Well shakin, my name's Cam, welcome back to another video. You are not going to believe this, but since the last episode of Writer Badlands, writers and authors are still out there making complete fools of themselves. I know it's like my sole video, my one video should have solved all writer drama in the entire world, but somehow it didn't. Thanks for all the love on the last episode, by the way guys, these videos are really not easy to put together. I know they probably seem like they are, but they're not, they take quite a bit of time. So I really do appreciate all of the support.  I have lots of videos on writing and I do make other videos on here aside from Writer Badlands where I talk about writing and the journey of trying to be a professional writer slash author, etc. There are lots of super interesting stories today guys, including the big one, I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about if you're at least slightly plugged into the social zeitgeist. There's a lot to cover, so I'll quickly get the house keeping out of the way. All links and sources for the stories I talk about today will be in the description below, including in particular a few Twitter accounts and threads that were a huge help in me getting all of the receipts and the screenshots for some of this stuff because as I'm sure you know, usually when an author or a writer fucks up, they go and delete all of the proof. I obviously can't cover everything with every story from A to B because this video is not five hours long, so if you would like to look into each of these stories as we go, you can scroll down and have a look for yourself. I want to stress as well that these videos are not to throw shade or stir the tea, share drama, however you want to put it. The purpose of these videos is to take a closer look into the writing related topics that everyone on the internet is talking about and seeing if there's any nuance to it, anything we can learn from it. It's not just about saying, here's some gossip, it's about trying to have at least a little bit of an extra discussion about it. That is all the boring stuff out of the way so without further ado, let's jump straight into Episode 2 of Writer. As you probably remember from Episode 1, I want to start each of these videos with at least something positive so today I have, I thought I would make it an author tube shout out. I recently watched a video from a channel called Rachel Writes called I'm a Published Author and it was one of the most inspiring videos that I've seen on here for a fair while. There are very few people I've seen on here that have published and submitted as many stories in such a short space of time and that video really hit a chord with me because I've been thinking a lot this year about submitting short stories to various magazines and lit websites. It's something I've never done but something I've always wanted to do and this year I was hoping would be the year that I would start doing that. So this video was a huge push for me in starting to get that ball rolling. If you're interested in getting some information on how to submit stories and what it's like when you do, I highly recommend this video and Rachel's channel as a whole is just pretty damn great. I will leave a link in the description below. Coway-y mere mortals because Lauren Hof has returned. If you don't know who Lauren Hof is, boy are you in for a treat. Let me give you the crash course and get you up to date. It's going to seem like I'm making this stuff up but I promise you I'm not. Lauren Hof is the author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing. Currently at 3 stars on Goodreads, it was previously at 2 stars last time I looked but curiously it's been bumped up a little bit due to a recent influx of 5 star reviews kind of over the last few days in fact and for once the book itself isn't actually at the center of the hellstorm here but rather some stuff she said after the fact her very controversial opinions on 4 star reviews. You as a writer would probably imagine that getting a 4 star review on any book you put out would be amazing, it would be magnificent, that is a great review that is literally higher than average. However, Lauren's view was that anyone not brave enough to give her a 5 star review instead of a 4 star review, anyone not brave enough to give her glimmering masterpiece of modern literature a rock hard 5 stars is a nerd. Even when on an enormous twitter tirade throwing insults at pretty much anyone who reviewed her book any less than 5 stars and then in a bizarre twist of events turned around and blamed the whole thing on being high because people at Smokeweed are very well known for going around and calling everyone nerds scooby-doo levels of wacky bullshitery, I know. There is truly a whole lot more to that situation, again links below but we fast forward to now. Lauren makes a post lamenting over how her book will not win a lambda prize, passive aggressively hinting that it's because of twitter cancel culture and not because she started throwing insults at the majority of her fan base. She also said that her book likely wouldn't win a prize because her friend Sandra had recently published a fantastic book, a book called The Men which has a whole controversy in itself and yes we will come back to that. I want to quickly read out a bit from Lauren's post. My book won't win a prize because my friend Sandra Newman wrote a book. The premise of her book is, what if all the men disappeared? When she announced the book on twitter, YA twitter saw it. This is the single most terrifying thing that can happen to a writer on twitter. YA twitter presumably fans of young adult fiction are somehow unfamiliar with the concept of fiction. YA twitter doesn't do nuance, they don't understand metaphor or thought experiment, they expect fictional characters to be good and moral and just, whether antagonist or protagonist. They expect characters and plot to be free of conflict. They require fiction to portray a world without racism, bigotry and bullies. And when YA twitter gets wind of a book that doesn't meet their demands, they respond with a beatdown so unrelenting and vicious it would shock William Golden. They call it call out culture because bullying is wrong, unless your target is someone you don't like, for social justice reasons of course. Now while I do get second hand embarrassment from her pretty much straight out generalizing the entire YA book twitter group as a whole, the crazy thing is I kind of agree with a lot of what she's saying here. Twitter does have a habit of irrationally equating authors with the fictional circumstances and happenstances of the stories that they write. If the character within a story, especially one posed as a hero, is not the paragon of moral virtue without any character flaws or any hint of malicious intent, if the author has gone out of their way to make them morally questionable, it can land them in hot water and it has before. I see a lot of hot takes on book twitter that I think are just mind bogglingly stupid so normally when reading a post like this I would probably be going, if it wasn't written by Lauren Hoff. She wasn't cancelled because her fictional characters were morally questionable. I don't think I saw the content of her book being brought into the discussion once. She was cancelled because again she roasted nearly everyone that had reviewed her book like she was a bully in an early 2000s Disney show. Let's jump back a bit, let's jump back to Sandra Newman if only for a moment. I'm going to read out the hook to her book or a little bit of a paragraph that she's using for publicity sake, for the book The Men. And before I even give my opinion after I read it out for you, I just want you to sit with it, sit with what I've read out and truly ask yourself how you feel about it. Do you think it's an acceptable or appropriate premise for a story? Think about that before I give you my opinion. Everyone with a Y chromosome suddenly mysteriously disappears. In the months that follow, the world gets better, safer, kinder, more egalitarian but the book is about women who can't let go of the men they've lost and devote their lives to getting them back. Okay, so this is part of a sub-genre that I was completely unaware of called gender side and now for my opinion. I truly believe that I'm one of the last people that will do any pearl clutching when it comes to art, including writing. Unless the writing itself is explicitly endorsing harmful rhetoric, I think it has a right to exist just as everyone else has the right to call it out as I'm about to.  First of all, it has been pointed out that the plot of this book with the specific focus of targeting and removing the Y chromosome is potentially transphobic and feeds into ideologies and attitudes that actively harm the trans community. I would go even further and say that maybe don't write a book where the plot of the story is that the world would be a better, safer, kinder place if an entire group of people didn't exist.       You don't need to kill all men.  And I am genuinely terrified for how this now socially acceptable standard of telling men that the world would be a better place if they didn't exist or if they just sat down, shut up and had nothing to do with anything that ever happens in the world. I'm terrified for how that's going to affect people in the future.  They are going to grow up feeling like the world is inherently a worst place simply because they exist, because of the way they were born. This is rhetoric that's probably starting to sound very familiar, rhetoric that we know objectively is harmful and wrong. I know that men are by far not the worst off in the world.  I'm just editing right now and I wanted to add really quickly that when I say until recent history, I'm referring specifically to the super overt sexist propaganda of like the 50s and 60s, etc. I am well aware that the world is still extremely sexist and damaging to young women. Again, I've been on TikTok in most part, maybe even due to apps like TikTok and Instagram, but that's a whole other conversation. The point I wanted to make was just that I know that sexism against young women is not gone. I know it's not in the past.  That's the point. We have seen how harmful this kind of shit can be for children and for emotionally vulnerable people that are already asking the world if it would be better if they just removed themselves from it.   And it's incredibly disappointing that it would even be considered for an award. Just be nice to people.  It's not that hard. I ran over. I'm sorry, this is just a topic that I do take pretty seriously. If you've been around on my channel during Movember, you'll know why. On a lighter note, depending on how you look at it, GK Rowling is back in the news for a reason that I still can't believe I'm going to say it. J.K. was endorsed by Putin. Putin compared his sanctions to being canceled online like J.K. Rowling, which is just wild. I mean, I know that so little of this is actually funny, but I mean what world are we living in? You know, now don't get me wrong. I'm not J.K.'s biggest fan by a long stretch, but I'm not sure how I feel about people using this as proof that she's a bad person. I just don't really put these two people in the same boat when it comes to being bad people.  