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Shawn Tierney meets up with Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems to discuss Trends in Automation, Inspiring a New Generation of Controls Engineers, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the Automation Podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And in this episode, I sit down with Ryland Pychak from Cleveland Automation Systems, a system integrator house, to talk about all things industrial automation, including how do we get more people involved in controls engineering as well as, like, what are the latest products and technologies people are using. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Ryland Piechak from Cleveland Automation Systems. Ryland, it’s great to have you on the show. Now before we jump into our conversation, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Certainly. Well well, first and foremost, thanks for having me as well, Shawn. Definitely appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. To give a little bit of background, I’m Radom Pyshak, founder, president of, Clearwater Automation Systems, as well as a controls engineer. You know, we’ve we’ve essentially been in business for ten years now. And, ultimately, you know, my background has been controls engineering through and through. Actually started the manufacturing floor myself. You know, a lot of maintenance technician role, a lot of day to day kind of supporting troubleshooting equipment and whatnot. From there, obviously, went off to college, got a controls engineering background, did a little stint at Rockwell, also worked at an OEM as well as a system integrator. And then from there, kind of saw the entire picture of manufacturing and decided to go out and start cleaning automation systems myself. You know, so since then, like I said, we’ve been in business going on ten years so far. And, yeah, it’s been been great. You know, there’s a lot of unique things we’ve come across in the manufacturing industry, and, I’m definitely very passionate. And it’s, something that’s very interesting from my perspective. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. And, really, that’s our audience, the controls engineers, the, really, the automation electricians, those electricians who just really get into automation and do that as kind of a specialty, as well as the, maintenance technicians and control technicians, you know, maybe have an electronics background, a mechatronics background, and then get into automation. And so, really great to have you on. And it’s you have a great pedigree. They have different companies you’ve worked with. You’ve kinda seen the industry from different angles, which, you know, a lot of people don’t get that get that chance to work for a vendor and a integrator and an OEM and on the plant floor. So what really, tell us about your company, Cleveland Automation Systems. What do you guys do? Like, what was the purpose and found doing it? And and, really, what’s your what’s your focus? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. So click on automation system is probably the best, you know, term for us as a system integrator. Right? We typically have various clients that come to us to solve unique problems. That’s anywhere from simple, you know, field troubleshooting, simple service calls we get to complex equipment development, a lot of custom automation, as well as a lot of integration. You know? So, really, we work pretty much with every clientele across the board. I would say the main one, pretty much the only thing we don’t do is oil and gas. But we support clients across various manufacturing industries. And, really, you know, we essentially got into business to solve a lot of these complex problems. What I saw from my perspective was a lot of, you know, lack of support for various legacy systems, you know, other challenges that our our clients would have where, hey. How do we integrate various components together? So really going into business kinda to solve a lot of those problems, and that’s still what we do today. You know, anywhere from upgrading, you know, obsolete components and hardware, software control systems, all the way to developing custom unique, you know, different kinds of equipment and machinery. So very interesting industry, and our client base is pretty wide as well. Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I know with your background, right, there’s probably a focus on, like you were just saying, on helping people migrate to the latest generation or to a platform that’s gonna be stable for them. I know in the pre show we talked about some of your clients have, like, just a mishmash of controls. And so, and I know a lot of people in the audience, they have to deal with all different types of vendors. And so, just a, you know, a minute and not that not you know, we’re gonna be preaching to the choir here. But when you’re when you have a a one of your customers come to you and say, here’s what I got. What’s the best path forward? What’s some of the things you tell them about? Maybe not having every vendor on the planet every control system on the planet in your plan, well, that would be great for a museum, is not really great for your your people because it can be difficult. I mean, people struggle understanding an iPhone how to use an iPhone and an Android. Right? Because it’s so different. And if you take that times five or 10, it really just puts a lot of stress on the, the maintenance staff, the electricians, and and the engineers on-site. So what’s some of the advice you give when when you’re working with your your, vendors? Your I’m sorry. Your, customers. Rylan Pyciak: Certainly. I mean, I think you hit the nail right on the head there with the, you know, the iPhone to Android comparison. I use that as well. You know, the biggest thing is what we like to do. First and foremost, we usually do a site assessment for our clients, and that is coming in and understanding everything within the facility. Right? That is, you know, what control systems, hardware, software, motors, kind of everything that makes automation run. And really from there, it’s identifying and saying, hey. You have these, you know, five, six, 15 different vendor hardware, software platforms in your facility. You know, which route do you wanna go? Obviously, there’s some name brands that, you know, all of us understand are are primary here, you know, at least in The US that most people use. And and, really, it’s more of an educational thing than anything else with our customers of outlining and saying, hey. You know, to be able to hire somebody, you know, to fill a maintenance technician role, to fill a controls engineer role, you know, not only do they have to bring the skill sets of actually doing that work, they also need to bring along the skill sets of how to support these systems. You look at something such as DeviceNet versus Ethernet IP. Right? There are, you know, different I’m gonna call it generations, different demographics that grew up supporting that versus what is currently used in the market. So, you know, really, it’s sitting down, talking to our customers, kind of looking at that list we’ve developed with them and saying, hey. This is everything you have within your facility. Which route do you wanna go? What does your current maintenance staff look like? What can you support? As well as what does your infrastructure look like? Because end of the day, it’s you know, one, obviously, obsolescence is huge. I’m sure we’ve all been there. Right? You have a an obsolete hardware software device that goes down. Now you’re scrambling to go and find another one, right, typically on eBay, pulling it off the shelf, potentially opening up and soldering things. Nobody wants to go that route. So it’s more so understanding this is the route you should go and a lot of guidance education on, you know, one, why you should migrate as well as two, what that’s going to look like, you know, from your support and maintenance perspective where, hey. Now you only have one software license to manage. You only have one platform to manage, and it’s not, you know, five, six different platforms and somebody’s old Windows XP sitting on the shelf that you have to clean dust off of every time. So that’s, you know, I’d say in a nutshell, a lot of education, you know, goes into a lot of these conversations. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I think about over the years, all the peat times people upgraded and the reasons for upgrading and just the the cost of upgrading. There was a lot of people who upgraded in, for y two k when there was no reason to. And but they would there was a fear factor there. You know? Fear and certainty, doubt. Right, FUD? And so they would do upgrades, and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I was just sitting there as a technical person being like, you’re wasting your money. You don’t need this. And, you know, I often see, like, an end user where they have a, you know, they have a a storeroom full of every IO module and every terminal block and every, processor and memory card, and it’s like, should we update the entire plan? I’m like, why? You not only is everything running smoothly and everybody’s trained on it, you have all the speeds you could ever use, and this stuff will last forever. Whereas when you’re sitting down with an OEM and they’re like, well, now I need to do six axes, and I have to do, you know, coordinated motion. You’re like, well, yeah, you’re not gonna wanna use that old stuff. Right? You we need to get you into the latest stuff where we have these new text test axes, commands and different things we can do that will just make your development so much easier. Plus, you’re gonna want tech support because if you go into the new generation, you’re probably gonna have some questions because you’ve been using the old generation. So it can really be case. And then I see, like, a lot of the the sensor vendors we have on, they come out with this new sensor that has features that no other sensor on the market has. And so I can see an end user saying, well, we usually use brand x, but brand y is really killing it. And this is the application brand x couldn’t solve, so we’re gonna go with brand y. And so it does make sense to I mean, you know, you can come at this from every different angle, but at the end of the day, I guess, like you were saying, you don’t wanna have a plan with 15 different things in there, 15 different software licenses. And, you know, it’s like, just because you’re good at Word doesn’t mean you’re an expert at Excel or PowerPoint. Right? And just because you’ve learned brand x does not mean you’re gonna be able to pick up brand y quickly. I know when I started working with Siemens, it was like a huge just, it was like going from, you know, Photoshop to PaintShop Pro or you know? It was just like a huge, huge change, and you really just you’re not as efficient when you first start off. So definitely definitely a lot of considerations there. You know, I think one of the things we’re talking about, in the preshow was the you know, how do you attract young people? Because so many people like us who are getting older. Right? And then the people who taught us who are retiring, you know, there’s a a lot of a lot of the younger, audience, you know, they they’ve been using a touch screen since they were. My grandkids have never known, devices without touch screens. Right? Rylan Pyciak: Mhmm. It’s Shawn Tierney (Host): so and so, you know, how do we what do what can we do to help get that younger generation in? Because we need to bring before everybody retires who has that that, you know, that knowledge. We’re gonna we’re gonna get that the younger folks to keep coming in and, you know, maybe we won’t have as many because, you know, systems are more mature and the you know, when I first started PLCs, we’re still relatively new. So programming PLCs with software was still relatively new, only a couple years, three, four years old. And so but today, we’ve been doing it for, you know, thirty five years, forty years. So, we may need less people as as as the knowledge is easier as a and and the products get easier, easier to use too. But how do we attract, younger engineers into this? I think we would both agree is a phenomenal, industry of, you know, automating manufacturing and other and other Rylan Pyciak: things? Yeah. Yeah. No. That that’s a great question. You know, honestly, I think some of it from my perspective, manufacturing is almost like a black sheep. Right? A lot of people haven’t heard of manufacturing. They typically look at it of, hey. It’s something either I see on TV or it’s how cars are made. But I feel like there are a lot of younger generations that may not just fully understand what we do day in and day out. You know, from the technical aspect, from problem solving, from engineering design, you know, all of the things that go into manufacturing a product, both on our side as integrators, programmers, things like that, but also from support, from production, you know, on the flip side. So, you know, I think there’s some of that of actually drawing an awareness to what our industry is and what it does. You know, if I’m being frank, a lot of my first introductory really was just talking to friends of friends, you know, and primarily, you know, older generations of, hey. You’re really hands on, really like to do things like this. You should look at this industry. And if it weren’t for those conversations, I probably would have never ended up in this industry either. You know, so, really, I think it’s it’s kind of opening up and saying, hey. You know, First Robotics, other, you know, kind of vocational or technical, you know, trades kind of situations when you’re in high school, even middle school of identifying people that are interested in these industries or interested in more, you know, hands on designing things, building things, and getting in front of those younger generations and showing them, hey. Manufacturing is something you can get into. And, right, you could pick up a teach pendant and move half of a car around with a robot. That’s really cool. So I think it’s a lot of kind of, you know, not only educational from a sense of educating people, but also just, you know, getting in front of younger generations, showing them what’s out there, you know, things that we like to do. There are a lot of career days at schools if we can go in and do things like that. Any kind of, you know, I guess, community involvement or outreach where you do have middle school, high schools, you know, even vocational schools of having introductories. Definitely love to do that. I mean, I sit on a couple advisory boards. Anytime we have professors that wanna invite us in, absolutely would jump on board and say, yes. I will sit down, show everything what we do, show Dawson pictures, kind of walk them through what you can do, you know, as controls engineers, as mechanical engineers, and really get a better sense of of this is what this industry looks like. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I think, when my kids were growing up they’re all grown up now, have kids of their own. When I was when I was when they were growing up, there was really no inexpensive way to to they nothing inexpensive I really could put in front of them to let them let them learn, you know, electronics and programming. We had, you know, we had PCs, but, beyond that, that’s not the way it is today. Today, we have, and we’ve covered them on the channel is, you know, I think one of the best places to start is with the Arduinos. And you can buy kits from kits with lots of electronics. It’s kinda like when I was a kid, they had a thousand and one experiments. Right? So you can buy buy, you know, kits that are, you know, $20 or $30. And we’ve reviewed a lot of the kits and and and the what comes in them, but they they come with all kinds of electronics and then the world, you know, the the world’s your oyster from there. You can do so many things. But even before you get to that point, I loved and I used to coach legal league. And for those younger middle school kids, right, legal league, you know, you can I was I had kids in there in fourth grade, right, learning to do the Lego League stuff, and they they do a great job of trying to make it fun? You you’re plugging the like, motors into into bricks, onto a a computer, and then you program it graphically, you know, with, you know, moves and, you know, if you’re into motion, everybody you know, you got a gut moves and how far you’re gonna go and sensors that tell you when to stop. And, I mean, it’s just I think it’s amazing. But the one thing I found, though, that that is difficult is that, you know, most most parents these days, they’re working, they’re both working, they don’t have a lot of time, they come home exhausted, and so they they have, an Xbox or a streaming surface that is their babysitter just so they can have some some alone time. And and I would just recommend, you know, limit that time. You know, the especially with video games these days, everything’s a season. You don’t wanna miss the next big thing that’s happening and and you would think from roadblocks to to, Destiny or, you know, Call of Duty or whatever. But don’t limit your kids’ time so when they’re bored, they have to they have to pull out that kit and stop playing with it. I was with my grandson recently, and he got grounded. And I said, well, I bet your mom well, you can’t play video games. I bet your mom will let you create your own video games. It’s like on her computer. He started, you know, designing his own levels and whatnot. It’s like, you know, if they if, you know, people are gonna go for easy. Right? But once easy is not there anymore, then they’ll they’ll look for something else. And, now talk to me about how how have you worked with the young have you done anything with the with the first robotics or with training? You said you’re on advisory councils. Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve, you know, we’ve sponsored a few high school competitions as well as some other local high schools that essentially, you know, they’re they’re just looking to do introductory into robotics design. You know, I think it almost goes back to the educational standpoint where, you know, your typical curriculum is is pretty standardized now. And a lot of, you know, shop classes, I feel like don’t exist at many high schools like they did, you know, ten, fifteen, thirty years ago. So some of it’s conversation. Some of it is honestly just where we’ve engaged with, you know, either prior high school, you know, where I went or other high schools that are interested in that and supporting it. Right? Like you mentioned, the biggest thing is is funding and finding opportunities. And to your point, yes, nowadays, it is hundreds of dollars. It’s not thousands or tens of thousands to do that. Exactly. But that that’s something I feel like us as, you know, us as companies in the integration world, and just speaking kind of at in general, being able to identify those things, you know, from anyone listening, if you are on the integration side or even if you’re on the manufacturing side of maybe having conversations with, you know, what your your current layout looks like, potentially your your children or high schools that you worked with, you know, and then going to higher ups and maybe asking for a little sponsorship. I mean, a couple $100 can get quite a few different pieces of hardware and software, and you could start building these things that, you know, allow for that aptitude and that intriguing, you know, design and and doing hands on design, you know, I think opens a lot of doors from that perspective. Yeah. I mean, definitely having good conversations with with, like I said, high school students, as well as trying to find other opportunities where you can work with these generations and allow them to have that curiosity. You You know, I think that’s the biggest thing. Once you get that spark and that curiosity, really just continuing to run from that and seeing what other options are out there in the world. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And and if you’re gonna sponsor as a company or as a group or as a, you know, organization, I would definitely put a put a requirement in there and and maybe go and and see the final project. Because my wife’s a principal, she’s been teaching for twenty years, and, people have sponsored different different, you know, things that she’s tried to implement in her school. And I think the one thing they fall down on is, yeah, they they have you fill out a form. They give you the money. Then so you can go buy the kits, but and then they don’t get involved. And it’s like, you know, people get busy. And if there’s not, like, this requirement that, hey. They have to show you know, at the end of the at the end of the season or year or course, we’re gonna come in and see what they did. Just to try to hold their feet to the, not hold their feet to the fire, but just to give the teacher or the instructor some accountability, some some, reason to make sure that this stuff gets used and covered because there are so many mandates. Hopefully, this will change, but today, there’s so many mandates that it’s difficult. They really have to make an effort to teach, outside of what’s mandated, which is and and like you said, unfortunately, shop class shop class, and, you know, basic electricity, those type of things are not mandated anymore or not mandated today. But, you know, as we’re talking about this, let if you don’t mind, can we switch over and talk about smarter manufacturing? So we’ve talked a while about how we get youngsters involved, but as you go to work every day, right, and you work with your people and you work with your customers, I mean, what are some of the trends you’re seeing out there where people are doing things maybe smarter or adopting new newer technologies that, you know, we didn’t have maybe ten years ago that are really making a difference in their plants? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. You know, there are quite a few different things that we’ve come across. You know, there there are some buzzwords definitely. You know, I think that you kind of have to sandbox exactly what they are, AI being one of them. Right? I think in the general sense, a lot of people may not understand. But there are some I’m gonna call them, you know, AI such as vision systems where essentially you’re teaching it, hey. Here are, you know, passable or passing products. Here are failing products. And it’s not necessarily how vision systems traditionally were, right, where it always has to be the same picture if it doesn’t line up. If it’s not good, it’s bad. Right? That that’s kinda more of the traditional sense where some of these newer AI, you know, learning systems that are out there are actually able to detect and say, hey. You know, I may be looking for something to be right side up, and it’s within that plus or minus 10 degree window. That’s gonna be a pass. If I see something flipped upside down, that’s certainly gonna be a fail. So we’re seeing some newer technologies like that definitely being implemented out there. IoT, smart sensors, IO Link are other ones that are huge. We’re seeing a lot of deployments, especially in food and beverage where you’re no longer having to run analog sensors everywhere, but rather, you know, you’re basically implementing IO Link and other similar platforms where now I’m actually getting that process data over Ethernet IP. I don’t know if they’re about scaling other things like that. They make field installation and setup time a breeze. We do a lot of that as well. So definitely some newer technologies. And then some other things I’d say are pretty unique too are more maybe around the robotics where we’re seeing a lot of your ROS and ROS two development where, you know, again, it’s kind of more of a open source platform that essentially allows you to run the control kind of independent of what we would traditionally look at from a controller where, hey. You may have a Fanuc or a KUKA robot that is essentially now running, you know, from a ROS perspective versus your traditional, you know, picking up the teach pendant and programming points. So it it it’s definitely interesting. I’d say, you know, we’re working on a quite a few different applications that are kind of bridging that gap between traditional and newer technologies, you know, where there’s a lot more dynamic going on. You know, for instance, an application we’re currently doing, essentially, we have, you know, a product coming into an area, a couple scanners doing a three d point cloud, and then robots that are actually going over top of that. That product that’s coming in is never the same from one product to the next. So there’s a lot of kind of, you know, ongoing smart technology that’s feeding in there, vision systems, three d systems, and that’s actually using one of the the ROS, you know, approach as well. So, yeah, it’s definitely something that I think as our our industry grows, there’s a lot more, interest in it, and there’s a lot more funding coming in, private equity, venture capitalists, that are are starting to try and solve some of these more complex problems. And I think from that, it it does allow us to now look at this. Hey. Traditionally, you would program with a PLC ladder logic. And the teach pendant. Well, that way you might be able to use more software based controls and engineering versus, you know, ladder logic programming and things like that. So, yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. Again, from our standpoint as a system integrator, we get to see so many of these different things going on, that you walk in and you’re like, this it’s pretty neat to see what other people are trying to do out there. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, we talked about AI quite a bit last year in in robotics. AI, you know, we and and I asked the audience to help me. Look. We gotta spread the the the knowledge about AI as far as what it really is. Couple years ago, I was on vacation, and we were on a tour, and we had these dinners every night. And this older man, he’s he’s like, AIs self aware, and they’re programming itself, and we don’t need people anymore. And I’m like, that’s a great science fiction book you just read, but, I mean, I think if you know? You know, you try to explain to them. It’s like, look. It’s like they published this. IEEE does a great job covering this. They’ve literally spent millions every year, like, 10 of the millions every year programming these AIs. They’re not self aware. They’re not then that people still are needed. That’s why they’re paying people, you know, millions of dollars to program them. