Hello there, it's Sandy Olnock, and today I'm going to be doing my first jelly plate printing project. Ah! I know, crazy, right? I have had this jelly plate for at least probably 10 years, I don't know. I've used it apparently, because it's dirty, but the jelly plate seems to be okay. It was wrapped in its wrapping and stuff, so it seems to be fine. So I'm going to go ahead and try it and see how it works. I did have to get a new brayer, and I got this one that is a hard rubber brayer. I don't know if there's a difference between brayers, but I will find out in coming months because I'm going to be experimenting with some fun stuff in the future. I did decide to use this Hanamula bamboo paper. It's terrible for every other thing that I've tried it for. I have not enjoyed watercolor on it. I don't really like pen and ink on it all that much, so let's see if printing on it is going to get rid of the package, because I just want to use it up. I started by trying to make some cards that were inspired by one of my holiday inspiration cards. I forgot to show it in this section of the video. You'll see it in just a moment, but the card has a background that was done with a jelly plate, which is what inspired me to get this out. She had some colors in it that I really loved, and I wanted to see if I could mimic that kind of a look. It didn't succeed, I'll tell you, in this first try, so I just decided I would mix the colors myself using white with the blue and the green that I had because I don't have very many colors. I just don't own many and figured I'd just put some color on here and see what happens. Why not? I have no idea how much paint to put on. Am I doing too much? Am I doing not enough? I have no clue in the world, so yeah, I'm just going to try it and see. I decided not to go look up a bunch of YouTube videos on how to do it because that only teaches me how it's already been done. It doesn't teach me anything new and different, so I love playing with mediums before I know what I'm doing because sometimes I'll come up with something completely new without any preconceived notions. So I put my color down and pressed my paper on it. Again, I don't know how hard you're supposed to press. No idea, but there you go. My first background, woohoo! However, it didn't even come close to matching the color I was trying for, but I had extra color left on my brayer, so I decided to try it. The print that was on there first on that paper was trying to get off any excess from the jelly plate, but that didn't do much. So brayered on some more color, and then I wanted to really get rid of all the color on the brayer, so I just kept going over it to try to remove some of that because I wanted to clean all this up so I could start again with the right color and mix up the right color to match what I was trying for. And I figured out how to clean a jelly plate. I don't know if this is how you're supposed to. Maybe you're supposed to take it under the sink, but I used a baby wipe and then put the plastic on the front and back of it so that if it sat there for a while, I don't know if it's going to dry out.  So I cleaned everything up, cleaned the brayer and everything, and then started mixing paints. We'll go a little faster this time. And in order to mix that blue, I was going to need something different because it's a much cooler blue. It has some red in it. So I started mixing colors until I got the right red. Now most people would say, oh, that's just a blue, but look at how much pink I have to put into that to make it match what's on the card. And you know, playing around with it, trying to figure out how light to make it as well, didn't know how light or how dark it was going to need to be to match what was on the card. But the green I mixed in kind of the same way. I added a little bit of the pink to it just to dull it down a little bit so it wouldn't be quite as bright. Here's a mistake I made. I put extra white on the surface of the jelly plate, just directly squeezed it out on there. And I thought I was being really smart to add some extra lightness to it. But instead what I added was blobby dis because the layer that's on the bottom, like touching the jelly plate, is what's going to show up on your paper. The layer that I see that might make my eyes happy is going to be on the bottom side. It's going to be touching the paper. And I wasn't really thinking about that. I wasn't thinking in reverse. So yeah, that was not maybe necessarily the smartest thing I've ever done because look at my weird blobbies that I now have. So then it was going to be a matter of figuring out how to fix that. And I decided to try just using the brayer itself with the leftover color. That didn't seem to do a whole lot because I didn't have much left on the brayer. So I was trying to really squish it in there and soften some of those hard blobs. But then I decided I was going to try to mix a darker color because it still wasn't dark enough from the jelly printing. So I mixed a darker version of that same blue and pink color together. And I didn't overbrayer at this time because I wanted to leave some of the lighter color showing through and then some of that darker. Yes, I am avoiding the blob. I don't like paint on my fingers. I'm weird that way. But the color worked out much better. I was much happier with my background. Now it came time to clean off this brayer because I wanted to put it away really tidy. It's a brand new brayer. And I had paint that even though it hadn't sat there for very long was stuck. So I did go to YouTube to find how the heck to do this. I didn't want to leave it on there overnight or for a week or whenever till I get to my next jelly printing. And somebody said on YouTube that you can use alcohol. So I put a little alcohol onto a paper towel and then wiped it off and then rinse the whole thing really well afterward so there would be no alcohol left. I don't know if