In this practical, we will learn about the excretory system of vertebrates. The highest category of the animal kingdom and vertebrates contain the vertebral column. Major excretory organ that is present in the vertebrates is the kidneys. They play important role in the formation of excretory waste. Other than kidneys, different excretory glands are present in the vertebrates. For example, lungs, gills, liver, intestine and skin. They all play together along with the kidneys to remove the excretory waste from the body. We will learn in this practical about the excretory system of reptiles and excretory system of human. If we talk about reptiles, there are very small kidneys present in both sides of the vertebral column. And different excretory wastes are removed from the body in different reptiles. If we talk about lizards, snakes and crocodiles, excretory wastes are euric acid. Whereas marine iguanas have excretory wastes. Reptiles produce mostly dilute urine. Because the structure of their body is not so well developed that it can produce concentrated urine. Other than kidneys, different glands are present in the vertebrates. Like salt glands are present in the vertebrates and different locations are present in the vertebrates. If we talk about marine iguanas, most of the salt glands are present in the head region. Salt glands are present in the head region. And the water or salt is removed in the liquid form. It is removed from the head region with a flow. Next, if we talk about crocodiles, salt glands are present in the head region. Salt glands are present in both sides. And excretory wastes are present in the removal. Next, if we talk about lizards, there are kidneys present in both sides. The vertebral column is in the centre and the kidneys are present on both sides. Most of the types of kidneys are metanaphric kidneys. The highest-dwelled form of kidneys in the vertebrates are metanaphric kidneys. If we look at the structure of the kidneys and the reproductive organs, we can see that the lizards or reptiles are mostly reproductive organs. And the excretory organs are connected to each other. So, when these organs are connected to each other, we can also call the urogenital duct or the urogenital system. These tubules are shown here. These tubules are called metanaphros. These tubules are derived from naphrons. If you have blood from these metanaphros, the extra water or salt is absorbed in these tubules. These tubules are absorbed in the rectum. Now, for excretive waste removal, there is a single opening for excretory organs. The reproductive system is also connected to these tubules. The gametes will also go out through these tubules. The digestive system waste will also go out through these tubules. The excretory system waste, for example, uren, will also be removed out of this single opening. These tubules are ovaries. The ovaries have an opening, which is called oviduct, which passes the gametes through the clioca. This is its female structure. This is its male structure. The same is present in the male, which is called metanaphric kidney. And in the kidney, metanaphrons are present. The uren formation is done. The extra material is absorbed through the blood. And it is removed from the outer body through the clioca. The male gametes are also removed from the ducts. The clioca is removed from the outer body. This was the excretory system of reptiles. And we saw the excretory system of lizards. Next, we have the human excretory system. And the human excretory system depends on the different organs. The first organ is the kidneys, which are present on both the sides. And the next structure is the ureters. The uren is present in the ureters of the kidneys. After that, it goes into a storage muscular organ, which is called a bladder. And the bladder ends in the urethra. And the uren is removed from the outer body. In the excretory system of humans, for example, you have vertebrates, for example, amphibians, reptiles. And there is a difference in the bird sound. In this, there is a separate opening. For reproductive gametes, for excretive waste, there is a separate opening. And for digestive waste, there is a separate opening. If we look at the kidney structure, the outer part is called cortex. The inner part is called medulla. And these two parts are called pelvis. And there are many collecting ducts in the pelvis. And they lead to ureter. And ureter leads to bladder. If we look at the nephron structure, which is a single unit in the kidney, means that the kidney is formed from many nephrons. So, in the nephron structure, we first see a cup shape, which is called bowman capsule. And in the bowman capsule, there are many bundles of arteries, which are called glomerulus. The blood that is formed from the glomerulus, the small pores are formed from it. The air enters the bowman capsule. And in this, there are no red blood cells and no proteins. Because their size is large. So, they cannot pass on such small pores. So, the bowman capsule leads to proximal tibials. Some of the material is absorbed in the blood. Some are absorbed. And proximal convoluted tibials lead to a q-shaped structure, which is called loop-of-handle. We just talked about that this laser does not develop that much. So, there are two loops in the loop-of-handle. The one coming down is called descending loop-of-handle. The one going up is called ascending loop-of-handle. The descending loop-of-handle, which is water, is absorbed in the descending loop-of-handle. Whereas, the ascending loop-of-handle is completely impermeable for the absorption of water. No absorption of water can be done in the ascending loop-of-handle. The ascending loop-of-handle leads to a lot of convoluted tibials. These are called distal tibials. These distal tibials lead to the collecting duct. The collecting duct opens up in the renal pelvis and leads to the ureters. This is how urine formation and excretive waste are removed from the human body. In addition to kidneys, there are many other accessory excretive organs that play an important role in the removal of waste from the body. If we look here, the first organ is the skin. It is mostly removed from the skin by the skin. Sorts, especially sodium chloride, in the form of sweat with the help of sweat glands. Next, you have lungs. In the lungs, it is mostly removed through water and weathers. After that, you have the liver. All the metabolism of drugs in the liver removes the waste from the liver. It comes into the blood and goes into the kidneys and is removed from the body through urine. After that, there is a major organ in the kidneys and it plays a more or less role in water absorption and water removal. This was the excretive system of humans. What did we learn in this practical? Excretive organs, vertebrates. In this, we saw the excretive organ of reptiles and humans. Kidneys are present in reptiles, whereas the loop of the anus is not present. There is not much dwelled structure. Due to which reptiles cannot produce concentrated urine. Whereas we have humans, the loop of the anus is also dwelled. Kidneys are also dwelled. In addition, there is ureter and bladder. There is ureter for urine storage and there is a separate opening for urine removal. Excretive waste varies in reptiles. Some have uric acid and some have urea. Other than kidneys, many accessory glands are present. For example, gills are present in fishes. If we talk about humans, they have skin, lungs, kidneys and liver. What do they do? They work as excretive organs and remove the waste. In this way, animals remove excessive material from their body and help in their survival. Thank you very much. Good luck.