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s basically you know, as we look at the I always go back to, like, voice activation, and I should mute my, my device here so I don’t accidentally trigger it. But, you know, if we think back, like, I bought Dragon Natural Speaking back in the day because I wanted I my old job for twenty five years, I spent half or more of every day driving. So four hours driving, seven hours working, or eight hours driving, four hours. It was just it was just a for somebody who likes to do for a doer, it’s just demoralizing to be on the road that much. For a driver, that’s great. I mean, they love that. But in any case, long story short, it’s 90% and, again, I have an accent. But 90%, you think that sounds great until you go to edit what you said. It’s not good. Right? It’s, like, too much work. I could just type this from scratch. And we we also see that with a lot of transcripts. Like, if you’re on a video streaming site, the transcripts, the, automatic English captions, right, closed captions, A lot of times, they’re not that good either. But we’ve seen that grow. I know when I first got my, my iPhone and it had Siri, and I would be like I would talk to it and be like, I can’t answer that. Today, I can talk to it, and it does a great job. It’s it’s the the database that has backing it up is so much better. And so I take that and I go into, like, the vision system example you gave. Right? Now in the past, like you were saying, we had to have the lighting perfect. We had the gauges and the tools, and the the product had to be in the spot all the time, and there was no way to for it to float around and find the product and and most early on. And today, you can shoot it, like, a 100 products and say these are all good, and it can the algorithm can figure out, hey. What are the minor variances of these so I can understand what falls into the good bucket? And then you can shoot at a 100 bad products and say, okay. These are bad. And they can actually build some, some, tables or or value sets to know, to really know really well, you know, much faster than any person could, what’s good and what’s bad. And it’s amazing. Even one vendor said, hey. If you need to give it train it do even more training, we you can upload it to our website. We’ll do it offline and send it back to you, which I just think is amazing. And I know it’s revolutionizing, you know, cancer treatment or or detection and all kinds of other things. But, yeah, no. This is not data from Star Trek. Rylan Pyciak: Right? Yeah. Shawn Tierney (Host): This is not Al from 02/2001. And, and, yeah. And so so go ahead. Go ahead. Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. No. I was I mean, you’re you’re spot on, Shauna. It it it’s a good balance. Right? I mean, you know, I even look at it. We’ve all been there, right, especially from the controls perspective where something isn’t running and you walk out and it’s that slight little turn of the photo eye. Right? So as much as I think a lot of people may look at it of, hey. It’s taking over the world and it’s taking over what we’re doing, It still requires people, you know, in in at least in our world, technicians to implement it, to program it, to set it up. And, again, a lot of our equipment too doesn’t even have that smart that technology. So, you know, it’s something that as we move forward educationally, I think, you know, generations that that still have a pretty good length of career left, it it’s making sure you’re educating yourself on it, understanding what it is, how to deploy it, utilizing it as it becomes more commonplace, but definitely not you know, I wouldn’t be intimidated by it because it it’s something that it it’s like anything else. It’s a tool that’s going to be used. You know, and I think it’s making yourself aware of it, understanding how you can actually deploy it in the future. And and something else, I guess, you know, a thought that they brought up from my standpoint is actually investment in this new technology. It’s something else that we have a lot of these conversations with customers. You know, I know automate just happened. Right? You go out and you see the latest and greatest of everything. Lot of cool technology, new technology. You know, we always caution our customers to be, you know, cautiously optimistic and consider what you’re investing in, because one of the things you have to look at you know, there are all these these crazy new technologies that are out there. I’m gonna use collaborative robots as an example. Right? When when they first came out, it was universal robots. Now you watch the show, you know, there are probably 50, a 100, I don’t know, 500 collaborative robots. The thing you have to really consider is not only are you purchasing this technology, you’re investing in education, you know, from an internal standpoint to to bring your teams up to speed. But you also have to make sure that technology still exists in five, ten, twenty years. A great use case, you know, we actually did case study on it. You know, Ready Robotics, I thought was a great platform, works really well, you know, kind of made robot programming agnostic. And and they had a really, really valuable, you know, use case, I thought. And, you know, they went bankrupt. They went out of business. So you have to look at that too of, hey. I’m gonna go and spend this money as a decision maker for my plant, for my company, for my process. You have to also make sure that that hardware, that software, that firmware, that company that developed that is also there in the long term. So you kinda have to do a pros and cons and make sure, really, our our biggest things, you know, how long have those companies been in business, what does their technology look like, what does their tech support look like, Right? Do they have a team? Is it one individual? Are they writing firmware on the back end as these bugs come up? But it really is a holistic picture. And and, again, I really recommend having conversations with your personnel that are on the floor supporting this. Reach out to integrators, reach out to individuals within the market. You know, ask a lot of questions before you make those decisions. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. But, you know, it’s does it work with your existing architecture? So there are so many great cobot and robot manufacturers. And, quite honestly, some of them work better with brand a and some work better with brand b. And if you have brand b, you probably want one that works really well with it. You know, if you have brand a, then, you know, that’s gonna be and I know they all try to work with all they try to be vendor agnostic as far as the control systems, but some do a better job with you know? A lot of times it’s geographical or it’s just, you know, the the mission of the company internally. But, and then there are there are companies out there who do just just do a phenomenal job or try to with all vendors. But, you know, I think Cobot’s, that’s one place we talk about the younger generation. I mean, you think about it. Right? And and I worked in a machine shop one summer when I was, in high school, and it’s it’s a job that young people do not want. Right? If you’re if you’re if you’re machining products, right, it it’s similar to, like, if an injection molding facility. People don’t wanna work there either. Right? Younger generation, a lot of them don’t because they want something more, you know, twenty twenty five ish. Right? And so, if you can have a COBOS sit at that machine and put the pieces in and out instead of a human being, and I could tell you that was very boring work. And I and and and most of the people there were not college graduates. Right? They were there because they were you know, it was the best paying job they could find without having any experience. And so as those people retire, if if you don’t have enough people to fill those roles, that’s where the Cobots, I think, could do a great job. And this people even have innovative uses for them. Like, this one company was it was a three d printing company, and so they like to work eight to five like most people do. They have families. They wanna enjoy their evenings. And, the problem was, though, the printers would finish the print. You know, they would take custom print jobs. They’d finish, like, in the evening. Right? And nobody wanted to drive back to work and switch out the trays so they could print something else. Right? Expensive machines printing expensive products. And so they bought a Kobo. Now all that Kobo does is it goes around and replaces the trays on the three d printers when they finish their job so that you can print something else. And it gives them another, you know, theoretically, another sixteen hours worth of printing they can get out of their machines while everybody’s at home, you know, spending time with the family and and and sleeping. And so there’s a lot of innovative ways to use cobots. Now have you guys done any work recently with cobots? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it it’s definitely something, you know, we’ve deployed quite a few collaborative applications. Yep. You know, really, when when it comes to I’m gonna say collaborative versus noncollaborative. More so, we’re we’re kinda back to, I guess, what you just touched on is identifying, you know, what are the problems that you could potentially solve? Or, honestly even just walking in and saying, hey. There is a potential solution here that maybe somebody’s never thought of. You know, that’s identifying, like you said, that, right, the three d is dirty, dull, dangerous where people just it’s a boring job. People hate it. It’s high turnover. You know, really kind of finding those applications where it’s something simple. You know, it it it’s low cost. It’s something you could implement very easily. And then being able to walk in and replace that with a robot with a collaborative robot, you know, with an automated solution that actually solves those problems. Right? And then it takes those individuals from doing that that high turnover, boring, or dangerous, or, you know, mind numbing kind of position into something that that opens up a lot more doors, and now they can be technicians. They can, you know, kinda move into a higher position where they’re doing more from the company perspective. But, yeah, I mean, in terms of collaborative applications, definitely a lot of opportunity that’s out there. You know, I think the biggest things are, you know, obviously identifying what you’re trying to do, making sure you do proper risk assessments to make sure that application is actually collaborative, as well as, you know, really finding what are you trying to solve at the end of the day. Right? Is it a labor problem? Is it, you know, just just an ergonomic problem is definitely a big one we see a lot of. Time saving problems. We deployed one two years ago, actually, that essentially just mixing the solution. Right? In every fifteen minutes, operator would have to stop, open up the door, go in there and mix this this solution, essentially, to keep it mixed, shut the door, and hit go. That essentially removed that where now that operator is no longer there and actually doing the other pieces of their job. You know, it was a slam dunk for everyone involved. So definitely a lot of opportunities out there. You know, I think, really, it’s it’s identifying what you’re trying to solve. But you can definitely utilize them in quite a few different locations. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know? And I that kinda brings another thought to mind is, you know, we hear a lot of people say, well, automation is bad because it takes away jobs. And I usually, it’s a boomer when I see somebody saying this on TV and not to pick on boomers. Okay? But, typically, it’s a boomer. Right? Mhmm. And, they’re holding a, like, an $800 smartphone, and they’re standing next to a a, you know, a $5,500 big screen TV. And I’m just like I’m I’m like or with those products you love to use, the car you like to drive, that smartphone you love, you know, None of those can be made without automation. Impossible. Literally impossible to make your modern devices without automation. Technology, and I like to just say technology technology gets rid of the lowest level jobs. Right? So from the day we learned to tie an ox to that wheel to turn it so we could either pump water or grind, you know, grain or whatever, right, or harness it harness the wind with the wind with the winter a wind wheel, a windmill. You know, that where people are always trying to find smarter ways to doing thing. And, you know, not that mixing a container by hand is extremely difficult or but I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to the local, home supply store, and they’ve mixed my paint wrong, literally. Or I’ll say this too. Same place. Have my keys made wrong. I’ve I have, like, half a dozen keys I’ve paid them I had made, and they mess them up. Right? And so I’m not picking on people. They’re they’re stressed out. They got lots doing. But if If if if I need a key now, because I know there’s one, department store nearby that has the automated. You just put your key in. It does everything automated. I will only go there because I know it is done correctly every time. And quite honestly, I don’t have to listen to the to the the sales guy go, oh, I don’t like making keys. I can’t believe I gotta do this. You know? It’s just so funny. Yes. I wish you didn’t have to do this either because you keep doing it wrong. So Uh-huh. I mean, do do you agree with me? Or I mean, the technology I find is elevating. It’s giving people better jobs. It’s not it’s really eliminating the jobs that most people don’t want. Am I right about that? What what are your thoughts about that? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. I you know, honestly, Shawn, I think I think you’re spot on with that. You know, really, automation and and I would say this. You know, the last couple years, a lot of our customers, they’re asking for automation because they simply cannot find enough people to fill their roles. It’s not that, hey. We wanna, you know, necessarily improve a process or, you know, replace people. Nobody’s actually filling those roles where they don’t have enough resources to do that manually. So it’s a, you know, it’s a labor shortage issue, honestly, of what we’re dealing with. But by no means is it actually taking over, replacing jobs, anything like that. I mean, exactly what you said. Right? You look at at jobs that are very labor intensive, that are, you know, very stressing, ergonomic issues that, you know, it it’s honestly it’s backbreaking work. And I definitely understand that I wouldn’t wanna do that kind of labor myself day in and day out, five days a week. And that’s where automation is key. Right? So you now walk in and a robot, a control system, you know, whatever it is is replacing those things that are, you know, beating up your body or, you know, other things, you know, very toxic locations, locations that you don’t wanna deal with chemicals, things like that. Now those same persons that had to go in and do that are now actually supporting it. And kind of back to what we were talking about before, right, now those individuals are learning how to operate the HMIs. They learn how to recover the robots. They’re learning how to do basic troubleshooting on PLCs, you know, robotic systems, things like that. So, you know, from from an employment perspective, from a technology and educational perspective, I think it’s taking them from doing a repetitive, laborious job, and now it’s opening up more avenues where you could walk in and say, hey. You know, I have background, you know, programming, doing basic troubleshooting on this system that has, you know, phanic robot, Allen Bradley PLC. I made edits. You know, we may be maybe that system, you’ve put in five new part variants since you purchased it. You know, so now you you have more applicable skills that I think, in general, our industry needs to head that rate. Right? As you mentioned, one, to be able to be competitive with the prices of what we pay for the cost of goods sold in general. But two, just from a standpoint of, you know, if corporations and companies are going to try and remain competitive, they certainly are going to have to automate. You’re not going to be able to replace and do everything with manual, you know, human labor, and you need to start implementing automation, you know, in the right locations, but also making sure you’re implementing it so you can, like I said, obviously, fill those labor gaps, fill the labor shortages that you have, you know, high turnover positions or dangerous positions, replace that with industrial automation. And, yeah, I mean, end of the day, It it is definitely not taking people’s jobs. I can’t say I’ve seen any project where we walked in and said, hey. Here’s a machine that runs x rate. These five people are now gone. Usually, they’re moving into higher level positions, technician positions, and and, honestly, getting more education. So, I mean, I’m absolutely on board that automations automation is nothing but a good investment from a company perspective. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And, you know, I think back to, BeachNet, they make baby food. And, I was, working with them when they were building a new plant, and, the old plant looked ugly. It was like an old brick building, multistory. Yeah. It I like, I walked through it, and I’m like, I don’t know that I could ever buy this baby food again. But their new plant was just beautiful. Beautiful. When you walk into the lobby, it’s huge and beautiful. You walk in the lobby, they have a mural on the wall. It’s like endless mostly ladies in hair nets, endless table of ladies cutting potatoes and carrots, and and, they’re all happy. They’re like, yeah. This is great. The kids are in school. I can make some extra money. Maybe we’ll buy a new car. You know? They were all pretty happy. It was like they can sit there. They can chat. They can cut the carrots and potatoes, and they’re making healthy baby food for the community. And so it was great. Today, I don’t think my granddaughter would wanted that job for a a, you know, million dollars. You know? She’s never known a time when it hasn’t been, you know, high screen high resolution touch screens in her hand or in her mother’s hand or, you know, in her house, and it’s like, why would we do this manually again? Rylan Pyciak: Mhmm. Shawn Tierney (Host): Why would I spend all day repetitively getting carpal tunnel tunnel syndrome or whatever? You know? You know? And and so that’s just where we are. I think most of us see most people most people who who are paying attention to what they’re doing, they wanna do it better. They wanna improve. You know? It’s that continuous improvement, CAN ban, all that stuff that talks about, you know, let’s let’s keep making changes to make the process better. And, you know, you’re not always not every change is is for the positive. But, you know, I think this kinda this brings us full circle too because, you know, I there was a technologist recently who was saying, we can import a lot of engineers because we don’t have enough engineers. And it’s like, I replied to him, like, we have tons of engineers. What you’re really seeing is the schools are not teaching what you want them to learn. Partner with the schools so like, my youngest son and all these other software engineers out there are not unemployed because the schools didn’t teach them what you wanted. You need a you need a thousand engineers. Go to the local go to the local school. Tell them this is why I need your people to learn. Trust me. They’ll start teaching it. Because the last thing that, you know, a competent school wants to do or college or university is, you know, put people out there who can’t actually get a job. They they love being able to brag about people getting jobs. They love to be able to brag about hey. I’m working with company Y, and, we send them a thousand engineers over the last four years. So we kinda come full circle. I think we all need to think about that. How can we encourage our local educational institutions? Maybe it’s our kids where our kids are going. Maybe it’s where our grandkids are going. Maybe it’s where nieces and nephews or siblings are going. How can we get involved and help those local you know, everything from grade school through high school through through, junior college, technical, you know, community colleges, and so on. We we gotta help them understand what we’re doing and what’s valuable so they can stay away from, you know, maybe saying, hey. The Raspberry PIs gonna take over the world, so that’s all you need to learn. No. Sorry. Yeah. No. I hate to bring it to you, but there’s a reason why we have major vendors, and they’ve been in business for over a hundred years because they make the what the customers want. But, yeah, that kinda brings a full circle to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show. Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, It it definitely it it’s an entire ecosystem. Right? I think from from that perspective, right, from the large corporations that are manufacturing, it is having those conversations and saying, hey. These are the kind of technicians, the controls engineers, the, you know, whatever roles you’re trying to fill. This is what we do day in and day out. And those individuals and corporations need to have conversations with, again, the the local vocational schools, the community colleges, the technical colleges, even, like I said, even high school and middle school and outline Yeah. This is what our career path looks like. This is what you know? Right? This is what our process looks like. Honestly, you know, doing site tours, facility tours, understanding how things are made, looking at equipment and working with equipments where, hey. We may have, you know, humongous boilers or, you know, I grew up in Southern Ohio where steel at one point was was very large before it went overseas. You know, understanding what that looks like, how electric arc furnaces work and function, and actually working with local community colleges of, hey. This is this is the kind of technical resources of what we need. Right? That’s low rates. It it’s electricians. It’s hands on labor, whatever that is. And then, you know, aligning both what you’re trying to fill from a technical perspective with what is actually being taught in those vocational technical community colleges even back again to high schools where, you know, hey. Yeah. PLC programming is great. We actually utilize, like you said, we utilize Siemens or Allen Bradley. We don’t do Arduino for, you know, a a $100,000,000 production facility. So I think a lot of it is honestly, it’s more community involvement. Quite honestly, it’s conversations like you and I are having, but on a on a bigger scale of understanding, hey. These are the skill gaps. This is where we’re currently at, and these are the roles we’re trying to fill. Because a lot of it, like you said, it’s it’s I feel like a lot of people in our industry more often than not, kind of stumble upon it or at least have some in. But if it weren’t for that, people really wouldn’t know what manufacturing does. So I mean, I would definitely encourage that. Again, kind of back to the advisory boards that I’ve talked about, we have a lot of those conversations with the local community colleges of this is what we do. This is what’s good. Your training systems, this is awesome. We don’t use any of this. And just having those those two way conversations and making sure you’re staying involved. I mean, end of the day, communication’s key, and I think that’s what we all need to do more of. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Rylan, I really appreciate coming on the show. I’m just looking at my list of bullets of things I wanted to talk about. Was there anything that you wanted to talk about that we hadn’t gotten through yet? Rylan Pyciak: I don’t think so. I mean, I think we touched on a lot of great topics. You know, in general, Shawn, I’d say, you know, really, one of my passions is definitely bringing in younger generations’ education into this industry. You know, end of the day, we’re all engineers. I think by default, we like to collaborate and have conversations. And, really, I’m just trying to encourage more of that, right, of of all of us being able to have open, honest conversations. I know you get onto the forums and you get onto Reddit and all these other, you know, areas of the Internet, and it’s great because there’s a lot of collaborative energy. And I and, honestly, I think it’s something we just need to do that more, be more supportive of other individuals, of others in the industry, and keep having these conversations. Right? Because the more collective minds we bring together, I think it’s gonna open up more doors, and it’s gonna allow us to have, you know, more exciting conversations like this. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Rylan, I really appreciate you coming on. Now if people wanna learn more about Cleveland Automation Systems, where would they go to find out more? Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Definitely. You can find us on our website since clevelandautomationsystems.com. I know it’s a mouthful. You could also look look up myself on LinkedIn, Rylan Pyshak, Cleveland Automation Systems as well as on LinkedIn. But definitely feel free to reach out. I’m always open. I love having conversations like this. So definitely you can find us, like I said, website LinkedIn. Send me a direct message if you wanna talk about something. I’ll definitely share my contact info, and, you know, we can connect any which way you want. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And we’ll include all those links in the description so you guys, wherever you’re listening or watching, you’ll be able to have access to that so you don’t have to type it all in. But in any case, Ryland, thank you so much coming on. I really enjoyed our conversation today, and, just thanks again for coming on. Rylan Pyciak: Definitely. And thank you for having me, Shawn. I definitely appreciate the opportunity. Shawn Tierney (Host): I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Rylan for coming on the show and talking about all things industrial automation. I really enjoyed our chat. I hope you did too. And I will put his link to his LinkedIn profile and to his company in the description. I also wanna thank Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode so we could bring it to you completely ad free. So if you’re talking to Ryland or anybody over there, please, tell them thank you for us. And, with that said, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. The Automation Podcast, Episode 238 Show Notes: Special thanks to Rylan for coming on the show, and to Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode so we could release this episode Ad Free! Below you’ll find links to Rylan’s LinkedIn profile, and to Cleveland Automation Systems: Rylan Pyciak’s LinkedIn Cleveland Automation Systems Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