that's going to do anything to the rubber. But it didn't work very well to clean it. All right, next to the rest of the card making since I have my great backgrounds, they trimmed them down to fit in my Misti and then used distress oxide inks to stamp the follow la la la background and did that on both of them in different ways, different colors, things to try to figure out how I was going to make this work. I was using my baby wipe to clean off the stamp and had a thought while I was doing that because I realized that the distress oxide ink is water soluble. So I could soften the look of it and I dabbed on it to sort of make it fade into the background a little bit. Now I know there's jelly printing ways you can do that. I have no idea what they are. So I'm just doing it with the stamping and this kind of a baby wipe technique. I pulled out the other one as well to move some of that color around and soften that one because I didn't like quite how strong the follow la was on both of these and that made me much happier. Stamping the tree in both of those blues, just tapping on the color and then retapping color to add more to it, gave the tree a distressed look and created just a really beautiful element to put on the front of that card. Now the tree, you could also get the dye and it's a beautiful, really simple tree, very useful for a lot of different things.  I was going to use it on a different card out of the background. And then I added a couple other trees. I moved one up to make it taller and I moved another down and like cut off a third of it to make a shorter tree. And then for the snow, I used a white gel pen, my Uniball Signo gel pen to make the snow in the sky and then just a flat brush with some of the acrylic white paint. Dabbed on to make some distressed looking snow in the ground. And that kind of matched the whole jelly plate look and worked pretty well. This one, I embossed a sentiment on it and my embossing went crazy. I just had all kinds of trouble with it. So I added a ton of snow to hide the fact that I had embossing powder all over the place. And then I added the snow to the ground underneath of the trees. And those trees, of course, are die cut from scraps of one of the other pieces. So it's good to be able to use those pieces and intermix them. And this one I had some design issues with because the way that I stamped that tree and then put the sentiment where I did, I wanted the sentiment to relate to the tree. But then I had this big space left over on the left side. And I needed to find a way to balance the card better because this was just not working for me. I'm really big on my design elements on my cards. And the snow helped. I do like things that are off center, so I like the off center focus. But I needed some other, I don't know, something else on the left hand side to make this work better. What I opted to do was to glue down a piece that would just go as a band around that front panel. So I lifted it up, glued that down and tied a knot. Just a nice flat knot with some same wide ribbon around it. And I need my scissors sharpened really badly. The scissors were just giving me fits. So I think that's going to be my next to-do list. Getting those puppies nice and sharp. And I added a snowflake to it, which all of that white still led me, led my eye to see the rest of the card. So the color on that kept it lighter and less focused. So that the focus goes to the tree and the sentiment. So there's my first jelly print experiments. I know I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm having fun doing it, whatever it is. So I'm okay with that. And I will see you guys later.  Go make something beautiful. See ya.


Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with Matt. Hello. Hello. So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? I am Matt Gordon. I'm in Lexington, Kentucky. As you can see by the beautiful horse farm that's definitely right behind me. Yes. I am a senior architect for centric consulting. So I do data and analytics consulting for us. Have been consulting for a while, but started out as kind of in IT, turned into a DBA, and turned into a data consultant, and off we went. So you've been a data platform MVP for five, six years? This was my fifth year. So yeah, I was renewed this year and the site says five. I checked it. So yeah. I always like to ask because it's sometimes it's really confusing and they occasionally move the buckets around in the order. So what's included within the data platform space? Well, so, you know, way, way, way back when I would say these were the SQL Server MVPs, but it's broadened quite a bit, right? So the data platform, you still got SQL Server folks in there, and that's what they do. And that's awesome. But you've got the whole Azure data platform. So you've got Synapse people in there. You could have Power BI people in there. You could have, you know, any of that data stuff, some of the stuff that's growing, like I don't know that there is one, but you could have one where Azure Data Explorer is your thing and you speak about it, blog about it and know it well and all that. And that that's your route. But yeah, most of the people I know I would say are broadly analytics or, you know, were SQL Server DBAs and turned into consultants or something like that, or are still DBAs that speak or blog or whatever. And that's the world they're in. But we all play nice, mostly. Well, that's why it's interesting because, yeah, people that for non-techies might listen to some of what you just described and say, yeah, but there are Azure MVPs that describe it similar. There are business application MVPs, which are more of the front end, more of the power platform, you know, site of things. But the folks that I know or data platform kind of, I would say the common theme that I see is kind of the DBA traditionally, like the more the DBA function, although some are on the Azure