So, we're continuing with putting the dovetail slots in both sides of the base frames, of the saw stallions, and on the top, and probably then along the one edge that doesn't have anything sticking out beyond it. In other words, there's an edge here designed to be flat. So, I'm building a track for my routers. There's going to be a two-in-one track. One side of it is going to be for the large router with the dovetail bit in it, and the other track is going to be the smaller router with the straight bit in it. Whenever we cut the dovetail grooves, we do the small straight bit first at a partial depth, and then we do the dovetail. So, I've got this 16-inch fiberboard sort of material. It's 1 eighth of an inch thick. You could use 1 quarter inch, or instead of 1 eighth, and probably it might even be better, I don't know. I like this stuff. It's nice and slick, although it may not take glue very well, because I don't expect it to glue very well, kind of a slick surface on it. I've put it two-sided carpet tape down what's going to be the bottom side of my rail. And so I'm going to flip that over now and try to get that lined up down the middle of this strip. It's not critical that it be down the middle, because the routers are going to be self-adjusting. And you'll see what I mean when I run the routers.  So, got that all down now. I am going to end up fortifying that by going from the underside. I do want to make sure that I keep the very middle clear for any metal, because I am going to run my routers down that. All right, so there are two lines. Sorry, run down on me, so I lost my audio, so I'm going to do a voice over here. This is my eight-foot track. And to review what we did previously, we screwed down from the underside a one-by-six eight-foot long board to the top of the particle board. And now we're going to cut a dovetail groove down the center of the track, or the one-by-six board. We were careful not to put the screws where they would interfere with the router bit. So I have simply laid it out on some saw horses here, and you're building a saw horse, so you'll have some ability to do this later. And then I have used an eight-foot long board as a track guide, and set that at the right distance so that the center of my router bit would run down the center of my track.  As we just will discuss several times, you do the preliminary groove at about one-quarter of an inch deep into your board, and you do the dovetail at three. Just for clarification, we are doing the dovetail groove on the bottom of the track unit, not on the side that has the wooden track, but on the 12-inch wide bottom. That's because we want our dovetail groove on the bottom of the jig, so that we can use our match fit clamps to have a zero profile when we hook our track up to various work pieces. So I took the eight-foot track, and I cut it into two sections, one five feet or 60 inches, and one three feet or 36 inches. So this would be very useful often when I'm cutting smaller things and pulling dovetail grooves with them, and this would be useful when I'm doing longer ones. And I guess if I really need to, I can put the two together carefully if I need to do a foot. So what I've done on this one already off-camera is I've run the Bosch router, the big one, big router with the dovetail bit in it, across this rail going this direction, and I have run the little Bosch coat with the quarter-inch straight bit and it along this direction. So when I'm putting dovetail grooves into anything, including the pop-up workbench top, I will just use the right hand section or one section to do all the preliminary grooves, and then I'll use the same track to you to go and do the deeper dovetail grooves. So I've got this one ready. Now I'm doing this one, so I've got this secured, actually using dovetail clamps to my saw horse on that end, to my table saw on this end, making sure that I've got enough clearance so that this dovetail bit is not going to hit my saw horse. Well, I'm not sure. Well, let's see. No, so it's not going to hit my saw horse, and it's not going to hit my table saw. So here we go. I'm going to just now cut along this edge. You always want to, your router wants to go right to left, so you always want your router on the right hand side of any track. So we'll put dovetail grooves in all of those. There's two things you'll want to use. One is maybe a track that's set up, what I've done is set up a track that on one side is for my dovetail, my big router with my dovetail bit in and then on the other side coming this way is for my Bosch colt router with a half inch up cut bit in that. So I did the half inch up cut first everywhere and then I come back and lay down the track as closely as I can, but just a little bit off because the dovetail bit is just a little wider and I want it centered on that groove. So anyway, that's the process. So that's what we're working on. I did find that I wanted to do a preliminary groove with the quarter inch, I think I said a half inch a minute ago, quarter inch up tail, up cut bit and that then relieves a lot of the stress on the dovetail bit when it does the deeper and wider cut. I probably need to stop shortly and sharpen my dovetail bit as well. All right, here we got the base dovetail grooves all the way on this side, all the way down the legs, stopping just short of where the tenon is that goes into the foot then we got it all the way across there, all the way down there, we got a slot all the way one third of the way across the top and we have slots on the other all of the other faces. Hopefully they're all now yep, they're all full size and then we got one down the side so that saw stallion is ready to be put into its feet sanded and polyurethane. I'll experiment with that so that's what we're after. Now we get to go, since I got all the grooves and all of this and it's a buddy, the other saw stallion, now we get to start putting all the dovetail grooves in the side panel that can be used as a small top and then also into the large top.


