Hello everyone and good evening. My name is Terri Irkart and I'm the Arts and Special Events Programmer at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. On behalf of the library and the West Vancouver Art Museum, I'd like to welcome you all to tonight's art talk and panel discussion, Leon Coupe, my dearest Kate. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening and with the help of some magical technology, some of you are even joining us from the other side of the globe, I would like to acknowledge that the West Vancouver Library and Art Museum reside within the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Swamish Nation, Slavertooth Nation and Musqueam Nation. We recognize and respect these nations within this territory as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us since time immemorial. I am personally grateful to call the Pacific Northwest my home and I'm thankful to the Coast Salish communities that continue to protect the natural beauty and animal diversity that surround me every day. It has been my great pleasure to work with Hilary Letwin and our guests tonight to bring this event to our community and I know that we are all in for a really great treat and now I'd like to pass things over to our art museum's curator extraordinaire Hilary. Hello, welcome. My name is Hilary Letwin and I'm the administrator curator at the West Vancouver Art Museum. I would like to go to the Vancouver Memorial Library for the chance to co-present this panel discussion that we are presenting this evening and I'm also delighted to introduce our new exhibition at the West Vancouver Art Museum, My Dearest Kate Leon Coupe. This exhibition includes just over 120 postcards that were all drawn and sent by Leon Coupe from Paris between 1902 and 1912. Many of the cards were sent to Kate Barlow Hunt, Leon's fiance and later wife who lived in London. Other cards were sent to their son Maurice and additional family members. Leon was a lawyer by profession but as we can see from the postcards in the exhibition also an extremely inventive artist. On the back of commercial postcards souvenirs with views of Paris Leon drew portraits of his beloved self-portraits landscapes and caricatures. These postcards were passed down through the family with many now held in West Vancouver by West Vancouver artist Pierre Coupe. Before we get to our discussion this evening it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our panelists. We have Guy Atkins a writer and an artist based in London. Thank you for joining us Guy. Educated at Oxford University and Goldsmiths the University of London. Guy has written extensively on the culture of sending and collecting postcards in Edwardian Britain including in the 2014 book Come Home at Once published by Bantam Press. Their collaborative art projects explore the politics of history making often through personal and museum collecting. Atkins has developed their multi-disciplinary practice through projects with diverse communities including people in prison for a project called This Small Change from 2020 presented with the Prisoner's Education Trust in Tate with peace campaigners in a project called and there was Brian in 2018 presented for the Museum of London and a project with psychoanalysts called 20 Years of Archive Fever in 2014 presented for the Freud Museum of London. Our second panelist Pierre Coupe was a founding co-editor of the Georgia Straight and the founding editor of the Capilana Review. His work has received numerous awards grants and commissions including grants from the Conce des Arts in Quebec, Canada Council, the BC Arts Council. He received the Distinguished Artist Award from fans in 2013 was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2018 and named Faculty Emeritus at Capilana University in 2019. His work is represented in private corporate and public collections in Canada and abroad including the permanent collections of the Burnaby Art Gallery, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Colonna Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery among many others. So Guy and Pierre, let's start by having you both explain your connection to the postcards in the exhibition that we have. Guy do you want to start us off? Sure thanks, thanks Hilary. Yes I've been collecting and studying Edwardian postcards for about 15 years and over the last 10 years I've become particularly interested in hand drawn cards so where the sender has embellished the image on the front or has created an entirely new postcard and then posted it and I've been collecting and collecting and have really enjoyed doing so and then in 2019 I was at a market in London and which I'd been to many many many times before and I came across this folder of 50 postcards that Leon sent to Kate in 1903-1904 and I was bowled over by the might I'd never seen anything like that like these like the folder and eventually decided to buy them and become drawn into the amazing story that they show and having transcribed the 50 cards and Leon wrote an awful lot on each postcard having transcribed them. I got in contact with Pierre who amazingly had put a couple of a few of those postcards already on the internet and so I was able to link up with him and it's just been it's been an incredible experience to be able to to join the story. And Pierre we know your family connection but why don't you tell us a little bit more about the Leon Coupe project and your connection to it? Well it's such a big story in so many ways and hard to summarize but first of all thank you for the introduction Hilary and thank you guys so nice to see you both on Zoom and to keep this project going a little bit further. Well you know my father never really showed us these cards at all when we were kids in in Montreal. I think it was only later in his life that he brought them out and my brother I think was the first one to see them and I think my brother framed two sets of them for my father so that he would have them in the house in Montreal on Altsford Avenue and that's when I first saw them. My father never made a big deal of the cards he didn't talk to us about the cards he didn't talk to us about my grandfather and my grandmother so we have very little stories from him on in that regard but then after my father passed away and my mother passed away the cards that he had were distributed between me and my brother and my sister my brother Philippe and my sister Marguerite and so that's when I began to pay a little bit more attention to them and the cards that I received I received one of the framed sets that were in Montreal and they were really badly framed and so I had them reframed and and I hung them in the house in the studio here in West Vancouver and I thought that you know they were beautiful cards and I hadn't seen all the other cards in the family at that point and I thought well maybe it would be a good idea in order to have a little bit of a legacy for our children and our grandchildren to start getting the cards together and scanning them perhaps doing a self-polished little book just for the family just so everyone in the family could have an idea of what Leon did for Kate and then one day Reid Schar the the director of the Polygon Gallery came over for a studio visit and as he was leaving he noticed the set of postcards that I had framed above my computer above my desk here and he stopped in his tracks and said Pierre we have to do a book of these and that was the first time that I thought gee maybe we should take these cards a little bit more seriously maybe there's something here to share not just with the family but to share with a wider audience and so with Reid's encouragement with that kind of stimulus and then his he introduced me to Lisa Bouldicera at the Griffin Art Projects and Lisa came to see the cards and she was generous enough to include them in a group show at the Griffin Art Projects called Personne and about all kinds of matters