And the other is in the midst of carrying out a full scale genocide. I just I mean, the scales, I just don't know how I feel about those two people being in the same conversation when we're referring to the worst of the worst. You know, do you get what I mean? With that said, I do find it painfully ironic how self-described radical feminists will back J.K. on everything she says, but then completely discredit the entire career of another woman just because she said she supports trans people. Didn't even say anything about J.K. specifically just said that she supports trans people. This tweet about Emma Watson seems pretty damn anti-feminist to me. Emma has carved out an objectively positive and selfless career for herself outside of acting and suggesting that she would be living in a trailer.  I'm not trying to go full simp, but Emma Watson is definitely a lot smarter than pretty much anyone who logs on the Twitter, including myself. So the idea that she would be working in a fast food restaurant.  Stop. And also, how's that any different to saying that J.K. would still be a dirt poor single mother, if not for the person at the publishing company that decided to give her a chance? If you're going to start saying that every successful person owes their success 100 percent to the person that gave them their first opportunity, you could take that line all the way back to the first caveman. Just be better. Literary agents have been taking a bit of a beating online recently. In particular, these two, you can pause it and have a read for yourself if you'd like. Yeah, the passive aggressive attitude of these tweets is not a good look. It's extremely unprofessional. However, for the most part, I actually do find myself agreeing with what they're saying. I've seen authors, especially new ones, treat literary agents like their own personal wait stuff simply because they see it entirely as the literary agent is working for them, which, depending on how you look at it, is maybe technically true. But I would think you would want to treat it as more of a partnership or at the very least, you should take into account that the literary agent very likely has other clients as well. There are a lot of very dodgy lit agents out there, no doubt, no doubt. But I do kind of detest the idea that just because an author poured their heart and soul into this manuscript, the agent owes them every second of their time. Like I said, most agents have multiple clients. Most agents have personal lives. This is also an incredibly taxing and competitive industry, especially now book sales and aspiring authors have absolutely skyrocketed in the last couple of years, which is good, but it does put a significantly larger workload on the lit agents themselves, especially when a lot of these new aspiring authors are going their own way and just doing self-publishing without the middleman. I think Liana summed it up pretty well in this tweet. So an author named Emily Everett wrote a romance story called Heartland. And I'm just going to go ahead and read the synopsis out for you again after I finish reading before I even give you my opinion. I just want you to sit with it for a bit, see how you feel. A story set on American soil during World War Two about the secret relationship between a young woman and a German POW assigned to work on her family's Iowa farm that causes each to question who they are, what they desire and their complicity in an unforgiving war, shining a light on the little known history of POW camps in the expansive American Midwest. So I'm going to try to tread very carefully here.   I want you to keep in mind that I said that before I start playing Devil's Advocate here, because I know by law of statistics there's probably going to be at least one person that hears what I'm about to say and says, he likes Nazis. I don't. I am literally telling you that I do not.  I think the conclusion that a lot of people were trying to come to was that this story would in some way try to make us sympathetic for the Nazi cause itself, which I just don't think is the case. Even reading the like the synopsis that I just read out for you, it literally says that this story will force the characters to question who they are and their complicity in an unforgiving war.  But we should keep in mind that no small number of soldiers, Nazi soldiers during World War Two were forced into that role under threat of death, not only to them, but to their families. I mean, just look at the notorious children soldier units that the Nazis used to gear up and send out. It wasn't just as simple as the good guys and the bad guys. That's all I'm trying to say. And it seems, I don't know for sure, but it seems like that's what this story is going to be getting at.  I still don't know. It still seems a bit inappropriate of a setting or a backdrop for a romance story, if I'm being honest. I just don't think that in twenty twenty two, we need any more stories exploring the moral duality of a Nazi. So where do I stand? I don't think this story was a great idea, but at the same time, I'm also I feel a bit sorry for the author, Emily, because she says in her post herself that writing a book was her dream. And she's obviously very, very like happy that her dreams come true.  And it can also be the kind of thing that can completely destroy someone's aspirations as an author, which, again, as we know, is her dream. I don't think there was any malicious intent here. I think she just had a bit of a goofy idea. But at the end of the day, I haven't read the book. I don't know this story. Maybe it does completely sympathize with Nazis. That's I don't I don't even want to say that and word anymore. Nazis, I don't want to say that word anymore. So I'll leave it with you. What do you think? On the topic of she wrote, what we have a TikTok author, our favorite, not just a TikTok author. Oh, no.   Here we go again. Naila Kaye wrote a story that I'm just going to read this synopsis for you. You know the drill. What's an honest man to do? Isn't that always the question we find ourselves wondering when we get swept up in something bad, something overpowering and tangibly wrong with the ability to corrupt our morals down to the core? These boys, they're not mine, but they might as well be. I'm responsible for them, in a sense, and they couldn't be more different. Identical and looks alone. One I've noticed. The other has noticed me. One needs me. The other needs him. Sometimes a hero will fall on his own sword. But in my case, I've fallen on too. Double edged is a full length taboo MMM standalone novel that is intended for mature readers only. Some of the themes in this book could make readers uncomfortable. Please proceed with caution. People are very critical of the idea of a romance story in this case, based on this author's previous books. I'm guessing a very sexual or smart, if you want to use that word, a romance story involving two twin brothers and a stepdad because of incest. Look, on the surface, I'm like, whatever, it's fiction. I don't want to kink shame. Technically, no one's getting hurt. God knows there's more than enough popular romance about equally illegal. And I would argue much more questionable sexual content. However, the one element of this story that I didn't see anyone talking about was that the twin brothers in this story are 17.  That's just kind of anyway. Of course, I would love to hear what you think about it. Where where do you stand? Now, the biggest story of the day of the video is one for the horror community. Jean O'Neill is a reasonably prolific author coming out with a new book called The White Plague Chronicles. I will, of course, read the synopsis for you. And some of this may bring back memories of Sandra's The Men book that we discussed earlier. Time is running out.  Two retired Black Ops specialists named Ryan Tull and Joey Hotzko are thrust into the unfortunate position of being humanity's last hope. These ageing combat vets have been recruited into a secret international organization known only as The Association. Their mission to do whatever it takes to stop the virus from being released. Together, they must travel from the backwater rivers and jungles of Borneo to the scorching desert outback of Tasmania to the politically and religiously charged hotbed of the streets and back alleys of Israel. But will they succeed in stopping the madmen responsible for this atrocity before it's too late? Sadly, the answer will be no. The plague will be released and the effects of the deadly virus will be even worse than feared, mutating and evolving into a worst case scenario that will change the world as we know it forever.  So I would hope that it's not too hard to see why this book, the idea for this story upset quite a few people. The rescue of the quickly vanishing white race is a pretty thinly veiled tale of white erasure, which has been a calling card for almost all far right movements, the belief that we are being replaced. And the publisher at the forefront of this is Silver Shamrock Publishing, which until this incident was actually a very well known horror press. I've actually come across them in the past. I've even considered submitting to them quite a few times in a long string of now deleted tweets. They staunchly defended the book and the author and clapped back against criticism with such whammies as censorship or content warnings being one step away from SWAT stickers and jackboots. I don't think anyone is being censored here, though. Silver Shamrock is literally the publisher. They can publish it. Like I said before, though, just as they have the freedom to do that, people also have the freedom to criticize them for it and call them out on it. And also content warnings just aren't censorship. They're just they're just not like they're just emphatically not that thing. Content warnings are literally just a way for readers who choose to to check for anything that will make the reading experience worse or even dangerous for them. If you're worried about spoilers, don't read the content warning. Anyway, like these defensive tweets aren't unprofessional enough. Shamrock apparently also asked the author Jean to direct his entire Facebook fan base to one person's specific Twitter thread, a Twitter thread that was highlighting that person's concerns with the book and the story. As I understand it, Silver Shamrock may now actually be shutting down and removing themselves from the publishing and online sphere entirely, which unfortunately has left a lot of horror authors displaced in an industry that already shows little to no love for that genre. The story of White Plague itself actually kind of reminds me of that Jenny Nicholson video about the book Trigger Warning. It's basically a very obvious self-insert fantasy of an old white dude making himself a young muscular action hero so he can fight the young multicultural lives to save his outdated views. In the story, the hero is described every page as being big and jacked and also having very old sensibilities, sensibilities almost identical. To the author. Holy hell, there it is. Big month for writers. I hope you enjoyed. Please do let me know what you think about any and all of the stories we've spoken about today in the comments below. I appreciate it and I appreciate your support. Like I said, I make other videos aside from these ones about writing as well.  Thanks for watching. Hopefully I'll see you in my next writing video. Otherwise, I guess I'll see you in episode three of Writer Badlands. Catch it.