Okay, so we're going to talk about how to change a dream scene once you're already looted. So this is just an example of a dream scene, and this is a lovely stickman drawing that I've just put together here, which hopefully will be very inspirational to you. So when you enter a looted dream scene, what you'll have is sort of a collection, like you can see here, of different things from either your memory or from your imagination. They'll all be combined into one scene. And you'll find that if you really look closely, the sort of edges and the lines between the different parts of the dream will often be very blurred. If you look closely at the edge between, say, a lake and the trees on the far bank, it won't really be an edge because when you look at it, it changes. And so that's really a key with this, is that what you look at in a looted dream normally changes. If you looked far away at this mountain here, for example, and you really concentrated hard on it, you'd find that you'd be able to change the size and shape of it. You'd even be able to move it if you concentrated hard enough, just by waving your hand. You can also do the same thing with the temperature and the weather. If you looked up at the sun and it was shining, for example here, just by looking at it and imagining it moving over to here or even going away completely, it will. And this is really to do with expectation and your subconscious beliefs of how things should work in the dream. But really it comes down to, as I said, what you expect to happen. Say if you were in the dream and you started off here and you wanted to get to somewhere over there, now the fastest way would be to teleport, but seeing as there's not really any way you could teleport here easily, the easiest way of course would be if there were a door and you could simply imagine that when you open the door, you would be where you wanted to be. But because there's no door in the immediate area, what you can do is you can actually just fly at a very high speed. So to do this, it sounds very simple but it's easy as this. Jump up in the air, expect that you'll float when you jump up, so don't expect to come down and then once you're floating in the air, you've done a hard bit. What you need to then do is just imagine what you're going to do when you get to where you want to get to. So just imagine what will be on the other side of that mountain and fill that expectation with sort of emotion and desire so that all you really want to do and all you want to focus on is what you're going to do when you get around that corner, right, when you get behind the mountain. And what that does is it makes your mind forget about this distance here entirely. So if you didn't do that, what would happen is you'd be thinking, wow I really want to get to that mountain. That's a long way to travel and subconsciously in your brain, right, in your dreaming mind, you're going to be thinking, well okay usually that distance would take a long time to travel so it probably should take a long time here in the dream. And you limit yourself. You'll slow yourself down. Things will get in the way. Maybe somebody will pop up here as you're trying to get to the mountain. Maybe the mountain will disappear completely.  Who knows? What you need to do is focus on what will be on the other side of where you want to get to because that makes your mind, your dreaming mind, forget about the distance in between you and the point you want to reach and it makes you focus on what's next which means that because you expect to go there, you will go there. Now this might sound a bit simple, a bit silly maybe. What I'd encourage you to do is just to try it in your next lucid dream. It doesn't have to be a mountain. You know you could travel to for example this strange looking house here. Whatever the case is, if you enter a dream and you're presented with a scene like this one, try and imagine somewhere you want to go that isn't just immediately here. So don't go to somewhere as close as that for example. Go somewhere like either the next mountain or somewhere in the distance like behind one of these trees in this house. Something that would normally take a bit of time to get to because what you're trying to do here is just to completely get rid of your subconscious belief that to travel from here to there will take effort or time. You want to make sure that you instill the belief in your mind that you can go anywhere in a dream instantly just by expecting to be there and by thinking about what will be there when you finally reach the destination. So hopefully this has been helpful. Please leave a comment telling me about where you would like to go in your dreams and where you have been and if you have any questions leave a comment I'll try and make a video to respond to them.


There's a story I need to tell. This seems as good a place as any. It happened at the Devil's Elbow. The Devil's Elbow is a jagged peak that juts up from a ridge in the Sierra foothills. It's in the southern part of the state, not far from where the mountains give way to the desert. There's a rounded rise further down the ridge that people call Hip Hill. Being viewed from the proper angle, it resembles a man lying on his side with his bent elbow poking up. That's how it got its name. Well, that and the reputation the area has. Not many people venture up the slopes of the Devil's Elbow, and of those that do, not all of them come back. I've lived around here most of my life. Our family was from Darby, about 20 miles down the highway. But my parents owned a cabin on Maggie's Folly Road, a two lane state route that winds its way up a broad canyon near the base of Devil's Elbow. That's where I lived in the cabin, although calling it a cabin is a little misleading. The rough timber and fieldstone construction gave it a rustic look, but it had indoor plumbing, electricity, a hot tub, and even broadband. Most of the other cabins along the road were the same. It was the kind of place where people with money built vacation homes. I may have not amounted to much in the eyes of some, but my parents did pretty well for themselves. Maybe that making money genes skips a generation. Aside from having living there for the better part of the last five years, I spent most of my summers at the cabin when I was growing up. I may have not heard all of the tales, but I know most of them. Strange sounds, strange tracks, strange occurrences. My older brother Brad once told me about the time he went out on a search party with our dad looking for a missing hiker. I was too young to go along and he kind of lorded that over me. But when they came back, he wasn't