All right. So for the next session, we're going to have a talk by Sarah Jane and Sarah that we're speaking about everyday objects and user research. And I'll just share that in a minute. If you all can see this screen, please let me know in chat. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Hi, my name is Sarah Jane Clark. I go by SJ and I'm a senior user experience researcher at Red Hat and I focus on developer products. And I'm Sarah. I'm also a senior user researcher at Red Hat. My focus is basically on rail and anything that's related to rail. All right. So you have gotten somehow access to a whole bunch of users, which is amazing. Now you've got some questions for them. You want to ask them about their motivations, how they use product, what they are doing with your particular project. But now what do you do with them? So you could try some of the old standard type things that you would do for research. You could do a usability test. You could try a survey, even a card sort if you're looking at navigation or that sort of thing. Maybe you have some sketches or a prototype. You kind of want to walk them through that stuff to get their ideas. And these are all great options. They're still, you know, the foundation of our toolbox. But those are all screen based options. What if you actually got them up and away from the screen? So the question really is how can we get the same quality of data that you would get from those kind of old standard type research methods, but do it in kind of a more visual and interactive and engaging way. All right. So let's take a look at the string board. This was a project that I put together for our company's annual conference. And what I had set out to do originally was to help us update our knowledge about our developer audience. So we wanted to update our persona set. We wanted to understand more about their motivations and their workflow, just kind of some foundational information. So to that end, I put together this survey. And we were going to have our attendees, our participants in this case, do this study on this tablet, an eight inch tablet. They would hold the tablet while in our booth and answer the questions on the form. And that's a perfectly good survey. It's still serviceable and it still accomplishes what I set out to do. But I thought, what if we could make this more engaging and more visual? What if I made it so that I could still engage with them and talk with them while they're answering these questions? So I thought, well, what if I brought this to life kind of in a 3D way? What if I could put this on a board that they would interact with physically? So this actually would help me address a couple of concerns I had. So first, it's difficult to interact with somebody while they're focusing on a screen or, you know, using a tablet it's a little creepy to kind of be hovering over them and, you know, hoping that you'll catch a glimpse of what their answer is so that you can engage them in deeper conversation. When I put this board together, as you can see in this picture here, it was so much easier to kind of step back, you know, not really be in the person's personal space, but still be able to strike up a conversation with them or, as you see with the person there on the right, he was able to listen in and still get some information from this conversation. So it was so much easier to kind of spark that up in the moment. So here's the board. What we did was we took all of those same survey questions and those are each of the columns and each roll had their own color of string so that what they would do is come along and choose their string that matched what their roll is and they would wrap it around each peg in each column that would correspond to the answers that they would provide in the survey. So we're getting the same information that we got from the survey, but it's much more visual and it builds up over time that we would have folks that would come back to our booth, you know, two or three times in the day and see how this data had changed and amassed over the day. They were interested in the story it was telling, so we were able to have conversations not only with the folks who responded, but with casual observers. So through this board, this photo was taken, it was about two and a half hours of users passing by here. In total, the three times that we used this board, we got over 250 data points. Now similar surveys that we did that we actually did on the tablets got fewer than five responses. So this was definitely much more engaging for our target audience, but also for folks who were kind of passing by and providing comments. So every night after we used this board, we would unravel the strings and enter that data right into this spreadsheet. So it made it really easy to, after we wrap up, keep track of the data that we had. So when we got back to the office on Monday morning, it was all there and ready to go and ready to be analyzed. Let's have a look at another example similar to string board. We call this activity the Lego board. Similar to the string board, Lego board, it's like multiple choice question, but fun and colorful. In this example, we wanted to understand customer's first impression and reaction to a visual design example. So we provided a list of positive and negative words and to choose the ones that best described the design. However, the one thing that we changed here was that instead of having them to select from a list of words in a certain way, we had them to select from Lego bricks. We used a different Lego color for each word and had our participant to choose from the Lego bricks. After selecting the colors, we asked our participant to put together something with the Lego's they chose and make something fun. This was a great opportunity for us to engage with them while they are playing with the Lego to better understand the why behind their selection. So for example, if they selected to choose flexible from the list, we had the opportunity to ask them why they thought the design is flexible and what makes it flexible to them. Every time we did this activity, we were able to collect more than 100 responses, which is a pretty high number for a survey question like this. Since we didn't have enough Lego bricks for all 100 something participants we had every day. At the end of every day, we had to take apart our pieces from the board to be ready for the next day. We took them apart and counted the number and honestly, what's more fun than playing with Lego's with your colleagues after a long conference day. So on the last day of the conference, we got together and built a city and called the pattern fly city because it was a pattern fly project. So this is the end outcome of our project. We wanted to understand what words come to people's mind when they look at their design. So we use those words as as bricks and put them together and we created something called pattern fly city. Here's another example of the same activity at DefConf Bernal last year. We were interested to learn which libraries and frameworks our front end developers use the most. So we use the same method to gather the data we were looking for, but in very engaging and fun way. If you have attended DefConf Bernal last year, you most probably have seen this activity. So is the data as good as regular methods? Well, to be honest with you, yes. So the data that we are gathering, we are collecting very high quality data because first of all, we are not just gathering some hard data, but at the same time we are gathering qualitative data because we are having the opportunity to engage with our customers and users to understand the why behind the selection and just better understand what they're doing and just learn more about them. But at the same time, these activities are simple to put together as SJ showed you, we use everyday material to put these activities together. They're engaging, they're enjoyable and they're great for building relationships with your users. As user researchers, not only we are responsible for creating and delivering sound and robust research insight to improve our product experiences for users, but also we have the responsibility to make the research participation experience enjoyable and pleasing for our users and the participants. So this is what makes user researchers different than data scientists. Our source of data is humans. So we need to be humanly with our data collection approaches whenever we have the opportunity. So to humanify research approaches, we would need to bring art, crafts, colors and games into the play, similar to the ones that we just discussed. Okay, so I bet now you are excited to try your own activity and we've got some helpful tips for you to get started with your own exercise. So first, like you would do with any good research study, you want to start with the question. That question is going to drive everything else that you do with this exercise. So you want to be pretty clear upfront what it is you want to learn. Secondly, simple but not necessarily easy is best for activities like this. So as you saw with the examples we gave, the answers were brief one or two words and that makes it a lot easier to pair up the answers with the items that the users will be working with. Third, you want to look around you for inspiration. Like Sarah said, are you into games? Are you into movies? Do you do arts and crafts? Do you crochet? Do you knit? I bet you've got some interesting things lying around that would help you put together a really cool exercise like this. Be creative. Fourth, consider your audience. So when we do these activities, they tend to be in kind of loud, you know, brightly lit spaces where there's a lot of people milling around. When you're putting together your exercise, think these things through. Think it through like what the sound is going to be like, is there going to be table space? You want to figure out these logistics ahead of time and that's going to help you make decisions about how you put your exercise together. Fifth, build a prototype and test it. When you've got somebody standing there with you, that is not when you want to be working out those issues that you have with your board. So, you know, take the time to put together a sample. It doesn't have to be your final item if it is, that's great. But test out these things, get your friends to participate and work out those issues. Six, iterate. It's rare that you're going to get it right on the first attempt. We certainly didn't in both of our activities. This is your chance to refine and improve on what you discovered while you were testing out your prototype. You want to keep refining it until it's just right. A good example is with my string board, after a participant would answer all of the questions, sometimes there'd be these really long lengths of string left behind and they'd be laying on the ground and that's kind of a tripping hazard in the busy area. So, we went back to the drawing board, literally, and we created a way for them to tie off the remainder of the string so it wasn't draping on the floor. That's the kind of iteration that you need for your projects. I hope these tips get you excited to try your own exercise. We look forward to seeing what you come up with. Please get in contact with us at the information we've listed here. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Jane and Sarah. That was a really nice talk and I hope we all get to try some of the tips that you gave us. Sorry, you had an interesting question and I don't know if anyone had a response to that on thoughts of how to adapt these activities for virtual groups. Folks, if you have ideas, feel free to drop them in the chat. But for now, I guess we'll head over to the breakout room. Thank you.