Hey, it's Brett. Here's the third devlog video for Elysium. I've been working on the full production of the game, beyond the prototype phase, since sitting down, writing the story outline, creating character sheets for the characters, and understanding the locations and the progression of the game. I've made quite a lot of progress since then, so I wanted to share that and go over all the different differences. So the first thing is new music. I replaced the stolen Dragon Quest music with some public domain music. In maps, there's this kind of more quiet theme, and I'll put info in the video description about who these are from, who made the music. Combat also has a new music, so I wanted to replace that with some public domain music. I also replaced the Dragon Quest background with one that I made, a pretty simple rudimentary planes one. That mushroom enemy is new. The main character, Kino's Spray, the little blue woman in the center there. That's new, before it was the main character from Dragon Quest. Yeah, I just wanted to get rid of all those Dragon Quest assets. Mushrooms new, can't remember if I said that, but that's a new enemy I made. A lot of mushrooms. We'll flee, that'll show the enemy flicker, and you have a chance to then escape. Here's a slime. I replaced the Dragon Quest slime with my own slime. Also, enemies on the map now have their own movement pattern, and then they'll eventually stop fleeing if you get far enough away. They kind of, they move randomly, and then we'll pursue. This entire map area is new. This area is called the Huron Plains West, and it's a pretty big map that'll show you and tiled for how I build it, and I made this whole tile set. Some of the art is a little rough, like the trees in the boulder ridge, like this ridge blocks me from going down. Let's fight this mushroom, because I want to show leveling, which is a new part I built in the game, so Kino got three experience from defeating the mushroom, levels up to two, and all of her health gets restored. You can see on the pause menu, I now display information about her health, her level, current experience, and the experience to the next level, and now that Kino has leveled up to level two, she's quite a bit stronger, and has a little higher defense. So the mushroom did less damage, and Kino is you're able to defeat them faster and take on stronger enemies. Let's save the game, and then we'll load it, and we'll see that Kino's health is saved, but also her level, her total experience is saved, which is new. That didn't exist before. We've got NPCs on the map, which I don't have sprites for yet, but you can talk to them. You can go from maps to maps, which existed before, and now we're back to some of the placeholder maps. Let's see what else is new. Yeah, that's primarily it. We've got levels, we've got fresh sprites and music, we've got uh, tiles on the map with collision. I think that covers most of the progress. From here, I will go and work on, I can't get through there, from here I will work on building out a village where you can sleep and restore your health items that you can consume and equip. So those are two new systems that I haven't really built out yet, and I'll have to build a new tile set for that village. It'll be called Teuron Village. Um, I'll add some new enemies and just kind of keep making steady progress throughout there. Let's talk to this NPC. Douglas says I just went out for a stroll and then all of a sudden I got surrounded by monsters. Today's just not my day. Oh yeah, there's water. It's interesting that that enemy got out onto the water because that should be, that's a bug, but hey, they're kind of bugs and uh, have to spend some time fixing them. Yeah, that's what I've got so far. I've been having a lot of fun working on it, and I thought it'd be cool to show you tiles, just to show you the map editing because I've been spending quite a lot of time in it. So this is Tiled, which is a free program for map editing. It's really great. I'm really enjoying using it. Before I was using Ogmo Editor 3, I switched to Tiled and recoded how that worked to use Tiled because I think it's quite a bit. I like the interface a lot more, so that's, that's been quite positive. But yeah, you can see the zoomed out view of what we were just exploring. And on the map editor, you have a tile set that you can use to paint the tiles. So if we click this grass, and I click here, that updated the map to now have this grassy grass, instead of just normal grass. So that's how you edit the tiles, and then certain tiles have collision properties that prevent objects from moving past them, like trees and those kinds of things. What I do is I edit this PNG image file, and then that refreshes here, and then I'll also refresh on the map and in the game so I can go and iterate on the sprites to make them better. And then you place objects, which I have an enemy object, and then based on whether it's a mushroom or a slime determines what shows up in the game. I'll be able to set properties like their level and anything else I want to, where the player starts when you start a new game. Building out NPCs, and this name key determines which text gets displayed, and then you can transport to different areas. So yeah, working with tiles has been nice. And then I'll build out different maps, like here's opening up that test area. And yeah, that's my progress so far. Going to work on building out the first town slash village, going to build the second version of the planes that you go north through, and keep on making progress. I'm potentially collaborating with a friend who's going to help with some character designs and music, which I'm really excited about and hopeful that that goes well. And add some creative energy that through collaborating that would be quite a lot of fun. So hopefully I'll have more to share there. That's my project. That's my progress on Elysian. Thanks for falling along, checking it out, and hope to have more to share soon as I keep making progress. All right, thanks. Have a good one.


Hey everybody, Dr. O here. Welcome to our unit on fluid, electrolyte and acid based balance. So I'm just going to introduce why those three things are important today. So here you see water, right? I mean, water is so important. If water wasn't water, life wouldn't exist. That's the way that I look at it. Water has life-giving properties, not just for us, but the biological world around us. I like to say that life takes place in water. So there's a lot of water in you, somewhere in the ballpark of 60% of your body weight is water, depending on age, et cetera, but water isn't the only thing there. So another thing I like to say a little bit cliche here, but you are not a problem, right?  So a solution is going to be a solvent and water is the universal solvent in the human body. So one solvent water plus one or more solutes. So the other ingredients that make you up are going to be the solutes that are in this solution. So if you think that's one way to look at it is you are a solution. So what are these solutes and why they matter so much? So fluid balance is, can we balance that our water gains with our water losses? That's great. We have to have the right amount of water in our body. But the solutes in our body, not only do they have their own functions, but they play a huge role in where this water is. So some of these solutes are going to be like your proteins that can transport hormones and all sorts of things. You've got other macronutrients, carbohydrates, et cetera. Then we have electrolytes. So electrolyte balance is, do you have the right number of electrolytes and are they in the right location to help determine where this body water is? So as I cover in another video, you're about 60% of your body water is intracellular fluid and the other 40% is extracellular fluid. Well it's electrolytes and other solvents that determine where these things are. So we'll talk about electrolyte balance as far as primarily the role it plays with where your body fluid is. We really can't boss water around. We have to, water moves by osmosis. So we have to change where solutes are so water will follow it. That's the simplest way to look at it. So fluid balance is important. Electrolyte balance determines where that fluid is and then none of this matters if we can't maintain a normal pH. So think about like your blood pH is normally 7.35 to 7.45.  So the pH of these fluids is also going to matter a big deal, which is why we'll cover the acid-base balance as well. Here you see just so back to fluid balance, I mean you are mostly water, somewhere between 50 and 60% water depending on fat versus muscle. When you're younger it's even higher, like 75%. As you get older it can even get down to like 45%. We kind of shrivel up as we get older, basically. But the fluid numbers, I generally just say 50 to 60% water. But a man or someone with more lean tissue like muscle would be closer to 60%. Someone with more fat would be a lower number closer to 50%. Here you see just different examples.  They're both 80 to 85% water whereas your teeth only have a little tiny bit of water in them. But usually they're going to, and bones are going to not have very much water either. So your body's made of water, but of course different amounts in different places. So that's fluid balance we've already talked about. So how do you keep all this water in your body? I cover this in another video, but you balance your gains with your losses.  Your metabolism does generate about a cup of water a day. How do you lose it?  And then of course feces is going to lose some water and hopefully not too much. So we have to, the electrolytes are going to determine where this water goes. We've talked about this. Last thing here with this introduction is just why is it so important to help maintain pH or why is it so difficult? Every second of every day, your body is generating acids. So the waste products of your metabolism are acids. So we are kind of always teetering on this edge of our pH dropping too low and us getting sick or succumbing, dying from it. So you have buffers and you have systems in place that constantly deal with these acids. This is why if someone does have an acid-base disturbance, it's almost always an acidosis because our metabolism is pushing us that direction anyways. If we don't constantly maintain a normal pH with buffers, our kidneys and our lungs, then we're in trouble. Okay, so that's just a real brief introduction to the three main topics we're going to cover in this unit. Fluid balance, electrolyte balance, and acid-base balance. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.