of intimacy and of course these cards are very intimate cards here we are bringing them to the audience to a public audience and I can't imagine that either Kate or Leon ever thought that they would be seen by anyone other than the postman and and I'm sure that Leon was quite confident that his handwriting was so tiny and so indecipherable that no one else would ever take the time to even bother to read them so here we are making them public so it's been a project it's become a project and so for the last four years I've become more and more engaged with it and trying to find out ways of making them available to a more public audience and then getting the family more involved in letting me have them so the next step was after the Lisa Bouldicera show at the Griffin Art Projects Darren Morrison from the West Van Kuber Art Museum, your predecessor Hillary came to see them and he said well maybe we should do a show of them at the West Van Kuber Art Museum and then as often happens with all of my exhibition projects one director or curator resigns and you one comes in and you came in Hillary and of course you can't just inherit a project from a predecessor willy-nilly you had to come and take a look for yourself to make sure that this was something that you wanted to be behind and thankfully you were so here we are and so at that point I started to contact all the various family members and ask them if they would be willing to lend their postcards in their collection to this show and all of them were and that was I'm very grateful for that and so they began to send me all their cards which of course I had to sort and keep in you know securely because I can't afford to lose any of their cards and then had to begin the process of having them stand front and back and the process of having them frame and so it's been a long long journey doing all of that I have not yet arrived at the point that Guy has and kind I bless you for this Guy has transcribed all the texts of his cards I haven't had a chance to do that yet there's a lot more work to be done so basically that's how this project came developed and how we came to this point of having a show so I have to ask because I have my favorite but I would love to hear what your favorite cards are in the exhibition and are they a particular type of category of course we've got landscapes we've got self-portraits and portraits and caricatures so Guy can you start by telling us which of the cards are your favorite my favorite I think I think it's the self-portraits I think they really bring and the portraits of Kate as well but they seem to me to really bring out the importance of the collection as a whole how how you get drawn into this this intimate relationship that's building over time I think that's another element that's so interesting that this is a story this isn't a relationship that's this isn't these cards build the relationship and so they we move from them being engaged to the couple through to them being married and in that way those self representations and those representations of Kate carry such a weight you feel they're so charged I I love particularly the image of Leon Leon where he seems to sort of emerge from a sort of puddle of ink and you get that sense that he's and I think right through the cards you get a sense of his humor his craft but also this sort of perhaps darker side perhaps a more anxious side and he somehow is able to to to crystallize that into single cards and so the cards where yeah he's revealing something of himself I find really compelling and Pierre what about you can you pick just to feel as your favorite you know I I just love all of them and the more I look at them the more I want more of them too and and even this morning in preparation for this I was scrolling through them on my iPad while I was having breakfast and gosh you see more detail in them every time you take a look so for such tiny little things three and a half inches by five and a half inches they they they contain so much and they have such implications but I have to agree with Guy that my absolute favorite is that dark self-portrait where his face emerges from that pool of ink and that's the one that we put on the cover and then of course the other favorite is what we have on the back cover and that's his portrait of Kate which I think is so lovely it's just very moving to see those yes the self-portraits in general I love all of them the calligraphies are so so interesting the monograms his play on the the initials k h and those those ones always astonish me then I have a couple of other favorites naturally I love the ones where he's either addressing my father right after he's born in 1905 or depicting him and of course those have sentimental value for me but to just to get back to the self-portrait I have to put this in the self-portraits is that every time I see them of course I see my father because they are the spitting image of each other to the hair the moustache the nose the way they had this dark eyed gaze I mean my father's gaze could kill you from you know at a hundred yards if you wanted to I mean there was something there's a sharpness there anyway then some other favorites the one of my real favorites of course that I come back to again and again is the drawing of the the card that has the drawing of the lizard that forms the sea of our family name coupé and then there's the card that he addresses to my father in 1905 where the crescent moon in an inky blue sky forms the sea of coupé so all those kinds of plays are always interesting to me there's more and I could go on obviously I think we all could well and it's really nice actually to talk a little bit about the way in which the images work with the the text as well because as as you rightly say these are extremely small they're about three and a half by five inches and within the exhibition of course we have them framed in sets of nine and 10 and 12 depending on which family member they are on loan from or guy in guy's case and we actually have these wonderful magnifying sheets that you can hold up to the card so that you can look more closely at the detail which can get lost because they're so small in size and we've had a number of visitors pour over the cards with these magnifying sheets and and take in all of the details which when we have 120 cards can take quite a long time but it's it's wonderful to think about the interplay between the text and the image in these and I agree Pierre I think my favorite is probably the postcard with the moon as well there's also a really charming poem a four-line poem on that card and it's I think it refers to breastfeeding because Maurice has just been born the milky way and it's it's just completely charming and you do get a wonderful sense of Leon's personality in particular through not only the images but also the text and he's playful and he's inventive really an extraordinary person he tells he tells stories very very quickly as well that I love but there are Kareen Kate's sister and Kate have visited Leon on one of the it's in the aftermath of that visit and he describes the the flat after they've left and how sort of bare it is and how the the mattress that he's slept on is now back where it was meant to be and it was behind a piano and whereas Kate and Kareen have slept in his bed and you get it's such an incredible sense of the moments that he is trying to represent as well in that text and there I think there's something really magical in that and that he has he's able to convey things so in such a short space and so evocatively absolutely thank you for that so I'd like to just talk about the significance of the postcards because as I said Leon of course was a lawyer by profession and the postcards are if I'm not mistaken entirely commercial postcards that have been picked up basically souvenirs many with views of Paris and I just wondered and perhaps this is more a question for Guy what the