I guess we should start. Okay, well, welcome to the policy bof this year. It is a bof, I'm gonna get off the stage in a minute and sit there, I guess. I just wanted to say a few things by way of introduction, so I'm up here. Would anyone be willing to watch IRC for any questions that come up? Okay, thank you, Jonathan. Okay, so what is Debian Policy? Well, it's the document that defines the content there, what is allowed to go into packages, the document that defines the technical content of packages requirements for that content. You might say it's like a spec for all of Debian or as much as we've managed to document. It's also a repository of lessons learned, so things that we've learned not to do in developing Debian are written down there and that's a useful thing to have for us and for others. What is it not? The key thing that it's not is it doesn't really deal with social processes, so we have this other document, the developer's reference, which is meant to contain social workflows and how to coordinate with each other. And so sometimes people file policy bugs asking for social stuff to go in and usually we just reassign it to develop as reference. I thought I might be interested to know why I work on policy. In real life, I'm a philosophy PhD student and so my skills that I get from that are stating things precisely, so I work on policy in the hope of applying that to Debian's benefit. So that's that. How does it work? How do changes to policy happen? Well, there's an appendix to policy called the policy changes process and it basically has four stages. So someone posts a bug saying, I think there's something wrong with this section or I think this thing should be written down and that's the discussion phase. And then at some point someone comes up so the discussion comes to a consensus about what needs to happen and that's called the proposal phase, so there's a proposal for what should be done. Once there's a proposal, the next thing is to write a patch to the manual documenting the proposal and that's possibly the hardest stage. Like often we know what we want to do but writing it down can be tricky. And then the patch needs to be seconded by DDs. So we want three people, three DDs to sign off on a patch. So if the patch submitter was a DD that counts as one and then two seconds. If the patch was submitted by a non-DD then we need three seconds. So seconding is the only thing you have to be a DD to do or everything else in that process anyone can do and you don't have to be a special kind of DD to second policy bugs. That's something that anyone can do. Talking to people this week, I've discovered that some people thought it was like a smaller group than that so I wanted to mention that. And then the changes go in. What do the policy editors do? That's what I am, I'm one of the four policy editors. Basically three things. We maintain the package in the standard sense. So we triage the bugs, we fix FTBFS bugs which do sometimes happen. And that kind of stuff, we write the changelog. We guide the bugs through the process kind of part of triaging. So if it's not clear what should happen next with a bug the policy editors try and like indicate that. And we judge when consensus has been established. So that's basically the reason we're DPL delegated because that can be very contentious in some cases. Usually it's not. So that's the three things we do. One other thing to mention about how policy works is that it's intended to lag behind what's going on in Debian. So changes to policy should never block doing other stuff. Generally there are exceptions where you have to change policy first but generally you should just do stuff if it's the right thing to do and write it down later. And changes to policy shouldn't make lots of packages buggy because they should already be considered buggy and that's why we're writing it in policy. So like if we've got a project consensus that we shouldn't do X then all packages doing X are buggy. And so if we write down in policy that you shouldn't do X we didn't make anything buggy, that's the idea. Okay, let me talk about the past year since the last policy buff. Policy has been uploaded 10 times. Seven of those uploads were normative as in they changed the requirements specified. The other three were like fixing packaging bugs I think. I would like the seven to be 12. I think it would be great if we were releasing policy about once a month. Why don't we? Well, we try to wait until there's about four substantive changes waiting to be released because otherwise we'd be sending these very short emails to Debian developer now and expecting people to read them and that wouldn't be a good use of people's time and the Lindsay and maintainers have to respond to policy releases so we don't wanna make spurious ones but it would be great if we had enough changes that we could release once a month, that would be a goal. So that's releases. We fixed all the issues relating to the transition to Sphinx and RST, I think. I don't think there are any more open bugs. The webmaster team are gonna add some redirects. That hasn't happened yet but we closed all the bugs against policy I think. So that's pretty cool. There's been a lot of contributors over the past year like there's been people who have come back after a while not working on policy and submitted useful patches so Ian is someone who's done that and there've been people like Simon McVitie who have been involved in a lot of discussions and there've been a lot of people who I won't mention because there's so many of them who have just come in and made a first contribution to policy. So that's been great. Translations. Hideki, Yamane and I are working on translations and I think I know how that's gonna work in terms of process. I think I've talked to enough people at DevCom to figure out how to do it. So it's just a case of basically getting the tech to work and I think this is the first time someone's tried to translate something written in Sphinx, in Debian at least. So we're still figuring out how to do that but I think it's only a matter of time before we can start translating which I'm very excited about because there's these old translations of old versions of policy floating around on the internet and if you speak that language you might be tempted to refer to that instead of the current version of policy and then you might be uploading stuff that's buggy and that's pretty bad. So I'm hoping we can get official translations up and running. Okay, that's everything I had so I'm gonna get off the stage. I thought people could ask questions about the process. We could talk about suggestions for changes to the process or particular bugs. We could talk about how to attract contributors and we could talk about translations, anything to do with policy. Ian, here is the mic. I just wanted to say that the translations is really cool for another reason. If you are a non-native English speaker and you're using one of Debian or one of our derivatives you might need to read that documentation to find out how to make your computer do what you want and the fact that that documentation may now be available, going to be available in your native language and not be years or decades out of date, that's really cool. Yes, so I kind of gave a negative only reason and so I appreciate that. Also it's like, we expect all contributors to be able to use English but you can save people's time if they don't have to decipher something that's not in their native language. So for developers as well it's great. Hello, so I recently had a quite trivial problem with the policy, a minor problem with the policy process but it was annoying enough for me not to second propose change. In fact, the diff that I saw contained also a lot of layout diffs and this made it very, very difficult for me to read what precisely the diff in the contents was. So because it was just some trivial change in line breaks and that made it quite difficult for me to see right on the spot, I mean I could have made a check out and the jit-var diff but I didn't do it so it would probably much, much easier be for people than there would be a more readable diff of the proposed change. That's a great idea. I don't know how to implement it. Does anyone have any thoughts? Can you generate a word diff that can be pasted into a bug email? Is that possible? So what you could do is I suppose that you're having a jit branch for the proposed changes and then you can, instead of doing a jit diff, you can do a jit wdiff, I think, something like that and this gives you a word diff or otherwise you could just take care when you edit the document in your feature branch that you do not introduce any layout changes like line breaks or stuff like that. Right. Okay, so there's normally a branch. If I write a patch, I always have it on a branch. I guess it might be useful to just reference the branch and maybe write in the read me saying like, please push a branch and reference it. Does that seem sensible? Okay, I'm gonna put that in the read me, thank you. It might be worth having a small script that you could run on a mail that maybe one of the policy editors would run. If somebody doesn't push it to a branch, you'd have a script that would feed the patch to get AM on a detached head and produce the word diff and automatically email it to the list saying, oh, it automatically generated this thing and then if that becomes a thing we end up doing a lot, then we can have a robot do it. Yeah, totally. You wanna write it? We're in so many mail robots. Yes, you have. Yeah, I guess I'll investigate how hard that is. Thank you. That's great. Seconding, I guess I hadn't really realized that the seconding had workflow issues so that's really valuable feedback, thank you. The main thing that we need volunteer time on, I guess, is writing patches because as I said, it's pretty time intensive. So I write most of the patches but it's kind of not meant to be that way, right? The policy editors are meant to be reviewing patches more than writing them. But that's just how it is. Sorry, can you take a microphone? Could you explain how does the translation work? Does it translate sentence by sentence or just they translate by the paragraph? It's gonna be standard PO4A which I think works by paragraph. Is that, does anyone have any experience translating? Okay, it's PO5, I see. Yeah, it's PO4A. So Chinese translation would be great because you have a lot of potential developers in China, I'm sure. About translation, how do we expect to keep track of the fact that the updates of the original English policy in other languages or maybe the fact that you have translated policies that is almost up to date and you want to specify to the user, you can refer to it except maybe for this paragraph. Right. How do we expect to do that? As I understand it, the way PO4A works is it tracks whether a translation is up to date and if it's not, the English text replaces the out-of-date translated text, which is wonderful and these unofficial translations can't do that so that's why it's great to have an official translation. Do you have a list of issues that you need help with somewhere accessible publicly? Yes, we do. So last debcom, two of the policy editors, me and Russ, had a triage session or sessions and we went through our entire list and we basically divided it into two, well three but the third list is done now. Things that we think ought to be uncontroversial and are basically in almost all cases waiting for someone to write a patch and things that, it's not clear what should change and so people can dig into them but they should expect it to take longer. That is available if you clone the policy repo and check out a branch called triage, you'll find a file triage.txt, which has that list. That could go somewhere better if someone wants to move that. But yes. So that's on salsa. Yeah, well if you just type deb check out debium policy. So one could make issues out of it, get lab issues. So that's something that actually came up just this week. We, the discussions that happen that lead to a policy change have to be archived because we don't like put all the reasoning for the change into policy. So the problem with salsa issues is that the archiving is a bit less robust than the BTS. So I think we'd probably prefer not to do that. But we could probably publish that triage list better. Does anyone have any thoughts where that could go? Debbie and Wiki, that sounds fine. Yeah, okay. So the bug system has a feature that allows you to have that triage for you be the default view of the bugs. You mean user tags? It's very complicated. If it involves, I think it involves user tags and it also involves setting some other properties somewhere. The dev scripts package has done it. We already have that for the stages of the process. So this question about whether a bug is easy is orthogonal to that, right? Can we do both at once? You can have multiple of these axes and I think have everything classified by both. Okay, maybe you and I could talk about that. Because you probably didn't know it. Well, I was going to do this for the DGIT package and I thought this is far, far too hard. But it might be worth it for policy. I did at least look at the relevant docs and go, oh my God. Right. If you've already done the... Well, we don't want to break what's there, but if we were able to add this information as well, then sure. I think possibly that's possible. Let's talk about that later, thank you. These are some fantastic suggestions. I'm very grateful.  