started. Thank you guys for coming. I know it's the end of the day and everyone's probably pretty tired, but I really appreciate you guys coming to this talk. So I'm going to start out with a short poll. Can you guys raise your hand for me if you've ever used Siri or Google Voice or any other type of voice dictation software? So show of hands. Okay, great. So almost everyone in the room.  Anyone? Okay, so that's pretty much what I expected. And that was basically my impression of voice dictation as well. So for example, when I was back in San Francisco in my apartment, putting together my slides, I tried to get Siri to turn on the lights above my desk and I had to ask about four different times. And in the end, she didn't even turn on the correct light. But that being said, today we are going to talk about voice dictation specifically with a technology called the Web Speech API. But first, introductions. Hi, I'm Cameron, and I build expert use software for stitchfix in Ruby on Rails. And you may have also heard expert use software described as internal tools. So what this means is that I build applications for other stitchfix employees. And I'm going to be spending most of our time today talking about a project that I worked on recently at Stitchfix. So I thought it would be a good idea to give a brief overview of what the company does so that everyone can level set and everyone's on the same page. So Stitchfix is an online personalization company currently focused on men's and women's apparel, accessories, and footwear. So the way that it works is you go online, you fill out a survey with your size and fit preferences, and then we match you with a personal stylist who puts together a box for you of five items. We pick the five items from our warehouse, we send it to your house, you try it on at home, and you get to keep what you love and send the rest back free of charge. So the previous slide showed a picture of a typical stitchfix box also known as a fix. And here I want to show the life cycle of one of those items in a fix. So before the item gets to the client, there's several different steps that it goes through. At the very beginning it involves a choice by the buyer to actually bring in the style to sell to our clients. The buyer places the order for the style to come in at a certain date, and then the vendor ships the items of the style to our warehouse on that date. Next, the warehouse receives and puts the items into inventory, and then they're available for the stylist to send out to the client. So once the stylist picks the item to go in the client's fix, we're back at the warehouse, and the warehouse picks the items out of inventory, packs them up, and ships them to the client. Then, like I mentioned before, the client can try on the items at home, and then the warehouse is going to process anything that the client returned. So we'll come back to that in a second, but now that we've talked a little bit about stitchfix, here's a brief overview of what we're going to cover today. So first I'm going to go through a case study featuring data entry by associates at our warehouse. Then I'll show you how you can get started with the web speech API to experiment with voice dictation on your own. I'll talk about some voice dictation challenges that we ran into and solutions that we implemented, and then I'll answer the question, is voice the right solution for you? So jumping into the case study, like many retail companies, stitchfix takes measurements of the items that we bring into inventory to eventually sell to our clients. So this is a diagram of a men's long sleeve woven shirt, and you can see six marks across the shirt, and these are called points of measure. So these are very specific technical retail measurements that we would take on the shirt. And there's actually hundreds of these measurements that can be taken, and they range from something as specific to the width of a button to as generic as the length or width of the shirt. But at stitchfix for any given men's shirt, we typically take about 15 to 20 measurements. And the part of the process where we take these measurements, if we go back to the life cycle of an item, it's at our warehouse when we receive the inventory from the vendor. And the way that the measurements are collected is just with a basic sewing measuring tape. So here you can see one of the men's shirts laid out flat on a table, and we're measuring across the shoulders with the measuring tape. So when I started working on this project, the goal of the project was to build an application to start capturing these measurements that we were taking at our warehouses. And the process was already in place before I started working on the project. So measurements were already being taken and collected, but the team was using Google sheets to record these measurements. And you'll see that as kind of a recurring theme in internal software is that we're taking existing processes and making them more efficient and scalable by building software to support them. And so that's exactly what we did in this project. So throughout this project, I got the opportunity to partner with my coworker on the user experience or UX design team at Stitchfix. And we worked together throughout the entire project from the user research phase, the prototyping phase, and the development phase. So here's a picture from our initial user research session where we went to the warehouse to observe the current measurement process before figuring out what type of tool we were going to build to support the process. And we had a couple main takeaways from the first user research session. So the pictures on the left and the right show some handmade props that the warehouse associates had made to aid them in the measuring process. And you can see from the diagram a couple slides ago that we really took inspiration from these props that they made and carried that through into the application. And then the middle photo shows one of the warehouse associates actually taking these measurements. And our main takeaway from that was that they were recording these measurements on very small laptop screens. And there was a lot of hunching over a lot of shifting in body language back and forth between measuring the garment and entering it into the keyboard. So before I talk about the rest of the process we went through to build this application, I wanted to give you guys some context so you can think about what we ended up building as we go through the rest of the process. So here's a quick demo of the final solution that we came up with. 23, 18 and one over four, nine and three quarters, eight and a half, four and seven eighths, two and three over four, 16 and one half, two and five over eight, save. So in case you guys haven't figured it out already, you are at one of the JavaScript talks at RailsConf. So we ended up going with voice dictation as our solution. This is a Rails app, but all of the voice dictation is built on the front but in all honesty, this isn't really a talk about JavaScript or even about voice dictation. It's a story about how to leverage the UX design process in engineering to build the best product for our users. So how did we do that? Well, let's finish the story. So after our initial user research session, we were we were pretty focused on the fact that the users were hunched over the small laptop and they had to switch back and forth from measuring and entering the measurements into the keyboard. So we wanted to test out measuring in pairs. We asked the associates to pair up so that one of them could continuously measure and dictate the measurements aloud, and then the other could type into the laptop. And the reasoning behind that is that our hypothesis was that if one of the associates could spend 100% of their time measuring, they wouldn't have to break their flow or their concentration. They wouldn't have to reset their body language or their hand position on the measuring tape and they would be able to be more efficient. So what we found from this test is that the associates kind of hated this concept of measuring in pairs. The person who was typing in the laptop felt like he was just sort of waiting around and wasn't really doing much and felt like he could have been more efficient if he had grabbed another shirt and started measuring himself. But what we did notice that was promising is that the associate who got to focus completely on measuring did seem to be more efficient and she didn't have to break her flow. She was able to continuously measure without breaking her concentration and without shifting her body language. So because of that finding, we then wanted to move forward with a voice usability study. So these two screenshots show our initial prototypes that we brought to the warehouse. The one on the left is a basic keyboard entry and the one on the right is the voice dictation prototype. And they don't look that much different. Just want to call that out. You're not really supposed to see a difference in these because this isn't so much of a UI change as an input change. But you can see in the voice dictation prototype, there's a click to speak button on the top for the associates to press when they're ready to start speaking into the application. But aside from that, the interfaces are pretty similar. So in this voice usability study, there were three main questions that we were hoping to answer. And the first one was around efficiency. So would voice entry affect the overall time to measure a garment? And then the second question that we wanted to answer was around accuracy. So a little bit of background. Our warehouses are pretty noisy environments. The associates often like to play music. They sing aloud to the music and they want to talk to their friends during their shifts. And so we were wondering if this would work out for voice dictation or if it would be hard to capture the input that the user was saying. And then the last one was a question a little bit around culture and workflow. How would the warehouse associates feel about voice entry? So a little bit of context into that. Any associate who's working on the measurements usually is doing it in about a four hour shift. So about half of a workday with breaks in between. And we didn't know if that would feel exhausting to be talking aloud for hours at a time or if they would prefer to be typing into a keyboard instead. So let's take a look at the results. Here are the results around efficiency. We tested these prototypes with two warehouse associates and you can see that participant one had a pretty dramatic increase in efficiency shaved about three minutes off of his measurement time with the voice data entry. And then participant two also saw a bit of a lift in efficiency but not quite as dramatic. And the interesting thing here is that participant two was already the more experienced person doing the measurements. And so he was already very ridiculously fast at taking measurements which is why he didn't have he didn't have quite the increase in efficiency as the less experienced associate. But we thought these were really promising results especially since we knew that we would be onboarding new people onto this process to be taking these measurements there seem to be a huge efficiency gain