74. Creative Digital Scrapbooking Opportunities Using PaintShop ProAlice talks to Carole Asselin, aka Cassel, from Scrapbook Campus and Creation Cassel to learn about some of the unique scrapbooking opportunities that are available to you when using PaintShop Pro.Don't miss out on Carole's free Bootcamps so you can receive her expert guidance to learn how to use PaintShop Pro for scrapbooking.Find all of the links and some sample layouts made using Quick Pages and Templates to see the great results you can have!Contact Alice Boll from ScrapHappyInstagram: @scraphappierInstagram: @scraphappyorgYouTube: ScrapHappyFacebook: ScrapHappy.orgFind out more about ScrapHappy membership:ScrapHappy.org/joinFind out more about an upcoming LOAD Challenge:ScrapHappy.org/loadP.S. Alice's favourite episode is #2. Your Scrapbooking Why!

Directed By: Tim Kincaid Starring: Rick Gianasi, Joe Derrig, Richard Mooney, seriously, who are these fuckers? John's pick this week as we dive into a movie that has a kind of intriguing poster. I've always told not to judge a book by it's cover, and that's probably still the case with this 'film'. IMDB describes The Occultist as: "A cyborg private eye is hired to protect a Caribbean president visiting New York City from sadistic sorcerers. Where behind the lush beauty of the island lurk powers of darkness so evil no man has ever fought them - and lived." Just... wow. This poster looks like someone took Kai's Power Tools and fucked around with the flame filter in Paint Shop Pro 3.0. WTF. We Also Talked About: Rooftops (Tubi) Midnight Ride (Freevee/Amazon) Showgirls (Amazon) Against the Dark (Amazon) Myth & Mogul: John Delorean (Netflix) Sneakerheads (YouTube) Repo Man (Netflix) Energy Drink Guy (YouTube - John really oversold this one, btw) (Some of the above links are affiliate links, if you purchase through these affiliate links we do get a small kickback). Rate us on the podcast platform of your choice! As always, remember, you can always find the latest goings on at our website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Crap.Town --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/deweypodmonster/message

An airhacks.fm conversation with Jaroslav Bachorik (@yardus) about: programming a paper computer, Atari 130, building a drum machine for Atari, the Programming Pearls book, building a sound sampler, building a game for Atari, getting Amiga 1200, inspired by Paint Shop Pro, building software in Norway in Visual Basic, the most famous castle in Slovakia - Bojnice Castle, starting a software company, building cluster software in Manchester with Java Applets, using the jahia content server, enjoying Apache Tapestry, joining Sun MIcrosystems NetBeans team, working on the NetBeans profiler, jvisualvm and NetBeans profiler, dtrace and btrace, how btrace started, btrace is used by Alibaba, joining the serviceability JDK team, joining Markus Hirt at Datadog, building a continuous profiler Jaroslav Bachorik on twitter: @yardus

Digital Scrapbooking If you understand how to use PaintShop Pro, and you love digital scrapbooking, then you are almost certain to know the name Carole Asselin. She's the queen of digital scrapbooking when it comes to PaintShop Pro. Carole is our guest on The Next 100 Days Podcast. Carole and Kevin have known each other longer than Graham and Kevin. They met, like we did, in the Facebook group associated with Internet Business Mastery. Kevin sometimes moves at a slow pace, so go figure why it took him this long to ask Carole to be a guest! Podcast Summary Graham congratulated Kevin on becoming a grandfather for the third time! Carole Asselin Carole discovered the potential of digital scrapbooking and turned it into a side hustle by teaching others and selling her scripts. She opened her own store and started a membership teaching site, successfully catering to the demand for her content. Carole, Graham, and Kevin discussed Carole's niche market of teaching scrapbooking using Paint Shop Pro. She wanted to distinguish herself from others teaching scrapbooking with Photoshop and offered a range of tutorials and workshops to attract clients, with the majority being female. Storytelling Graham, Kevin, and Carole discussed the power of storytelling in marketing and teaching. Would it be possible to create a digital scrapbook to chronicle one's life? Can it be a creative and community-building activity. The future Kevin, Carole, and Graham discussed the current state and potential future of digital scrapbooking. They talked about the active participation of members in the community, the global reach of Carole's audience, the possibility of AI assistance in creating scrapbook pages, and the importance of personal touch in the creative process. Younger Generations? Kevin, Carole, and Graham discussed their experiences with digital scrapbooking and the challenges of managing an abundance of digital photos. They also talked about the importance of community and the potential for younger generations to join Carole's digital scrapbooking community. Carole, Kevin, and Graham discussed Carole's digital scrapbooking business and her various ventures, including a podcast and a membership academy. They also mentioned her unique approach to teaching and her potential for expanding her business in the future. A Passion Business Kevin and Graham discussed various topics including building a business around passion, the challenges of turning a hobby into a business, and the importance of segmenting email lists based on time zones. Clips Kevin Reminisces http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Kevin-Reminsces.mp4 The Origin Story http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Origin-Story.mp4 Translated Scrapbooks into a Digital Form http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Scrapbooks-on-the-go.mp4 Digital Scrapbooking Scripts http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Scripts.mp4 Stories http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Stories.mp4 Another String to Carole's Bow http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-North-Pole-Letters.mp4 Testimonial http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Carole-Asselin-Testimonial.mp4   The Next 100 Days co-hosts… Graham Arrowsmith Graham founded Finely Fettled to help marketers who want to market to affluent and high-net-worth customers.  He is now Host of The 2023 Alternative Investment Summit, featuring 22 providers of alternative investments. You can attend the summit for free. Register free of charge here: https://www.thealternativeinvestmentsummit.co.uk Kevin Appleby Kevin specialises in finance transformation and implementing business change. He's the COO of GrowCFO which provide both community and CPD-accredited training designed t...

Rosa Metra e una Workforce Change Manager con oltre 20 anni di esperienza internazionale nell'implementare strategie all'avanguardia che permettono di accelerare l'adozione di nuove tecnologie e la trasformazione culturale, di competenze e di well being in un'ottica di business regeneration. E specializzata in Progettazione Organizzativa e Change Management, Leadership e Middle Management Coaching eCritical Skills and Competencies building e RegeneratiVe Business Transformation. E CEO della societa di consulenza britannica Change Works Ltd, della societa di consulenza italiana Human Change Consulting Srl e autrice della metodologia HumanTech® Adoption. Autrice di molteplici soluzioni di apprendimento B2B, ha supportato organizzazioni globali in tutto il mondo negli ultimi 20 anni tra cui Mercedes Benz, Unilever, Condé Nast, Roche, Salesforce, EDF Energy, British Airways, BPM, Hitachi, Cargill, Sony, IBM, Pearson e altri. La sua formazione scolastica di una figura come la sua è costruita nel tempo, nel suo caso da un Master in Marketing Events Management-London Metropolitan University, Londra, Laurea in Scienze e Tecnologie della Comunicazione-Università degli Studi di Milano Università IULM, Milano (Italia) e Università Parigi XII, Parigi (Francia), Diploma in Ragioneria e Commercio-Instito Tecnico Faravelli (ITCG), Pavia (Italia) Corsi, Certificazione PROSCI Practitioner, Retail Brand Management - University of the Arts London, Dubai, Formazione sulla gestione dei progetti snella da CareerBuilder & Xebia.fr, Parigi. Sul fronte competenze informatiche, questa la sua expertise utile per la sua figura: Project Management: Jira, Confluence, Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker Analytics: Google Analytics, Omniture Site Catalysts, Flurry and Distimo Marketing and Sales: Eloqua, Exact Target, Salesforce and Sugar Office and Utilities: Cloud, CRM, Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Outlook Express, Corel Word Perfect, WinZip, Lotus Notes, Notes Buddy, Citrix, Go To Meeting, Skype, Communicator and Googledocs Web: Internet, Front Page, Dreamweaver, Wordpress, .net, ruby on rails Digital Media: Power Director,Video Studio, Win DVD, DVD Copy Illustration and Design: CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, InDesign, Flash, Painter X, Autocad. App, siti utili libri e link humanchangeconsulting linkedin Informazioni su come sia strutturato il percorso per diventare Metaverse Change Manager Metaverse Change Manager Metaverso è una delle parole più cercate sui motori di ricerca. Tutti ne parlano, tutti vogliono entrarci, ma in pochi sanno davvero di cosa si tratti e che opportunità possa offrire. Per quanto riguarda il mondo aziendale, può rappresentare un ostacolo o una grande occasione, indipendentemente dal prodotto, dal target di riferimento, dallo stato di digitalizzazione e innovazione, dal budget, dalla struttura interna e dal livello di apertura verso le trasformazioni guidate dal digitale. Se all'inizio il metaverso sembrava relegato soltanto all'ambito del gaming, oggi sta aprendo le porte a una rivoluzione in ambito commerciale, educativo e sociale. Le aziende che riusciranno a sfruttare appieno il potenziale del metaverso saranno quelle in grado di fornire ai propri dipendenti le conoscenze e gli strumenti necessari per entrare concretamente in questo mondo, lavorando su un piano virtuale con la stessa efficienza del piano reale. Ogni azienda dovrà sviluppare nuove competenze e c'è il bisogno impellente di una risorsa esperta del metaverso incaricata della missione chiave di guidare la definizione, la formazione e l'adozione del processo di utilizzo del metaverso all'interno della propria organizzazione: il Metaverse Manager. Human Change Consulting offre alle aziende la possibilità di risolvere questo problema con la figura del Metaverse Change Manager, il manager del futuro. Un manager che conosca le diverse piattaforme, che impari il linguaggio di sviluppo e che abbia le caratteristiche tecniche per diventare un lead del metaverso con nozioni di change. Perché il suo ruolo è anche quello di imparare a spingere e sostenere l'adozione del metaverso nelle società. Se le aziende hanno la tecnologia ma le persone non sono supportate a utilizzarla, non avranno mai l'adozione che si aspettano.