significance of the commercial picture is on the recto of each postcard because we're focusing of course on Leon's drawings and and and the text but but was he putting any care or thought into what the images were from the postcard view? I think they give a sense of the of the postcard as a technology and how they were how they were produced and that he is using cards that are widely available there are lots of publishers competing for this this market that that's exploded in both London and Paris he I think it's interesting that he does on at some at some points choose quite loaded cards I think in terms of picking out particular spots of Paris that relate to shared memories and he's got the choice of available cards in order to do that and at the same time he uses cards from different art galleries and there are certain images within those artworks that I think are very deliberate and in fact actually then get repeated in later cards so there is the severed head of John the Baptist is one of the paintings by Moreau I think it is that's from the Louvre and that image then gets reworked into later cards by Leon of his own head which he draws by hand and sends sends to Kate and I think the fact that that he is making objects that are widely available into particular gifts for Kate is really significant and it and it's something that whilst there were other people doing that and using the postcard form as something to be to be played with it he is an outlier in terms of going to the extent that he did I don't think he's an outlier in terms of the number of cards that he sent it was a craze such that in London London went from well the UK went from sending sort of 300 million postcards a year at the end of the 19th century to sending close to a billion cards by 1914 it was that it was that quick an expansion so they were objects that people were familiar with getting but in 1903 it was it was pretty new and I'd love to know what Kate made of the of the artworks that she was receiving because they would have been new in a sense particularly the ones where he's using really kind of quite bright colors in his works they would have been incredibly exciting where he seems to be being influenced by contemporary art trends in Paris. Yes it would be a wonderful guy I would that's something I really wish I could find out more about and and have more time to study the cards and glean more of that information but there are two of the seascapes that show that his love for contemporary or for great artists and in which he inscribes the name Turner at the bottom of the card so he's clearly been looking at Turner in the National Gallery in London because he lived in London for about seven or eight years and the other thing that we should note is that he wrote all the cards to Kate in English even though he's a Frenchman but many of the cards have French phrases in them like so one of the decapitation scenes shows the guillotine and inscribed on the guillotine is entrez sans frappé enter without knocking and that phrase appears in different places too and then I just noticed this morning and one of the the cards that were sent to Kate in Barak près du Calais where she was staying in a pension that also had a charcuterie that on one of the pigs it's there's inscribed the phrase maison de retraite pour cochon retirement home for pigs so that kind of sense of humor also comes into play in those cards as well so yeah I would like to know more about who his artistic influences were and the ongoing perhaps guy is going to find out more and other people looking at them will be able to tell me more there's Turner but there's one little landscape where I he must have been looking at Monet at some point there's others one of the self-portraits reminds you of a go-gan self-portrait so I mean there are these associations that you can make whether they were deliberate whether he was actually looking at them actually influenced there's no way of really knowing for sure as there is no way of really knowing everything for sure about these cards they remain mysteries it's really nice in the exhibition that here we have two of the cards that you framed framed as double-sided and and and shown so that we can see both the recto and the verso and I think that's a fantastic way to understand the way in which he was choosing his commercial postcards and and he was clearly being selective about it guy of course your your your academic research has focused on postcard correspondence and you touched on this a little bit previously but I wonder if you can expand on it and speak a little bit about how Leon's practice for these postcards compared to those of his contemporaries yes um I think it's hard to appreciate just what an exciting technology and I think of it as a technology the postcard how exciting it was for people and in a sense the number of of of factors which came together in this period between 1900 and 1914 that makes what people refer to as the golden age of postcards we go from quite drab postcards before before the 20th century so when postcards were introduced in the 1870s and they looked something like this well exactly like this this is an 1875 postcard that was sent in the UK and what's interesting about it I suppose to a modern eye is that it's it has no image that the front is the address side and then you have the message on the back and in in the UK it stayed like that right into the into the 1890s there was a monopoly within within the UK a firm called De La Rue produced all the postcards and it was only because postcards were becoming increasingly popular in in in Europe in Germany and in France as well in the 1890s that there was this pressure in the UK to sort of liberate the postcard market and the post office allowed this and what you had was then this craze that emerges that takes advantage of the fact that so many more so many people can now read and write because education was was was was more widely available so that most homes had someone in in the house that could read and read and write the postal service got better and better in in the UK and France such that more and more regular deliveries took place such that in London at the peak there were 12 deliveries a day so that's one an hour so you could send a postcard in the morning it would arrive at lunchtime and then you could reply at lunchtime and it would get to your destination within the city by five or six o'clock so there was an instant element to the to the postcard that made it extremely exciting there were more people with some disposable income and the postcards were incredibly cheap because printing technologies were improving all the time and lots of commercial publishers were able to to make a lot of money out of this and there was this and they would encourage the collecting craze so yes the postcard was like it was in later the 20th century a holiday item as more and more people went on day trips to the seaside because the transport systems were the trains were better but people were also sending them simply to collect them simply to request something you know rather than write a formal letter you would send a postcard so you had this this this booming industry which people would take advantage of and play with and so people would draw on the front add figures to the front they would create I mean I've got one here which is which is a hand drawn postcard and that's all that was sent through the post I mean you know there's nothing on this side because the address is there with the stamp um all people would perhaps more more elaborate cards like this but there was they were still they were they and people would play with the form so here the lady who's or the man who's um pushing the cart says that he's nearly knocked my head he says on the on the on the top of the postcard so Leon wasn't you know it wasn't the only person um uh creating using the postcard as a as a as a site for creativity but having said that um