Britain has proposed a suborbital launch vehicle, a space station and a moon mission, and nothing has made out of it. What next? Logically, actual rocket hardware, of course. Just like the Americans did with their Thor Able rocket, which utilised a Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile for a first stage, and the Soviets with their R7 and Cosmos families, not only the United Kingdom, but Europe was going to develop their own launch vehicle based off their own homegrown IRBM. Welcome to part two of It's Not Rocket Science, the British space programme. Following World War Two for Britain and the Allies, another step on the warfare tech tree had been unlocked – nuclear weapons. To keep up the World War-winning streak, the UK needed their own nuclear strike force in case another war started 20 years after World War Two ended, just like with the first. The British government feared losing the UK's great power status. Of course, in hindsight, nuclear warfare only ended up being a threat of the Cold War, but in 1952, hindsight didn't exist yet. So on the 3rd of October, Britain became the world's third nuclear superpower with the destination of Operation Hurricane. Britain has their nuclear bomb, and we know that it worked. But how will it be delivered relatively quickly? Spoiler alert, we're not at the rockets yet, but we're probably the most iconic British aircraft fleet of all. A feat of three brand new modern aircraft types, the Vickers of Alliance, the Avro Vulcan and the Handily Page of Victor, which ended service with the Royal Air Force in 1955, 56 and 57 respectively. These beautiful aircraft were used multiple times throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s seeing service during the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, but never for a nuclear mission. It was also realised that planes, although they may be fast, just weren't fast enough. Just like with the Americans and the Soviets, a missile would be required as an adequate nuclear deterrent for the United Kingdom, and the answer was Blue Streak. Standing at 24 metres tall, this intermediate-range ballistic missile was the answer to Britain's needs. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce RZ-2 engines, which mixed liquid oxygen and kerosene fuel just like SpaceX's Falcon 9, but this was a bit of an issue. As you may know, Falcon 9 is fuelled right up until launch as the very cold Keralocks likes to evaporate. Well, the same was the case with Blue Streak, and it couldn't be left in the sun with a full tank of cryogenic propellants sitting inside. When its use was required, it'd have to firstly be filled up with propellant and oxidiser, a process which would take four and a half minutes before it could be launched. Four and a half minutes was simply too slow, even if it could beat the plane. This issue was rectified, however, as the manufacturer of Blue Streak to Haverland invented a standby mode for the IRBM. This feature would allow Blue Streak to be held at a T-minus 30 seconds position for up to 10 hours. With multiple missiles, Britain's deterrent was sorted. Until it was cancelled in 1960. It was too expensive and too vulnerable, and this man, Admiral of the Fleet, Louis-Francis Albert-Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, first Admiral of Burma, had also been arguing for a long time that the Navy should be armed with nuclear weapons instead. I wonder what that is. Depending on how you look at the story, this is either the sad end of Blue Streak or the exciting start of a new chapter, because the British didn't stop there. Blue Streak was about to be assigned a role far more exciting than the IRBM, and that's the first stage of the UK's first almost-class launch vehicle. Desmond King Healy and Dorin Gilmore of the Royal Aircraft Establishment put forward a proposal in 1957 to develop a three-stage launch vehicle comprised of stages that the military already had access to. The first stage would be Blue Streak, the second stage would be Black Knight, a research ballistic missile, and a solid third stage. It also attracted the IRBM's project manager, Dr Geoffrey Pardo. Just like with the original purpose of Blue Streak, developing what became known as Black Prince any further would cost a lot of money. Money, which the sole nation of the UK probably wouldn't be willing to spend, so collaboration was found to be the route forward, and a new name, Europa. Because it sounds like Europe. And Europa's in space. Just like a certain aircraft being developed in the 60s, Britain partnered with France, who became the leading nations in the European Launcher Development Organisation, or ELDO. Joining later on would be Italy, Belgium, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. Yes, Australia isn't in Europe, but they did provide a large uninhabited region for launching to the east from, which is something Europe definitely doesn't have. If Australia is allowed to compete in Eurovision, then I'm sure it's OK for them to be in ELDO. Just like how Desmond and Dorin's original idea was an amalgamation of British equipment, Europa's design was an amalgamation of European assets. It, of course, used the blue streak for the first stage, with France providing the second. This was named Coralie, which was powered by four Vexin A liquid engines, which used nitrogen, tetroxide, and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine fuel. Germany provided the third stage, which they called Astris, which is Latin for the stars. This stage housed just one engine, also called Astris, which was filled with nitrogen, tetroxide, and aerozine 50, which is an even 50-50 mix of hydrogen and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. Originally designed for use in the Titan II. Over the Europa programme, blue streak by itself had been tested five times, with two tests of the Coralie second stage, but the full Europa I rocket wouldn't be launched until 30 November 1968 at the Wumerah site in Australia. The rocketry capabilities of Britain, France and Germany would all be combined to create the first orbital launch of Europa. And unsurprisingly for a test launch, it was a failure. So they tried again in 1969, and it failed. And they tried again in 1970, and it failed. 1971 though would see the next generation, Europa II, featuring a brand new solid rocket fourth stage and a brand new launch site, one that is still in use today, Kuru, French Guiana. The maiden flight of Europa II would also turn out to be a failure, however. Two more generations had been envisioned, Europa III and Europa IV, but they never made it to launch. The 5th of November 1971 would be the last time that the Europa programme would fly. But just like with blue streak, it wasn't all Obama. Europe may have just cancelled their launch vehicle, but something bigger and better came out of Europa, the European Space Agency. Crew flights, an ISS module, a Ryan service module, and much more came because of Europa, even if it could barely get off the ground itself, physically. ESA would later go on in 1975 to create the Ariane family of rockets, starting with this, the Ariane 1. It has a strong resemblance to Europa, keeping the lineage going, although Ariane 1 has some major updates over its unsuccessful predecessor. The blue streak first stage on Europa used an RP1 liquid oxygen mix whilst Ariane 1's first stage instead opted for a nitrogen tetroxide, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine fuel, just like Europa's second stage. Ariane 1's first stage also had four new engines, named Viking 5. These allowed the stage to achieve a maximum thrust over 1,000 kN higher than blue streak, which is quite the upgrade. The Ariane 1, and in turn the Europa lineage, can easily be seen in the later Ariane 2, Ariane 3 and Ariane 4 vehicles. Even though the aesthetic and technological similarities died out with Ariane 4, the spirit of Europa still lives on within Ariane 5, and soon, Ariane 6. If we rewind a couple of years, though, back to 1969, alongside Europa, the most famous British rocket of them all first took to the skies. It's the one I'm often told I know nothing about in the comments. It's the only British rocket to ever make it to orbit. It's the Black Arrow. Only five were ever built, but it was enough to mark off the UK as one of the countries in the I Got a Satellite to Orbit Club. Launch one, though, was a failure. It was a suborbital test flight of only the first and second stages, but the thrust vectoring failed so it couldn't steer itself. Launch two, however, that marked the first success for Britain in the orbital launch journey. A successful suborbital test of the first and second stages with no thrust vectoring failures. The first orbital launch attempt was to follow with the satellite named Orber inside the payload fairing. And it was a failure. Starting to notice a pattern. Sadly, the Minister of State for Trade and Industry at the time, Frederick Corfield, did too, and he announced in the House of Commons that the plug had been pulled on the Black Arrow on the 29th of July, 1971. It was oddly convenient, however, that the final component of the rocket required for a fourth launch, the second stage, had arrived at Wumerra a whopping three days earlier. They practically had a rocket on the pad, so one final launch attempt was granted. With one last chance of success, launch four of the Black Arrow commenced at 0409 UTC on the 28th of October, 1971, and on the final ever attempt, Britain delivered Prospero to orbit. It's the most British government-y thing to happen, in my opinion. Cancel a program before it's successful. It ends up becoming successful, but you can't backtrack, so we lost that capability anyways. The British government at the time decided, unsurprisingly, that the economics of the Black Arrow didn't make sense. NASA had offered to launch their payloads for free on a scout rocket, so why keep splashing the cash on their own? It turned out, however, that as soon as the Black Arrow program had been cancelled, NASA swiftly backed down on this offer and there were no free launches to be had. Britain lost that battle chasing an offer, which turned out not to materialise. Within a year of the final flight of the Black Arrow, its launch facility at Wumerra was demolished and only dreams of what could have been remained today. As of writing this video, the United Kingdom is still the only country to develop an orbital vehicle, cancel the program and then get it to orbit anyways on their final attempt. Imagine if SpaceX's Falcon 1 program was pulled just before they flew Flight 4, their first successful launch as well. There'd be no Flight 5, no Falcon 9, no Starship. Just imagine what could have been if the Black Arrow wasn't pulled. You may recall, though, that I said earlier that five Black Arrows were built, but only four were launched. Due to the cancellation of the Black Arrow program, the final one to be built, serial number R4, is now on display at the Science Museum in London, which you can go and see today for yourself. Unlike Europa, Wumerra was the only launch site ever used for the Black Arrow, but it wasn't the only one proposed. Two domestic sites were also considered one of them being the Island Group of Eust. They're part of the Outer Hebrides, just off the western coast of mainland Scotland. This site was rejected, however, because it was too remote, but I don't quite understand that, considering that the other option was the middle of the desert on the other side of the planet in Australia. The long side of the big coastal to home was also considered in Wumerra County, and it does actually kind of make sense, as apart from the city of Norwich, it's basically a 5,300 square kilometre field with some rivers here and there. There is a limited range of poem-a-mort opportunities from Norfolk, but if you thread the needle, it is possible. I personally find it extremely annoying, knowing that you could have had a multiple-point facility on your doorstep, but with the budget cuts in the 70s, it never came to fruition. To be honest though, it probably wouldn't have anyways, because there are concerns that spent stages are full of oil rigs in the North Sea. Dropping spent stages on innocent people is something which is heavily frowned upon, and it is for the best that this doesn't happen.  Yet. Stay tuned for part three. Thanks to Paul and the rest of the team here at the National Space Centre in Leicester. If you're ever here, make sure to come down. They let me film inside of mock-up modules. They let me film rockets, astronauts. You can come see all of this stuff for yourself. I definitely recommend it. The final part of this series will see us entered on modern day with humans going to space, so I don't think you'd want to miss that. Hopefully I'll see you then. Thanks for watching, and goodbye.