side. It's interesting to me, especially, you know, I got involved in community stuff back in basically 2013. That was the first past summit that I went to. And it's been interesting to see people's journeys. A lot of people that I remember from that event speaking, and their title was lead DBA or DBA this somewhere. And where all those different journeys have gone, you know, a lot of those people that I remember making those notes, like great speaker, great content, want to hear more from them, they still speak, they still contribute to stuff, but not a lot of them are doing what they were. Some of them still are, you know, but a lot of them had gone to data engineering rather in the analytics or, you know, just there's a lot of different paths that data can take you. But I think just the nature of timing and kind of how the industry evolved. You know, a lot of the people kind of maybe around my career age, we came from the DBA world. Some of us are still there and some of us aren't. What's an observation that I had, I would mention this before we started, you know, recording, but is that when I kind of got into the Microsoft ecosystem, like I got involved with the Microsoft space in roughly about 2005 and joined Microsoft and coming from like the data warehousing world and working with the DBAs extensively, in the Microsoft ecosystem, like it just kind of disappeared people within that role. Here we are, we're in this era, we are creating more content, more data than ever before. Remember when the big data platform providers started coming out, I'm like everything's big data. What is this, what does big data really mean? And we're called the DBAs because all that data, it's not like you can just point your front end system at a database and it works magically. There's effort behind the cleanup and organization of that data. Well, and that right, some of these boundaries are hard to define, right? Because like I've gone into some places that as a consultant and you'll have a developer, somebody asked the question like, all right, we have a database that's 20 terabytes or whatever and it's having the issues you would expect it to have. And they will ask like, are we dealing with big data? It's like, well, it's large but conceptually big data really is something kind of different. And right, and that's kind of, as our tools have changed, especially as the cloud providers have matured and things like that, there's, I think there's always going to be a space for your traditional operational DBAs that role is going to evolve, it already has. But right, a lot of these kind of data tools where we can just shove a bunch of stuff in there and visualize it, report against it, all that. It doesn't need, it doesn't need the same sort of supporting roles that we always used to have. So it's certainly an interesting time to be involved. I'm very glad this is the world that I ended up in because there's so many different paths that can take, and I know the one I'm on now and could that change in five years? I don't know because we may not know what the next big thing is and maybe the next big thing is really interesting and we want to pursue that. So two of my four kids kind of went the data science route and two very different. One is the healthcare, one is in atmospheric sciences but both kind of gravitating back towards the tools and the technology side and the data and all the different roles. I advised them, I said, look, you can't go wrong with the career path around a DBA type, data management, data science type function because every company needs that. Yeah. And whether they've realized it or not, you're right. Every company needs people that wrangle data, whether they're DBAs, whether they're data engineers, data scientists, maybe some of both, some of all three. It's not going away and it's not like we're producing less data on anything. I can think of consulting engagements I've had where it's basically like we have a relational system for the industry that we're in. We know there are insights in here. We know that there's value that we can help bring to our clients or we can help increase our sales because we don't have a good understanding of what we're selling and what customers are doing and all that and it's questions they've had. They don't know how to get those answers and then you go, right, then you leave that kind of operational world into, well, let's do some analytics on this. Let's find the right platform and tools for you so you can figure that out. I often use the kind of the analogy. I have a good friend who got his masters in music composition and I was overdoing kind of a studio project. He had a lot of equipment and very talented musician and we were recording a bunch of stuff and we were using, this is a few years back, but we were using Cakewalk. I'm at his house and we're editing some stuff and I'm like, hey, I can do this editing. I get the setup. I went and purchased Cakewalk and installed it and had no idea how to go and set up. He had finally tuned it, massaged it and set it up in a way that it was very, very easy. I look at a lot of what DBAs do, a lot of this world where it's like Power BI. I know how to use the basics of Power BI. I've gone in, I've done a few things, but I also know enough to realize that how much cleanup, how much organization, does somebody that understands how to bring the pieces together, how important that role is. It's Power BI is not an out-of-the-box solution. I would credit whoever I remember saying this, but I can't remember who it was. They said the biggest problem with SQL server is that it just runs. You can stuff data into it, you can maybe take backups and do all the stuff you're supposed to do. The thing, even as smart as it gets, even you watch the keynote in 2022, does cool stuff. The art of the performance tuning and its art and science, that's not going anywhere because you're right. The bigger the