so smug anymore. He told me the story that night, whispering down from the top bunk. He said there were only a few hundred yards up the slope of the devil's elbow when the sheriff's deputy leading their party raised his hand for everyone to stop. He asked if anyone heard anything. Nobody did. At all. There was no birdsong, no crickets chirping, no cicadas whirring. He said everybody was really weirded out by it. All of a sudden, the members of the search party, most of them seasoned hunters and outdoorsmen, got panicking and scared. The deputy decided they'd gone far enough and should move on to the next search sector. Nobody argued. I laid awake most of that night, wondering what might be up on that mountain. But by the next day, I was pretty sure Brad was just yanking my chain. Since then, I've never put much stock in the tall tales and campfire stories people told about the devil's elbow. That was until the fire. I got a text ordering evacuation a little after three in the afternoon. I would have missed it if my phone wasn't set to vibrate. I always keep my phone on vibrate. There's no way I'd ever hear a ringtone or notification chime over all the noise in the shop. The winds had shifted, according to the alert. The wildfire had turned west, crossing the devil's elbow ridge, and was burning out of control. Straight for the canyon where I lived with my girlfriend. I immediately stepped out onto the loading dock to call her. Chloe, did you get the evacuation message? I asked when she picked up. Oh yeah, I left about a couple hours ago. People were saying the fire was going to turn, so I didn't wait. So you're in town? Where are you staying? Um, actually, I'm at Gary's. What? Gary was her ex, one of those corporate flunkies with an office in the city, soft hands and a closet full of silk shirts and Italian loafers. He and Chloe had remained friends after their breakup. She even had him up to dinner at my place a couple of times, just to show how mature an adult we all were. Normally, I'm not the jealous type, but their chumminess didn't sit right with me. I thought we agreed we'd stay in town if we had to evacuate, I said. Darby was what they call a bedroom community, maybe a 45 minute drive from the city, situated in the desert. It had a main drag lined with upscale boutiques and restaurants surrounded by gated communities. On the outskirts of town were a couple of strip malls for the regular folk, two chain motels and Reggie's Rods and Chops, the custom car and motorcycle shop where I worked as a machinist. Most of the hot rods, muscle cars and choppers we built wound up as little more than lawn ornaments for rich people, but I can't complain. It's a pretty good living. You want me to stay in some cheesy, best Western or Comfort Inn? I can't even. You know I have anxiety. I need to be some place familiar. She was almost in tears. That always got me. We could hash things out later, Gary had one of those fake haciendas all tile and stucco. The place reminded me of a 90s era Taco Bell. It was in a new development near the edge of the desert, far enough away from the wooded foothills below the devil's elbow to be safe. Okay, okay. I said, we'll figure it out. But what about Dizzy? Gary was not fond of my dog. Dizzy, oh. What do you mean, oh? David, I'm so sorry. I forgot her. You left my dog in a forest fire? Don't shout at me. I was so scared.  I don't know what other excuses she gave because I hung up, leapt off the loading dock and sprinted for my Jeep. You have to understand Dizzy is pretty important to me.  She came to me at a pretty low point in my life. It was about five years ago. I'd just gone through a messy divorce and had been laid off from the factory where I worked at the time. My dad had lost his battle with cancer the year before. Mom had just passed away herself. I think she died of a broken heart. Sounds sappy, I know, but I'm pretty sure it's true. My brother got the big house in Darby and I got the cabin in the canyon because my parents knew us well and wanted us to be happy. I was on my way out of the city after signing the papers at the lawyer's office to take possession of the cabin when I saw the sign for the animal rescue. I'm not sure why I turned in there. When people ask, I always say I figured a guy that lived in a cabin is a guy who should have a dog. That's not true. It's just something I made up. So I'd have an answer to the question I didn't have an answer for. Whatever the reason, I pulled into the shelter and told the woman behind the counter that I wanted a dog. She told me I was in luck. They had plenty. There were lots of purebred labs, retrievers and collies. Dogs that had been Christmas gifts when they were puppies and then dumped at the shelter when they got big and the kids lost interest. I'm sure they were great dogs. All of them seemed friendly enough, but I didn't really click with any of them. I was about to thank the woman for her time and head out when she said they had one more. She didn't sound hopeful, but I said I'd look at it just to be polite. That's when I met Dizzy. She didn't take to me right away. But just kind of hid behind the shelter lady with her head hung low. I got a couple of treats from the jar on the counter and managed to get her to take them from my hand. Once she had the treat in her mouth, though, she'd run back behind the shelter lady to gobble it down. Dizzy had been confiscated from her previous owner by animal control and had been in the shelter for more than two years. She was a bully breed, mostly black, probably about three years old, had different colored eyes, scars and a missing ear. The only thing that would have made her less adorable was if she had horns and cloven hooves, according to the shelter lady. Right about the time she was explaining that to me, Dizzy let me give her a quick scratch. She wagged her tail. It was only two or three times, but that's all it took. You could have stuck a fork in me because I was done.  There is an application and a background check. I even had to give references. It took two weeks to get approved. While I waited, I made a trip to the shelter every day they were open to take Dizzy for a walk or play fetch. Every day when they brought her out of her kennel, she'd get so excited when she saw me that she'd spin in circles until she couldn't walk straight. The day the adoption was official, I changed her name to Dizzy. The shelter staff had called her Edna. That just wasn't going to work. It was just the two of us for the next couple of years. We settled into the cabin. I got hired at Reggie's. Life was good. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like I wasn't just going through the motions. Then along came Chloe. That was good too, at first. Things started to get a little iffy when she moved in with us. Chloe had opinions that she didn't mind sharing. She didn't think animals should be kept as pets. It was demeaning to their intrinsic nobility and symbolic of neocolonialism. She would tell me stories that she'd read somewhere she couldn't remember about how dangerous pit bulls were and that they could lock their jaws about how sometimes they just snapped for no reason and mauled innocent little children. I knew all of that was BS, but it was easier not to argue. At one point, she asked me what I would say if she told me she wouldn't marry me unless I got rid of Dizzy. The thought that popped into my head was who said anything about marriage? Instead, I told her that Dizzy would probably only live for another eight or 10 years. If we were still together, we could get married then. That did not go over well. Chloe packed her bags. She made it as far as the front porch before she had a panic attack and collapsed. For her part, Dizzy didn't seem to care much for Chloe either. She never got aggressive or anything. She just ignored her. In all honesty, I can't think of anything that would piss Chloe off more than just being ignored. Coming up out of the desert and approaching the foothills, I could see a couple of highway patrol cruisers on the road ahead, blocking the turnoff to Maggie's folly. They would never let me pass, not to rescue a dog, but there was an old cutoff just to the south. Not much more than a rutted dirt track through the desert, it followed the top of a low bluff before turning east into a draw that would eventually lead to the canyon road a couple of miles below my cabin. My jeep was beefed up from stock, one of the advantages of working in a custom vehicle shop, but even with the engine and suspension modifications I'd made, it would be slow going. The sky was already darkening with smoke. I could see the orange glow of the wildfire coming down the backside of the devil's elbow ridge. It was moving fast. With no other choice, I threw the transfer case into four by four high and wheeled onto the cutoff. The fat off-road tires sprayed plumes of dust into the air. There was no way the cops didn't see me, but there was no way they could stop me either. I pushed my jeep as fast as I dared, slamming over ruts and rocks, worried the whole time I might break an axle. Halfway along the bluff, I could actually look down on Gary's place, sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac lined with empty lots. He was very proud that this was the first home in that section of the development. It was a good ways off and I was being thrown against my seatbelt hard enough to rattle my teeth, but I thought I could make out two figures, reclining on lounge chairs by the pool. I couldn't believe it.  Once I turned into the draw, the going got tougher. I had to shift into four low. The cutoff was more overgrown than I remembered. Low hanging spruce branches slapped against the windshield, cracking the glass and scraping down the sides of my wrangler. More than once, the skid plate slammed against a rock or root with a jarring blow. I had to be careful. Lots of animals were fleeing the fire.  I even spotted a couple of elk bowling their way downhill through the underbrush. My tires spun, caught, lurched forward and spun again, making my progress nightmarishly slow. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it, concentrating on keeping the Jeep upright and moving forward. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, twice over, I broke into the clear and turned onto the smooth asphalt of Maggie's folly. I floored the gas pedal. It was a little after five, according to the dashboard clock and sunset at that time of year was just before seven. But when I whipped into my driveway, slewing sideways on the loose gravel, the smoke was so thick, it might as well have been midnight. Ash drifted down from the sky like an early snow. I took the porch steps three at a time, fumbling my keys twice before I managed to get the door open. Dizzy should have been right there. She always knows when I pull in the driveway. She always greets me at the door, spinning in circles until she can't walk straight. Dizzy, I shouted, come on girl. Nothing. The cabin's lower level has an open floor plan. I could see she wasn't downstairs. Up on the second floor, I checked the bedrooms, closets, bathroom, and under the beds. I couldn't find my dog. The only place left was outside. I told Chloe a hundred times never to let Dizzy outside by herself. The canyon wasn't wilderness, but it was close. There were coyotes, bobcats, bears, maybe even some wolves and mountain lions. Dizzy wasn't big enough to take on a pack of coyotes, let alone a wool for a cougar. I dashed out the back door, heat hit me like a fist in the face. The yard was empty. Dizzy, I shouted, then immediately doubled over in a coughing fit. The smoke was thick. The fire was no longer an orange glow in the distance. I could see flames through the trees. Dizzy, I shouted again, running to the edge of the woods.  I heard something moving through the brush. It wasn't Dizzy, whatever it was, it was big and moving fast. Branches snapped like gunfire, trees swayed. A cold hard panic gripped my heart as I backed away. Maybe 20 yards into the trees, I saw motion, just a blur, really, but bigger than any bear I'd ever seen. I kept backing away until I thumped against my storage shed. That's when I heard the low whining. Dizzy, I dropped to the ground, peering into the gap under the shed's floor. No dog, I ran around to the other side, she wasn't there. There was a weak yip, it came from inside. I kept the key on a hook beside the kitchen door, but there was no time to run back and get it. Instead, I shoved my fingers through the gap between the double doors and yanked. It took three good hard pulls with everything I had before the hasp screws ripped out of the wood. Inside, Dizzy was cowering in the back corner, panning and hacking from the smoke. When she saw me, she trotted to the door and tried to spin around, but there wasn't enough oxygen in the air. She fell over. I scooped her up into my arms and ran for my jeep as fast as my burning lungs would allow. The roof of my cabin was smoldering. I could see the glow of burning trees further down the canyon. The fire had flanked us and we were in danger of being cut off. I began to realize that we might not make it out of here. Back in the jeep with the windows closed, the air was slightly more breathable. Dizzy seemed to perk up a little. I jammed the transmission into gear, wheeled around and sped down as fast as I could in the smoke and darkness. Heat battered us. Flaming embers sparked off the hood and windshield. I babbled prayers to a God I wasn't sure existed. Three miles along, just when I started to think we might make it, a fallen tree blazing so hotly, the asphalt beneath it bubbled, blocking the road. I screamed incoherently, beating the steering wheel with my fist.  