Okay. Cool. Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Human vs Machine, a love story. My name is Simon Chisnell, and I've come across from Auckland, where I work for a small company by the name of Whipscope. I've been around for a while. I've been developing Drupal for six or seven years. So quick introduction about this presentation, so at Whipscope we spent years refining and adding to a developer workflow, and now we think the structure will go. This is not written by me, this is written by my boss who's not here. But we love automated tests as they allow us to spend more time doing what we do best, writing code, or letting machines do what they do best, automation. But this is more my kind of concept, is automation isn't easy, and in this presentation we'll look at some different approaches we've taken personally, as a company, and share experiences with each of these. So an overview of what we'll be looking at. Three different testing methods, mythologies, CII continuous integration, which probably everyone knows, continuous testing, which is something I made up, and visual regression testing. And quick discussion around the technologies we use in the tech stack area. Pantheon for hosting, I'm sorry for platform SH and Acrea, but we use Pantheon. Bitbucket for a repo which we need to coach it, and then Behat, I don't know if you were in the sand beckers, well I'm but he didn't seem to like it, but we use it. And then Vagant for a VM look at development, but maybe Beatbox now, because that sounded pretty cool. So each of these testing methods, we'll have a look at what it is, how we implement them, and then pros and cons for each. Okay, continuous integration, what is it? People are probably familiar with it, the concepts, basically a development practice where developers constantly check in and integrate code into a shared repository, and then each check-in is verified by an automated test before being deployed. So how do we implement CI, in particular around Pantheon, which is not so CI friendly? So a little diagram here, developer does some work, commits, develops some work in the Bitbucket repo. So I'm not talking about branches here, I'm just kind of generally talking about the flow. Doesn't work, commits, Bitbucket then fires code chip, or I should say code chip watches Bitbucket, and then a test is run, or a project build is run in code chip. Now code chip basically builds the complete website that provides, I think a base kind of VM or environment that you can then do what you want with. And in this case, we run a script there in the corner, so you can see it, which basically says use a code base from a Bitbucket push, use terminus, which is a Pantheon thing to get a database. In this case, we use a development database. And then using a custom settings, pull in that database, start the server, and then run some B-hat tests. And then if the test do not pass, we get notified and develop and fix them. If they do, then that should be automatically deployed. And in this case, deployment basically involves cloning down the Pantheon repo, copying over a Bitbucket code, and then committing those changes. So then that pushes you or your commit all the way through from Bitbucket into Pantheon. So pros and cons, pros, it's useful to stop multiple developers committing code and affairs with other developer codes. So that's a CI concept in general. Again gives the developer confidence to commit and release code and forces developers to fix code, so they won't, or won't get deployed. Or my bug bear with it is they might just bypass the tests because they're just in a hurry. So the cons can be complex to set up, especially for small web shops or personal people with a lot of overhead involved in that. There you go, large set up overhead. And then minor issues can hold out development and deployment, I should say really in there. If it's a small thing and you just want to try to get it into your development environment to show people, then you've got to fix that test. Or in the end, you might just bypass the test. There are some resources if you wanted to try that. We've got a repo at the top, and then that basically is based on that particular Pantheon repository, which I found very useful and they've got some other useful ones as well. I think through to CodeChip and BeHat, that's the Drupal extension which BeHat runs on. Okay, so another testing method which started implementing more. It's the one that I've made up, Continuous Testing. It's basically CI without the automated deployment. So it's less likely to interfere with day-to-day development. So the concept is more, it'll run your tests, but you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about if it's going to do a deployment. You don't have to worry about running a test locally. It's just constantly running in the background. So yeah, so basically it follows a similar process to CI, except there's no deployment at the end of the cycle, and we only use, another advantage, only use the Bitbucket repo to hold files required for the actual test build as fired by CodeChip API. So I won't demo that, I'll demo it shortly, but... So a little diagram of that. So this time we're working directly on the Pantheon branch, whatever it may be, develop, or if you've got a multi-dev branch, and you make a commit and we use Pantheon's Quicksilver hook, which basically allows you to run anything you want on certain actions in the Pantheon repo. So in this case, we run a command which calls in some PHP script to run, which then triggers a CodeChip build. So previously prior to this, we've set up CodeChip, a CodeChip project and everything ready to go, and then so basically the Pantheon commit fires off the command to run that CodeChip build. And then test pass, nothing happens. Deployment will still be handled by the developer, the usual kind of concept with Pantheon. However, if tests fail, then they get notified by whatever means you want, Slack or email or anything you desire. OK, so pros and cons to continuous testing. Pros only requires code to level my repository, so this is a big one for us. Me personally, especially, I didn't like code living in Bitbucket and Pantheon. Uninterrupted deployment, so if you're in a hurry, you just want to get things into branch or into Pantheon to show a client or something that goes straight through. And then because of this test, you never need to be bypassed. Cons, failed tests won't stop deployment. And then we basically as a side thing, bad code can make it through more easily. So it's not a foolproof gate. It's more of a notification that your tests are running OK, that your code base is going OK. What have we got there? So it's not really using testing platforms as they are intended. It's kind of a hack that we've come up with to be useful for Pantheon. OK, so resources for that. That's top one of another repo we created. It's got everything you need to basically set up and try to run this kind of cycle, this method, and then the same code chip and dribble there. OK, so I'll do a demo, which is going to be exciting. So this is a B-hat test. Well, first of all, I should say that I've just installed default Drupal site straight out of the box, standard profile. I've created one article there just to show that it's got content. I'm not actually going to use that content. So going back to our feature, we can see our scenario of your home page is pretty irrelevant, but reading it through, using B-hat saying, given I am an anonymous user and then and article content. So this is using the Drupal extension to create content quickly and easily. So to create those three nodes of article content, the title status and body, and then go to the home page and then telling us what we should see. So we should see those three articles. We can probably clear that. That's really small, too. OK, so running the test, creating the content, and it's passing, which makes sense, because we've just created it. You'll notice that it's created that content, but it's not in the database. That's because Drupal extension with B-hat will delete any nodes that are created in a test, which is quite handy. OK, so we'll go in, we will break the test. We're doing the hardest scientific way of commenting out a title and rerun the test. And we should see it fails. OK, so say I'm a developer. I'm a notes to me, me commenting out a title, broke something. I commit it anyway. I'd commit titles. OK, so if we're going back to a slide previously, that commit is going to fire off a Quicksilver hook, and we can jump into that quickly. Quicksilver hook, that sits within our actual Pantheon code base, calls a code chip integration PHP file, and in particular here does a call request to an API endpoint on code chip. So basically it says code chip, run that project build, and if you go into code chip, OK, so this is the actual build. We can see that it's running, it's been triggered, and so it started, and that takes a little bit. So as you can see, this is, I mean, I think this one takes three minutes, and that's one test. So it's not the most efficient way of testing, but I guess that's functional testing. But the concept being that every commit this will run kind of in the background, you don't have to really be aware of it until something comes up you weren't expecting. This is particularly good for front-end developers if they don't like to run tests locally. They won't even be aware that it's being run on every commit. OK, so if we look into the setup of the code chip build or project, you can basically tell code chip to run whatever commands you want when the project starts. In this case, we run a script and with a couple of arguments, if we go into that script, big enough. That's kind of big enough. OK, now this is where it gets kind of complicated, but it's quite a bit of work in setting up the environment that we need, starting off with removing some guff, XD bug that comes with the composer, installing Imimagic, then basically using composer to, I think we're adding in Drash Terminus, where you're at in there, connecting to Terminus, whoops, OK, and then we can see in here, so we're running Git clone to pull in Pantheon repo and then using that code base, using Terminus, which is another Pantheon tool, to basically grab the database down from development, and we're going to test against and install the site, do a bit of cache refreshing, and install Selenium and start PHP. So if we go back to our test now, it's a little bit variable. OK, so it's running, but you can always jump into any test. So we just chose co-chip, because I think it had free tests, so it was easy to start with. Oh, there we go.  Now, this is where notification will come through. It's important if you use a system to have good notifications, an email, or I think there's a Chrome plugin and something like Slack, will pop up saying that that particular commit has caused a fail. So the developer can go and fix it at their own leisure, good concept. OK, last one we're going to look at is visual regressing test. So I've only just started playing with this, slightly not through to the introduction. The concept is using screenshot comparisons to automatically detect changes and then report them back to you. So the usual process is a set of baseline screenshots of your application or website that's generated by creating node content, or nodes of set content, and then any point after that you can compare against that baseline to see if any changes have come through. Only really useful for after-base development or after the website's been developed, but it can be very powerful. So the usual process is two-prong. The developer's either content type or the entire project's complete. Comes up with some baseline images or baseline tests. So I'll give a quick demo of that. And then runs this BHAT command or a set of tests essentially to create those baselines. And then maybe a month later he comes back, decides they want to work on something else in the project, makes code changes, etc. And then runs a different suite of tests to test against that baseline. Okay, maybe I'll just go straight into a demo of that. All right, so this is a test to set up to... Just have to do this locally because we've only just got it going really. This is a test to create that baseline. So advantage of BHAT for regression testing, BHAT and Drupal extension is you can easily create nodes of set content. So everything being the same, they should always look exactly the same. So walking through it, starting off giving an anonymous user a set of browser width and then create, or in this case I'm using a slightly different one, saying I'm viewing an article or a note of article content type, fill in some fields. And then this is a custom trait or custom step that I created. Then I take a regression screenshot. So if I run