scale gets, and you can say, oh, it thinks through some of this stuff. Really where that's headed is, the query engine is a little smarter. It's going to add some intelligence on top of that. You still need somebody that understands that data well, understands the structures underneath, and uses the new tools we had. I would have killed for some of the stuff that we have now 10 years ago. I'd have gotten a lot more sleep, but you still need that knowledge. Maybe you don't have to supervise your backups anymore because you're in the cloud and it's done for you, but making things go faster, that's not going anywhere. Yeah, well yeah, it's right because it's not just about utilizing capabilities that are out there. Data lifecycle, a lot of that stuff you can automate. I work for an ISV that creates those kinds of solutions. You still have to architect those solutions, be smart about that. You still need to be able to go in and optimize based on whatever the new changes are and the features are, but then you have other stuff that changes. As you said, you could throw new data on it, you can expand on what's already there, then you re-ork, then you acquire a company, or then you're acquired, or a million other things that could happen there. Matt, what kind of stuff are you out actively talking about? What are the hot topics in the space right now? My hot topics, because I was involved, I was in consulting for a while, stepped away from that and went to work for a company as their director of cloud administration, basically to manage a cloud migration that they did. In the end, it evolved into essentially a consulting gig that I did for about two years before stepping officially back into that space. Migrations have been on my mind a lot. We were involved in a kind of a soup to nuts one. It wasn't just let's take a couple databases and put it up there. It's our entire on-premise world is going up. I've spent, and leading into that, that's most of what I was doing as a consultant for probably two or three years before then. I've seen ones go well. I've seen ones go poorly, kind of know how to set them up for success. If those elements are missing, what's going to happen? As they run, some things you have to watch out for and taking care of the people that are doing them to. Going back to that kind of operational thing, you got to keep the lights on while you're moving all that stuff. If the same team is doing both, you're going to chew them up. I've mostly been mostly technical topics around that, but one thing I hadn't done until the last couple years was do some kind of professional development around that. For those that are in the operational space, how do you take care of yourself? How do you speak up for you and your team and prevent getting in the boat where you're the on-call for when the old stuff breaks and you're working nights and weekends to get the new stuff up there, have a lot of passionate feelings about that. Isn't that the glamour that you sign up for when you say go down the IT track? Glamour is one way to describe it. It doesn't usually work out like that. Sorry, I meant to say the glamour. I had to have the airfoil. Sorry. Yeah, well, it's kind of one of those things because it's not black or white, you know, because at a certain career stage, I certainly went through that and in the end it was good for me. You know, I worked a ton of hours doing high availability stuff. Well, that set the table for me to go into consulting because there was a firm that was like, we need an HA person. We think you know this. Had I not put in those long hours, you know, I wouldn't have gotten that job. But on the flip side, and that's kind of, and I have a talk that I've been submitting to some conferences next year, but how you weigh that, you know, there is a right time maybe, listen, you talk to your partner, your family, or if it's just you, it's a short talk. But it's, am I going to commit to this? Because I think it's going to set the stage for me to kind of take that next step versus, listen, I'm at the point in my career in life where that's not right for me and that that's okay to say. And then think about what the consequences might be and just how to position yourself for success without running yourself into the ground, which I've done. Yeah. No, that's a, well, I don't think you can work in IT in any role and not have had that own internal discussion around that. And there's, I mean, there's times of my life and I've spent a good portion of my career more of the startup, you know, the front lines than the larger company. And a lot of times without benefits, there's no 401K, there's a lot of high risk around it, I learned so much. And I, you know, and so I wouldn't trade that for any, well, a couple of them I would trade, I'd be happy to trade. Well, it's why I say that's, that's why, you know, it, yeah, I hope that session gets picked up at a couple of places next year. I never envisioned myself doing professional development talks, but I have found them so useful that I was like, well, I think I have something to contribute here and, because it's not, and I'll say this, having been involved both as an outside employee and inside as well, when you go into a migration project, especially a large scale one, personnel is fairly considered. That's all we need this team involved. We need these other teams involved. Maybe not, not always even that, but it's not. Well, we're going to ask our core team to do X and Y. Well, your core team is only so many folks that, and, you know, if probably have some years of experience under their belt, people with years of experience tend to have partners and families and all that that have to be considered. And it's pretty rare that it's like, well, we can't work those people too hard. So let's bring in some outside help. Let's hire more. Let's get consultants, whatever. It's like pedal to the metal, you know, hardcore, let's do it. And odds are, the team is not along for the ride. And the project ends up stuck in a pretty awkward spot as people start to leave. You know, one thing that I mean, it's definitely an industry-wide trend that you're seeing with so much focus. And I know it's a different workload. It's a different area, but around like the Microsoft Viva and all the employee experience stuff, but you do see are those topics permeating across all areas. So to go in, like I was just at this event in Copenhagen and there were sessions on, you know, diversity and inclusion and kind of all that stuff. A lot, there's accessibility sessions.  