503: The Tiniest Laptops
Transcript from 503: The Tiniest Laptops with Emily Lovell, Christopher White, and Elecia White.
EW (00:00:06):
Welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Dr. Emily Lovell. We are going to talk about open source software for as long as we can, before we shift the conversation over to guitars.
CW (00:00:21):
Hi, Emily. Welcome.
EL (00:00:23):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
EW (00:00:24):
Could you tell us about yourself, as if we met at a University California Santa Cruz- That is UCSC, programming night.
CW (00:00:37):
What is a programming night?
EL (00:00:38):
Sure. <laugh> Yeah, what is a programming night?
EW (00:00:40):
One of these meetups, where you get together and introduce yourself around a table.
CW (00:00:45):
Okay.
EL (00:00:48):
Sure. I would say, "Hi. I am Emily. I care a lot about who is participating in tech, and the sorts of things that people feel empowered to make in tech. I work in open source, which I think is like the punk rock of software engineering. Right now I get to do that full time."
(00:01:10):
"I am currently the associate director of the Open Source Program Office at UC Santa Cruz, where we are figuring out what our campuses need from us, in terms of support. I in particular get to spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage students in open source software contribution."
EW (00:01:30):
Cool. Problems that I always have with open source is how do you get paid?
EL (00:01:36):
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, well, we are still figuring that out too. <laugh>
EW (00:01:39):
Okay.
EL (00:01:41):
But yeah. That is an interesting one.
EW (00:01:45):
We are going to do lightning round, where we ask you short questions and we want short answers. Are you ready?
CW (00:01:52):
<laugh>
EL (00:01:52):
Yeah, let us go.
CW (00:01:54):
You skipped the whole thing about our part of that, is to not ask a lot.
EW (00:01:59):
Well no. The other part- I was thinking about saying she can only use one word answers, but I figured I would see how verbose she was before I limited it.
CW (00:02:06):
Oh, I see. All right, all right. Beach or forest?
EL (00:02:10):
<laugh> Oh. Beach or forest? Forest.
EW (00:02:12):
Name of your dog?
EL (00:02:14):
Daphne.
CW (00:02:18):
Have you- Okay. I am just seeing some of these for the first time. Have you ever purchased a deli slicer for a computer science class?
EL (00:02:24):
Yes. <laugh>
EW (00:02:27):
If you could be expert in one instrument, what would it be?
EL (00:02:29):
Hmm. Drums.
CW (00:02:32):
I like that answer. If you could choose a new instrument to learn, what would it be?
EL (00:02:37):
Drums. <laugh>
EW (00:02:37):
Favorite guitar tuning?
EL (00:02:41):
Open E.
CW (00:02:44):
Okay. This is misspelled in a hilarious way, but I am not going to pronounce the misspelling. Single coil or humbucker?
EL (00:02:51):
Single coil.
EW (00:02:51):
Wow, that really was misspelled.
CW (00:02:53):
<laugh>
EW (00:02:53):
Complete one project, or start a dozen?
EL (00:03:00):
In theory, complete one project. In practice, start a dozen.
CW (00:03:06):
Yep. You are at a college. But if you could teach a college course of your choice, what would it be?
EL (00:03:11):
A computational craft course, which I have taught, but I think it would be fun to do again.
EW (00:03:18):
Favorite fictional robot?
EL (00:03:20):
Baymax.
EW (00:03:20):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
CW (00:03:23):
Okay. Lightning round is over, but need to follow up on two of those lightning round questions. First, I need to know what is going on with the deli slicer.
EW (00:03:32):
<laugh> That was the reason for the one word answer, was that nobody would find out what was going on with the deli slicer.
CW (00:03:38):
Well, I will delete this whole section. The listeners will not know, but I will know.
EW (00:03:42):
Okay.
EL (00:03:42):
<laugh> I would love to know how you knew to ask me that question. But yeah, when I was an undergrad working with my- Who later became my undergrad advisor, then grad advisor, and now my boss, I did a project.
(00:04:00):
I think it was called the "Visible Fruit Project," that was based on a project called the "Visible Human Project." Where we sliced fruit extremely thinly, took lots of pictures of it, and they used it to do visualization of three dimensional objects.
EW (00:04:16):
Volumetric visualization.
EL (00:04:17):
Mm-hmm.
CW (00:04:17):
Oh! Very cool. Okay.
EL (00:04:22):
Do I get to know how you found that information?