I wrapped her in my arms and began to cry. How long had Chloe been locking her in the shed? Why would she do that? Dizzy panned and whined in my arms. The heat had become almost unbearable. At least Dizzy wasn't gonna die alone. Then it hit me. The cut off. The fire hadn't advanced as far down on the other side of the canyon. It might still be clear. We're getting out of here, girl. I assured my dog as much as myself. I whipped the jeep around again, heading back up the hill. In the smoke and darkness, I missed the turn and had to reverse back down the road for 50 yards or so. Plunging the jeep back into the trees, we jounced over the same ruts, rocks and roots that had nearly rattled me to pieces on the way up. Dizzy splayed her feet on the passenger seat, trying to steady herself. My phone vibrated again. I ignored it again. We were maybe three quarters of a mile down the draw with the fire closing in fast from behind. When the thing stepped out under the track in front of us, I slammed the brakes. Dizzy slipped off the seat and fell into the passenger's footwell. It was tall, 15 feet at least, towering over my jeep and walked upright. Its body was emaciated, mottled gray skin stretched drum tight over its bones. Tuffs of mangy fur hung from its shoulders. The hands were enormous. Each gnarled finger tipped with a hooked claw. Its head was elongated and crowned with antlers. In its mouth were row after row of crooked needle-like teeth. It leaned forward, peering at me through the windshield with eyes that glowed a dull yellow. I felt that cold, hard panic grip my heart again. Blood turned to ice water in my veins. Dizzy jumped into my lap, planning her front paws on the steering wheel, snarling and barking at the thing like I'd never heard her before. Just then, a tree exploded to the right of the track. The heat of the flames had boiled off the pine resin in the trunk, turning it into an expanding gas that blew the tree apart like a grenade. Chunks of wood pelted the side of my Jeep, dimpling the sheet metal and making spider webs in the safety glass. Jagged splinters sprayed the creature. It snorted in irritation before striding off into the trees on the left. I sat frozen in terror until the brightening glow in my rear view mirror drew my eye. The flames were speeding up behind us. I released the brake, stomping on the gas. Dizzy jumped back into the passenger seat as the Jeep leapt forward and we careened downhill. The rest of that trip down that draw was a blur. I have snatches of memory of lurching painfully hard against my seatbelt, of Dizzy whining in fear as she was thrown around in the passenger's footwell, of wanting to give her a reassuring pat but not being able to take my hands off the wheel. I do remember emerging from the last bit of scrub into the open desert and the fire burning out just behind us. I drove along the top of the bluff for a bit before I had to stop. The sun had set, moonlight washed the desert, turning it into a black and white photograph. The air there was much cooler and free of smoke. Stepping out of the Jeep, I drank it in deep. I plopped down on the edge of the bluff, pulling Dizzy into my lap and scratching her behind the ears. My phone vibrated in my pocket. This time I answered it. David, Chloe nearly shouted.  Why'd you lock Dizzy in the shed? What? What are you talking about? I went to get Dizzy. She was locked in the shed. You locked her in the shed. Have you been doing this every day when I go to work?  I've been calling and calling. Why didn't you answer? I was worried sick. You know, I have anxiety. What would have happened to me if you died? I could hear splashes in the background from where I sat. I could see the lights of Gary's house. Something else caught my eye. David, are you listening to me? No, I said, not really.   You weren't locked in a shed. I growled. That dog is dangerous. She gets really mean with me when you're not around. I have to put her in the shed when you're gone. Did she even bit me once? She never bit you. You would have told me if she had. Are you calling me a liar? Yeah, I guess I am. I said, squinting my eyes. It was a ways off, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was. You know what? Gary's right. You need to make a choice, me or the dog. I'll take dizzy. She stayed on the line long enough to curse me out and tell me she never wanted to speak to me again before hanging up. I thought about calling her back, warning her, but what was the point? She would have just laughed at me. The three quarter moon was bright enough for me to see the beast slouching off across the desert floor towards the lights of Gary's Hacienda. I guess some of those campfire stories were true after all. According to the tales I'd heard, it would be hungry. They were always hungry. We needed to get out of there before it turned its attention to us. Dizzy and I loaded up and limped what was left of my Jeep back to Darby. The police came to talk to me a week or so later. Chloe's sister had reported her missing. I didn't even know she had a sister. I told them the truth, most of it anyway. They found her car and her possessions at Gary's place. Gary was missing too. Turns out he was embezzling money from his firm. The police figure he and Chloe ran off to Mexico together. The cabin was a total loss. So I stayed with my brother until the insurance company settled up. Dizzy and I got ourselves a little bungalow in one of the more affordable sections of Darby. I like it here. I like working at Reggie's and Dizzy took a real shine to Brad's kids. So it's nice to be nearby. I suppose I could have rebuilt the cabin if I'd wanted. A lot of the residents did just that. But this is as close to the devil's elbow as I care to go. Thank you very much. I'm just now at the point where I can sleep most nights without dreaming of those eyes, glowing dull yellow. Maybe I should have tried to warn Chloe. Maybe I should have told her that a wind ago, fleeing a wildfire on the devil's elbow was headed straight for her. Of course she wouldn't have believed me. But maybe I should have tried anyway. Does it make me a bad person that I didn't? I don't know. All I do know is that she shouldn't have tried to get between me and my dog.


