Ladies and gentlemen, we've had a very rich day of presentations and when you have a good cake you always put the icing on the top and we're, I think, ending our day and the presentation will shortly follow and then our reception with what I think is going to be some very nice icing. We've tried to avoid having too many introducers introducing introducers but let me take just five seconds to introduce Rita Hauser, President of the Hauser Foundation and Chairperson of the International Peace Academy. Rita is an international lawyer whose real passion is foreign policy and I won't go through a very long list of institutions that she's been involved in other than the note. It bridges the Aspen Institute, the IISS in London, the RAND Corporation, work on various congressional or, sorry, State Department panels that make her eminently qualified for a whole range of internationally oriented activities, not the least of which is to introduce our honored speaker this afternoon. Rita, please. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. When Dick Solomon called and asked if I would introduce Kandee Rice, I accepted with a lacquery because it would give me the opportunity to tell you a good bit about her personally and I'll leave to her to tell you about her views on foreign policy as she will this weekend assume the position of National Security Advisor to the new president, the first woman to hold that position. But before I do so, I want to make a very perhaps astounding confession. Kandee and I share a man here in Washington. And we share someone's deep friendship, affection, his wise counsel. He's always there for both of us and I think we mark much of our career by it. I hope I don't embarrass him by saying it's our dear friend, Brent Scopar. Now as I said earlier, Kandee will be the first woman to achieve this position and it's never easy to be a first in anything, particularly the first woman. In an era when there were not many mentors or role models or people to look to for how to behave when you are the first, you have to rely on your own inner resources of which Kandee has an abundance. Intelligence, life, competitiveness, great determination and a willingness to do what's necessary to accomplish what everyone sets out to dream about in life. And she certainly will be reaching that apex this weekend. During the course of the campaign, I saw on numerous occasions the deep affection that President-Elect Bush had achieved vis-a-vis Kandee. They are really not only comrades and colleagues but buddies and good friends. Kandee is a loyal and deep friend, one whose commitments are very personal and one whose friendship everyone cherishes. She was a very devoted daughter and a very, very deep and affectionate person to those who were close to her during her life. Her accomplishments are known to you publicly. She's an academic of distinction. She served in the first Bush Administration under Brent Scopar and then went on to become the youngest provost at Stanford. Being very much in the Harvard crowd myself, I always believed it was important to snoop out the opposition. And when I did call around at Stanford, I found that they were flicking because of this new provost who was doing a most effective job in not only administering but in setting the tone for the university. It is a true honor to have her with us this evening to talk about the new administration's view of foreign policy. And I know you all join me in wishing her the best of luck as she assumes her position this weekend. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rita, for that wonderful introduction. You've had decades of service to our country and in the service of international peace and cooperation, and so it is especially wonderful to have you introduce me. I am very much looking forward to joining the fraternity of national security advisors. I don't know if they're going to have to change the rules of admission or not, but it is delightful to follow in the footsteps of a great group of people who serve the country selflessly. And I just want to add no more, with no one more selflessly than my former boss, Frank Skokrop, who I expect will still be on the other end of the phone to tell me how to really do the job. I'm also very glad to be here with all of you. I see a lot of friends in the audience, a lot of people whose wise counsel I've had over the years and whose wise counsel I hope I will have over the coming years. And I'm especially glad to participate in a conference that is organized by the United States Institute of Peace. This is clearly one of our country's most successful new public-private partnerships. I'm grateful to the Institute for its work. I'm grateful to its visionary director, Richard Solomon, with whom I've had many, many interesting and important discussions about foreign policy and about Asia in particular. And I'm very grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to speak about passing the baton. Now, that's an image that I particularly like because passing the baton evokes an image of a relay race run by a team. And indeed, I like that image because Sandy Berger and I are teammates in important ways. We may compete against each other when we're in races at home, but I can tell you that when the United States tries to pull together a foreign policy that is good for Americans' interests and I hope good for the world, that we have both had the pleasure of representing Team USA. This has been, as most of you know, a very curry transition for reasons that we all know. But Sandy has done everything possible to make this transition a smooth one. And I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank him because when we get off to a start on Saturday, if we get off to a good start, it will be in large part because Sandy has performed that task so well. And I would like you all to know that. I'm going to try to keep my prepared remarks relatively short because I'd like to leave some time for questions for dialogue. I think that dialogue is a part of the tradition here at the U.S. Institute for Feeds. But I want to offer some thoughts about the challenges that we face and a little bit about how I think the National Security Council staff and its advisors need to think about those challenges as we face them over the next several years. Now, as you all know, I had the honor of serving in government for the United States at the end of the Cold War and in 1990, I saw events that I never thought I would behold. I, like most specialists in international politics, went into government expecting to return to Stanford University with a Europe divided with a Soviet Union intact, with a Germany divided, and with a world that had been pretty static since 1945 largely unchanged. Well, to my great surprise and indeed my great honor, I had a chance instead to participate in the unraveling of the Cold War, a largely peaceful unraveling of the Cold War that came about because of great statesmanship on all sides. And I really do want to say on all sides, on the side of the United States, of the Europeans, but also on the side of the Soviet Union, statesmanship that saved the world from what could have been a conflagration. It was also a time when values mattered, when values of individual liberty and freedom that had been suppressed in one part of Europe for almost 50 years emerged unscathed because it turns out that they are incredibly powerful values that can, regardless of the circumstances, endure. I remember particularly one moment when I stood in Moscow at the Akober Sky Hotel and witnessed the signing of the document that reunified Germany. And it struck me that it was remarkable that it was done really with very little ceremony. Quite unlike the scores of arms control agreements that had been attended by major summits and great fanfare, this moment was taken to place in a hotel in Moscow. The only head of state who was there was Soviet President Gorbachev. In some ways, it was as if the world tired of the Cold War had finally decided that it should end with a whimper, not a bang. To that, we should be very grateful. But in thinking about that moment, we should not underestimate how remarkable it was. And I want you to know that I do know that you don't have to hear a band playing to signal that one era has ended and another has begun. For the first years of the new era, after leaving the government, I had the privilege of helping to manage one of the world's great educational institutions, Sanford University, parked right in the heart of the Silicon Valley. In fact, Sanford University and the Silicon Valley are symbiotic. This last week, one of the last remaining fathers of the Silicon Valley, Bill Hewlett, died. Bill Hewlett and David Cassert built a little company called Hewlett-Cassert with a $500 loan from the Dean of Engineering at Sanford University, Brad Terman, who somehow believed that these two young graduate students that he had had a good idea and that that creativity ought to be rewarded and that they ought to go out and give it a try. Well, I'm going to tell you that's still the story of not just the Silicon Valley, but the story of Route 128 in Austin, Texas and many, many places where knowledge and smart people that come out of the great American University go on to create whole new realms of knowledge that become whole new areas of the economy. I can tell you that during that time, the subjects that were familiar and of great luck to me, Kremlin debates and nuclear throwaways to be true, were displaced by some new topics. Believe me, when you talk about the rivalry of the great powers in the Silicon Valley, they don't mean east and west. They look toward Redmond, Washington. Now, no foreign visitor to my office ever wanted to talk about nuclear throwaways or Kremlin debates during my time as provost. They wanted instead to talk about how to become the Silicon Valley, how to use the creativity and innovativeness of their people to create whole new areas of knowledge and to spur the kind of economic miracles that we have seen in this country. I'm grateful for the opportunity of having had that experience because it taught me something very special about the United States of America. And indeed, unless you understand the specialness of the American experiment, it is hard to understand what America can mean in the world. First of all, it taught me that creativity and openness and risk-taking, the willingness to let a free people and their laborers be rewarded is really the engine of economic growth. It taught me, too, that we are one America out of many background and ethnic heritage because California and the Silicon Valley in particular is an ethnically diverse place and she will ever find. And in fact, one of America's great strengths has been that it has been open to waves after waves of immigration, constantly rejuvenating, constantly strengthening the pool of people already here. And that is something that if we ever lose, we lose something that is very vital to the United States.