One thing that you might do is you might, I know it's a very small group here and probably not very representative, but if there are particular, are kind of awkward bugs that you want to... Well, okay. So there's time consuming and there's awkward. I mean, not that, I mean, we just closed this morning, one of the most awkward that's been open for 10 years. So that was pretty great. Awkward ones aren't occurring to me. Here's some really difficult, but uncontroversial ones. Documenting multi-arc. Right now, the only docs for multi-arc are the spec and the implementation, which as I understand it, are not the same. Because they realized that aspects of the spec should be changed and so they implemented an improved version, which is great. But right now if you want to understand, I don't understand multi-arc. And if I wanted to, I'd have to read the spec, probably end up reading the code, kind of a drag. It would be great if policy said what multi-arc is and what the different values mean. We tried, helmets grown, had a go, but unfortunately we got stuck. So if anyone else would like to make a fresh attempt at getting multi-arc in, that would be, I think, a huge contribution to Debian to have that written down in policy. Second one, deep package triggers are not in policy. If you want to use one, if you think that a deep package trigger is what you need, you have to start reading the man pages and probably end up reading the code. It's pretty tough. It would be great if that was just right there in policy for you to read and apply. There's the original text file, which is just like a plain text file spec. I think one change was made after that was... Is that triggers? The triggers, yeah. Right. And that, I mean, that's in the deep package somewhere. So you're not completely stuffed. Probably, I mean, certainly this should be in policy. But I think the multi-arc thing is more important because the spec that's on the there is, there's a spec on the wiki and it's quite indigestible. The Ubuntu wiki spec as well, yeah. There's one on the Ubuntu wiki, which I think is the canonical. Oh, right. And neither of those describe completely what was accidentally, sorry, actually implemented. Right. And this situation is not very good. Yeah, it's pretty bad. So, you know, if you're interested in learning about these things and then writing down what you learned, please get involved. Basically for these really tough bugs, the policy editors themselves like me, don't want to drive the bug because then we do nothing else, right? We wouldn't have triage and maintenance. So the idea is that we would like someone other than us to drive something like documenting multi-arc and then we'll be very eager to review patches and discuss it. Cool, we just have one comment from RSC. Yes. Gregorus says, SP Wittens blog posts are also very helpful. Check out the tag Debian policy and it's also syndicated on Planet Debian. So if anyone's following or watching this video afterwards, look that up, it's really good. Thanks. Yes, we have a script that's quite old but it still works fine. That extracts user tag information, basically, from the BTS, it gives you three lists, things that are awaiting a patch, things that are awaiting a second and things that are merged for the next release and I blog that about once a month. That was a suggestion at last, the last one. Nice job. Other hard things. So multi-arc, the package triggers. Let's see. There are some control fields that aren't written down. So I learned this week that there's a tags field that connects to depth tags and that's not in policy. So, you know, if I came across a source package with that field, I wouldn't know what it meant. So if you come across something like that, then consider writing a patch. If you spent time figuring out what the field means and when it's meant to be used, share it. Well, we don't have to continue if there aren't any more questions. Thank you for your interest. Please feel free to speak to me if there's an open bug you'd like to start working on. Thank you. And thank you, video team.


Hey everybody, welcome back to magic orthodoxy. My name is David and this is the magic review Hey today, we're gonna look at the finger flasher from Jeremy Bracco. Alright, so what is this? It's basically a utility Okay, it's not an effect in and of itself. It's utility.  You want to see what the trailer looks like? This is it We've all seen the magician come out on stage and make fire up here out of his hands and really this is what that is It's a utility device that allows you to make like a big burst big, you know Tower big flame fire a couple questions We always ask about all our magic reviews and the first of which is what's in the box? What's in the box? It's a box.  Is it what I thought? Yes Right, it's gonna be what you thought because it says it right on the title. It's a finger flasher We all know what they do. It's exactly what I thought How are the angles the angles are you do need a jacket? Of course, you need a jacket you need a you need sleeves because this is a pole device Can it be inspected? You know if you do it right there should be nothing left to inspect What's the overall quality and production value of the video the video is four minutes long and it's in French Okay, only in French no subtitles So yeah, it's just him walking through some sort of an abandoned building that's covered in spray paint and as far as Just watching it because I don't speak French. I don't speak French at all And so just from watching it. I felt like there was too many distance shots There was a lot of shots full-body But when working with a finger flasher, you should be looking at you know, the close-up views of the hand Maybe going up the sleeve Maybe wearing a transparent raincoat so people can see where it's going He didn't do anything like that in fact whenever he showed a shot of his hand it was so fast It was over with and I was like what what you know, I almost felt like I could have watched it if it was really well instruction I wouldn't have needed You know English subtitles I would have been able to figure it out But it just felt four minutes was just so fast and I just felt it was filmed so choppy It didn't really help me at all. Is it well made it is well made it is made out of plastic It is heavy-duty plastic. I've heard some people Complain and say well, it's plastic and fire and maybe it might melt But you know what the the fire that you get from flash paper or flash cotton or flash string It happens so fast the burst of energy is so quick I've seen people like hold flash paper in their hands and not even feel the heat So it's I don't really think you have to worry about the plastic Catching on fire. I so I do think it is a well-made product. How much practice does this require? You know, it's all timing. It really is. It's all timing.  It's pretty much instant because it is a pole so it's always ready to go It's just gonna be you reloading your wadding Okay, whether it be a flash cotton flash paper flash string whatever and then you're ready to go Positives all right, so what are the positives to the finger flasher the finger flasher will put some extra spark Into any routine and I think those looking to ignite Their magic are sure to burn brightly for this one Negatives hey, like we say around here. There's negatives to everything the negatives for me on this was the video For one, there's no download code even in the box to download it I had to go out to you know the powers to be and ask where is the video and then I was sent a video link But again even getting it. I didn't feel like it was worth it It's too bad. It doesn't have English subtitles or or you know an English alternative, but you know what like I said It doesn't really help you anyway. So yeah, is it worth your money? You know what? This is the most expensive fire producer. I've seen it really is there's a lot on the market that are a lot cheaper So I don't know How I can say it's worth your money. It's certainly bigger It's a bigger device and you can certainly stick more wanting in it and maybe that might mean more fire And maybe that was explained in the French video. I don't know, but it is a very expensive finger flasher There's definitely cheaper ones on the market. So I would just say do your research All right, so that is my review for the finger flasher from Jeremy Brocco If you'd like to purchase this for yourself, I would highly recommend you check out your favorite Murphy's Magic retailer. Thanks. Bye