that, we're down there again, sorry. Okay, so we can see we've run through, created a node, and then the output of that step saying, can I take a regression screenshot? We'll actually create a PNG and tell you where we put it. So we can go over and look at it. Okay, there's a lovely screenshot with a rabbit. Okay, now if we were to make a change, we're above the developer, we've done a CSS change across all nodes without thinking. Make a change. So we can see that change has lost that margin. The article's pushed up, the content's pushed up against it. And a test should spot that change. If we look at what this test is going to be, it's exactly the same setup. The exact same node. The exact same node, everything is exactly the same, except the last step, the screenshot should be equal to article. Is there anyone that's different? Run that, set it up, and it passes, which it's not supposed to do. That's because... We'll just try it again. Maybe because I haven't set up the settings correctly. Okay, and you'll actually see, we get some output from that saying, file's not equal and it'll output a comparison file of the differences. We can have a look at that again. Okay, it's not ideal. But it'll give the developer a chance to find something to start with or a starting point. Okay, the pros and cons of this one. Pros can test entire pages and nodes for bugs. Obviously, because it's the entire look of a node. So it'll catch unintended visual changes. Styles might change for one thing that you didn't realize impacted another. It can be used for cross-browser testing as well. You could either do locally or with browser stack with a bit more setup and time. It's really great for testing module and core updates because obviously you never know how they might impact a site. That along with standard be-hat testing. Cons doesn't work well with dynamic content. So you notice I've used a set node there because we can then maintain exactly what's in the content. But even things like a time might change if you've got a time output on a node or something. Or in particular, views. As a developer, you'll be developing a way. You'll have some rogue nodes in there. Like in the home page, for instance. We tested that. That dummy-article is going to sit there. So it's always going to have... It's always going to break. Other cons, it can be difficult to set up and maintain. I think we're going to start running into that soon. And then the baseline screenshots require constant updating. So that's something we've got to be aware of. Same resources, really. Again, put everything we've done into a repo there. And then the bottom one there is some base B-hat steps that I've used for the actual screenshot comparison. Okay, so summary.  But it's a lot of work. So yes, we'll hopefully get you going quicker and works better, in my opinion. Our team for smaller teams. Visual integration is great for testing completed sites. Oh, I haven't actually changed that text.  Thank you. All right, questions? All right, cool. Thank you very much, Simon. Do we have any questions over here? Yes. With the regression testing, is it possible to sort of, like, ignore parts? So, like, you were saying that it was tough with dynamic content. How do you get it to work, then, if something, like with views or something like that? Yeah, I think... Does it just not work at all? There are... There's some ones, like, Shove and things, some kind of completed ones. So that kind of one I showed you was something I've basically pulled together really in the last week. I want to start using it as something I wanted to do. But the deeper you delve into that, the more complex it is. And there are, I mean, a few Google visual regression testing. There are ones out there that do it, but they're kind of complete systems. And sort of what I was trying to get at in here was it's better to start off with a baseline. So maybe to start off with your base content types. But maybe, yeah, if you've got more time and passion, then you could delve into that more. In my experience, on those things like timestamps, you can stub out content with the same timestamps so that your views are always going to look the same. It's just a lot more... Yeah. Yeah, I'm just wondering about the BeHat feature for actually doing the comparison between the images. Is that something you've open sourced? Yeah. Let me jump into it. I wouldn't have open sourced it because I don't create too much. I'm just consume. So what have we got? Okay, so this one, I take a regression screenshot. Okay. Yeah, so this is one of the steps I've created myself. But then you can see this one here, this... Create screenshot. That I'm pretty sure is coming from... I'm pretty sure that's coming from that other guy, that Cevue. Yeah, but I mean, to get that running, you just have to grab this web scope, Mint Context, and throw that into your BeHat test and it'll be there. And that should be in that repo. I'll refer to Sam Becker's presentation where at one point, he was putting creating screenshots, not with BeHat, but with Mink, I believe it was. I think I'm pretty sure has users of Mink to actually do that. And so to be using the same feature. In his case, he was just creating, like, it does this and then create a screenshot just so you can review it and see what was actually happening. Maybe. I'd just say if you... I would have to refer back to the video to find out what it was. Cross-referencing for future internet users. You mentioned in the install scripts that you're installing Selenium on the servers, but are you running the tests? I thought about that before. I mean, are the tests running through Gaunt from the server or through Selenium? It doesn't work on a server. So with BeHat, you can see we've got some tags in there. So API is one of the requirements for the Drupal extension, so that's needed basically to pull on the Drupal extension stuff. JavaScript then wouldn't BeHat decide that you're going to use... OK. So locally out here, I'm running PhantomJS. Yeah. So that's obviously taking the screenshots locally. And then I should be able to see what I'm using on the... I see Selenium in the scripts there. Yeah. That's right. I'm wondering what they could possibly be doing on the servers. Yeah. So this is the BeHat file that's used on the... on CodeChip. Yeah. So I guess it's just running... it's using Selenium. For anything that's JavaScript. Anything tag JavaScript, yeah. Which takes longer, so you've got to be a bit more careful. Any other questions? Yes. Do you find CodeChip flaky at all? We were actually using it with Docker, using their Docker integration stuff. I mean, just we've got a... I mean, it was great, but we did get a few false positives. False negatives. Yeah, I think... I mean, in parts and other projects, we've got more and more complex in our testing, and we see as conception, and we found that more flaky. I don't know if it's just conception, or because it's putting more on the system, or just because they're more complex. But again, it's kind of like... I prefer to start off baseline, get things going, and then, yeah, start with that. Move into the more complex that you can, but... Yeah. Tom? I'm just wondering about CodeChip. Do they keep the environments up after the build so you can do any debugging? Yes, yep. Yeah, so you can jump in. So this is a failed one. You can see a history of them. So that's one thing. There's always been a lot more, but because I'm running the same project over and over again with the CS kind of concept, it's just re-running the top one. But any particular one you can jump into, and then... Can you actually access the sites? No. So what you can do is run like a link server or something, or a link browser. There's a really good tool called Probo that we just started using. It actually builds out your pipeline, your build. It shuts down the container afterwards and you can still access the site at that point in time. Okay, it could be good. Yeah, good. The all-popular UAT testing. Let's sign off. Have we got any more questions? Okay. Thank you so much, Simon. You've come over from New Zealand. Yeah. Big round of applause for Simon for coming this way. Thank you.


Welcome digital asset news to get top stories and crypto currency digital assets and break them down to bite sized pieces today a lot Of stuff to go over let's break right in so first up Wall Street veteran says many people will turn to Bitcoin after Labor Day This is a very interesting story because the gentleman who's gonna speak first of all has a wealth of information on The traditional stock market, but also it's because he was against Bitcoin and now it looks like he's converted So as time goes on it looks like this is gonna happen more and more also Warren Buffett We'll buy Bitcoin soon says Morgan creaks Jason Williams This is a piggybacked on another article which talks about how Warren Buffett is getting out of the stock market in some way shape or form and Getting his investments into gold also Crackers going to list polka dot this week and lastly we'll go over question a day Which is uphold and their 65 day asset hold policy so forget that let's take a look at what's going with the market So I got to tell you on the weekend usually we see dips, but not this one looks like it's doing pretty good I thought Bitcoin's gonna hit 12,000, but here we are sitting at just below 11 9 and it's down by point 3% But again Bitcoin has done a tremendous rally as a lot of other all coins have as well So Ethereum looking pretty sharp 431 XRP 29 cents watch out Tether the dollar chain link is at a solid 19 so pretty good and again I thought it actually would hit 20 but here at 19 still pretty happy about that Bitcoin cash 304 Cardano up point or down point seven Bitcoin SV still in the top 10 don't understand like coin I can see that 2.9% finance coin Tezos 3.9 4.2 Tron Congratulations to all you Tron holders. I used to hold Tron a while ago in 2017 2018 Got rid of it didn't really see the whole point But if you've been holding this whole time, hey tip of the hat Good job to you and then that's pretty much it's not too many huge historical moves AVE as far as DeFi going up to 10% so that's pretty good and Bat for some reason basic attention token Wow 14 and a half percent and OMG is right for OMG Network 56% nice little pump going on there So let's break into today's top story. So first up Wall Street veterans as many people turn to Bitcoin and he gives a Specific day after Labor Day. It's pretty amazing, but it's not just what he says here Really what he's saying is if they're gonna do that after Labor Day, which since September You need to start making your moves now. So what's going on here? So Wall Street veteran George Ball a former crypto skeptic explain Why he believes that many wealthy investors and traders will be looking at Bitcoin after Labor Day and look we just saw one of the Most famous wealthiest investors Warren Buffett say he's gonna get into gold Which he has never done before him and his party Chile monger never done that before and here they are So if they're talking about gold, what do you think's gonna happen with the rest of the stock market? We'll get that in a bit George Ball currently serves as chairman and CEO of Sanders Morris Harris Which is a privately owned duly registered broker dealer an RIA firm Establishing 87 he started his career as a stockbroker EF Hutton was president between look at this 1977 and 82 he left Hutton in July became a CEO of prudential box securities labor later renamed to prudential security So this guy has been around the block We'll just say moving down Keptiyama was the interviewer and he started the interview by asking ball Why he thinks that now is the time for people to take a look at their portfolios and potentially make some adjustments and he talks about the summer doldrums and how things are going but This is what was interesting. He says COVID will be with us through the first quarter of next year And then there will be a vaccine as if he just knows it like oh, it's gonna be you know The first quarter he states the markets waiting for a new spark and that sparks likely to come in into ignition as it often does Right after Labor Day, so the time to reposition the portfolio is before everything blows up, which is right now So if you are in this space You've seen Exponential growth over the last two three weeks. I gotta tell you this would have been the time to really and best Actually, it wasn't this time It was in March when everything went down the tubes That was a time to get in was before but I still see a Tremendous amount of growth or there's a lot of upswing coming this way anyhow. This is where it gets interesting Kadyama then asked ball what assets other than equities people should be looking at and ball said before I read it I just want you to hear it