Welcome, Mr. Adam Silver. Hi. Wow, thank you. So how's work camp so far? Awesome. And because it's after lunch and I have a tradition of doing this, here we go. OK, that's all I got. Freaks people out. I love doing that. See? It works. All right. As I was introduced, I'm Adam Silver. This is the podcasting. It's a workshop. It's a demo. We'll see what it is. If you wanted to share, oh, dang it, wrong thing. If you want to go and share that you're here right now, you can go to this website and share this socially. That'd be great, because social media is awesome. And that's your orange. OK, I'll stop. So real quick, what is a podcast? Anyone have the actual definition by heart besides me? Anyone know what a podcast is? So just in case you don't, here's the definition of a podcast. You can read it yourself. I don't need to read it to you, because it's behind me and that'd just be awkward. I don't want to do this, because I just did that. OK. So a podcast technically is an episodic audio or video file or PDF, technically, as well. I'm old school. I think it's audio. Personally, video to me is video. It's not a podcast, but people do believe it is. And the definition does indicate that it can be. So that's the definition of a podcast. We'll get to that. Who currently listens to podcasts? The other way around. Who has never listened to a podcast? Don't be shy. One of you is lying. That's OK. Wow, so a lot of you have. Who has a podcast besides me? One, two, three, four, four, OK. Three and a half people. All right. It's awkward. I kind of have one. Who's started one and stopped one? One. Oh, wow. Yeah. How many episodes did you have, April? One. That's lower than the average. The average for pod fading is seven. If you get past seven, usually people are fairly golden. So one, yeah, that's the problem. Six more to go, you would have been golden. So all right. Here are the top 10 podcasts, actually, as of, I believe, what did I say, the July, just last month. It changes weekly and monthly. Those are the top 10. Any of those look familiar to anybody? Couple. So I listen to out of these. I listen to none. No, I listen to this American life sometimes. But I average 35 hours a week listening to podcasts. I do not listen to radio much at all. It's depressing. So OK. Simple, right? Stats, 29 million minutes being produced every year, 2.5 million minutes a month being produced, 80,000 minutes a day, 55 recorded podcasts, any given moment are being recorded right now. And just so you know, I have 155 more slides to go. I'm kidding. About 45 slides to go. And after that, we'll take a quick five minute break. We are going to record my podcast here. I'm going to interview somebody up here, as you may have heard at opening remarks. And you'll see the process. I want you guys to show you how the sausage is made.  And my show is a 15 minute show on average. And you'll see how long it takes. And I haven't done the prep, but I didn't do the prep, because I want you to see the prep. Does that make sense? OK, we'll talk about that. Some more stats. 49% of podcasts listening is done at home, down from 51% of 2017. 22% of people listen while they're driving. They have the wrong slide, don't you? How about that one? That's better. 22% listen while driving. It makes the most sense, because you're driving. What else are you going to do? I lived in Los Angeles for a majority of my life. People say, why do you need to move to North Carolina? Because it's not Los Angeles. So that said, I was in traffic a lot. I listen to a lot of podcasts. So that's my reasoning. People listen on average, six different shows. I listen to an average, I think I'm up to 24, 25. I used to be really keen. So the people who listen to podcasts, do you feel like you have to listen to every episode? Wow, I wish I was like that. Certain shows. Yeah, so for the longest time, I was like, I always felt like I had that number out there. 14 shows behind, like oh my god. I finally got over that. Little therapy was great, really was. Now I'll skip weeks sometimes. Like you know what, I'll look at the topic of the speaker and I may just move past it. So you don't have to listen to every episode, unless it's of course an episodic type of linear type show, right? And that's seven, so six shows in general to subscribe to, seven shows per week. I'm like three times that. All right, what do you think the most popular categories are? Anyone want to venture a guess? Okay, second guess? Third guess. Interesting, psychology of the pay. So you're all wrong. Religion, right. And it changed, this actually went up. So I did this talk two years ago. It was like 35,000. This is the most popular categories. This changes based also on region of country and world. Keep that in mind, this is US based, okay? So religion and spirituality are the top 16 major podcasts in Apple. 58,000 podcasts are about religion and spirituality. Society, culture, music, arts, education. Comedy is also super popular, but it's weirdly ranked differently across the board within Apple. So there's also Stitcher Radio. There is, what's the other one called it? There's Google Now, Google Play. There's a third or fourth one. I can't think of what's called. But they'll come back to me. So they all rank things differently. iTunes is still the biggest library. By the way, iTunes does not host music. You learned earlier from the class, who was in the previous podcasting session? Just a few of you, okay. So iTunes does not host anything. They're just a directory. You have to have hosting separately, okay? So podcasting grew 23% between 2016 and 2017, and it's growing every year about the same rate at this point, okay? What's driving podcasting? What do you think, what's the number one reason why it's growing? Anyone wanna venture a guess? Time, what do you mean by time? That's a deep question. Oh, interesting. Okay, well that's one way to look at it. The other way is, what's driving it is mobile. Okay, I was looking for mobile. Because our iPhones, Apple phones, and any phone these days has, once Apple puts the podcast app on the iPhone as a default standard, it went through the roof, okay? It used to be you have to go get it. I don't use the iTunes app, the Apple OS app. They ruined it, in my opinion. I'm an Apple fanboy through and through. I don't have a tattoo, but I'm really close, no. But I used to like their app, it was just fine. And then they switched, they just made some changes, and it's just terrible. So I use overcast, so it's my favorite app. And I listen at 1.5 speed, and they take out gaps. If it's anything fast at 1.5, I get really excited. It's too much, I'm stressed. I'm already like this as it is, so I can't take any more than me. One in four Americans have listened to, between 12 and 54, to a podcast in the last month. So most of you have listened to podcasts, right? Everyone in this room, everyone answered something, or they didn't answer at all, so I don't know. Podcast versus blogging, who has a blog? So a lot more people have blogs and podcasts. That said, we have 420 million active blogs, 520 million active podcasts. This is flipped, this used to be the different number. There's still room to grow. Think about the numbers of WordPress websites, 90 million websites, right? So people who do maintenance and dev work, we can't handle all of it. I can't handle 90 million, I can handle maybe a million? No, I'm kidding, that'd be a lot of work. So if you have a voice, if you wanna say something still you still have time to get into it. You have not missed the boat in any stretch of the United Nations. People are like, oh, it's come and gone, podcasting's almost done, it's not. The key is consistency, and I'll talk about that in a second. Okay, so the benefits. The benefits really are three-fold, three or two-fold. Connection to audience, it's the rapport. People get to know you, right? It's easier for some. I don't wanna blog, plain simple. I don't wanna take the time to write out 300 words, 600 words, 1,000 words every week. Some people love blogging, and writing, and then using postcards. I'll stop there. So some people I feel like it's easier for me to speak, okay? So that's just me. And it's the I Know You phenomenon, right? People get to know you, they know your voice, and I have two stories for you. One story is I was at a word camp in Dayton, Ohio three, four years ago, and I was talking to somebody, I was on a panel, and after the panel, I step off and I'm talking to people, and one guy comes up to me, and it's a circle of seven or eight people. The panelists and other people said hi, and wanted to say hi to us and thank us for whatever reason, and one guy comes across the circle, gets really close, I'm gonna do it to you. He does this, shake my hand. Hi, I'm a big fan of your podcast. It's awkward now, isn't it? It's really awkward, see?  