EW (00:04:24):
The person who introduced us, Kathleen Tuite, gave me-
EL (00:04:28):
Ohh.
EW (00:04:28):
A few questions that I might share with you. There are a few more in here too.
EL (00:04:33):
<laugh> Okay. I love it. I am impressed that she remembers. Wow. Cool.
CW (00:04:39):
I know we said we were going to make the whole show about guitar. But since you have mentioned that you are really excited about drums, the whole show is now going to be about drums.
EW (00:04:46):
Right.
EL (00:04:46):
Oh. I would love that.
EW (00:04:46):
We are just going to cut the open source part, and do guitar and drums.
EL (00:04:48):
<laugh> Are you a drummer?
CW (00:04:51):
Yes.
EL (00:04:52):
Oh, my gosh. Okay. Yeah, we should talk about that.
EW (00:04:54):
I am sitting in his studio and I am literally surrounded by drums.
CW (00:04:59):
You are literally sitting on my drum stool.
EW (00:05:01):
I am.
EL (00:05:01):
Woww. I just turned 40 last week, and I have wanted to play the drum since I was a teenager. So for my 40th birthday, I went and rented a rehearsal studio and played for the first time.
CW (00:05:11):
Awesome.
EL (00:05:12):
I got super excited about it. So that is really cool you are a drummer.
CW (00:05:17):
A very exciting instrument.
EW (00:05:18):
He also plays guitar. And bass.
CW (00:05:21):
A littler guitar.
EW (00:05:22):
A little guitar. But he has a nice guitar. Anyway-
EL (00:05:24):
<laugh>
EW (00:05:25):
So I hear you make guitars.
CW (00:05:26):
<laugh>
EL (00:05:26):
I do. <laugh>
EW (00:05:28):
Aberdeen? Is that the name of your guitar company?
EL (00:05:33):
Yeah. Aberdeen Guitars. Yeah. We make vintage inspired steel string American acoustic guitars.
EW (00:05:40):
Okay. But you are also going to be a professor at UCSC?
EL (00:05:46):
Yes. <laugh> Yeah, that is right. Yeah, I just accepted an adjunct assistant professor appointment at UCSC. Where I will get to continue doing the programmatic work I have been at the Open Source Program Office.
EW (00:05:59):
But you also make guitars?
EL (00:06:01):
I do. Yeah. <laugh>
EW (00:06:02):
Okay.
EL (00:06:02):
Yeah.
EW (00:06:02):
Is that monetizing your hobby? And if so, which one is your hobby?
EL (00:06:09):
Hmm. Ooh. That is a really good question. I like that.
EW (00:06:14):
But no answer. <laugh>
EL (00:06:14):
It does not feel like hobby. Yeah. They both feel like work. They do both feel like real jobs. But I think it is fun to get to work in two different areas. Because whenever one area I feel stuck or frustrated or projects are not moving, there is always something else to go pour myself into. So I feel like they actually feed each other, having these two areas that I get paid to do work.
EW (00:06:41):
I understand that. Yeah.
(00:06:48):
<music> I want to take a break from today's conversation, and mention a resource for those of you interested in the future of a clean technology. Mouser Electronics, sponsor of today's show, has an Empowering Innovation Together hub. Where they dive into all sorts of topics like renewable energy, energy efficient systems, and sustainable design.
(00:07:08):
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(00:07:33):
Okay. Before I ask you how you got into guitars-
CW (00:07:37):
This is an engineering show!
EW (00:07:39):
So?
CW (00:07:39):
I am making fun of us. That is all. <laugh>
EW (00:07:44):
You worked on LilyTiny. Which is not the LilyPad, but something smaller. Tinier than the LilyPad. LilyTiny. How did you get started on that?
EL (00:07:54):
Yeah. I worked with Leah Buechley. Was my first graduate advisor in the High-Low Tech Research Group.
EW (00:07:58):
She has been on the show.
EL (00:08:01):
Yeah, I saw it. That is so cool. I just saw her recently.
(00:08:03):
I was in her first cohort of graduate students for the High-Low Tech Research Group. She had been working- So much of her doctorate work was on the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. For anyone listening who is not familiar, that is a sewable set of Arduino microcontrollers, that use conductive thread instead of wires to connect. And can be sewn into anything textile based.
(00:08:32):
So when I joined the group, Leah already had that body of work going. I was really interested in broadening participation in computing. Like, who is making stuff? And who feels supported and like they can be creative?