from the horse's mouth So this is what ball actually said in the interview well George what assets should investors get into say outside of equities? I've never said this before and I've always been a Blockchain crypto currents Bitcoin opponent But if you look right now the government can't stimulate the markets forever the liquidity flood will end As sooner or later the government's got to start paying for some of these stimulus for some of the deficits for Some of the well-deserved very smart subsidies that is providing to people are they gonna raise taxes that high or if not are they going to print money if they print money that debases the currency and probably even things like tips Treasury inflation protective securities can be corrupted so the very wealthy investor or the trader Probably turns to Bitcoin or something like it as a staple Wow, I never thought I'd hear you say that and we heard Jamie Diamond talk about Bitcoin before and yeah, that's that's it So I mean it's pretty interesting when he talks about it because there's some people who believe in the modern monetary theory Which are MMT where you can just you know have helicopter money and it doesn't really matter But it matters. I mean it's some way shape or form. It's gonna matter There is no free lunch and I think at some point taxes are gonna be raised. There is going to be I mean even they could still actually print more money But at some point you have to pay the piper and I think what these investors are looking at especially somebody like Warren Buffett is like Hey, I don't know what's gonna happen later on down on the road But there's only so much liquidity we can inject into the stock market before people like what the heck is going on Maybe that is a bubble and they look for safe haven assets and I think Bitcoin is one of those so I Gotta tell you in my opinion new savings account for this world is gold silver and Bitcoin But I could be wrong. Let me know what you think of the comment section But before we move on let me say this I had always said that I believe that Bitcoin would do our digital assets and cryptocurrencies in general do very well as Long are for an extended period of time They would reach new highs if the economy still stayed in a downturn if there was different problems with This pandemic if different things because people would rush to it But now with what ball was talking about here. I can see how it doesn't really matter now It doesn't matter because everything has been set in motion Months and really if you think about it even years ago all the different things that are going on right now are Economic policies that are going to in some way Fail and it's going to lead us into what Bitcoin can actually do Which is a which is not a any kind of soft money It is a hard asset it is deflationary and it can do a lot of different things that the economic policy here for not just the United States But globally I can't fix but again only time will tell let's move on next article Warren Buffett will buy Bitcoin says Morgan Creek Jason Williams And this wasn't so much about you know him buying, you know gold and going into Bitcoin But just Warren Buffett getting into gold is amazing to me So on Friday was reported on several major news outlets that American billionaire Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway bought This is weird 21 million shares of Berwick gold worth 563 million This is something investors like Buffett known as value investors have never done before According to Martin Creek partner Jason Williams Bitcoin is the next thing for Buffett to score and he will buy it soon And it was just like what ball was talking about investors are going to look into some kind of safe haven assets So if you got somebody like Buffett and he's going into gold the next obvious choice that he can do Is going to digital gold which will be Bitcoin is he gonna do it? I have no idea, but I can tell you it would only make sense to me Especially if he's every picks a look at it What has been the highest performing asset class in the last decade and has been Bitcoin and to a lesser extent a theorem as well So it'll be interesting to see anyhow moving on going report by Forbes the decision to buy the shares may have been inspired by a close and painstaking monitoring of gold's performance in the charts Which Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger may have found interesting I would believe they did and now he talks about Bitcoin maxi max Kaiser which he explained that the billionaires involvement with gold Will spill over as Bitcoin is considered to be many digital gold which is what I said global He states global 100 trillion fund management is is less than 1% invest in gold With Buffett's now moving into gold expecting global allocation of 5% AU minimum Implies $5,000 per gold expect a 1% Bitcoin global allocation. Remember that again expect a 1% Bitcoin global allocation, which is 1 trillion dollars. This implies 50,000 for Bitcoin Expect PTJ ups to 10% so I gotta tell you all those different gold bugs out there and they're talking Hey, congratulations. Gold's at an all-time high, but I gotta tell you I understand why they're they talk Negatively about Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is going to eat their lunch and just to take a look at how much wealth There is just in gold which is pretty interesting if you take a look at this one. I show a lot It's the money in markets It was just published on May 27th just more than three months ago And you can see that this little square is worth a hundred billion So here's silver at a paltry forty three billion dollars. Okay. Here's crypto at 244 Now it's another hundred billion so a little bit more military spending budget deficit coins banks feds balance sheet Which is way higher. I'm sure here's billionaires. Here's these guys good for them and here's gold So gold right now is looking at almost 11 trillion dollars So how much do you think if you just take 10% just 10% and you put it into Bitcoin? There's your trillion that's pretty much it in 1.1 trillion if you want to be You know math wise, but yeah, that's just that's first of all, that's just gold It's just gold now if you want to take a look at other types of places where you can get this type of money Here's a fortune 500 look at Microsoft Apple Amazon and Facebook and Google how much they have that's a lot of money Here's stock markets a 9 trillion global money supply which 7% is physical I might add 90% non physical and I don't really care about the rest of stuff The one that always gets me is this one right down here called derivatives because in derivatives At the low end it's 558 trillion and on the high side It could be what's called one quadrillion, which I even know that number even existed until I saw this this visualization So if we start to talk about, you know, how early we are my friends We are unbelievably super early if we're talking about cryptocurrency So if you think that it can't go up, I beg your differ and lastly to finish this up It states if he eventually buys Bitcoin, it will be a dream come true for the crypto space I may mark the beginning of a new era for the industry at large. I gotta tell you Warren Buffett's from Omaha. I'm from Omaha. My brother still lives there And I was back there about a month ago And he was telling me about his investment of Visa which he had done now for 10 for 10 years And he was he was talking to me about how he doubled his his Investment and I was like, uh, are you are you bragging or you complaining? I don't know what you're talking about He was yeah, yeah, you know, I doubled in a decade. I'm like Jesus Crimey Christmas. I go, that's just that's just happening like a month ago I go, you know, you really should take a look at this stuff. He's like, that's ridiculous There's no one who's gonna get in that. I'm telling you right now I'm telling you right now if Warren Buffett comes out and says in any way shape or form that he's doing anything with Cryptocurrency assets, you will see this market explode because you got people like my brother who follow that guy like he is some kind of God and Let me tell you once they figure it out of what's going on behind the scenes It'll be a powder cake. Just my opinion. What do you think of the comment section? Let's move on next up Polka dots coming to Kraken and that's gonna happen on August 18th So I got a little email which is always interesting and I say hey polka dots coming and this is a big thing And I'm like, but that's polka dot so I've heard a lot of people in the in the comment section say Hey, have you taken a look at polka dot? Look at polka dot. And it was the same thing with like Voyager People are like, have you taken a look at Voyager? Look at Voyager when I hear the same thing over and over again Like I can see I can hear somebody say hey He's looked at potato foot and a potato foot coin or tomato coin and I'm like, okay And I never hear about it again But this polka dot has been like that the thing that I keep hearing again and again and again So first of all I have to ask myself. Well, what the heck is polka dot? So there's two things that really stuck out of me one was scale and how it was able to scale So blockchains and isolations can only process a limited amount of traffic, which is true I was one of the problems with scaling up certain blockchain types of projects polka dot is a sharded sharded sharded Multi-chain network meaning you can process many transactions on several chains in parallel Eliminating the bottlenecks that occurred on all the other ones So this when they start talking about sharding. Well, that's competing directly with Ethereum and Cardano's Hydra So that's very interesting right out the bat next one. It talks about specialization when it comes to blockchain architecture One side doesn't fit all all blockchains make trade-offs to support different features one chain might optimize for identity management All another might optimize for file storage on polka dot each blockchain can have a novel design Optimized for a specific use case and this one is competing directly with IBM's permission blockchain Because they are going for those huge conglomerates those huge entities for those privatized Blockchains because they're going to specialize but now with polka dot they think they they can come in and go look We do the same thing and we have a better product So interesting to see what could happen now going even farther. Just so you know polka dot is now live great for that There's interoperability which we just talked about Blockchain innovation again create a custom blockchain and minutes It's pretty interesting and this this part was what got me forkless and future-proof polka dot can upgrade Without hard forks to integrate new features of bug or fixed bugs nights. I I thought about I go well There's been other ones same thing with like eos They had talked about the same thing but there was a problem however This one's pretty interesting because it talks about polka dot as a sophisticated governance system With where all stakeholders have a voice so they're going to be able to vote on where the direction of the chain actually goes So these are the little things that I know about polka dot. I am interested to see how it all works out As far as like the price itself on coin gecko right now You were looking this one is below the top 100. I believe amazingly. It is 300 almost three It was it's about 350. It's about 350 for one polka dot. Why well if you take a look at the circulating supply It has a maximum of only 10 million. So that's interesting. However, does that mean it's going to take off? Well, it has a very low supply. So we have supply and demand I believe this is going to have a huge demand when it goes live We will actually see I will tell you this though as far as getting able to actually purchase polka dot Good luck with that here are the exchanges that I see I haven't took a look at uniswap and it's not there So I'll be taking a look at this project later on to see how it all goes But I can just tell you as before it gets listed on Kraken I set the price to go up massively then when it gets listed to drop again Just like all cryptocurrencies do interesting project, but not in my plan. All right, let's move on next up for Q of the day This is a pretty good statement in question And it was posed me by RDNZL and it's all about uphold and 65 day asset holds So let's jump in the office. Okay. I welcome everybody it's back to the office And we're going to go over the question today, which is from RDNZL 7393. I don't have a name just have an email and It's a it's a comment and a question. I'll rule that one It says hey Rob this week you had a question from a viewer about Voyager policies And I thought you might be interested to know but a new policy for a CH a CH are automated Automated clearing house purchases. So when you connect your bank to an exchange, you can do what's called a CH You can transfer funds automatically Or you can do it via debit card or a credit card or a wire just depends on your particular Exchange and how it's actually being offered but for what she's talking about here is a CH for uphold So she says or he or she says for a CH purposes at uphold and perhaps update your explained exchange spreadsheet a CH purchases are now being held by uphold For 65 days before you are allowed to transfer them off their exchange and when I first read this I'm like I got to read that again because it makes that didn't sound right But three times four times like okay, I get it now. Let's see what's going on So they say the purchases are cleared for trading immediately with other assets on the platform But their market rates are from an alternate alternate dimension Apparently because they are nowhere near our actual market rates Okay, so the only way to get your assets prior to 65 days of uphold is to use a credit card or debit Which we just talked about I can't believe they made this policy change 10 days is the longest period I had experience so far Customer service is only replied with can responses quoting the policy which that's usually what we do now For everybody who has customer service for their businesses.  