Before the Apple Arcade exclusive Sonic Dream Team had even released, many early players were already calling it one of the best Sonic games of modern times. As it stands, it is probably one of, if not the best Sonic game released in 2023, and considering the year that Sonic has had, that is saying something. This year we've had Sonic Frontiers DLC, Sonic Origins Plus, Sonic Prime Dash, Sonic Superstars, and the wonderful murder of Sonic the Hedgehog in addition to Sonic Dream Team. So for Sonic fans, we've had a lot of good stuff. For a relatively small budget mobile title to shine as brightly as it does, Sonic Dream Team clearly does something right. The question is, what is it doing that very few other Sonic games have done over the past 20 to 30 years? Apologies, by the way, for another video in this format. It is not my favourite, but it's been such a ridiculously busy month slash year that if the video is not made like this, then it's just not going to be made. And also that's why I'm just like literally filming with the backdrop from some of the videos that I do for my day job, because I do not have the space or the time to rearrange the lights and get things set up. Otherwise, I hope that everybody's just okay with that. What's your message for the universe? Hello, I'm still here for you soon. Sorry. So I was having a conversation with some friends in the immediate aftermath of Sonic Dream Team being released, and I said something which I have said before and is a little bit capricious, but I said that at this point I think that Sonic Team are the only people on planet Earth who don't know how to make a Sonic game.  And in response to that, one of my friends, Tessnakerer, be sure to check his channel out, said, quote, they do know how to make a Sonic game. The issue is they don't know how to make one twice. And that's kind of the point. That there, that is what Sonic Dream Team does that no other Sonic game recently has done. They have made a successful sequel that uses ideas from previous Sonic games, but doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, Sonic Team has developed this reputation that every few years they try to dramatically shake things up for Sonic, and in doing so they start again from scratch. And in doing so, they kind of get rid of all of the stuff that they were building upon. And again, they're left with things that are maybe half thought out or that need more development. It's not uncommon to get to the end of a Sonic game and think to yourself, well, that was all right. There was some pretty good concepts in there. It'll be interesting to see what they do next with this. And then what they do next with this is something completely unrelated entirely. So you had the 2D stuff, and then there's Sonic 3D Blast, but then there was the adventure games, and then there's Sonic Heroes, and then there's Shadow of the Hedgehog, and then there's Sonic 06, and then there's Sonic Boom is in there somewhere, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic and the Secret Rings. All of these games do something very different with Sonic, and none of them really flow from one to the other. Like the ideas that really work in one game are not then carried on into the next. And then in fairness, we did get quite a long stretch where Modern Sonic was all focused on the boost with the Hedgehog engine, all very, very similar in terms of the Sonic gameplay. So you have Unleashed, and you've got colors, and you've got generations. All of these games that feel more or less the same, and that allowed Sonic to for a little while build upon things that featured in previous games, and take out elements that didn't work quite as well, and then add in new things to kind of experiment with the formula. But even with this locked-in formula, it hasn't always felt like Sonic Team understands why certain things are popular in their games. The classic example being Classic Sonic, who was thrown into Sonic Forces because he was popular in Sonic generations, even though it doesn't quite fit the game, and even though the way that Sonic controls in these segments of Sonic Forces doesn't quite feel right either. I think the challenge for Sonic Team for quite a while now has been trying to figure out which of their ideas are actually worth pursuing further. And sometimes they pick the right things, and sometimes they get the wrong end of the stick when something ends up being very popular, or they just end up dropping a mechanic that people enjoy, but that doesn't quite gel with whatever they have in their head that they want to do next. They also, and I know I'm going to get comments for saying this again, but I'm going to say it again anyway, they also do have a tendency to borrow ideas from Zelda games, or at least that's how it feels, because they always seem to be something in these Sonic games that feels reminiscent of something that Zelda did three or four years prior. At the moment we're at a point where Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka insists that Sonic Frontiers is the future of the Sonic franchise, that we're going to be getting more wide open zone games where you can wander around a bit more, you have a bit more freedom to explore, and in that you can soak up the atmosphere, you can bounce off different springs, you can grind on some rails, you can just kind of figure things out for yourself. As far as the direction for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise may go, that's not the worst thing that they could possibly have decided on, but at the same time we're being told yet again that this is the foundation and that the next game is going to build off of these things, and we have yet to see what they actually decide to keep and what they decide to lose from that game. At a time then when Sonic the Hedgehog is going more open world, Sonic Dream Team feels like a little bit of a throwback, or indeed a lot of a throwback, because all of the big ideas from this game have appeared in previous Sonic the Hedgehog titles, both from Classic Sonic, Modern Sonic, from the adventure games, from all of the different eras of Sonic, there's a little bit of Sonic Lost World in there which is just interesting to see. All of these ideas kind of mushed around, turned into something new, as they've created a game that builds on basically everything that Sonic is, rather than trying to pick one specific direction, and indeed rather than trying to forge a new path, looking at what worked before and how it can be updated and modernized, and made to fit with everything else. What's interesting about this approach is that not only does it feel fresh and original to have a Sonic game that is using a lot of ideas, but using them very well, it also retroactively makes some of these ideas feel more coherent as a result. It makes you feel like, oh yes, going back to these games, it does make more sense, because here's what they could have been, and what they were building towards. Here's the baby steps that have then formed Sonic Dream Team. And that's brilliant, because it's always nice to have something which not only is great in its own right, but also makes everything else around it better as well. Now, Sonic Dream Team does not have a Sonic Frontiers-sized budget. That is very clear right from the start. Things open with the delightful 2D hand-drawn animated opening cutscene, and then we get a series of still images. It feels like a comic strip that has been made using the 3D character models from the game, which is essentially the cheapest and the quickest and the easiest way that you could possibly have an intro story for this type of game. And indeed, all of the cutscenes of the game play out in a similar fashion, just a series of still images. I think that's brilliant. I think that's a very good choice on the part of Sega Hard Light, because they had a limited budget, and they decided to focus on the things that matter, and then present the story in a way where it does the job, but they're aware that most people are hitting the skip button anyway. I say this, having been a huge fan of the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog primarily because it is very much a visual novel. So it's not that I'm saying that I don't like story in Sonic games. I definitely do when there's a context and a reason for them, but in a game like Sonic Dream Team, the point is to get to the action as quickly as possible, and if they've decided to cut corners on the storytelling in order to focus on the gameplay itself, I think that's the right way around to do things. Speaking of gameplay, the games that Dream Team reminds me the most of are the Sonic Adventure titles. There's a very heavy emphasis on grinding on rails, the light speed dash makes an appearance for the first time in a very long time, and when knuckles and rues climb up walls, they feel exactly the same as they did in Sonic Adventure. There's also a game mode where you have to search the level for gems, which look identical to pieces of the Master Emerald, albeit in a different color from the Sonic Adventure games. Things are spiced up a little bit more with Tails and Cream and how they fly in this game. It feels very different to Sonic Adventure and completely different to how Tails feels in Sonic Adventure 2, and I think this may be the weakest part of the controls of the game. I don't think that I love flying as either of these characters, and considering that this is the largest departure from anything else in a previous Sonic game, it's interesting to note that the thing that they've tried that's new is the thing that maybe doesn't quite work as well. Otherwise, everything here feels like pieces of other Sonic games that have been brought together into a unified whole for the first time. I'm generally more a fan of 2D Sonic games than 3D Sonic games, and what I think this does really well is bring along some of the level design from a 2D Sonic game into the third dimension for the first time. Even all the way back with the Adventure games, a lot of Sonic levels in particular in Sonic Adventure games are very linear in 3D. You just follow the prescribed path and there's not a lot of deviation and you don't get a lot of choice about how exactly you approach a level. Compare this with a 2D Sonic game where the whole point of the level design is that you can either go up, you can go down. There are various different paths that you can take along the way and different secrets to discover and things to explore with different characters that then bring out different parts of the level. This slightly more varied element of Sonic level design is perfect in Dream Team. You have the choice in a lot of levels whether you want to approach it as Sonic or as Knuckles or as Tails or as their female counterparts and you have the choice yourself as to how you go about that. Do you want to make use of the Lightspeed dash here? Do you want to fly? Do you want to glide over to something and climb up a wall? It's all fairly open and doing it in different ways will take you through the level in a different progression and will also give you the opportunity to explore at your leisure. There are of course some levels that you are locked in with a particular character and when you've got some of the more free and the open levels where you're exploring to find gems there are certain points in the level that can only be reached by one of these characters. You've got the freedom to change character at any point which is a very welcome inclusion but this idea of being able to explore the same one level with multiple different characters who control in a different way is strangely absent from a lot of 3D Sonic games and it works perfectly here. On the subject of multiple characters I do like that things have been very much streamlined here so you have the three core male heroes that we're all familiar with Sonic and Tails and Knuckles and then you've got three female counterparts