(00:08:49):
I had grown up sewing. My grandmother was a seamstress. So I grew up working a lot with my hands, doing all kinds of craft work. And started playing with a LilyPad Arduino toolkit, I guess after college.
(00:09:08):
So when I started working with Leah, I was really interested in combining education and all of the work that she was doing. A lot of which was already an education. But I was really interested in exploring parts of it that she had not gotten to yet, or that I was excited by.
(00:09:29):
One of those things was thinking about equity and broadening participation, was thinking about all the people that I wish could play with the LilyPad toolkit, and experience that joy and creativity in computing. But maybe their school did not have the resources, or their teacher did not know anything about circuits.
(00:09:48):
So yeah, that is how the LilyTiny project came to be, was Leah and I really brainstorming together. She had ideas and I had ideas, about increasing access to that sort of tinkering. And then the LilyTiny was sort of my master's thesis work. Which was making a sewable microcontroller that is pre-programmed, and way cheaper to produce. Because it is just an ATtiny microcontroller breakout board basically.
(00:10:21):
But then also developing an approachable curriculum that teachers could use with it, who did not have to know anything about circuits. I am not a hardware person, so I also learned a lot in the process of putting that together. But I had had a lot of teaching experience at that point, that I think informed that work.
EW (00:10:45):
So it is pre-programmed to flicker lights? What is it pre-programmed to do?
EL (00:10:51):
Yeah. It comes pre-programmed with basically an assortment of light patterns. So in a lot of the work we did teaching with LilyPad, the toolkit as it existed at the time, there was either we would teach workshops where participants might sew LEDs onto a bracelet or something. Lights and a battery. The lights were always on, or you took out the battery and they were off.
(00:11:14):
Or the other type of workshop might be teaching people how to write Arduino code to make interactive stuff. So I think that we were grappling with, how do you get people from one to the next? How do you start introducing computational ideas or computational thinking. Or having a conversation about what is a microcontroller, without having to require the programming yet.
(00:11:45):
I think there is still- We did not solve that problem. We did not totally bridge that gap. But it was sort of a baby step, that could be more advanced than just connecting lights to a battery. But did not require programming yet. If that makes sense.
EW (00:12:03):
Sure. You connect lights to a battery, and someone now understands that batteries provide energy. And if you connect things this way, and only this way, things will light up. So you get some creativity there, but it is just a light staying on. There is more joy to it when light is doing things.
EL (00:12:29):
Yeah. We programmed it- It is a simple program, but that different pins that you would connect to, would have different light patterns. The hope there was that you could start to have these conversations about a microcontroller as a tiny computer. And this tiny computer, somebody else already put this program on it. So that this pin makes a heartbeat pattern, and this pin makes a fade on and off pattern. If you want, you can use both.
(00:12:58):
It also introduces more room for not really error, but unexpected outcomes. So when you just have more options and you are teaching people how to do all this for the first time, often at the K-12 level, more things can happen differently than you expect.
EW (00:13:19):
<laugh>
EL (00:13:19):
Which is always a learning opportunity, I think. Right? If you are like, "Oh, well, my friend next to me, their thing is doing something different than my thing," and you are like, "Great. Let us talk about it."
EW (00:13:30):
I like this idea of there being space before you have to program it yourself, to understand that things can be programmed.
EL (00:13:38):
Mm-hmm.
EW (00:13:38):
How much do the LilyPads cost, do you know? Or how much did they cost then?
EL (00:13:46):
Yeah. Thank you for modifying that question. The market, I am sure has changed. At the time, I would say to buy a LilyPad Arduino, which was the programmable microcontroller, might be like $20 or $25. Then once you started adding on the LilyPad LEDs, those might be another couple dollars or more, maybe $2 or $3 per sewable LED.
(00:14:10):
Part of my work was the LilyTiny, advocating for that to be lower price point. So that eventually was $5, with price breaks if you bought in quantity. And then also documenting as part of the curriculum, how you could order just LEDs, like regular through-hole LEDs, and modify them to make them sewable.
(00:14:36):
That was all stuff that I learned from Leah. But being able to sort of collate and document it, in a way that teachers could go on DigiKey and not have to know anything about DigiKey except, "I need a hundred of this part number." That is it. So that kind of thing was part of it too.
EW (00:14:56):
What was your curriculum? What were your curriculum's objectives?