So, but he liked my show, he's a huge fan. He is now one of my best friends. I keep people I like, you know. So, actually, it's Kyle Maurer, he's the co-host of the other show I'm on. But he liked the show, he had been a fan, so they got to know me just based on my voice. Same word camp, next day, I'm talking to somebody in the hallway, and a gentleman walks past me, and he might be where AJ is, and turns around, comes right back. I'm not wearing a lanyard, he says, excuse me, are you Adam Silver? I guess I am. I listen to your podcast, recognize your voice. Thank you for your show, thank you. So, that happens a lot over time. It took about a year, you're gonna have to get there. But it does happen, okay? So, it's, people know you, you know, because you're in someone's ears, that's the key, versus video where someone could kind of tune out, you're in someone's ears while they're doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn, folding laundry, child watching, you know, whatever you're doing, driving, you're in their ears, and you're talking to them, and based on your topic, you can really connect with people, okay? So, steps to success, this is the easy part, super simple to be successful, okay? Consistency, number one reason, you have to be consistent, okay? People ask me, and I talked about this yesterday at lunch, how do I know what to talk about? Passion, what are you passionate about, for one? Number two, if you have a topic, then you need to come up with subjects, or you have a subject you need to come up with topics. You don't need to come up with a hundred right away, but you need to come up with about 20, 25. I say 20, 25, if you did 25, that's every other week, taking two weeks off for the holidays. If you can't come up with 25 topics in your subject, before you start, you may not have the right show, okay? On top of that, you don't have to do it every week.  You don't have to wake up on a Wednesday and say, ah, I have to podcast. If you do that, you're in the wrong topic again. You don't wanna feel like you have to do it.  You can also batch this, like with writing blog posts, if the muse hits you to do four or five recordings on a Sunday, fantastic, then schedule them out, right? How many people did not know you can schedule out blog posts? Okay, good. A lot of people don't know. You guys are awesome. You guys are really smart from the previous work camps I've been to. This is only my first work camp this month, okay? See you later. Thank you. How many people, real quick, how many people have been to more than five work camps? How many people have been to more than five work camps this year? Okay, more than, oh yeah, April, that's true. Damn. April's here, okay, good enough, fair enough. How many people have been to more than 10 work camps this year? Okay, how many people are going to more than 10 work camps this year? Yeah, that's nice. Where, which one do you, what are you going? I'm like, we'll cut that there, okay. So, secondary thing of success. Have a format for your show. Just start the microphone, start talking. It may not be all that interesting. Have a format, in my opinion, you wanna have a format. My show, Kitchen Sink WP, has a format. I have four segments. I have upcoming, in the news, upcoming events, upcoming events, in the news. The Meat Potatoes, which is segment two, like when I talk about the topic and I have tip or trick of the week. Tip or tool of the week. That's it, short show, right? I have a format, every week, it's consistent, okay? So, it's basic. And then, I market it. How do you market it? Social media, I have guests. I don't do a lot of guests. Every guest, every four to six weeks tops. Unless, I say that on average, four to six weeks, because it's just not part of my show consistently. But some people do interviews all the time. The problem with interviews is you rely on someone else to show up consistently if you're doing it every week, right? And schedules change. And then the audio quality is that it can be an issue. If you're doing things through Skype or Zoom, so there's other technical things to think about. Okay. I'm gonna go back one thing real quick here. Success. Schedule the time you're gonna record. Schedule the time you're gonna, that you're going to publish. My show comes out every Monday at 6 a.m. Eastern. Even when I was on the West Coast, I wanted the East Coast commute. 6 a.m. Eastern every Monday. So my show is due to be done tonight for tomorrow. I'm not up at, well actually I'm up early now that I live on the East Coast, but I wasn't up at 3 a.m. to hit publish. I scheduled it. Okay. Be consistent. My show has missed two release dates because I forgot to hit a category for my RSS feed. It's my fault. And I get tweets. Where's the show? People know my show on Monday. They run to my show. They go to the gym. They get accustomed to having it. Remember back in the day before we had Tebow? Who remembers pre-Tebow days? Who remembers Betamax? The back row like, yeah, we're old. Okay. Before you can record something and watch it later, people had a schedule to watch certain shows. My show comes out Monday. People listen to my show on Monday. Simple. The reason I picked Monday, it's two days before my other friend's show. I wanna beat him to the news. Okay.  Monetization. Making money at podcasting so easy. Said nobody ever. Okay. Sponsors. So I have sponsors. I'm really picky on sponsors. I will not take a sponsor if it's about drugs, alcohol, pornography, obviously. Anything that's inappropriate, in my opinion. It's my show. Number two, has to match the audience. My audience are podcasters. Usually beginners or intermediate people in word press. But it doesn't match my audience. It's a money grab. I'm not interested. I average 1,000 downloads a week. Okay. It's not a bad number. I've been in it for four years. And my audience respects that. They trust me, in my opinion. So I will only take sponsors of things that I think make sense and that I've used. Okay. There's a secondary level of sponsors that have been making money. It's affiliates. So, and I've done this. And it's, you may come to hear this in podcasting. You'll notice it next time. So if I have an empty space, I don't have sponsors every week. I didn't take sponsors for the first year. I just didn't want them. I wanted to build an audience with slow and steady growth. Then I took them. And it's fine. I make, it's easy money, technically. It's not extra money. There's no such thing as extra money, by the way. Totally never know. It's easy money. I say something for 30 seconds. I get $250. Okay. Affiliates are different. So affiliates, it's a, it needs to be a win, win, win. So if you have a product and I'm an affiliate, I'm going to send you a client potentially.  Right. But you're not paying me to say that. Because there's a difference.  So I'm getting paid no matter what. No matter what happens on their end, on selling something doesn't matter. I still get the money. It's good for me. It's a risky for them. It's like any other type of advertising. Right. The affiliate spot will be more like, I use this service. Go to freshbooks.com. Go to kitchensyncwp.com. Freshbooks get 30 days free. Everybody gets 30 days free. Right. But I use Freshbooks and I do trust it and I use it all the time. And I'll say this during the tax season or during the new year, when people are trying to do their books, I'll mention that. And I'll get a commission. That's the affiliate kind of way to make money as well. But again, I only do affiliate things for things I use consistently. Freshbooks, nifty, nifty quarter, you know, just certain things, services I use. Okay. All right. Questions on monetization? And if you have questions, you can by all means raise your hand or you can wait until the end. Okay. Tools. This is always, people want to know the tools and you can come up and see the stuff after you need to as well. Okay. Hardware. So you need some hardware. Your hardware, like my studio looks like this. This is what you need. I'm totally choking. You do not need this at all. Okay. I've been in rooms like that. An old day job I had. My boss used to have that. I don't like him. So that's level one. Right. Laptop, headphone with a USB headphone with a microphone. You can go that level. I personally do not record into my computer because computers crash. Macs and PCs. Things freeze. Things make noise. Fans turn on. I don't want to risk my computer stopping from the recording. Okay. So at a base level, you can spend $25 and start recording into iTunes, into QuickTime audio file. Pretty basic. Even on a PC, you can do certain like this. Very inexpensive way to get in. Or you can step up and go to a better microphone. And at the one on the far right is a little stand, a little triangle stand. That's not on my desk anymore. But that's this microphone. It's an ATR 2100 Audio Technica. I love this microphone. It's professional. It has XLR and USB. So I can do both. I can go right to the computer if I want, or I can go to my mixer. No mixer in this mix, in this picture, but I could. $67. An ATR 2100. I'll share all the notes, all this stuff as well, on Twitter and some places with my affiliate links to Amazon. I'm just kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all.  