So everyone today is Monday March 30th at 7 57 a.m. Gonna do a video watch us today Couple things I want to talk about before we get started is remember today is Monday people have been going crazy at home Everyone's losing their mind. So I'm sure everyone is over eager to be trading today I'm sure everyone is kind of get Triggers ready to go right they're ready to attack. So my advice for you guys to always remember is that For me Mondays are my worst performing days. So I consciously take it slower on Mondays besides down more I try to control how over eager I get to trade. So I don't want to trade pre-market I don't want to mess around. I just want to stay calm and stick to my process. That's been rewarding me every single day I'll come with so Just keep that in mind Remember Mondays everyone is ready to attack So if you recognize that or the sooner you recognize that the more of an edge that you have, right? So let's kind of get started. So BK why I this stock just got absolutely destroyed As soon as it broke this kind of 170 ish death line, right? 170 ish death line. It kind of just unwound, right? So in the morning, hopefully we get a morning pop towards Towards these levels and always I'm drawing out my lines So hopefully we get a morning pop towards these levels so that we could short it I will not chase weakness on this. I would rather wait for this to kind of pop up first and then attack it MFA this is a setup that I'm not too in love with Let me actually pull up some information on it This is an 840 million dollar company. So it's a real company So I do not want to use size if I'm training it But what I see is a very very very simple two dollar line So if it goes to two dollars, I'll look to short it with a plan to add in the kind of 220s area With a stop kind of above 230 again. This is gonna be a small size stop Trade because the company is a real company, right?  I'd rather wait for it to pop PSTV Excuse me. This is the new stock of the day. It's extremely extremely beaten down. So it is a former runner It likes to push on volume notice every time it pushes on volume. It kind of pulls back So I mean this one's gonna be interesting for me. I want to see this kind of test this 270 to 3 level right I want to see how it tests around that level and wait for it to push wait for it to tank and then Shorting the bounce after tanks. That's kind of gonna be my main watch on something like this I'll have more commentary at the open. We're just kind of waiting for the price action to develop first SPC be this kind of already down trending so Looking for a pop towards 105 which is right here. So looking for a pop towards these levels in the morning Notice, I'm just drawing my lines Keeping it very very simple. So if it pops to each of my levels, I will attack Last things are I put some of the recent videos on the week in the bottom of the watch list So if you haven't seen any of these recent videos, please check it out and let me check till right So the thing with tilray is extremely extremely beaten down stock It went from 300 to like almost three bucks, right? So for me because this is so beaten up I'm not even touching it even though it's a first red day because there's gonna be so many buyers buying because on sale, right? So technically yes, it is a first red day But this is a setup that I don't think extended hard enough to be considered a red day sure two to nine is Not really that bad, but remember it came from 300 So I'm just gonna kind of hold off on this one marijuana stocks are kind of in the news People are still going getting high and going to the dispensary So I really just don't want to touch it because I think there's gonna be a lot of news driven stuff behind it So I'm gonna kind of avoid that but You guys have any questions be sure to message me again today's watch list is free every Monday I make it free for YouTube and then every day or every other day I posted for MIC members at the end of these videos I like to do a secret word to make sure that you guys are watching till the end So today's secret word is gonna be haircut because you better believe that I need one So good luck guys. I'm gonna take it slow today, and I will see you for a YouTube recap at 11. Thanks


Hey folks, this is Rod from Burn to Learn, and today we're going to show you how to use the very cool, easy to learn, date-diff function in Excel 2016. Here's your situation. In just two months, your company will have its annual service award party to recognize employees who have hit 10, 15, and 25 years of continuous service. As a member of the Human Resources Department, it's your responsibility to identify the service award recipients and to give their names to the general manager this afternoon. Using this employee information report and the date-diff function in Excel 2016 will help you to easily organize your report. As you can see, the information report gives us the employee's full name in column A and their higher dates in column B. The first thing you must do is to use the TODAY function to complete column C with today's dates. To do this, write an equal sign in cell C6, then type the word TODAY followed by an open and closed parentheses. Here's the formula for this. Now press Enter and the TODAY function fills in the current date automatically. Now drag the formula and fill in all of column C. Then you need to determine each employee's years of service in column D. Don't worry, the date-diff function will perform the complicated math for you. All you have to do is write an equal sign in cell D6, then type the word DATE-DIF followed by an open parentheses. Now select the higher date in cell B6 followed by a comma. Then write the word TODAY with an open and closed parentheses followed by a comma. Now type an open quotation mark, then type the letter Y for years and a closed quotation mark. Now type a closed parentheses and press Enter. Here's the formula. Then drag the formula and see the years of service for every employee has been calculated by the date-diff function. You can now use this formula to obtain the months and days remaining in each employee's length of service. First, let's do the months. Write an equal sign in cell E6, then write the word DATE-DIF followed by an open parentheses. Now select the higher date in cell B6 followed by a comma. Then write the word TODAY with an open and closed parentheses followed by a comma. Now type an open quotation mark and then type the letters YM for year, month, and a closed quotation mark. You typed the letters YM rather than just M for the months because you want to know how many months are left to count after you've taken out all the full years. Now type a closed parentheses and press Enter. Here's the formula.  Now let's do the days. Write an equal sign in cell F6, then write the word DATE-DIF with an open parentheses. Now select the higher date in cell B6 followed by a comma. Then write the word TODAY with an open and closed parentheses followed by a comma. Now type an open quotation mark and then type the letters YD for year, day with a closed quotation mark. You typed the letters YD instead of just D for the days because you want to know how many days are left to count after you've taken out all the full months. Now type a closed parentheses and press Enter. Here's the formula. Drag the formula and you see the days left after you take off the full months. Now you can give your general manager the names of this year's recipients of service awards. Robert Palmer is first with five years, one month, and 47 days. Luke Miller then follows with exactly 10 years, 11 months, and 359 days. Demi Allen has 25 years, 9 months, and 279 days. And you were able to do this quickly and easily without performing time consuming math calculations. Okay, now you've added another practical and easy to use multi-purpose tool to your tool belt called Excel DATE-DIF. If you liked this video, then don't forget to leave a comment, share it, and hit the like button. And do subscribe to our channel for more upcoming videos. Till then, goodbye and have a great day!


Guys and Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate this amazing holiday like always every year I do a what I got for Christmas video and that is what I'm going to be sharing with you today If you are new to my channel, don't forget to subscribe and hit the little bell icon So you'll be notified every time I upload a video. I'm so grateful for everything that I got this year I am so lucky and I am so thankful and happy it with everything I got this year I know this year was really challenging for many of you And that is why I am hosting a giveaway. So if you want to enter that there's still time to enter the giveaway ends on December 30th, so make sure to enter I will leave the video with all that information in the description box to you guys will know But I wanted to give back to you Especially because these times are a lot harder considering like coronavirus and just everything that has happened this year So anyway without further ado, I am just going to get started. So in no particular order I'm just going to go through all of my presents that I received This includes stocking stuffers because we kind of just like mix everything and Santa just gets me stocking stuffers I'm a little older. The first thing I got are these really comfy Ugg slippers. I've been needing new slippers for a while now and these are perfect. They are this red color They're showing up a little bit more bright red on camera, but they are more of a muted pinky red They are just so cozy and I love them to death The next thing I got for Christmas was this ornament and it is a stranger things Monster ornament and it's the 2020 version and I think this is so funny because it's pretty much 2020 in an ornament. This is what the ornament looks like. I can't wait to hang this on the tree because it looks so funny Oh my gosh, look how funny it is. This is definitely 2020 in an ornament I also got these fuzzy socks and honestly, I feel like you can't have enough of these I wear these all the time, especially being at home a lot more I definitely always am wearing a pair of fuzzy socks Normally I wear fuzzy socks with my slippers just because I don't know more cozy on the feet But right now I'm just wearing the bare feet with the Uggs I got these two pairs this pattern and then the grand black. This is probably my favorite I love how like simple it is I also got these kick-ass biker shorts and I'm really excited to wear them because I love like the Oversized shirts and it looks like you don't have pants on but when you wear these types of biker shorts You have pants on if you get my drift. These will also be good for working out. I also love that they're black They'll match anything. They got the little peach logo on the back another clothing item I got was this big sweatshirt and I have the shirt that matches this I wear it in like almost all my videos because I don't have anything else to wear But it is this Walt Disney World like retro vintage pattern. It has a hood So it's definitely a hoodie and it's just I think this is the extra large Yeah, it's an extra large and I love oversized things like I just said, okay So the next thing I got in my stocking was this pair of ears I normally wouldn't pick out a pair that looks like this, but I wanted to get something at 2020 Just to have so my mom chose this for me and one other thing just to represent 2020 at Disney So I got these ears and it says a 2020 on the side here I probably won't wear them just because 2020 is almost over but it's just kind of like a little