EL (00:15:03):
A lot of it was about sparking joy and confidence, I would say. It was not super technically advanced by the end of it. If you did all the activities in it, someone might know how to make a basic circuit, or connect a basic circuit to the LilyTiny. But a lot of it was really wanting to support people having well scaffolded first experiences with hardware, in a craft context.
(00:15:37):
So my master's thesis really focused on the idea of self-efficacy, and helping people develop this self confidence, or this concept of, "I am capable of being successful at this." That comes from a lot of different boring academic stuff, that I wrote about in my thesis.
(00:15:55):
But it comes from having somebody role model what that looks like. And having actual successful experiences, which means that you are getting that sort of difficulty calibrated to the learner. And stuff like that. So it was broader than just, "Learn how to make a circuit," I guess, was the hope at least.
EW (00:16:16):
That makes a lot of sense. You do not teach kids to color, because we need coloring books filled in.
EL (00:16:20):
<laugh> Yeah.
EW (00:16:20):
You teach kids to color, because it is a fun way to teach them fine motor control skills.
CW (00:16:27):
"Get to the Crayola mines, kids."
EL (00:16:30):
Yeah. So true. Yeah.
EW (00:16:31):
So how does this e-textile work influence what you are doing now, with open source and universities?
EL (00:16:40):
Hmm.
EW (00:16:40):
That was totally one of Kathleen's questions.
EL (00:16:45):
<laugh>
EW (00:16:45):
She did such a good job.
EL (00:16:50):
It was sort of like- This is how we all, I guess, experience life. It was sort of a wandering, next one thing at a time. Like, I was doing this work at MIT, and Leah ultimately left MIT, and our research group dissolved. At that point, I also had a lot of stuff going on with my health, at that point in my life. So I ended up back at UC Santa Cruz, because I knew that I had a really supportive advisor here.
(00:17:21):
But I was in a different departmental context. The MIT Media Lab is perfect for that sort of extremely interdisciplinary, fringe provocative work. And I landed back in a computer science department. So I still remained a little engaged in that space, but ended up exploring more like, "Okay. What are some threads of that, that were really interesting?"
(00:17:52):
The Arduino microcontrollers are open source, so I had had a lot of exposure to open source hardware. The reason I could even make the LilyTiny- Well, I knew Leah. But if I had not known Leah, the reason I could make the LilyTiny is because I went and I pulled existing board layout files, and looked at those. Then just made one that was same size and style.
(00:18:14):
So that exposed me to things that open source makes possible. Then once I was back at UCSC as a grad student, I just- Happenstance, someone asked me to help mentor a open source software contribution workshop, with students at CSU Monterey Bay. I went and just saw like, "Oh. This is so empowering for students, to be actually contributing to real software projects." And, yeah, getting to see a lot of that community values in that.
(00:18:50):
Then a postdoc. It was just luck and good timing, that the Sloan Foundation had given UCSC funding for Open Source Program Office work. And that funded a postdoc, that came to be when I was finishing my doctorate.
EW (00:19:09):
I want to open some California snobbery here. Any of the UC colleges are usually considered a little more prestigious than the Cal State, which is the California State University at Monterey or Fullerton, or a whole bunch of them.
CW (00:19:34):
SJSU, where I went.
EW (00:19:37):
Was SJSU Cal State?
CW (00:19:38):
Mm-hmm.
EW (00:19:39):
Oh, okay.
EL (00:19:39):
Mm-hmm.
EW (00:19:41):
So there is UCSC helping Cal State Monterey. It is a prestigious thing. The Monterey folks got to hang out with their-
CW (00:19:56):
Email Elecia, when you have complaints about this line of-
EW (00:19:59):
I am sorry. I thought that people in Ghana might want to know how the California school systems rank. Okay?
CW (00:20:07):
<laugh>
EL (00:20:08):
Yeah. Yeah. No. I think it is interesting context to call out. I would say the UC systems are really known for being research universities, and the CSU schools are really known for being teaching institutions.
EW (00:20:20):
Thank you. That is such a much better way to put it, than what I meant.
EL (00:20:25):
<laugh>
CW (00:20:27):
UCs give PhDs. CSU goes up to masters.
EL (00:20:31):
Yeah. But there is- You are absolutely right that there is a feeling of...
EW (00:20:38):
Affluence? Prestige?
EL (00:20:39):
Hierarchy.
EW (00:20:39):
Snootiness?
EL (00:20:39):
Yeah. Snootiness. Yeah, maybe that is it. I do not know.