And it's good to see that and healthy turnout at a lot of those sessions. So people are, are, I think there's a lot more, having had this shared experience of the pandemic, there's a lot more empathy in the tech world. I think there is. I mean, there's been nothing good about any of this, right? But what it did, so all the bad things that came with blurring the line between work and home, I think you're right. The one thing and it just, it's not universal for sure. But the one thing I have seen both in kind of community events like that and even companies that never used to think this way before is more attention to the fact that it's a person. It's not a resource. Right. And that person is dealing with everything we've all been dealing with. And then whatever challenges they have could be from this, could be not from this. Right. And considering that, as you plan work and plan staffing levels, you know, again, not every company's doing this. Some of them are still like, ah, just don't watch the news. Everything's fine and don't worry about anything and also work 80 hours a week for us. But some are, and I think the most successful companies as we move forward are going to be the ones to think about their people as people. Right. Well, we've been all saying this for years, is burnout is real. Absolutely. And especially, again, the vast majority of people within the tech sector have very marketable skills. Even in this down economy, it's like the so much of us are essential to keep all the other areas of the business up and running. We're so, you know, at least in the Western world, we are so tech-reliant on those things. And so you have to be thoughtful about that health and well-being of your employees. Yeah. And from a practical perspective, it's so expensive to replace a good person. Yeah. Somebody who's got domain knowledge, tech experience, all that, they walk out the door because you've worked them too hard or whatever, getting that equivalent person, it's really expensive and takes a long time. So it's better to just not do that. Yep. Treat people nice. Pam, well, treat. Treat people like humans. Yeah. Yeah. Basic stuff. It's not hard. No. Well, Matt, really appreciate your time today. For folks that want to connect with you, reach out to you. What are the best ways to reach you? Yes, I encourage that. I am SQL at Speed everywhere online. So SQL at Speed on Twitter, eventually masked it on. I just haven't had the time to do that yet, but I'll have that handle there as well, hopefully. SQL at Speed on LinkedIn and all my presentations and stuff are up on GitHub. You could go tell me what's wrong with all my slides if you want to do that. That's an interesting approach too. You know, it happens. Sometimes somebody's poked around and said, I think you should change this to say this. It's like I would always learn like feedback. I heard like horror stories of people getting heckled by conferences given sessions. And I always wanted that. I finally had one. It wasn't, I mean heckle. People told me, ah, he was heckling. No, he asked really good questions and I didn't have answers there. I'm good friends with the guy now years later, 10 years later. And I went back and I researched and I modified those slides to answer those questions. And that's the thing, like a lot of speakers say it. I think almost all of us mean it. Like sincerely, we want feedback. You know, the joke I would say, I stole from an old boss and I was like, if you think this was terrible, email me and tell me why. If you think it was good, tweet it so everybody knows. But really, we always want to get better. I don't want to give the same talk if you sat there and you're like, hey, that was all right. I want it to be better than that. And I want feedback on kind of what would have made it better for you. So we all mean it. Yeah. I wish people were a bit more free with their feedback there. You know, we agreed. Yeah. Anyway, well, Matt, hey, it was great connecting. We'll talk soon. All right. Thanks so much.


Okay, who else gagged when Alistair got a whole that salt in his mouth? I was just making me go, the whole time. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my review for Head on a Pin. This is episode 16 of Supernatural Season 4, and this is one of my favorite episodes of the season. Not only do we have Dean go one-on-one with his former torture mentor, Alistair, we also find out about Dean being the origins of the apocalypse. Anna returns and further builds that gap of uncertainty for Castiel. We find out that Uriel is actually a homie who wants the world, and he wants to see Lucifer rise, and there is a conflict between those two, as well as Sam getting enough juice to full-on destroy Alistair in his own body, as well as there's some really cool angel-dead-angels-wing shots. There's one that starts the episode, where all the cars are being destroyed, and then obviously Uriel at the end. I like this episode for two reasons. There's the back-and-forth conflict between Dean and Alistair, which eventually leads to Alistair winning, because Dean just can't torture him in the way that it is expected to make him talk. There is this great back-and-forth banter, and in the end, Alistair beats him with words before he even beats him with his own fists. And then, at