and and partly this relates to I suppose how the cards have survived because typically cards once they go into the the postcard collecting world they get split up and there's a single cards um that that are bought Leon's card and I think it's because they were so beautiful um because they were so so important that they were able to survive as a set together and that means that we have we're in quite a unique position really of having a set um that that he's able to show us um what people did with postcards um over over a period of time and that is that is quite quite unique about the collection thank you for that insight I I remember as a young art history undergrad and and grad student collecting postcards from different museums of artwork from around the world that I would then sort of work into my research and it reminds me a little bit about that and it's amazing how how that industry progressed really and it looks like the message the the first postcard you showed us from 1875 just had that one line and it was basically about responding right what is that tech can you read what the text says there yeah and they were they were generally business messages I mean that's what they that's what they were used for they were used for a basic admin business administration um so it says um memorandum um if you have not written me by the post please report progress by return um so the the postcard was it was a was a handy object for business um before the images um I mean occasionally you do come across hand drawn cards from the 1870s um but and they're they're very exciting to to find but certainly not the love notes that we see Leon sending to his family members I've never seen I've never seen a love note on on on a on a draw of 1870s card no maybe they just don't exist anymore maybe they didn't survive um here I I'd love to what's that Pierre be then burn yes exactly um here I'd love to hear a little bit more about your family's plans for um these cards of course as I say they've all been framed and presented um as as per each collector within the exhibition uh so those will all go back to the individual family members uh from around the world North America and elsewhere but what happens to the project the the Leon Coupe project that you have uh so diligently put online do you have future plans for these well I have plans and I have hopes maybe more hopes than plans nothing concrete uh first of all I don't want to return any of the frame sets to anybody uh I think I'm going to keep them all and they'll have to fight me tooth and nail to get them back but no uh what I'd like to see if possible there are two things two routes that I would like to have happen now uh I would like to see the possibility of this exhibition traveling to another city it would be lovely to be able to show them in London and have Guy in London as a curator for the show there uh other curators have already seen the show and have suggested that they should be exhibited in Montreal or Paris or Tokyo where they might receive a good reception according to this person uh but I think further exhibition possibilities are something that I'd like to explore but another thing that I would that I'd hope for is for a book publication the catalogue that we've done with this exhibition at the Westman Cougar Art Museum is really beautiful and there are 60 reproductions in it with Guy Atkins text your text and my text but I think the postcards as a collection deserve a larger publication so that we can see the front and back of each card simultaneously on a page and I think that it would be nice to find someone more skilled than me it probably is Guy or you Hillary that to to write a full text about them to explore them in all of their dimensions I think that would be something that would be lovely to to have done whether there's a big market for that I don't know but again this is all speculation for me the uh as an artist the my my most my my my my deepest feeling for them is as aesthetic objects there are the historical associations the revelations the implications there are the family stories that are all attached to this but for me I see them purely as works of art now and and I'm always knocked out by not only how beautiful they are etc but how how fluent Leon's hand was how how good he was at drawing with pen and ink and then with brush and ink when you look at them more closely you see that he used a variety of techniques to to accomplish these things so I would like to see them shared for on that basis for their aesthetic value with a larger audience and I think that it would be important to have enough full books so that they all could be seen at once so plans aspirations hopes dreams uh let's just see what unfolds I mean this exhibition is and uh and the catalog has already brought new attention to the cards and brought new family members into the picture as well so I'm now beginning to learn more about the barlow hunt side of the family from people relatives in England that have recently contacted me so the project itself is you know growing in that dimension as well anyway we shall see I think for now we cannot we we who do not own any of these cards can be very envious of you who do because they are such lovely things thank you I think this is probably a a really good opportunity to wrap up but I just wanted to give Guy and Pierre the opportunity to say any last remarks that you would like to add to our discussion anything that we didn't cover perhaps um no I think I think that that was that was really lovely and really it was really nicely balanced across the different themes of the of the cards and you can it is so I mean that's the I think that's the wonderful thing about postcards actually is that they they seem to open up you know they're restless objects you know you you turn them over and they've got their text their image um their their their high art their low art you know their their their their fragile and yet they last you know then again you know and I think that's what was was so exciting and um about you know me the Pierre and Hilary you've made this this exhibition happen is just is just absolutely wonderful and it's uh uh yeah I'm I'm I'm absolutely sure it will be exhibition that that goes on elsewhere um yeah it feels very authentic I think that's the another aspect of it it's quite rare that you you get to work on a project which which feels like it's got an energy of its own and this this has um we know there isn't you all sorts of people find the cards compelling um and they are able to find their own particular interest in them um and that's that's really special it reminds me and I've talked to the Pierre about this before I'm struck by the parallel between the the Pierre the Leon Coupe project and the works of Vivian Mayer the street photographer um now I know they're very different artists but there is something incredibly authentic about the works um and that they weren't necessarily made for a big audience and that that that comes through when you get up close to the works um and that makes them incredibly human um and yeah there's a there's a momentum within the project that that that comes from that absolutely thank you Guy Pierre did you want to add anything before we do I think that's a wonderful way to end I think that's just gorgeous and I want to thank both of you so much for your participation and your and your your your your your your support for this project and for Leon's work that's wonderful thank you thank you Pierre uh so the exhibition my dearest Kate runs at the West Vancouver Art Museum until March 12th the Art Museum is open Tuesday this Saturday from 11 a.m to 5 p.m and we're happy for visitors to drop in during those hours they don't need to pre-book we have some excellent programming that's coming up including a virtual postcard printing workshop with Mark Johnson on February 24th and I encourage you to check out our website at West Vancouver Art Museum.ca for further details about our upcoming events as Pierre mentioned earlier we produced a beautiful exhibition designed by Stacey Noyes of Blissform which is available for purchase for $15 from our shop and that includes excellent essays by Pierre and by Guy and we look forward to seeing you all at the West Vancouver Art Museum very soon thank you Pierre thank you Guy have a good evening thanks Hilary thank you Guy