commemorative Piece to have and she got a good deal on it because she works at Disney keeping along the theme of Disney and 2020 I got this little lenticular holographic card with the characters on it and it's just 3d. I love these types of things. I have a whole collection of them So definitely something that I really like and I'll just put it with all my other lenticular hologram things The next item I got was really cool and I'm so happy to have it and it is this Gucci card holder It's a card holder that you can attach your keys to so I've already like got all my stuff Inside here and I already have my keys attached This thing holds quite a bit of cards like I don't know if you can see Like how many cards it holds but it holds quite a bit I feel like I could get some more cards in here and it zippers up like so and it's really cool I did not know how to work this clasp thing. I know my camera is doing a really bad job focusing on this Okay, so this is the clasp and I was so confused how to work it So my mom had to like show me you have to pull it out and then down so it looks like that And then it just like snaps back into place, but honestly, this is a really cool piece I'm really really happy that I got some Gucci and I will definitely be using this for a long time Honestly, I think this present is one of my favorites and it's so simple and so small and it's super affordable But it is this cute little air pod case and I will do a close-up in just a minute It is just this matte mauve colored air pod case and I love this like key ring thing It comes with and I don't know why I just love the design and this piece is from I kept the card So I could remember to shout out this company because it is a small business Her name is Janet Gwen and it was made in Charlotte, North Carolina So I guess she makes like different pieces for different things like this is for air pods, obviously I actually found this air pod case on Instagram It was an Instagram advertisement. So that is what caused me to want to get it So this is what the case looks like. I love this little like key ring hook thing It like screws out and then you can attach stuff to it But this is the front and this is the back of it I just really like the color and I don't really have anything else to say about it It's just really cool and I'm happy I got this This is also really random, but it came in this little dust bag like it came in a little dust bag And it's like an air pod case. I found that to be really funny The next present I got was from our family's Secret Santa and I just got this cute iPhone case It looks like this. It has really cool patterns and stuff the next present You guys will like too because I have been needing this for so long And I think you guys might know what it is But my Aunt Wendy always pulls through with like some of that coolest presents This is definitely something I have been needing and I'm so happy that she got it for me But it is a little ring light for my videos. So I just want to show you this part I mean, there's like a whole stand. There's like a phone thing So like if you wanted to make a TikTok and you didn't have good lighting You could like attach this contraption so your phone could be held by this mechanism So it was really cool and this is what the ring light kind of looks like. I can't wait to set this up I'll probably set it up a little later In my vlog because I am vlogging today that that's just really cool and I've never had like a ring light So thank you so much Aunt Wendy That was this is like a really cool present and stuff and especially because like now I could film videos Probably like in the evening time if I wanted to and if I didn't have good lighting because I always use natural lighting For my videos, so this will be a really big help for like when I want to film Different things, but I don't have the best lighting. Okay, so I had to save the best for last But my parents so graciously got me a Gucci belt for Christmas This is so cool because I don't know. I just feel like this will dress up every outfit. It's kind of like a statement I don't really get the most expensive clothes. So this will like dress it up take it to the next level I don't really go clothes shopping a whole lot if you watch my videos You'll know so I'm really like playing and everything So this will just be like a hint of something to like add to what I'm wearing Especially when I wear like high-waisted things It'll just be really cute to wear But this is what the GGs look like I got the matte gold Because I just really like the tarnished look like kind of the worn look and I got it in black Just so it'll match everything. This is definitely not an item. That's necessary to have But it's just one of those fun things that like I really wanted and we didn't really know what to get me for Christmas So I just chose the Gucci belt because it's just such a piece and I will be like around forever So yeah, I think that is about it for this video again If you haven't entered my giveaway that link will be in the description box Video to explain everything. Let me know it down below your favorite gift and why it's your favorite gift I would love to know don't forget to subscribe give this video a thumbs up I hope you have a great day and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye


as Toby likes to call it, the metal voices today. Yeah, the metal voices talking to the metal voice today. Ladies and gentlemen, that was your sport. You're going to introduce me. Tobias Samet. Yeah, ecstatic to have the one and only Tobias Samet with us here today, being a huge Aventasia fan. This is, for me personally, a great honor to have you here with us. It's seen you lots of times live, but man, it's great to be able to speak to you today about the new album. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's great to be here. The ninth studio album, a paranormal evening with the Moonflower Society. It couldn't be any longer the title album. No, I tried, I tried, but especially in streaming, day and age of streaming, it's pretty difficult to get the title on those thumbnail stamp sized covers online. So no, it was, in fact, it was really funny because the record company, when I first told them what the album is going to be called, they went like, are you sure it's a bit long, isn't it? I said, well, do you think so? I'm not sure. But the funny thing is they said, OK, it's going to be a challenge marketing and promotion wise. But we love the title so much that we would be up for the challenge. And when you hear something like that from a record company that is programmed to make money and stick to rules and not be creative, but be with formulas and try to sell stuff the way they have always sold stuff, when those people say it's worth a challenge, then it either means that they have given up hope completely or it means that you have a pretty good title, despite it being a bit too long. Speaking of the album, here, I just got it in from New Zealand Bass yesterday. Oh, cool. Is that the album? Open it up and you can walk us through the special edition. Toby, this is an unboxing. This is an unboxing live. Live with you. Well, not live, but. My daughter was in the quarter and came in just in time for this interview. So walk us through what we're seeing here. Look at this. How beautiful. That's amazing. I couldn't have done this better myself. Yeah, that's two discs for the price of two. What? The instrumental of all the songs, right? Absolutely. Yeah. All the songs and the book. It's like a book. It is like a storybook. Look at that. Wow. Look at it. Oh my God. And there's pictures. Pictures. Live pictures. Oh, look at the music. Is that the actual music? Yes. Toby, what are you doing? In case there's a power shortage, we wanted to put the scores in there so you can sing the songs. That's right. That's right. Gorgeous. Because we thought of everything. We're living in strange times. You always have to expect a blackout to happen. So we thought, OK, let's put some musical scores in there so at least people when they're sitting at home freezing their asses off, they can sing the songs. No, that's like humor. I shouldn't be saying this. Hey, we're in Montreal and the weather's going to start turning here anytime. So you're just great, great thinking. Thank you in advance that we can sing along in those cold winter nights. Where are you based, by the way? Montreal. Montreal. That's pretty, that's that's pretty. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we remember that. Right before COVID. Yeah, yeah, we, yeah, yeah. It was, we were on a wave, absolutely. And everything was going so well. And at some point, you know, grapes growing into my mouth. And I felt like a king. And all of a sudden somebody pulled the plug. We were all sitting here, not knowing if there was going to be a music business in the future. It was a challenging time. And I think this new album helped me a lot to get through this because there was nothing else to do with all this time on my hands. You were presented with the time you were being locked in. And I was sitting there in my basement. I had just built my own studio, which was a blessing. It turned out to be a blessing. I was sitting there not knowing what to do, except from retreating to music. And, you know, what else can you do except from writing a new album, producing it on a lousy plumber, bad bricklayer, really, I couldn't do anything. You know, you were pumping out, Jimmy and I had this discussion on many a show. You were pumping out so much music between Avantasia and Ed Guy in just a short amount of time. And it looks like, well, whatever happened to him, where's he gone? Because you were, you were releasing almost an album a year at one point. Yeah, it was, but it was really, it was, I have to admit that it was taken its toll. And when you, the real mean thing about it is when you enjoy what you're doing, you don't realize that you're overdoing it while you're at it. You just realize that certain things get a little more difficult. I think it was in 2008, February 2008, when I had my first hearing loss due to stress and stuff like that, but you don't, and that was, you know, I thought like, yeah, but you know, I'm young. I've lost my hearing. It was back after 10 days. No problem. I lost my hearing doing something I love. It would have been way worse if I lost my hearing due to stress doing something I don't love or based on doing something I don't love. So I even made fun of it and called the next Edgar album, Tinnitus Sanctus. It was a Tinnitus because it happened because of stress doing something that I love. I didn't really take, I didn't read the signs and I didn't take it seriously. And at some point I wasn't a treadmill without even realizing it. And I just tried to live up to expectations. And whenever I was done with an Edgar record, I wanted to do a new Aventasia record. I had new song ideas. I wanted to do this. I wanted to cherish the project. And I had those ideas. Whenever I was done with an Aventasia tour, I came home and I was two weeks home and the others were like, okay, where's the new Edgar album? Have you written it already? No, just give me six weeks maybe. I need seven more songs. It became, it was funny in the beginning, but at some point I realized I was burning out. And that's, I think some of those things, now this is a real sad, now this is a real sad interview. I don't want this to be so.  