Now to level three. You can upgrade. You can go better microphone, mixing board, recorder, computer. Okay. In this case, this microphone, this is like one of the standard like high-end stuff, like $500 for that mic. That's the basic mixer. It's what I have here. Similar model. And I have a recorder here as well. Okay. And the reason I do this so, you'll see, I think my next slide is this one. My next slide, I record microphone into the mixer, right? My laptop goes into the mixer. The mixer goes into the recorder. Out of that recorder, I'll get out of the way for the photo ops, or I can go... Out of the recorder, I get a WAV file. WAV file, I pulled SD card out, goes in my computer, right? And then I edit the file in audition. So we'll talk about that in a second. The only difference here is when I record now, like we're doing a live recording here. So I have a second microphone, which I'm gonna use here. And with my show with Kyle, he's in through Skype, so he comes in through the computer. But I have an iPad I've added to it. So then he can listen to sound effects or people who've left messages for us. It's called a mix minus. So I mix in the iPad. iPad would go into the mixer. I'm gonna do this way. iPad would go into like one of these inputs. And then I would have an out that goes into another device that goes into my USB port here. And in the mixer, I can... He hears it, but he doesn't hear himself loop back. He doesn't hear and echo to himself. It's called a mix minus. I mix it in, and I minus out his voice. Right? Once you get the concept, it's simple to do. It took me like six months to figure this out. Okay? I'm not that smart. I'm just really tall. Okay. All right. So, software. Any questions on hardware? I can go back real quick. Any questions on hardware? Again, you can spend... Someone asked me earlier... So you came up and asked me how much to start. $67 microphone. You don't need the mixer. You can go right... the microphone right into the computer. $65 bucks. That's it. You can start that low or less. You want to get a little bit more fancy. You can. Like I said, I just don't use my computer to record audio because I don't want things to crash. I like the separation of troops and state, if you will. Okay. That was weird. All right. Moving on. Tools. So, like I said earlier, Lipsyn is where I host my audio files. I pay $15 bucks a month. Okay. This is GarageBand. This is Adobe Audition. And this is... The asset. The asset. Thank you. I use Audition and I use Lipsyn. I use Soundboard. Soundboard is a little... I'll show this in a second. Soundboard is a piece of software where I can have sound effects or my bumpers are there. I can play them from my computer. Right? So I can play it off the computer in through the mixer to the recorder. I'm not sure they make it anymore, but there are other apps like it. Mine is still... Mine still works so I keep using it. Until it stops working, I'll replace it. Okay. Again, GarageBand comes with every Mac. Adobe Audition is part of the Adobe suite. I don't pay for it. I have it for free. I'm grandfathered in for life. It was awesome. I used to be a trainer at Apple a long time ago. I did for them. And then because of that relationship, I had connections at Adobe. We would trade software and licenses. So all my connections at Adobe are gone, but I still have the licenses. So it works out well. All right. So, okay. Moving on. My workflow. This is where we're going to show in a second so I'm going to take you through this. But here's my workflow. I write the outline. I record. I like edit with Adobe Audition. I expert the MP3. There's some pieces missing in this, but you can take it. Again, you don't have to take pictures. I will share this freely. Well, maybe for 99 seconds. No. There's a lot of steps in this. And there's actually some pre-steps to this as well. There's some stuff that's newer. I'm a huge checklist guy. The reason you want to check this is you want to be consistent. It's a great book called The Checklist Manifesto. Anyone read this book? Yeah. Great book. Fantastic. Highly recommended. If you have a checklist, then you get busy and you're doing super well. You can outsource this and say, here's how you do my show. Here's my post-production. Right? I'm getting to that point where I have two shows now. I'm looking to launch three to four more this year. When's that going to happen as far as the post-production and the editing? I want to find someone, but here's what I want done so I can outsource that. So that's kind of how I do my show in a nutshell. We are now, it's only been 20 minutes, which is great. We're right on time because I want to take a look at the podcast. You have to be kind of quiet for part of it. Well, all of it, really. Imagine this is going to be a movie, like a talkie. Who remembers talkies? I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. All right. So my two shows are good to sync WP and get options. Like I said, that's me and that was me living on the phone. I've always liked to talk. Can you tell? So, and I used to have blonde hair. I'm just happy I still have hair. And now we can do a producer show. We'll take a quick minute, a couple of five minute break, questions about the slides about just in general podcasting and that stuff before we do the show part. Yes, in the back, yellow shirt. Sure. Yeah. So I looked at my niche. I looked at WordPress, other WordPress podcasts. So when I started my podcast four years ago, there weren't that many shows around. There were about four or five. Actually, there were at one point like 10, but half of them were gone already. They had podfated. The other ones that were live, I looked at their sponsors yet because it was still kind of growing. Right? Only half of its life or third of its life. So then as people kind of came up, I looked at other people's fees on what they were charging for what they were offering. And I stole their number. So there's another way to look at it. The analytics kind of showed as well. You want to have an audience of at least two, three hundred downloads a week. Minimum per episode depends on how often you do episodes. And then you also, some people say it's 10,000 downloads a week to get, you know, $50 a show. In my case, I looked at, I don't want to say my competition, but I looked at my colleagues, what we were all kind of doing, and kind of just based on that. That's how I went online. Yeah. Everything's negotiable. Here's the thing. When I had a day job, almost two years ago, I was working in social media marketing, full time for a company, toxic, terrible company. They're not going to ever hear this. It's just great. I left to relaunch my business at Contier's. I did it on the side. So when I had the day job, I didn't need sponsorship necessarily for one.  This is not going to be good for the show. How are you doing? It's good. So I had a sponsor opportunity. They wanted a month. This is awesome, actually. It's kind of a funny story. They wanted four weeks back to back to back, which is like, okay, $250,000. They said, can you do four weeks back to back? I'm like, let me move things around for you. Let you know within a week. Day later, I'm like, okay. But I needed that appearance had to happen, right? So they bought a month. Fantastic. And then they actually sponsored WordCamp, Los Angeles, 2016. And they were trying to grow their business. They were trying to grow their involvement in the WordPress community, which as you have to do sometimes, you have to spend money for marketing to get the name out your branding out. They're a snap ID. They do two-factor authentication. They're still around. It's pretty cool how it works. And then they came to me after WordCamp and some of their marketing funds had depleted and they noticed I had a gap in my sponsorship. And sometimes I'll sponsor my own show, by the way. Kitchen Sync would be sponsored by Concierge WP. Maintenance. So if I have a spot, I'll put my own in there. Why not, right? And I'm honest. Some people, most people know it's they're both me. It doesn't matter. They came to me after WordCamp, Los Angeles, 2016. They said, hey, we know you had a gap. We would like to sponsor more, but our funds are less. Would you give me a deal? I left the day job. Yes, I will. Money, right?  So, yeah.  And they said, okay. And I said, and, before they finished, I said, and I want to put you in every other week for three months, because that way I can sell other spots. And the audience doesn't get burned down and listen to the same commercial spot. And some are going to be produced, like pre-produced. My wife does voiceover work sometimes for me. So I hired her for really low money, actually no money. No recording, two versions of it. I wrote the script, they approved it, and then I would do a live read. So every, you know, every other week, they'd have a spot, but one would be just me push a button, one would be me reading some bullet points. So, it's negotiable. Everything's negotiable.  Sure. Still not hard money. So, who had another question before we move on to the next section? We're good, we're plenty of good questions. Questions? Questions? AJ? No, you have one. I know you're chomping. No? Yes, sir. So, the question is, any questions, any resources for free podcast hosting? Short answer? No. Medium answer. The issue being, A, you pay what you get for, right? You get what you pay for, get what you pay for that way, makes more sense. B, analytics. You want to see stuff, eventually. It's one of the default standards. They just had a podcast movement. Anybody go to podcast movement a couple weeks ago? There was a big conference in Philly. So, if you're into podcasting, podcast movement is where you want to go. I haven't asked to go many years in a row, hasn't worked out for my calendar, unfortunately. I know the guys who created it. It spun off from New Media Expo in Vegas, like four years ago. So, I pay 15 bucks a month per show. So, and that gets me some pretty good stats. I can actually get more depth, but for right now, I'm okay with the 15 bucks a month. What you don't want to do is you do not want to host your podcast on your own site. Don't put video or audio on a WordPress shared server, please. Even though shared services and shared hosting will say unlimited bandwidth, they're lying. And I know this because when I used to teach WordPress essentials when I taught stuff online or in person in Los Angeles, one of my students put a video. I said that the homework on your page. So, he embedded the video by putting the video on my server because he got a sandbox through my server. And I get text messages all night long, three in the morning, bandwidth, bandwidth. Yeah, it's because there was a 20 megabyte file on my server being played through YouTube. Actually, it was hosted on my server. Even though shared hosting says unlimited for a lot of these companies, it's not truly unlimited. There is a point they're going to say, hey, that's enough. Sorry, I don't have, yeah, for free hosting, couldn't help you. There are other ones. We can do SoundCloud. I guess they're kind of free. Lipson is paid. Podbean is paid. So, you know, there's a handful of them. But I use Lipson. It works. It's easy. The interface, the UI, and you'll see it today.  