for them who will control in exactly the same way Amy and Rouge and Cream. It does mean that Amy has yet another different control style and she's collected more than a few just this year alone but at the same time it's wonderful to see this level of inclusion this is something that I personally have been fighting for for a very long time I've been very vocal about wanting to see Amy in more games and seeing Cream back as well is just wonderful it's really brilliant and I'm very grateful that they've gone about it with this way. One thing I also appreciate is that in bringing along all of these old ideas from previous Sonic games they haven't just imported them wholesale they have tweaked them they have altered them to make them feel a little bit more comfortable. There are a lot of moments in Dream Team where I think I'm about to hurtle off a ledge because I've made a slight mistake or miscalculated a jump and the game just kind of plops me where it knows that I was trying to go. This is particularly true around grinding on rails where the game says ah you press the button prompt vaguely near the rail we'll just put you on the rail that's what you were aiming for anyway and it's also true of the lightspeed dash there's a moment of panic almost every time I use the lightspeed dash because I'm not quite sure if it's going to work and generally it does but there is just that second of me thinking oh no did I get it right and part of that is probably a hangover from the adventure games but also part of it as I feel there might just be something in the way that the game is presented where it just it triggers something in me that I'm a little bit concerned but generally it works out fairly well. I think as I progressed through the game they got to more and more points where obviously the difficulty scaled up and I was struggling a little bit more and accidental deaths became slightly more common but at the same time I've never felt like I've been cheated in this particular Sonic game which I have definitely in other games in the past it always feels like the game is fair and where I've made a mistake it's generally my fault the exception to that is the camera the camera in this game sometimes decides that it doesn't want to do what I want it to and it will just do its own thing it's a bit frustrating at times but as a Sonic fan I'm very well aware of how difficult cameras are to get right with this particular speed-based gameplay style and as a result I'm willing to overlook its peculiar quirks certainly for the most part I feel like the game is tremendously well polished it does an excellent job of having a limited scope and of not attempting to exceed that or kind of go further and stretch further than it could do this is a game that knows its limits well and in the Sonic franchise that's not always the case so I applaud it where I see it indeed one of the big criticisms I've seen of this game and it's not really a criticism anyway is it is people saying I wish this game were longer it's quite a short ride and that is absolutely true and I don't think that that is a bad thing because there have been a lot of Sonic games this year and there have been Sonic games indeed for people who love all different types of Sonic experiences and if you want a big long sprawling Sonic game Frontiers still exists I find that the focused tight game that is Sonic Dream Team is a lot more to my personal liking because I know that it's not wasting my time this is not to say that Sonic Frontiers necessarily wastes the player's time but it is to say that just sometimes games can feel the need to feature unnecessary fetch quests or unnecessary challenges or kind of just string things on for a little bit longer for the sake of extending the run time one game that I do feel does this in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is Sonic Colors where I breeze through the first few levels I'm having a great time and then suddenly I'm stuck in some awkward really fiddly platforming stages that don't need to be there they're really clearly just there to make sure that I've slowed down and play the game for more than two hours without finishing it Sonic Dream Team does not mind if you play for two hours and finish the entire thing and in that way I think it reminds me a lot of classic Sonic games where you can finish any of them in about half an hour if you push through that's absolutely not a bad thing given the number of times that I return to classic Sonic games all killer, no filler considering that limited budget I do think that the way Sonic Dream Team is structured really works to its favor so you have a level and then you've got five challenges within that level but all of them feel appropriate none of them feel like they're deliberately slow or clunky or that they're trying to get you to do things that the game is not designed for you've got various challenges of getting to a goal you've got some speed trials you've got some exploration trials they all work and none of them linger or overstay their welcome you'll quickly move on to the next thing boss fights have been a contentious subject in Sonic the Hedgehog games this year so I think that Sonic Dream Team does a very wise thing the first boss fight is clearly just copying Super Mario Odyssey and there's nothing wrong with that because if it works it works subsequent boss fights can be a little bit more fiddly but the fact that there is no live system and the fact that you don't have to start a boss fight all over again if you die means that this is a lot more enjoyable than the boss fights in certain other Sonic games from this year mentioning no names all in all Sonic Dream Team works for me personally because it is a culmination of all of the wonderful things that I have loved in previous Sonic games it is put together in a package that is very well polished that doesn't overstay its welcome that just works as a coherent game in a way that a lot of Sonic Team Sonic games don't necessarily always land is it my favourite Sonic game of the year I really liked the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog so I'm probably going to say that that is my absolute favourite Sonic game of the year and quite possibly my favourite game of the year in general because I just thought it was whimsical fun and I really enjoyed the art and the writing and the whole experience but certainly as a favourite Sonic game like actual Sonic game with actual Sonic gameplay this might just be it not just for this year but for a long time like what's the I guess it was mania was the last time that I enjoyed a Sonic game where you play Sonic gameplay this much sorry if that sounds a little bit convoluted with me separating out the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog into its own little bubble but I hope that you can understand why I'm doing that and why that feels like a very different thing to like a proper Sonic game where you run and jump and collect rings I mean yes you collect rings but you get the point so then yeah Dream Team the best Sonic game that I've played since Sonic Mania not including the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog but at the same time I'm aware that this game is locked on a certain device it is exclusive to Apple Arcade which means that if you don't own an Apple product you can't play the game and with that being the case I would not necessarily say that this game alone is worth the price of admission if you need to buy an iPad or an iPhone to play it one hopes that eventually it will be ported to other systems but even if that never happens there are so many other Sonic games out just this year alone that I feel like there are other games that you can play and you don't necessarily need this one in your life so yes I really enjoyed it yes I think that you will really enjoy it too but no if you can't play it easily I don't think that you should go out of your way to do so at the end of the day there are always more games out there this is true now more than ever there are so so many really wonderful games and it's fantastic that we have a Sonic game that for me feels like it really pulls everything together and makes something coherent out of so many disparate ideas but at the same time if you can't play this you can play something else that is also brilliant the moral of this story is that creativity is a messy process you won't necessarily nail things first time and you might be inclined to try a bunch of different approaches and different techniques along the way to finding the right thing for you but as you're going through this journey every not quite achieved goal every slight misstep every imperfect project does lead you to develop a greater sense of yourself and by the time you're finished everything along that journey even and indeed especially the ways in which you failed help to make you better and make you stronger and make you the more fulfilled person that you can be Sonic Dream Team proves this and hopefully whatever comes next will build on that and I mean that does go some way to explaining the tumultuous journey that this channel has had in the past 12 months as well which is still a work in progress all I can do is my best hello everyone I do really miss talking to you and I hope I get too soon bye that makes it sound like I'm like forcing you off it


Words at war presents, here is your war by Ernie Pyle. I haven't written anything about the big picture of the war because I don't know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worms eye view.  Long, darkened convoys in the middle of the night. Silent men wandering down the hill from battle. Chow lines and foxholes and burning tanks. In the rustle of high-flown shells. Jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rows. Sea rations and cactus patches. Blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents.  Laughter and anger and wine and lovely flowers. And constant cussing. And graves and graves and graves. This is our war. And we'll carry it with us as we go from one battlefield to another until it is all over. Leaving some of us behind and every beach in every field.  When we leave here for the next chore, there is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses. Except perhaps to pause and murmur. Thanks, pal. Words at war, brought to you by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council on Books in War Time, brings you another in this series of radio adaptations of outstanding war books. Tonight, stories of the American campaign in North Africa as reported in the new book, Here is Your War, by the famous correspondent, Ernie Pyle. Soon after the first American troops landed in North Africa, millions of Americans here at home came to know for the first time a man named Ernie Pyle. Millions had known him, of course, in peacetime for his stories of the little things and the interesting people he met on his wanderings around the United States. But now, his dispatches from North Africa brought him a vastly wider audience of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and sweethearts who wanted to know what was happening to their soldier. Ernie Pyle told them, for Ernie, a slight friendly fellow of 40 years and about 140 pounds, had appointed himself the biographer of the GI soldier. He lived with his soldier, spent furloughs with him, ate and slept with him in the field and followed him into battle and wrote about him for the folks back home. These are some of the stories he has written in the words of Ernie Pyle. We stood at the rail about troopship at an English port and watched the troops march aboard. They came through the rain heavily laden, steel helmets, overcoats, carrying rifles and huge packs and rumors about where they were going. You got any idea, Ernie? About what, Sergeant? About where we're going. No, they didn't tell me. I got an idea. Maybe we're going to Russia. I don't figure it that way, Sergeant. No? How do you figure it, Corporal? Well, I figure it's Iceland. No, they don't need any more troops in Iceland. What do you say, Ernie? I shouldn't think so, Sergeant. Hey, look, Mr. Pyle, maybe we're going back to America, huh? Say, are you nuts? It ain't impossible. Listen, you think they ship us all the way over here just to ship us back again? You're crazy. Hey, you soldier! Oh, me? No, they didn't tell me. I got an idea. Hey, you soldier! Oh, me? Yes, Sergeant? Well, men were going off to war. They carried odd things aboard. Some had books in their hands. Some carried violin or banjo cases.  