EW (00:20:48):
Okay. So in that vein, you have been very outspoken and very proactive about bringing people who do not normally get into tech, at least a little bit into tech, to show them what it can be. Can you give examples of how people can do that? Or how you have done it, that maybe other people can make their own version for?
EL (00:21:21):
Yeah. I think there are so many people who all have a thousand approaches to doing this sort of work, which I think is what makes it really interesting. But I think something that is really important to me, and has just grown out of my own experiences, is the importance of going and finding out what do people even want to do with technology?
(00:21:47):
Because I think things are getting better. But I think tech has gone through periods of the people with the resources saying, this is how they think that everybody should be using technology. Or, "Oh. We want more women in tech, and they should be doing this." And then as a woman in tech, I am like, "What? No!"
(00:22:08):
So I think that with all the students that I have been fortunate to work with, what has been really most exciting to me, is seeing what excites them and what feels relevant to them. And then thinking, "Okay, how can I offer them tools towards that end?" And that is going to look super different for different types of students.
(00:22:30):
Like, I taught in rural Kentucky for a while. My students there were just demographically completely different than my students at UC Santa Cruz, or the HBCU students that I work with. So I think just being humble and listening to what people are interested in and what they want to do, is really important.
EW (00:22:52):
So in Kentucky, this was Berea College?
EL (00:22:55):
Berea. Mm-hmm.
EW (00:22:58):
The internet says it is the first integrated college in the South, and it does not charge tuition.
EL (00:23:03):
Yeah.
EW (00:23:04):
How did you end up there? And can you compare it to being in Santa Cruz?
EL (00:23:13):
Hmm. Yeah. I ended up teaching at Berea through open source work. Open source has become this thread through everything for me. But I had met a lot of really awesome faculty, who were teaching open source and had a lot of experience with that, around the time that I first became curious about that as a grad student, after having that one experience I mentioned at CSUMB.
(00:23:38):
So it was actually through that circle of professional development, that I met some faculty at Berea College. It started out as they needed a visiting instructor. But I ended up leaving my PhD, in the middle of the PhD at Santa Cruz, and going and living in Kentucky. The visiting position turned into a tenure track position. I was still ABD, meaning that I had not finished my dissertation yet. <laugh>
EW (00:24:06):
All But Dissertation. It is what PhD students have, when they do not actually have the PhD.
CW (00:24:10):
<laugh>
EL (00:24:11):
Exactly. So I was ABD. I sort of did everything out of order. But yeah, I ended up having the opportunity through my open source circle of faculty at the time. But then took it in part because it seemed like a really unique place to teach. Because you get to do really high impact work, with students from really different life experience than me.
(00:24:44):
Yeah, everything you read on the internet is correct. Berea has an endowment that helps pay for everything. Students who go there also work. It is a work college, so all the students work on campus. They do everything from greet you when you come into the dean's office for an appointment, to run the library and teaching assistants. And then they do not pay tuition. So it is a really unique place to teach.
EW (00:25:20):
When you say "teaching open source" and "faculty in open source," is that, "I am going to create my first project online and not put in copyright"? Or is that teaching folks how to contribute to big open source projects? I know there is a spectrum in there.
EL (00:25:46):
Yeah. Usually in the work that I am doing, it is- When I talk about teaching open source, usually it is people who are teaching students how to contribute to open source projects. Those might be instructor led projects. So there are faculty who manage their own open source project, that has predominantly student contributors.
(00:26:06):
In my own work, usually I am supporting students contributing to projects that are in the wild, so external facing open source projects. Another facet of that work is people who are the first one, which is teaching people how to make their own open source projects.
(00:26:26):
Here at UCSC, we do a lot more of that in the Open Source Program Office, through supporting research software development. But teaching wise, usually it is teaching people to contribute to open source.
EW (00:26:42):
Because I have whole bunch of personal repositories of varying quality-
EL (00:26:46):
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Same.
EW (00:26:47):
And they are all open source, but I would not really wish them upon anyone.
EL (00:26:53):
Yes. Yes, yes. I relate.
EW (00:26:55):
Except in my book repository. That one has some good stuff for this. But contributing to open source, the first thing you do is you their README, you fix their typos, you write a PR for the fixed README. And then six months later, they do not accept it because you did not put your comments in correctly. That is how open source works, right?
EL (00:27:22):
Sometimes. <laugh> Yeah. When I work with students, a lot of the work is figuring out where are you going to put your time. Some open source is paid. A lot of open source is not paid.