I possibly can myself, but it is what it is So then she here she says thanks for suggesting Voyager sign signed up. It's going great Okay, so first of all we have to verify everything right never assume things are what they say they are Do your own research right and do you do diligence? So I took a look at uphold Let's take a look at the actual The FAQ section and I found this it says how fast my trade funds deposited from my US bank account Starting August 13th. You can trade a CH deposits instantly on uphold, which means you can buy Bitcoin XRP Without the four to seven day cooldown period for people who want to get into fast moving cryptos quickly the change is a massively forward So great. I believe that you can withdraw an a CH deposit to your originating bank account after three business days Once the funds have settled. However, and this is a big one You can withdraw a CH funds to external networks such as crypto wallets or sent to other users on the platform after 65 days and is exactly right from The actual website from uphold so what I did is I mean the Statement is the statement the question was can you update your exchange list? And of course so in the description of my videos There is a link it's gonna look like this and this link is gonna send you to a Google spreadsheet Which has all the information that I've collected for all the different exchanges and wallets that I have used and currently using and will not use I go over everything as far as like the interest rates the fees how it all works if I recommended I'm not I talk about my one-two punch Voyager and Celsius. I know some people I mean a lot of people love Voyager and some people hate it. They say odds. It's this and that But you know, I guess it just comes down to your your personal experience I have a nothing but a good experience and then now that I hear about uphold I'm like, well, that's kind of a bummer. So 65 days is quite a long time So I put that response in there and I also put a link to that particular page so people can find it and When they have questions, it'll just write there for them. So that is the question of day. I'm glad Someone actually is updating me on these things because I cannot imagine 65 days seems like a tremendous amount of time. All right. So that's it for today Let's jump back. All right, and that's it So thanks a lot for sticking with me on a Sunday. Just want to say thanks to everybody who has joined up I have a join now button underneath.  It's a dollar 99 and these people sign up just as a way of showing thanks So I say great. I'll do random shout-outs. So I want to give random shout-outs to the new ones Jesse Kirkland, Lincoln Six Echo, William Howell, who's been around for a long time actually. Carlos Gomez, Droplet Who else we got? Patrick Neal, Noel Flippin Vegas been around, Jimmy G, Joe Griffin, Mary Yallah, Yallah Timothy Dillon and D Ropeke. So thanks to everybody. Really appreciate it. If you like those types of videos There's me too. It's gonna pop up on your left and right. I don't know what they are because YouTube has control over that Also, they have control over all the ads you see So if it was a scam in the beginning a scam ad or a scam ad in the middle or a scam ad after Let YouTube know. They'd love to hear from you. And that's it for today. So thanks a lot. Appreciate it.


What better way to feel how old you are how brief your existence is and to question the importance of your life? Then by talking about how old movies are Hey guys, this is a new segment I thought about starting mainly because I saw that the dark night turns 10 years old This year in July and that made me feel old as hell So I thought that I would do a segment talking about movies that turn 10 years old some that we know some That we don't and I thought this would be a kind of an interesting retrospective and also really kind of hit you in the Gut early in the morning reminding you how old you are so this will be a short little series I do throughout 2018 talking about movies that came out in 2008 and I thought what better way to start than with the movie clover field clover field was directed by Matt Reeves written by Drew Goddard and produced by JJ Abrams and was released on the 18th of January in 2008 It still baffles my mind that this movie which had such a huge conspiracy following and actually has such a cult status Following was released in January, which we all know now as the gutter trash of movie releases This was a movie that came out pretty much at the pinnacle of Technological knowledge in terms of how to promote a movie on the internet the internet was still not used as much for Promoting movies as obviously as it is now There was movie trailers and normal promotions all that sort of stuff and then there was the internet The internet was still a new player in the game and the guys behind this movie used it to its ultimate advantage The trailer that came out was actually really a short Summarization of the first ten minutes of the movie with the party You're kind of wondering what was going on because it felt like you were watching a movie and then the attack happened and The short little clip ended with the Statue of Liberty's head rolling in front of you that hooked Everyone especially the fact that they didn't give the movie a title either at the end of the trailer They just said when the movie was coming out absolutely fantastic It did however leave a website what it had was a lot of fake promotional videos and photos of Animal attacks the sightings of a giant creature and whatnot, but it didn't really allude to anything It just left you little Easter eggs inside and obviously this Blew up on the internet people were theorizing what it was they were wondering if this was a Cthulhu movie They had all of these ideas Admittedly when the movie came out some people weren't as happy with the result It was sort of kind of like a no man's sky situation now or near as bad Admittedly but the idea that the theories took a hold of the movie and promoted it to an area that the film just could Not contend with but it was still a decent film It's probably one of the better if not one of the best handheld movies ever made handheld movies weren't a big thing Yeah, mainly because this was not a cheap handheld movie either. This was a big production It just so happened that the story took place from a camera and that was probably one of the more interesting aspects of it This film gave people the idea of what a survivor's perspective would be in such like a Godzilla attack What also surprises me is TJ Miller was HUD. He's the guy who's holding the camera I can't believe that he was in this movie and the movie is kind of average the story is a little bit simplistic the characters aren't really that memorable and Really, you're more interested in what's going on with the monsters the whole mystery Every thing of the aspect of the event is much more interesting than the characters themselves But like I said the movie is a gem of its promotion as it is something that we will probably never Experience again because of the vast limitations of the internet nothing can be kept secret anymore People are able to figure out plot twists and all other manners of secrets and films nowadays They're so easily can be shared on the internet and because of that That's what makes Cloverfield all the more memorable is because of its promotion and just what it means in terms of Promotion to film as well as just an era that was very brief because not too long after Cloverfield The internet just took over and it became the main conduit of promotion for films anyways guys That's the end of the first episode of movies that are 10 years old now I'm gonna try and make this a regular thing because 2008 was an interesting time for me I was actually starting to see movies by myself at this time which my high school friends thought I was very strange for But I just enjoyed the movie going experience and this was sort of the build-up to me being what I am now as a short-time movie reviewer But anyways keep an eye out these reviews are going to be kind of random But they will always be on the date of the movie's release So if you liked this video and you like this idea leave some comments down below Talk about what you remember of Cloverfield and then maybe talk about other movies that you remember that came out around the Similar time so guys if you liked this video leave a like and if you're interested in seeing what I talk about next Maybe hit the subscribe anyways guys. That's all from me. See you on the next video


I coined the phrase, relationships over transactions. It hit me like a ton of bricks one day. And this is something that you've really got to take to heart. Is that when I'm talking to a prospect, I absolutely do not care if they want to buy or sell something today or not. My goal is not to sell them a piece of property or have them sell their piece of property. My goal is to create a friendship with them and make them feel comfortable with me. Period. End of story. If you can't make someone feel comfortable with you, there's no chance at all for any business there's not going to be a transaction. The number one goal for you as a real estate agent, one goal is to talk to the most people. A secondary goal right under that and the reason of talking to so many people is to make them feel comfortable with you. Your goal when you're talking to a prospect is not to get a listing, set an appointment, stay balanced and take it one step at a time. Don't try to learn everything in one day or sell everything in one day. What I would suggest is spend half your time, 50% of the time you want to allocate to real estate on training and the other half on making calls and building your business. The problem is a lot of new agents spend 100% of the time they allocate to real estate towards training and they never start making the calls and never start trying to build their business. So start there. 50% calls, 50% training and then once you get through the first lump of training dial that back to 70-30, 30% training, 70% real estate building your business but break that 70% into 50-50, 50% calls, 50% marketing and you start to ease into the marketing side of the business too. So that's a little formula I like to use for new agents. 50-50 training and calls.  Listen man, GL leads are great and all but I'm going to tell you where the gold is. Okay? You ready for this? Old expires, old expires, old, old expires. What we want to do is we want to go back two years, right? So get right ex expires, go back two years worth of data. Have that two years worth of data in your folder. Now you have that data to chip away at whenever you feel like calling expires, right? Whatever day you want to call expires. So now we're in a situation where we have two years worth of expires and all the new ones are getting added to the bottom of that list every day. And so we just have an ongoing list that continues to grow and these conversations, now why I call it gold, okay? The reason why I think this is the way to go right now is because of the type of conversations you're going to have because here's the script, hey Mrs. owner, this is whoever with whatever real estate, how are you doing? I'm enjoying the days in a gorgeous cool. Listen, I don't want to take it too much of your time, but I saw your house was for sale last year. Whatever happened with that? Boom. Booyah. End of story. Period. There it is.