And one I found out later carried two puppies under his shirt. What do you mean, Sergeant? What dog? The British, ours was a British ship, a finicky about allowing dogs and troop transports. All dogs were ordered turned in.  They came aboard silently, most of them. Now and then one would catch sight of somebody and knew what the rail and there would be a shout. It was a thrilling sight. And a sad sight too, in a way, to see them marching in endless numbers up the steep gangway to be swallowed up by the great ship. After some time out, rumour-mongering was rife again. And one officer made up a rumour to the effect that we were going to Casablanca and timed it to see just how long it would take to circle the ship. It came back to him as cold packed right from the bridge in just half an hour. I believe you could take any thousand soldiers in our army and out of them get many good entertainers. From the troops aboard our ship, they dug up an accordionist, a dancer and a cowboy singer. They rehearsed every afternoon and the big night came a couple of evenings before we got to Gibraldo. They put on two shows that night for the enlisted men only. But word got around and the officers and nurses wanted to see it. So the night we were approaching Gibraldo, they cleaned it up some and put it on again. It was terrific. There was genuine talent in it. But the hero of the evening was a hairy corporal, Joe Kamita Brooklyn, who did a stripped tee. Joe twirled and stripped. Twirled and stripped. And then when he was down to his long heavy GI underwear, he swung to the front of the stage, lifted his veil and kissed the front row colonel right on the top of his bald head. The show was pretty good. There was something more to it than just that. There was the knowledge deep in everybody's mind that this was our night of danger. The video had just brought word that Germany's entire U-boat pack was concentrated in the approaches to Gibraldo. More than 50 submarines were said to be waiting for us. I doubt that there was a soul aboard who expected the night to pass without a tank. Mr. Kyle? Yes, Major? It's a wonderful thing. Those boys putting on that show up there in the war like galley slaves down in the hole. When you think of some people at home squawking their heads off, because they've got to do without little things, that makes my blood boil. Outside, the air was warm and the moon laid a brilliant sheen across the water. By its very gentleness, the night seemed inclusion with the evil that lay beneath the waters. It was a perfect night for romance. Or for death. We went through with laughter, music, and a song. Finally, we reached our port. Slowly and intricately, like twine from a hidden ball, the ships poured us onto the docks in long brown lines. We lined up and marched away. Some of us marched three miles, some of us 20 miles. We marched at first galley and finally with great weariness. But always with a feeling that at last we were beginning the final series of marches that would lead us home again. Home. The one really profound goal that obsesses every American marching on foreign soil. In due time, our first taste of action. Each man was issued three bars of D. ration chocolate and up to last one day, he took no other food. He carried two canteens of water instead of the usual one. In the day that followed, he lived in a way that is inconceivable to anyone who hasn't experienced it. He walked and fought all night without sleep. Next day he huddled in a foxhole or hidden fields of green knee-high wheat. The German felt for him continually with his artillery. He frankly didn't like it much. I wish it was night. Won't be any picnic tonight. Anything's better than just laying here, listening to that dog on artillery.   That's what I wish.  A man can't see a shell unless he's standing near the gun when it's fired. But it's rushed through the air, makes such a loud sound. You wouldn't believe it, couldn't be seen. Some shells whine. Others make a kind of toneless rustle. It's hard to describe. The nearest I can come to it is the sound of jerking a stick through water. Some apparently defective shells got out of shape and made queer noises. I remember one that sounded like a locomotive popping hard at 40 miles an hour.   You're crazy. We were shot at by 88s, 47s, machine guns, tanks. And despite our own air superiority, we would dive bomb lots of times. But the Germans were always in such a hurry to get it over and get home that usually their aim was bad and the bombs fell harmlessly in open spaces. Of course, you couldn't depend on that. But strangely enough, although there's nothing light-hearted about the imminence of death at the moment it's upon a man, sometimes it can seem very funny next morning. Say, I hear this one man who says he wasn't scared last night. Yeah, who's that such? I don't know.   Me?  As soon as those bombs started dropping, I started hunting up a chaplain. Boy, I needed some morale building. Actually, the reaction of American soldiers to their first bad bombings were exactly what you'd expected of them. They took it in a way to make you proud. Let's say there was a camp of 5,000 men and they went through a dive bombing and machine gun strafing. One man out of that 5,000 might break completely. 25 might lose their heads and run around foolishly. A couple of hundred would decide to change trenches in the middle of the bombing, forgetting that the safest place was the trench where they were in the beginning. But the 4,774 others would stay right in their trenches, thoroughly scared, but in full possession of themselves. And the moment it was over, they would be out with shovels and tools, helping to put out fires. Working as calmly as ever they did in their jobs at home. Speaking of home, the mail from home caught up with us now and then. There'd be long intervals without any mail at all. Then suddenly, an avalanche. Hey, look at Jablowski here. He's got 75 letters. Hey, Jablowski, how about let me read some? I didn't get nothing. Carmen, I see you drew something. I did, too. I noticed that a friend of mine is sending me a magazine subscription and a mimeographed letter describing a church festival in my hometown. Wonderful, isn't it? Well, better than nothing. Hey, listen to this one I got. A letter from a rubber company telling me I ought to conserve my time. Everybody felt really sorry for private first-class Jim Blake. Oh, my gosh, this is terrible. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What's the matter, Blake? You got all kinds of mail there. Sure, look at it. 50 letters. 50 letters from my wife. 50 letters from your wife? What's the matter with you? You ought to be jumping up and down. Hey, listen to the guy. He gets 50 letters from his wife and he's crabbing. Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. You don't get it. This is terrible. It's awful. It puts me in an awful jam. The guy gets 50 letters and he's squawking. I don't get it. Well, listen, here's what happened. See, I don't hear from my wife for three months. You see? She promised me she'll write me twice a week. Okay, I don't hear from her for three months. I get sour, see? I write her and tell her she's let me down. I tell her we're all washed up.  Hey, that's bad, Blake. And now I get 50 letters. The poor kid's been writing four letters a week. Only they just catch up with me. The poor kid, what am I gonna do? Gee, Blake, I don't know what to tell you. That's tough, Blake. But look, maybe she didn't get your letter about the divorce yet. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you could send her a cable and say it was just a gag. But those were rare respites where the battle would not wait. And battle meant the infantry. I love the infantry because they were the underdogs. They had no comforts and they learned to live without the necessities. And in the end, they were the guys without whom the battle of Africa could not have been won. The men were walking slowly dead weary. Every line of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion. On their shoulders, they carried heavy steel tripods, machine gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. There was an agony in your heart and you felt almost ashamed to look at them. They were just guys from Broadway and Main Street. Their world could never be known to you. But if you could have seen them just once, you'd know people were working back home. They never kept pace with those infantrymen in Tunisia. We talk sometimes during the louts. Talk about home mostly. When do you figure the war will be over, Ernie? I don't know. It's hard to say, Snip. This year, maybe? I hardly think so, Riley. I sure wish it was over. Maybe it will be over in 1944, Ernie. Maybe. Boy, I sure want to get home back there in Idaho where there's open country.  I don't care about hollering. I'd like to get back on my job. What was your job, Riley? I was kind of a carpenter, but my specialty was cabinet work. That's what I like. When a house is all done on the outside, I like to start inside and build cabinets and tables. I'm going to be a cabinet worker when I get back. What did you do, Snip? I've been making deliveries 80 miles a day. You know, sometimes I'd make as high as $60 a week on that bakery route. That's good money, Snip. I'd make that doing cabinet work. I might even make more than that. $60 a week would be okay for me. Of course, I don't plan on driving that bakery truck, especially. What do you plan on, Snip? Oh, I don't know. I'd do any number of things. There's lots of things to do in Idaho. It's a great place. Say, Ernie, do you like to hunt? Of course, over. Will you come hunting with me in South Carolina? Hey, you let me take your fishing before you do that. I'll show you some fishing that... Hey, hey, watch out! Say, you ever been deer hunting in South Carolina, Ernie? No, I haven't. Well, you know what they do to the first man to miss a deer? What's that round?  What for? I don't know. It's just a custom there. Boy, if I live through this, I'm going to do me some real fishing when I get on. War corsons, most people. Men live rough and talk rough. If they didn't toughen up inside, they simply wouldn't be able to take it. An officer friend of mine told me of an incident that touched him deeply. During a battle, he and a fellow officer came up to a tiny farmhouse. And just to be on the safe side, they called before entry. Anybody in there? Who's in there? Who's in there? I'm in here, and who wants to know? Oh, well, I'm Lieutenant Brown Sur, and this is Lieutenant Kruger. May we come in? The order, please. Captain, we won't be in your way. You won't be in my way. I'm heating up some rations. Hope you've got some of your own. Yes, we have, sir. May we throw our bedding down over here? Put it where you like. Thank you, sir. Good job for that man over there. Huh? Oh, I didn't see him, sir. Oh, he's wounded. He's dead. Sir, I happen to have this bottle here. Would you join us in a drink? What? Will you have a drink, sir? Drink?  I know, sir. Just what's here? Oh, thanks. War corsons, people. My own emotion seemed dead and crusty when presented with the tangibles of war. I found I could look on rows of fresh graves without a lump in my throat. Somehow I could look on mutilated bodies without flinching.  