Wooo! Part 2, baby! More great songs for Mato! Today we have Fleeting Lullaby Tot Musica The World's Continuation And my plug-in for Patreon, baby! Ha ha! Wanna watch my reaction to these music videos? And the full album? While my reaction is to order that is available to you on Patreon right now, baby. I appreciate you a lot. Thank you. Ah, that was nice and relaxing. But now... It's not time for that! It's time to listen to more of Aido's versatile rainbow-like voice. Yeah, there's more of the rainbow with her voice in this album. And we'll start it off with Fleeting Lullaby. Buh! Buh! Buh! Screw singing the song in a karaoke. Aido's overwhelming technique of their voice would embarrass me if I tried to sing it. I would give up. But this is probably the best song in the album that showcases Aido's overwhelming unique technique of their vocals. Like a bruh. Listen. I have never heard an artist with this much vocal range, power, and flexibility. She has the ability to be five different people in the same song, and the song will still come out as an organized and non-cluttered masterpiece. And we see that in this song. I seriously don't know how she does it. It's like her voice is associated with the color purple in this song because of how creative it is. It's impressive, and whoever can sing like this in karaoke is like also extremely like... Talented! I'll be here like this. Somewhere over the rain. Yeah, but also I still can't sing.  It is absolutely invigorating how versatile it is. But this madness can also factor into the song's meaning, which is about the new generation needs to not be caught up in the old generation's madness. Got to clean up this brainwash.  Heads up, let my song clear your senses. If you watch the music video closely, you can feel the high level of Uta running away from madness of the old society in the first half and dancing with madness in the second half like she's in control of it. I feel like Ado goes through a packet of lozenges at the end of each session in the studio because goddamn her voice must hurt from this raspiness that she is constantly giving us in these songs which is absolutely amazing and in top music it is... phenomenal, the amount of raspiness we hear. But this dark heavy song hooks you in immediately because of Ado's powerful vocals syncing perfectly with the dark heavy atmosphere of the song. And I believe this song is a continuation of the previous song's meaning but more desperate, just like a fallen angel. The irreversible suffering, the expressiveness of darkness in the heart which makes it eerie and scary. But there's beauty inside of it. But just like Backlight, we get another showcase of Ado's red voice of rage but more desperate and I love it. Ado can sing any concept and I will support it. If she wants to yodel, she can yodel away. I'm here to support that, okay? And the next song in this album, The World's Continuation was the song that made Ado one of my favourite artists of all time. That right there was the indication I needed to confirm Ado would be in my top tier list of musical artists. A beautiful soft creamy voice that soothes your heart after all this intense and amazing hardship that Ado went through in this album. And it's beautiful. One of my favourite songs in this whole album. Being able to hear Ado's voice in such a majestic tone from start to end is just what I needed. I might be the odd one here because of this song being my favourite from the album but being able to hear this softness from Ado just melts my heart like a marshmallow over a warm flame. So sweet and delicious. I just want the soft flames to be constantly reaching me when I listen to this song and I never want it to end. Actually, I don't want this album to end but next week is my last week of this album review where I'll be talking about the last two songs and then my overall thoughts of this album. But yeah, thank you all for watching this video. I hope you guys did enjoy.  I can see glasses off. Can't see. But I just wanted to not wear glasses today. It's been a while. But seriously, this album is so refreshing. It's like I'm getting like a new main dish after main dish after main dish and I can't wait to talk about it next week with the last two songs. It's going to be a bit interesting, especially with the But yeah, thank you all for watching this video. Comment down below your favorite song so far that I have talked about in this album review series. And I hope you all have a great day. Keep smiling. Be safe out there because I don't want you to get sick. And yeah, other than that. Peace.


friends welcome to my channel. We all know that gate exam is right around the corner and I'm receiving tons of messages every day where students are showcasing their worry about the last-minute exam prep. So here I am with a video in which I'm going to talk about the best possible way in which you can utilize the last one week before the gate exam. Also don't forget to watch this video till the end because towards the end I'm going to share three bonus tips on how you can effectively give the exam. So I'm going to talk about certain important tips that you must remember while giving the gate exam and I'm also going to talk about a very very important strategy on how to fluke the right answers. We all know that in a competitive exam as difficult as gate it is very very important to guess the answers in a smart manner. You might not know the answer but you can still guess it in such a manner that you get it right. You get that answer right. So I'm going to talk about that strategy towards the end of this video. The very first lesson that I would like you to learn from this video is that don't wait for course completion. Directly jump into revision. What I mean by this is very simple. You don't need to learn anything new in this last week. You just need to focus on revising whatever you have studied so far. Even if you've studied just for 15 days stop studying anything new right now and take the notes of those 15 days and start revising them one by one. Why am I saying this? I'll give you a very simple example from my life. So I have a little brother who is currently preparing for SAT exam SAT exam and he gave a mock test a few days back. In that mock test he got some really really simple questions wrong and when I was sitting with him and analyzing the paper I could actually see the reason why he was getting those questions wrong. He has studied mean median mode concepts five months back but just before the mock he did not go through the formula sheet. He did not revise the information which he has been studying from past five months. What happens? When the question comes you are sure about how to solve it but you don't recall the formula or you might not recall a very simple step just because you've not revised it. Because revision is the key guys. Revision helps to consolidate the information. We keep on learning so many new information it all gets stored in the brain but it has to get consolidated. A particular information has to fit to the chain of other information which are related to it and that will not happen unless and until you start revising. And this is the reason why I am telling you to stop whatever you are doing right now and start revising whatever you have studied so far. Let's now jump to the second lesson. The second lesson simply states that please stay away from the rumours. Now there's a fair possibility that one of your friend what saps you a list of writers saying that five or six questions