But other than that, it's fine. Anyone else? You had a question that there was one I thought here? Yes, yeah. You in the back. In addition to the podcast itself, do you have a WordPress website that you have to manage that has offices? Yes. So, great question. And I'm going to show you all that as well. The question is, do I have a WordPress website? I do, yes. You do not have to at all. If you don't want to have a website to go with any of this, you don't have to. You can just record the show, edit it, upload it to Lipson, for example. And you need a feed. In the previous class, was there talk about feeds, the RSS feed? A little bit. So, I'm not going to get into that. That's the technical side. You have to set up an RSS feed. You can do it on your own WordPress site. I use Feedburner through Google. There's always talk about them shutting it down. Well, to shut it down, I'll cross that bridge. But you don't need to go through them. You can actually go through Lipson for all of this. And Lipson actually have a website for you if you want. So many services offer that. I have my own WordPress website. And I manage it based on every podcast gets a post, technically, and show notes. And the category podcast though, and it knows to go to Lipson, Feedburner, Feedburner then sends it to iTunes. iTunes, they're talking. They're always like, did people listen to your podcast from the website? They can. Are they listening to like a link from Lipson? No. Actually, technically, yes. It's a stream from Lipson. Yes. So it counts as a download. Yeah. For a long time, I wasn't sure. I'm like, well, if they're listening to my desktop, I don't know. But it does count because that link is, I'm not uploading the MP3 to my server. It's just that link. You'll see that too. Yeah. And sometimes I've made a mistake and it didn't come through. That show comes out Wednesdays. It used to be Mondays also, but I'm like, that's too much work for me. So I make that show Wednesdays. And it didn't come in at 6 a.m. I'm like, where is it? And I look at the show notes and I see the URL in the show notes, not where it's supposed to be in the plug-in. I use Burberry. So I'll show you how that works. So, okay. So we go to questions. You have one right here. And then the last one. It's a search engine. And it has its own SEO. So ironically enough, I forgot to mention one more thing. The question is using YouTube for podcasting. Absolutely. I'm actually in the process right now of taking all 231 episodes, converting them to MP4s. The video, I say the video will be my image of the show that week just as a static image for the duration. The benefit is people find you on YouTube based on what your keywords are, based on your link. Yeah. And then the goal is to get them back to your website. Ideally subscribed. I'm actually about in the process right now doing this. I'm about to hire either my daughter or not my daughter to do this, right? Don't know. We'll see. She's like, I'll do it for 15 an hour. I'm like, how about 50 bucks? So it's like 15 an hour. She's like, how long will it take? I'm like too much, too long. So she's 17. She's like, all of a sudden, she's like, I just kind of gave a rich dad a poor dad. She's like, okay, how do I make this money? All right. Okay, cool. It's gonna be really cool, I think. Okay. All right.


How to reset Windows 10 if the system won't boot To reset it, you need to create a recovery disk Go to Control Panel, find the Element Recovery and click on Create a Recovery Drive And in the next window, choose the connected flash drive where a recovery drive will be created Now you can reset your system even if Windows 10 won't boot To do it, turn on your computer and go to BIOS or UFI Then make your computer boot from the USB drive Press Enter and wait for the system to boot from the recovery drive Choose the language, click on Trouble, Shoot and Reset Choose Keep My Files and the target system should be Windows 10 After you have chosen the target system, the process of resetting Windows 10 begins


What's up navigation traders welcome to today's update today is the first day of the second quarter Wednesday April 1st Starting with today's trade hacker question of the day Question is if IV stays high if implied volatility stays high through earnings season Will we still get the IV crush after the earnings announcements? Just to review, you know implied volatility expands options get more and more expensive as we near Companies quarterly earnings announcement because of the Uncertainty that surrounds that and that's why we can benefit from sell selling options for Earnings players being net sellers of options for these earnings plays is because we get this implied volatility crush right after the announcement and So the question is with implied volatility is still high and so much uncertainty just in the global economic Situation that we're in well. We still get the IV crush after the earnings announcement Let's go to the platform and take a look. I mentioned this yesterday, but a Company that just announced earnings a couple days ago was Restoration hardware ticker RH and so what you'll see here is obviously implied volatility has been pegged up here at a hundred High 90s about the IV percentile IV rank and what you'll see here is after they made the announcement We did get a little bit of implied volatility contraction But definitely not the crush that you would typically see and if I go to a yearly chart I mean here's what I'm talking about. I mean implied volatility gets up in the 90s 100s And then boom just gets crushed in this case in the 80s boom gets crushed In this case in the 80s boom gets crushed So those are the last three earnings announcements and then this one, you know, we're up near a hundred and Got crushed a little bit. I wouldn't call it crush more just an IV contraction But that's what we're likely to see with these upcoming earnings announcements here that are going to be starting here in a couple weeks Is we're still gonna get an IV crush to a point where a lot of the premium is gonna get sucked out of those near-term options Especially if we're trading the options with, you know, one to four days to expiration within the same week of expiration You know, those are those are gonna get crushed because we're getting so close to expiration anyway But some of the further dated options may not contract as much. So that's what we're expecting good question Hopefully that is helpful as we start to come up on earning season here in the next couple weeks So what's going on in the market today? Well, S&P's down a cool, honey We still got about over an hour and a half left in today's session at the time of this recording Dow is down over 700 Nasdaq down to 60 Russell down 73 so what are some of the headlines going on today? What's what's potentially moving the market? Well interestingly enough You know, there's breaking news on one of the not to be mentioned news media sites the breaking news was According to US intelligence The reported numbers on the coronavirus in China are Low, they're inaccurate.  Is that really breaking news? Is it is does anyone actually believe anything China's government says? I mean, we're talking about, you know, a country that is just known for hiding data and Misreporting things to make themselves look good as a as a government. I Mean, I don't I'm not sure why that was breaking news, but I Guess it's just confirmed now is what the situation is So all the all the data and numbers that China has been reporting from the number of coronaviruses from the number of deaths Completely inaccurate completely low compared to what the actual data should be The other thing and this was I saw this yesterday, but according to some some new projections We are expected to see Between a hundred thousand and two hundred and forty thousand deaths in the in the US alone from this I mean, that's trading aside.  So You know, and that's that's part of why I just don't think this this market is done with the volatility You know when when you see that kind of impact and you see what that's gonna do Not only from a health perspective But the financial devastation that that's gonna create for families for businesses and everything else I mean just I mean look out below guys. I mean this thing's this thing's going down now We're not gonna get crazy. We're not gonna load the boat on short positions But we're definitely gonna be creating more and more short Delta positions here as we as we have on this little ride up so What did we do today? Well, we we didn't do much We're kind of letting on these last couple days letting these these short Delta plays work for us as the market's going down We did add one iron duck in SPY and we're keeping very small, you know, even though our iron ducks have a big buffer to the downside We've got all the way down to about here and it's just about a week long trade. I mean Obviously price could get there tomorrow, you know, so we don't we're not going crazy here But we do want to start layering in some iron ducks on days that we have On on days where the markets down we're implied volatility expanding and when we you know We're trying to get our break evens as far away from the current price as possible Obviously if this thing does turn and things do we do get some news on things turning for the better in regards to this virus I mean if this thing does rip up we have no risk to the upside in fact We'll book some profits to the upside so that's the cool thing about the duck So that's that's really the only trade we did in our alerts portfolio. If we like take a look at some of the stocks I mean obviously the stocks that are most susceptible to To the social distancing and lack of travel. I mean casinos, you know win down 10% today big move down We've got some short Delta in win Delta Airlines I was looking at earlier. It's having a big down day as well Let's see. Where's it DAL, you know down 15%? I mean these These these stocks are just gonna have a tough time. I mean, it's gonna be a while before people are traveling again Banks getting hammered You know capital one financial down 10% city bank down Almost 8% a lot of I mean just a lot of red across the board here a couple a few things that are having good days grocery stores Kroger Walmart target proctor and gamble, you know, those kind of the consumer staples basically the essential businesses that are still open right now You know, they're having a decent day, but everything else is pretty much in the red So that's all I got for you. Everybody have a great evening and we'll talk to you tomorrow