There were times when I felt I couldn't stand it and would have to leave. But in the fighting soldier, that phase of the war was behind. He was left behind after his first battle. His blood was out. He was fighting for his life and killing became as much a profession to him as writing was for me. He was truly at war. And yet, the same front-line soldier was quite a different fellow in the towns and villages. More often than not, he gave all his rations away to the scrawny Arab kids and then had to live on oranges and tangerines himself. The Arab kids were friendly and our soldiers weren't two days in a new place until every kid in town could say in English chocolate, chewing gum, okay and goodbye. Wait a minute, you guys. Wait. Anybody got any candy or gum? I haven't got a thing. I'm sorry, sonny. We're all out of gum and chocolate. Gee, we're mighty sorry, sonny. Well, hey, what are you crawling around in that dirt floor?  Dirty enough without crawling in it. On your feet, pal. Hey, wait a minute, Jack. What's the matter?  He has to crawl. He must crawl all over town like that. Chewing gum? Yeah. Yeah, chewing gum, sonny.   They got him some chewing gum, and more than that. They took this terribly crippled Arab back to their airdrome. They took the wheels off a battery carry and made a little wheel platform for the kid to lie on. Now he rolls along the streets instead of crawling in the field. And every soldier is his friend. Yes, war coarsens people, but it can't harden the hearts of American boys for all the killing they must do so that there'll be an end to killing. I don't think that any of us who have seen the mass cruelty of war can ever be cruel to a living thing when this war is over. And what of your soldier? I'm just the same as I always was. I'm no different. The men over here in North Africa have changed. They're too close to themselves to sense the change, perhaps. But they have changed in little ways. Once, soldiers inevitably ask me two questions wherever I went. When is the war going to be over, Ernie? When do you think we'll get home, Ernie? It's different now. Sure. They all still want to go home. But there is something deeper now. It isn't a theatrical proclamation that the enemy must be destroyed and the name of freedom. Just that we've got to win this war or else. We can't be running excursion steamers back and forth across the Atlantic while we're doing it. They're rougher than when you last saw them. Wars are rough business. Money means little to them right now. They spend it freely or give it away. And they're dead sure of one thing. Boy, if I ever get home, I'm going to stay home. I never want to see a foreign country again. I don't even hear about a foreign country. But down in their hearts they know full well. Yeah, I bet you won't be home six months before you start going around talking Arabic. Bragging about that girl you met in England. Telling about the beautiful sunset you saw in Germany. Oh, me? Why are you... Yeah, I guess that's just about what we'll all be doing. You'll know them all right. They'll snap back into the ways of peace just as they snapped into the ways of war. Meanwhile, they're well cared for. They're well cared for. Meanwhile, they're well cared for. No soldiers in any other war in history have had such excellent attention. They're a healthy army. Their food is good. Boy, what I wouldn't give for a swell steak in a Broadway restaurant. He's thinking more of Broadway than the steak. He's thinking more of home. Wherever home may be. Finally, the campaign was over. Now we're in a lull. Here, where I'm writing these words, the Mediterranean surf caresses the sandy beach not 100 yards away and is a lullaby of a sleeping. The water is incredibly blue just as we always heard it was. The sky is a cloudless blue infinity. The only sounds of the birds singing in the scrub bushes that grow out of the sand and lean away from the sea. Now, there's a little time to rest. Time for a cigarette and peace. A music in the song. And under this cloudless sky and by this blue sea there are the rows of white crosses that we must leave behind as we start for another battlefield. As we start another march feeling as we always feel that this is the march that will lead us home. Home. The one goal of every American who marches in foreign soil will always be some left behind as we go from one battlefield to another.  There is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses except perhaps the paws and murmur. The 21st program of Words at War we have brought you passages from the new book by Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War adapted for radio by Gerald Holland of the NBC staff. Ernie Pyle was played by Santa Sortega. Others in the cast were Harry Belova, Humphrey Davis, David Gotthard, John Griggs, Gerald Keane, Richard Keith, Alastair Kyle, Billy Redfield, Norman Rose, and Bill Zuckert. The original music was composed and conducted by Morris Mamorsky and the production of Joseph Loce. Next week, Words at War will present Lieutenant John Mason Brown in a dramatic adaptation of his brilliant forthcoming book, To All Hands which he calls An Amphibious Adventure. Words at War is brought to you in cooperation with the Council on Books and Wartime by the National Broadcasting Company and the independent radio stations associated with the NBC network. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


Welcome to the RF elements of my podcast. We're back again. My name is Caleb. And of course with always we've got Toss us over here. So hi Toss us. What's up? Hi Toss us. And today we're joined by Jorge all the way from also RF elements. Hello to one. Thank you for having me to take it. So quick music intro GM and then we'll get to it. All right guys. So we are back back again 2023. So we've been a little slower or podcast updating schedule yet last year. In the last year was kind of crazy.  Which is always just chaos. Got back from that. We had Titan Fest the holidays and then now we're really just kind of want to wrap up you know what what we saw last year what we're looking forward to this year. And we're talked with Jorge. He's got some cool new stuff coming up focusing on our Latin American market. So it'll be a good time. Good time. So I guess as we get into it Toss us you want to give the good people out there they're called action. Yeah absolutely.  Cool. Cool. All right. So I guess looking back you know last year we don't want to spend too much time in memory lane but you know it was a pretty active year in the old West market a couple of things going on. I mean you know obviously still kind of working through the mass chaos from the covid times that seems to have pulled back got a little bit towards a normal or whatever we want to consider normal. Definitely way more normal. Yeah definitely. So but you know we've seen a lot of like really cool potential things you know working way through of course. And we have a number of podcasts last year about all the craziness and you know government funding competition. I mean we talked about CVRS stuff a lot. We talked about Toronto coming up a lot and what that's doing in the market. Let's see what else. Of course six gig you know six is a big one. We want to throw some information out there this week. Talk about six gig where we are now kind of what we're looking forward to on six gig. But you know I guess from a summary perspective man like you know anything we want to really hit up in great detail here. Yeah I mean it would definitely six gig. I think there's quite a bit to talk about that's getting kind of exciting here. You know Cambium is now releasing their hardware so like the 4600L 4600 series radios are out in the market. So a lot of people are testing the feedback looks pretty promising so far as far as speeds reliability and stuff like that even its ability to handle a noise which is really exciting. You know our horns are current five gigahertz horns actually quite a few of our antennas already work in the six gig range. Quite a few whists are already trying out are like symmetrical 30 degree horn. Our ultra dishes and ultra horn are all performing really well in six gig. Clearly we have you know we will have brand new skews for six gigahertz so the whole line of symmetrical and asymmetrical that's specifically made from you know the six to seven or maybe five nine to seven one. I'm not sure what that exact spec is going to be but that's going to be really cool. We've already seen prototypes and you know they're itty bitty. They're much smaller than the original ones you know because the wavelength is smaller so the antennas get a little bit smaller so that's kind of cool. But yeah I'm really excited to you know what I'm seeing already in six gig especially with our horns and I think what we're going to see in the future. Yeah for sure. I mean the testing we've seen in six gig with the forty six hundred stuff like really noisy here is like point to point links you know people are just killing it especially using the ultra horn. You know not a lot of noise in six gig yet obviously but we've had some people kind of generate their own you know in these test areas just to see what is it going to do. You know the results are having really cool. I'm starting to see some of the then just insane seeds what we're pulling on the access points and everything. So to put a little more color on the two so you know the new products that we are releasing so we're definitely releasing new horns for six you know that's definitely coming. Those will be closer to more release info and data once the AFC gets a little bit closer right. So when is that was a hashtag soon. Who knows. Yeah. Yeah. Hashtag who knows right. So maybe later. Yeah some time later. So I don't know what we're here now is probably going to be Q3 you know in the Q2 the AFC people get set up ready to go and wait for the SSE do their stuff. But I mean again this has been you know two quarters three quarters away plus plus we just add a quarter every quarter we go into. Well that's a lot more details as to what those new products keys are all look like specs and pricing and all that stuff a little bit further down the road. But we do want to point out how this stuff's coming. We get a lot of questions now again like I said for the ones that are testing now. So we specifically went and tested several products that we knew that would work in this upper band to get some official specs. So the Symmetric 30 horn the ultra dishes and the ultra horns we have tested they're good up to 60 70 75 which covers most of that outdoor range. Beyond that you really don't want to really run it beyond that a pattern is fall apart VSWR gets too high so on and so forth. But for those three lines we've updated we've updated the spec sheets as well. So if you don't remember just look at spec sheets are up to date those new ranges are shown in that spec sheet as well. So if you're testing the stuff it is definitely available and give it a shot. Let us know like we'd love to hear the feedback and stuff right things. Especially if you know folks start testing like the split sector functionality again really see how this doing for speed. We've got a lot of interest people looking to use the ultra dish with the 4600 C and our EP and P2K adapter. You know those are those that already works with that right. So same for a factor as some of the other variants before. So what we're waiting for now is sort of some long distance results or running this really high SMRs right. So if you're wanting to run this 1024 qualms 496 qualms leagues you're definitely going to need a really high SNR. And one of the best ways to do that is with high quality 27 dbi dish and running with that TPA and let us know. And we're super excited to kind of see what those results are going to look like. So we've got that looks like the 5 gig stuff is going to be coming just down the road before too much longer as well. We're excited to see what those results are going to be especially noisy areas. You know there's there's tons of noise and 5 gig to play around with. And I'm really excited to see how well that AX platform works in those noisy 5 gig areas. Especially can then do a like for like comparison against an existing system. You know I'll get 3000 or a prism or something like that. So you know it's not necessarily magic. But there's a lot of really cool stuff in the AX protocols that they're utilizing in here that should give us some really cruel crazy kind of performance for sure. So yeah. What do you see Lord eight like in in Latin America. I mean do you have a six gig out there. I mean I know there's a lot of Mamosa customers that they use Mamosa out there because it goes up to 6.4 exactly legal right or whatever. But what's the 6 gig spectrum. Is there any talks in Latin America for that stuff. Yeah. There are actually Brazil was the first one already that they did the first outdoor test for the six gigahertz already. So in Brazil is definitely moving forward with Camille and on the rest of the countries. Mexico for example which is one of our biggest markets down there. It's definitely they said that by the end of February and beginning of March. They should be already publishing the whole regulation of the six gig. But it's going to be the same. They follow the FCC basically. So it's going to be as you guys do in the U.S. they will do that in Mexico as well. So definitely that country is going into a six gig very hard. Also Colombia will be the other player there that also they have very advanced regulations. So any moment should be released and the rest of the countries are quite smaller. But also picking up on this throughout last year was very promising December and that very well with this six gigahertz.  