We should talk about funny things, but some of those experiences and the trouble of dealing with expectations and being caught in that trap mode, I put into songs like Arabesque on this new record and Scars, it's some of that I had to get off my chest. Still within the fantastic, fairy-tale-ish concept of the album, but I managed to put a lot of myself in there and process some thoughts and get things off my chest. So yeah, I was very prolific and I'm happy, I was able to do it, but I think I won't release an album every year in the future. I don't think so. And I won't do 80 shows a year in the future as well. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm getting an old fart. Toby, is Ed Guy done? Is it over now or? No, no, I don't think so. I mean, certainly we're inactive right now and we're on high ages and we don't have any plans to go out anytime soon. I mean, that's not just because it is the situation in the world. That's not just the only reason. I mean, it makes things difficult, but it's also, we had run out of steam. And that was normal. We like each other and we're still those childhood friends. I mean, we don't have much to do with each other or that much anymore, but we're still in touch. The thing is we have developed very different views. Everybody of us, it's not just me and four other people. It was just five opinions on everything. And especially when you're working, when you're facing your limits stress-wise, of course, it's not so easy. If you are in charge of everything, you're writing the songs, you're producing everything, you're putting everything together, you're managing the bands and to make everybody happy is not always easy. And it's very exhausting and there's a lot of frictional loss, I would call, when you have to please everybody in a bad situation. And so it was just time to say, okay, why don't we all do our individual stuff for now and see what happens. But I'm taking Felix with me. I'm taking Felix with me. Yeah, but this little cocksucker, I'm gonna take with me.  Everything's on your shoulders, right? I think what's happened, at least in my eyes and my perception is Avantasia, that brand is outpaced EdGuy brand in a sense, right?  I don't think that's the reason. I mean, of course I have to feed a family and EdGuy certainly couldn't feed a family. Avantasia absolutely can feed a family, but it's been like that from the beginning. I mean, ever since I started the Avantasia, Avantasia was the band that made me become a professional musician in a sense that for the first time in my life, I got money for my music. That was the first Avantasia. And before that, I wasn't paying for it. And when I started out with Avantasia and it went through the roof and it went, the first album was an instant success. It also dragged EdGuy along. I mean, EdGuy made a huge step upon the release of the first Avantasia record. So, Avantasia was bigger right from the start, way big. But still, it doesn't prevent me from doing what I enjoy and going back and doing Hellfire Club and Mandrag and all these records, Rocket Ride, Tinnitus, Sanctus Age of the Joker, Space Police, all these records came together while Avantasia was way bigger. So that's not, I try not to focus. Of course, when you have a family to feed, you have to also make business decisions, but that's not the integral. That's not the main part of it, not at all. And you know what? I saw the Tinnitus Sanctus tour here in Montreal and you promised you'd be back with EdGuy. So I'm gonna hold you to it. I'll just be very patient. That's all. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I don't necessarily believe in reincarnation. So I think there's good hope. There's good hope it's gonna happen in this life, in this lifetime. I really, you know, I don't believe EdGuy is over. It's just right now, it's hibernating and hibernation. I don't know how long hibernation usually takes for human beings, but... For bears is usually about, what, three, four months? Three years apparently. But fortunately we are no bears because if we were bears, you wouldn't come pay taking to see a show. That's exactly. Bears don't have money. Hey, so let's get to the new album. I mean, A, you've got your stable, the avant-tage of stable that we've grown accustomed to, Yorn Landy, of course Bob Catley, Michael. But you also got new guys like Ralph Sheepers and Florid Janssen. That's a great pickup. I mean, that's a great, great song is with her on it. Absolutely, and it was really funny because I think it all started when I was talking to Sasha about how great I think she is for Nightwish and how diverse she sings and how verticile she is vocally. And Sasha said, yeah, of course. And in studio, she's amazing when she's singing in the studio recording and he knew because he had worked with her for those first After Forever records that she had been singing on. It was her band or she was in that band. So I said, oh, we should ask her. And I had known her briefly, but I had known her for quite a long time because After Forever had been moving in the same circles, recording the same studio with the same production team as avant-tage and Ed Guy. So she was moving in the same circles and I got in touch with her and asked if she was ready to be or if she was willing to be part of the new avant-age record. And she said, yes, to my surprise, that was also because of the pandemic probably because everybody was forced to be at home. She said, okay, I'm gonna do it in my studio. Why not? Great idea. So she was, I sent her the song which was placed among the angels and she got back to me and said, oh, it's a good song, but I'm not sure it's exactly the right thing for my voice. It's the range is not, my voice is higher range wise. And I said, oh, that's a bummer. Now she's gonna bail out. And I said, okay, give me a few days. I'm gonna write you something else.  And usually I can't write upon pressure. Usually I don't, I'm not a service provider. I can't do that when a record company comes and I thought you were though.  Yeah, but actually I am not like that. Actually I'm a very, very lazy guy and very, very, I need to be relaxed to write and be creative. But I thought, okay, I have to seize that chance. And it was inspiring to write with her in the back of my head.  She listened to it and she said, okay, perfect. Great pop song, 80s epic pop. I'm gonna put my spandex on and I'm gonna sing it. That's what she actually said. I'm gonna put my 80s spandex on and I'm gonna sing it. And a few weeks later she got back to me and she had recorded in her studio and she said, by the way, Toby, I'm gonna send you misplaced among the angels too with my vocals on because I checked again and I became acquainted with the song and I really liked it and it worked to my surprise. So she sent both songs and they're both fabulous. She's an amazing singer, very verticile, very, yeah, amazing vocalist, technically, emotionally, pitch, power, everything is there. She's very, very good. I think misplaced among the angels was actually your vocal performance is outstanding on that one. Maybe you're doing the high parts so that you were talking about. No, she's singing the even higher harmony. I'm thankful. Thank you. I have to say I'm very happy with the vocal performance as well on this record. It's weird, I don't know, my voice felt so much more. I've sung a lot in the past two years in my studio because there was not so much else to do. I was sometimes just going in and singing journey songs and Queen's Rite songs and just for the sake of it, just because I like singing again, which it should be normal for a singer, but in the past I couldn't even think about whether I like to sing or not. I was singing whenever it was required for an album or a show, and but this time with a lockdown and no shows and I was sometimes just sneaking into my studio trying out new equipment, valve equipment, tube microphones and stuff like that. And it was, I became a bit nerdy, but it was great fun and my voice sounds so rested because I haven't done any of those grinding tours under weird circumstances in the past, so or in the recent past. So yeah, it was, I'm happy with my voice, absolutely. You kind of answered my next question. It's, do you write songs for specific people in mind or do you just send them the songs and hope that they fit? Like, I mean, I'm listening to Scars and that's right in Jeff Tate's wheelhouse. I mean, he's done such a great job on that and yourself as well. I just wanted to know what's the writing process? Do you have people in mind? There's never a rule without an exception or there are no rules at all. Most of what I do is based on intuition and sometimes I write a song like I Tamed the Storm and it turns out to be this modern Iron Maiden rip-off. And I think who's gonna be the right singer to cover the fact that it sounds like a Maiden rip-off? Oh, let's take your London. He makes every song great and no seriously, his song works so well, his voice was so well on that song, but it was very Maiden-esque before he sang it and it was not planned. And he took that song into completely different direction with Scars and Jeff's songs in particular. And I would say Michael Kiske is the same case. I usually have their voices in mind when I write something because are you still with me? Yeah. Okay, yeah, because I just got a battery information that I'm running low, but it's all fine. I'm gonna plug it in. If you hang up, we know why. It's all good. He's gonna get plugged in. Yeah, the math's nice. The wrong questions. No, when I write a song like Scars, I have Jeff in mind and what is weird is that I really, I write that song and while I write it and I have his melody, his voice in my head, I can't imagine his voice, I can hear it. I can hear how it sounds when he's singing it or what it sounds like when he's singing it. Even though he doesn't even know yet that he's gonna sing on that song, even though we had not been in touch about it, it's just a matter of imagination. That's why I think that's why, well, that's because Jeff's voice is in my DNA. It's grown up with those Queen's Reich albums, Rage for Order and it's in my DNA and I love his voice so much. It's been so influential to me that I know exactly what it sounds like and I can envision the song with his voice on. So, and it's really, I think the only case when I wrote a song for Jeff that was actually not written for Jeff was the first time we worked together, seduction of decay because after I'd written that song, I thought at first, so when I was writing that song, to me it sounded like a version of black, like a rendition, a heavy metal rendition of black dog of sapling and I envisioned it to be sung by a Robert Plant kind of raspy voice. But then I thought, ah, that's too obvious. What would it sound like if Jeff would do it? And I immediately switched and I started to sing that song. Hey, the far cry that it's singing in just a wink, we'd come for you. And immediately it was in my DNA and I thought that's a perfect Jeff song I really love his voice. And I love the guy. He's a absolutely fantastic guy, great person. So we got my favorite, the scarecrow trilogy then you got the mystery of time trilogy. Where does this fit in? Is this the start of a new trilogy? Is this the end of another segment of the Aventasia story? A mystery of time wasn't a trilogy. Mystery of time was just a, what is the trilogy called if it just consists of two parts? A two-logy. A two-logy. It's a two-logy. It was a two-logy. And this one is pretty much a two-logy but it could also be a one-logy. A one-logy? Well, a one-logy, yeah. I think the new album is in a way a continuation of the previous album Moonglow. But both albums don't really need a plot and this album doesn't even have a plot. I approached the album like a visit to a magic theater where its protagonists would, the Moongflower Society is quirky protagonist would drag the listener into a completely different dimension or different world. So it deals with escapism. It deals with getting away from expectations and it deals with fantasy. And this concept gave me the option to include, to write, to paint a nocturne cycle, if you like, to paint 11 individual scenes and pictures that all belong together and speak in the same language. But at the same time, it gave me better opportunities to put my own thoughts and feelings in there and put things in between the lines that it's really difficult to do that when you're writing, when you're following a plot because following a plot is, you're a service provider.  