Well welcome to our second hot topic another case of civil society keeping government on its toes as court orders federal government to account for a batch of loot recovered since 1999. The social economic rights and accountability project will be throwing more light on this as we have been joined by Mr. Kolawale Oluwadari deputy director Serap they actually instituted that case. Good morning Mr. Kolawale Oluwadari. Morning. All right well judgment was delivered on July 3rd on this case. President Tenubu ordered you know has been ordered to disclose the exact sum stolen by Genosani Abacha from Nigeria through the Ministry of Finance and then the total amount recovered. All agreements signed on same by former president Oduchebo Vasanjo, Omar Yerutwa, Good Lord Jonathan and Mohamed Abu-Hare. Tell us they can't gave this administration this government seven days to make this information available. Are we looking at today and what has been done with regards to that order has actually been taken? Very much. Ordinaryly since the parties were all in processes and the parties are the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice. It is presumed in law that they are privy to the president and they are privy to the judgment already. But we've taken the extra step of writing to the president and these concerned ministries affording the satisfactory copy of the judgment to them. So the judgment ideally begins the seven days begins to count from the date of the judgment since they believe the law were participated in the proceedings by the processes that followed. But we've taken extra portion of sentiments that might copy the judgment along with the request in demand for the president to direct these affected ministries to obey the judgment of court. So what follows next or what should follow next then in democracy is that the judgment of court is obeyed and those details are requested by Sarah and as ordered by the court they are obeyed by all available means to ensure that the nations have access to them. It's simply put that is what should happen and that's what we expect to have. Today is seven days. Correct. Mr. Loadare. Yes, I can hear you. Yeah, it was delivered on the third. So it's expected that today you should have at least had that document. Correct. That's why the apartheid's judgments, they even join his use in his suit and presumes were notice of the judgment, but we have also taken the extra portion to write. So the seven days ideally as far as the court is concerned begins to count from the third of July. But we are also waiting for the president. So what we are waiting for is compliance on the part of these agencies when they are not called. So what happens after the seven days is what is the next action that Sarah can take legally? Unfortunately, this is one of those, the conquest of the dysfunctional democracy of government. Actually, it is not about Sarah doing anything. It should be about the government obeying the court and obeying the court is very simple. It means that these agencies of government publish the details about the court and publish it in this instance stated by the FYI includes using different measures and means includes on the on the website of the Ministry of Finance, on the website of the Ministry of Justice by newsletters, brochures and every available means government against it to make this information available. So the information is not meant to be made available to set but to the public, to the nuclear citizens because the suit itself is predicated on the public interest and these are the behalf of the nuclear citizens in the interest of the nuclear citizens. Who should know? How about that's coming by a way of a term on which I can spend and how they may expect. Don't forget the sentence of the unit that the victims in this instance, those function that left in the end of the first place, now that they've come back in, the victims should be the main beneficiaries. But it means it should start from knowing what you're coming, how they tend to expect. Okay, well, what how much has come in and how much has been spent and how it has been spent is something that can be achievable. But one of the demands according to the report that we heard that Seraph was demanding for was how much a batch actually looted. Is that even a possibility? We keep seeing, I see every year one one tranche of it every year, another another tranche of it coming in that we didn't even know about. Is it possible to know how much was really stolen by the abacha government? It's possible. But the main focus of the suit is how much has been recovered, which is very important. When it is important to know how much has been stolen, it is much more important to know how much has been recovered. Unless we hear some figures been barred in the round about time, but that is not enough. We need to know exactly to do it's more or less called how much has been recovered in the various tranches. And now those funds are to be And that also includes the role of international agencies have played in the coming of those funds. And perhaps whether there are agreements that the years have entered to enter the government specific way to sponsor those funds. Indians, they start to know what the law says. The Oncac Convention on Ideas are new to all clearly states. In this instance, the reparation for the big teams on sub-corrosion. Everything there is Now that those funds are coming, the victims not currently should be, should know that that's not the reparations that are coming out that it's spent who benefits us in those spending. So the focus is on how much has come in now that it's spent. And then you would understand that the essence of this kind of advocacy is to ensure, first of all, that its funds do not leave Nigeria the same way they left the private budgets. Exactly. Nigerians have been curious about how these recovered loots have been spent. We publicly hear of, you know, their return to Nigeria. We hear, for instance, in November 2022, we learned that $20 million was returned to Nigeria. In 2020, we heard that $311.7 million was also returned. But then we do not get to hear how they were spent. So this ruling would put an end to some of the mysteries, expectedly, if the government would respond to it. There's a batch of loot mystery. Many Nigerians are looking forward to see. And you have said that you did not go to just for syrup, but for the Nigerian masses. Now tell us what you know about the three critical infrastructure projects that the U.S. signed with the government that these monies that went returned should be channeled into. Do you have any information to eat at all? And is this one of the reasons why you went to court over this matter? We went to court because we had requested this information from the government by way of a freedom of information request in the consonants with the Freedom of Information Act and sections that now the constitutional guarantees are synchronized with those itself and the freedom of expression that is addressed to the function. It is because we did not get those answers that we ended up in court. And the aim of the freedom of information request as part of our advocacy for transparency and accountability is to make government use available funds, public funds in the interest of Nigerians to better the welfare of Nigerians. Also, economic rights now have been abused over time. There is growing poverty in Nigerians. The NPS National and Europe Studies has listed more than more than three million Nigerians at war. There is multi-dimensional reports. Inflation is rising. The removal of persons in these has raised a cost of living. Cost of governments has continued to go up. We Nigerians need it in death. What more indices do we need to show that government must, at this time, more than any other time, prioritize social economic rights of Nigerians? I would like to, to be speaking simply, fulfill the important quality education at Pottingham Waterhouse. For the Bogeyanskate, we're talking on, talking on security. And these are provisions of the Constitution that has been guaranteed to Nigeria. These is the reason why we are officers, elected, public officers elected and appointed in the office. So, basically, what Sarah, the base of this has looked at is to ensure that much of their public funds, in this instance where we have our challenge, is used for the benefit of Nigerians. So, the protest that governments want to undertake this is not as important as the manner in which we suspect. And we've seen this done over time. Governments see this as an allocated social amount to education. Governments see this as an allocated this to security. But we do not see it in