In the 1680s, English history was a stream of conspiracies and counter-conspiracies. The Restoration King Charles II died without a son in 1685, leaving the throne to his openly Catholic brother, the Duke of York. The new King James II was also the royally chartered proprietor of New York and a dogged and determined enemy of all things Puritan. James followed Charles's process of imperial reform in New England, he wiped away the colonial assemblies, their charters, their borders, and even their land grants. The monarch reclaimed his special powers and privileges, reincorporating his ancestors' creatures into his own royal body of rights. Protestant Englishmen across the Atlantic feared a Catholic plot to unite the earth under anti-Christ spanners. This is Liberty Chronicles, a project of Libertarianism.org. I'm Anthony Comegna. In place of the old colonies, James created the Dominion of New England, a militarized dictatorship ruled over by the King's puppet, Sir Edmund Andros. Despite peace with the Indians, the new government spent, taxed, and regulated with abandon. After the King's son and heir was born in 1688, Protestants in Parliament conspired to remove James from the throne. They feared a Catholic dynasty and secretly invited the Dutch Prince of Orange to the throne. Prince William's wife was a steward, and the disarray in the army and navy easily allowed a military invasion of the English mainland. James fled the capital in November, and the coup d'etat was complete. Anti-James rebellions erupted almost universally and spontaneously across the colonies, nowhere more vigorously so than in Boston, the seat of Dominion government. The so-called Glorious Revolution offered New Englanders an opportunity to unite together against a common, essentially foreign enemy, without domestic affairs clouding the fight. But the battle was quickly concluded. Andros and his cronies easily captured and imprisoned, and old local antagonisms revived. By 1691, the new King William III restored the Massachusetts Charter, complete with pre-Dominion land titles.  But the divines once again misused their power and their liberty. In 1692, witch fever struck Salem, and the Puritan state executed 18 women and one man for entirely imagined crimes. A century and a half later, William Godwin saw the Salem trials as the moment when Puritanism finally lost enough of its mind that some of its soul went with it. And the world was better off for it. Godwin lived from 1756 to 1836. He was brilliant and highly influential, the first modern anarchist philosopher, an important voice for rationalism and skepticism, the first utilitarian, and a sort of founding father in the individualist and socialist pantheons. In his 1834 Lives of the Necromancers, Godwin determined to dispel the significant remaining social ignorance, myths, half truths, and lies based in supernatural beliefs that enabled tragedies like the Salem trials. In Godwin's hands, quackery became sociological and political conspiracy. All human beings possessed the capacity to investigate nature's laws with reason. Throughout the ages, though, there have been those who seek to obfuscate and obscure this power from others. The charismatic, the cunning, and the immoral have nearly always and everywhere organized themselves into classes of conspirators against the liberties and wisdom of the common people. Godwin hoped to disarm these priests, magicians, fortune tellers, divine right monarchs, and licksbiddle court devotionists. Behind them all, sadly and unfortunately, lay the average person's boundless ambition because practically everyone can be swept away with grandiose dreams and visions of the supernatural and the real blending together. Practically everyone falls prey to those who would lie, cheat, and worse to dominate their fellow beings. The Necromancers' intrusions into the realm of death violated broadly accepted laws of ethics and religion. Only those individuals motivated by the most wicked and horrifying lusts would resort to such an unnatural means of acquiring power. The Alchemists promised unending wealth and immortality. The Rosicrucians practiced hallucinogenic communication with powerful elemental creatures. Leadership claimed the ability to control these fearsome beings and commanded the full loyalty of subordinate priests. In pre-modern societies, scientific knowledge was reserved exclusively for the elite few and a very small number of specialists. Sociomistical divisions were so sharp that conquerors like Alexander even lived on after death, venerated as a god made flesh. The famous Simon Magus could reportedly fly through the air, pass through miles of matter at a time, make himself invisible. He could shape-shift, transfigure matter, bring statues to life, and bid defiance to all locks. He was, and I should stress the word, apparently fireproof. Early medieval Europe was a world flush with supernatural entities and powerful individuals who could access this otherworldly realm with specialized occultic learning. Angels flitted around everywhere. Demons haunted the rocks and forests. Witches and sorcerers practiced their crafts for good and ill while God's saints endlessly battled them and alchemists and necromancers desperately searched for an existence beyond this life. In the crusading era, many Westerners wholeheartedly embraced knowledge and technology from the East. Occult knowledge broadened beyond the tiny ruling class and its courtly elite. A seemingly endless array of friars, philosophers, scientists, archimists, and educators joined the magical fray to advance their own power, influence, and visions. With Renaissance figures like Petrarch, the enlightened and educated no longer practiced witchcraft, but they would have defended to the death your right to do so. Europeans became more and more keenly aware of the physical laws governing natural phenomenon. Science demystified witchcraft and exposed it as a sociological, not a supernatural phenomenon, but popular belief in political institutions lags significantly behind the new learning. Marginalized and powerless individuals often made easy targets for both angry mobs and political or religious leaders in desperate need of a scapegoat. As magic lost its power in European courts, it retained an important command over the average person's worldview. For the uneducated, the world still abounded with spirits, strange energies, and endless signs of Satan's battle against God. In the transitional early modern period, monarchs like England's James I exploited the marginality of witches for the purposes of modern statecraft. James wrote his own demonology and orchestrated show trials for accused witches like Agnes Sampson and John Feehan, whom he held responsible for delaying a trip to his betrothed in Norway. For their crimes, they suffered horrifying torture and execution. James's administration and scholarship inspired future bad actors like the witch hunter Matthew Hopkins. Hopkins' bloody career flourished in the early days of the English Civil War. He traveled through England convincing localities that Satan was actively training witches in their village, staging for a full demonic invasion. Hopkins convinced towns to hire his hunters, who murdered over 300 women accused of making satanic packs. During his two-year reign of terror, Hopkins killed more people than the previous two centuries of witch hunting in England. Having built a dandy career out of the horrible affair, Hopkins published his manual, The Discovery of Witches, in 1647. Within a few decades, witch fever spread across the Atlantic to yet another Puritan society, drunk on righteousness and mysticism. William Godwin, Witchcraft in New England, from Lives of the Necromancers, 1834. As a story of witchcraft, without any poetry to it, without anything to amuse the imagination or interest the fancy, but hard, prosy, and accompanied with all that is wretched, pitiful, and withering, perhaps the well-known story of the New England witchcraft surpasses everything else upon record. The New Englanders were at this time, towards the close of the 17th century, rigorous Calvinists with long sermons, and tedious monotonous prayers, with hell before them forever on one side, and a tyrannical, sour, and austere God on the other, jealous of an arbitrary sovereignty, who hath mercy, on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. These men, with long and melancholy faces, with a drawing and sanctified tone, in a carriage that would at once make the most severely disposed merry, and the most cheerful spectator sad, constituted nearly the entire population of the province of Massachusetts Bay. The prosecutions for witchcraft continued with little intermission principally at Salem during the greater part of the year, 1692. The accusations were of the most vulgar and contemptible sort, invisible pinchings and blows, fits with the blastings and morality of cattle, and wanes stuck fast in the ground, or losing their wheels. A conspicuous feature in nearly the whole of these stories was what they named the spectral sight, in other words, that the prolific accusers first fiend for the most part the injuries they received, and next saw the figures in action of the persons who inflicted them when they were invisible to everyone else. Hence, the miserable prosecutors gained the power of gratifying the wantonness of their malice, by pretending that they suffered by the hand of anyone whose name first presented itself, or against whom they bore an ill-will. The persons so charged, though unseen by any but the accuser, and who in their corporal presence were at a distance of miles, and were doubtless wholly unconscious of the mischief that was hatching against them, were immediately taken up and cast into prison. And what was more monstrous and incredible, there stood at the bar the prisoner on trial for his life, while the witnesses were permitted to swear that his specter had haunted them, and afflicted them with all manner of injuries, that the poor prosecuted wretch stood astonished at what was alleged against him, was utterly overwhelmed with the charges, and knew not what to answer. Was all of it interpreted as so many presumptions of his guilt? Ignored as they were, were unhappy and unskillful in their defense, and if they spoke of the devil as was but natural, it was instantly caught at as a proof how familiar they were with the fiend that had seduced them to their damnation. Godwin's theory of the Salem trials is representative of scholarly thought for quite some time. They were largely the result of a combination of personal animus, avarice, and cruelty within a deeply occultist culture. True believer Puritan saw Satan and his minions behind every tree and in the eyes of every person not elect. In fact, witch hunting was a matter of public policy, and many copies of Matthew Hopkins's The Discovery of Witches rested on the saints' bookshelves, no doubt with very well-worn pages. Once the first baseless accusations flew, the flood was unstoppable. The first specimen of this sort of accusation in the present instance was given by one Paris, minister of a church at Salem in the end of the year 1691, who had two daughters, one nine years old, the other eleven that were afflicted with fits and convulsions. The first person fixed on as the mysterious author of what was seen was Tituba, a female slave in the family, and she was harassed by her master into a confession of unlawful practices and spells. The girls then fixed on Sarah Good, a female known to be the victim of a morbid melancholy, and Osborn, a poor man that had for a considerable time been bed rid as persons whose specters had perpetually haunted and tormented them, and Good was twelve months after hanged on this accusation. A person who was one of the first to fall under the imputation was one George Burroughs, also a minister of Salem. He had it seems buried two wives, both of whom the busy gossips said he had used ill in their lifetime and consequently it was whispered had murdered them. This man was accustomed foolishly to vaunt that he knew what people said of him in his absence and this was brought as a proof that he dealt with the devil. Two women who were witnesses against him interrupted their testimony with exclaiming that they saw the ghosts of the murdered wives present who had promised them that they would come, though no one else in the court saw them and this was taken in evidence. Burroughs conducted himself in a very injudicious way on his trial, but when he came to be hanged, made so impressive a speech on the ladder with fervent protestations of innocence as melted many of the spectators into tears. The nature of accusations of this sort is ever found to operate like an epidemic. Fits and convulsions are communicated from one subject to another. The spectral site, as it was called, is obviously a theme for the vanity of ignorance. When two such things are talked of when the devil and the spirits of hell are made familiar conversation, when stories of this sort are among the daily news and one person and another who had a little more before nothing extraordinary about them become subjects of wonder. These topics enter into the thoughts of many sleeping and waking. Their young men see visions and their old men dream dreams. New England courts executed 19 witches and subjected many repented convicts to purifying torture. One thing only ended the feverish trials. Accusers gradually turned on the affluent and influential