When the holidays hit folks will take photos. Photos and your Computer! Lots of them. Maybe you want to adjust the lighting, perhaps get rid of red-eye, or just sharpen it a little. Getting those photos ready for printing and framing, making cards or calendars and just sharing around is a great thing but doesn't require Photoshop! So we're talking about alternatives to Photoshop that are better suited to normal folks like us! Photoshop Elements is the Diet Coke of Photoshop meant for consumers. https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html Windows Photos and MacOS Preview are included with your operating system and can do many basic tasks. Even your smart phone has built-in tools in its photos apps. GIMP is a free, open-source program but has a bit of a learning curve. https://www.gimp.org/ Paintshop Pro is a longtime alternative. https://www.paintshoppro.com/ Corel offers a whole suite of graphics tools, including a photoshop alternative! https://www.coreldraw.com/en/ Affinity Photo is a professionally aimed program with a budget friendly price. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ And do you want better photos? Starting with how you take them will help! https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/10-quick-tips-to-fix-your-bad-photos https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-take-good-photos-with-your-phone/ https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/10-easy-tips-and-tricks-for-better-smartphone-photos

On this episode of Build Better Brands, Danielle Clarke is joined by Tom Ross, CEO of Design Cuts, he's known as a community branding guy and community builder. He also hosts the podcasts The Honest Designer's Show and Biz Buds which explore his passion for community building and mentoring others. The pair talk about his journey from designing websites from the age of 12 to building his own company and personal brand and now helps others do the same.KEY TAKEAWAYSThere's a lot of confusion about what ‘community' means. People talk about social media following, newsletters, podcast listenership. There's no finite line for me, but typically a community platform is a space where members can chat to each other – many-to-many rather than one-to-many (e.g. Discord server, Slack group, Facebook group, Circle forum).Being able to see someone else having the same interests in certain brands as you gives a sense of identity and belonging. This is massively proliferating in the digital world right now with things like NFTs.People have become bored, apathetic and to some extent blind towards their social media news feed. There's only so many years that we can sit there like zombies scrolling through for hours on end looking at peoples highlight reels. Particularly with the pandemic and pandemic of loneliness, people are craving human connection and depth and social media doesn't necessarily offer that.There are a few key principles to community building: 1) Much like any business you need to have a strong foundation: have a clear value proposition, have a clear structure, understand the expectation of your members or it will die out. 2) It takes more work than anything else online so you've got to love it and invest serious time and effort in it. 3) Don't focus on the quantity of members, it's better to have a smaller community who properly engage and are aligned around your purpose and understand why they're there and what they're getting out of it. BEST MOMENTS‘We're seeing a shift where, historically, community building has been seen as ‘fluffy', unmeasurable and doesn't elicit ROI for businesses. There's starting to be investment in brand and community.'‘The barrier to entry has lowers, there's greater awareness and more data available where you can measure ROI.'‘NFTs aren't new, it's just starting to hit scale. People were selling digital items for real money in video games 20 years ago. Now we're seeing that concept at a major scale.'‘If you haven't thoroughly educated yourself on something and really lived it, you shouldn't speak too strongly about it.'ABOUT THE GUESTWhen he was 12 years old, Tom Ross and his best friend right clicked on 'view source' a web-page they were looking at. The screen of code that appeared blew his mind.They taught themselves HTML and went on to start countless web projects over the next few years, many of which never saw the light of day, some made them a few hundred bucks, but mostly, they were just an incredible learning ground.Alongside these web projects, Tom embraced his inner creative, learning Paintshop Pro, and later Photoshop. He began creating endless graphics and websites, eventually leading him to enter design contests. These contests taught him early lessons in working with clients. A successful run of contest wins developed into a more steady freelance career, alongside school, building online communities, simply for the fun of it.After several more successful ventures, Tom discovered his 'hustle'. After binge listening to a bunch of hustle pornstars and internalising their workaholic mantras, he became a working machine. Starting Design Cuts, Tom worked 18 hour days, 7 days per week for the first 18 months, culminating in a hospital visit, major stomach surgery, and years of chronic health issues to follow. Despite the tumultuous journey, Design Cuts flourished into a thriving community of 750,000 creatives.In his spare time, Tom explores his passion for community building and mentoring others. His podcasts, The Honest Designer's Show and Biz Buds have now attracted millions of downloads, and he gets immense joy in providing value to his community.Websites: https://tomross.co/ and https://tomross.co/newsletter/Social media: @tomrossmediaCircle forum: learn.community ABOUT THE HOSTDanielle Clarke is a Brand and Marketing Consultant, University Lecturer and Business Owner.Since 2006 Danielle has provided brand design and marketing support for clients including Škoda, Gtech, UK Biocentre, UK Mail and GIRLvsCANCER Danielle is committed to helping brands that want to have a positive impact on people's lives. She spends her time consulting and working with business owners to help them attract and retain their best customers.Insta - @danielleclarkecreative | [https://www.instagram.com/danielleclarkecreative/]LinkedIn - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-clarke-creative/]Twitter - @D4nielleCl4rke | [https://twitter.com/D4nielleCl4rke](https://twitter.com/D4nielleCl4rke)Email - [hello@danielleclarkecreative.com](http://www.danielleclarkecreative.com/)Website: www.danielleclarkecreative.comThis show was brought to you by Progressive Media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Without Meatloaf and Christian Summer camp, we wouldn't have Evanescence. Without the label's fear that they couldn't sell a band with a female fronted singer, we would have that rap verse on Bring Me To Life. Without McZee and Paint Shop Pro 5, we wouldn't have Bacio Death Trip. Thankfully, all things have combined and nature has found a way for us to create this soon-to-be award winning podcast. We weren't Evanescence fans before this but there is a new found respect after spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon watching documentary after documentary on them. If you want to know the Amy Lee timeline, we're your pod. You wanna know the link between Kelly Clarkson, Limp Bizkit Creed and Evanescence, then you've come to the right place. We've been woken up inside and we've got a great episode for you.

This is The Digital Story Podcast #790, May 11, 2021. Today's theme is "Supercharge Your Editing App." I'm Derrick Story. Opening Monologue One of the reasons we don't move from an existing photo management app, such as Lightroom, to another is because we have so much time invested in it. Changing horses doesn't make sense. But what if we could breathe new life into our existing workflow without having to relocate a single file? That sounds more palatable. And it's the first story in today's TDS Photography Podcast. I hope you enjoy the show. Digital Photography Podcast 790 Tune-In Via Your Favorite Podcast App! Apple Podcasts -- Spotify Podcasts -- Stitcher Podbean Podcasts -- Podbay FM -- Tune In Supercharge Your Editing App Most of us are familiar with plugins. Over the years I've covered quite a few including RAW Power, Luminar, and Pixelmator. I had always wanted to include ON1 in that list, but my tests had hit bumps in the road. But now with ON1 Effects 2021, I can say that it's been a great ride. Can Use it with and for Practically Everything Regardless of what your base app is - Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One Pro, Photos for macOS, PaintShop Pro, or Affinity Photo - Effects can add creativity and capability to your existing workflow. It includes tools for masking and retouching. There are tons of presets included, and you can create your own as well. My favorite part are the Filters. There are some truly interesting and creative ones including B&W, Glow, Grunge, Dynamic Contrast, Channel Mixer, Skin Retouching, Sun Flare, and many, many more. Powerful, but Easy to Use Printing too One of the delightful surprises I discovered while testing Effects was its well thought out printing module. This is something that I've been disappointed with time and time again with other applications. Not this time. The Effects print module is easy to use, but provides the options that most photographers are looking for. And the very cool thing about it, is that you can use the print module while in plugin mode. In the case of Photos, I went to Edit, chose Effects, then set up my print job within the plugin. It worked great. And if you load your manufacturer's print driver instead of using AirPrint, you'll have even more options in the Setup dialog. This is very nice. Downloading a Free Trial or Purchasing ON1 Effects 2021 You can try ON1 Effects 2021 free for 14 days. If you decide to purchase, you can buy for $69.95. Save 15% off that price by using coupon code: THEDIGITALSTORY. Bottom Line I started using ON1 Effects for my infrared photography because of its excellent Channel Mixer, LUTs, and presets. But I've discovered that it's useful for all of my photography. It's a robust tool for both my Photos and Capture One Pro workflows. And it's a great way to get the most out of my iPhone shots as well. Next MacBook Air Powered by M2, To Come in Multiple Colors: Report You can read the entire article on Petapixel. If a new rumor is to be believed, Apple wasn't done using color with its new M1 iMac series: the design aesthetic is coming to the next MacBook Air as well. Famed Apple leaker Jon Prosser, who has a pretty decent track record, has released a set of new renders that he says is indicative of MacBook Air designs he was shown from his own source at the company. As reported by Digital Trends, the renders feature several notable changes to the current MacBook Air design. The most obvious change is that the computer will supposedly be available in one of seven colors: Silver, Blue. Yellow, Orange. Pink, Purple, and Green. Not coincidently, those are the same colors that Apple's newly-announced M1 iMacs are available in. New Release: Capture One Pro 21 Essential Training Capture One Pro is a complete digital photo management and editing application for professional photographers and serious enthusiasts. Photographers who appreciate outstanding RAW processing, expert color control, and logical organization should consider Capture One Pro for its comprehensive feature set. In this course, professional photographer and instructor Derrick Story helps you learn the basics quickly, then takes you deeper into the application to master its finer points. For seasoned users, Derrick also covers all the new features in version 21, including Speed Edit, the Dehaze slider, and Style Brushes that allow you to enhance specific areas of a photo. To wrap up, he shares tips and techniques that can help you ensure your workflow is as efficient as possible. You can check it out now by visiting LinkedIn Learning. The New Donation Kit for Carefree Shipping of Found Film Cameras We have more time around the house than ever. And you finally dove into that bedroom closet that's been begging for some organization. If you found a film camera that you're no longer using, our new Donation Kit makes it easy to pack and ship. Just visit the Contact Form on

Photos! We’re taking more of them now than ever before! We can keep them, share them, and even print them onto a variety of things. But one thing that hasn’t changed is people often want to use Photoshop to do simple changes like resizing, touching up, and more. Photoshop Alternatives Frankly, you don’t need a bulldozer when you want to make a sand castle, right? So, when considering an alternative consider how easy/simple it is to do what you need, how often you want to use it, and how much you’re willing to spend. Full-fledged Photoshop is $20.99 a month, so unless you’re making money? Best to find something cheaper! Windows Photos and MacOS Preview can do all the basics many folks need. GIMP is a free program, but has a bit of a learning curve behind it. https://www.gimp.org/ Paintshop Pro is a longtime alternative. https://www.paintshoppro.com/ Affinity Photo is the total overhaul of Serif Photo Plus aimed at professionals at a steal of a price! https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ And how could we forget Photoshop Elements? https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html  