Okay, as a PlayStation fan, you want the right audio for your PlayStation setup, right? But I've got the right soundbar for you. I think it's the right soundbar. I'm talking about the Sony A3000 soundbar.  Now, this is a 3.1 channel soundbar. What that means is you've got a left, a right, a center, and you've got two subwoofers built into this beautiful soundbar.  I do wish it came in the white version. So, Sony, think about that. You've got the Sony logo on one end. On the other end, you do have your controls, power, volume, Bluetooth. Also, you've got demos for 360 audio and Dolby Atmos, which you guess we'll take a listen to. Now, at the back, on the lower right-hand side from where I'm sitting, you do have all your ports. You've got a HDMI-ER port. It's HDMI out. You've got an optical port. You've got an S-line port for your S-line center channel. If you have a Sony TV, if not, that's fine. But you've got all the ports you need on this device. You've got to hear the audio coming from this. But before we get to that, I know you guys are waiting. Let's talk about the remote control. So, the remote kind of looks chunky. It looks like something that maybe, you know, you've seen in the past. But it does have a lot of great functionality built into this remote. The top area there, the power button. You've got the TV option. You've got Spotify option there as well. Bluetooth. This allows you to toggle immediately to any of those options. Then you've got things like voice that enhances vocals for you directly. Or you've got night. Basically, tuning the volume down so that when you're watching or playing games at night, you're not going to disturb your neighbors. Then, of course, you've got general playback controls, sound field, which basically tunes everything together with the accessories. And it's got some really nice subwoofer and rear speaker accessories, which are really good. Now, you've got your home button. But right below are volume controls. This is center volume for your master volume. But then you've got rear speaker volume controls and as well as also subwoofer controls. Those are necessary because you can crank it up with those accessories. So, let's just get to the meat of the matter. I said it sounded really good. Now, I'm going to play audio from the Soundbar along the A3000 so you guys can listen to it. And you're going to hear vocals from my YouTube video. You're also going to hear some music. And then we'll get into some gaming on our PS5. Size-wise, when you compare them to the XM4s, the XM4s are massive. They are really big. All right, so that sounded really, really good.  You could hear those explosion really crisp. The vocals came out well. But what if I told you you can enhance that experience and make it even better.  I do have the SW3. And then you also have their satellite speakers. You've got the three series and the five series. I have the three series here. And they do a really good job in enhancing that overall audio experience. And what I like about it is, is that this supports 360 reality audio. Also supports DTSX. So of course, as a gamer, you definitely love that. And as well as Dolby Atmos. So a lot of your games support that and you're going to get that feel all together. Now you're wondering how is that overall sound with now this, you know, surround sound setup? Well, you just have to listen to it. A time for legends. History is written by the victors. Okay, that was amazing. I really love the fact that you could hear just the separation of everything going on, especially during the games. Playing Spider-Man, Miles Morales, you could of course hear the music, you know, also the swinging around and then going over to Call of Duty. You could definitely hear the explosions, the center of the explosions where it's coming from.  It's one of the best experiences that I can actually point to. And I think a lot of people will like that. Now, putting this all together is truly amazing. But the soundbar itself really is the center of all this. And it's priced at just $6.99. And I think this might be the soundbar to go with actually enhance that gaming experience and get your audio of course to the very next level. Now, of course, you can add in the accessories you want, whether it's a subwoofer or the rear speakers. But this is a fun little package. So if you guys think this is worth your while or something you want to use with your gaming experience and also just watching content, definitely check out the Sony A3000 soundbar. Otherwise, guys, don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and always enjoy your entertainment.


We're going to take you live to a press conference with Christine Mill, the Greens' leader. She's responding to the government's $500 million package for dental health. It's restricted access to services and also we don't have enough personnel in terms of dentists and dental technicians as well as raising the profile, public awareness of dental issues. So this is what the Greens have been able to do because the people of Melbourne voted for Adam Bandt and because the Greens around the country achieved balance of power, we have been able to deliver this for the community and I'm delighted that that is the result of our negotiations coming into this year's budget. Following a down payment last year where we managed to get $50 million and an advisory committee set up, now we've had the recommendations of the advisory committee and we're finally seeing a real change in terms of dental services in Australia. Richard. Well, as Christine said, today is a great day for those hundreds of thousands of people who are on a public waiting list and there are many hundreds of thousands more who simply don't go on a waiting list because the list is just far too long. So what we've negotiated in this agreement with the government and I have to say it's a testament to the hard work that Christine put in discussions with the Prime Minister and a really great thing to have achieved in the few short weeks that she's been the leader of the Australian Greens, what we've managed to achieve is a $350 million blitz on public dental waiting lists right across the country. That's a huge win. It's exactly what the expert panel, the advisory council, have recommended needs to be injected into the state public dental sector. So we've managed to achieve every cent that was recommended by the advisory council. We've got a further $80 million in terms of training. We've got a graduate year for dentists and now for oral health therapists so that we get new graduates, new dentists, new oral health therapists working in the public dental sector, being exposed to complex, often chronic conditions that they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to and working in regional and remote communities as well. So it's a really tremendous workforce initiative. We've got almost $80 million to bring more dentists to regional Australia and this is a sign of just how committed we are, the Greens, to regional Australia, that we have worked very hard to ensure that we get a strong commitment to getting more dentists into regional Australia. This $80 million investment will translate to about 300 new dentists working right across the country in regional areas, so that's a terrific outcome. We've managed to secure over $10.5 million in oral health promotion. So we've got to start tackling this problem from the prevention lens as well as the acute care lens and this $10.5 million will go towards coordinating a lot of the oral health promotion work done at a state level. It will mean that we begin to integrate our oral health promotion strategies with all the other chronic disease messages and approaches that we have, for example, with diabetes, chronic heart disease and so on. A lot of those approaches and strategies need to work together. We've got also a half a million dollars for the National Dental Foundation, an organisation that does very good work in coordinating dentists who, as a community service, dedicate their time on a pro bono basis to provide treatment to the most needy. In total, the package is worth over half a billion dollars and it is one of the biggest investments made in public sector dentistry in a generation. We're really pleased to be part of the outcome. We think it's a great outcome for people right across the country. It is the foundations for denti care. So through this package, we have laid the foundations for denti care. The training package, the workforce package, the oral health promotion and the huge waiting list splits into the public dental sector are all critical first steps for denti care and were recommended by the expert panel that was set up as a result of the agreement with the Greens. The next step is to work with the government over the coming months to establish that national dental scheme, building on these foundations. And so today's a really significant announcement. It's the biggest transformation to the dental sector in a generation and we're well on the way to the Greens vision of denti care. Once again, commend Christine for her work, commend the government for entering into these negotiations in good faith. Think we've together reached a terrific negotiated settlement. And of course, I thank the people of Melbourne who because they elected Adam Bant into the lower house, we've managed to be in a position where we could negotiate this outcome with the government. Adam. Look, I'm really thrilled to be here in the electorate of Melbourne to announce one of the biggest reforms in dental health in a generation. When we, the people of Melbourne voted Greens at the last election and almost two years ago, we were in a position to sit down with the Prime Minister and agree to provide stability to the minority government. One of the things he said was that we wanted to see reform in the area of dental health. We have so many hundreds of thousands of Australians on waiting lists to get to see a dentist and many people don't go because they can't even afford to at all. And that particularly hits people who are on low incomes. Here in my electorate of Melbourne, we have more public housing dwellings than anywhere else in the country. And it's low income earners who are going to benefit the most from the package that the people of Melbourne have just put onto the national stage and I'm thrilled that we are going to see over half a billion dollars in investment in dental health. And so we're going to start to move to the situation where going to the dentist is like going to the doctor where ultimately you can use your Medicare card. But this first step, this blitz on waiting lists in the public sector is really going to benefit community centres like Dudegala where we are today. Dudegala here does some amazing work for some of the most vulnerable people in the community. Now, we're a wealthy country. Everyone should have the right to good quality dental care. That's something that these community dental health care centres practice every day. And as a result of the package that we've negotiated, they've got a massive boost and it's going to be a big help to clear some of those public health waiting lists. And so on that note, I might introduce Kaz Healy, who's the CEO of Dudegala Community Health and ask her to say a few words about the implication of this package. Thanks, Adam. Come on. This investment is just a fantastic outcome for those many thousands of people who just can't afford to go to the dentist and who end up in great pain, really unwell and often in our public hospital system for something which is clearly preventable. This is a really great first step in acknowledging the experts. Okay, we're going to leave that press conference from the Greens and some dental health experts there in Melbourne. The Greens taking some credit for the package that was announced today, $500 million. And one of the key aspects of that will be to clear the huge backlog of patients who are waiting for treatment on the public dental list.