after using up the easier targets of marginalized and poor women. In such a town as Salem, the second in point of importance in the colony such accusations spread with wonderful rapidity. Many were seized with fits, exhibited frightful contortions of their limbs and features and became a fearful spectacle to the bystander. They were asked to assign the cause of all this and they supposed or pretended to suppose. Some neighbor already solitary and afflicted and on that account in ill odor with the townspeople scowling upon, threatening and tormenting them. Presently persons, specially gifted with the spectral sight formed a class by themselves and were sent about at the public expense from place to place that they might see what no one else could see. The prisons were filled with the persons accused. The utmost horror was entertained as of a calamity which in such a degree had never visited that part of the world. It happened, most unfortunately, that Baxter's certainty of the world of spirits had been published but the year before and a number of copies had been sent out to New England. There seemed a strange coincidence and sympathy between vital Christianity and its most honorable sense and the fear of the devil dared to be come down unto them with great wrath. Mr. Increase Mather and Mr. Cotton Mather his son two clergymen of highest reputation in the neighborhood by the solemnity and awe with which they treated the subject and the earnestness and zeal which they displayed gave a sanction to the lowest superstition in virulence of the ignorant. All the forms of justice were brought forward on this occasion. There was no lack of judges and grand juries and petty juries and executioners and still less of prosecutors and witnesses. The first person that was hanged was on the 10th of June five more on the 19th of July, five on the 19th of August and eight on the 22nd of September. Multitudes confessed that they were witches and appeared the only way for the accused to save their lives. Husbands and children fell down on their knees and implored their wives and mothers to own their guilt. Many were tortured by being tied neck and heels together till they confessed whatever was suggested to them. It is remarkable, however, that not one persisted in her confession at the place of execution. The whole of this dreadful tragedy was kept together by a thread. Spectra seers for a considerable time prudently restricted their accusations to persons of ill repute or otherwise of no consequence in the community. By and by, however, they lost sight of this caution and pretended they saw the figures of some persons well connected and of unquestioned honor and reputation engaged in acts of witchcraft. Immediately the whole fell through in a moment. The leading inhabitants presently saw how safe it would be to trust their reputations and their lives to the mercy of these profligate accusers. Of 56 bills of indictment that were offered to the grand jury on the 3rd of January 1693, 26 only were found true bills and 30 thrown out. On the 26 bills that were found, three persons only were pronounced guilty by the petty jury and these three received their pardon from the government. The prisons were thrown open, 50 confessed witches, together with 200 persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at liberty and no more accusations were heard of. The afflicted, as they were technically termed, recovered their health. The spectral sight was universally scouted and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the victims of so horrible a delusion. Once the Massachusetts Bay elite felt their interests were also seriously threatened by the outbreak, they reasserted control over the courts and ended the trials. For the next century and more, rationalist philosophers condemning the excesses of church and state had an especially horrifying and ridiculous example from Salem. The trials quickly became the stuff of ridicule and while folk beliefs in the supernatural persisted, the regime recognized its follies. Over the next generation, preachers of the Jeremiah sought to recover the founding generation's missionary zeal. The founders' children and grandchildren failed the original religious mission, but they had effectively terrorized or marginalized dissenters. Thomas Morton's Rainbow Coalition was almost entirely displaced with shades of Puritan gray. Though Puritanism was now stripped of much mysticism, demonology and expansionary vigor, new generations maintained the basic mission and the conviction that violence was an acceptable means to establish God's earthly kingdom. Liberty Chronicles is a project of Libertarianism.org. It is produced by Test Terrible. To learn more about Liberty Chronicles, visit Libertarianism.org.


Welcome back to our lecture series, Math 1060 Trigonometry for students at Southern Utah University. As usual, I'll be your professor today, Dr. Andrew Misildine. In lecture 16, we're going to continue our discussion of trigonometric identities. Now that we've learned the fundamental identities and we've seen how we can use them to start proving trigonometric identities, we're going to start doing that in full force now. But before it can just jump into the deep into the pool, there's a few guidelines I want to mention that will help us as we prove them. These are not techniques for proving them, but these are guideposts that we should stay between so that we don't make mistakes while we are proving these trigonometric identities. The first one we actually did talk about before as one of our tips for proving trigonometric identities, but it's important enough that it's worth mentioning twice here. When you are trying to prove a trigonometric identity, work on one side of the equation at a time that is transfer the left-hand side into the right-hand side or transfer the right-hand side into the left-hand side. For more complicated identities, you can actually work on one side of the equation for a little bit and then move to the other side and then work on it for a while. Maybe it's find yourself in the middle, right? If you work on the left-hand side, it's like, I don't know how these are connected, then you work on the right-hand side, and then they can come together in the middle. Just you never, never, never, ever, let me say one more time, never use operations that affect both sides of the equation at the same time. That's a horrible mistake. You don't want to do that. Avoid that. We always work with one side at a time, but you can use both sides just never at the same time. The second guideline I want us to follow here is that it's usually best to work with the more complicated side first. We have these two sides of the trigonometric identity. I often choose the more complicated side to start working with that first, even if it's the right-hand side. To help you remember this, think about this. That in mathematics, unlike life, it is easier to simplify things than it is to complicate things. In life, we complicate things way too much, but it's easier to simplify than to complicate it. That is to take a simpler expression and expand it into a more complicated one. The third guideline I want us to follow is that when trying to prove trigonometric identities, look for trigonometric substitutions that involve the basic identities first. Look for things with the ratio, the reciprocal, the Pythagorean identities, maybe the symmetry identities. Use the basic identities first before you use the more exotic ones. Now, that's not going to be such a big deal right now in this lecture, but as we move on to lecture 17 and beyond, and we learn new identities, like the double angle identity, the half angle identity, the product of some identities, all of these, we should try to avoid using the more exotic identities until we really have no better option. That is, in medicine, when you're trying to give a prognosis or a diagnosis of a disease, you're told, don't look for zebras among the horses, right? If you see it, it's probably a horse, right? And so let's use the more basic identities first, right? When trying to prove trigonometric identities, it's also important to realize that algebra is your best friend. Look for algebraic operations that can help us, like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Could we add fractions by finding common denominator? Could we factor things? Could we cancel across a fraction bar? Could we distribute? Can we foil things? Turns out algebraic operations will be very useful, okay? Tip number five here, I should say guideline number five. If you cannot think of anything else to do, change everything to signs and cosigns and try to simplify it, because oftentimes proving that identity can be difficult, you have a cosecant here, you have a cotangent there, there's all these trigonometric functions with all of their trigonometric identities. If you can switch to signs and cosigns, then you have fewer identities you have to worry about and perhaps there's simplifications that can occur that were not obvious from before. And then the last guideline I'm gonna offer right now is always keep your eye on the side you're not working with to be sure you're working towards it or it's much simpler. Always keep your eye on the prize. When you're trying to do a trigonometric identity, you have the left-hand side, you have the right-hand side. Suppose you're trying to convert the left-hand side into the right-hand side. Well, you don't just start applying arbitrary identities to the left-hand side, you choose identities that will hopefully get you closer to the right-hand side. And so use your goal to help you guide in the direction you wanna go. And so I wanna prove a few trigonometric identities and show you how these guidelines help me as I try to prove it because I don't have these proofs memorized, I don't. I'm reproducing it in real time as we're recording this video. This isn't some scripted thing. How am I gonna do this? Well, when I look at this, I have to pick a side, left-hand side or right-hand side. Which one do I wanna prove? Well, the left-hand side is the product of two trigonometric functions. The right-hand side is just cosine. So the left-hand side looks more complicated. So that's the side I'm gonna start with. So let's take the left-hand side here. I actually always like to start by writing left-hand side and then I'll write whatever that left-hand side is. It helps me remember that I can only work with one side at a time and not doing two sides at the same time. That's a big no-no there, all right? So what can I do there? It's like, okay, shine and cosine. The right-hand side only has a cosine in it. Sorry, sine and cotangent. The right-hand side only has a cosine in it. So I have to somehow get rid of, well, basically what I'm trying to say is the right-hand side only involves sines and cosines, so to speak. The left-hand side does have this cotangent. So what if I were to replace the cotangent with cosine over sine, right? Because cotangent, excuse me, is cosine over sine. That's a ratio-identity error because somehow I have to introduce cosine into the problem, right? I have to somehow bring a cosine into it if I'm working with the left-hand side. How am I gonna get a cosine? Well, cotangent has a cosine in the numerator. Then when I look at that, like, oh, there's a sine in the numerator that cancels with the sine and denominator. I can use that algebraic simplification, all right? And then it just simplifies just to be cosine, which is the right-hand side. And I do like to write that out right-hand side there. And you put a little square there to indicate that the proof is done. You see this a lot of mathematics. They draw a little square at the end of the proof. It indicates that the proof is done. This is called the QED symbol. QED is an acronym of a Latin phrase that I will not, I won't bother saying it right now. But what it translates to English as is basically the question is now dead, meaning that the, I should say the doubt in the question is dead, right? Our doubt, whether this is a true statement or not, is now gone because we have the proof in front of us. And so to commemorate that our doubt is now dead, that little square is supposed to represent a tombstone. Yeah, it seems kind of morbid. Take that in though, but that's the etymology of that little square right there. It represents that the doubt is dead. And so we draw a tombstone, a little grave for our doubt. Isn't that so sweet? But how did we prove this thing, right? We chose the more complicated side, which is the left-hand side. We moved from the left-hand side one step at a time, always justifiable until we reached the right-hand side. We only did one side at a time. What are the justifications here? Well, the first one is just that is what the left-hand side is. The second one, we used the ratio identity, which again, our strategy was, we used only fundamental identities. We recognized that the right-hand side has a cosine. I have to get a cosine into the problem somehow. So I used the ratio identity, it did that.  