So not that far behind I would say that'd be interesting to see how it plays out. But we also look I said you know 5 gig right to this AX stuff is coming in 5 gig as well. So that's that would be exciting for everybody for sure for sure. So and that's kind of the way you know across the world globally. I think on most countries now have opened up the indoor bands you know to cover the six gig range you know that came with the 60 part of the standards. So you know everyone's sort of done that in a lot of places internationally are going to be kind of following the the lead as to what the U.S. and the FCC does with AFC right. Some art of course is just kind of independent. So look at the rules for your region. You know some are going to have pretty heavy ERP limitations. Some are going to have application limitations. Some will just follow in lockstep with us and implement very similar systems which I'm sure will just be spin off of the existing systems right. So if you've got a Qualcomm AFC or federated or something I'm sure they're going to be duplicating these for these regions as well because most of the work's already done. So again most of this coordination exists because it's mainly to just not interfere with the existing license links that are in this band. You know in the U.S. for sure there's a ton of these microwave links that are in that lower part of six gig and a good number that are in the upper part of six gig. And this AFC is basically trying to or will be preventing the radios that we're using in our space for broadcasting and interfere with those license links right. So if we're not seeing the test results have been really positive like you know one of the big fears is it's going to block out whole giant areas where you're not going to use it. But from everything I've seen so far it's really promising instead of you know it'll cut out a couple of slices here where you can't use but then you've got the whole rest of the band to use. So at least here in the U.S. you know we're talking 850 megahertz of spectrum that's opened up for outdoor use. So you know it's a tremendous amount of spectrum. Again we're very excited. We've talked about this in the past a few times as well because we're we're plumped in. Now the equipment is like now people are actually starting to test this stuff and see what it's starting to do. Now it's like all right time to get excited guys. Let's see what things are going to do. Yeah that means you see what other hardware vendors do. I mean obviously you know most are already as they're A6 platform haven't really heard much about that and you know how well it's doing and who's really testing it. But even Toronto right they'd be interesting to see if Toronto goes the 6 gigahertz route because right now it's just CVRS 5 gig they're kind of quiet on what you do on 6. I don't know if it was part of their original plan to have 6. Is it something that they're like maybe hey we just have to do it now. I mean it could take a year or two just to get a CC certification for the hardware and 6 gigs if they're just starting now. So it'd be interesting to see where that goes as well. Yep yep yep for sure for sure. So we got that coming of course. There's the band part of it. The new tech part of it's coming is really cool. What are some other stuff we've been talking about? I guess also just to add something on a 6 gig. Definitely the most important thing that we follow as a company is like you know speak to people, teach them not to make the same mistakes that they did in 5 gig. Tell me about it. Really make sure that they deploy the right gear for what they need to avoid of course all the issues with noise and all these things in towers. All the you know all the negative stuff that we learn already from the 5 gig. We should not do it in 6 so part of our work is also to teach the people speak to them also. Be there you know as a manufacturer. We definitely did a lot of that obviously in 5 gig and that's why you know we made 5 gig and we're so successful. Yeah we saved 5 gig from itself you know. But yeah I know in the early days I mean again I saw some I think it was like some Mamosa testing you know with Omnis and I'm just like here we go again. Yeah. It's unfortunate that most of the most of the technology that's coming out now for 6 gig and you know I mean this is just the way beamforming goes is you know all built again on patch array antennas right which have all these side lobes. And although you know they they people like to say that they use the side lobes for beamforming but that's not really how it works you know the the the the side lobes that are created are really creating noise and dirtying things up. So yeah that's how they kind of use the beams to kind of focus and shoot some over here shoot some over there. But you got to remember there's they like to show in their spec sheets or in their and their representations of how it works this nice little perfectly elliptical node going here or here. And they don't show all the side lobes that are around that you know making all that noise. So you know horns will be fantastic with this you know new stuff you know beamforming doesn't always have to just happen with a patch array antenna. Hopefully Wisps will see that early and not like you said not destroy the spectrum. Especially with the fact that you know they're starting out everybody wants to run hundred and sixty megahertz channels you know that's ready. I'm dying a little bit inside every time I hear somebody want to do that you know. But that's that's the thing I you know I was reading some blog that somebody wrote was Matt Larson right he wrote a really cool cool blog.  And yeah I mean some people need it but that's not what everybody needs. What we need is good reliable you know sustainable and you know stable internet is what people need. Of course speed is part of it right you know we can't be selling one or two five make packages anymore. You know you're selling twenty five fifty hundred make packages. I mean that's like 90 plus percent of the people that's more than sufficient for. You know if you looked at the the pre-sum report you see that the average house of that average person still utilizes like seven bags. That's it you know and we're selling them gig plans and stuff like that. So you know if we if we use spectrum you know properly then we'll be around for a long time to use. And I mean five gig is not dead. I mean it's still it's still very you know feasible to utilize it. Like I said I'm excited for the cambium forty five hundred a piece or forty five hundred series basically the five gigahertz AX stuff. I really can't wait to see that stuff come out and see what we can still do in five gig because you know the AX protocol has that you know spectrum piercing or something where like you know it just has like little five megahertz slots that go across the entire spectrum to dance around noise and that's that's going to be really cool stuff to see how that works. Yeah it's going to be really adaptive and I think we're going to see a re vitalism rejuvenation. That's the fancy five dollar word I was looking for right there. Rejuvenation of the band you know and just being able to pull a lot more speed and capacity versus what we were before. So then in six you know I mean I think we're going to see a ton of usable 80 megahertz channels. I think is where folks are going to settle in on you know so yeah 80 is real sexy 160 320 you know. Okay it's a little crazy right. But you know there's enough spectrum and if we use it smartly and don't just shoot ourselves in the foot then we've got a wide number of 80 mega channels that we can very easily sell you know 100 megahertz along and have good capacity have good ROI and like all these you know things you need to be successful in this. So it's going to be going to be real fun times looking forward to it. Yeah I mean honestly I mean we can go beyond 100 meg on an 80 megahertz channel right. Yeah sure. So I mean at 1024 at 1024 quam that's 800 meg right of basic and an 80 megahertz channel that you that you get right. So you can easily sell 200 even 300 meg packages on an 80 meg channel. Obviously how many is another story but with multi user MIMO and stuff like that it really becomes a possibility in both five and six gig and moving out to start talking about you know some of the hardware like the cambium things to 450 V that will basically do like almost carrier aggregation right. You'll be able to do five and six gigahertz at the same time. So if you that's the best way to run 160 megahertz channels like 80 mega and five gig and 80 mega and six gig you know none of this. All all your eggs in one spectrum basket. Yeah there's going to be some long time. So yeah a lot of really cool stuff to look forward to earlier for sure. So getting lots of funding opportunities kind of looking outside just banned stuff. I'm kind of excited to see you know a lot of what Wisp has been doing lately just trying to get people on a more sort of unified footing. I mean that's always been the goal right and like it grows and progresses. I think what I see we've seen real recently is a lot more push and focus sort of on the state level advocacy and grouping and stuff. So like they just did this recent show here in Milwaukee. The toss us was that. So very good show. Yeah. Yeah. Cause Milwaukee in January. Excellent. Excellent timing guys. But it was it really wasn't that cold. I mean honestly it's I saw it's like in below zero now. Right. I was in the 30s and I was there. So it was perfect. It was perfect weather. But you know that's where a lot of these like battles are really going to be one in thought. You know because it's like you know there's some doom and gloom about a lot of the funding and competition and stuff like that. But I mean realistically we've beat on this so many times in the past is you know if you get to understand what your state level folks your county even your local municipality level folks are doing. You're going to find that they're going to be a lot more willing to work with a local operator that understands the area understands their constituency. My constituency. Oh yeah. Such good money. But um anyways um and you know it's going to be willing to work with you and get past a lot of those pain points then dealing with just some you know multinational conglomerate juggernaut for sure. So. And that's that's where I mean a lot of it is flowing in actually that was some of the stuff. But again this you know you're like chasing the gig thing I think is really from the federal level all that federal money but now all that again that federal money is going down to the state level to dole it out. It's actually sounding like you know those gig to the home thing is really not what the states want. Right. Or at least you know the local players you know the local municipalities you know are able to get around that kind of thing and say look we just need to deliver. Good internet we need to deliver it now we need to deliver it to everybody so there the state funded money is really where you want to go because that's where you're able to just do what's best and and you know do it your way rather than. You know the way some bureaucrats in the federal government have told you it has to be you know that probably have people clicking the mouse for them you know they didn't even know how to use the Internet but anyway. Yeah it's just it's a state level stuff that's really exciting and I think that's where we're really going to make a difference to kind of bridge just digital divide that everybody keeps talking about you know. Yeah so. There'll be a lot more conversation on that at Wisp America which is like it's a month or not basically. Yeah. Time keeps on ticking baby. Yeah so that'll be Louisville Kentucky of course we'll be there full force doing our thing for sure so it'll be it was like did we just do a show like I don't know what it was five months ago.  