For folks working in IT, one of the situations we find ourselves in these days is fixing, upgrading, refurbishing, or replacing the PC's of our progenitors. The machines of our matriarch and patriarchs. The computers of creators. The Tech of our... well, you get the idea. But do we HAVE to? What I mean is, are we obligated by the bonds of family honor and respect, not to mention religious mandate, to make sure their desktop, laptop, tablet and pad are in tip-top shape? In this episode we're going to explore the ramifications of the commandment to honor our parents and whether that means we have to support their aged Windows 95 systems. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:32): Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious Leon (00:54): For folks working in IT. One of the situations we find ourselves in these days is fixing, upgrading, refurbishing, or replacing the PCs of our progenitors, the machines of our matriarchs and patriarchs, the computers of our creators, the tech of our... Well, you get the idea, but do we have to, what I mean is are we obligated by the bonds of family, honor and respect, not to mention religious mandate to make sure their desktop, laptop, tablet, and pad are in tiptop, shape. And this episode we're going to explore the ramifications of the commandment to honor our parents and whether that means we have to support their aged windows 95 systems. I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcasting crime. Josh Biggley. Josh (01:36): Hello. Hello. Leon (01:37): Along with frequent guest, Al Rasheed. Al (01:40): Hello everybody! Leon (01:40): and a new voice to the podcast. Kevin Sparenberg. Kevin (01:42): Hello and thanks for having me. Leon (01:44): Thank you for being with us. And we're going to kick off the show like we always do with uh, some shameless self promotion. So Kevin, being the Technically Religious newbie that you are, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself. Speaker 5 (01:56): So my name is Kevin Sparenberg. I am the technical content manager for community at SolarWinds. I am found on pretty much all social platforms at a, @KMSigma, K M S I G M A. I have a blog at blog.kmsigma.com. I am officially a lapsed Catholic. Uh, my wife was the good Catholic and basically a Bible church Christian. Leon (02:17): Very nice. Well, welcome again to the show. Al. Tell us, uh, what do you doin' these days? Al (02:22): So my name is Al, and as you pointed out, I am a systems administrator for a federal contractor here in the Northern Virginia area. I'm pretty active on Twitter, so you can find me best there in terms of social media, Al _Rashid. Uh, there you'll also find in my Twitter profile the URL for my blog and I am a practicing Muslim. Leon (02:42): Very nice. Josh, what's up with you these days? Josh (02:45): Oh, well, lots of things. Lots of things. Josh Biggley, I'm an ops strategist at New Relic. You can find me like Kevin on almost every social media platform using Jbiggley. I do not have a blog and I am officially as of December, 2019, uh, an ex Mormon. Leon (03:04): and I'm still not sure whether I say congratulations or, or something else for that. Josh (03:08): There's gotta be a hallmark card someplace. Leon (03:11): Absolutely. So I'm in Cleveland, so American greetings probably has something for it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And just rounding things up. Uh, I'm Leon Adato, I'm a head geek. Yes. That's actually my job title, head geek at SolarWinds, which is neither solar nor wind because naming things is hard. You can find me on the Twitters as we say, just to trigger Kevin Townsend's daughter, uh, on the twitters @LeonAdato I pontificate on all things technical and occasionally religious at adattosystems.com and identify as Orthodox Jewish and sometimes my rabbi lets me identify that way also. Yeah, before we dive into the show, um, just because we are, you know, in the world that we are in right now, I want to, I want to do a really honest check in how, how's everyone doing? Kevin (04:03): Are we going to use the stabby to lottery scale? Leon (04:06): I, you know what, let's do that. Let's, you know, you know, on a scale of one to five where five is I won the lottery and one is I'm feeling very stabby, how are you doing? Kevin (04:15): Uh, I'm, I'm hovering at a good like two, five, like I'm doing okay, but I'm not pleased. I've realized something that my wife has broken about me is I actually like seeing people in person and the level of isolation is just starting to kind of hit me slowly. Leon (04:31): Oh, got it. Okay. Al, how about you? Al (04:36): uh, I, I didn't win the lottery. I'd probably say between a three and a four. Um, things could obviously be worse. We hope they can get better sooner than later. Uh, the biggest challenge for me personally, or as a father I should say as a parent, is just trying to keep the kids occupied and engaged and remain positive while, you know, we've been stuck at home just like everybody else. Leon (04:58): Yeah. I think a lot of parents are in that same position where, you know, it's, it's week number four or five depending on what your region of the country has done and, and every rainy day activity that you had is done and you're sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to figure out what else are you going to do when summer is looming. Okay. Josh, how about you? Josh (05:18): You know, this week I'm going to rate myself at about a four. Um, you know, I've, uh, I made some changes this past week. I started getting up earlier, forcing myself to get out of bed because, you know, it's real easy to, uh, stay in bed until, you know, eight or 8:30 and then, you know, grab a quick shower and bring your breakfast to your desk. I don't advise that it's really bad for your, uh, you know, for your work life balance. Uh, and, uh, in case anyone forgets, I live on an Island. So a couple of weeks ago we actually shut down, um, all ports of entry. So you can't cross the bridge, you can't fly in. The only way you can get across as if you live here or you're a deemed essential worker. And yes, we are turning people away at the border. So we're really fortunate on PEI and that we have a 26, uh, confirmed cases of covid 19. Um, of that only three are active. We've had no deaths and no hospitalizations and no evidence of community transmission. So really good to live on an Island that we're, we're very fortunate up here. Um, I mean, our, our worst complaint is, uh, you know, Oh my goodness, I, I'm living a dog's life. I'm getting up, I'm eating my, I'm taking a nap. I'm pooping and I'm going back to sleep, Leon (06:28): or an infant. Right? Or is the order the order doesn't matter. Oh no, I'm sorry. Between bed and pooping, it's very important to get those in the right order. There's a couple of places where orders are important. Okay. And I, for me and my family, we're, we're around a four. But, uh, as I mentioned before, we started recording Passover just finished. Um, and that was really taking a lot of our attention. And so with that finally, uh, you know, behind us, I think that this is going to be the first week that feels like not normal life because we were so focused on cleaning the house getting ready for an eight day holiday and things and being in an eight day holiday, you know, four days of which were offline. So you know that now we're going to see what you know, what's it really like. Leon (07:18): Um, and I also want to take a minute, although I know that these episodes are timeless. Uh, it is April 19th, and I want to wish people who observe it a happy, uh, post Passover and counting of the Omer, a happy post-Easter and an upcoming, uh, Ramadan Mubarak. So, you know, we are not yet problem. So yeah, it's, you know, some of us are trying to lose the weight that we gained and meanwhile, Al and, and his family are trying to bulk up in preparation for a month of fasting. Al (07:51): I think I've done enough bulking up in these last few weeks. So hopefully uh.. Leon (07:55): You've been training for this your whole life. I get it, I get it. With those things, things behind us. Um, I want to start off with what I'm calling talking 0.0 in this talk. And that is, uh, just to say upfront that while we are talking about parents, we are not necessarily talking about our parents unless we explicitly say, my mom or my dad did something. Leon (08:18): We are using fictional examples. So mom, as you listen to this, I'm not talking about you unless I say I'm talking about you, so please don't worry about it. Um, because we're not really here to spread gossip or make our parents feel insulted or give them a reason to feel embarrassed in any way. So I want to put that up front. And the other thing I want to point out is that we know lots of people have parents who are incredibly tech savvy. You know, some of us are lucky enough to have parents who still know more about tech in it than we do. Um, I, I've seen on Twitter and other places where the inevitable joke about how to get your mom to use her iPhone is like, my mom teaches computer science classes and probably taught, you know, you and your parents both, you know, and that kind of thing. Leon (09:00): So we know that there's lots of parents who are very tech savvy. Um, we're not playing on that old trope. What we want to focus on in this episode is the boundaries of sort of the filial obligation when it comes to us having skills that they don't, we could be talking about plumbing or you know, car repair or dog training or whatever, but you know, we're technically religious, so we're going to focus on tech because #geeks. With those disclaimers out of the way, uh, the first talking point, I think because we're in it, let's go ahead and define our terms. What does it really mean to honor thy father and mother? What are we talking about when we say that? Josh (09:40): I mean at this age or like when I was a kid. Leon (09:44): Well, I think now I think, I think kids, it's a lot more cut and dried, but I think as an adult, that's where, and especially again, because we're gonna be talking about fixing our parents' computer stuff and dealing with their needs as a user. And Al, you probably on the show have waxed the most eloquent about users. You know, users are always users. They are, they always have an opinion. But you've said a lot about whether their requirements are always valid and our parents are just as much a user as anyone else. Sometimes Al (10:14): how it can be a challenge, there is a fine line, especially as you just pointed out, one where adults, when we're parents, when we're husbands and or wives, um, you can't always be there for them. You want to provide as much as possible, but sometimes being honest and blunt and saying politely, no, I can't do it. It might sting a little bit at first, but if you build that solid relationship leading up until that point, both sides can get past it. Leon (10:42): Sure, absolutely. I still want to, I still want to focus on what does honor your father and mother mean though as an adult, what does that come down to? Josh (10:51): So I have an interesting perspective on this. Um, and it really is tied to my status as an ex-Mormon. Um, when I told my family and I was the first one to leave the Mormon church or the church that is currently using the term, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is their full name or LDS church, I called up my father and I said, Holy crap, did you know this stuff? And his response to me was, yeah, I did. My response is, why didn't you tell me? And he said, I didn't think it was important. And so when it comes to, yeah, right. So when it comes to honoring your father and your mother there, there is a, uh, a fine line and I think it comes, it's or is best articulated in that moment you have as a parent, when you say something and you're like, Holy crap, I am my parents. Josh (11:46): You, you know, that intonation the words. You're like, Oh my goodness, I have become, I have become my parents. Now that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. And honoring your parents is, for me is recognizing the things that are really powerful. Uh, one of my, I think one of my favorite LinkedIn posts that I've ever written is about my father and his level of honesty and the lengths to which he went in order to be seen as an honest and truthful man. Um, on the flip side, when we see things that our parents have done that are not in keeping with the things that we would want to honor moving beyond those things, as parents, as, as Al said, as husbands and wives as, uh, as members of community and doing good, to me that's honoring the name and it's something I always told my kids and I still tell them when they go out. Josh (12:39): I said, remember the things you do reflect on us as a family. So just remember that when you're out in the community and interacting with people and it doesn't mean you can't call BS, BS. That's okay. You know, you can't call in when you see stuff, say something. Right? It's not, it's not just for the department of Homeland Security. Quite literally. If you see something, say something and that's okay, but you, you know, you need to remember our name. So for me, honor thy father and thy mother, do the things that your parents did awesome - continue to do and the things that your parents sucked at, be better at that than they were. And, and so doing, you honor the name that you carry. Al (13:15): One thing that I took from Joshua's point is things do come full circle. So things that you saw as a kid, maybe you didn't necessarily improve or you didn't understand. But now here you are as a parent and you have to decide, do I honor my parents? Do I follow in their footsteps? How do I approach this? Leon (13:34): I want to offer a perspective from, from the Jewish point of view that honor thy father and mother, um, comes down to some pretty cut and dry things. The bare minimum in Jewish thinking is that you have to make sure that your parents have food, clothes, and shelter. That that's, that's what honor means. Um, and as long as you've done that, then you have fulfilled your obligation as a child. Now, there's, there's ways to express that honor, um, that aren't considered the bare minimum. You know, for example, when a parent enters the room, you should stand up. If you're at a meal, you should, uh, pour, you know, a drink for them, pour water or whatever. Um, you don't have to necessarily run to get your dad, scotch or your mom a scotch, but, uh, you should pour them a regular drink and things like that. Leon (14:22): Those are, those are ways that you express it, but that's not a requirement. That's simply an outward expression of the idea of honoring your parents. But at no time does the Torah or Talmud say in either medieval French or Aramaic or Hebrew that you have to fix their iPad. You're not required to. So again, when we talk about honoring your father and mother, there are some, there's some fairly explicit boundaries. Um, honoring your father and mother also does not, in Jewish thinking, require you to take abuse or bad advice. If it my parent. And so I'm Orthodox observant. My parents aren't. They never were. We became Orthodox just a few years ago. So if my, if my parents said to me, which they, they don't, luckily we have a good relationship as far as that goes. They say, you know, you know what, I really need you to come over on Shabbat. I really need you to do these things and honor your parent comes before that. You can say no, you can say no, no, that's not how this works. You can't, you can't leverage honor your father and mother for me to break other commandments. So you don't have to do that or take abuse or what have you. So all of that also falls into it. Josh (15:32): I mean, I feel like I honored my father when I told him to get an iPad. Right? And so my dad, my dad is a tinkerer. Uh, he, he is, uh, he tinkers and all sorts of things. Um, and he loves to tinker with technology. And I, I got tired of, I got tired of him having a broken computer. And finally one day I said, dad, you gotta buy an iPad. You're killing me. You gotta buy an Apple. Uh, and uh, and he has, and that is the one thing that is consistently the iPad just works. And you know, bless my parents, their, uh, my, you know, my mom is a [cough cough] years old and my dad is in his mid sixties. And um, I mean they, they're both pretty good with their technology, right? They've got the whole, you know, hold it with one hand and you know, press with one finger thing, you know, they're, they're not texting, you know, like my kids text. But it's cool. Right. But so my question for us then ultimately is how far do we have to go with, with fixing? Kevin (16:35): Well, I think it's a little bit of what everyone said, but for me it's been, I don't want to say it's been a struggle, but it's been a, it's been an ever-changing line. So obviously when I'm young, when I'm five, 10 years old, it's listening to obey near practically everything they tell me. But it's when I transitioned into adulthood, you know, and maybe some of that's being a teen is you, you stop listening or you fight back or whatever. And then when you finally get in to be an adult. And I think there's, there's kind of a, I can honor and respect my parents more now that they honor and respect me as an adult. And that's probably not the way it always should have been. But that's been the ultimate end of it. And I think you're right. I think there's, there's, there's the mid bar there is, and I think you mentioned, you know, uh, you know, making sure they have food and shelter and if that's the absolute bare minimum, great, but does that mean I take the time to still call them out on their birthdays? Do I still check on them every so often? And those are things that I do because I enjoy being as part of them. I don't do it as an obligation. If I was obligated to do it, I probably wouldn't do it too much teenage rebellion stored up. Leon (17:40): You're not the boss of me. Kevin (17:41): There's a lot of that. Uh, but I think there is, and I've become friends with my parents, which is good, which means if, and when I do have to tell them no, that's not a good idea. They acknowledge it. Josh (17:52): So I think ultimately the question that I have is how far does this honor thy father and thy mother go when it comes to tech support? Look, I love my parents. I don't always agree with them, but I'm not their tech support. Right. I have fixed their computer, I have fixed their printers. I have helped my mom with Excel formulas, uh, because she worked well into her sixties and was still doing, you know, reasonably complex Excel formulas, at least for, uh, someone who works in a administration and education. But like I said, I, I came to this point and I said, mom and dad, you just need to buy an iPad because I am tired of fixing your technology. Um, just, just don't touch that crap anymore because, I mean, I live across the country now. They live in Ontario and I live way out here on the East coast and I can't roll down to your house. Josh (18:44): And fix your stuff for you anymore. I mean, sometimes I think it means, uh, love me and saying no. Like I'm not going to keep that antiquated, whatever. And I know we're, we're geeks, you know, #geeks as Leon you said earlier. So we're talking about computers and not, you know, phones and you know, that old flip phone that your dad had, like those things. But, uh, it also means there are some things that we need to tell the parents to just let go of. Right. You know, classic cars. You should let go of them and they should come to me. Kevin (19:16): Subtle. You're good at subtle, Josh. Al (19:19): Your inheritance, nah, I'm just joking. Josh (19:22): you know, a old coin collections, uh, any, uh, bearer bonds of... I'm sorry. No, sorry. Sorry, mom and dad. There comes a point in time where we just need to say to our parents, okay, Hey, you know, I'm just, it's time. It's time to put that piece of technology to bed. Kevin (19:39): Yeah. But it's weird for me though because my father taught me computing like originally. So to then me have to turn around and tell my dad, yeah, uh no, I'm sorry you don't actually know what you're doing right now. And it's, it's not an all things, there's always like an edge case kind of thing. But being able to like be have that conversation with them was like, no, I'm sorry. That's not how operating operating systems work anymore. No, I'm sorry. That's not the way bioses work anymore. No, you can't look for your dip switches. They aren't there anymore and there's a conversation needs to be had there that my father has been thankfully very gracious about, but he could have taken an alternate viewpoint of, you know, you're my child and how dare you. Thankfully he hasn't done that, but I've also been able to, how do I say this nicely? I've been able to pawn off kind of desktop support on him than he does himself. Like he supports himself and my mother and when it's network level stuff, that's when I have to get involved. Leon (20:39): I think a lot of us who grew up at a certain point in time as far as the computer age, our parents, the first, uh, people who taught us computer because they bought them in the very early eighties, uh, my dad went out and got an Atari 400 computer and you know, there was a word processor and things like that. I was a better typist, but, uh, you know, he was the one who had the computer and he was the one who had the cash. So when it was time to get the 800 and then the 1600, he got it. And he was the one who got deep into it as a hobbyist. You know, and this is partly why we're having this, this episode is that I've spent, I'm now on hour number 40, upgrading my dad's piece, windows seven PC, and it's taken 40 hours because, uh, it's, it's a little older. It's okay. He got one of the most overpowered computers you could get about four years ago. It's no longer overpowered, but it's still powerful. Leon (21:34): But the components are all custom components that he paid someone to put together. Um, he got a, you know, super duper graphics card because, uh, Microsoft publisher needed it to create a PDF. And yeah, Kevin, to your point, like he keeps talking about dip switches and things like that. There aren't dip switches anymore. So I've been working for 40 hours to upgrade this and Windows seven simply won't upgrade. So I bought a SSD drive and I'm going to put windows 10 on the SSD drive, but I can't because he won't let me redo everything because he needs to get a replacement for his beloved paint shop pro. Kevin (22:16): and an in place upgrade, which goes for that age is not really a good idea. Leon (22:21): Yeah. And, and I, I give him credit because he grudgingly let me replace Outlook express a couple of months ago. Thunderbird. Yeah. Thunderbird. Thunderbird. Yeah. Leon (22:34): So the point is, is that, um, they, some of us have parents who might have been better than us at tech at one time because they were hobbyists. Um, but they're not anymore. And the thing that saved me was the fact that my dad is, was a hobbyist when it came to technology. He didn't have a whole lot of ego tied up in it. I think that if it had been something closer to his area of expertise, if, you know, if I had gone into music and we had had, I'd had strong opinions about, you know, the music scene or things like that, he might have felt a little bit more strongly. Who knows? He might've been more gracious about it. I don't know. Um, but it, thankfully being able to honor my dad means being able to tell him the hard truth and trust that I'm going to say this. He'll be adult enough to accept that hard truth. I think if I told him there is no replacement for Paint Shop Pro, which he's used exactly zero times in the last two years, um, he probably would be disappointed, but he, he deal with it. Al (23:42): Yeah. If I could, I'm actually in a unique situation. Um, both of my parents have never been in the tech growing up. Did they buy tech equipment for me? Laptops, desktop computers, yes. But they never themselves got into tech or had an interest in tech. Up until about maybe 12 years ago, I bought my mother a desktopm, set up a modern, this one, their spare bedrooms at the house, connected it to their, you know, uh, wifi connection and whatnot and she had no use for it. She couldn't acclimate to it. She found it hard. She found that a challenge and the time I spent, to your point, Leon, trying to assist her over the phone, trying to guide her on how to do simple tasks, it became kind of cumbersome and I didn't see this going any further or it becoming a learning experience. Um, my brother who happens to live about 20 minutes away from my parents, I live about an hour away. Al (24:37): He is my default tech guy when I can't get through to them on the phone. What I've done, what I've done is share everything with my brother via Google shared document in terms of how their network is set up at home, what their passwords are, what their usernames are, but they still found it cumbersome, more so my mother, about six or seven years ago or whenever the iPad was introduced, it seems like ages ago, these days, while we're sitting at home for weeks, I've gave my, I bought my mother and iPad and she's adjusted to it flawlessly. It's been a piece of cake, requires no maintenance. I don't have to struggle with her over the phone for hours at a time. And most recently during this covid shutdown or however you want to describe it, my, my kids and I, including my wife, we will call my parents on my mother's iPhone and have a FaceTime call because it makes them so happy they get to see the kids and vice versa. Leon (25:31): And I think that as, as IT pros, there's a couple of, there's a couple of lessons there. First of all, um, for every user, and this is both in corporate settings as well as in home settings, finding the, the form that works for the, for the application. And when I say application, I don't mean the program but I mean the use case, that not every use case is a desktop computer and not ever use cases, a laptop and not ever use cases, a ruggedized strapped to your wrist, Borg style computing device. But some use cases are one of those things. And figuring out the correct use case is as necessary for our family members as it is for, you know, the corporate environment. You know, trying to figure out whether this is a cloud based app or if this is better as a microservice or this is better as a on premises, you know, legacy, uh, application running on Cobalt. Al (26:26): Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And when I set up, if I could go back real quick, when I set up her wifi network at home, I created a simple SS ID. I tried to create, not necessarily a complex password, but kind of in between. That became a challenge. Trying to explain to them upper case, lower case, special character. even after I printed out everything for them as well and stuck it on the refrigerator so they can see it for themselves. And it just got to the point where, you know what, here's your password. It's ABCD, one, two, three, four, five, whatever and everything works fine. No, nobody heard that. There'll be those where they live either, but it just, it's a fine balance. You want to accommodate them, you want to create a comfort level for them. So they accept technology, but you don't want to be their full time geek squad employees. Leon (27:15): Right. And that was the other piece I wanted to point out is that again, as IT professionals, we have to recognize when the job is bigger than just us. Uh, my brother works in desktop support very much like you, Al. Um, when I can't get there or it's just something that, you know, I've, I've tried, I've tried to have, the conversation wasn't working. It's like Aaron, Aaron, can you please, please Aaron? So, you know, it was like you are going to owe me a steak for this. Okay, fine. I will buy you a steak for this. Yeah. Um, so, so knowing when you need to call in other members of the team and sharing documentation, absolute 100% sharing the documentation, all good things. Um, I do want to point out sort of one of those, on the other hand things where we say that, you know, the, our responsibility is IT pros doesn't necessarily require us to support our parents in their tech. Uh, Jessica, uh, I hope I'm saying her name right. Jessica Hische, um, has a very famous webpage. ShouldIworkforfree.com that you'll find in the show notes and one of the very few yes, Workflows in should I work for free? Is, is it your mother? So just as a counterpoint, should you do it, you know, 32 hours of labor and you can't make a flyer for my garage sale. Al (28:38): They can see me, but no, but. Josh (28:42): This reminds me, this reminds me of my, my neighbor who is well into her eighties, and every year around Christmas time, she calls me up and says, Josh, can you come upgrade my computer? And the very first time she called, I thought, Oh my goodness, what does she want from me? And what she wanted was for me to install the new antivirus for her. Um, and you know, and just make little tweaks, you know, she uses it for email and, uh, every year she sends me home with, you know, a box of chocolates or something else. It's, you know, you usually take it right into the hall... Hook them up by the, yeah. Actually hooked me by the belly. Right? It's more of the thing. Um, and it's, you know, it's a, a great symbiotic relationship that we have. Josh (29:32): It's usually an hour long, uh, engagement, but it, it, it brings to my mind who, because my parents don't live near me, who else should we honor? Is it just our father and mother? I know that in Christianity there's a, uh, a creed, uh, that's in the King James version, um, of the New Testament in Matthew 25 verses 40 and 45 says, "verily I say unto you, in as much as you have done it on to one of the least of these, my bretheren you've done it unto me." And then in verse 45, "Verily, I say unto you in as much as you did it, not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." So, you know, if we do it to one of the people that we should honor, then we know we've done it to God. And if you don't do it because of whatever reason, you've also not done it unto God. And I'm just wondering in the other religious observances, uh, of our guests, like what do you do, right? Like is, is there an equivalent to the, you know, in as much as you have done it unto the least of these. Al (30:34): So in Islam, one of the five pillars is zakat. It's a duty to perform by all Muslims. Um, but it's more on the religious side. It's, I don't know how to, I'll try my best to be delicate with this approach. It's, it's about giving back, giving back to the poor, to the needy, to the less fortunate. I don't know how to make this, this comparison when it comes to providing IT or tech support. Like I said, just drawing the line and saying, when is enough enough? I've gone above and beyond, There's not much else I can do. Um, so on and so forth. Leon (31:09): And I think it's, it's analogous to the Jewish concept of tsadaka, which people, uh, translate inaccurately as charity. But the concept of charity is that I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart to give. And that's not what tsadaka and I think in Islam, you know, zakat also the, the, the, the commandment or the, the deed of tsadaka benefits me, the giver. It doesn't benefit the, the receiver. In fact, the highest, the best form of tsadaka is where I'm giving and I don't know who's getting, and the person who's getting doesn't know that I gave, it's completely anonymous because it's not about giving and feeling some sense of largess it's to build, to cultivate the personal ethic of being a giving person. So I'm not sure that that zakat or tsadaka in, in Judaism necessarily. What I will say does, does match up is the idea of um, protecting or not afflicting the stranger among you, the widow, the orphan, the disenfranchise, which is mentioned in some people say 36 times, other people count up to 46 times in, in Torah or Old Testament that there's a mention of, you know, protect or do not afflict or take care of, again, the widow, the orphan, the disenfranchise, the stranger among you. And I think that that's more analogous. And that is if you, if you're going numerically, it's a much more important commandment to observe. Um, and so taking care of people around you in your community who can't do for themselves. Now again, Al, to your point, there's gotta be a line. There has to be a line at which I've given, but I can't give anymore. I can't be required to keep giving even though there are those who aren't. You know, if I was going to do free tech support for everyone in the community, I'd never, I'd never sleep Al (33:13): well, nor would you. Nor could you pay your bills. Let's be frank. There is a, it's not about finances or it's not a financial game. You're doing it because you're doing it out of the kindness of your heart. But eventually there are times where it's taken advantage of and you just have to say, I can't, I'm done. I can't do much more for you. Kevin (33:32): No, it's, it's funny though because I think, and this is tying back specifically to my parents is that, uh, for a number of years it was kind of, it was never mentioned. It was never spoken directly, but it was an, uh, in kind trade. So I would help my, my father and my mother with their computers, with their local network, with their wifi, whatever it was. And in exchange, my father would help me keep the cars running or teach me some stuff about how to do home repair and maintenance, you know, whether it's some plumbing or some electrical. And I think that when I mentioned earlier that kind of, there was a tipping point for me when, when my parents saw me as an adult that we could actually have this communication. Uh, almost like friends where my father saw that I was in need, that I as an individual, a member of his community, member of his family needed help with, you know, electrical or plumbing or mostly dry wall. Let's be serious. I can do the other two. Dry walls, I'm horrible at it. But, but my parents weren't able to do the computer side of it, including like building a machine from scratch, which my father literally hadn't done since about 85. I think it was a PS1 at the time. And I said, this is cool. Well let's order parts. And we built it together. So it was, you know, it was, he was honoring me as a son by including me in that project, just as I was doing the same. And each of us, it was a net gain for both of us. And I think that goes to the giving for the sake of giving is, is really about the giver. It's not about the recipient. Josh (35:06): There's one time where giving old technology is. Okay. Uh, and, and here's, here's the example about 18 years ago and I know because my wife was pregnant with our youngest child who is now 17, uh, my father-in-law who would often travel to Jamaica, found a school in St. Anne's Parish that he decided we needed to build a computer lab for. They, you know, they had, they had literally nothing. Uh, so not only were we going to, uh, build a computer lab, but we are also going to have to kind of refurbish this you rundown building, um, and put in desks and computers. Like the whole thing. And knowing that I, you know, was in the industry, I was tasked with designing and you know, helping to source. And so we ended up sourcing, I don't gee almost 20 years ago, I'm going to say, uh, 20 machines. Josh (35:54): We prepped them all, you know, packed it all into this big shipping container and shipped it down in Jamaica. And if you know anything about the wonderful Island of Jamaica, it is beautiful and everything operates at about Oh one eighth time. So what we thought was going to be, uh, you know, this quick. Hey, drop things off and then we'll fly down and we'll spend a week and you know, bigger thing. It took many, many months. What did we send them? Man, we did not send them the most cutting edge technology. We sent them the most simple technology that had been battle tested that we knew that was sitting on the desks in a hot, un-air conditioned room. It was going to keep running. It was the same technology, but at the time I used in a, an automotive plant, right? These machines that, you know, how do you fix them? Speaker 7 (36:40): You pick them up and you drop them and then the problem goes away, right? Like those are the kinds of machines that you want. So sometimes it is, it is okay to give technology that is fit for the purpose of is, you know, it's needed for in the case of these kids and this, uh, in the school at St. Anne's Parish, um, you know, they had these machines and I mean, I ended up sending my best friend out in my place because I couldn't go. And so he got a trip to Jamaica and I got a, a, a new child. Leon (37:07): Okay. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up? Josh (37:10): I want to, I just point out that across every, every belief, you know, and at the table today, we all come from a very different backgrounds and we didn't talk about, you know, Hinduism or Buddhism or any of the other isms that are of religious observance, but every one of them has this idea of giving because it is good to give, but also in giving because it is the honorable thing to do, you know, and you know, Christianity talks about giving a 10%, uh, you know, um, you know, Islam talks about, you know, two and a half percent. There's sure we can argue about the semantics of it, but the, the gist of it is you give, because it's an honorable thing to do. And, and I kind of think of it as this, I do a lot of what I do now, I've been in the IT industry for 20 years because I'm paying it forward. There are, you know, yeah, my dad was, my dad worked in sales. He wasn't a technical, a tech geek, but there are lots of people within technology. Uh, John Foster, I don't know, John, if you're ever going to listen to this episode, but he was the guy who said to me in my very first IT job, Hey, I'll hire you even though he had no reason in the world to hire me. He is the reason that I am still in IT today and that I did not go back to school to be a lawyer. I don't know if I should thank him or curse him,, but I'll definitely thank you. Okay. Okay, perfect. Definitely. But it's because of people like him that I'm successful. So honoring him by helping others, by giving to others. Uh, I think that that's very much something that we need to see continue in the industry and probably see more of in the industry that generosity, that pay it forward mentality. Al (38:53): Absolutely. It's good karma. You never wanted to come back and bite you in the rear end. And we do tend to see it more often than not in it. Uh, when you do good things good things come back to you and the same rules or the same philosophy should apply in our lives as well. Kevin (39:09): Yeah. I was just thinking that this seems so much like kind of where I came to be about five or six years ago actually about the time I started this job was that I realized that I like sharing knowledge that I like helping people out. It's a for a while I was, I was the bad it guy where I liked to hoard knowledge and I like to be the person who can answer the questions and then I realized that's, that's a one way street to loneliness and to basically self isolation and instead being able to actually say, you know what, let's come together. Let's talk about these things. Let's bring it all about. And being able to share that information, whether it's, you know, enough information with my parents to be able to do their stuff, enough information with my aunts and uncles when they're ready to buy a new machine. Let's not talk about scope creep when we actually support our parents because you know, their brothers and sisters will get in on that if, if we can't, if they can, they will. Uh, so there's a little limited you need to put there. But just being able to share stuff and being able to, as Josh mentioned, pay it forward. It's, if I'm able to help any one person do their job or help support their people a little better today than they were able to do yesterday, for me, that's a win. Leon (40:20): I like it. I'm going to play, I'm just going to be a little bit of a counterpoint here and remind people that especially in what's going on in the world today, the opportunities to volunteer, the opportunity to share, the opportunities to um, give that support, whether it's to your immediate parents or parent-like-neighbors or people who are of the same generation or Kevin, to your point to aunt Sally and uncle Bob and all that stuff. You know, the opportunities are many and that, um, you know, you also have to take care of yourself. That you have to balance the desire to, to give and the desire to share with um, your ability to give tomorrow. That, uh, to put it in terms of again, the concept of tsadakah, a great rabbi from the middle ages was asked, is it better to give 2, Oh, I'm going to put it in dollar terms. Is it better to give $200 once or $1 200 separate times? And he said unequivocably, it's better to give $1 200 separate times because after giving $1 200 times, you have built up the habit of giving. And you also have put limits. You've built up the of not giving. You're not required to give everything you have. And by giving $1 200 times, you know how to stop. And that's just knowing how to stop is just as important as knowing how to start. So please, for those people who are listening, if you're thinking, wow, maybe I should do this thing, whatever this thing is, you know, to help out, just remember that knowing when to start is good. Knowing when to stop. Also important. narrator (42:01): Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media. Leon (42:15): Friends, don't let friends use windows 98 Kevin (42:17): or internet Explorer. Al (42:19): or simple passwords, Leon (42:20): or Pearl.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.      The 2021 edition of Paint Shop Pro is out from Corel…and fans will find some impressive new features powered by AI.   We’ve been impressed especially with new image resizing capabilities.  Product Marketing Manager Karli Deter...