here. So the next thing that we wanted to take a look at was the accuracy. And we found that investing in the right headset was really the key here and we were able to mitigate the accuracy issues from the noisy environment. So this is the headset that we ended up purchasing for our warehouse associates. The microphone has a pretty narrow input range. And then the most important factor here is that the microphone can be flipped up into the headset and it stops recording when it's flipped up. So this was important to us in terms of keeping the culture going in the warehouse. The associates could move seamlessly back and forth between measuring and singing along or talking to their friends and they didn't have to feel trapped by this voice dictation device. And then the last thing that we wanted to know was how the associates would feel about voice dictation. So here are some photos. The left one shows the keyboard entry prototype and the right one shows the voice dictation. And this is participant number one in the study and his main comment was that the voice dictation felt a lot better for his back. And you can't see as well in the keyboard picture but in the dictation picture he's standing up definitely straighter not as hunched over the laptop. And then this is participant two who was the most experienced and already pretty efficient at using the keyboard. And his main comment is that he liked that he never had to remove his hands from the measuring tape. So you can see in the photo on the left even when he's using keyboard entry he has kind of a one handed approach to typing into the keyboard. And since he's more experienced at measuring he really capitalized on the fact that if you don't have to completely reset your hands on the measuring tape each time you can move through the measurements faster. And so that was his main call out that with the voice data entry he could truly use two hands at all times to do the measurements. So now that you've seen how we utilized voice dictation with our warehouse associates I want to talk a little bit about how you can get started with the Web Speech API on your own. So first here's a bit of coffee script showing how to initialize the Web Speech API. And the really cool thing about this API is that there's no external library or anything that you need to pull in. This is available as part of the JavaScript language if you're using the Chrome browser. So it's really just as simple as initializing the WebKit speech recognition. And on that note like I mentioned this is available to use in Chrome with no external libraries. But the flip side of that is that it's only available in Chrome. So that's why internal tools make a really good candidate for using the Web Speech API because we can fully control our users browsers. But it probably wouldn't be the best solution for something that's customer facing where you have to be able to support every browser under the sun. And then below the screenshot is just a little code snippet showing that we're only initializing the speech recognition if it's defined. And then pretty much the only other thing that you have to do is start the recognition and record voice results. So you can also see a bit of code here in the middle where we have logic that restarts the recognition every time it ends. And this is so that the associates could continuously measure. They could go through every measurement on the form without having to click any button or actively turn on and off the voice recognition and the way that they could move in and out of the voice dictation was by flipping the microphone up in the headset as opposed to clicking anything on the keyboard or messing with the app at all. And then the last step is just getting the results back from the API and returning the transcript. So it's a pretty straightforward setup. And I now want to go into some of the challenges that we ran into with voice dictation and some of the solutions that we implemented. So the first challenge was around contextual formatting. You may or may not have noticed a couple of slides ago that the results that come back from the web speech API come back as an array. And this is because what the API is doing is it's recording context along the way as the user is speaking. And it actually returns snippets of speech along with the final result which is going to be the last element in the array. So let's look at two basic examples here. On the top you can see the user will start to speak and they say two. They continue speaking and they say two and a half. And then they finish off their sentence with two and a half ice creams. And so the API determines okay this person is speaking in sentence form. There's other context around. They're talking about ice cream. We're just going to return the words just as they said them and there's no need for additional formatting. But then in the second example the user starts out the same. They start to say the word two. They then continue on and they say two and a half and then they stop speaking. Which is the case for our application since our users are only recording numbers. And what the API is supposed to do here is from the lack of context it implies that the user is speaking a number. And so it transforms the text into the numeric version. And this is pretty awesome. I thought this was one of the most fascinating things about the API that you kind of just get out of the box was this contextual formatting. But unfortunately it doesn't really work 100% of the time. I think we saw about like a 50-50 success rate with this. And so what that meant for our users was that they were speaking aloud two and a half and they were seeing the words two and a half come on to the screen as opposed to the number. And that's really confusing when they're using a measuring tape and they're supposed to be entering data in fractions. And sometimes they get a fraction and sometimes they get words. But we were able to solve this pretty easily. I think because of the fact that we had such structured data we were only expecting our users to dictate numbers. So we were able to account for that and be able to do the contextual format formatting ourselves. So what we did is we set up an object which is a mapping between the numbers as words and then the numeric counterparts. And then every time we got a transcript back from the API we iterated through the object. We checked for matches in the keys and then if we found a match we just replaced it with the value which is the numeric version. So in addition to contextual formatting another challenge we ran into was dictation errors from our users which were a little bit harder to solve. So here's two examples that we ran into. The first one the user dictated 35 eighths which came out to be 35 over 8. Pretty much just as expected. But what the user was actually trying to say was 30 and 5 eighths but they just didn't enunciate they didn't actually physically pronounce the and. And so this was more of a matter of training the users in how the API would work and how it would record their results. So in this case it was literally recording exactly what they were saying but the user didn't say what they meant to say. And the same thing with the example on the bottom with four quarters would return four over four because that's four quarters but what they actually meant to say it was four and one quarter. It just didn't come out of their mouth the way that they were intending it to. So that's a little challenging because both of the results are valid fractions. So it's a little hard to catch these and luckily we do have a front and validation in the application that makes sure users reduce their fractions. And so these both of these examples will catch an error but that's only because they're non reduced fractions. So you could imagine other dictation errors that are totally valid fractions that it may not catch. So that one's a little bit harder to plan for. And then the last challenge that we ran into with voice dictation was around reliability. So if you go to the MDN documentation for the web speech API you'll see a notice at the top. This is an experimental technology and a bunch of caveats about not always being backwards compatible could have breaking changes etc etc. And after a few weeks of using the voice dictation in production ongoing on a daily basis we noticed some unexpected behavior. And the main unexpected behavior we noticed was that the users would get through about half of a page of measurements and the recording would just completely stop working altogether. And this proved pretty challenging to debug because there wasn't really a difference between those scenarios and the scenarios when it was working. And by that I mean there were no errors in the JavaScript console nothing really indicating that something was wrong. So it was pretty hard to debug and test. We initially turned to hardware as a potential problem. We thought oh maybe we made the wrong choice in headsets. So we tested a few different headset options even just regular earbuds and didn't really find anything there. We also tested different laptops Mac versus PC to see if it could potentially have to do with the laptop or the internal mic in the laptop. And then we made sure our users had up to date versions of Chrome which they all did. So it's still a little bit inconclusive and something that we're digging into more but we're not quite sure what's causing the reliability issues right now. But the good thing is that when working with an experimental technology we knew we had to have a fallback plan from the outset. So we never blocked the users from just entering the data into the form that you saw in the demo. So that's what they're using for the most part right now as we work through some of these reliability issues. And if you remember one of the main reasons that we wanted to implement voice dictation was for the user's comfort and their positioning in their body language. And so what we ended up doing was purchasing monitors that had large screens that we could stand up in the warehouse so that the associates could clearly see the form of measurements in front of them. They didn't have to hunch over and it was a much better experience for them. So I want to call out one other challenge that we've run into that's not related to voice dictation but has more to do with users entering data in the form. So you can imagine if a user is typing into the keyboard and they intend to type 10, they might accidentally slip and type an extra 0 and then we have invalid data essentially. We have a measurement of 100 instead of 10. And that's difficult to catch because 100 is a valid number. It's not any more invalid than 10. But what we had to do was implement suggested ranges for each of our measurements. So the way that we did that is for every single point of measure and again there's hundreds of these and they differ by type of item that we're measuring. We added a minimum and maximum value to the database that we were able to use and implement some front end warnings if the measurements were out of range. So here we show the orange warning but we're not ever blocking the users from submitting the form because it's definitely possible that a measurement could be out of range. We just want to catch the extreme