And it's that there's not so much room for creative freedom and for poetry. And that's why I rather adjusted the art form a bit. Who's on your wish list that you would like to have in the future? Like Bruce Dickinson and who else? Yeah, Bruce Dickinson is an open secret, but Rod Smallwood, who's a very, very nice chap and always in a very respectfully, always lets me know that it's not gonna happen. Because Bruce Dickinson. Yeah. Who would you like to have? Who would you like to have? Okay, Bruce Dickinson, that's one. Who else would you like to have in the future? Paul Stanley, great singer. One of my heroes. I have to say, of course, Lou Graham and Steve Perry, but I have to say, Adentencia has not to be mistaken for one of those bucket list bands. I think the guest list, the bells and whistles of the guest list, I think that should be subordinate to the songs and to the performances themselves. And I think the people I work with on this record, six old family members, two new family members, I think they helped me to realize my idea and my feelings and I think they give the songs what they need and that's why I think that's, that should be more important. I don't want this project to become one of those bands where people say, oh, songs don't really matter, but the new records got Steven Tyler, the Pope and Robbie Williams. You know, it's a boxed- Gotta get the Pope. Donny Buster. What? Gotta get the Pope on, gotta get the Pope on. I would, actually, I would get, I would like to get the Pope on it. I would do it. That would be one exception I would do just for the bells and whistles. All right. Hey, I'll be shot if I don't let you know this. My daughter, I've been listening to you since she was nine years old for over 10 years now. She just wants to let you know that you're one of her idols and you're the reason why she studies music and she writes your music creativity and genius writing inspires her and she loves you very much. And I had to get that in or else I should never speak to me again. Shout out to Kayla. She's probably the biggest adventager fan in all of Montreal here. Thank you very much. And you know what? I really, it really means something to me because when you inspire other people that's the biggest compliment you can get from somebody. And it's really, no, thank you really a lot. That's really flattering. Give her my best and let her know that I really, really appreciate it. And I hope she becomes a musician and inspires other people. And that's, thank you. Thank you. She's actually one that can follow the tablatures and the sheet music in here. I'm not getting like any of it. In case of a blackout, we're all good. All right, Tobias Amit's Avantasia, the 9th studio album, album show it as I speak. A paranormal evening with the Moonflower Society on Nuclear Blast. We should mention that it was released on October 21st. Get it now while it's on. Another masterpiece. And a pleasure speaking with you. Hope to speak to you in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And we definitely speak in the future. Thank you. We're tired now. We finally got you on the show. That's it. We're stopping now. Thank you. Thank you, family.


Right, thank you very much. Hello everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to speak at this session It's something that's been a hobby interest of mine, and also thanks to all the preceding papers that have given me a lot of very Interesting ideas of what else I can do with the data set that I'm about to present I want to talk about Ireland, the island of Ireland, and its archaeological Data set on that. Now Ireland has got a fairly rich Prehistoric and early medieval heritage. We have hundreds of thousands of archaeological Sites, all of which are well documented in sites and monuments records, and also uniquely the Republic of Ireland Over the last 20 years has undergone an economic transformation Which has led to a lot of infrastructural development. The motorways in the Republic of Ireland have only been built really in the last 15 years and they were fully monitored by archaeologists, and so that's Wealth of fieldwork, and it really is a absolute data mountain is one of the things that makes Ireland particularly Well-disposed to looking at questions of negative evidence and negative You know what that tells us? And the other thing that makes Ireland particularly well suited for this kind of work is In the 1960s a group of archaeology students from Belfast decided to set up an annual excavations burden Every excavation that happens in Ireland has to be licensed It is illegal to go and dig without getting an excavation license from the from the government department It's not like that, you know in Britain for example and As part of the requirements for that license the director of the excavation has to produce at the end of the year a Summary report just a few paragraphs that has then sent a centralized resource and all this data Has been available on the internet now for about 20 years on excavations.ie in a The department of the culture In the Republic of Ireland actually funds it and it contains the summaries of 22,000 Or the ever-growing number of excavations have been undertaken, you know since 1969 So this is a huge data set and that is a map before they all exist in the landscape and I was looking at this data set one day to try to work out right Let's get where all the settlement sites are and we can compare that to Where all the you know all the megalithic remains are and that's actually the difference in the landscape and Because it was never really designed for any sort of a database style querying. This data set is quite messy It is I got an unstructured ontology Lots of similar sites are called different things and it's very difficult to go into and just extract out Any particular site category without really a lot of heavyweight work going through it all But the by far the most there's five-thousand over five-thousand different site types But by far the most frequent one is the sites there are of no archaeological significance And when I saw this I thought it would be very very interesting just to compare Where these sites are in the landscape? What sort of places they constitute and compare that to all the sites where we do have archaeology and you know That's simple binary presence or absence. It's not an opportunity to happen very many other or any other major jurisdictions, I don't think so That's what I did There's a map of where the archaeology has been found in sites in Ireland and another map of where the archaeology That's not been found in sites in Ireland And you can see in the first instance Already has got a few interesting features great. I thought I'll start to look at the actual parameters of this landscape and see what exactly is driving this so cracking out the gis loading up a digital elevation model and just looked at the looked at the Distribution of these sites in the landscape and significantly there's many more sites where archaeology was found You know between zero and 25 meters above sea level And that's really the only difference in the two datasets. The rest is just being driven by commonalities in the land So you can compare this statistically both to themselves and to just random samples of the digital elevation model and see what comes out of this Significant so that's very encouraging It seems that the elevation is a Is a you know a risk factor for for finding archaeology on these sites and the question of course is why these particular elevations and I'll come back to that Today in Ireland, nobody lives or farms above 150 meters above sea level Feature of the data So slope how steep the ground is Uh, is there any archaeological significance to that? Well seemingly not sites are fairly randomly Well the landform itself has got a certain average shape and There's no real difference in where archaeology is found or not found There's no preference for very flat sites for example, which is interesting aspect So the the outlook from the site the angle on which the the site's terrain is pointed Now for sites where archaeology archaeology has been found you see The cardinal directions, you know northeast southwest Come out as really quite significant. There's a significant number of sites at point in that direction And if you were to do that to a group of archaeological sites, you probably think wow It's the cause cosmological significance of these Uh, you know coordinates Um, but an actual fact when you look at the sites where archaeology was not found You see a very similar pattern And this is because sites where archaeology has not been found these are to balance sites So in a thousand years time these are going to become archaeological sites And the cosmological significance of that Is this something that persists throughout the generations? So that is quite interesting and there are actually significant facts here I mean there's always some people like uh, you know, that's southern, like, like, for example, if it's that's the earth shattering Distance to known monuments. Now, this is something that the regulatory authorities to arbitrate Archaeology and planning and things like that would be interesting. It's often their condition that If a site is near a known monument that it needs to be more Thoroughly investigated or more adequately tested before development is given the good of it And so, uh, this is the probability distribution Reconstructed using kernel density of where archaeology is fine and where archaeology wasn't fine compared to a just random samples And there's actually no real difference between Where archaeology was found and where archaeology wasn't found with respect to distance to known monuments Which is quite interesting. They're both significantly different from Random points, but that's because people are made to look near in this part of the year That's where people are made to actually work but They know as well of randomize that strategy and find more archaeology as a consequence Distance to fresh water sources, uh, you know, it's another classic to see if that's significant and Although when you look at the actual pattern It's quite interesting in that it seems that sites where archaeology is found For some reason there's a lot more of them distant from water sources than just random points in the landscape makes a little sense, you know And I can't really interpret that but when you do the statistics Uh, it just could be just a random chance of the stochasticities of the data itself So, uh soils, uh, which is another interesting one Just looking at broad categories of soil how well drained it is how poorly drained it is If it's on uh, alluvial flood plains, uh, peat bogs, which are very very five or six percent I think of the land