So every step along the way was justifiable and each step was taken based upon the guidelines we learned on the previous slide. Let's do another example. Let's prove that secant theta minus cosine theta is equal to sine theta times tangent theta. All right, you look at that. I got some trigonometric functions. I got a difference of trig functions and I have a product of trig functions. I got to choose one side to get started with and then go from there. Now personally, I would think that the difference of trig functions is the more complicated side. The reason for that is that with products and fractions, it's easier to cancel terms. So the difference is actually a little bit more complicated for me, so I might start with that. So the left-hand side equals secant theta minus cosine theta, all right? What can I do with that? Well, the left-hand side is gonna be, it's sine and tangent. How am I gonna get a sine? How am I gonna get a tangent? You might not have any idea whatsoever. It's like, well, at the very least, I could write everything in terms of sines and cosines. The secant could become one over cosine, one over cosine theta minus cosine theta, like so. It's like, okay, but how am I gonna get rid of the difference? Well, if you're not sure what to do at this moment, it's like, well, I could find a common denominator, again, algebraic stuff here. I could find a common denominator. So I wanna cosine in the denominator here. I have to times the top by cosine as well. In which case then, this becomes a one minus cosine squared theta over cosine theta. In which case, maybe at this moment, you're stumped. You might not know what to do. It's like, I really don't see what's going on here. The other tip I would point out to you is that whenever there are squares involved, so notice we have a cosine squared now, it's very possible that a Pythagorean identity would be useful. So maybe I look up the Pythagorean identities. The mother identity tells us that cosine squared plus sine squared is equal to one. Well, notice that if I move the sine squared, excuse me, if I move the cosine squared to the side, this becomes one minus cosine squared theta is equal to sine squared theta. So that would get rid of the difference and would give me a sine. Would that be a good idea? Well, the left-hand side does have a sine in it. I need a sine squared, right? So that does seem like a step in the right direction, right? So let's try it. So we see that the left-hand side can become sine squared theta over cosine, like so. In which case, I got rid of the difference. I have just sines and cosines, but maybe you don't see where tangent is. Maybe you got stumped right there. Not a big deal. If ever you get stumped, start working on the right-hand side. It's like, okay, the right-hand side is equal to sine theta tangent theta, like so. In which case it's like, hmm, well, I have a sine and a tangent.  Well, if I switch maybe tangent into sines and cosines, so I'll just give her a tangent. Just switch to sines and cosines.    Those are equal. I found them in the middle. Yay, we get excited. So that's the thing is if you get stuck in the middle, you can sometimes work on the other side and connect them in the middle somewhere. So notice I never worked with both sides of the equations at the same time. I worked from the left-hand side until I got here. I worked from the right-hand side until they met together, right? And so that then proves our identity. Let's put a little tombstone because our doubt is now dead. Let's do one more example of this. All right, let's take tangent. Let's prove the identity of the tangent theta plus cosine, excuse me, tangent of x plus cosine of x is equal to sine x times secant x plus cotangent x. The name of the angle really doesn't matter too much. Call it x, call it theta, whatever. It is important you do write it.  Don't do things like this. The variable does actually matter. I mean, its label doesn't matter, but it is part of the function. We do need to include it. It's bad notation to not write the angles on it. If I was grading an exam and people didn't write the angles, I would dock them some points because that's not proper notation there. So just to watch out for such a thing. All right, so let's prove this identity. What can we do? Well, we have a sum of two trig functions on the left and a product of two trig functions, which one of those functions is itself a plus. I said that addition was more complicated than multiplication, but the left-hand side has addition, but the right-hand side has addition and multiplication. So I definitely would say that the right-hand side is the more complicated one here. So I'm gonna actually start with the right-hand side. Okay? The right-hand side also has a very natural algebraic operation that seems like it'd be useful. What if we distribute the sine, right? Because after all, the left-hand side is just a plus. We have a plus in a product. You have to get rid of the product. Distribution could get rid of the multiplication, so to speak.  So if you're not sure how to get this to look like tangent and cosine, well, maybe we just switch things to sines and cosines, right? So the secant is gonna become a one over cosine, all right? And then we have a sine. Well, let's just keep that around, but then the cotangent will become a cosine over sine. See what we can do with that. Well, I see that with the second product, there's a sine over sine, so let's cancel out, and that would then give me a cosine, right? It's like, oh, looking at what I'm trying to get, there's a cosine there. Do I have a tangent over here? Well, if you look at the first part, you have a sine over cosine. Oh, oh, oh, sine over cosine, that's a tangent, right? And so then this thin is in fact, tangent x plus cosine x, which is equal to the left-hand side. So kill the doubt, bury it in the ground, and we've now proven this trigonometric identity. So hopefully these examples illustrate how following the guidelines we started off this video with truly do help us prove these trigonometric identities. Watch some of the subsequent videos for this lecture as well, so you can see how we can use some more complicated trigonometric identities, but still following those guidelines, we will be successful in proving these trigonometric identities. If you follow these guidelines and with sufficient practice, you'll be able to prove these things too. I know you can.


So, Tom, why don't you just introduce yourself and tell us where we are? My name is Tom Locketel. We are at the Winooski Senior Center where I've been allowed to set up my workshop. Let me talk a little bit about how this project of yours got started. Okay, well, two years ago, or almost two and a half years ago now, I was up at Gilbrook. And I started harvesting dead logs around the ground. And I realized that, you know, they've got quite a bit of life left in them. I wonder what I can make. And as some people might know, I already made a table almost identical to this one. Up there, at Gilbrook, sighted up on a really nice grove of evergreen trees that overlooks the three ponds that are up there. And I thought that would be it. I'm like, okay, I got that done. Now what do I do? So you left it right up there in the public space. Yes, it's a little seeding area similar to this, pretty much identical, really, to these. And what I'm doing right now is making two end benches for them. And this is an example of what kind of semi decayed old wood that has been sitting on the ground for a while. This is kind of what it looks like. So I'm using standard mortise and tenon joinery. People call it timber frame. And I'm using the wood pretty much in a rough shape as it comes off the tree. And then I go to work on it to kind of smooth all the rough edges and take off some of the really old looking stuff. And it ends up looking pretty colorful with a lot of different character to it. So I'm in the middle of doing this bench here. And this piece is a rough piece. This one has got the tenon on it, which will go into a mortise, which is a square hole. And how do you cut the square hole?  So I take out most of the material with a drill bit and then I will come in with a chisel and make all the edges straight and square corners so that this tenon will fit into it. There is the leg to this bench. It has a mortise and tenon joint that goes up into the seat. And it has an oak peg that locks it all together. This is a sibling or nephew or cousin or something to one of these logs that's in here. I don't know. They all came from about six to eight dead pine trees that were up there at Gilbrook. And this was what I thought was just going to be something I wouldn't be able to use because it was hollow and it was rotten. But then I'm thinking, you know what? This is so easy to hollow out. I'm going to make a hollow bench out of it. And that's what I did. And it's your toolbox. And it's my toolbox now. So here are all the tools I use, pretty much all of them that I use for my hand tool work. And I've got some straight edges in there and levels and stuff. But yeah, this guy here is the old school kind of saw that I used to cut the pieces. I actually cut a lot of logs with this, cut all these pieces with this. And then this here is probably my most used and I got to say my favorite tool. I bought it online. It's made in Switzerland. I paid a lot of money for it, probably too much. But they call it a carving axe. So okay, I guess I'm a woodcarver. There's one. And then this one I almost like as much as the axe. That is a slick. It's just a word for a big chisel meant to be used by hand. And once I get to this point with the axe, get it close, then I can come in with this guy. And see how nice that works? Yeah, it just takes off all that stuff until you get it really flat. I'm not going to go crazy on it because then I'll take too much of something I don't want to take. And that's a bummer because you have to see a board stretcher anywhere. Okay, so that's one step of it. And the next step are these. These are just old school hand planes. Excuse me if I'm not getting anywhere with this right now. But usually I'll have this clamped down so it's not moving around. I think you can get the picture here of how this will take a rough surface and get it even smoother. So in a nutshell are the tools right here. So along with that huge chest with all the stuff in it, I got this little guy here. And this holds a lot of the stuff I use. Small plane, old school ruler. Take measure, chalk line, square, a variety of chisels. Just store bought regular old chisels. That's what I use to make the mortises. And I got a pretty good size one for that. I think that's all I really need to show you out of here. I do have this nice tool. That's a rasp. That really is handy. When I started doing this stuff, I really kind of went into making finished kind of looking stuff that really had a lot of flatness and straightness whereas these don't. And all the scraps that I was coming away from with the pieces that I had, I saved them. Like for instance, I'm saving these. That's a flat surface right there. It's hard to make that by hand from a log so I don't want to throw them away. And what I ended up doing with them is making little toys or whatever you want to call them. I mean I guess you could cut off this as a toy but it's made out of little individual blocks. And it's all cut-offs from pieces that I've made. They were already dimensioned and I didn't want to throw them away. And it wasn't that hard to just kind of put them together like a kid playing with blocks.  