outliers like 100 for across the shoulder which would never happen. So is voice the right solution for you? A couple thoughts on that. A few things that I would consider if you want to look into voice dictation as a potential solution for your users and the first being browser control. For the web speech API in particular it's only supported in Chrome right now which I think because we were building this as an internal tool that allowed us to experiment with it more easily than if you were potentially building a customer facing tool. I think the fact that we had structured data was also really helpful particularly in the contextual formatting. I'm not really sure how we would solve that problem if the API was returning unexpected data and we were just allowing any words to come through. So the fact that we were only expecting numbers we were only allowed to input numbers really helped us out there in order to quickly solve the problem. And then I think it's important since this is a pretty experimental technology that you have a flexible user base and a fallback plan. So building that trust with your users making sure they're willing to experiment with you and making sure they have the understanding that it might not be perfect especially for the first few iterations and communicating that there's always a fallback plan and making sure everyone's trained on the fallback plan is really key. So when I was thinking about my key takeaways making up to make up this slide I sort of came to the realization that this talk has served as a bit of a postmortem on this project for me. There's a lot to learn here but when I think about it there's a couple of things that I'd like you to take away from this story and those are around UX and engineering collaboration. So the first one is that the UX and engineering collaboration that we had allowed us to empathetically build expert use software. And by that I mean usually I'm working on software that's used by people who are sitting at a desk typing in on a keyboard. So this was the first time I had thought about things like body language and the user's comfort level while they were using the app. And that's something that I hope to bring to a lot more of my applications and products down the line. And then the collaboration also allowed us to quickly prototype early on. We were able to iterate and quickly solve problems. And so the couple prototypes that I showed at the beginning that we tested with our users, those were built 100% in code as a true collaboration between UX and engineering. And the reason that was beneficial is because we could get out a realistic prototype to our user, test it quickly and make iterations directly in the code. And some of that code ended up in our production version. So I think it allowed us to move through the process faster. It also allowed us to look at the problem from both the engineering and the user experience lens. So I want to thank a few people for their collaboration on this project. First and foremost, Sarah Poon, my co-worker on the UX design team who was with me every step of the way during this project. And everyone else on this list was also instrumental in getting it off the ground. And with that, thank you guys. Why did we choose speech versus something else? Well, were there any other options? I mean, the only options we were really considering was the speech versus the traditional keyboard entry. We haven't really looked into any technology like a smart measuring tape or something like that. But it sounds like a cool idea. Yeah. Are there limits to how long we can be recording for? So our impression was no, but the sort of intermittent recording that we're getting like might imply otherwise, if that makes sense. Whenever it's really hard to duplicate the problem, if you're just sort of testing at your laptop or even in the warehouse, and so we've noticed, we have noticed that it becomes more of a problem with like continuous use like hours at a time. So you're right, there could be something there.  So it's yeah, that's it's a good point. It's something to look into. Definitely. So the question was, was there any reasons using the web speech API versus some other speech? Have we played around with any other API? So like I said, this is still the very like early stages of the project. And we went with the web speech API pretty much because it was available quickly and easily for our initial prototyping and we didn't run into the issues early on. So we were like, well, let's not fix what's not broken. But now we're at the point where we probably have to evaluate some other options. But that's a good question. Oh yes. Good question. So the question was around if the warehouse associates saw something that they didn't expect or maybe had an error and they wanted to go back, did we implement anything that helped them do that? And yes, I didn't mention that in the talk, but we did implement some sort of like keyword triggers that would move the cursor around on the page. The one that was in the demo was the save, which submits the form. And then we did implement a back and a forward as well so that if they did hit a mistake, they didn't have to touch the keyboard to go back and change it. Did I say we have a warehouse in France? The question was if we implemented localization with different languages. We only have warehouses in the US right now. So that wasn't an issue, but you might have seen on the initialization side you can't set a language option. We haven't tried it yet, but I'm assuming it would work. Oh, yes. Am I able to share the model of headset it was that we were using? It's called Jabra. I think it's a pretty common company for like call centers. Anyway, that's that's how we found it. How many garments per day does the company measure? So I'm not quite sure and we're not fully ramped up since this is such an early project where we started with men's clothing because it was it was a little simpler to like wrap wrap our minds around like how we would measure it because men's clothing is primarily based on like a box or a square. Not to make any implications, but it's a little bit it's a little bit tougher to measure women's clothing because of the extreme silhouette variation and different styles of necklines and sleeves, etc, etc. So we rolled this out with men's, which is why most of the examples were for men's and then a small subset of women's blouses. So right now we have a handful of associates measuring for a few hours a day, but I'm not sure quite how many garments. Anyone else? All right. Thank you guys.


Hello everyone. Thanks for joining this session. There are more people than I expected, almost a full house, so thanks a lot. My name is Cilla Jigri and I'm VP of strategy at BTP. We are an enterprise blockchain company. And what we are going to do in this session is to demonstrate how easy it is to deploy an enterprise blockchain stack on top of Kubernetes and using our management and operations platform. But before that, I wanted to set the context a little bit.  And I want to have a common understanding of where these different things fit.  So this landscape shows the broader distributed ledger technology space. We use DLT as the umbrella term. Blockchain would be a type of ledger technology. And I don't think you'll be surprised to see that the landscape starts with the computing infrastructure layer that obviously underpins a lot of things and DLT is no exception in that. Here you will see the typical cloud providers, AWS and so on. You can see things like Susie Rancher as well. There is a little delay. And also container orchestration tools like Kubernetes. We actually extensively use this tool in our platform. So essentially, a DLT-based application, well, a DLT-based network and an application on top can be deployed in the cloud. It can be deployed on premises and in a mix of these two environments. Then the next layer is made up of the core distributed ledgers. We differentiate between permission less permission than hybrid protocols. Right now companies are using a number of these. We are sort of living in a multi-chain or multi-ledger world. They choose one based on their requirements, based experience or skills that they have or vendor relationships and so on. So a few maybe, obviously, you may know the Hyperledger Foundation is part of the Linux Foundation. They have a few projects in this layer. Hyperledger Bezu would be one, which is actually one of the protocols that we support. Another example would be Hyperledger Bezu. If we move up also, I always like to say that blockchain technology doesn't stand on its own and it's used in combination with obviously other technologies as well, whether those are established ones or emerging ones. It could be something very simple as we all know distributed file systems. We have been using them for years, but you can put a distributed ledger underneath and then make it more decentralized. Also, for example, blockchain can be used in conjunction with artificial intelligence, with IoT. There's actually a very cool project. For example, Helium, they provide a decentralized wireless infrastructure for this short range type of IoT. It's a very cool project. So they take advantage of different technologies in combination. Then if we move up the stack, interoperability, obviously that's important everywhere because, again, we are in a multi-ledger or multi-chain world, so you have to make these things work together and also legacy systems used by different enterprises. You want to make sure that, for example, you can interact and transact across different systems as smooth as possible, seamlessly as possible. This is a very fragmented space still, but there are a number of projects that are focusing actually on this as well as different standards organizations. Then if we move up, obviously smart contracts and asset tokenization, it's a very important layer in this space. Smart contracts are known as transaction protocols that run on a distributed ledger, but they can also run on a database, but I would always prefer that they run on a distributed ledger. Smart contracts essentially just automate and formalize relationships between organizations, individuals, and even machines when it comes to IoT type of use cases. Asset tokenization has been, now we talk a lot about cryptocurrencies and so on, but other type of assets can also be tokenized and we can move them or trade them on a distributed ledger and using smart contracts and so on. Then the next layer comprises all the tooling for developers that can, both developers and users, just to make their lives easier and also the integrations with existing business applications that have been around for years, but now you can enhance that with the distributed ledger, enhance them with just integrating smart contracts and so on. Then on top of all this stack, you can find a wide range of industry specific applications, decentralized marketplaces, across many, many industries. For the sake of this presentation today, the important thing is that obviously as you can see, this is not, this is pretty complex. There are a lot of moving parts that need to work together. Many organizations don't have the expertise, so there are companies that actually can make this easy for organizations