surface in Ireland is peat bog Uh, just, you know, what actually comes up and to do it looks quite significant when you first do it But you realize that most driving is differences sites and urban areas, which are obviously on, you know, the Ground and when you take that away There's no real difference Sites whether they're in well-drained ground or not so well-drained ground the only difference really is peat Peat is extremely good at preserving archaeological remains, you know timber in particular because of this waterlog nature And uh, so where we look in peat bogs find archaeology at a much higher rate than Uh, on average and the kind of sites that we find in peat bogs are track ways Places that connect one part of the landscape to another and traverse this this uh, this sort of track, you know Actually get from one part of the landscape to another So this brings us to mind of the fact that you know, this entire approach to archaeology really is about trying to reconstruct These networks and these paths and these movements across the landscape And so this is what it all boils down to Networks are essentially the thing that are driving the uh, the change No, I haven't really done any fancy statistical modeling in this but you can see Uh, where archaeology is found the pattern of modern roads comes up much more strongly than it does in sites where archaeology has not been found and you know, this is perhaps due to the high quality archaeological services that are You know very carefully managed and controlled by things like the national roads authority in the republic of ireland But it's also to do with the fact that roads are simply not independent of the of the archaeological past Nor are they independent of the parameters of the the landscape and the landform gives us that allows us to traverse this This landform and to illustrate What's new on about the pattern of early medieval Roads in ireland in fact, he's probably taken back to the army Uh, they certainly follow, you know, you know this this route here and this route here This route here they're the same pathways through the landscape and uh the When my colleague Emma Hanna and Queens has been looking at the you know the least cost path the correlations between these These roads and just you know deriving that from the elevation model and shows that there's basically the same thing So this illustrates that those sites those elevations, you know, that nicely significant Histogram where we have sites that are you know, 20 meters above sea level or so that come up as part of Uh, where archaeology is found more frequently That's not because of any particularly advantageous Uh reason why that landscape is more suited for agriculture or settlement But it is because it's more suited for traversing the landform itself And because these sites are part of the network. There's a lower cost associated with getting to them and getting from Right. Well, that's me Many of the correlations between the archaeology and numericality and the landform itself do seem significant But what the no visible remains are that where we haven't found archaeology allows us to be uniquely is This wonderful control sample that you would need if you were conducting a medical trial for to use tim's, you know analogy from earlier uh, and The fact that modern development patterns dominate these signals Is of course what we would expect it's the systematic bias in archaeology But that is not independent of the reasons why people did the things that they were in the past Anyway, so thank you very much


My name is Soha and me and actually we will be talking about how we can build bots on social media that can help to raise awareness on in the internet. So a bit of background about me, I'm currently a student at NTU and doing my master's by research. I'm doing my master's by research and my research is mostly on deep learning and pneumomorphic hardware. And I'm also course instructor for an edge computing course on Udacity. Hi everyone, I'm Anjali and I'm a graduate student at NUS, studying management of technology. Prior to that I was a software engineer in Semander and today we are going to build bots to raise awareness on the endangered animals on social media. So do you recognize this picture? Well, this is of the two of the only white giraffes on earth. They were slaughtered by tortures on 10th March 2020 in Kenya. And most of the people say that this happened due to the lack of awareness. And how can we as tech enthusiasts, what can we do to contribute towards the conservation of the endangered species? Well, we can create bots and raise the awareness through social media because it has a long reach. So has any of you here ever built a bot? Show of hands please. Okay, no worries. So today we will learn how to create bots on social media. Why are we choosing social media as a platform is because of its reach.  And 56% of the Reddit users are the young adults between the age of 18 to 29 whom we are targeting. Twitter has more reach because it has 152 million daily active users on an average base. So that is why we are choosing social media as a platform to spread the awareness. We did some statistics and we found out on the internet that most of the commonly mentioned animals on social media are dogs, cats and all of these very few endangered species are mentioned here. Nobody really talks about the endangered species. So surprisingly we did a survey and found out that Alpecas are one of the least talked about animals on the social media, on Reddit. And this made us really inquisitive and further on further research we found out that there are no wild Alpecas left and about 98% of the population has already been wiped out. So we decided to raise the awareness on Alpecas by creating the Alpeca bot. What does this bot do? So this bot basically moves through all the latest comments on Reddit and searches for the string Alpeca. And when it finds the string it just comments on about some random facts about Alpecas. So initially when you start out doing this, there will be some limitations. As Reddit presently has a great limiting time off which is because of the low karma. So for the initial users you will have a low karma and gradually as you gain more comments and the awards the karma rating will grow even further. So initially there will be some issues but after that the number of comments that you can do will eventually and gradually increase. So we built an Alpeca bot on Reddit and a Kuala bot on Twitter. So these are some of the comments that we got. So for Twitter we got one of the government saying that we need to keep on promoting these gorgeous freshest animals as you know that Kuala are getting more extent because of the latest fires in Australia, Australian forest fires. And also Alpeca, for Alpeca bot we got a lot of messages saying that we love the bot and we are so happy to have it. Even one of the users even proposed to the Alpeca bot to hand. So are you guys interested to build your own bot now? So each social media has their own API which we can use to interact with the network. So Reddit's official API is prompt and we can use it, we can use Python to interact with, to write the code and interact with the Reddit. So initially there will be some authentication needed which will include the client ID and the client string. Sohan will explain on much more detail about it in a while. So yeah, similarly for Twitter we have Pipe. So Pipe is not an official API of Twitter but it's a wrapper to be official one and it's much more easier to use. So we will be using that as well. Now Sohan will give us a demo on how can we build our own bot. Thank you actually. So if you can access this link, it will have a few overlap notebooks that will have the code for all the bots that we will be building. So it's tinyurl.com slash pos dash asia dash bot. So everyone get ready. So once you open the link you will find a few overlap notebooks. The first one we will be looking at is this notebook which is Reddit body full. So first what we will do is we will show you a overview of the whole bot and once we get an idea of the whole overview then we can start building the bot. So the first thing we need to do is install cloud. So you can do that by using this link. Desclamatory mark here just shows that it will run on the shell. And then since we are using Python so we have to do pip install. So I hope everyone is familiar with Jupyter notebooks. You don't have to write the code now. I will show you the code later on. This is just like an overview. After that we have to import some of the packages we need. So we will import more and time and time. So what kind of works like this? It first checks all of the comments and every time it finds a comment with alpaca it will fetch a fact from a fact file. And then it will reply to that comment with the fact. So this is the function that gets the fact. So it chooses a random fact from a list of file which contains a unique fact in each line. After that it just fills in the fact in the text which also contains info of the bot and the code. There is also a link where you can read that. And so once all of that is done it will return the text. The next function we have to create is a get comments function which will get all the comments. So how this works is we first need to call a top level API from Reddit which returns all the supplements. After that we need to stream comments from all the supplements which we do in this line. So in this folder what's happening is every time this folder finds a list it will fetch a new comment from Reddit. So we also need to check whether the comment author is the bot itself because we know how to keep replying to the same bot. So that's why we check if the comment author is alpaca bot. And if it is then we just continue and continue on to the next iteration. If it's not then we check whether the string alpaca is present in the comment body. And if it is then it just calls another function that replies to the comment. So this is the reply function and basically what it does is it takes the comment and calls the reply function. And so it replies with the fact that we get from the get plan function. And finally over here we have to first initialize an object of Reddit. We do that by specifying our own client and client secret and also the username of the bot and the password. So I'll show you later on how you can actually access all of these. And yeah so we do all of this in a value because we want the bot to keep them authentic. So yeah now that you have an idea of the code overview let's actually create our own bot. So for that you'll have to open the reddit.net. And what this notebook basically contains is it contains some of the skeleton code. But it also contains some to-dos that you will have to fill in. So yeah so the first thing that we have to do is install browser. This is the text. I think you want me to zoom in. Oh yeah sure. So this is the link. So yeah to create a new code cell just click the plus code button here. If you need a code cell if not you can just directly run this way by either clicking the play button here or pressing shift and then. So clicking the play button here will start to install any issues. Yeah any issues in this step. Sure. Once you go to the you are you just open the reddit.net what it says I think. All right. So the Jupyter so the file is read only. So all you have to do is kind of copy it into your own drive and then start editing. So yeah just so running this first cell with install the data in the package. Right so the next step is to import. And if you need any other packages you can import it later on. So the next step will be to actually get facts. So how we will do that is. Is there a new span for this because it's behind the time. Can I keep it like this? Yeah. I guess you should be. When you talk to you otherwise you want to go into the video because they make a problem. You want to try something else. And you don't need to get the audio. Hello business. I think it should be fine. Yeah. Okay. So the first thing we need to do is actually get a pack from the time. So if you go back to the. So if you go back to the. The main folder you'll see a file called alpaca packs. If you want to build a bot for alpaca as you can use this same file. Or even if you want to build a bot for another animal of your own that. You can just create a file with your own one. So how you can. Upload a fact is. Just download the file. Save it. And then click upload from here. So the first thing we need to do is actually open the file so we can open the file by. And call it by the pilot. Again, like you don't have to use the same file.  