Different color scheme, different talk. I want to show you how I moved my C-Pen development work to GitHub. Anyone of you with your modules on C-Pen? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Wow, OK. Well, I have quite a number of modules on C-Pen. Somewhere in 2001, I was a professional trainer, mainly UNIX, and then I had to learn Pearl to teach people to program in Pearl. And then I got really addicted to Pearl. And since then, I published all my projects, and some got really large. So since 2001, I published about, say, 70 modules on C-Pen. And for instance, my email work is in total about 245 PM files. So that's quite large. And I made over 1,000 releases. But I used a very simple model. My model was released often. I just fixed some things. I'm making some additions, some regression tests, publish it. If people complain, just fix it, publish it. So every month, I saw you get a new release for dynamic modules. And some modules, they don't need much maintenance. Sometimes you see modules which are 10 years old on C-Pen and you install them and they still work. And some modules, they need more maintenance. And so it's quite a mess. And my directory, my working directory, was also quite a mess. Well, let's first see on C-Pen. This is my mess. It's about two or three pages more. And this was how we did it 10 years ago, at least. But more and more people have moved to Duke It. And I have to use it for all the projects, professional products as well. So I thought, well, should I use it? And I hesitated for a very long time. Oh, by the way, are you using a search C-Pen or are you using meta C-Pen? Meta C-Pen. Meta C-Pen. So this is meta C-Pen. It looks more modern. And this is a search C-Pen. So I thought I had no need for version control. And yeah, it's nearly true. I release often, as I told you. I'm the only developer. So Git is very useful if you have more than one developer. I had quite a good memory. So I could remember all my codes. I have a route and exactly which module and where I had to be when something went wrong. And my main complaint about contributions is that 50% of the contributions you get break the code for other people. And 90% of the contributions lack regression tests, documentation, and so on. So actually, contribution to other people, I really welcome them. And I really like people complaining, finding bugs. But the usefulness of contributions is not really high. They're code contributions. So I have to rewrite it anyway, usually. So what's the advantage in publishing everything via Git and people forking it? So that's a bit of a problem. The other thing, I have a difficult release process. I will show you a bit about my release process. I have my own documentation system. And I have, well, OK. So this is about my documentation system. If you have very large modules, and certainly when you have object-oriented modules, you will find out that POT is quite limited. The plain old document system can be used to document one single PM file. But if you're writing object orientation, then certainly if you have three or four levels of inheritance, then you have to copy parts of the documentation from lower levels to higher levels and maintain that. If you have a lower level in the hierarchy, you find a function, and you document it there, then it will not automatically appear another levels of your documentation. And well, that's really a hassle. So I extended POT with some features like methods. You can define a method instead of add to or item. You can say, OK, now I define a method. And the format I will decide how it looks like in your manual page, examples, and so on. This is a class method. With methods, you can define options and defaults. And on different levels of hierarchy, you can change the default because that happens. So I have my own text. And this saved me a lot. It saved me for my mailbox modules about 70,000 lines of code in the manual page, which is produced. So this is the output. It automatically shows you the inheritance relations with other modules and so on. There's some formatting, it shows you the options, and where the options with level of hierarchy in the object oriented tree, it gets these from, and so on. It also produces real HTML, not what Meta-C-Pen is producing, or because my POT is smarter, and it knows it is a method. So it can produce all kinds of extra links to collect manuals which are closely related, methods, indexes of methods, so you can find it back in the class hierarchy, and so on. Diagnostics, error messages, explanations, and so on. So this is what OODoc does with only a few lines of extra configuration. The name of the module is wrong. I called it OODoc, but after that someone created OpenOffice, and then I got stuck. It should have been called OOPOT, maybe. That will be a more useful name. OK, so anyway, this is my system, and I have to integrate it somewhere in my Git and in my GitHub. So I doubted for many, many years, but at the moment, I'm more in favor of going to Git GitHub. Release often. Well, in the beginning, the first 10 years, I remembered all my code, but now I have some code in maintenance, which means that I didn't look at it for 10 years. And then when I release it, I forgot that some of the developments were halfway, and so on. So I hope it helps me a little bit in stabilizing this code. I would like people to feed me patches, and it happened the first week already that I put things on GitHub that people started to give me things. My memory is going down, and the patches are still bad. But a little bit more involvement, or at least people who are tempted to help you, is welcome. OK, so well, let's try it. 17 years of garbage, oh yeah, I really had to clean up license texts everywhere, add metadata on this way, also referring to licenses, referring to GitHub, and so on. To standardize all my modules, my idea about how code should look changed over time a little bit, what order of the use statements, or those things. So I had to clean up this mess. Well, actually, this is already without the 30 modules I already moved to GitHub. So this is my current mess. Still things to be solved. And for instance here, I have four versions of mailbox, zero dot something, two dot something versions, and so on. And then I make a big step, so you change your major number. But you still have to support the older versions. So I create a different directory. And I have to merge them back again into GitHub some way. So this is my old process. Here is the real location of my files in which I develop. It's a nice thing about OODoc, by the way. It's using the syntax of POT. So it just runs with Perl. It doesn't complain about POT statements. It doesn't recognize. So I can just use it for testing. And then when I make a release, or this is part of my framework, then it produces, extracts all the POT from the PM file and create next to that a real POT file. So it translates POT into real POT. And did you know that this is possible to make a POT file next to the PM file, that you don't have to have the documentation in the same file? Well, OK, it is possible. And also the files I