and we are in the platform space, which you can see on the left-hand side. We are BTP. We have this management operations platform that is called Sextant. We are essentially, what we do is basically just provide all the technology infrastructure and the tools that you need to be able to build multiparty applications. Then obviously there are other companies in our space as well as in the professional services space that they would even help you with business requirements and help you, you know, wherever you have a use case, just build everything from scratch and even, you know, deploy it for you and so on. So this is the big picture and now I'm going back to, because now is where Sextant comes into the picture. Again, you know, the basic value proposition of this platform is just to make it easy for you to build multiparty applications so you don't have to worry about that, you know, painful underlying technology infrastructure. We can, you know, Sextant can do that for you. So Sextant, very briefly, it's a Kubernetes-native management and operations platform. It can, yeah, it deploys and manages, you know, a range of blockchain protocols. Mostly we are mostly focusing on permission and hybrid type, not so much on the permissionless ones. Sextant also can overlay support for smart contract runtime environments. We now support two smart languages, one is Digital Assets Demo Language and the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Assembly Language. And we can also, you know, use Sextant to deploy Decentral, as I mentioned, earlier Decentral X file systems, document management systems, and go on for, you know, any type of business critical data. And then we have, there's some, actually, something new. We recently launched a provenance solution. There's also a powered by Sextant, which essentially provides you with the capability to track, you know, any type of physical digital asset immutably. So the good thing about Sextant, I guess, that we package it, we provide, you know, long-term support.  We built it, we tested it, and it's maintained by us, so you don't have to worry about all that. And then, again, so the areas that Sextant covers would be, you know, the distributed ledgers, so you can use it to deploy very quickly a blockchain-based network. You can also, you know, use it to deploy a decentralized secure file system. You can also, you know, again, deploy it and accelerate the adoption of smart contracts, because you can, you know, forget about the runtime environment and everything. You just have to focus on your business logic or the application. And then, again, provenance, Sextant supports our chronicle product that it's blockchain-based, and it's a domain agnostic provenance solution. So this is, you know, if you remember the DLT landscape that I showed you, that's a general one for the market, and this is our view of it, and these are the areas that we cover. So this is just, I guess, we like to see graphics, so it sort of illustrates where we are, right? So we use, we take extensive use of Kubernetes, the distributed ledgers that we currently or support, or will support very soon, you know, include Hypergebezu and so too, which we already support, and Fabric and Corda is coming soon. We also support some databases, because sometimes enterprises want to deploy smart contracts on a database first and then maybe move to a distributed ledger a bit later. And then, in terms of your information security, there's this cybersecurity firm from the U.S. that we work with called Techian. So they are using Hyperge's sawtooth and are sextant to provide a decentralized and secure file system. In terms of smart contracts, as I mentioned, we provide support for Demo and WebAssembly, and our provenance product is called Chronicle, which is also blockchain backed. And then you have sextant, which, you know, takes sort of takes care of everything on this stack. And in terms of customer stories, just where sextant is being used in production, just obviously we are in finance events. So there are a few clients in the, from the financial sectors of the insurance that we work with. One example is an insure tech company called the Demox Group. They are using sextant to, they have built an innovative risk management platform to help organizations build climate resilience into their business models. They are using, in terms of technology, underlying technology, they are using both Hyperge's sawtooth, the Demo smart contracts on top, and then underneath that an Azure Kubernetes service. Liquid Share is another company. It's a French startup, financial startup, is owned actually by a number of big European banks, and they have launched a cutting-edge, post-trade platform, and they were using sextant. In terms of the technology specifically, they are also using the Demo smart contract, but they are using it on top of Hyperledger Bezu. And then in terms of the infrastructure, they are using Google Kubernetes Engine. And then another example would be the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. They built a lending platform using sextant. They are not using smart contracts, but they have deployed Hyperledger to sawtooth as their distributed ledger on top of the Rancher Kubernetes Engine. So these are some of the examples where sextant is already sort of working and being used. And now, Demo time. So I'll ask Duncan Johnson, who is the CEO of BTP, and he's going to do Demo. So I'm going to run a couple of demos, and there is a one I'm saying, never work with children, animals, or CEOs. So I apologize in advance. So the first is really looking at setting up and installing sextant itself. So we mentioned earlier, children mentioned that sextant is a Kubernetes native management and operations platform. And so what we did not that long ago, in fact, was we integrated into the Susie Rancher marketplace. Now, if you don't know what Susie Rancher is, it was originally Rancher Labs. Chris Anacheck from CNCF is here. We have some folks from like FX from Susie, if you have questions about that, but essentially, it's an open source container management platform that lets you roll out any number of Kubernetes clusters and manage them. And that's really, really important because the theme throughout this, whether it's what we're doing at the sort of blockchain DLT level, or whether it's what companies like Rancher are doing at the sort of Kubernetes level, it's all about ensuring that there is very solid management. Because what you can't afford to do with these technologies is deploy them, and then you lose track of things and you can't maintain a production grade service level agreement. And I'm actually originally from financial services and so I do understand SLAs, I do understand what it means to roll out a production system and you can't half transact, you can't half trade. So with that in mind, a couple of things, and I think these slides will be available later, there is actually a guest blog that Chilla wrote that actually describes in detail how to do what I'm going to do, he said optimistically. And then there's also cookbooks. So cookbooks are the things that our DevOps engineers like to write, which are very sort of nitty gritty, but give you the same information in a way that you can just follow. So right now, I have, and here is one I made earlier, we run a routine within our sort of organization, we run a rancher environment, which is, as you can see here, rancher.dev.catenasis.com, so catenasis or catenasis is a domain we use for a lot of our internal work, blockchain TP obviously for the external. And what's interesting with Susie Rancher from 2.6 onwards is they created this notion of a marketplace. And so what does that actually mean? It means that you have available a set of curated helm charts that the Susie Rancher team maintain themselves. So those are core, core, in fact, we can look at what they are if we if we change the selection here and just take the partners out for a second. Now you can see a range of curated helm charts that are supported by the Susie Rancher team. So things like Longhorn, if you're familiar with that, NeuVector and so on and so forth. But what's interesting for us as a partner is that they've actually also introduced this notion of creating a set of helm charts provided by partners. And you go through this whole sort of onboarding process. So this is not you don't just rock up and do this. And in fact, you can see here, you can add your own, your own repo whilst you're experimenting. So B2B stable, B2B test. B2B unstable is what that actually means rest assured is this is this is this is I love engineers. It's like they say they it does what it says on the tin. That's the experimental version of many of our sort of helm charts. But anyway, sticking with this and just coming over here, I'm just going to look for sextant. And this is standard for any of these, any of these packages. What you're essentially doing is you're providing the helm chart, you're also providing some some you decorate it essentially so that then rancher knows to pull in information and create a sort of a very, very easy to use installation process. So so if you click install, and just to prove that there is there's currently nothing there, I'll just go back here for a second. There are no installed apps. So this is this is high wire without a safety net. So what I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to specify a namespace. It's always a good idea when you're working with Kubernetes not to just push everything into the same namespace, you'll then destroy in the value of one of the values of the Kubernetes product, which is to allow you to segment things. So so I'm going to use sextant namespace. And then I'm going to go next. Now this is the only bit where you actually have to interact with us. And so you have to go and get credentials. The reason for that is that we will probably be changing this over the course of the summer. But right now, we want to engage with people, which in the open source community, it's this sort of do I don't I do you just push stuff out there and let people use it? Or do you want to have some kind of engagement with them? So right now, we politely say would you mind just pinging us and we'll give you the user credentials. So what does that mean? It means that this allows us or rather it allows the helm chart that's running behind the scenes to actually pull through our sextant Docker images from a repo that is obviously behind user credentials. So I'm just going to load these here. And I stored them because it's much easier to store them using last pass or something like that. And this was actually originally part of a tutorial that we did for the Susie Con a few weeks ago. So this is these are the credentials that I was given. There are a few other things I could set here, but I'm just going to accept the default. So for example, here I'm saying just just create an user, an internal database to store any of the sextant state. You could of course actually connect this to an existing Postgres database. So wait, hit install say a prayer to the demo gods. So what's it actually doing? It's literally what's going on behind the scenes is, and I should have said, by the way, I'm operating within one of these clusters. So I skipped