real time. It doesn't refer to the reality. We do not have a way of infrastructure on economic development and subsystems. And that is why these are the reasons to ensure that we have public funds to protect our infrastructure and governments without recourse to loans and to ensure principality. And this again doesn't end up in primary pockets. So, whether this is used for education, for health, or able to cushion the effect of the brighting crunch of the economy, the most important thing is that the economic rights of Nigerians are respected. And that we all see, government can account for this, how these funds have been spent. Which are ways that these funds can be spent, for instance, is to ensure that our health infrastructure, both at the touch of personal and primary levels, and they have to take care of Nigerians. And it also means that the various aspects of our education, right from primary to secondary school, is funded enough to afford quality education. But again, it is not enough to talk about sectors, education, resource applications in the sector. What is most important is to ensure that they are spent with the losses that you spend and they do not be in private pockets. We see budgets coming year after year. Huge amounts of money, growing the deficit continues. How are you just trust it? Which is why Nigerians need to ensure that, sustain this advocacy, to ensure that either this administration or previous administrations, anything that I point to the Nigerian government, is monitored and spent and transparency for the benefit of Nigerians. Yeah, I must say kudos to Serap for being so dogged in this fight. Matter of fact, most Nigerians no longer have confidence in NGOs. Well, not all NGOs. Some NGOs and some CSOs as much as they have confidence in Serap. So kudos to you. But wouldn't it have been so great to have those individual presidents who dispensed these monies answer to these questions, answer these questions. Government is continuum, there's no doubt. But wouldn't it have been more exciting to have these individual presidents who dispense these monies give account? Of course, it would have been, but the practicality of that is the challenge. For instance, this suit was filed in 2020 and we have enjoyed it in 2023. Three years after the suit was filed, this also coupled with the slow pace of Kyrgyzstan challenge has also been led to these issues. But much more importantly, whether those presidents are, they are yet office or not is immaterial. The principal parties to this suit are the Ministry of Finance and the Minister of Justice. Those ministries that still exist, they are continuous. When I am, ministers are pointed to anyone who wants to say continuum. So move on with Kyrgyzstan. Like, while the people who are in the station for instance are not being made on the obligations of Nigerians for the loans that they collected by previous administrations, they cannot say they don't have those records. They cannot say that they do not want to hold the keyboard Nigerians in on the bucket. So in the set, in the set frame, these funds are coming by way of Nigeria since 1999, under many different administration protocols. Nigerians, it does not stop these engineers at the moment who, by non-stakeholders, they play the bottom roles in the recovery and allocation and the expenditure of this funds, by the way. And I'm talking about the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice to work for them. So it is not about the presence of the administration. It is about institutions of government in this instance. The two ministries that are parties to this suit and who played very important roles in the movement of these funds, who in every movement have an excuse, they should be able to give account for how much they're coming, how much they spend, and the status of that spending has any kind of judgmental cause. Yeah, matter of fact, the Ministry of Finance had earlier given the excuse that it was unable to account for the requested documents. And the Council to the federal government had also said that Serap had no local standing. But you persisted. They caught dismissed their arguments and you got judgment. How does it feel to be at this point in this fight and do you see your victory? Well, the victory of this whole case opening the floodgate for more CSOs, Nigerians who have been accused of having been too docile to come up and ask government to account for our public wealth. It's, they don't the suit. And these kind of the delay in the suits are some kind of discouraging effect. And the box, fortunately, judge made and given in this instance. And I'm very happy that the judge could see through the field to dispense the fences of both respondents in the court. And that is why we have judgment in this record. And I do not necessarily think this will open the litigation. The civic space in Nigeria as I'm with the tribe, apart from the various actions of the government to style forward the string of civic space by preventing robust engagement. But the Nigerians have been talking and persistence also much more like Serap in the consistent and cohesive of good governance. So I look more politically and learn more less civic in the government space which is still the same and cohesive towards good governance. And I believe that Nigerians will think and Nigerians are will be lacking where moral politics go and where we have much more governance than we used to be about since 1999. You understand the basic rights of citizens as rights holders and those non-computers as duty bearers. But what we need to do more about and the hope is that this kind of judgment the Nigerians are able to take this up and further the course of misogynism. Make sure that questions like these judgments like this remain on the front bottom of public discourse that is a concept and by our subsistence if the team do decision of influence on which of course that is very very lengthy. The same question political institutions have asked of this administration whether already the lack of research administration or whether it has gone that people can ask now more is coming and now what have been spent. So this judgment is another one of those the victories for democracy and what is the situation of us but more importantly the the executive that obligated to be this judgment in fortress or transverse unaccompanied governments and a total rate of aggression. Okay we we do hope that when the government comes and tells you that the money was used for trader money the money was used for school feeding program the money was used for Alcor Boraz program you can be able to scrutinize even if the money they claim to have spent was we spent that way or you take it a step further we'd like to thank you this morning it's it's a pity this is how much we can take on the show this morning thank you so much for coming on the program okay we're talking with Barista Kolaouale Oluwa Dari deputy director of CERAP and he was telling us about the court judgment that has just been gotten by CERAP for the government to be transparent enough to tell us what monies have come in from their abacha loot and how the monies have been spent but this is where we'll draw the curtain for today except for the court of the day the court of the day will be coming um okay or maybe I should just just give them the court of the day sometimes the people around you wouldn't understand your journey they do not need to it's not for them this is from yogurt both are advising us advice yourself my name is Nyamukin and I am Maurene do you have explained the day and thanks for being with us


Psychotropic plants created by the Centre of Excellence, narrated by Jane Branch Centre of Excellence Psychotropic Plants Module 1 Psychopharmacology Your own beliefs will determine how you feel about the fact that a good number of plants growing around the planet contain constituents which can perfectly interact with our nervous system for medicinal, spiritual and recreational purposes. Was it a sublime stroke of luck, intelligent design or something else? Historically we see plants that acted psychotropically were held in high esteem by our ancestors from all corners of the globe, for a plant to have such a profound effect on the fabric of a person and their psyche led them to attach spirits, gods, goddesses and even the devil to them as they attempted to make sense of it. Throughout these modules we'll see evidence that our ancestors were highly skilled in the use of these plants and despite the lack of scientific research they had a good idea what could be achieved in using them but what does modern science tell us is happening when we consume a psychotropic plant? What is this curious relationship between two kingdoms, plant kingdom and the animal kingdom? To gain a better understanding let's start with us and the study of our nervous system. What is the nervous system? Structurally our nervous system is divided into the central and the peripheral nervous system with the central nervous system comprised of the brain and spinal cord and the peripheral nervous system including all the bundles of nerve fibres that run down through the body from the central nervous system. It's also divided up on a functional basis too with a somatic nervous system in charge of our special senses and conscious decisions like movement and the autonomic system in charge of all the unconscious and visceral activity in our body like digestion. A number of cells make up the nervous system. Neurons are the nerve cells that transmit and receive information.  Psychotropic plants contain active constituents that communicate with neurons and can either trigger or halt certain messages that the... Sample complete. Ready to continue?