This week Mel returns to Amazon and Kelly FINALLY learns GIMP (sorta) Mel’s recommendation:  Aicook Electric Kettle After years of irresponsible tea brewing, Mel picked up an electric kettle with presets for the best temperature to brew green tea, white tea, Oolong tea, black tea, and coffee.  She has really noticed the difference in flavor, and outside of missing the cool blue LED light on her old kettle, she has been very satisfied.       Kelly’s recommendation:  Logos by Nick YouTube channel After years of irresponsible editing, Kelly is FINALLY moving on from his Paint Shop Pro (version 6) … Continue reading →

Episode 338 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 -  Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS! Featured: Photographer, Carol M. Highsmith In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Show Opener:Photographer, Carol M. Highsmith.  Thanks Carol! Sponsors: - Fujifilm's 52 weeks of FREE education.  Build Your Legacy with Fujifilm- Get 20% off at BenroUSA.com with offer code PetaPixel20- Get up to $125 off select Explore series gear through 8/31/20 at ShimodaDesigns.com.- Get FreshBooks cloud accounting FREE for 30 DAYS by entering PetaPixel in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section at FreshBooks.com/PetaPixel - More at LensShark.com/deals. Stories: Sony's a7s III ups the game in low-light shooting. (#) Sigma's 85mm f/1.4 takes on Sony's 85mm f/1.4 G Master. (#) Nikon's entry level full-frame Z5 mirrorless body. (#) Trade in your working body for a Z5 or another Nikon mirrorless Z body. (#) Who has what size slice of the shrinking camera industry pie. (#) PaintShop Pro 2021 gets AI and more. (#) Nikon South Africa's tone deaf announcement. (#) Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”

Techstination interview: What can you do with Corel's PaintShop Pro 2021?: Corel's Chris Pierce & Karli Deter

Techstination interview: What can you do with Corel's PaintShop Pro 2021?: Corel's Chris Pierce & Karli Deter

Show notes - Lockdown Series Episode 1   Wayne and Andy return from another legendary hiatus to bring you some alternative sources of entertainment during the lockdown. The first batch of things to waste your time with include:   A Youtube crash-course in networking included in a comprehensive tutorial on PFSense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agieD5uiwYY&list=PLE726R7YUJTePGvo0Zga2juUBxxFTH4Bk   Games: Pro Sim Fishing World for PS4, XBox and PC https://live.dovetailgames.com/live/fishing-sim-world (Update: Andy is proud to announce his life’s finest achievement, after the show he moved up to 3rd in the weekly carp tournament and 11th in match fishing)   Youtube: Smoke N’Scan: Live police chases with scanner audio accompanied by a presenter getting high https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0W2f-rD8PAdn12ZiTZ2bHA   Android apps: BirdUp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jb.birdlistener.birdup&hl=en_GB Leps https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.changetheory.lepsnap&hl=en_GB  Plantnet https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.plantnet&hl=en_GB CM Browser Unfortunatley this has now disappeared from the play store. Radio Garden https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jonathanpuckey.radiogarden&hl=en_GB   Old applications: Paint Shop Pro 5 https://winworldpc.com/product/paint-shop-pro/5x Irfanview https://www.irfanview.com/

An airhacks.fm conversation with Romain Manni-Bucau (@rmannibucau) about: PaintShop Pro, science fiction matte paintings, scene generation, short movies, 3D tool automation with scripting, starting C programming with GTK, programming PaintShop Pro "clone" as "hello, world", linux over windows, image editing involves math, learning algorithms from the internet, building winamp-like mp3 player with C++ and GTK, switching from C/C++ to Java, no memory management in Java, implementing problem-solvers with Java, developing "BigData" apps with Hazelcast, Talip Ozturk, implementing map-reduce algorithms for a banking sector with Hazelcast, using Apache openEJB, working with Jean-Louis Monteiro the openEJB committer, using openEJB for good start times and for testing, Java EE and standards do not impact your business code, working with friends at Tomitribe, implementing extensions for TomEE - the MicroProfile before MicroProfile, joining talend to implement batch processes, joining yupiik.com startup, Apache Spark, Apache Beam and ReactJS, using Apache Meecrowave, ReactJS vs. Custom Elements, WebComponents and Redux, deploying service on-the-fly with OSGi, integrating CDI with OSGI, working with Apache Aries, using OSGi to load machine learnings models, hot-loading modules for "Fluid Logic", OSGI alliance specs, Karaf OSGi, HTTP/2 with Felix, OSGi ConfigAdmin configuration, OSGi whiteboard pattern, Aries CDI, Romain Manni-Bucau on twitter: @rmannibucau, Romain's blog: rmannibucau.metawerx.net

In this episode of The Darkroom Podcast we got a chance to chat with YouTuber and photographer Jessica Kobeissi in the Epidemic Sound Studio.  Even as a teenager, Jessica was building community and exploring her artistic talents through PaintShop Pro and Neopets. With a massive following on Neopets, Jessica was inspired to build her own website, teaching herself how to code. She began releasing design tutorials and even ran advertising through her website as a 15 year old. Jessica got her first camera soon after, inspired by other artists on Facebook and began shooting portrait work from day 1 in her backyard. Since then, she has amassed over 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube where she helps her viewers grow their skills while bringing the photography community closer.  With a heavy focus on portraiture work, Jessica gives her advice for any artists looking to find their speciality and begin standing out in our saturated world of content. Jessica brings such a unique energy and perspective to any discussion so we're excited to share this episode with you!   

Episode 327 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 -  Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS! Featured: Portrait photographer, Eli Infante In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Show Opener:Portrait photographer, Eli Infante.  Thanks Eli! Sponsors: - Build Your Legacy with Fujifilm - Get 20% off at BenroUSA.com with offer code PetaPixel20- Get 20% off at SaramonicUSA.com with offer code PetaPixel10 - More at LensShark.com/deals. Stories: Canon's 90D and perhaps the beginning of the end of the DSLR. (#) Sony hikes of the price of a popular lens. (#) Canon releases two key lenses in the RF-mount lineup. (#) Corel announces PaintShop Pro 2020 with AI. (#) Nikon updates SnapBridge with highly-requested features. (#) Canon eyes an update of old technology. (#) A photographer knows his rights, and it nearly costs him. (#) The FAA reminds the public not to be stupid. (#) Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”

¡Rancheros Tiernos llega a las 1000 reproducciones! Hoy hablamos de los diseñadores que se quejan de sus clientes, de diseñadores que adoptan la godinez y la verborrea en pos de verse profesionales, ser multidisciplinario contra hiperespecializarse, nuestros inicios en Fireworks y Paint Shop Pro, el abuso de los calificativos emo y hipster, y exiliarse a las montañas a comer rata de campo. Con este episodio nos declaramos listos para que nos inviten a dar charlas en universidades. El no-va-más de burlarse de los clientes Diseño Gráfico Sonorense Lo que se ve… Hiperespecialización What the hell is multidisciplinary design El odio a Corel Draw Emos según la tele Emos vs. Punks! Plecas, Plastas y Serifas.

In this episode, I am chatting with Carole Asselin about how she stumbled upon the software Paintshop Pro and after mastering it, she started to monetize her skill with digital products, webinars, course, and memberships. You can learn more about Carole's side hustle by visiting scrapbookcampus.com #Four ways you can support this podcast: Take a screenshot of this podcast and send it to a friend who may like it I am doing a drawing for a free hard copy of The Side Hustle Journal for every 5 iTunes reviews. So if you want a chance to win, leave a rating and review on iTunes or Apple podcasts and send me an email at hello@gritandhustle.co. Detailed instructions on how to do this are at www.gritandhustle.co/review Take your side hustle to the next level by implementing a sales funnel to turn your passive website visitors into paying customer with ClickFunnels, the #1 sales funnel software in the world. You can get a free trial by going to www.gritandhustle.co/profit If you are interested in podcasting, which is the fastest growing content medium in the world, head over to www.gritandhustle.co/podcastingmadeeasy to enroll in my course now. If you have an awesome side hustle that you would like to share with the world, I'd love to have you on my podcast. You can schedule a podcast interview by going to calendly.com/gritandhustleco/guest

Para la edición y tratamiento de imágenes contamos en el mercado con una amplia oferta de programas que nos permiten hacer prácticamente cualquier cosa. Por supuesto, son muy populares las versiones comerciales como Photoshop o Paint Shop Pro, por ser las que frecuentemente utilizan los profesionales de los medios audiovisuales e impresos para realizar sus contenidos; además, de que al estar integrados en las suites de grandes marcas, como es el caso de Adobe, facilitan mucho el intercambio y el trabajo colaborativo con otros programas como pueden ser Illustratror, Premier, etcétera.