a bit where, you know, because Rancher allows you to set up access to multiple clusters, I'm just using the default one, which is normally called local. So what it's now doing is then it's done it. Okay, so it's now installed sextant. We can see that because if I if I come across to here, I can't actually access sextant at the moment. So there's nothing running there. But if you look at the instructions in the Rancher install, what it's saying to me is I, and this is a sort of easy way of doing it is I can just basically if I can manage to operate a computer, I can grab that. And what this is doing is it's just for convenience for the purpose of this demo, it's just saying, fine, I'm just going to run this and and connect through to the Kubernetes, sorry, to sextant running the Kubernetes cluster using something called port forwarding. Okay, so what that now means is if I go back to here and click on here and hit refresh, right. So I'm now, so a moment ago, or a few moments ago, we didn't have an running example of sextant, which is a say a Kubernetes native management operations platform. We now do have one. And you'll notice that when you install it, it also gives you a way of extracting the full admin credentials, so admin being the username and a generated password. So I'm just going to again pull these through from here. So far, so good. So the first thing to know is that because we've done this as part of the installation within the Rancher world, we've automatically pulled through the definition of local, which was the cluster that that we've installed sex and all. Now that's quite convenient. You can, of course, add other clusters. So if I step back a minute and say, Well, what is sextant really doing here? It's really only concerned with three things users. But we have a default user. So we use that clusters. So the again, in the same way that the rancher, excuse me, rancher manages clusters, we also need to talk to clusters. Now we're not managing them. Somebody else is creating them, deploying them and so on. But what we need to do is get the service, create a service account and get the credentials so that we can actually interact with with that cluster. Interacting with it means we can ask it to do things. We can ask it to install using Helm charts. So behind the scenes, Helm charts, Helm charts, Helm charts. So with Helm, with Helm version three dot x onwards, we return to using Helm because it's now super clean and easy to use. So everything, whether it's the rancher guys importing things into the marketplace, whether it's us creating these deployments around DLT, smart contracts and so on. What we're all doing behind the scenes is curating Helm charts and making sure they're robust, versioned etc. So clusters are the target environments. And then deployments are really, this is where we get into that stack that Chilla showed you where we're actually going to pick and choose, right, do I want sorties, do I want Damwon, Bezu, etc. So if I stick with the clusters, I also have a sort of simplified, super simplified read only view just so you can see here, this is obviously this is an actual EKS cluster that's running in US one for those care about these things. There are no deployments running there. So so what am I going to do? I'm going to add a deployment. So this is really where it starts to get interesting. So the choices here in the community edition are somewhat restricted at the moment. We're just focusing on Bezu, sorties and Damwon Bezu, Damwon sorties. That's because with companies like Tachyon who we're working with in the infosex space, we're not allowed to distribute and make their stuff freely available because obviously it's a partnership. Chronicle is not here yet, but will be added shortly. So because that's ours, we have full control over that. But again, going back to that picture that Chiller showed you, the key thing here is to give you a kind of a set of options. So I will I will start with my favorite, which is Sawtooth. And again, in much the same way that the installation process that was presented by Rancher a few minutes ago, we are also simplifying things. So we're saying, look, we'll we'll provide the sensible defaults for you. Now, we've kind of gabbled our way through this and sort of never really said what a distributor ledger is when it boils down to it. What it is, in this case, is going to be four nodes which are wired up that have a protocol that allows them to talk to one another and establish consensus. Why is consensus important? Because you only ever update the state of the world when there is agreement amongst those nodes. And four is the magic minimum. So you can't do anything with less than four nodes because you want to be able to assure that, you know, we can continue to operate even if we lose a node. If I go from four to seven nodes, I can afford to lose two nodes before I have to sort of halt the network until things have repaired and so on and so forth. So basically what you're doing with, and this is true of a lot of the consensus mechanisms, is you want to make sure that that there's no there's never more than a third of the nodes either under attack or out of action. If there are, then you cannot proceed because you cannot you cannot create consensus consensus. It's in our world, in the world of permission, it's a mathematical consensus algorithm called normally practical Byzantine for tolerance or Istanbul Byzantine for tolerance, which is, which is the basic version. But these are not proof of work. So we're not consuming vast amounts of electricity, however cheap or not. So I'm going to give this a name. I'm good on names, sorted deployment and sorted namespace. I was running this during one of the keynotes. It worked twice, right? Engineers induction, okay? Once, complete fluke second. All right, we're motoring now three. It's is the universal truth. So will this will this actually work three times? So what we're saying here is we're going to accept those defaults. And as I said, we're now going to, and if you recall, we've got a four node cluster conveniently. So we now hit deploy. And now literally what we're doing is section is talking to that cluster, in this case, the local cluster in, in Rancher terminology. And it's now saying, right, I want to roll out a four node network. And I have a quick look at that network. And it's just coming up. There we go. So what, what have I actually done here? So again, harking back to what children were saying earlier, you know, we want to ensure that you, if you're developing an application, if you're working with sort to directly, then you're creating things called transaction processes. If you're working at the smart contract level, then obviously you're developing smart contracts. But whatever level you're operating at, we want to provide a very solid runtime environment for you. And we do that. So you don't have to worry about it. So you can then get on with doing the cool stuff, which is creating these new multi party applications. So what we're looking at here is a summary view of there are four nodes, there are a bunch of services associated with them.  And I can look at where am I? I'm on, I'm on the local cluster. There is a namespace called sawtooth. So if I switch to that, this is sort of showing how the, you know, so that's essentially, and look, 79 seconds earlier.  So now if I come back to sex and one more time, you know, we're not stopping there. You can also, you can go back to your cluster, look at it again. Now we can see that we've got sawtooth deployed. We can now add down one Bezu. Now to add down one Bezu, there's one thing you need to know, which is you need to actually add image pool secrets. So I'm not going to actually do that here. I don't want you to see my image pool secrets. But essentially what's going on here is there are certain components that we want to pull through that are again in a, in a repository, a Docker repository that we manage. But hopefully you get the idea of what we're trying to do. And that basically ends the demo. Hopefully we've got time for a few questions. We're everywhere. If everywhere is Edinburgh, Barcelona, London, New York and San Francisco. By the way, Edinburgh is now the number one city in the world according to time out. City in the world. Best place to live. What else? So, but so you're all welcome. But we have time for a few questions if people have any. Yes, please. Okay. Can I answer that? Yeah. So the big difference, and this was something that Chilla talked about in terms of the types of blockchain or DLT, majority of the public ones have some form of native token and there's some way of rewarding participation. When you're working with the permissioned or hybrid world that we live within, you actually take a different point of view which is you govern who can contribute nodes and so there's a whole layering of that. So you're not rewarding people simply by rocking up and adding a sort of node. What's actually happening is that sort of network is being used, for example, at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to build out a securities lending platform. And in the same way that there's, you know, you're all in, I hope you're all familiar with things like message oriented middleware, right? There is this thing called the internet. But when you're actually working within a bank or financial institution, you'll roll out a message bus. But your message bus might extend quite far into other companies. But it may even be the Swift network or something like that. But in general, you're not doing a one, there's no notion of a single blockchain. What there is is a number of different blockchain networks and that's why interoperability and bridging between them becomes important. So in the enterprise space, which is where we live, it's all about whether it's somebody operating the network as literally the network operator, whether it's somebody doing that and then adding participants who can contribute nodes, or whether it's a consortium where everyone is contributing nodes. What we provide and what other companies provide is really the glue, the way of actually attaching nodes to an existing network. So where I was in Sawtooth saying, yes, I'm going to create a genesis block. If you're adding, contributing, let's say, three new nodes to that network, you wouldn't actually attempt to add a genesis block. Instead, what you would do is be given the credentials that allow you to then wire yourself into what is essentially a virtual private network. So a lot of what we do around this is when I say we, this is us as a company advising is create a very secure environment in which to operate, which can be multi-party. So this is not within a single organization. But so the short answer is there is no reward because what you're typically doing is developing an application or service, and that is what's really of value. So hopefully that answers the question. I mean, reward is just feeling good about having deployed something without having to do any effort. Right. So next question. If there are no other questions, we should let our next speaker come in and actually set up because we're quite tight for time here. But thank you for joining us. We'll be around and look forward to continuing the conversation.