You know. It's very quick definitely the time is flowing like really fast. Do you guys see any do you guys see any like is there any government funding in Latin America as well is there any money flowing into Wisp's or into Internet at all from the you know the government level. Not really not really the way the operator is different is mostly just private companies putting money into some of the selected operators in different countries. But the government in that part is just create their own stuff. They don't really fund like operators in the middle of nowhere or in rural areas. So no no funding. Sorry guys we've done a terrible job introducing we're here so I apologize. It's never too late. Yeah. The guy I've worked with for a couple years now everyone knows him too. Yeah. So Jorge handles. He's one of our product managers. He handles a lot of the social media stuff. So you'll see him in all of our Latin American videos. He's the all the YouTube stuff and everything you know he's the one doing the main presenting the webinars and stuff like that has a lot of social media. But there's also does a lot of the account management and service and stuff. I mean for Latin America in general. So and anywhere where they speak Spanish very handy. Yeah. Jorge if you want to give us a little bit of your background. How long have you been here kind of you know what's your background in the space and stuff. Yeah. Talk about kind of what you've got coming up in relation to podcast stuff and things like that. Yeah definitely. Well I I mean this wireless thing for a little bit over a decade now. I started with this basically with my first router was like this WR-T54. And the link sees that everybody knows which one it is. Yeah. And then I used basically all the technology step-a-link then UBNT and etc. I used to have a run a Wisp in my country for more than a decade there until I basically joined our filaments and then I just left that to somebody else. So I had plenty of experience in device configurations installing devices in towers because we used to do our own towers. And we installed our own devices. So I climbed towers many times as well. What was that like I mean because for people we don't know I mean his home country is Cuba right. Yeah. It was pretty interesting there. Yeah. Yeah. It was a really a boom after 2010. Yeah. I don't know how but devices just started entering the country in huge amounts. Yeah. So we have all the UBNT all the microdic lines were really there. Actually microdic found out about that and they decided to do a moon in Havana in 2016 which is where I met one of the sales person of our filaments. So we started there and basically was our own private thing. I remember the first network I had was computer to computer you know one LAN cable 50 meters across the neighborhood. Everything started like that. At the end of the day we had a tower with dozens of AP's there. So we had all the suites of devices you can imagine there. And we really test them to the limit because since we didn't have more devices to keep growing we started doing like more optimization of the network we had. And that's how we learn all the microdic all the you know router OS how to really go deep into the network and make it more stable with what we had. So at the end of the day we were offering packages that were almost 20 megs per customer. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody was living fairly close I would say no more than three kilometers. Yeah. So and we also did install a few horns as well that they're actually working there. Yeah. Now it's very good. Yeah. So just to follow up then basically I finished my university in 2018 and then I got the opportunity to come to work with other filaments. I met our filaments in 2015 was the first time online in online presence. And then I started to really interact with what you were doing because we were facing the same issues. You know this amount of devices deployed we were having noise issues all the time. But we didn't know what it was. So watching the webinars that Tassos was doing I learned that you know hey we were facing that you know. And then I slowly start investing more time into our filaments. I got to know some of the people online. I started to work in the in the early stages of the other filaments Spanish group at that point was newborn. Let's call it this way. And then I had the opportunity to come here to Slovakia where I am now. So which is very cold by the way. After buying many jackets and sweaters. Oh boy. There are no idea. I look like an alpinist in the mountain with the amount of layers. Like you're climbing Everest and it's like fall. Yeah. There's no palm trees here. Yeah. I miss the palm trees definitely. So tell us about your podcasts. I mean so I mean how do you see it developing there for Latin America. Yeah well first let's let's say that there's going to be a podcast. Yes. We haven't actually gotten that far yet. So so we're talking internally and you know Tassos now have been doing us for a little while now. But just to the nature that we're both based in the States you know and this is where our entire experience has been. You know it's easy for us to be sort of you know US centric right just a nature of you know where we are. A lot like the the technical RF side doesn't really change at all obviously right. But you know a lot of times when you start dealing with funding and regulations and stuff like that. You know a lot of the stuff that necessarily apply to the rest of the globe. So we talked about it and we decided we'd like to open up the podcast to do for Latin America regions. And you know a native Spanish speaker obviously helps without tremendously. So we're going to be watching another version of the podcast or an offshoot. Well we're going to have some mechanics here very soon. Yeah we're working on it. We'll make those details clear when we have details details right. Yeah so and basically it's going to be Jorge just on you know kind of tell us what you're thinking so far. How you're going to attack it how you approach and grow it out. Well first of all we have a massive crowd in Latin America. There's thousands of followers there. And we're going to start basically interviewing people as well. And then also inviting them to share not only what they have been doing with our followers but also their experience in a wireless market because there are many of them that easily can be or have been working for over the two decades. So I want that knowledge also to be transmitted to the rest of the crowd because as we know many people that are really still lacking you know a little bit more of education. So this is another mean that our followers will use basically to get to those people you know. We understand that people are really overloaded with the online webinars and the things we used to do which were very successful the last two years. So now we are going to go also on these formats and prepare the content in a different way. The idea behind that is basically the training of people and teaching them you know the right how to deployments based not only from our point of view but also from their colleagues in the field you know from people who are there also installing the same devices they're using. Maybe they are living in the same country so they will familiarize quickly with them. So we have a bunch of people waiting to participate so we're going to definitely set up all the details and I guess we will start very soon with this episode as well. Real soon. Real soon not us hashtag sayings. Real soon. The interview format I think we found it and our listeners find it to be extremely helpful. I mean we're going to be doing a lot more of this this year as we've kind of got this thing cranked back up on our side. We're just getting a lot of interviews and stuff scheduled out. Hey if you want to be a part of our version the current version of this now or you want to be interested in talking to Jorge for his version of the podcast please reach out to us. I mean we can be found everywhere. Any platform. Yeah any platform. Any platform social media we are paying close attention to what's going on. Yep so RF elements English RF elements Espanyol. Espanyol. Yeah there's a ton of folks there so you can also find us I mean Tazos and then I you know super easy to find so. Very cool I'm looking forward to that I think it's going to be a great experience for everyone and we'll see where it goes from there so. I will definitely put the sherry on top of the cake here to basically say a quick message to our perhaps viewers in Spanish in this podcast right so I open parenthesis now. Amigos bueno todas las personas que nos están escuchando por acá en este podcast en inglés por favor estén atentos vamos a estar lanzando un podcast en mi idioma español si están interesados en contar su historia su experiencia en el terreno va a ser muy valioso para los demás amigos que están también en la misma línea de esta telecomunicación entonces por favor contacte nos si desean participar muchísimas gracias. Awesome. Basically it's an invitation letter. Yeah so very cool. Well that's all I've got right now Tazos anything else you really want to give them to now like I said we've got a lot coming up this year in the podcast I mean we use a lot of really cool stuff so looking forward to it. Yeah I mean basically just whisper America right so looking forward to that coming up here soon hopefully we see a lot of you out there like Caleb said you know where we're building our list of people to be on the show so I mean if you're in Kentucky for whisper America stop by our booth if you want to be on the show let us know we'd love to have you on. Alright alright anyone else that won't be there where can I find this Tazos. They can find us everywhere on social media Facebook Instagram they can find information and contact information on our website RFelements.com you can go and reform RFELab.com or in our Facebook groups like RFelements English Espanyol and RFelements proper. Alright alright well good to be back and I guess we'll be talking to everyone here again real soon so until then y'all be good. See you next time. Thank you everyone. Thank you take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Adios. Adios amigos. Bye.