the same time, we see Sam come in full-on, strong-armed, the guy, and all the while Castiel is kind of questioning what it is he's actually doing, what this torturing method is, and then he sees Sam come in and do the job even quicker. But he can't really disagree with what Sam's doing, because he did what they had Dean do in a much shorter sense of time. And then I like that Anna is really kind of making her own faction of angels. She is essentially trying to build team-free will while the brothers are already doing it kind of subconsciously. And in Castiel's conversations about being disobedient is really well written. And this episode was written by Ben Endlin, and you can see his really great writing throughout this episode in terms of the twists, in terms of the inner character dynamics, and their morals, and their conflicts. And then the episode ends with Castiel and Uriel having a pretty damn good fight. And when Castiel goes right through that pillar, I think the pillar like scissors him and it's just, it's a nuts fight scene. It's pretty cool to see it and considering Supernatural, it actually damaged walls when eventually characters would just get thrown against them and nothing would happen, not even a dent. But this was really cool to see destruction on the set. All around it has a bunch of very solid twists. The fact that Alastair's able to get out while also hold up to Dean's tortures, not only with just his character, but also his chin. Like I said, I'd really like the actor who plays Alastair. He's only in two episodes, at least this version of him. And the entirety of the show, as far as I can remember, and he is one of the most memorable characters in this entire show's history. There are certain characters in Supernatural's history that have had a long staying effect when they've only been around for one or two episodes. So this guy definitely is up there in that pillar, in that Hall of Honor, if you want to call it that. I like how Sam full on just force grips him and kills him. And then again, just how the episode ends with Dean just being like, I can't do this. This extra layer of guilt on top of him being that he is the one who caused the apocalypse. But then Castiel also kind of gives up that moniker of possible hope being that the man who starts the apocalypse is also the one who will end it. And it's great because they don't fully answer it, but the idea is that he takes on the moniker of Michael. And I like that there is this forward building. They say that they didn't have a lot of the idea set in stone, but you can really see that they're building up to season five. And this is something that a lot of you who watched me from season 12, all the way up to 15, would complain about, would see me complain about being that there wasn't any forward building in the show anymore. But that's because of how the show was structured at that point. Being renewed season by season is no way to fully think and point and point out and plot out a season, the forward arc. And that's why every story arc after season five was essentially a different one every time. You can't write a show like that. So it's why it's so satisfying for me to see an episode like this building up all the way to season five. But that's something that the show has been doing ever since season one, practically. So if it wasn't obvious enough already, I'm gonna give head on a pen, a seven out of seven. This is one of my favorite episodes of the season and it rightfully deserves that number. All around, it's a great episode, great villains, great twists, great conflict and a really cool resolution slash build up to what will be the main conflict of season five. And as always, I asked you guys for your comments about this episode, so let's read those off now. Okay, I really shouldn't be surprised, but you guys had a lot to say about this episode. So this might be a little bit long. On the head of a pen has to be one of the darkest episode in the series. And again, my favorite, third favorite of this season alongside Death Takes a Holiday. This episode has great atmosphere and production value. It's honestly one of the most visually pleasing episodes of the show, particularly with the first angel death shot. Yes, very much so, especially also with the torture chamber. The performances are top notch with Alastair and especially Dean being the standouts. And that's the best part about characters is flaws. Those are the parts that we resonate with most. Those are the parts that we can attach to and kind of acknowledge. And those moments definitely went away from the show, but that's also just kind of longevity. Eventually that would just disappear because of how long the show had gone for. It's kind of like Pokemon. Head on a pin is to hands down my favorite episode of the entire series. Edlin is the best writer the show ever had. So many revelations in this one episode. Dean broke the first seal. Sam got his mojo from drinking demon blood. Ruby, 100% evil. Not a shocker, but her face when she had Sam drinking was crazy. Angels are killable. Cass is a true ally and heaven is completely corrupt. The Alastair actor absolutely nailed it. His face when Sam killed him was crazy. Jensen proved he could actually act. This better get a seven out of seven, Jeremy. Yes, it does. It does. And all of those moments that you are 100% true. There was a lot of revelations, a lot of great moments that were put into this episode, thanks to Edlin's writing. Head on a pin is in competition with yellow fever for being my favorite episode of this season. This episode proves that even though death may not mean too much in this show, it's still created for really interesting stories. Dean dying and going to hell and then coming back with a guild of having torture people was interesting enough, but seeing it here was so great. I also think that was the best directed episode in the whole season. The lighting