This guy here is a hollow log that I found out in the woods similar to my work bench or my log bench. And I made another one. So that is either going to end up being something they hang on a wall with a few shelves in it or it'll just be like that and just have a little curio cabin. Something you can just put stuff in.  So I played around with the blocks and I came up with my version of the Acropolis. Right there. And I'm also very much into found objects which kind of relates back to these finding these dead trees that are just going to sit there and rot. This, and I don't know what this has to do with anything but I don't have to say this here. This is my favorite found object so far. And in case you don't know what that is, that's a hook that goes on a big old crane and it's got a stamp on it that enabled me to Google it and find out what it's for. Where did you find it? I found it up on Hercules Drive and I pretty much know where it came from. It literally fell off a truck. I'm not kidding here. So that thing will lift 40,000 pounds according to the brand of it. What do you think your table weighs? The table? I don't know. That's a good question. You know I'm not averse to showing off so let me show you something. It shouldn't take long and this will give you an idea of how much this thing might weigh. I made it so I could take it apart easily and move it to wherever I need. And it's been real handy for me to have it here dealing with these big chunks of wood. I make something, don't really know what I'm going to do with it and before you know it it's got a use. So here is a lock. This lock here, I used to have, I used to know each one of these logs like a personal friend. It's story, where it came from, what other pieces came with it because a lot of these trees were like 40, 50 feet long. And I used all of it. So it's like yeah this one goes to that one, this one goes to that one, blah blah blah, I used to remember. But now I don't anymore unless I really think. So here we go, this comes apart. Alright, using this I'll be able to show you how this works. I tried to do it so that I could do it myself, but there you go. There's one end and then here's another end. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Then, wow, I'll buy myself a little mind. Wow, so there you go. There's a mortise and tenon joint for you. Nice. And as you can see that's pretty doggone heavy. I don't think I could lift this by myself. I would say it probably weighs 200 pounds. I wouldn't try. So I'm not going to try even though I want to. The scale of what you're doing is very extraordinary. Yeah, so there and as you can see this gives you a better look at the oak frame. This tenon actually goes all the way through and it's one piece. That's one piece. That tenon comes through this mortise from this piece and it sticks up enough just to engage that. There's nothing structural about it, it's just to hold it in place. Wow. Whereas this piece is really structural. This will hold it together and be a strong joint just like on a timber frame. That's a big one, yeah. So that's the difference there. Well, these are great and I appreciate your visit today. Yeah, you're welcome. My pleasure. Go to Gilbrook and see the table. And this one will be in the Winooski parks soon. And if you have any ideas on where to go, I'd love to hear it.


You're listening to Barbell Logic brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching where each week we take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast the principle series where we talk about principles that have shaped our everyday lives and positive ways quality of life sort of issues and Today I wanted to talk about What we call the Pomodoro which my little brother Chris introduced me to years ago Last week we talked about the quadrants of things that are urgent and important and We primarily use the Pomodoro which is undistracted work blocks of time for undistracted work. I'll let Chris introduce that While tackling those issues that are both urgent and important so Chris. Thanks for being on the show again Tell me a little bit about where did you discover this is old? This has been around for a while Yeah, it actually it looks like it actually was invented or maybe first published in the late 80s by a guy named Francesco Cirillo and He's an Italian guy, which is actually where the Pomodoro phrase came from. It's a means of tomato It's like tomato timer. Yeah, you guys remember remember your when you like your grandma had the old kitchen timer that was in the shape of a tomato that was had sort of a Had sort of an equator around it And you could you could twist the two the bottom half in the top half apart and it would tick tick tick tick tick tick Right well now we have timers on our phones So we don't have to use these old kitchen timers But that was originally what this was based on was how to use a kitchen timer to work efficiently. That's exactly right and This was introduced to me by two colleagues at work at the same time So I can't actually credit one individual over another. I think it was really becoming a hot topic within circles of programmers which is my background and you it makes total sense that programmers would be some of the early people to adopt this because You have to be in the flow state of work for a very long period of time as a programmer We talk a little bit about context switches within the programming world and it applies to humans Fascinatingly so the basic idea is just if you're working on something in programming You have a huge amount of context in your brain And if somebody comes up and taps you on the shoulder and asks you about something else You have to ditch all that knowledge that's in your brain for a minute answer their question Grab that knowledge put it back in your brain and re get into the context It's been estimated that that costs you about 20 minutes in programming It's that hard to get back into the the flow state and so a couple of friends of mine that that worked with me Mentioned this to me and they said you know you should really read up on the Pomodoro technique And part of this just because I Productivity hacks were always very interesting to me. I always liked that So they sent me Looking into the Pomodoro and so I found several articles on it read through the original Pomodoro paper Which you can find online by just looking up Pomodoro technique the Wikipedia article is also Fascinating it's a very good source of information on the Pomodoro But the basic concept is incredibly simple. It's just what you do is You set a 25 minute timer now this the amount of time is not quite as important as the principles underneath the time So you'll notice over as you progress through doing Pomodoro's you might actually adjust the time quite a bit in various directions, but For 25 minutes you stay absolutely Dedicated to one thing that you're trying to get done You do not do two things and you never allow an interruption an interruption means that the Pomodoro was failed and you have to start it over again and The basic idea behind this is to keep you in that state of flow and to keep you from having to do a Context switch which is incredibly expensive Especially for knowledge workers that have things in their head and they're they're working on trying to get something done But I even noticed when my wife and I were remodeling a house that you know Spending all my time working on a particular area of the house Context switch was also expensive. So for those of you that do more like labor style jobs. I think it's still very beneficial the basic idea 25 minutes you stayed absolutely focused you do not use the restroom you do not go get a drink there are a million ways we distract ourselves on purpose because we're a little bit bored with what we're doing and You you cannot allow those things to happen or you will not be very efficient at the process and then at the end of the 25 minutes You check a checkbox off. So, you know, I did it You take a five minute break and the five minute break is actually very very important You got to get up. That's your time to use the restroom get a drink You don't grab some coffee whatever maybe for me It would I'd get outside and just look off a distance I'd notice I get some ice-drain if I was staring at my computer for too long You whatever you need to do during that period of time then you sit down and you start the timer again and you keep going It's amazing how over time You can build up the ability to do more and more and more Pomodoro's in a day. So a Pomodoro would be a unit of 25 minutes Yeah, or even 30 minutes 25 minutes of work and five minutes of rest So you introduced this to me years probably a decade ago and I started using it in everything that I did Outside of those things that were important but not urgent, right? So anything in those first three quadrants that we talked about last week I would I would either delegate or automate or I Pomodoro and so to this day I still do that And so some of my tips that I use on a on a daily basis is I talked about this last week I get up really early because there are less distractions early Pomodoro's work well for me the first two or three hours. I'm awake every morning. That's the best Pomodoro time I have it's much more difficult for me to do Pomodoro's at three o'clock in the afternoon because my phone is blowing up now number two The best thing I can do to cut distractions is to turn off all of the notifications Off of my phone and off of my computer. So I don't get notifications for emails for texts for slack Which has become a huge part of this no social media. I don't need I don't even have Facebook on my phone I you know no social media notifications. I have them off of my computer as well Because those notifications become a massive distraction and then for me I always have a blank sheet of paper That's sitting on my desk that if something pops into my head like oh, we need to pick this up at the grocery store I can just write whatever cilantro and I'm right back to work because Trying to hold the idea of I need to pick up cilantro at the grocery store this afternoon Actually takes up more bandwidth in my head. I want to free the bandwidth up So it's not that you're not allowed a three-second distraction It's that you get that distraction on paper as fast as possible So that it doesn't have to take up bandwidth in your head and that is how I get tons of work accomplished now We've done this anytime I have the leadership team come out and we work together either here in Springfield or if we're on a business trip together We do Pomodoro's together as a team like we sit down at a conference table And we'll talk a little bit do our thing a lot of times eat breakfast drink coffee Whatever like okay, we're gonna start Pomodoro's is everybody ready and a lot of times We'll even go around the table really quick and we'll say what is the thing you're working on for the next Pomodoro So that there's some accountability there, right? So my editor-in-chief says I'm working on this article my my VP of marketing says this is what I'm doing, right? And we go all the way around the table everybody says this is what we're doing Okay, here we go start we do the Pomodoro at 25 minutes.  