The focus, again, is on trying to do national health insurance because funding health care through budgeting has proved, of course, to be practically impossible because you simply do not have the resources to fund health care through just budgeting. There's no way. The state cannot do enough, federal government itself cannot do enough. So the national health insurance is a very basic part of this, and we are currently working now with the World Bank and with the Bill and Melinga Gates Foundation to establish a proper national health insurance scheme. Now we have a national health insurance scheme, it's done about 8 million people so far, but we need legislation to make it compulsory so that more people can get on to the scheme and so that more people can pay something in order to contribute to the health insurance because the funding of health care for the number of people that we have can simply not be done from just revenues, it's completely impossible.


Okay, let's look at, I'm going to do more of a tutorial on this in the future, but I'm going to show you a script that I recently wrote. So if you remember, let's go here to my web browser, I'll go to filmsbychrist.com. As I mentioned earlier today, that I like, anytime you have a list, especially once it gets over 20, you're definitely over 50, I like when you have lists that you can filter, and I like that they can filter as you're typing, instead of having to type a little bit, hit Enter and see what happens. So an example on my website here, I can type an in-map and right away it gives me a response of three videos, if I was to delete that, I can type in bash, obviously I got a lot of bash videos, or just trying to think camera, so there's some videos with cameras. So I like that, can we do that in bash? Using just bash scripts, I don't know if N Cursors has anything like this, but this is just doing a simple little bash script. This can obviously be improved upon, but it's a simple little script I wrote that kind of allows you to do that. So let me move into my downloads folder, and I have a photos folder here, photos lowercase p, and here, if I list this out, you can see I have 25 or so images, and then I have the script here. Let me just show you how this works. I'm going to run my script, filter.sh, and automatically I have it set up to list JPEGs that are in the current directory. And now I can start typing. So let's say I want to find a picture with my daughter's name in the title. I can type in e, and you can see it filters down the list a little bit. I hit m, and it's filter it down more, and then I can type in br, and when I do underscore, it filters a little bit more, and when I hit one, it opens the picture automatically. So again, let's do that again with something else, I'll type in bas. We have two images here, underscore two, and there's my son sleeping inside a laundry basket. So it filters down the list as you're typing. As you can see, again, if I type in s, you can see up here, it says there's eight results for s, and it is doing it case insensitive, which is something like this you probably want. Then I'm going to hit o, and you can see it filters again, and now it says there's three, and then at this point I can start typing south. Oh, you see, and I want to show you. If I type something wrong, so again, like if I hit e here, and there's no results, it says zero results for this, it pauses for a second, and it says, you know, no entries found for, and then it's clearing the list, and it brings you back to the last thing you typed that was a valid entry. So now I can continue typing. One thing that would be nice for me to add to this is like to be able to narrow down the list and then select from the list, and I actually have some batch script code that does that, similar to, you know, like a list that you have in endcurses, but not using endcurses just because. So in reality using endcurses is a great thing, if you're not familiar with it. And to have just a list, now here I'm filtering a list which I like, but also if you just have minimum of type, and it jumps to something in the list, that's great too, and I'm pretty sure endcurses does that, so if I have a long list I can start typing them, it jumps to those things in the list, but usually those things in a lot of cases only, like I can start typing south, it would bring up these ones that have south at the beginning, but I couldn't start typing border, so for example, if I just close the script and reopen it, I can start typing bor, and you see it doesn't matter that it's at the beginning or the end, it's finding what I'm typing inside the list, so I go like this, underscore, I hit E, there was one left, and it opens up that picture. So again, it's not perfect, but it's a nice little script, very simple, and it does something that I find useful without having to use, I don't want to say external tools, because it is using grep, but it's using core tools, let's just look at the code again, I'm going to probably do a video on this more in depth in the future, but just looking at this, let's just bring this down a little bit, so you can see I have this set up to look for JPEG, so automatically it creates a variable called L, puts the list of JPEGs in there, we have some variables, you can change what viewer you want, and clears the screen, lists out the list, and then down here, it's going to start a loop down here, where it's constantly looking for input from the user, but it's looking for one character at a time and adding it to the I variable, we'll recall the prompt, which is this here, and basically it's going to grep through the list, give you a count, and give you results, and then depending on whether the output is blank, meaning there were no results, it will tell you there's no results, clearing the list, reset the variable to the last note, working input, sleep for a second, then bring up this prompt again, and then now at any point, if the count, we get down to where there's one thing in the list, at that point, it's going to clear the screen, let us know that it found something, and then open the image viewer, and then after that, once you close the image viewer, it brings up the prompt again, and starts to cycle over again, so it's a very simple little script, obviously could be approved upon, but something you can throw into a script if you want to have filter, and so again, you can have hundreds or thousands of things, and as you're typing, it do it again, it be nice if, you know, if I typed in IMG here, okay, so be really easy for me to go underscore BI, and it opens up the bike one, but if I do IMG underscore two, it's like I still have all these, and I have to type in 2018, zero three, it narrows it a little bit more, I can go two, okay, there's a little more, four, underscore zero, eight, two, and then when I hit, if I hit seven now, it will open the picture, but if I hit nine, I've got to go a little bit further, two, so I'm pretty much typing out the full name, so it's beneficial, but it'd be great if I can figure out a way to incorporate this to where you can filter the list, and then also, you know, use your arrow keys up and down to choose from that list, and I just found a bug in my program, I don't know, it's just, it's, I thought it was caught in the loop there. I hit the up arrow and it detected that as a key, and it cleared it out, and I thought it did it twice, so I thought there was going to continuously do that. Anyway, again, very simple, but this is the sort of thing where I look at as far as my programming, let me say this, my program here, my script probably could be more efficient, it's probably not the best way to do this, but it works, but even if my program isn't right, I would consider this good design, because, again, in my opinion, if you have a list, once you get over 20 or especially over 50 things in the list, you should be able to jump to things in the list, or at the very least, or preferably, filter a list as you're typing, because to me, that's just, you know, the best way I'm typing, and I can see things as I'm typing, I don't have to type part of it, hit enter, see what the results are. So to me, that's just part of good design. I don't know if you guys feel the same way, definitely let me know what you guys think. Again, if you just have 10, 15 things in the list, it's not a huge deal, but the larger the list gets, the ability to filter it as you're typing becomes more and more necessary, if you ask me.  You know, when it comes to forms and stuff in applications or websites, you can have a drop-down list, try to think of someplace, you know, most drop-down lists by default, you can hit a letter and jump to, you know, the A's in the list, or the B's in the list, or you can type in BA, and it'll jump to the BA in the list, but it doesn't filter lots of times by the, you know, center of the word. Certainly, you know, some do, but by default, usually drop-down lists aren't like that. And that's why I prefer filters. So again, my website here with this, or, well, first of all, let's also mention this. If you want this code, it's up on my pay spin. Here's the address right here. So you can type that in now if you'd like. Or, as always, if you come to my website, Filmsbychrist.com, click on software. And if you're watching this future, that website design might be different, but I should still have this here under software. Notes brings up my notes here. And again, here's a filter list. I can type something like filter. And it filtered down the list. And this is a little bit smarter of a filter. I can hit space and type in BASH, and it'll bring up all files that say filter and bash inside that code. And then we have two things on the list. And obviously, it's this first one that we want. It's the code that we're looking at today. So again, if you want to give my little code a try, give it, you know, see if you can improve it maybe. If you do improve it, definitely let me know. It's under a GPL license. I would love if you shared the code back. I should probably put it up on, again, as I said earlier today, I'm using Pastebin for a lot of my simple little scripts that aren't bigger projects. I really much would prefer to use GIST, and I really should start using GIST. But I wrote my little filter list there to back up and pull and create this database based on my Pastebin. I just haven't had time or felt like rewriting my code to work with GIST. And yeah, that's why I'm still using Pastebin. So it's a little bit harder for you to submit changes. But if you do make a change, let me know. You know, send it to me and maybe we'll set up something on GIST or Github or something like that depending on how big the project gets, probably just GIST. Anyway, again, films.christ.com will afford you to the most current version. Software, notes, in here. You can start typing. So again, like Nmap, here's my notes on Nmap. You know, you get the title and you can click on it and it should bring you to Pastebin. You can see the code. If I was typing something like Arduino. Here's some Arduino scripts. Again, these are my like single page short little scripts or notes. They're not larger projects in which case they'd be up my Github. So that's the same thing if you were to go to my if you click scripts here. This is example codes, mostly HTML and JavaScript stuff that will run in my web browser so you can see them there. A lot of those are projects that are based on pulled from my Github page. So here's my Github. You know, I have 143 repositories and here you can go through things like my bin here has a lot of this kind of my bin is kind of kind of like my Pastebin. It's there there a bunch of short little scripts under different categories and then I have bigger projects as well. My Vim setup, which also actually has my Tmux setup. Simple little install script there for that. My configs, I don't remember what some of this is. Also my Fluxbox and my i3 configs, which I need to update because I've made some changes to my i3, which I've been using for a couple of months now. Barcode scanner here is actually hit barcode scanner. This is probably to pull YouTube. Oh okay, yeah this was example code I was creating for somebody to to use barcode scanner to so I could scan a music CD and it will bring up the playlist on YouTube and probably yeah using YouTube DL to pull the address and stuff like that. Anyway I got a lot of projects out so that's just kind of what I'm pointing out here. Some of these are like little projects I started and never finished and some are just ones I'm constantly working on but they're all they're all accessible through my website again. Filmsbychrist.com software, you can go to my larger projects, my notes or see example code running online in the web browser. Yeah so let's see what is next.