are definitely going to come from this particular list in the GATE exam. Whatever you were doing you keep that aside and you start focusing on that list day in and day out right before the exam. Now have you ever given a thought that since this exam is happening for the first time how did your friend know that this kind of writers or these topics are going to pop up in the exam? No we don't put in our brain we just do what the other people are doing specifically our good friends. I still remember guys that when I was preparing for my net exam I kept my cell phone off switched off for six months before the exam because I did not want to get in touch with any of my friends. Friends at times have a very bad influence in your life they are either going to call you and tell you how much they have studied and if you have not studied that much that is going to put you in an anxious state or else there are friends who are going to call you and tell that they have not studied anything and they are just going to chit chat because they know they are not going to clear the exam so they are going to pass their time in the last one week but you don't belong to any of these categories so kindly keep yourself away from friends, acquaintances who are going to put you morally down in the last one week. It is important for you to only focus on your preparation and nothing else. It's not advisable to become selfish in life but in areas like these make sure that you take that selfishness inside you and you make sure that you do something exclusively for your own benefit. Don't think about what other people are going to say whatever they have studied, what they are doing, what are their strategies just make your own strategy and stick to it. It is not going to help you to keep shifting from one strategy to the other. It is important that you follow your own strategy for a sufficient amount of time so that the results can be visible. There are a lot of people who are enrolled in my online course from where they are preparing not just for GATE 2021 but also for UGC net June 2021. A lot of people call me and ask me that for GATE 2021 they just have one week left if studied almost all the modules that were there in my course ranging from British literature, American, post-colonial, theory and criticism and they are struggling with the idea that what should be their primary focus during revision. So let me tell you guys that IIT Bombay released a mock test for GATE 2021 in which there were 40 questions from English literature portion and out of these 40 questions there were questions from different different topics. The list of those questions and their division is displayed on the screen. Now you can see very clearly from this list that the primary focus in the mock was on British literature as always be it any examination related to English literature British literature would be the primary focus always remember this is a thumb rule that you should never forget if you are a literature student preparing for any sort of competitive exam and the next important area was Indian literature. So from the mock test we can definitely conclude that British and Indian literature should be your primary focus during revision but since the GATE exam is conducted for the first time and you're not sure how and by what means are they going to set the paper we can still not predict a lot of stuff but looking at the mock test these are the two things that I think you should be focusing in the last one week. So now it's the time where I'm going to share the three bonus tips that will help you in your GATE 2021 exam. We all know that GATE exam has negative marking this time and whenever any exam has negative marking students are really confused on how to mark the answers should they attempt the questions they are not sure of should they attempt the questions for which they are confused or should they totally or altogether leave those questions which are giving them goosebumps. So I have a very simple strategy here the first important thing that you need to understand and apply on the day of the exam is the elimination technique. Now what is elimination technique in a normal scenario where you have a question with four options what is the probability of getting one option right 25 percent right that simple maths but suppose you want to increase your probability to get the question right in that case what you do is you use the elimination technique that was used by the master brain Sherlock Holmes. So whenever Sherlock Holmes had to find a murderer in a mystery what he would do is that he was going to eliminate all the options or all the people who were not the murderer according to him. So whatever left however improbable would be the correct option that was what Sherlock Holmes always said the same technique even you have to apply. So suppose you get a question where you have four options now the first intention of yours should be to eliminate at least two options which according to you will never be the right answer. So suppose you eliminate option A and B now what is left with you and C and D. Now the answer is going to be either C or D so what is the probability that you're going to get it right 50 percent right in case you would not have eliminated then the probability of getting any one option right out of the four would be 25 percent. So you have increased your chances of getting to the right answer. So always make sure whenever you have a question don't look for the right option try to look for the wrong option and cross it so that whatever remains at the last is going to be the right answer. So this is the first bonus tip the second bonus tip is that don't get stuck on a particular question this is a very very silly thing that we all do since childhood like I remember when I was going to school my mom used to always tell me before the exam don't get stuck to a question if you don't know move on don't try to put your brain your energy into just solving one question you're not going to get extra marks for getting that question right. So your intention should be spend 10 to 15 seconds on a question if you don't get it right in the first place leave it and move ahead. Another important benefit when you use this technique is that you're not just save time but you also help your subconscious brain. What happens is whenever we read something which is tricky our subconscious brain automatically starts looking for answers. We have all the information stored in our brain but it takes time to retrieve that information.  So next time when you're going to read that question in your revision period of your examination automatically the right answer might you know strike you why would that happen because your brain was subconsciously working to find the right answer. But if you try to put in a lot of pressure in your brain your brain will get anxious your brain will get into a zone where fear is operating and in that case he will not be able to look for the right answer. So just let your brain work on its own speed meanwhile you can go and solve the simpler questions. The difficult questions can be left to your subconscious brain and even if the subconscious brain is not able to come up with an answer we always have the elimination technique in place. So finally we land on to the third bonus tip now this tip is very common and I know that all of you would have done this kind of error in any of your previous exams and the tip is avoid silly mistakes. I know you know that right but have you ever wondered that how many times you've lost some really really important marks in the exam because of your silly mistake and yet you commit it every time in your next exam. So this time let us pledge that in Gate 2021 paper we are going to make sure that we are not going to lose a single mark because of a silly mistake. It's okay to lose marks when you don't know the question you don't know the options but it is really disheartening