Do you have more left to do or are you ready to move on to the next thing? And we'll knock out four five six Pomodoro's in a row as a team and at the end every single time my entire team's like Oh my god, this is amazing. How much work I got done and so it works every single time But the story I wrote an article for Barbara logic last year about this you can go on Barbara logic You search Pomodoro My daughter Kalin's 14 very easily distracted most 14 year olds are but she's very easily distracted and She when of course we homeschool and so she doesn't have enough work Even though we use a very tough curriculum to work eight or nine hours a day And yet I noticed she was working eight or nine hours a day I was like what's going on and she's like I can't get all my work done I was like whoa hold on so so of course I didn't make her get up before 30 But I think I set the alarm for 6 30 in the morning Had her get up at 6 30 come down in the office and we just did Pomodoro's together and in like three Pomodoro She was done with all of her work as a freshman in high school in an hour and a half and she was like oh my god This is a this is ridiculous. I'm like no this works now You can spend the rest of your day at 14 years old doing whatever you want You want to go like play on tiktok or watch YouTube or go shopping at the mall or do whatever you can do those things And we don't let you do those things unless your schoolwork is done So now she has a strategy leader schoolwork done faster so that she can go do the things that are important to her as a 14 year old Absolutely Pomodoro's are a fascinating Way to get into two concepts that are complementary and they actually affect each other Across the rest of your life and that is the idea of how to ignore things that actually don't matter Yeah, and also how to really pay attention and be present to the things that you are doing It almost forces you to do that it's very close To what you read about and it's popular now But at the time that I read Pomodoro's it wasn't it wasn't really a thing that people were talking about and that is things like Meditation right where what you're actually doing is you're focusing on one thing and a distraction is Something that you might make note of they even use those words make note well in Pomodoro You know you used an example earlier where you keep a piece of paper there. That's actually part of the process To write down the idea so it's not trapped in your head and taking up space or looping and The same is true in your life when you're playing with your kids If you are actually not there in your head, you're doing something else. You're worrying about something else Then you're not giving them your undivided attention. You're not enjoying it as much all those things Pomodoro's are a very interesting way to help you see how much your mind Wants to avoid doing the thing it is you're trying to do how much it will fight boredom Or even the slightest just is looking for that dopamine hit of you know getting on Social media and taking a look at what's going on or whatever There is Pomodoro's are a structured technique to make sure that you absolutely get 25 minutes of something done That's right, and it's fascinating the more you get into it How easy it is to do more inside of a day? I can't remember what my top number was but it was in the upper 20s of the number of consistent Pomodoro's I could pull off you were programming like crazy You would say you could do eight hours of Pomodoro's which would be 16 Pomodoro's Yeah, it took years to get to where I was capable of doing that. I can't I can't do that That's more more even than I can do certainly certainly in it just about a row One of the techniques for Pomodoro's for most people is after they do Three or four of these they need to take a longer break five minute break is not enough for most people They'll need to take a 30 minute break an hour break Go walk do something active get some blood flow. It's a really good time to work out things like that So we talked about the the strategies for distraction to make sure the notifications are off your Phones computers, etc. We talked about the for us finding times that are That are Harder for people to distract you which for us is early in the morning But that's not what it would be for everybody but find those times that there's less chance of being distracted I always try to go in a private room when I do this stuff like people that work in coffee shops I don't understand how they do that because there's too much distraction for me Now I've had to do it before I've had to do it at airport lounges and on airplanes and and to me That's where earphones like noise canceling headphones work really really well And of course, you know your eyes are focused on a screen But the more you have things going in front of your face And distracting your eyesight that that is a potential problem. And so I try to I try to really focus in on my eyes see this my ears hear this There are no notifications popping up on my phone or computer my family is sleeping. So there's no like auditory distractions I have it to the to the sound piece of that too that I used very frequently when I was in a chaotic situation I traveled a lot while I was programming also and you know Airplanes or airports airports, especially are just total chaos, right?  I mean it is absolutely fantastic how much I mean you'll look around and you don't know what's going on Outside in terms of sound So if you're someone I am particularly distracted by sound sound, I'm super sound sensitive Um visually not so much I can block out things visually but sound just affects me terribly If you're in a similar boat, you know buy a giant box of those foam earplugs they don't go bad and uh and then get some over your ear sound cancelling headphones play white noise in it and You'll notice that that the world falls away the last point I want to make here is that if we tie this back to last week in that we try to Get rid of the things in our life as much as possible that are not urgent not important We try to delegate or automate for the most part the things that are urgent But not important and for the things that I cannot delegate and still have to do Then I use pomodoros for those I use pomodoros primarily for that third quadrant of things that are urgent and important And I very rarely use pomodoros for the final quadrant and I'll say I'll put the caveat with this If it has to do with relationships I would never pomodor like I don't want efficiency of time When it comes time to going on a date with my wife or playing with my kids Uh, but you have noted and it's true. I do like efficiency of time for things like reading for things like working out I like I like timed rest periods for we've all seen people who work out And they take three hours to do a workout because they just lolly gag the whole time like that's not That's a waste of time to spend three hours on a workout If your workout takes longer than 90 minutes, especially if you're if you're not an advanced lifter It shouldn't take longer than an hour But if it takes longer 90 minutes you're lolly gagging and you've talked about using pomodoros for things like reading books Like books are important to you And so you try to give your reading 25 minutes of undistracted time so that your mind can really hone in and focus on the thing You're reading Absolutely, yeah, and I mean I think there are other advantages too on the things that are not relationship oriented And I agree with you wholeheartedly on the relationship side dedicate your time to those people and don't don't time it When it comes to reading what's interesting is if you time it you can also track some things So i'm a little bit of a data geek and some people most people aren't but if you are One thing you'll notice is you've got a consistent time factor You can figure out how many pages you normally read inside that period of time And it's easy for you to project out how long it's going to take you to complete a book or 50 books However many you know you're doing so there are advantages in there of running those and then additionally Just keeping the distractions out, you know if i'm going to go through a book And somebody interrupts me in the middle of of my 25 minute reading period You know normally i'll just say you just hang tight until i'm till i'm done with this section And i'll get with you you know in in a few minutes And that allows me to stay head down on on the reading that i want to get done because it's it's very important to me And what i do right now awesome, so takeaway there is Everybody that's listening to this has things that they know they need to do Often those things are things you don't really want to do that much But you know you need to get them done They're both urgent and important a pomodoro is a great strategy To attack that to get it done as quickly as possible so that it opens up your schedule To do more of the things and be present for the things that are important But not so urgent so next time you get a chance like tomorrow morning Do some pomodoro's and see how fast you get this work knocked out Thank you for listening again. This has been another episode of barbologic podcast principle series And we'll see you next week


Nsukha Professionals Association, NPA, has raised the alarm over alleged plans by some politicians to import armed thugs in police and military uniforms into integral state to aid the alleged attempt to halt the bimodal voter accreditation system, leave as an IRAF portal during the governorship and state House of Assembly elections. The association called on the Inspector General of Police and military authorities to act fast by frustrating the plan, which it said was aimed at disrupting elections in some part of the state. While briefing journalists in Lagos on the threat of violence and widespread electrum are practices in the March 18 elections, the president of the association, Charles Ongodo, said professional hackers had been contracted by one of the parties to compromise with the electoral process by transmitting fake result into the INEX portal. Nsukha Professionals Association, a non-partisan and important stakeholder in Enugu state, hereby calls attention to the following developments which if left unattended to may plunge Enugu state into a needless orgy of violence and lawlessness in the buildup to the governatorial and state assembly elections. A, unresolved high profile alleged assassination. The brutal assassination of the level party candidate for Enugu is sedentary districts in the days preceding the February 25, 2023 elections. By individuals who are yet to be apprehended, we are appalled that no arrests have been made and no suspects have been interrogated by the security agencies to date. The Inspector General of Police is implored to dispatch a special team of detectives to Enugu state with a mandate to seek out and apprehend all those directly or indirectly connected with this heinous crime, no matter their status or extent of connections in the society. The Nsukha Professionals Association announces a donation of one million Naira to the family of the slain politician in humanitarian solidarity for their grief. Along with all persons of good will in Enugu state and Nigeria, it is our resolve to ensure that this crime is thoroughly investigated and justice served on the guilty in accordance with our laws. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.