We did some calculations about what you could lose if you were forced to leave the Navy because of testing positive on a drug test. Let's say you had planned on retiring after a career of 20 years of service at the age of 39. Actuarial tables put life expectancy at 79, so we used that age for the basis of our calculations. We also assumed for the purposes of these calculations that you'd retire as an E7 at age 39. Your exchange and commissary privileges could have saved you an estimated 10% on shopping expenses, or $52,000. Medical insurance savings would average $61,600. The pension from your military retirement would amount to over $1.3 million. That's a loss of a grand total of over $1.4 million during your lifetime. Zero tolerance means zero.


Welcome! This is Melissa Arnold with the Stock Swoosh and Reviewing BA. Man, was this the trade and the gap of the week and the month and the year? I mean, it's just unbelievable where this has gone this week. We did so many trades, and I don't even know how many trades we've done in this. And they've all worked. I mean, it's absolutely, absolutely, absolutely insane the move that this made. This is down today because Dow herrings, and so this is down with that, but this would have been down anyways. So, we've done day trades in this. We did putts in this, and it's falling today. Again, the market's going to be a little tricky today. So, this could, you know, be back and forth here with the market. Early in the morning here, if the market fails, this could fail too. But the one interesting thing, again, that I just want to talk about in reference to BA is, it's just a great example of institutional money and selling when it comes into a stock. So, institutions dumped BA. They just dumped it, dumped it, dumped it, and that's why it worked. That's why it works so big. You've got to follow institutional money in order to make money. And anything that you do, any stock that you trade, if you're on the side of institutional money, you will profit in the market as an active trader, even if you're running out of something in a couple of minutes. Let alone a couple of days, like we did this BA for the putt, but, you know, great example here of institutional money and definitely a chart that people should study. Again, so far, this has been the best gap we've had this year. The best chart, I should say. There's been multiple gaps. We'll see where this goes into next week. Long weekend, three-day weekend. Be careful, everybody. Take profits today. And if you're interested in starting up for the Golden Gap course and learning how to read institutional money in a stock chart in the market, email me at Melissa at thestockswitch.com. The first class of 2024 is January 27th and 28th. Have a great weekend, everyone.


As a visually impaired person and a mother of two visually impaired children, I can say that one can actually see from the time when I was at school struggling to get a book, getting it late while other children have received their books early. To my nine-year-old daughter who's in grade three who's just started school, getting her books on time on the same day with other children. So South Africa has made a lot of progress for us Given the current text we are a bit ahead of the text because blind South Africans do read We do have the library for the blind, but we also have the daisy That ensures that blind people that can read books Don't really have to buy very expensive books But they are able to buy them in the format that they have Access to works for visually impaired people in South Africa a lot has been done already and a lot has been achieved So we're hoping that this treaty will actually come to a point where the rules of engagement between publishers and authors can change and So that authors can also become more sensitive because it's not only about governments about the authors Who needs to also change the manner in which they make their works available so that when publishers Engage authors that they engage them on different on different set of rules so that the author should give consent up front But also that the the the publishers need to begin to say unity and show that we publish your books in the right format Right from the beginning so that no one has to ask Back and forth and not have it so we we hoping that this treaty will get us there The message will be that they should not negotiate about blind people as helpless Victims, but they should negotiate for blind people as equals and Or as people that have rights and that their rights must be affirmed not as victims of charity in need of Humanitarian because they can also write but they also can read all that they need is for the book feminine to end


Not allowed to use basic economics to crash the evil empire of the economy by spending all my swag there at once. Cannot take the moniker, the hyper-polisyllabic equipped delinist. The banana of disarming is not a real magic item. Cannot sharpen Ian's stones for increased headbutt damage. No use of my hideously low charisma to get the villain to the opposite of what I suggest. No need to stop using my reality-altering ability to make everyday Mardi Gras. I'm based my barbarian after a wink martindale.  My Paladin mini is vetoed of his obviously private drake from aliens. Any planet vetoed of it was obviously inspired by Boromir. My info-gathering mission must include info that wasn't obviously obtained in a brothel. If almost all the words in my character's background start with the same letter, he's vetoed. Then told to leave a trail for the rest of the party to follow, they didn't mean with cigarette butts. Even if the rule would allow it, it can't seek a battleship with a stapler. I do not get a bulk discount on ninjas. Even if the rule would allow it, I can't invent the script joint. I cannot play a race the GM can't pronounce. I cannot start the game a post-apocalyptic Poland driving a Porsche. Warnings given retroactively in battle aren't appreciated. A fluffy tale does not add to my comeliness if I'm already one-foot-tall, furry, and a squirrel. I don't have to include the line, it didn't stab them a lot in the plan, it's already assumed. Even if my superpower is invisibility, I still have to provide a model for my character. Can't intentionally fail all my secret door checks so I don't have to play Tomb of Horrors again. If my character is related to a god, it can't be as apparent. The time machine is not for finishing my set of disciple autographs. No, there is not a Mr. of Arc. No, I still can't hit on her. My black ops experience does not include panty-raids and beer runs. Cannot singlehandedly make Starfleet Academy the number one party school in the Alpha Quadrant. Not legal to retroactively challenge anyone I just shot to a duel. Cannot take the flaw of obsession, elf chicks lingerie. No part of the plan includes, you give me the idol, I'll give you the whip. No matter how many call shots to the neck I make, I'm still not going to cause a cool pyrotechnics display. Not allowed to trade in my X-Wing for a gunstar. Cannot make a plan that hinges on the villain first being allergic to peanuts. My character's background cannot be a Wikipedia biography with Falco crossed off in my character's name written in. Adding hydraulics to my R2 unit does not give him an Intimidate bonus. No taking the party to Carrot Tour just because my character has a thing for Asian chicks.  Though highly educational, no more slipping the anti-paladin sodium pentothal. Cannot make the black ops super easy by sending a couple of strippers to the guard room first. I'm not allowed to give my character a name from a Bushman click language. Not possible to tap a keg from mana. Many chaotic, angry and neutral hungry aren't real alignments either. Even if the rule will allow it, can't take out an MBT with a shotgun loaded with slug. My second wish can't be for a new, more open-minded genie to grant my remaining wishes. Can't wish I was a GM. No making up holidays for my cleric. Can't just walk the obstacle course, even though I beat everyone who tried to run it. Holding a pillow over a sleeping person's face is not a no-wish expression of affection. There is not a spent clip fairy. A bag of holding is a bad place to stash bear traps, badgers, or crushed glass. If the party has to pose as classical German composers, I will not declare, I'll be balk. Can't take the spedum as my favorite weapon just because it sounds dirty. No encouraging Swedish accents. Even if the rules give no maximum incumbrance, still can't pick up the bank and walk away with it. There is a reason no game has pasties in a starting equipment list. The power armor skill does not have a cascade skill dance. I will not build a character with a skill from every single expansion book. Not allowed to take a toad for a familiar just before his pharmaceutical properties. Restricted to one blue chip for humor per game. Can't use the time machine to remain famous historical discoveries after myself. Not allowed to forge the 1.1 ring. Can't put points in before him just so he can hammer dance after each fatal critical hit. No slipping the juicer riddling. In the middle of a chase in a commandeered car can't spend an action to change the radio presets. I can't parry with a called shot to the face. No more crazy ivans while I'm driving the AT-AT. When challenged to a high noon shootout, that means in the time zone I'm currently in. Burning my barge song on CD and putting on repeat does not mean the effect never ends. Before turning on dead, make sure the assassin didn't take the vampire template. My mythos investigator doesn't talk into sleep. Mashed potatoes do not add to my damage resistance. Not allowed to base a paladin off Lee Marvin. My great axe privileges can be taken away. If I'm leveled up 5 times to the dragonkin 0, that doesn't mean I'm lapping him. My investigator's motto is not, 99% mythos lore, 1% sanity. Do not push me. Even if it was obviously in self defense, my character is not allowed to kill George Takei. Taekwondoberman is not a real martial arts skill. It is not possible to bioengineer a kosher pig. Even if we are in Ravenloft, paladin can't go up 10 levels in one night. When told I have to join the RPGA to play in a game, can't sign the membership card Dduck. My tribe's trial by combat ritual is not best described as Calvin ball with axes. My paladin's job is not to enforce happiness. The following are not acceptable iron claw characters. Mortal Wombat, Dolly Lama, Boomerangatang. Monks do not make three stooges sounds in combat. Even if the rules allow it, can't shoot 20 guys in one round with a musket. No, I can't keep the drought priestess if we just found her as a pet. Part of career modeling is not an appropriate use of the suggestion spell. You take the scary one is not our default battle strategy. Even if it's for his own safety, can't secretly remove the firing pins from the power gamer's guns. If I have access to warm water, I don't take watch unsupervised. Not allowed to give any birthday gift to a child that merely earns me a dark side point. Despite the movie's claims, wookies get no racial bonus for chess. Even building a superhero can't spend half his points on radar scents and the other half on cooking. Pregen characters do not have cutie nicknames, even if their real names are free lame. Improved division and not solid proof ducking cover works.  If in the middle of our dressing down our CEO strokes out, we took the joke too far. Not allowed to use guppies as buckshot. That hunt drought with a spotlight and a thirty-odd six.