and cinematography add to the level of darkness portrayed in this episode. I'm always excited to revisit this one. Dean's conversation with Alastair is easily one of my favorite things about this episode, where he starts to realize that he may have been the reason the apocalypse is about to begin. Yes, I love the revelations. I love the dialogue. And yes, the episode shot really well. Like I said, there's that really great fight scene with Castiel, but also showing the room and its entirety. Since a lot of it's in studio, they have a lot of opportunities to have different angles to add to that. They couldn't have done that. They didn't have to, but they still went through that trouble to do those interesting angles and have that great back and forth banter with a little battle of words. Alastair is easily one of the most menacing villains this show's ever seen, despite only making a brief appearance. There's an uncomfortable intimacy in the way he interacts with Dean that I find far more sinister than any of the later baddies. At times, it's almost like he's addressing an old flame. I carved you into a new animal is such an incredible line. Props both to Christopher Herydryl and Jensen Akles for making the torture scenes in a head on a pen, some of the grittiest scenes in the show's history. Apparently Christopher really lifted Jensen by his neck while choking him on set. The level of trust and professionalism needed for that is just crazy. Wow, I did not know that, but that is pretty insane. The guy is super goddamn tall too. So he needed to really have that element of fear put not only to Dean, but also us as the audience. Okay, here's a long one. I don't know if I'll be able to read the whole thing, Joe, but I'll read what I can. On the head of a pen is what stands out to me throughout the entire season.  The master and the student relationship between Alastair and Dean is perfectly written. It's kind of a question of who is really torturing who because Alastair is not only the master of physical torture, but also emotional torture as well. The music, the torture and the heartbreak of the reveal of Dean being the first domino piece to ushering Lucifer's rise is literally almost as good as Darth Vader telling Luke of his shared heritage. I like, yeah, that's a good comparison. I really love the evil sacrilege demons have especially with Alastair not getting killed by saying I guess God is on my side today. This is also one of my very rare instances where we see angels being expelled from human vessels from an incantation that I wish they use later in the show. Castiel starting to question his loyalty to the angels is honestly a great character moment when he comes to Anna for help and I love how she doesn't do it. That's, it's more of the journey of self discovery more than anything else. The last scene with Castiel and Dean in the hospital is one of the most heartbreaking moments of the season and perhaps even the show. Just so much doubt and so much despair. This episode once again was done by my favorite writer and I hope you enjoyed it as I did or at least a great amount. No, this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire season. I would say it might even be my favorite one because this is the one that I always think of when season four comes around. Lazarus Rising is probably the best put together episode but this is probably one of my favorite ones. On the head of a pin would be on my list of underrated episodes. It is my joint favorite of season four with the first episode and the next episode. I can't think of a supernatural episode which has done the multiple storyline for multiple characters better or for main characters better. In this episode, all the main characters had significant storyline development. Also love how the episode balances action drama humor. There's something stuck in my throat. It's my throat and the dark sad ending. Plus well acted and that version of Alastair is super creepy and definitely a contender for best demon on the show is a big bad. I'm 100% gonna always remember Alastair as one of the best villains of this show. If I ever did have top five or top 10 villains of supernatural, Alastair would be there and this guy was only in two goddamn episodes. If death takes a holiday as a seven out of seven which is not for me, then head on a pin is for sure a seven out of seven. The question is how do I keep the praise for this episode short? Amazing acting from all, but Ruby in this episode, especially Chris. I'm not gonna say his name right because I'm not as Alastair. No surprise Jensen himself has said Chris was an amazing as a guest star and he would like to work with again. The drama and the number of surprise reveals is off the charts. Angels killing angels, Uriel's betrayal, Dean breaking the first seal required for the apocalypse.  Sam's new power is a real season changer while Dean's guilt is crushing. It's all just thrillingly heartbreaking. And while Anna's character isn't treated well in the long run, she gets a memorable line. That's the real Anna one righteous queen. Yes, that was a great moment on her part. And again, yeah, we're gonna start to see Anna's character kind of get a little bit muddled as we continue on, especially into season five which is a little bit unfortunate but sometimes that just happens. Thank you guys once again for those thoughts and comments. Now we've got it's a terrible life episode 17. So give me your thoughts about that episode in the comments below and I'll read those off in the next video. Otherwise guys, I hope you enjoyed the review. If you did leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe. Otherwise, see you guys next week. Thanks for watching the video. My name is Knitz and you might remember me from the animated cult classic TV show, Undergrads. 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. 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.