But around 8pm on Wednesday 2nd December 1998, a tragic incident forever changed CFA. At a forest fire north of the small town of Linton near Ballarat, two tankers, one from Geelong City and one from Geelong West, were engulfed by fire after a change in wind direction. All five Geelong West firefighters died. Well, the incident was a total shock to us, of course.  So Geelong West fire truck had been lost. And I said, how could you lose a fire truck? But he didn't answer me any further. On subsequent phone calls to the CFA in Geelong, Lexter Mann answered my call and I said, no mucking around, give me the facts. And he said, Bill, I'm sorry, but Jason has passed with four other guys on the fire truck in the Linton forest and that just imploded and it was terrible. We were going to bed fairly late that night and around about 12pm I heard on the wireless on 774 that there was five people got killed up at Linton. And I didn't mention where the truck was from, it just said five died. And I thought, if that had had been Stuart, we would have known because it's on the news. I didn't tell my wife about it. I just went to bed and maybe an hour or so later I heard a few cars pull up outside and I looked out the window and of course you saw the CFA and the police cars there.  A 107 day coronial inquest followed. How the inquest rolled out, it was a little like Simon said, different people were in there for different things. Yeah, that was very emotional because every day we went there, we went over and over and it just kept bringing back the torment and it still does today. The families went up by bus and we all came home together on a bus and that was really good therapy coming home. If someone didn't understand what happened or so on, we sort of discussed it and if we needed to cry we did, we needed to laugh, laugh we did. But the therapy on the bus home was really, really good. There were 55 recommendations handed down as CFA introduced programs to improve planning, procedures and equipment. We all looked after extremely well from day one from the CFA, I've got to say. Their attention to our needs were superlative. There was not a want that was not acceded to within reason and to this day we have people like Jamie McKenzie who gives us a call, how are you doing, what are you up to and that sort of thing. So I can only speak very highly of the CFA from that point of view. I think it's been really, really good because since 1998 there's been no crime and lost in the same way. Now that they're doing this staff ride and the lessons learned out of this just absolutely brilliant. The coroner made 55 recommendations in his coroner's report. We're not sure how many of those have been adapted but I'd be very interested to know how many have been adapted but I'd suggest that a lot of them would have been a fair percentage which has been good which becomes training tools for you know CFA personnel and I'm sure through our DNRE the same thing would apply. In the military staff rides educate people on the actions taken during battle. Through the dedication and commitment of several local CFA members and with the support of the families of the five CFA firefighters killed a Linton staff ride was established. Yeah he took us to lunch out to the Warnpons Hotel. That's right I think the majority of families were there. They were. We invited the families. And he was suggesting that they wanted to do a training program using Linton and it was unanimous. No one questioned. No one complained. No one said no I don't want you to go there. This sounds really good. And then it just sort of evolved. And again he'd sort of ring us up and say I want to... This is what I want to do. Just to get our edifice on it which was quite and to see it come to fruition the way that has developed is exceptional. I still think that and I don't know whether he's got this but as part of his training package I believe you know if you want to be a firefighter this is what you've got to do. This incorporates all the information known as the day progressed. Activities where participants discussed decision making. A moment to reflect at the memorial. And at all Linton staff rides to date. A first-hand account from then strike team leader Simon Scarf. And I think Max would say the same. We now know the detail. And to have Simon play his part I believe every time there was 17 last year there's to be 18 this year and he will possibly do the 18 again. That's just phenomenal from his point of view. And I understand that some of his time is in his own volunteer time. It's not all paid by CFA which again is incredible to the person he is. As Max said a week after the death of the boys he came around to their home and sat and spoke and told probably that same story. And it would not have altered. And I can remember the times during the inquest and we'd break and come out into the foyer and we'd you know go and speak with him. He wasn't the ogre. He was a friend. Last month Bill and Max experienced the staff ride for the first time. The thing that I think has been wonderful has been this Linton staff ride. I don't know whose brainchild it was but I fear I know who it is. They have included us in it all of the time. Any alterations, changes they've come and had our blessing which we truly thank them for. But to see having been on this today my daughter came up here and my son last year they did the ride and my daughter said Dad you won't believe it. You won't believe it. It's just incredible.  Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.  Yeah, that brings you back to the night. But it is a very calming, calming area. Whilst it wasn't good what happened here but it's lovely to come and sit here and reflect. It's a very special place. Absolutely special place. My daughter said it's just incredible and as she said Dad I now know how my brother passed.


Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to update town meeting on the new municipal facility at 51 Grove Street As part of this update, I will quickly review the budget presented to town meeting this past November I will outline the current project pricing based on bids obtained by the construction manager as well as review the current market conditions and outline what has changed in the last six months and Finally, I will summarize the cost control measures on this project that are being proposed as well as an additional funding request to cover higher costs being driven by the current market conditions This slide provides an overview of the October 2020 estimate that was presented to town meeting in November Which identified a total project cost of approximately thirty eight point nine million dollars Following town meeting in November the design drawings were finalized and the construction manager obtained pricing for the project this past March Based on the final drawings and the current market conditions, the final cost came in at approximately forty three point nine million dollars This resulted in the project being five million dollars over the current authorization In addition based on these higher costs the construction contingency, which is being carried is too low for a project of this complexity in these market conditions It should be reassessed accordingly The project team evaluated the bid price to find what was causing this overrun So we could communicate the driving factors and identify potential cost-cutting measures based on this analysis The single largest increase was related to a surge of material costs Which also directly contributed to the overrun associated with the estimating variances What I would like to do at this point is briefly discuss these material cost increases and how they are impacting this project This is an example of actual historic stale pricing over the last two years You should note that the estimates for the municipal facility project were prepared in March of 2020 and again in October 2020 With town meeting falling in November As you can see from the graph the stale prices generally remain flat during the time that the estimates were being prepared for the project But as was mentioned earlier as the economy began reopening the demand for construction material increased exponentially And as a result so did the cost of stale as shown here This spike began soon after town meeting in November and resulted in a 30 to 35 percent increase in just a few short months We found that this trend was consistent across most construction material markets There have been numerous articles documenting this including a recent Wall Street Journal report Which identified significant surges in lumber to other materials such as paint roofing and flooring as well as copper For the answer to why the construction market is seeing these surges the answers were consistent Including factory production had dropped significantly in 2020 due to the pandemic They are still not running at capacity and there continues to be supply chain hiccups across the country And according to the Associated General Contractors of America the AGC the short answer for the cause of these surges is the pandemic In fact the Associated General Contractors recently issued a rare construction inflation alert to contractors and owners alike As shown by this graph beginning in November of 2020 there has been a steep incline in price changes for steel, copper, brass, lumber and diesel fuel Which all have a significant impact on projects such as the new municipal facility Working closely with the project team we identified cost control measures that we determined would not result in any impact to the original scope or the operational intent of the project These cost saving measures included among others reducing the number of ballads on site to changing the construction type for the salt shed To eliminating several of the program evolution items such as the snow melt system, roof monitor and small mezzanine We reviewed each of these with the town and then worked with the construction manager to identify a total savings of approximately $1.8 million Taking all this information into consideration the following is the current budget status As reviewed earlier the current cost stands at approximately $43.9 million We have identified a total of approximately $1.8 million in cost savings as reviewed on the previous slide And are recommending that the owner's construction contingency be increased by $2.25 million To take into consideration the higher overall cost of the project, the complexity of the project as well as the continued volatility of the market It is important to note that if the construction contingency is not used it will be returned to the town This results in a revised total project cost of approximately $44.3 million compared to the previous authorization of $38.9 Resulting in an additional funding request of approximately $5.4 million So in closing to summarize the information that has been presented, the scope has been scrubbed to maximize cost saving measures We have received competitive bids which reduces the uncertainty associated with the market volatility We are proposing an increase in the contingency to address future unforeseen conditions And the additional request allows the project to proceed without removing any key program elements It is also important to note that the cost of waiting could result in significantly higher costs With continued material cost increases, material shortages and the potential for labor shortages As the federal government introduces stimulus and infrastructure funds into the economy Thanks again for the opportunity to present this information to you


Holi graphine is a promising material for both thermoelectrics and her catalysis. Its thermal conductivity is significantly reduced compared to other materials, making it ideal for applications where heat dissipation is important. Additionally, its low over-potential makes it suitable for use in her catalysis. This article was authored by Mohammed Saadjad, Surabi Sureshne, Jajan Abdul Saadjad, and others.