So this is the first filter system here? Correct. So the way the softener works, as the water comes in from your pressure system, the water comes down and the first thing it hits is a 20 micron pre-filter. We're gonna capture any sediment, silt, sand, or anything in the water. 20 microns are larger, protecting the inner working components of the valve and protecting the media and everything inside. One tank is always in service while the other is in standby. So when one tank is exhausted and you are out of your softened water, this system will regenerate immediately. My skin, I'm telling you, the hard water that I've had in my house, my skin is so rough. I'm looking forward to this.  I don't have to worry about the hardness in the water, like in my humidifier, not to mention the hot water heater that I've already replaced because of scale, hardness, ridiculousness.


Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys. Hey guys, this is my review for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This is the latest film directed by Quentin Tarantino, his ninth film that the posters and the trailers wouldn't shut up about. The first thing I will say is this is the least Tarantino film that Tarantino has ever made. One being that it's the cleanest movie I think he's ever made. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in terms of the last few films he's made, this movie is super clean in comparison. It is super non-risky in terms of what it's showing, what it's talking about, as well as the language. The F word is used so little in this movie that I almost have to keep reminding myself it was a Quentin Tarantino movie. I feel that this is his homage to the idea and the lifestyle of the late 60s, early 70s, because that's all the movie's about. When you come down to bare bones basics of what this movie's about, it's about nothing. I remember seeing a lot of comments about the trailers that were being released for the film saying, yeah, this is a good trailer. It doesn't tell anything about the story and it keeps you interested, which it did. But there's a reason why, because there is no story. Yes, there are events that happen through the film, but if you were to ask me what the plot is, this is it. Leo's an actor, Brad's a stuntman. Leo's kinda down on his luck, Brad's not really getting much work. Leo does a few western movies while Brad drives around in his car. Brad hangs out with some hippie chicks and finds Charlie Manson's compound, walks in, beats up a dude, and then walks out, whereas Leo is struggling with acting, and in the end he decides to go to Italy, which they skim over in about a few minutes. They come back and then they just so happen to be there on the night that the Sharon Tate murders happen. That is the movie.  I will say of course that the acting in this movie is very good. Leonardo DiCaprio is really good. Brad Pitt's really good. Everyone that just makes a surprise cameo in this movie. There's a lot of them. And I'm not just talking about the ones that aren't credited. I'm talking about the ones who aren't. Dakota Fanning's in this for maybe four minutes. Bruce Dern is in this movie for two minutes and he's credited. This movie has a ton of moments where the main characters will crumb across a character who is a pretty well-known actor and then they never come back again. It moves on from a different pointless interaction to a different pointless interaction. Obviously the dialogue is funny. Obviously there's some witty humor and there's some witty lines. But when all you have is your characters talking with each other about nothing and then we're watching other guys watch movies that they've made. All you're doing is just establishing that yes, these movies happen. This lifestyle happened. This is what the time and base of the film is. I'll give the set deck and the setting amazing credit. This movie makes you feel like you're in the 60s. Everything down from the music, which is fantastic, to the advertisements, to the buildings, to the cars, to how open it was to drive in Los Angeles at the time. When it comes to detail, Tarantino does it really well in this movie. But it seems like he put all of his effort into that. At first it's interesting for maybe a half hour, but then when you realize you're watching the same thing for the next hour, there's a scene that feigns itself as something suspenseful and then it's over and then you're back to boredom again until the end, which honestly feels like such a slapped on ending. Hey, I did this in one of my movies before. I'll do it again because people like that. It feels so tacked on to the end that it feels like it had to be put in there because at the point there was no rising action. There was no downfall. There was no basic film story structure.  I checked my watch so often during this movie. I didn't really get into this movie and when the film was over, my roommate and I both sat there and said, what did we just watch? You want another example of pointlessness? Sharon Tate played by Margot Robbie is in this movie. For the majority of the movie, the only connection that they have is that he knows that she lives next to him. There's kind of this interesting scene where she goes to the movie theater and watches a movie of herself, which Tarantino respectfully has the actual Sharon Tate up on the screen instead of something imposed, which they did do with a few things for Rick Dalton, which were pretty impressive. I think this is the most visual effects that he's ever put into a movie. It doesn't serve anything. If you were going to make a movie about Sharon Tate as a biography, why don't you just make a whole movie about Sharon Tate? Why did you put her into this story about these two guys and they don't do anything and she doesn't do anything and you don't go anywhere with either of them? And something else that I will admit, I was expecting a lot more from Brad and Leo in terms of their interaction. Any time that they do have interactions on screen, it's great. It's really good, but when you think about it, the amount of screen time that they're together is pretty small considering this is the first time these two have ever been in a movie together. For in this movie, they are hanging out a lot, but they don't do much. There's not much to it. Finally, in the end, I feel that once upon a time in Hollywood is just Quentin making a really easy movie. I thought that Hateful Eight was him kind of just going with emotions considering he almost didn't want to make the movie because of the script leak, but this one feels lazy. Obviously not set deck and setting-wise, but just in terms of story. I know some of you are going to be like, well, what's the character development? You know, the interactions are all really good. Yeah, sure, but you need to have a point. There needs to be a point to this. And there needs to be a point of me wanting to see these characters go about their lives, aside from just who they are. I want to see what they're doing. They drop this huge bomb about Brad Pitt's characters pass and then they don't do anything with it. There is this tiny little snippet, but that's it. And considering how much they bring it up and how big of a bombshell it is, you would think that they would do more than absolutely almost nothing. And probably the one thing that does get me a little bit is considering the moniker once upon a time.  The fact that he's using the once upon a time moniker, which incurs with Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America, both by Sergio Leone, this movie is pitiful in comparison to those two, considering the moniker. So in the end, I did enjoy the interactions between Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. I did enjoy the visual style of the film in terms of its setting and its set deck. And I thought there were some funny parts, but overall, this is probably the most pointless Quentin Turntino movie he's ever made.  I would never care to watch this again. I feel like I wasted my time. Not saying that number is because it's a bad movie in terms of how it was made. It's just pointless. It is so pointless. But that is obviously my opinion. I know some of y'all are going to disagree with me and I accept that. And I'm interested to see what you guys have in terms of a counter to what I said. My favorite movies by Tarantino for the record are Django Unchained and True Romance. I know he didn't direct it, but he wrote it. Funny enough, because Django Unchained is his longest movie, but that movie actually moved the plot along better than most of his other films in my opinion. Anyways guys, I hope you enjoyed this review. I love you Tarantino fans. And I hope to see you guys on the next video. Thanks for watching the video. It's been a while, but I'm happy to say the click is finally getting back together in an all-new movie thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. But we are still asking for your support. You know Nits, you can't get more money unless you offer questionable favors. Yeah guy, unless of course those favors involve the ladies guy. By support I mean getting the word out guys. Oh well, couldn't you find it better means than this guy? Why didn't you ask for a natural or hold a coffee mug real awkward? Why didn't you ask a Kardashian or something? Yeah guy, get in with the ladies guy. Hey, he's trying to help out. Like you've been trying with Kimmy Burton? I've seen Jabba the Hutt finish a marathon faster.  To see any and all updates about the upcoming Undergrads movie, be sure to check out and like the Bring Back Undergrads Facebook page. And with any luck, we'll see you guys soon.