EPISODE 01 - Andrea Olivo & René Olivo We've been wanting to do a podcast for ages...so we did it! We get things started chatting about our reasons why and talking about what got us here and a bunch of things in between. Follow us on instagram: @arcade_studio_mi https://www.instagram.com/arcade_studio_mi/ @andy_olive https://www.instagram.com/andy_olive/ @rinothechef https://www.instagram.com/rinothechef/ Arcade Studio http://www.arcadestudiomilano.com/ /////////////////////////////////////// Some links to stuff we talked about: Viacom Inernational Media Networks, MTV, VH1 http://www.viacom.com/brands/Pages/vimn.aspx Southport, KwaZulu Natal https://www.sa-venues.com/attractionskzn/southport.php Milano Centrale skate spot https://vimeo.com/60521912 Skatemap http://skatemap.it/ Panzerotti https://www.google.it/search?q=panzerotti&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA3YeBorndAhVDxIUKHf5BC8sQ_AUICigB&biw=2202&bih=1275 South African Accent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZ7jh1His8 Franco Gaffuri http://www.francogaffuri.com/ Spaghettochild https://spaghettochild.bigcartel.com/ Paint Shop Pro 5 https://winworldpc.com/product/paint-shop-pro/5x Joe Rogan https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQUP1qoWDoEbmsQxvdjxgQ Durban Technikon http://www.dut.ac.za/ Aura Photo Agency https://www.auraphotoagency.com/pages.php?lang=eng&cat=andrea-olivo&subcat=photography "Day After Day" skateboard video https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUnD4aGQkX6w8ZqhnW1NNbjg&v=8-toXsmBASY Didael (e-learning company) https://www.didaelkts.it/ Sesamo (project) http://www.didael.it/sito/sesamo_01.htm Speed Razor (obscure editing program) http://www.zenvideo.co.uk/in-sync_speed_razor.htm Velocity Q (another obscure editing program) Daniele Zennaro (Director) http://www.danxzen.com/ Luca Grandini (Editor) https://vimeo.com/user9809391 Analysis of a scene/editing https://vimeo.com/kogonada Needful Things by Stephen King https://www.amazon.com/Needful-Things-Stephen-King/dp/045057458X Chef (Milanese skateboard brand) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC36IQjXuR0gs1p7c4MUWdHg Raekwon the Chef https://open.spotify.com/artist/2yQf6b8hxahZaT5dHlWaB1?autoplay=true&v=A Diego Garcia Dominguez https://www.linkedin.com/in/diego-garcia-dominguez-78619312a/?originalSubdomain=it Andrea "Cisko" Ciniselli https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-ciniselli-55888718/?originalSubdomain=it Neil Barrett https://www.neilbarrett.com/it/

TrueOS stable 17.12 is out, we have an OpenBSD workstation guide for you, learnings from the PDP-11, FreeBSD 2017 Releng recap and Duo SSH. This episode was brought to you by Headlines TrueOS stable release 17.12 (https://www.trueos.org/blog/trueos-17-12-release/) We are pleased to announce a new release of the 6-month STABLE version of TrueOS! This release cycle focused on lots of cleanup and stabilization of the distinguishing features of TrueOS: OpenRC, boot speed, removable-device management, SysAdm API integrations, Lumina improvements, and more. We have also been working quite a bit on the server offering of TrueOS, and are pleased to provide new text-based server images with support for Virtualization systems such as bhyve! This allows for simple server deployments which also take advantage of the TrueOS improvements to FreeBSD such as: Sane service management and status reporting with OpenRC Reliable, non-interactive system update mechanism with fail-safe boot environment support. Graphical management of remote TrueOS servers through SysAdm (also provides a reliable API for administrating systems remotely). LibreSSL for all base SSL support. Base system managed via packages (allows for additional fine-tuning). Base system is smaller due to the removal of the old GCC version in base. Any compiler and/or version may be installed and used via packages as desired. Support for newer graphics drivers and chipsets (graphics, networking, wifi, and more) TrueOS Version 17.12 (2017, December) is now available for download from the TrueOS website. Both the STABLE and UNSTABLE package repositories have also been updated in-sync with each other, so current users only need to follow the prompts about updating their system to run the new release. We are also pleased to announce the availability of TrueOS Sponsorships! If you would like to help contribute to the project financially we now have the ability to accept both one-time donations as well as recurring monthly donations which wil help us advocate for TrueOS around the world. Thank you all for using and supporting TrueOS! Notable Changes: Over 1100 OpenRC services have been created for 3rd-party packages. This should ensure the functionality of nearly all available 3rd-party packages that install/use their own services. The OpenRC services for FreeBSD itself have been overhauled, resulting in significantly shorter boot times. Separate install images for desktops and servers (server image uses a text/console installer) Bhyve support for TrueOS Server Install FreeBSD base is synced with 12.0-CURRENT as of December 4th, 2017 (Github commit: 209d01f) FreeBSD ports tree is synced as of November 30th (pre-FLAVOR changes) Lumina Desktop has been updated/developed from 1.3.0 to 1.4.1 PCDM now supports multiple simultaneous graphical sessions Removable devices are now managed through the “automounter” service. Devices are “announced” as available to the system via *.desktop shortcuts in /media. These shortcuts also contain a variety of optional “Actions” that may be performed on the device. Devices are only mounted while they are being used (such as when browsing via the command line or a file manager). Devices are automatically unmounted as soon as they stop being accessed. Integrated support for all major filesystems (UFS, EXT, FAT, NTFS, ExFAT, etc..) NOTE: The Lumina desktop is the only one which supports this functionality at the present time. The TrueOS update system has moved to an “active” update backend. This means that the user will need to actually start the update process by clicking the “Update Now” button in SysAdm, Lumina, or PCDM (as well as the command-line option). The staging of the update files is still performed automatically by default but this (and many other options) can be easily changed in the “Update Manager” settings as desired. Known Errata: [VirtualBox] Running FreeBSD within a VirtualBox VM is known to occasionally receive non-existent mouse clicks – particularly when using a scroll wheel or two-finger scroll. Quick Links: TrueOS Forums (https://discourse.trueos.org/) TrueOS Bugs (https://github.com/trueos/trueos-core/issues) TrueOS Handbook (https://www.trueos.org/handbook/trueos.html) TrueOS Community Chat on Telegram (https://t.me/TrueOSCommunity) *** OpenBSD Workstation Guide (https://begriffs.com/posts/2017-05-17-linux-workstation-guide.html) Design Goals User actions should complete instantaneously. While I understand if compiling code and rendering videos takes time, opening programs and moving windows should have no observable delay. The system should use minimalist tools. Corollary: cache data offline when possible. Everything from OpenStreetMaps to StackExchange can be stored locally. No reason to repeatedly hit the internet to query them. This also improves privacy because the initial download is indiscriminate and doesn't reveal personal queries or patterns of computer activity. No idling program should use a perceptible amount of CPU. Why does CalendarAgent on my Macbook sometimes use 150% CPU for fifteen minutes? Who knows. Why are background ChromeHelpers chugging along at upper-single-digit CPU? I didn't realize that holding a rendered DOM could be so challenging. Avoid interpreted languages, web-based desktop apps, and JavaScript garbage. There, I said it. Take your Electron apps with you to /dev/null! Stability. Old fashioned programs on a conservative OS on quality mainstream hardware. There are enough challenges to tackle without a bleeding edge system being one of them. Delegate to quality hardware components. Why use a janky ncurses software audio mixer when you can use…an actual audio mixer? Hardware privacy. No cameras or microphones that I can't physically disconnect. Also real hardware protection for cryptographic keys. Software privacy. Commercial software and operating systems have gotten so terrible about this. I even catch Mac command line tools trying to call Google Analytics. Sorry homebrew, your cute emojis don't make up for the surveillance. The Hardware Core To get the best hardware for the money I'm opting for a desktop computer. Haven't had one since the early 2000s and it feels anachronistic, but it will outperform a laptop of similar cost. After much searching, I found the HP Z240 Tower Workstation. It's no-nonsense and supports exactly the customizations I was looking for: No operating system pre-loaded (Cut out the “Windows tax”) Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6 processor (Supports ECC ram) 16 GB (2x8 GB) DDR4-2400 ECC Unbuffered memory (2400Mhz is the full memory clock speed supported by the Xeon) 256 GB HP Z Turbo Drive G2 PCIe SSD (Uses NVMe rather than SATA for faster throughput, supported by nvme(4)) No graphics card (We'll add our own) Intel® Ethernet I210-T1 PCIe (Supported by em(4)) A modest discrete video card will enable 2D Glamor acceleration on X11. The Radeon HD 6450 (sold separately) is fanless and listed as supported by radeon(4). Why build a solid computer and not protect it? Externally, the APC BR1300G UPS will protect the system from power surges and abrupt shutdowns. Peripherals The Matias Ergo Pro uses mechanical switches for that old fashioned clicky sound. It also includes dedicated buttons along the side for copying and pasting. Why is that cool? Well, it improves secondary selection, a technique that Sun computers used but time forgot. Since we're talking about a home office workstation, you may want a printer. The higher quality printers speak PostScript and PDF natively. Unix machines connect to them on TCP port 9100 and send PostScript commands directly. (You can print via telnet if you know the commands!) The Brother HL-L5100DN is a duplex LaserJet which allows that “raw” TCP printing. Audio/Video I know a lot of people enjoy surrounding themselves with a wall of monitors like they're in the heart of NASA Mission Control, but I find multi-monitor setups slightly disorienting. It introduces an extra bit of cognitive overhead to determine which monitor is for what exactly. That's why I'd go with a modest, crisp Dell UltraSharp 24" U2417H. It's 1080p and yeah there are 4k monitors nowadays, but text and icons are small enough as it is for me! If I ever considered a second monitor it would be e-ink for comfortably reading electronic copies of books or long articles. The price is currently too high to justify the purchase, but the most promising monitor seems to be the Dasung Paperlike. In the other direction, video input, it's more flexible to use a general-purpose HDMI capture box like the Rongyuxuan than settle on a particular webcam. This allows hooking up a real camera, or any other video device. Although the motherboard for this system has built-in audio, we should use a card with better OpenBSD support. The WBTUO PCIe card uses a C-Media CMI8768 chipset, handled by cmpci(4). The card provides S/PDIFF in and out ports if you ever want to use an external DAC or ADC. The way to connect it with other things is with a dedicated hardware mixer. The Behringer Xenyx 802 has all the connections needed, and the ability to route audio to and from the computer and a variety of devices at once. The mixer may seem an odd peripheral, but I want to mix the computer with an old fashioned CD player, ham radio gear, and amplifier so this unifies the audio setup. When doing remote pair programming or video team meetings it's nice to have a quality microphone. The best ones for this kind of work are directional, with a cardioid reception pattern. The MXL 770 condenser mic is perfect, and uses a powered XLR connection supplied by the mixer. Backups We're going dead simple and old-school, back to tapes. There are a set of tape standards called LTO-n. As n increases the tape capacity gets bigger, but the tape drive gets more expensive. In my opinion the best balance these days for the home user is LTO-3. You can usually find an HP Ultrium 960 LTO-3 on eBay for 150 dollars. The cartridges hold 800GB and are about 15 dollars apiece. Hard drives keep coming down in price, but these tapes are very cheap and simpler than keeping a bunch of disk drives. Also tape has proven longevity, and good recoverability. To use old fashioned tech like this you need a SCSI host bus adapter like the Adaptec 29320LPE, supported by ahd(4). Cryptography You don't want to generate and store secret keys on a general purpose network attached computer. The attack surface is a mile wide. Generating or manipulating “offline” secret keys needs to happen on a separate computer with no network access. Little boards like the Raspberry Pi would be good except they use ARM processors (incompatible with Tails OS) and have wifi. The JaguarBoard is a small x86 machine with no wireless capability. Just switch the keyboard and monitor over to this machine for your “cleanroom.” jaguar board: Generating keys requires entropy. The Linux kernel on Tails samples system properties to generate randomness, but why not help it out with a dedicated true random number generator (TRNG)? Bit Babbler supplies pure randomness at a high bitrate through USB. (OneRNG works better on the OpenBSD main system, via uonerng(4).) bit babbler: This little computer will save its results onto a OpenPGP Smartcard V2.1. This card provides write-only access to keys, and computes cryptographic primitives internally to sign and encrypt messages. To use it with a regular computer, hook up a Cherry ST2000 card reader. This reader has a PIN pad built in, so no keylogger on the main computer could even obtain your decryption PIN. The Software We take the beefed up hardware above and pair it with ninja-fast software written in C. Some text-based, others raw X11 graphical apps unencumbered by ties to any specific window manager. I'd advise OpenBSD for the underlying operating system, not a Linux. OpenBSD has greater internal consistency, their man pages are impeccable, and they make it a priority to prune old code to keep the system minimal. What Have We Learned from the PDP-11? (https://dave.cheney.net/2017/12/04/what-have-we-learned-from-the-pdp-11) The paper I have chosen tonight is a retrospective on a computer design. It is one of a series of papers by Gordon Bell, and various co-authors, spanning the design, growth, and eventual replacement of the companies iconic line of PDP-11 mini computers. This year represents the 60th anniversary of the founding of the company that produced the PDP-11. It is also 40 years since this paper was written, so I thought it would be entertaining to review Bell's retrospective through the lens of our own 20/20 hindsight. To set the scene for this paper, first we should talk a little about the company that produced the PDP-11, the Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts. Better known as DEC. It's also worth noting that the name PDP is an acronym for “Programmed Data Processor”, as at the time, computers had a reputation of being large, complicated, and expensive machines, and DEC's venture capitalists would not support them if they built a “computer” A computer is not solely determined by its architecture; it reflects the technological, economic, and human aspects of the environment in which it was designed and built. […] The finished computer is a product of the total design environment. “Right from the get go, Bell is letting us know that the success of any computer project is not abstractly building the best computer but building the right computer, and that takes context.” It is the nature of computer engineering to be goal-oriented, with pressure to produce deliverable products. It is therefore difficult to plan for an extensive lifetime. Because of the open nature of the PDP-11, anything which interpreted the instructions according to the processor specification, was a PDP-11, so there had been a rush within DEC, once it was clear that the PDP-11 market was heating up, to build implementations; you had different groups building fast, expensive ones and cost reduced slower ones The first weakness of minicomputers was their limited addressing capability. The biggest (and most common) mistake that can be made in a computer design is that of not providing enough address bits for memory addressing and management. A second weakness of minicomputers was their tendency not to have enough registers. This was corrected for the PDP-11 by providing eight 16-bit registers. Later, six 32-bit registers were added for floating-point arithmetic. […] More registers would increase the multiprogramming context switch time and confuse the user. “It's also interesting to note Bell's concern that additional registers would confuse the user. In the early 1970's the assumption that the machine would be programmed directly in assembly was still the prevailing mindset.” A third weakness of minicomputers was their lack of hardware stack capability. In the PDP-11, this was solved with the autoincrement/autodecrement addressing mechanism. This solution is unique to the PDP-11 and has proven to be exceptionally useful. (In fact, it has been copied by other designers.) “Nowadays it's hard to imagine hardware that doesn't have a notion of a stack, but consider that a stack isn't important if you don't need recursion.” “The design for the PDP-11 was laid down in 1969 and if we look at the programming languages of the time, FORTRAN and COBOL, neither supported recursive function calls. The function call sequence would often store the return address at a blank word at the start of the procedure making recursion impossible.” A fourth weakness, limited interrupt capability and slow context switching, was essentially solved with the device of UNIBUS interrupt vectors, which direct device interrupts. The basic mechanism is very fast, requiring only four memory cycles from the time an interrupt request is issued until the first instruction of the interrupt routine begins execution. A fifth weakness of prior minicomputers, inadequate character-handling capability, was met in the PDP-11 by providing direct byte addressing capability. “Strings and character handling were of increasing importance during the 1960's as scientific and business computing converged. The predominant character encodings at the time were 6 bit character sets which provided just enough space for upper case letters, the digits 0 to 9, space, and a few punctuation characters sufficient for printing financial reports.” “Because memory was so expensive, placing one 6 bit character into a 12 or 18 bit word was simply unacceptable so characters would be packed into words. This proved efficient for storage, but complex for operations like move, compare, and concatenate, which had to account for a character appearing in the top or bottom of the word, expending valuable words of program storage to cope.” “The problem was addressed in the PDP-11 by allowing the machine to operate on memory as both a 16-bit word, and the increasingly popular 8-bit byte. The expenditure of 2 additional bits per character was felt to be worth it for simpler string handling, and also eased the adoption of the increasingly popular 7-bit ASCII standard of which DEC were a proponent at the time. Bell concludes this point with the throw away line:” Although string instructions are not yet provided in the hardware, the common string operations (move, compare, concatenate) can be programmed with very short loops. A sixth weakness, the inability to use read-only memories, was avoided in the PDP-11. Most code written for the PDP-11 tends to be pure and reentrant without special effort by the programmer, allowing a read-only memory (ROM) to be used directly. A seventh weakness, one common to many minicomputers, was primitive I/O capabilities. A ninth weakness of minicomputers was the high cost of programming them. Many users program in assembly language, without the comfortable environment of editors, file systems, and debuggers available on bigger systems. The PDP-11 does not seem to have overcome this weakness, although it appears that more complex systems are being built successfully with the PDP-11 than with its predecessors, the PDP-8 and PDP-15. The problems faced by computer designers can usually be attributed to one of two causes: inexperience or second-systemitis Before the PDP-11, there was no UNIX. Before the PDP-11, there was no C, this is the computer that C was designed on. If you want to know why the classical C int is 16 bits wide, it's because of the PDP-11. UNIX bought us ideas such as pipes, everything is a file, and interactive computing. UNIX, which had arrived at Berkley in 1974 aboard a tape carried by Ken Thompson, would evolve into the west coast flavoured Berkley Systems Distribution. Berkeley UNIX had been ported to the VAX by the start of the 1980's and was thriving as the counter cultural alternative to DEC's own VMS operating system. Berkeley UNIX spawned a new generation of hackers who would go on to form companies like Sun micro systems, and languages like Self, which lead directly to the development of Java. UNIX was ported to a bewildering array of computer systems during the 80's and the fallout from the UNIX wars gave us the various BSD operating systems who continue to this day. The article, and the papers it is summarizing, contain a lot more than we could possibly dig into even if we dedicated the entire show to the topic *** News Roundup Two-factor authentication SSH with Duo in FreeBSD 11 (https://www.teachnix.com/2017/11/29/configuring-two-factor-authentication-on-freebsd-with-duo/) This setup uses an SSH key as the first factor of authentication. Please watch Part 1 on setting up SSH keys and how to scp it to your server. Video guide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EuvF-iaV0) Register for a free account at Duo.com Install the Duo package on your FreeBSD server pkg install -y duo Log into the Duo site > Applications > Protect an Application > Search for Unix application > Protect this Application This will generate the keys we need to configure Duo. Edit the Duo config file using the course notes template vi /usr/local/etc/pam_duo.conf Example config [duo] ; Duo integration key ikey = Integration key goes here ; Duo secret key skey = Secret key goes here ; Duo API host host = API hostname goes here Change the permissions of the Duo config file. If the permissions are not correct then the service will not function properly. chmod 600 /usr/local/etc/pam_duo.conf Edit the SSHD config file using the course notes template vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config Example config ListenAddress 0.0.0.0 Port 22 PasswordAuthentication no UsePAM yes ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes UseDNS no PermitRootLogin yes AuthenticationMethods publickey,keyboard-interactive Edit PAM to configure SSHD for Duo using the course notes template Example config ``` # auth auth sufficient pamopie.so nowarn nofakeprompts auth requisite pamopieaccess.so nowarn allowlocal auth required /usr/local/lib/security/pamduo.so # session # session optional pamssh.so wantagent session required pam_permit.so # password # password sufficient pamkrb5.so nowarn tryfirstpass password required pamunix.so nowarn tryfirstpass ``` Restart the sshd service service sshd restart SSH into your FreeBSD server and follow the link it outputs to enroll your phone with Duo. ssh server.example.com SSH into your server again ssh server.example.com Choose your preferred method and it should log you into your server. FreeBSD 2017 Release Engineering Recap (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/2017-release-engineering-recap/) This past year was undoubtedly a rather busy and successful year for the Release Engineering Team. Throughout the year, development snapshot builds for FreeBSD-CURRENT and supported FreeBSD-STABLE branches were continually provided. In addition, work to package the base system using pkg(8) continued throughout the year and remains ongoing. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team worked on the FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE, with the code slush starting mid-May. The FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE cycle stayed on schedule, with the final release build starting July 21, and the final release announcement following on July 25, building upon the stability and reliability of 11.0-RELEASE. Milestones during the 11.1-RELEASE cycle can be found on the 11.1 schedule page (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/schedule.html). The final announcement is available here (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/announce.html). The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team started the FreeBSD 10.4-RELEASE cycle, led by Marius Strobl. The FreeBSD 10.4-RELEASE cycle continued on schedule, with the only adjustments to the schedule being the addition of BETA4 and the removal of RC3. FreeBSD 10.4-RELEASE builds upon the stability and reliability of FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE, and is planned to be the final release from the stable/10 branch. Milestones during the 10.4-RELEASE cycle can be found on the 10.4 schedule page (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.4R/schedule.html). The final announcement is available here (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.4R/announce.html). In addition to these releases, support for additional arm single-board computer images were added, notably Raspberry Pi 3 and Pine64. Additionally, release-related documentation effective 12.0-RELEASE and later has been moved from the base system repository to the documentation repository, making it possible to update related documentation as necessary post-release. Additionally, the FreeBSD Release Engineering article in the Project Handbook had been rewritten to outline current practices used by the Release Engineering Team. For more information on the procedures and processes the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team follows, the new article is available here and continually updated as procedures change. Finally, following the availability of FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE, Glen Barber attended the September Developer Summit hosted at vBSDCon in Reston, VA, USA, where he gave a brief talk comprising of several points relating directly to the 11.1-RELEASE cycle. In particular, some of the points covered included what he felt went well during the release cycle, what did not go as well as it could have, and what we, as a Project, could do better to improve the release process. The slides from the talk are available in the FreeBSD Wiki. During the question and answer time following the talk, some questions asked included: Q: Should developers use the ‘Relnotes' tag in the Subversion commit template more loosely, at risk of an increase in false positives. A: When asked when the tag in the template was initially added, the answer would have been “no”, however in hindsight it is easier to sift through the false positives, than to comb through months or years of commit logs. Q: What issues are present preventing moving release-related documentation to the documentation repository? A: There were some rendering issues last time it was investigated, but it is really nothing more than taking the time to fix those issues. (Note, that since this talk, the migration of the documentation in question had moved.) Q: Does it make sense to extend the timeframe between milestone builds during a release cycle from one week to two weeks, to allow more time for testing, for example, RC1 versus RC2? A: No. It would extend the length of the release cycle with no real benefit between milestones since as we draw nearer to the end of a given release cycle, the number of changes to that code base significantly reduce. FLIMP - GIMP Exploit on FreeBSD (https://flimp.fuzzing-project.org) In 2014, when starting the Fuzzing Project (https://fuzzing-project.org/), Hanno Böck did some primitive fuzzing on GIMP and reported two bugs. They weren't fixed and were forgotten in the public bug tracker. Recently Tobias Stöckmann found one of these bugs (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=739133) (CVE-2017-17785) and figured out that it's easy to exploit. What kind of bug is that? It's a classic heap buffer overflow in the FLIC parser. FLIC is a file format for animations and was introduced by Autodesk Animator. How does the exploit work? Tobias has created a detailed writeup (https://flimp.fuzzing-project.org/exploit.html). The exploit doesn't work for me! We figured out it's unreliable and the memory addresses are depending on many circumstances. The exploit ZIP comes with two variations using different memory addresses. Try both of them. We also noticed putting the files in a subdirectory sometimes made the exploit work. Anything more to tell about the GIMP? There's a wide variety of graphics formats. GIMP tries to support many of them, including many legacy formats that nobody is using any more today. While this has obvious advantages - you can access the old images you may find on a backup CD from 1995 - it comes with risks. Support for many obscure file formats means many parsers that hardly anyone ever looks at. So... what about the other parsers? The second bug (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=739134) (CVE-2017-17786), which is a simple overread, was in the TGA parser. Furthermore we found buffer overreads in the XCF parser (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790783) (CVE-2017-17788), the Gimp Brush (GBR) parser (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790784) (CVE-2017-17784) and the Paint Shop Pro (PSP) parser (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790849) (CVE-2017-17789). We found another Heap buffer overflow (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790849) in the Paint Shop Pro parser (CVE-2017-17787) which is probably also exploitable. In other words: The GIMP import parsers are full of memory safety bugs. What should happen? First of all obviously all known memory safety bugs should be fixed. Furthermore we believe the way GIMP plugins work is not ideal for security testing. The plug-ins are separate executables, however they can't be executed on their own, as they communicate with the main GIMP process. Ideally either these plug-ins should be changed in a way that allows running them directly from the command line or - even better - they should be turned into libraries. The latter would also have the advantage of making the parser code useable for other software projects. Finally it might be a good idea to sandbox the import parsers. Dell FS12-NV7 Review – Bargain FreeBSD/ZFS box (http://blog.frankleonhardt.com/2017/dell-fs12-nv7-review-bargain-freebsdzfs-box/) It seems just about everyone selling refurbished data centre kit has a load of Dell FS12-NV7's to flog. Dell FS-what? You won't find them in the Dell catalogue, that's for sure. They look a bit like C2100s of some vintage, and they have a lot in common. But on closer inspection they're obviously a “special” for an important customer. Given the number of them knocking around, it's obviously a customer with big data, centres stuffed full of servers with a lot of processing to do. Here's a hint: It's not Google or Amazon. So, should you be buying a weirdo box with no documentation whatsoever? I'd say yes, definitely. If you're interests are anything like mine. In a 2U box you can get twin 4-core CPUs and 64Gb of RAM for £150 or less. What's not to like? Ah yes, the complete lack of documentation. Over the next few weeks I intend to cover that. And to start off this is my first PC review for nearly twenty years. As I mentioned, it's a 2U full length heavy metal box on rails. On the back there are the usual I/O ports: a 9-way RS-232, VGA, two 1Gb Ethernet, two USB2 and a PS/2 keyboard and mouse. The front is taken up by twelve 3.5″ hard drive bays, with the status lights and power button on one of the mounting ears to make room. Unlike other Dell servers, all the connections are on the back, only. So, in summary, you're getting a lot for your money if its the kind of thing you want. It's ideal as a high-performance Unix box with plenty of drive bays (preferably running BSD and ZFS). In this configuration it really shifts. Major bang-per-buck. Another idea I've had is using it for a flight simulator. That's a lot of RAM and processors for the money. If you forego the SAS controllers in the PCIe slots and dump in a decent graphics card and sound board, it's hard to see what's could be better (and you get jet engine sound effects without a speaker). So who should buy one of these? BSD geeks is the obvious answer. With a bit of tweaking they're a dream. It can build-absolutely-everything in 20-30 minutes. For storage you can put fast SAS drives in and it goes like the wind, even at 3Gb bandwidth per drive. I don't know if it works with FreeNAS but I can't see why not – I'm using mostly FreeBSD 11.1 and the generic kernel is fine. And if you want to run a load of weird operating systems (like Windows XP) in VM format, it seems to work very well with the Xen hypervisor and Dom0 under FreeBSD. Or CentOS if you prefer. So I shall end this review in true PCW style: Pros: Cheap Lots of CPUs, Lots of RAM Lots of HD slots Great for BSD/ZFS or VMs Cons: Noisy no AES-NI SAS needs upgrading Limited PCI slots As I've mentioned, the noise and SAS are easy and relatively cheap to fix, and thanks to BitCoin miners, even the PCI slot problem can be sorted. I'll talk about this in a later post. Beastie Bits Reflections on Hackathons (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20171126090055) 7-Part Video Crash Course on SaltStack For FreeBSD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HijG0hWebZk&list=PL5yV8umka8YQOr1wm719In5LITdGzQMOF) The LLVM Thread Sanitizer has been ported to NetBSD (https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/the_llvm_thread_sanitizer_has) The First Unix Port (1998) (http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/bits/Interdata/32bit/unix/univWollongong_v6/miller.pdf) arm64 platform now officially supported [and has syspatch(8)] (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20171208082238) BSDCan 2018 Call for Participation (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/call-for-papers/bsdcan-2018-call-for-participation/) AsiaBSDCon 2018 Call for Papers (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/call-for-papers/asiabsdcon-2018-call-for-papers/) *** Feedback/Questions Shawn - DragonFlyBSD vagrant images (http://dpaste.com/3PRPJHG#wrap) Ben - undermydesk (http://dpaste.com/0AZ32ZB#wrap) Ken - Conferences (http://dpaste.com/3E8FQC6#wrap) Ben - ssh keys (http://dpaste.com/0E4538Q#wrap) SSH Chaining (https://www.bsdnow.tv/tutorials/ssh-chaining) ***