and not at all acceptable if you lose marks because of silly mistakes. Right? So make sure that you give five extra seconds to a question just to avoid the silly mistake. There can be n number of silly mistakes that we all commit. There are times when we don't read the question properly. Suppose the question says that who amongst the following has not been the prime minister of India. Now while reading the question and by getting excited that you are going to know the answer for this question you don't read the word not and what you end up marking is Manmohan saying because according to you he has been the prime minister of India but you did not check the question twice that the question was actually saying that who amongst the following have not been the prime minister. The second kind of silly mistake we all do is when we are looking at the numeric questions. So we are going to look at the question and we are going to jot down the digits in the rough sheet of paper to solve it and while jotting down the digits we jot it down wrongly. Now you end up solving the entire question but you don't get to the right option why because the digits were wrong. Sometimes we do the other way around where we have solved the question the digits we have noted in the rough sheet is right but while marking the answer from rough sheet to the computer screen we mark the wrong answer unknowingly and we don't even check it later. So make sure that this time you skim through the question paper in such a way that you don't commit any single silly mistake. I would also like to know in the comments below that what kind of silly mistakes have you done in your previous exam. I would be the first person commenting below because I have done a lot of them and I've learned from each of them right. So let's meet in the comment section below and let's see what kind of silly mistakes we've done in our past lives. So that's it for this video lecture. I wish you all the best for the upcoming GATE 21 exam and I hope that you bring laurels to your family. That's it for this video. We'll meet very soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next. Happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpathakarva.com


Hey guys, John Hammond here still looking to pkctf 2017. So this challenge coming up next is called little school bus It says can you help me find the data in this little school bus dot BMP? So bitmap the nod here and kind of the the hint and guidance is that this is little school bus or L SB so that acronym you will hear a lot in forensics and kind of the umbrella of that or underneath that is Stegonography trying to hide data and other data trying to mask and Obscure things that you want to keep secret. So even that checking out the hints here that LSB means least Significant bits or trying to hide other data in the very very last bit of every single byte of something So this happens a lot in music or in images where you build tweak just the very very last bit or like the zero or the one at the end of every every every byte in a picture and Put all together all of those bits the very last one in a line or something that will have a special message or a special thing So you can do a whole lot of research on this if you want to look up least significant bits to iconography It's all over the internet It explains it a lot for one thing, but you want an interesting thing steganography Is you're trying to figure out? Okay, how can I actually get this? These bits out and how do I how do I actually? Uncover the data that people are trying to hide in here. So There are tools that allow you to do this a Lot of things are different because they may be trying to hide something in the image for one thing They may be trying to hide text etc. So some of the online tools may just give you an Online image thing that they're trying to detect So let me go ahead and copy this we can I can show it to you in action rather than just trying to talk about it Make directory little school bus W get this guy cool Let's upload him try and unhide or something in here that should be Uploaded now so even if we were checking out with this tool, there's nothing that we're gonna particularly get out of this It's not showing us at least significant bit wise for for text or something that we're trying to get out of it So this tool doesn't help us we may be able to find other tools and stuff for that But one that I've seen that works exceptionally well is called z-steg and that's to find hidden images or hidden information Hidden data in specifically PNG portable network graphics or bitmap Images so it requires Ruby. It's written in Ruby. So you need to use gem to install it So pseudo app install gem if you don't have that Ruby package manager kind of like pip from Python You can gem install z-steg and then there are some options you can give it But it will go ahead and like rip out any text that it finds if it finds text written or pieced together in the File that you give it so I haven't installed already I won't showcase going to install it, but I can if you need to it I think does trip up some people when you're trying to go ahead and get gem ready But it's well worth it if we once you get z-steg set up So you can run it and it will just crank through the entire like picture and it will rip out the flag Just like that z-steg is awesome when you have an LSB your least significant bit challenge. So let's keep that in mind as a flag So that is honestly all I kind of wanted to showcase for that challenge I would point you towards your own research if you want to learn more about least significant bit But I would advocate that that z-steg tool is awesome for when you see that challenge It will just kind of parse out any text or whatever it can find in just those bits that are defined as okay Something that may be manipulated to hide data, but it's one cool trick So now I want to give a shout out to the people that support me on patreon So all of these individuals you are the best. Thank you so much for being Awesome and being willing to do what you do. I appreciate all your support one dollar a month on patreon We'll give you a special shout at the end of every video just like this $5 a month will give you early access to everything I create on YouTube before it gets released Because I tend to record in bulk or in mass and then I'll gradually have YouTube just release it day by day Whatever the case may be so hey if you did like this video, please do leave me a like You may be comment maybe subscribe if you're willing and if you want to support me check me out on patreon or my website www.johnhamman.org thanks You


What's going on everybody got Kyle here with Layton Sports Cards and we're doing a break here 2020 Panini encased football eight box full case number 11 random division stop we did it randomized before the break god Bradley all with the AFC east down to miles h with the AFC south good luck here guys can always check those results on our website LaytonSportsCards.com underneath the results tab good luck encased full case all righty good luck here guys let's do it encased number 11 divisions thank you Ryan taking elite Don Russ elite for tomorrow release day Don Russ elite and mosaic basketball break in tomorrow guys I'll be back here tomorrow morning we'll get going on some mosaic basketball then we got Don Russ elite the afternoon and then we got Sam coming in tomorrow night so some more group breaks Corey Davis base for the Jets AFC east to start us off we've got another AFC east this one's jumbo jersey 50 of 50 gonna be Taekwon Thornton on the substantial rookie swatches 50 of 50 AFC east we've got triple relic to 99 Malik Willis that'll be AFC south 6 of 99 triple relic Titans and auto is Titans as well 12 of 99 Traylon Burks nice one there the big on-card auto AFC south all righty guys still 11 to go in prism breaks next 11 to go prism number six got a first encased here it is Ken Walker 2025 nice one