So the next thing you want to do is actually create a list of all the. Sentences of all the lines in the fight. So to do that, you know, just write list. And then. Grab the open part of the list. Awesome. Finally, the next thing we have to do is select a random item from that list. So to do that, we'll use the random package and random dot choice. Followed by the list will actually give us that. So we're using a package random here. So you have to import it and be able to. So now that we have a tax, we can. We can create a text that it will reply. So I'm using abstinence here and what abstinence actually does is. If you if you use curly braces with a variable inside, then it will replace that that with the actual variable battle. So in this case, what it will do is it will just return a fact, but that's not informative. So we can give some more information something like. Here is. Awesome. And yeah, so once you've done that, and again, you can make this as informative and as customized. But basically what this function will do is it will return a new fact every time you call it. Our next function that we have to finish is a function that will get comments from that. So the first thing we have to do is actually get an object from type subreddit. So to do that, we'll have to use the Reddit object, which we will create later on that subreddit. So Reddit subreddit will actually return an instance of subreddit. And inside the inside this, you can actually specify which subreddits you want to target. So for instance, if you want to target only a few specific subreddits, like say ask Reddit, then you can specify it like this. Or if you want to target all the subreddits, then just replace that text with all and it will target all the subreddits. The problem with targeting all the subreddits is that the volume of comments is so high in Reddit that it might miss a few comments. But I think that's fine because a lot of comments won't actually have that in the end. The next thing we have to do is stream comments. So for each subreddit, we have to stream the comments. And we also want to skip any existing comments that have already been commented. So yeah, just to end of repeat. So from here we'll get an instance of all the subreddits. With that we can then stream the comments. And what this does is it creates a generator. So every time you call it, it will return a new comment. And so what do we want to stream? We want to stream the comments. We also want to skip any existing comments. So we only want the latest comments. So that is what this line here does. So we'll create this later. That's the Reddit class and we'll create it later. So yeah, the next thing we want to do is actually check the comment author. And here you can give the name of an edit account that you'll be using. And actually before we actually move ahead, I think we should actually create an edit account. So if you have an edit account, then you can use that. Or if you don't and you want to create a new Reddit account, then this is how you do it. So yeah, go to reddit.com and then click sign up. And yeah, just specify an email ID and click next. So yeah, this is now where you can choose a username. So I just call it BossAsiaBot. Select the password. Check this. Sign up. Sign up. So yeah, great. So we created our own Reddit account. So yeah, we don't want to reply to our own comments. So over here just fill in the name of the Reddit account that you created. So yeah. I think we're using all the same ID. It's telling me that I'm trying it out too much. And I have to wait. Because we're all going out for the same ID. That means my ID is still there. Yeah, that's fine. It's also for a partner. So do you want me to wait till you guys wait? Yeah. And I think I can wait for like a minute or two. So. It's funny. Or what? Yeah. I will be. Awesome. So does everyone have an account created? Okay, great. So yeah, you don't want to keep replying to your own comments. So if the comment author is, you know, ourselves, then just continue. And if it is not, then. So yeah, you're using it. So if the author is not ourselves, then we want to actually check whether the animal string is present in the comment. So since I'm building a bot for alpacas, I'll just use alpaca in. So we want to check if it is present in the comment body. And also there'll be issues with capital cases and all of that. So let's just lower this comment. So what this will do is it'll check whether the word alpaca is present in the comment body. This is where I want to also mention something else, which is if you don't put spaces in here, then what that will do is it'll just search for the string alpaca in the whole comment body. And if there's any word that uses that has a substring alpaca in it, then it'll also catch that. And I've had a lot of funny experiences with this. So there's actually a trading platform, I think, that has the word alpaca in it. And there's this whole subreddit where they use this algorithm. And one of those subreddits is actually the cases where my bot commits a lot until they banned it. So yeah, that happens. There are also a few user names with alpaca in it. And so one of these guys used to get a lot of these comments until he finally, I guess, deleted his reddit account. A lot, I don't know. So yeah, but you know, it's also funny because you might be using this, but you might be using alpaca in one of your comments and you'll have a random bot reply to it, which a lot of people also like. And they also abuse that a lot because they just keep replying alpaca and they expect to get a new fact. But the problem there is, again, because there's so many comments that come in reddit, it doesn't pick up all of the comments. And so people actually use started getting angry about the fact that the bot was not replying to their comments. And there was nothing really I could do to fix that just because I can't really go faster than how the reddit API responds. So basically this is what I did and this is how you can turn a bug into a feature basically. So if you look at the reply text that you get when you call the bot, it actually has like the last name is something like this. So if you don't, you know, you get a fact, if you think only alpaca word is, you get it. And the funny thing is, you know, after putting this line there, people stopped complaining because they thought that, you know, there was like something, I don't know. Yeah, there was an algorithm behind that checks whether the bot replies to your comment or not. But actually then there isn't. It's just a reddit API. So that's how you turn a bug into a feature. Yeah, so basically if there is alpaca in the comment body, then we want to reply. So there's a function down here that's reply alpaca. So yeah, we'll just call that and we have to pass the comment. Awesome. Yeah, that's it. So yeah, we are done with this function. So any problems are down still here. The next part is where we have to reply to the comment. So again, like reddit API is actually very simple. So all you have to do is comment dot reply. And then we want to reply with the fact that we get from the compact function. And if you want to like print out whether you know it actually replied or not. So you can like print something like reddit to comment with reddit comment dot ID. Awesome. So now this function is also done. Finally, we have to just fill in our client ID and client secret here. So how you can get that is going to this site here. So if you come here, you can see a button called are you a developer, create an app. So yeah, just click this link here. And so this is the developer page where you can register an app. So yeah, click that button and give it a name. And this name can be anything. We are running a script. So you'll have to select script here and give it a, you know, meaningful description. So in the about URL, you can, you can just give any URL. So, you know, either give your LinkedIn URL or something. I'll just give my site. Yes. Fill this in with your own site or something. You can use your LinkedIn link here also. So once you're done with that, just click create app. So once you've done that, you'll get a page like this. So this random string here, this is your client ID. So copy that and put it here. So I'll just go back. This string here is going to be your client ID. The client secret is this string. You can place that here. User agent is basically a small string that you can specify to help let its engineering team or development team to help debug.  In the username, specify the username that you selected or that you created. So if you forgot your username, you can find it here. Sorry. Oh. In one of the new students, you dropped an M in college. The one before. We applied to college before. Yeah. So college was before. I'm using an M. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And yeah, finally in the password tab, just provide your password. And yeah, so once you're done with that, just run all the cells by clicking restart and run all in one thing. So yeah, so your bot is now running. I'll just see if I can actually trigger it. So the best way to trigger it is to go into if you're using the reddit app, just go into popular and click new posts. And just, you know, randomly just select a random post and comment something on it. So you might want to do it for a few different posts because, like I said, you know, oftentimes it misses some of the comments because of the huge volume of comments. Yeah, so you can see, right? It actually replied to a comment. And let me see if I can actually find that comment. Yeah. So that's what it looks like. How did you trigger that? Oh, yeah. So to trigger it just if you're using the website and again, you can use the company used to create the bot. But yeah, just go to all, sort by new and select a random, you know, comment. Select a random post, click comment and just comment. Or whatever. What bot did you create? Which animal did you create? You did it. My question is, why should I be triggered by your comment, right? Yeah. So that's one of the issues which is that since the volume of comments is huge. So yeah, it misses some of the comments. Yeah. That's why you have to kind of, also if you have created a new account then like Anjali mentioned, there's a rate limit where you can only comment once every 10 minutes. You get a message when you're posting it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let me see if I can, you know, trigger your comment. They're just spamming a random post. The comment has to be with you or with anyone. No, it can be anywhere. Or anywhere in the hot running, right? Anywhere in the hot running. But eventually what will happen is they'll start banning you from your subreddits because a lot of subreddits don't allow comments. And I'll show that in the next slide. It bans you whenever you do a comment, right? So it bans you whenever, like whenever the mods find out that it's a bot. Like it's a comment bot. If it doesn't commit and if the watch is silently like, you know, reads post or something, then the mods will do. It's not really banning you. It's like whoever administers. Yeah. Whoever administers that subreddit will stop you from connecting. So yeah, did anyone get a reply to any of the comments? No. Oh wait. I can't comment as the same user. If I comment with the same user, I cannot do it, right? Yeah. I have to do it with another account. With another account, yeah. So what about, like, did you create the bot with another animal or different? Yeah. Okay. And what's the trigger word? The street report. Does that have any spaces? No. And no capital? Yes. Okay, so do you want me to move on or do you want to like test out the problem? No. I'm just gonna move on to the next one. Okay. There are so many options. I have to go right here. There are many options. Maybe there's another option for it. Yeah. So, that was the reddit bottom, the next bot that I wanted to show you was bot or Twitter and yeah, I'll just show you like the completed bot file and you can go back and try building a bot on your own. So yeah, so we'll input tp and before this step you want to actually install it, so you can do that by doing install and yeah, the next step is that you have to actually authorize your bot. So to authorize your bot you'll have to go into your Twitter developer account. So yeah, just go to Twitter developers and go to your dashboard, all right, yeah. So yeah, just under your user account you'll find this apps option over there you can create a new app. So give your app a name and all of this stuff and after that you will get your client secrets and your client IDs. So once you have that you will have to create a function that you get back and this function is again similar to the last function that we use but here you have to keep in mind that Twitter has a character limit of I think 280 characters. So whatever fact and text you have it has to always be less than 280, otherwise it just won't come. The next thing you have to do is create a class and this class has to be an instance of tp.streamlistener and it needs to have three functions. Actually it needs to have just the on status functions but it's good to have these two as well. But the on status function will do is, so status will give you an instance of the tweet that it receives and you just have to check a few stuff like if it's a retweet, if it is you don't want to kind of keep tweeting over a retweet and some other stuff. So yeah you also don't want to reply to like you don't want to reply to a reply to a tweet. So to check all of that so you just have to check whether all of these things are and finally, so api is something that we created over here so you have to use that api and update status will basically like beat up something and yeah you can specify the status with the screen name and the path and so on error and on timeout just checks whether like you know the api encompass some error or there's some timeout in the api and if it is we just want to return true because we wanted to keep it adding more people stuff and yeah finally to start this stream you have to like run these just this is kind of like a boiler bit pool and yeah so how do you actually track animals so to do that you have to use this dot filter function and here you can like track for the streams so just give a list of all the strings that you want to track so yeah so once you know you have that then and you run it then your bot will be in the track. One thing about Twitter though is that it actually it's really good at identifying bots unlike Reddit and so I've had you know like lots of instances where it kind of either doesn't show the beat because it's a bot or it just kind of straight out just blocks the bottom and one way to kind of fix that is so the bot checks for repeating strings so basically I have two strings here that I'm generating so one is an intro stream which is like they can just say something like hello I'm koala bot or something like that and that's also randomly selected from a list of a bunch of introductions and the fact is also randomly selected so that just ensures that it's not tweeting the same thing again and again and another thing that Twitter also does is if your account is tweeting a lot then it will also block it so it's good to kind of limit how often you're tweeting but again that depends on the animal you're tracking so koalas are like kind of tweeted about a lot and like in 10 minutes it gets like 40 tweets and replies to 40 tweets and then Twitter just blocks it so one thing you could do here is just generate a random number and every time that number is saying you know less than 30 then you tweet so that means it will be 30% of the time or you know like you can play around with that number and see what works so yeah so that's the whole Twitter bot and if you go back to here you'll actually find there's a Twitter bot the exercise I like to do and there you can try building a one for your own yeah so one last thing that I wanted to show was like so this is like a survey I did on net it is this visible or do you want me to do something you can show me so we start this thing Basically, this was like a daily survey that I did. The blue line shows the number of daily comments that I commented on, and the red line shows the number of daily uploads that I used to get. And again, this is just for the first 30 days right now. It's much larger. So yeah, so you can see like just after the first day, people started figuring out that it's a bot and they started banning it. So on the second day I got banned from like four subreddits, and the next day there was like three subreddits banned, and yeah. But yeah, there's also some really nice stuff. So like, I got a silver over here on, I think the first 10 days, and yeah, later on I got gold awards and a bunch of other awards also. Someone actually also donated, so they donated $4, which was also pretty cool that helped me keep the water running. And yeah, if you're wondering where you can keep the water running on Google Cloud Compute, so it's like GCP. It has like this VM called F1 micro, and that's free. It's just one code, but it's good enough to run like two, three months at the same time. So yeah, so you can just use that to keep your water running for free. And yeah, this is also taken on by subreddits. And it involved with, I think it's a game, a gaming subreddit, and not surely why it has a huge number of commits, but it does. There's also late-stage capitalism, and this is where there was that analysis tool called Alpaca something, and people kept referring to it, and so that's why this has a huge number of comments also. Yeah, and another thing you can also kind of infer from this is even though the number of comments here is quite, sorry, even though the number of comments that I used to give in Rimworld is kind of like the fourth most, but it has the most outputs, and I think that just shows that Rimworld is kind of like a daily open and accepting community. And that's kind of nice. So yeah, those are basically some of the things that I kind of learned from running bots, yeah. And so yeah, I'll give this back to you. Thank you so much for the detailed workshop. So now let's do our part of helping endangered species. So like Alpaca, there are many other endangered animals while animals across the world. So you can also set up a PayPal account or have a domain button. So as Soha mentioned, we got some donations through it. So even you can do that, and we can donate it to the World Wide Fund for Nature, which can help us to conserve more of the endangered species. What are you waiting for? Let's start our weekend by building bots. These are our details if you contact us anytime. So yeah, so yeah, so this is where you can contact us and this QR code, it has like a link where you can get feedback, yeah. Feedback is really appreciated. It helps us improve, you know, how we present and how we conduct workshops. And yeah, it's anonymous, so, you know, you need whatever you say, we won't know who's saying it. And finally, if you want link links to all the slides and stuff, you can get it at the end of the feedback. Awesome, thank you. Thank you for having me, thank you. Any questions? Have you used this for any other bots so far? Yeah, so right now there's like two bots I'm running. One is Alpacabot on Reddit and another one is KoalaBot on Twitter. I also have, I just like creating bots, so I have a bunch of other bots. I have bots on Facebook that just, so for instance, I had this friend who used to put a really cringy profile pics and it used to just go and come in nice pic near every time he used to put up, you know, change his profile pic.  But yeah, so I had a bot for that. I also had another bot, so I don't know if you know this guy called DJ Khalid, and he just says another one, he has this kind of catchphrase. So I had another bot on Twitter and whenever my, I used to work before this, whenever my boss used to tweet something, it just used to come into another one, like whenever he tweeted something.  Sorry, that are also fun, but also help animals and do something, any other questions? Yeah. How, what is the process, like once you get this Google Cloud thing, you want to deploy that into the Google Cloud, you set up the instance, and then. Yeah, so you can't actually deploy it on Google Cloud because Google Cloud instances are only present for like 12 hours, so after that the bot will like stop running. So what you can do is go into Google Cloud, Google Cloud Platform and create a VM. And they have this preset VM called F1 Micro, which is free, so it's like a very bare minimum of instance with just one CPU and I think 10 GB of memory, but that's like more than enough to run bots. Basically the bottleneck in running bots is not how much compute you have, because we're not doing any computing tests in the past. But it's how fast your internet is, because the faster your internet is, the faster it can get on the movie comments. So, and then GCP has pretty fast internet, so yeah, just deploy it on GCP and keep it running. Yeah, for the deployment, do you copy everything into a Python file and then upload it? Yeah, so you can just directly copy everything to a Python file and just copy all the text in all the cells and create a Python file and just do a running thing. So you'll have to keep it persistent and to keep it persistent, you can use something like Tmux or you can use, I don't know, Docker or something. Yeah, you keep it around. Otherwise, like if you don't use that, then as soon as you exit out of the shell, whatever you're running, you'll stop there. And how much is the cost of the instance? Oh, it's free. Oh. Yeah, so that F1 Micro is free. Okay.  So yeah, it's kind of free. Is it? How many, how many... You can just create one of those. Oh, one of those for free? Yeah. I'm not sure. I haven't really had the need to create more instances because just that one instance is enough to run through three boxes. Oh, you ran all the boxes? Yeah, that one instance, yeah. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.