Episode 202 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 -  Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS! Featured: Capturing Passion's Lee Herbet In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Show Opener: Capturing Passion's Lee Herbet opens the show. Thanks Lee! Sponsors: - Get 10% off your order at MeFOTO.com, Tenba.com, KupoGrip.com and StellaProLights.com using code PetaPixel. - First time customers in the US get $25 off rentals of $50 or more through September 29, 2017 with code PP25 at BorrowLenses.com. Stories: A photographer warns of a used gear scam on Amazon. (#) Corel releases PaintShop Pro 2018. Is it a good alternative to Lightroom? (#) Solid specs of the upcoming Nikon D850 are leaked. (#) The Indian police officer couple who faked Everest summit photos are sacked. (#) Consumer Reports says that up to 25% of Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets could die within two years. (#) Edelkrone announces the SurfaceONE. (#) Legendary street photographer Arlene Gottfried passes away at age 66. (#) The US military now has approval to take out your drone. (#) Outtake Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”

Digital scrapbooking is a big industry. By learning to create “scripts” that make scrapbookers’ work more efficient, today’s featured hustler has created a sustainable second income.  Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle! Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second half our conversation with artist & developer, Jen Montes. We discuss being multilingual, Puerto Rico, Python, GitHub, and poutine. Jen currently works on the TV show Archer. Chris tries to show off, saying he learned Spanish from watching, Home Alone in Mexico. Jen wonders what the difference between European French and Quebec French is? Jacob, who is in the chatroom, chimes in to share his experience in Quebec. Jen grew up in Puerto Rico which reminds Chris of a recent Last Week Tonight video on voting rights in U.S. Territories. The Insular Cases are the awkward Supreme Court documents that surmise people in territories under the control of America do not receive all the rights guaranteed in the constitution. Paul is reminded of the videos by CPG Grey, American Empire and The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained. Paul explores Jen’s GitHub page and we talk Python. Jacob is looking forward to ES6 Harmony the sixth edition of Javascript. Jen is interested in the way Tent and the Indie Web movement are working. She hopes to build a personal site that interacts with other networks, but all her data is in one central place. One project Jen is working on is a file browser for the nifty, dropbox-like Syncthing. Remembering PaintShop Pro and 3D Studio Max, which are still made! Jen tells us that you can still get The Print Shop! That’s more exciting than baseball. Jeena’s site is a great example of indieweb ideas in the real world. He explains it in a blog post, IndieWeb Join us! Known is a service using the indieweb principles. Without having programing knowledge you can jump right in and begin publishing your own site. Jen is not a tremendous TV show junky but she does appreciate watching shows as a social activity. She watches The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and of course Archer with groups of friends. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode with Jen Montes. It’s fairly obvious that we had a good time. Up next, a topical show on privacy. Support Montreal Sauce on Patreon

Project Tor attacked, new computer options (laptop, desktop, tablet, hybrid), getting rid of malware (anti-virus scans, restoring to previous setpoint, clean install), cloud computing defined (NIST publiication 800-145, essential characteristics, service models, deployment models), color correcting scuba pictures (Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, use channel mixer to restore red channel), Profiles in IT (Ronald Gerald Wayne, forgotten co-founder of Apple Computer), clothing to shield RFID chips from being read (credit and debit cards vulnerable, pockets and wallets lined with conductor blocks signal), Sony hack may have been an inside job (objective was extortion, North Korea may have been a ruse), and North Korea Internet outage (probably a DDoS attack, easily executed by a lone operator). This show originally aired on Saturday, December 27, 2014, at 9:00 AM EST on WFED (1500 AM).

Project Tor attacked, new computer options (laptop, desktop, tablet, hybrid), getting rid of malware (anti-virus scans, restoring to previous setpoint, clean install), cloud computing defined (NIST publiication 800-145, essential characteristics, service models, deployment models), color correcting scuba pictures (Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, use channel mixer to restore red channel), Profiles in IT (Ronald Gerald Wayne, forgotten co-founder of Apple Computer), clothing to shield RFID chips from being read (credit and debit cards vulnerable, pockets and wallets lined with conductor blocks signal), Sony hack may have been an inside job (objective was extortion, North Korea may have been a ruse), and North Korea Internet outage (probably a DDoS attack, easily executed by a lone operator). This show originally aired on Saturday, December 27, 2014, at 9:00 AM EST on WFED (1500 AM).

If you remember using PaintShop Pro, now's the time to consider what the latest version can offer. Passwords may be the best first line of defense, but multi-factor passwords are better. In Short Circuits ... Apple's new phone and watch are cool, but this week Apple unveiled something even better, Amazon drops the price of it's Fire phones to 99 cents and some think that's overpriced, and Internet slowdown day generated a lot of messages, but the FCC will probably ignore them.

For this Snippet, we discuss Photoshop Is A City For Everyone: How Adobe Endlessly Rebuilds It's Classic App by Paul Miller. (http://www.pagebreakpodcast.com/snippets/adobe-photoshop-app-evolution)

With over over 500 shows  on his "A Book and a Chat" show he has learned there are many things that perhaps need to be said. Perhaps not totally "PC" Barry shares his views on items of news or just general run of the mill events. SUBJEST: Lies , Dam Lies and Paint Shop Pro

Why Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 might be the right choice for you; how crooked registrars make a bundle on expired domains; a first look at version 4 of The Bat. In Nerdly News: HD-DVD turns to toast and the San Jose Mercury News looks at cybercrooks.