work with, I publish them as well. Sometimes people help me, and they work based on their role files instead of the distribution files. And then I upload them to POS for CPAN and to my website for my own generated documentation. In a new situation, I have a new directory where I put all my already translated stuff in. I still have this file, oh, this. So this start of the release process can still be used. Then you add Git control. I will detail this later how it works. And for GitHub, you need to read me. It's very useful to have references to search CPAN and licenses and so on in the read me file. So the publication process is a little bit harder. First I have to call this. I upload this by hand to POS. There's also a script to do it, but I do it by hand. With R-Sync, I publish my produced HTML files. And I have to put it into Git there with POS. This is nice. So I will show you what I did to move all my old releases to GitHub. In GitHub, you know how it all works. You have these tags that stand up Git. You can tag a certain version of your code. But in GitHub, it's releases to tags. Release means it doesn't mean that much. It just says, we call this a release. And you can have release notes. And you can have extra information with this release. But actually, it's just some trick around a tag. Here you can't read it, I think, expect. But this is from my changelog file, automatically extracted from my changelog file in my insert process. Here you see the release as it went to C-Pen. And this is from GitHub itself, and from Git. The first task, if you start, is trying to get some administration how far you are. So I had to redo my overview of all the modules. One of the reasons I need my own overview and not just meta-C-Pen, is that many modules are clustered. They all relate some way or the other. And on C-Pen, I cannot show that to our meta-C-Pen. I cannot show that they are related. So I have my own page with some extra information why they are related and how they are related. So I cleaned up this. And this is an important field. GitHub, whether I already have converted it or not. And here you see, to-do, to-do, to-do, to-do, to-do. Still about 40 to go. This took me already a whole day. Then this is about the process, to move from the old version to the new version. First, I create this mailbox directory where my new work set is. I initialize kits there. And then for each of the distributions, and gladly, I kept them all in the directories. I have all these raw distributions and all the release material to C-Pen. So I have them all. I just collect them. And then I unpack the raw distribution because I put that raw version in GitHub and not the processed version, which is in C-Pen. And then I put the unpack, the raw distribution, then commit that. And then put an asset, as they call it. So you have this release, GitHub release, and the GitHub release has assets. And one of the assets is the distributed version. And then I clean up. And at the end, I have my whole working environment, which is many more files than they are released. And I copy that onto the same spot. And then I get at all the files which are in the manifest, automatically. And then I add by hand, the read me. And then I go and clean up my module a little bit. And I get pushed. So this is the general form, a little bit more detail. And the nice thing is, I hope you can read it, but the nice thing is that it's very simple. We have really great, two really great modules, the GitHub module and the Git module, Git repository module. And they make your life very easy. I will show you about five slides with code. But that's nearly all the codes. That's mainly, it's 80% of all the code. What you really need to get is to work. So in this case, GitHub has two versions. It supports version three, which is a REST interface. And version four is a Graph ML. And Graph ML works very differently. I won't explain that one, but I like the version three version better, the REST interface much better, how it works, it's clearer how it works. Well, I try to, you have to set some defaults. You use a name and the Git module you're working on. Then you try to get the repository, so my mailbox repository. And if it isn't there, I get an error message back in text and I create it. This is all everything you need to create this GitHub repository. That's not much, is it? Well, here is, you get back the URI, where you can upload the newer files to. It's a huge hash, what you get back from creating or from the getting, with all kinds of information how to use GitHub. Then start Git. Well, first, let's see whether I crashed in the last one. So I only created in its slides, when it didn't work last, didn't work last time, when I was never run. And it's as simple as this, a Git repository, and this is directory where my Git stuff is in. That's all. Then with archive.tar, I unpack one of my raw releases in a directory. I run at all. This is Git run at all. And then I collect some information for the release for instance, I can see on the check before you do is, if you unpack an archive, whether your timestamps are preserved. On my system, unique system gladly by default, but that's not always the case. So my 2004 release will have a 2004 timestamp in GitHub. Okay, then commit all. So now it's in Git. And then I add a tag because the releases on GitHub are based on tags. So I tag it, my release, and then I push it. This is a weird thing. You can only make a connection to the origin once you have made a commit. If you have never made a commit, you cannot do it. So yeah, that's a bit weird. But okay, work around. And I push my release to the currently unpacked release. And then I clean up the directory again, the whole directory, unpack the next star, the next raw version, and do this process over again. Then I change, I take the changelog file, gladly I'm quite nicely maintaining my changelogs. So it was quite, not so many failures on grabbing the changelog component. And I create a release again, default provided by the GitHub module. How to produce a release. Add, now set, that's what I uploaded. To see pan before. That's a bit of pity that GitHub doesn't support compressed star as meta data type, only zips. But maybe in the future they will understand this. And then, oh, I add a readme. I add this above each of the files. That's one of the hurdles. My release process, my Odoq adds the copyright text in all the files. And then I release it. But now I published my raw file, so I had to add something like reference to the module. And top of each of my files. And it works, that's all. So 80% of the code you saw, the rest is just a bit of configuration, command line options and so on. And here, this is 2008, you see all my releases for the 30 out of 70 modules, which are already converted. So if you are planning to do it yourself, you can get my scripts, they are not generic enough that you can use them out of the box, but you can move to GitHub as well. That's it. Questions? No time for questions I think, but. One minute. One minute, ha. Any question? Now come and talk to me out tours. Thank you ma'am, available. Bye.