Construction and demolition projects are responsible for about 40% emissions and about a third of the total waste in the EU, with a significant share being landfilled. Circularity is a way to better manage resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Transitioning to a circular economy is crucial and requires us to revisit all processes related to product design and development. The circular economy approach developed by the Allen MacArthur Foundation sets a starting point for the reuse of technical and biological materials. The key issue here is that circular economy innovation can deliver both environmental as well as economic benefits. To do that, a series of changes are necessary, not only to building product development, but also to the business models and to society as a whole. As we will find out from our guests in this course, new top-down and bottom-up governance schemes are required to ensure that companies will be efficiently incentivized towards adapting circular economy practices. Circularity in the built environment depends on establishing co-creation processes through all scales of materials, products, buildings and cities. And a transdisciplinary approach is required to tackle the complex environmental and economic issues that arise. In this course, you will discover the opportunities that circular building products can offer. You will investigate them from various perspectives, design and technology, business models and stakeholders, management and governance. This week, we will learn more about products, the base ingredient of buildings and how they relate to circular performance. We will also discuss some of the most common evaluation methods that we currently employ to measure product circularity. In week two, we will discuss technology and design challenges for circular product development with regard to the R strategies. In week three, we will scale up and discuss the vast number of stakeholders that are involved in a circular product's life cycle. Several possible business models are discussed. Week four is dedicated to the frameworks that promote circular economy implementation. Circular building products need to be supported through top-down governance as well as bottom-up initiatives. And finally, in week five, we will evaluate the current practices and limitations and we will introduce you to the circular building product canvas. We will unravel the complexity of the task by introducing you to case studies. You will meet experts who can provide you with a theoretical framework and the tools to create new products and new business models. During each week, you will be invited to a number of complementary activities and assignments so you can develop your knowledge and skills. This way, we will support you to design and create new circular building products and processes for your own organization. Enjoy the course.


And also bandits have attacked Nuhubamali Polytechnic located along Kaduna Zaria Road in Kaduna State. One student was killed and at least eight students and two staff members were abducted. The bandits broke into the Polytechnic around 10 p.m. on Thursday and started shooting sporadically. Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs Samuel Aduan confirmed the incident when he visited the institution to carry out an on-the-spot assessment of the situation. Here, two lecturers and about eight students have been kidnapped. And one student is confirmed dead and one is presently on admission. It's even medical attention. So we've had the plight of the students and I want to assure them that we will do all that is within our reach in order to enhance security asset here in the institution. And I also want the student to know that there is indeed deployment of troops across or along the Kaduna Zaria Road. They are carrying out aggressive fighting patrol and we are of the strong conviction that the bandits came to the institution because they were denied freedom of action on the Kaduna Zaria Road possibly. That is why they exploited the window that we saw here. But I want to assure you that we will do our best like you can see. We are here with the head of security agencies who operate in general. We are grateful to you. We are grateful for your civility. We are grateful for your understanding and I want to assure you that we don't take it for granted.


Let's see what he delivers over 200. Yazid Daniel of Barbados, Miles Grosjean of Haiti, Johan Ramalda Smythe of Jamaica, Cassia Daly of Antigua and Barbuda, the 400 champion Austin of Guyana, Mikael Miquelin of the Cayman Islands, and Bernard Hyde of the Turks and Caicos Islands. So the Cayman Islands deciding not to go with Jaden Reed, there is the Antigua and Barbuda athlete, Cassia Daly, Nacoc under 18, double champion last year. He is the Antigua and Barbuda junior sportsman of the year for 2023. On your marks. Gets his first outing at Carrifta 2024. Grosjean of Haiti, Ramalda Smythe of Jamaica in the lineup as well. The 17-year-old 400 champion Malachi Austin of Guyana goes in lane number six. Has run 21-59 for 200 meters. That's a personal best. He did that on the third of March. Off they go. Oh, Ramalda Smythe got a brilliant lead. The Haitian gets left in the blocks. And the Jamaican running a brilliant curve. Ramalda Smythe, Daly of Antigua and Barbuda trying to come forward. The Barbadian running well. That's Daniel on the inside. And now the 400 champion with those long-loping strides comes fast at the finish. Ramalda Smythe running pretty fast in quantifying. The clock says 21-33. A lot was happening there with the Haitian athlete left in the blocks. And was wondering why there was not a recall. This man at 21-41, Johan Ramalda Smythe, comes through to win. Second fastest over the heat this far. And Grand-Jean is still in disbelief as to what transpired. Well, the goal went, and he just didn't run. Here is another look at it. Ramalda Smythe represents the Mushet High School back in Jamaica. Lytton on about them about track and field before this season. They also have Chenoya Douglas, who will come in the girls 200 meters under 20. The Jamaican high school championships, they had back-to-back wins that pretty much stunned the crowd. But he's been in fine form all season and comes through here. Positive 0.9, 21-41. Malachi Austin, the 400 champion from Guyana, 21-63. Yes, Daniel, 21-86 of Barbados. And Dele of Antigua and Barbuda, 22-05, also gets into the final. 22-54 for the Caymanian on the bubble. Bernard Hyde of the Turks and Caicos Islands at 22-80, he's out of contention.