there on the on-card auto that'll be NFC West the Seahawks this Ken Walker 2025 hey got you Chris no problem my man Bancarel auto and green dragon the same break in a junk to 25 let's go let's go Chris I do remember those I appreciate you my man first up we've got to 25 it's gonna be George Kittle or the Niners there nice one NFC West 425 Kittle got AFC West number 250 triple relic is Isaiah Pacheco or the Chiefs triple relic in the middle three color in the middle two colors 50 there Pacheco we've got to 25 quad relics Bailey Zappie rookie AFC east there for the Patriots little four-color patch on the bottom I like these quad relics they're nice looking man nice one there AFC east and AFC east again number 250 it's going to be Taekwondo on the rookie auto 11 of 50 jersey number there Taekwondo now for our encased this one's thick geez oh geez Sam Karn it is 45 of 50 vaulted veteran on the jersey auto is Tyrell sucks nice that is a sick one there with the four-color patch that's a sick Ravens patch the uh the four colors vaulted veteran 45 of 50 nice sick too that's that's a nice nice big on-card auto there nice one there AFC north got the uh Ravens there sucks box three okay Anton taking one Brian taking one down to 10 guys down to 10 the next prism draft oh nice goal to 10 we got a uh Donny card here AJ Brown for the birds let's go nice one there eight out of 10 for the NFC east gold AJ got AFC west on the quad relative 99 gonna be sky more rookie chiefs AFC west this one is AFC east number 250 substantial rookie swatches James Cook the Beals number 250 on the jumbo jersey and AFC east on the back we got Jalen waddle 9 of 20 on the on-card auto nice one there for the Finns AFC east best celebration in the league in case number three waddle man hard to beat nice we got notable signatures of Ken Walker another encased Ken Walker here NFC west hey thank you it's a moss taking the Vikings in um an NT down to six to go on NT as Nebraska was winning this that's why I said at the beginning of the game I said um Minnesota didn't score a lot last year well they said they're right they're getting in the game uh-oh 151 uh-oh he'll have the extra yard three and make it back there's Tyree kill bronze not numbered Tyreek we've got future wave on the jersey two of 25 age um that's going to be AFC east James Cook future wave jersey nice four color uh Bill's jersey this one is gamers number to 25 it's going to be Lions TJ Hawkinson TJ Hawkinson so for the Lions there game worn on the gamers jersey 20 to 25 the back we have to 50 it's going to be Rookie Catpatch autographs of Trey McBride now one is for the Cardinals Trey McBride to 50 RPA yeah and Otto to 99 we got Lions again this one is Aidan Hutchinson nice box for the Lions there with the uh the Hutch and the um honk Hutch and honk honk it's a 99 they're Hutch box five good luck here guys plus 230 before the game I like it I like it yeah Minnesota is not uh not doing much here yeah Ryan that's what Donnie was just saying without uh the better QB they might be in a even bigger lead right now like he's like running he's been to house but like he has Bobby trees goal to 10 nice one there AFC south Robert Woods to 10 got a NFC north triple relic to 99 Jaquan brisker NFC north nice one here green four of 10 is Drake London on the triple relic nice one there NFC south the Falcons I did some nice patches there some uh some letter patches to 10 and we got Jalen waddle number to 75 another Otto a milestone marks this one is for the AFC east Dolphins another encased it is Bailey zappy to 99 on the rookie endorsements Otto AFC east again doing well with the autos on the AFC east endorsements to 99 zappy hey thank you Gary taken um I think the rest of the teams in NT no just Falcons left guys just Falcons just Falcons one team to go on NT thank you Gary taking a bunch of teams there and he took the Falcons thank you Gary all right you guys looks like we'll get a NT going next full case still got 10 to go on um number six here of prism draft football yeah thank you Gary thank you sir let's do it man see some fire for you another one to 10 it's going to be Aaron Jones this time NFC north Aaron Jones for the pack got AFC east to 25 going to be uh Eric azucanma well easy on the quad jersey 14 to 25 easy dolphins we've got Bailey zappy triple relics 39 of 99 for the pats pats oh that's a sick patch there five of 25 is rookie cap patch autographs Danny Gray as a sick Niners patch there the hat the hat patch that is sick looking man three color almost looks like something from the Braves nice one there NFC west of 25 now for our encased another thick one it is dual jersey um auto to 50 Malik Willis nice one there um AFC south with the dual jersey rpa the rookie dual swatches signatures nice Malik there 29 up 50 got the thick uh encased card now and two left guys two left seven hey thank you Brian taking two spots in um prism and rich taking a spot thank you guys should be down to eight now seven seven to go guys seven to go let's keep it moving here prism draft bronze got courtland Sutton got jersey quad relics to 99 NFC west is going to be Brock Purdy nice one there rookie for the Niners QB1 this is sick encore collection to 99 sweet looking card there is uh Eli Manning I guess not for Patriots fans probably Eli Manning celebrating the uh the trophy there and nice 18 of 25 vaulted veteran on the on-card jersey auto is Justin Jefferson nice nice one there NFC north the Vikings vaulted veteran 18 of 25 that's jersey number nice J Jetta that's a sweet one I like that a lot jersey number J Jetta hey thank you Tony thank you for grabbing a spot sir and nice box overall because we got to 99 gold ink auto Kenny pick it oh nice nice one there NF or AFC north AFC north on that one Kenny pick it on the gold ink that is Bradley with the AFC north nice Kenny one is 5 of 99 last box damn shit on the back got the 25 and for on the front Damian Pierce nice one there AFC south 14 of 25 Damian Pierce Texans this one is jumbo jersey to 50 Garrett Wilson rookie AFC east a substantial rookie swatches G willy this one is triple rally three of 10 nice one there NFC south Chris Olave good looking uh second year receiver now Olave three of 10 NFC south and redemption it is sapphire signatures of Trayvon Walker that one will go AFC south that's the Jags first pick in the draft Trayvon Walker on these sapphire signatures AFC south thank you John taking a spot we are down to six now guys down to six on prism draft picks and Cooper cub nice way to finish here two of 10 on the auto NFC west nice one there on the milestone marks Cooper cub former MVP two of 10 got the receiving triple crown I know what that means uh let the league are receiving yards receptions and touchdowns yeah by a healthy margin assist very nice first one to do it since Steve smith yeah no one's got you wow 12th player overall to do so all righty guys that'll do it for the break we'll do a quick recap here and we'll get going on some prism draft got six to go guys six to go on our prism draft break it next here Trayvon Walker Jags redemption nice one here to 25 bolted veteran of Jay Jetta NFC north got NFC west that one is going to be Danny Gray to 25 got Jaylin waddle to 75 AFC east um NFC west to 50 Tray McBride got Jaylin waddle AFC east AFC east of 50 type one Thornton got Traylon Burks AFC south um this one is NFC west to 10 Cooper cub this one is very nice to 99 we got AFC north Kenny Pickett on the golden gato got Malik Willis number 250 on the rookie dual swatch signatures AFC south Titans this one is Bailey Zappy AFC east to 99 on the on-card auto um NFC north Aden Hutchinson to 99 had Ken Walker NFC west to 99 notable signatures um this one is 250 bolted veteran of Terrell Suggs of Samcard and we got a Ken Walker number to 25 there on the rookie signatures all righty that'll do it for the uh in case football eight box full case number 11 guys appreciate y'all we'll get some prism going next