To say that our government doesn't represent us would be a gross understatement because to say that they're out of touch and elites I feel like that's fairly obvious But I actually think it goes deeper than that the issue is that a lot of these people in Congress are genuinely Psychotic and before you say that I'm being purposefully hyperbolic Just consider their priorities for a moment as Kenny Stansel of common dreams explains the Biden administration's March request for 813 billion dollars in military spending for fiscal year 2023 already marked a 31 billion dollar increase over the current historically large sum of 782 billion dollars during its markup of the National Defense Authorization Act the House Armed Services Committee approved by a 42 to 17 margin representative Jared Golden's amendment to boost the top-line budget by 37 billion dollars the House panel's increase comes less than a week after the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to add $45 billion to Biden's $813 billion request pushing the upper chambers total proposed budget for national military spending in the coming fiscal year to a whopping 857.6 billion dollars including 817 billion for the Pentagon 30 billion for the Department of Energy and an additional 10.6 billion that falls outside NDA a jurisdiction now ask yourself this Do you recall a single pundit? Asking how we're gonna be able to pay for this considering the deficit and the national debt Has anyone on mainstream media asked? How is it that we can prioritize an expansion of our already bloated military budget? But yet we can't afford Education healthcare for our residents You probably haven't heard that but what you did hear conversations about with regard to fiscal responsibility Was a really important program to feed children in the United States So at the beginning of the pandemic the US Department of Agriculture put in place an initiative that would expand meal waivers to students Allowing millions upon millions of students to eat school lunches for free without accumulating school lunch debt and for international viewers You didn't miss here what I just said school lunch debt is a phenomenon in the United States where students can literally go into debt If they eat school lunches without paying for them. Yeah, that's that's our country That's the kind of country that we live in here But unfortunately, you know the Senate especially Senate Republicans didn't want to extend this program for another year Why because they cited concerns about the cost now? what is the total cost of Extending this program for one more year You ready for this? 11 billion dollars Because that's 11 billion dollars that we could be spending on the military or elsewhere They decided I just can't go along with this program to feed millions of children in the United States Now we don't necessarily know what's going to happen But currently this program is set to expire on June 30th and after some pushback Our incredibly reasonable senators are fighting for the people by introducing a 90-day extension So rather than having this program expire on June 30th It'll now like it now expire on September 30th of 2022 How merciful a 90-day extension so that way when the overwhelming majority of children are out of school That's when We'll pay for lunch waivers. I Mean we have a government that is incapable of meeting the basic needs of citizens and They refuse to meet the basic needs of citizens, but yet without question from the mainstream media for many politicians They're expanding the military budget again, I Just I don't know how anyone can view this government as legitimate Because every subsequent year at the military budget gets bigger and bigger and bigger and yet we keep hearing how it's so Expensive and cost prohibitive to pay for health care for every American to feed students But there's not a peep from these same motherfuckers about the military budget. In fact, they want to expand that I mean I'm not saying that these politicians would have a change of heart if they were named and shamed But if the media at least Educated the American people about this double standard. Maybe they'd be a little bit more apprehensive about re-electing these same fucking ghouls every two or six years Now not everyone thankfully Approved of this grotesque increase because representative Sarah Jacobs of California decided to denounce it and announced she'd be voting against it and she also Explained how horrible this is and what I think was a pretty powerful speech take a look It's pretty unconscionable that even without this increase We're talking about a budget of over 800 billion dollars and yet I will still have constituents in in the military who have unacceptable housing conditions I will still have military families Thousands of whom are on a waitlist to get child care I will still have over 39,000 members of military families in San Diego County alone who have to visit the food bank every single month So yes, we need to increase funding for to expand resources for mental health and housing and child care We need to address the impact of inflation on our service members But these are priorities that we can and we should address within the existing top-line number that we have and If we are really serious about competing with China We need a better resource and funded diplomatic corps need greater investments in our development practitioners So we have resources to compete with China's investments We need to invest in our education system in innovation in our domestic infrastructure and pandemic preparedness That is what will determine if we are competitive with China Not whether we have one more LCS that as a chairwoman spear said doesn't even work and as the Pentagon themselves said they don't need For the last 20 years. We've been told we need more But I think it's time to recognize that more is not a policy and yes We have a lot of challenges, but there are simply not military solutions to every problem You mean we can't create lunch bombs to drop on schools If you can utilize the military Deliver these lunches and tanks perhaps That would make them more inclined to support this because you know as long as we're spending money on the military That's a okay. It's truly just it's ridiculous and the fact that there are some lawmakers willing to stand up That's cause for celebration, I guess, but it's nowhere near enough people speaking out about this There should be universal condemnation and when this proposal was announced by Jared Golden He should be laughed out of the room, but it was approved overwhelmingly So now one more speech that's worth highlighting is from representative Ro Khanna who denounced this in no uncertain terms Part of me wonders when we're just gonna get the amendment to have a trillion dollar defense budget Because it seems that's where we're going. I mean every year. They're basically adding 30 billion more to what the president wants And I think that's what we really need to think of on this committee if you're supporting this amendment You're basically paving the way to a trillion-dollar defense Is that what we want in this country a trillion dollars more more than a half of our discretionary budget is Going into defense Compared to all of the other needs the security needs that this country has now obviously We have major threats with Russia on the Ukraine border where the president has done an extraordinary job in rallying NATO and standing up for Ukraine and We passed on large bipartisan majority support for Ukraine the threat that China poses with Taiwan But that doesn't mean that we need defense budgets that are more than they were at the height of the Cold War That was a serious threat, too But we had the imagination and the innovation to be able to meet those threats without consuming over half our Discretionary budget. I just want to be clear There is no country in the world that has anywhere close to half over half the major power That's putting over half its discretionary budget Into defense and I would rather for us to be the preeminent economy of the 21st century Be investing in the health of our people in the education of our people in the industries of the future As we compete with China. Let me just make one more point about China. You know what China is really doing in 2025 They're not putting all their money in defense. They've got a made in China initiative They have a little Giants initiative. You know what the little Giants initiative is? It's four thousand startups that they think are in critical technologies that they're funding. They're funding their universities They're producing engineers and scientists millions of them That's what's going to make America lose if we don't invest in the new technologies If we don't invest in the new companies if we don't invest in the new industries if we don't make more things in America It is easy to just keep upping the defense budget in this committee. I trust President Biden I would support his defense budget But what requires more imagination is to actually get production back to actually do the things that are going to make us win In the 21st century. Yeah, well, I don't trust Biden personally But his broader point still stands these countries who the US government has deemed our enemies They're not pouring every single penny that they have into the military In fact, if you look at defense spending for 2022, the US spends more than the next nine biggest Spenders combined. So even if we cut our defense budget in half We'd still be the biggest spender globally by a lot But cutting defense is out of the question however spending money for health care and education and student debt cancellation and on school lunches Is always met with concerns of how are we going to pay for it health care? How are we going to pay for that education? How are we going to pay for that school lunches for children? I don't know how we're going to pay for that too expensive. Sorry.