Hi friends welcome back to my channel and happy Wednesday. You heard me, right? It is only Wednesday as I mentioned I am going camping. Well, my husband and I rented a cabin in standpoint Idaho for the weekend and we'll be heading out Thursday Morning ish, so I won't be at my workshop on Friday. So being Wednesday There's a workshop in my area, so I went ahead and I'm gonna go in and weigh in and go to the workshop Now it's only been a couple days since I weighed in last because I typically do weigh in on Friday and it is only Wednesday So I don't know what's gonna happen when I step on the scale But my week so far has been really good. It's been really busy with the transition into real estate. It has been Busy lots of training lots of meetings Lots of trying to get the word out there that I'm now an agent trying to build my business So if you guys are interested in helping me grow my business It's really easy no matter what state you're in if you know someone looking to be a buyer or a seller of their home or buy a Home all you have to do is reach out to me I will do all of the research to find an agent in your area or their area If it isn't in the state of Washington that has good ratings That would be a good personality fit with your friend or family member or even yourself And I'll make sure that you find the perfect agent to help you with your buying or selling process That allows me to build relationships and it also gives me a referral fee from that agent Not from the buyer or seller or you but from the agent So it helps me grow my business financially But also gives me the opportunity to interact with your friends and family or even yourself because you never know down The road we may be doing business again. So that's a great way to help me get started So it's just been really busy with that I haven't been doing my walking. I have been pretty active though Just kind of running around running errands and things but I'm getting back to my daily morning walking next week next week Looks a little less crazy I'm right now. I'm having like multiple things during the day. So it's super busy I'm doing a lot of packing my food and bringing it with me this coming up Sunday I am doing two open houses for another agent.  The only day that I splurged so to speak was on Saturday But my husband and I shoveled bark for four hours on Saturday. So pretty sure I burned it off So I don't know what's gonna happen when I go in but I didn't want to miss the topic So that I could share that with you and I want to weigh in and just kind of see where I am mid week So I'm gonna head in and I'll be back to share with you not only what we talked about at this week's workshop But also how my weigh-in is just a few days after my last weigh-in.  I just got out of my workshop and I'm heading into the office for a meeting We have a sales meeting every Wednesday So I'm heading in for that but I wanted to share with you guys what we talked about at this week's workshop And my weigh-in results. So I was really excited about the topic It is somewhat controversial in the weight loss environment in general and that is snacking Some people say you should snack some people say you shouldn't snack. I am a snacker I have a morning snack and an afternoon snack Not only does it keep me satisfied and full but it keeps me on track And I'm not tempted to eat things that aren't on plan if I am prepared with snacks So again, it can be a little bit controversial There's a lot of people that say you should eat three meals a day and not be spiking your blood sugar throughout the day So I say you do what works for you, but the topic was about snacking So let's talk a little bit about snacks So first of all as far as Weight Watchers is concerned based on the weekly and based on the workshop snacking is absolutely Okay, because again, it keeps you on track. It keeps you satisfied It doesn't put you in a position where you are so hungry that you are willing to eat anything and everything You can get your hands on because you didn't have a snack on hand and that's Especially important when traveling It's kind of funny because before I went in I told you guys about my open houses on Sunday and how I have to bring all of my food So weight watchers, you've done it again.  Are you going to be bringing it with you? Are you going to plan ahead and make sure that you have snacks in your desk at work? Think about the kinds of snacks that you're going to need to help you stay on plan and be successful So for me now that I'm in real estate. I'm gone a lot during the day So for example today, I packed my lunch because I know that when I leave my meeting I have to go down and get my access to all of the listings and you know pay a few fees I'm getting my eyebrows then today I've got to run to Target to get some new pillows So I know that I'm going to be out most of the day today until definitely well after lunch So I packed snacks. I packed a bill bar in my little bill bar cooler that I'm going to eat this morning I also packed my lunch because I didn't know if I would be home when I got hungry for lunch And here's a little tip for you My lunch today luckily is all cold food as you saw my wrap and my pasta salad But let's say that your lunch is something that you need to warm up and you're on the road I use the gas station microwave all the time. I don't even buy anything a lot of the times Sometimes I'll get a drink like a water or maybe a diet soda But I will just go into the gas station and throw my food in their microwave. No one ever says anything I always pack plastic silverware But in the event that you don't have that the gas station always has plastic silverware as well So there are options for you even to eat your meals on the road rather than turning to an unhealthy option So I think if you know, you're gonna be out in my opinion It is better to plan ahead and bring your snacks rather than putting yourself in a position where you have to try to find Something when you're out and about within the time that you're really hungry That's within your smart points and that's healthy and that's on plan This also comes to when you're planning your grocery list to think ahead about what snacks You may or may not want in the upcoming week or weeks depending on how often you do your grocery shopping Make sure you're thinking about that and you're putting that on your grocery list So that you again have those things on hand I know for me if I don't plan ahead it can be disastrous if I don't have healthy foods on hand I'm gonna reach for anything that's going to satisfy my hunger and most of the time you guys. It's not broccoli like let's be real It's not broccoli. It's chips. It's sweets It's something I shouldn't be eating or maybe it's something I can eat But I'm gonna get a lot less of it and be a lot less satisfied Then if I would have planned ahead and brought the snacks that keep me full that keep me satisfied that are better on plan So the rule of thumb with snacks is prepare Make sure you have snacks available If you're leaving for the day and you want to bring those snacks with you Make sure that they're packed and ready to go and in the event that you don't have snacks with you when you get That hunger-paying go ahead and stop somewhere and pick something up But do your absolute best to keep it within your smart points and not sabotage that day Because of a snack don't let snacks ruin you So next let's talk about weigh-in. So as I mentioned, I just waited on Friday. It is Wednesday It's only been a couple of days with a splurge day in the mix So I wasn't expecting a whole lot of greatness. I'd like to have a couple more days darn it But I'd rather go to the cabin and enjoy the lake and oh, I don't know if I mentioned But I'm gonna take you guys with me I'm gonna be doing a whole nother camping vlog a whole nother what I eat while camping I'm going to have my splurge day beyond Friday So I'm gonna share some of the foods that I'm eating with you guys really excited to take you guys with me to the cabin It was so fun last time you loved my camping vlog that I put out last time You can find that on my channel if you want to watch it. So I'm gonna take you guys with me So that's exciting. So I'd rather be at the cabin. Let's be honest But I'm sad that I don't get to weigh in and see my friends at my Friday workshop So when I stepped on the scale, I am down point two It's not very much especially when I gained a point six last week But I don't know what would have happened over the next couple of days Regardless, I'm down point two. I'll take it. I know that I have you know The next few days to stay on track have my little splurge on Friday and get right back on track So with weighing in today, you know early this week Hopefully it really catches up with me and next Friday I just have a really good weight loss because it'll be a week and a half Since I weighed in last so cross your fingers for me. I need all the luck I can get apparently so everything's been really good other than you know, just being really busy My food is good. I have a plan for this week Again, I'm gonna be bringing my snacks with me on Sunday when I go to do those open houses You guys will see all of that in my what I eat in a day video because I always film on Sunday So I'm actually really excited to take you with me and do a little bit different type of video for my What I eat in a day. So I want to hear how your guys's week went. Was it what you expected? Did you gain? Did you lose? Are you going to plan for some snacks? Remember Failing to plan plan to fail something along those lines. I can't remember the exact quote So make sure you're planning your snacks and bringing them with you this next week Comment down below. Let me know what you guys thought of the topic how your week went Thumbs up this video if you're new make sure you subscribe hit the little bell So you're notified whenever I upload that way. You don't miss a single video. I love you guys so much I hope you have a fantastic week and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye