that was the version that totally disregards everything that we learned. Now let's contrast that with the version without dialogue, but incorporates everything from composition to music and sound effects from our list and let us know in the comments which one speaks to you more. Oh, and don't forget to subscribe if you wanna see more videos like this. Let's check it out.


Bemidji celebrated this weekend with a tiny tradition that packs a lot of fun in a short amount of time. Reporter Cheryl Moore brings us into this year's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade. Together today we are all Irish and honor what the Irish mean to America. There's a few things that are essential to any great St. Patrick's Day. Need good friends, good music, green beverages, and of course a parade. Officially, not the 2000, 12,000, it's about the 12th. It's a great community event, it's so fun, people get really into it, and beads, everything's flying all over. The world's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade started with the Sushin competition to get the crowd pumped. This tradition started 12 years ago with an observation. Between me and Ann Hayes at the time from Bridges Cross came up with the idea for doing a St. Patrick's Day parade. We thought it was pretty unique that there was two Irish pubs on one block in Bemidji, so close to each other. The parade starts right here at Bridges Pub, but honestly if I turn the camera around, it ends right here across the street. It changes every year, so this year it went from the north from Bridges to Keg next year to go from Keg to Bridges, and it is a whole, we say about 78 steps. The parade lasts about five minutes total, then there's some dancing and it's a wrap, and most wouldn't have it any other way. I think it's so great just because of the time of year. You know, we're getting done with winter, spring is here, and everybody's excited to be outside. It's so fun, I went to college here, so it's so much fun to come back and enjoy something that we didn't have in college. Reporting of Bemidji, Shawmore, Lakeland News. Now we'll continue our St. Patrick's Day coverage tomorrow with a look at the Shamrock Shuffle in tomorrow night's edition of Northwood's Adventure right here on Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jasper's case breaks calm coming at you with 2019 2020 tops of Bundesliga Museum collection soccer I guess tops museum collection Bundesliga Are we saying that museum collection first and then what what it is? Right museum collection baseball Museum collection Bundesliga soccer and it whatever two box random club number one. I don't know how this So pretty good stuff. It's the German soccer league, which I'm not too familiar with But I think this guy Erlen Holland is One of the big like sort of I look up his highlights. They're pretty incredible He's like 18 or 19 years old Norwegian. Maybe Plays in the German league and it's just it's just lighting it up. So that's that club is bruxa van Dortmund So that basically that's one of the big teams right here and then Byron Munich has some classic players, right? They're there's a lot of teams there But yeah, Dortmund and Byron Munich or Munchen are Kind of the main teams I think You know, maybe maybe Haffenheim maybe by our labor Cusin So big thanks to these folks for taking a shot at the Bundesliga. They're the clubs right there. Let's roll it Let's randomize it five and one six times for each list names and clubs six times one two three four Five and one sixth and final time. We got Jack down to Brian five and one six times for the clubs one two three four five And a one sixth and final time. We got Red Bull a Leipzig down to Peterborn 07 All right, Jack with Leipzig David with Schalke Brian with Osberg Augsburg David with Herta Berlin Josh Bruce with Haffenheim Jack with Verder Bremen Sport Club freeberg for Jack as well by our munchen for Brian Brian by our Munich basically David with Cologne Jack with bruxa munchen gladbach and with Wolfsburg David with Eintracht Frankfurt Jack has a bare labor Cusin Dayton Rodgers with Fortuna Dusseldorf Jack with Union Berlin David with Mainz I used to I think Mainz is where a Liverpool my club's Liverpool where a Club used to coach and then he went to bruxa verandortement Brian with SC Peterborn 07. Let's sort this by column B by club right there and While you're considering trades, let's find figure out which two boxes we're gonna do out of this I'm assuming that's the correct one watching the end of this Ravens bills game Backup QB is in Lamar Jackson concussion Buffalo up 17-3. I wonder if I Wonder if someone's gonna win a bunch of money because they they had the Ravens backup quarterback in their draft Kings lineup We'll go one two three four five six so row one two three four five six on the dice roll We'll use that guy right there. Actually no, we're gonna use Liverpool red right there and it's five one two three four five, so it's the fifth box set of boxes down so those right there and This will save for next time All right, so I marked all those boxes with X's so we know they're all from the same case I think it's the only case we have right here Looks like no trade so trade window closed He had Jeff that was all those club names are a bit of a mouthful. There it is hot off the presses and Here are the two boxes So what are we looking for here each box guarantees one autograph card one autograph memorabilia card one memorabilia card eight cards in here using the small box format from Museum collection. Oh and right off the top We've got a couple more base cards on the bottom right off the top Erling Holland. That's the guy we're looking for bruce van doorman David de la peña With dormant nice Not numbered pretty strong right here. There you go. That's pretty nice We've got 37 out of 50 Kevin Trapp Frankfurt 10 out of 25 For also for bass toast for Frankfurt. We got another base card down here ruin Hennings For fortuna Dusseldorf and your first autograph is archival auto 16 out of 50 Timothy Chandler For I tracked Frankfurt Last three cards were for Frankfurt Frank first going to David Jersey and auto moment is material con ion 45 out of 50 for Dusseldorf It'll be for Dayton. Oh and another car on the bottom. It's a relic for Dortmund 21 out of 75. That's Marco Royce Has been linked to Liverpool many a time, but I don't think that deal is gonna happen anymore and that's Cohen Castiles And that would be for Wolfsburg I think didn't some old VW Jeddah's maybe had a Wolfsburg edition models Little more a little more powerful Box felt a little heavier because there's a gold frame in there Wow, nice. So we've got other hits down here. Let me just take a look at auto over there. Nice Let's see who gets that there's a Peter Gulaxi For Leipzig the base cards out of here. We've got Fabian Johnson For a bruxa mon gladbach for Jack. There's Musa Niakate the Frenchman who plays for Mainz David Chris Collins were the now Michael saying goodbye Kind of makes me sad because you realize there's less and less football going forward. There's Bas Dost For Frantzert, that's the frame. So let's do this first. It's momentous material and autograph Suat Sardar 20 out of 49 for Schalke You Schalke's pretty solid. You often see them in the top four of the Bundesliga. They end up in the Champions League group stages Or at least in European competition And we've got a relic back here. That's momentous material is Jean-Philippe Matta Matta I see the number right there three out of 25 He's of a shirt. He also goes to Mainz. That'll be for David on top here is is Grishka Bromel for Union Berlin. Where's Union Berlin? Oh, there it is for for Jack And the gold frame is autographed. It's gonna be Lucas Pradecki for Labor Cuisine Nice gold frame. That's Jack Townsend with Bayer Labor Cuisine I think the same Bayer that that manufactures the same city that Manufactures your aspirin There you go. I'm pretty sure and there's the Grishka as well and there you go boys and girls That's pretty fun little change of pace from all the usual sports that we do. I'm a fan of the soccer So like learning about some new players in the Bundesliga. There you have it That was a two box random country break number one We've got we've got more in the store. So check it out and we'll see you next time for the next ones. Bye. Bye


Do you find yourself answering questions from audience members? They message you through, I don't know, Instagram, Facebook, email, or other ways. And you maybe feel obligated to respond to them.  So of course, naturally, you want to respond in a kind and helpful way. And maybe you do. And then you start to wonder, oh, I'm spending quite a bit of time and energy doing this. Is it leading to my business? You know, because, well, there are unlimited numbers of people in the world who want to pick your brain for free. And so, first of all, before I say anything, I really look forward to seeing your opinion about this. Those of you who have been in this kind of situation where you start to answer questions and you like, oh, it's a good use of my business time. If you're doing as a volunteer, that's wonderful, you know, you're doing good in the world, volunteering your energy without any expectation of return. And often without no return, that's expected at all, not in this life anyway. But when it comes to your business strategy, is it a good idea to do so? So, you know, what's interesting about this is that I have noticed that as I've grown my business and as I have somehow almost invisibly, so let me say, somehow I am invisibly communicating my boundaries. And so I actually get fewer requests for picking my brain for free than ever before. And yet I have more sales of my courses and programs than ever before as well. So whatever business strategy I'm using is working. Now, what I don't do, some people like they, when you message them and you get a, you know, robot answering back saying, oh, if you want to engage with George, please do this or please do that. I don't, I don't have any autoresponders, not on my email, which I know he's a heck out of me, folks, please stop, please stop all the autoresponders on your emails. Okay. It's like I email someone and then it's like they get something back, oh, you know, due to my, I check email 9am and 4pm each day. I'm like, BS, stop. That's, that's really silly. And it like clogs, clogs up everyone's inbox and it just makes me annoyed. It makes everyone annoyed.  BS, I'm more organized than you are and I don't have those kinds of autoresponders, right. Sorry, maybe some of you are more organized than me. Please teach me, but I'm pretty darn organized for someone with my, you know, with, with, with what's on my plate. So, I don't have those things. And yet, I'll tell you why I think my boundaries are strong. There may be some kind of law of attraction visible vibrations going out. I don't know. I'll set that aside as a possibility. I think it's because I promote my services, my offerings often. It's a weird thing to say that the more often and the more confidently you promote your stuff, the more your audience understands your boundaries. If you're not promoting on a frequently basis and you don't sound confident in your promotions, you use all kinds of marketing shenanigans. Well, then, you know, if there's an invisible sense of this person's it's this person's insecure. So, and it's a weird thing. It's like the more confident you are the more people respect your boundaries, right. The more insecure you are the more people just stomp on your boundaries and you don't know where your time and energy went. And so, the other thing that that might be helpful is on my orientation course. And I only put this this particular segment I'm going to show you on screen here. Let me go ahead and show you on the screen here. So on my course platform, I have this thing called watch the orientation videos. And one of my first orientation segments is basically don't email me. I don't like to answer questions via email when I answer questions I wanted to help multiple people not just you. You're not a one on one client. If you're one on one client obviously you're paying me just to help you. But if you're not a one on one client you're paying me to answer a question that helps a bunch of people, including a course a group member whatever it is right so for example, I say ways I dislike and ways I like for you to ask me questions. Right and so here and by the way I'm showing you this and I'll put this link below. Below this video as well I'm going to put this video on on YouTube so I'm further setting my boundaries with all of you YouTubers and whoever's watching this later. So basically, you know ways I dislike getting questions again private messaging and if I'm only answering you I'm, I'm not making great use of my time because I could be saying the same thing to probably 20 people have the same questions you why am I only answering you. Same thing with email. No, right, so instead come to my Q&A calls. You get you got to buy one of my courses right then you get Q&A calls for two months it's good for my business is good for my time. Otherwise, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. And, or comment underneath the lessons you bought a course, you come to any lessons I reply to the lesson that helps everybody, not just you, right, and the members of my, my groups. Obviously, you can ask me questions in a private forum. If I answer it that helps everybody else as well. Right. And so, essentially, again, I'll put this link below and the reason why I put the link below is because I made that particular segment publicly available to everyone who's like checking out my stuff. They might see that segment. Oh yeah, George has strong boundaries.  Am I, am I not spiritual. Am I not loving and compassionate. Maybe, maybe. When it comes to my business time.    I know I'm whenever I reply back if someone is overstepping my boundaries I reply back nicely, but I reply back firmly, because if you don't do that. You get overwhelmed by the world. It's I think it's actually one of the core lessons for our souls and let's talk about spirituality here, right and being nice and loving and all united with the one. Right. It's like I feel like that's one of the lessons we're learning is limitation and constraints in this life otherwise why would there be constraints and limitations in this life constraints on our time on our energy and yet an onslaught as you get as you learn how to add more value to the world. You get more of this test of more people wanting your time this onslaught I mean I think about, I think about that scene. As always, you know, you could say, Jesus Christ superstar, or you could say the Bible, whichever, whichever scene you prefer. Heal yourselves you know which scene I'm talking about right when when Jesus is overwhelmed by all the lepers. Remember this scene from Jesus Christ superstar if you watch that show or you read the Bible. You know Jesus is overwhelmed by all the lepers and Jesus, like in a moment of frustration or the moment of spiritual spiritual wisdom says heal ourselves. He's kind of like saying I can't deal with all this coming at me the way I'm now I'm getting too religious and preachy here. The thing is coming back to whether or not you're spiritual or not spiritual or whatever you consider yourself. That's one of the core lessons of this life is how do we deal gracefully with constraints on our time on our energy on our attention, and therefore boundaries with our audience. One final question isn't as a good idea to have back and forth private conversations with your with your audience. I would say again, if you're in the volunteering mood and mode and that's okay. Part of my, you know, you could say hey my business has a nonprofit arm and a for profit arm. And my my nonprofit arm means I do spend a couple hours a week responding to people for free without with with no experience expecting them not to buy anything right that's the true charity right it's like you know I'm not hoping one day you'll buy something for me know I expect you not not I'm not going to tell them not to buy something but it's like zero truly zero expectation that they'll ever even benefit my business one bit that your nonprofit arm of your business you may want to carve out some hours for that you could you could you know and then you've got the for profit one is like okay and these times of my of my week and my day. I'm very grateful but firm with my balance and say hey you know what. These are great questions and honestly I love helping clients with this where I love having my group program where I help members with this drama group program by this course for me, come to my Q amp a call, or whatever it is you want to say gracefully. I would love to continue supporting you in this way or I have colleagues and friends I can refer you to. If you want to to engage with them in instead, but I really or or you can think of it as Oh, they're giving you prompts for content. Giving a prompt to kind of like you know that's a really great question. I'm going to put that as one of my ideas when I write a blog post or make a video you're going to see it on my Instagram or on my YouTube or on my LinkedIn or whatever. Thank you. Thank you for this is a very interesting question I have to think about this right so so in the early days before you have a lot of people doing this you could just see them as prompts for content and then, and then later on like me now whenever people email me privately a question. You know, if I can, I will just respond to say you know great question. I wrote about this here. Here's the blog post that that takes me not much time I'm not going to be like, Oh, you know, jerky with them is all come like you and a call when I have I have a if I something in mind I have a video about this or have a blog was I will let them know. But otherwise I'll say hey you know what. Thanks but I, I would like, oh here's my course on this, I go deep into this. Right so anyway hope this is helpful I really do look forward to seeing your opinion below how do you deal with this, whether you have a small audience or large audience I look forward to to hearing about thank you.


Let's sing this chorus together that we are signing up again That signing up again is not a sign of weakness not a sign of failure It's beautiful to the eyes of your Father He's not annoyed He is welcoming you with open arms We say yes right now Yes, I say yes An identity over you