(00:27:40):
Some of the work I do with students, is helping them screen projects for like, "How are these people talking to one another? Are people responding when people submit pull requests? Are they having respectful conversation about issues?" Those kinds of things. So that we reduce the chances of pouring time into something, where it is just going to go into a black hole.
EW (00:28:07):
Do the students- You said there were some instructor led projects. But for the other ones, do they just wander around looking for an interesting project, like Audacity or Linux?
CW (00:28:22):
I would not recommend Linux as a starting point.
EL (00:28:23):
<laugh> Yeah.
CW (00:28:25):
No particular reason. No experience there. But just I would not recommend a start with Linux. No.
EW (00:28:32):
Or do you have a list of like, "These are some pretty friendly ones. Why do you not get started in this list of 25, to find one you like?"
EL (00:28:40):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. It is a good question. Different people do this different ways. Everyone who teaches open source does it differently.
(00:28:50):
For me, I tend to do a little bit of both. I let students- I say like, "Okay, why do not you go find- Go search around. Find something related to your interests. If you are into photography. Or this. Or AI." They might come back with ideas. Then we go and we look into whether those communities seem welcoming, based on some of the criteria I mentioned.
(00:29:17):
However, I do also maintain a informal shortlist of projects, that either I have worked in, or I have had students work in. Or I know faculty who have had students work in, that I can guide students to. Or maybe I know a maintainer there. Or I have met a maintainer at a conference who said, "Please send me students." So it is a little bit of a mishmash.
(00:29:40):
But there is one interesting body of work, is that the folks who drew me into teaching open source, they especially encourage students to work in humanitarian open source projects. In part because they have found, anecdotally- They are doing deeper research. But anecdotally, have found those to be places where people tend to be kinder and more welcoming and supportive of new contributors.
EW (00:30:06):
What? You mean people who are out to do nice things, are often nice people?
EL (00:30:10):
Right. <laugh> Yeah.
EW (00:30:12):
Oof! That is a shocker.
EL (00:30:14):
Yeah.
EW (00:30:15):
That is like the time I came down heavily in favor of children reading.
EL (00:30:19):
Yeah. Right.
EW (00:30:21):
Okay. Nobody needed that soapbox, but still. Okay?
(00:30:27):
So changing subjects a bit, to get a little bit more concrete. There was recently an event called "SlugFest"?
EL (00:30:34):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
EW (00:30:36):
I know that the banana slug is USCS's mascot. Having had banana slugs in our yard, I can see why. Because once the banana slug is the size of a bus, a school bus, it can take over whatever you want. So there you stupid little sparrows at Stanford! Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, did any banana slugs attend SlugFest?
EL (00:31:02):
Hmm.
EW (00:31:04):
Cardinals.
CW (00:31:05):
Oh. I see, I see.
EL (00:31:06):
<laugh>
EW (00:31:06):
<laugh>
(00:31:06):
I see. You were purposely insulting the- Got it. Sorry.
(00:31:17):
Actually the Tree is their mascot, but just not go there.
CW (00:31:21):
Okay. I do not know. Yeah.
EL (00:31:22):
What is up with that? Yeah.
(00:31:24):
Yeah, we did have- If we are talking about banana slugs being students, yes, we had many in attendance. However, your question does make me wish that some real banana slugs would come, because they would have the tiniest laptops.
EW (00:31:37):
<laugh>
CW (00:31:37):
<laugh>
EL (00:31:44):
So I would actually really like-
EW (00:31:46):
Tiniest laptops.
EL (00:31:46):
To see that. And how do they type? I do not know, but I would love to find out. So maybe we will try that next time. Yeah.
EW (00:31:56):
You could capture a few just to-
CW (00:31:58):
No. Come on. You are not going to- I guess you could do some paper craft, little origami-
EW (00:32:04):
Origami little laptops and an ATtiny to make the thing blink occasionally.
EL (00:32:08):
Yeah.
CW (00:32:09):
All right. You have sold me.
EL (00:32:10):
<laugh>
EW (00:32:12):
Okay. Sorry. Open Source SlugFest. No slugs were harmed.
EL (00:32:17):
No slugs were harmed.
EW (00:32:20):
Well, what is it though? <laugh>
EL (00:32:21):
Yeah, so Open Source SlugFest- I was going to leave you hanging. This is an event we have. One of the things that our office thinks about is community. In thinking about what does an Open Source Program Office do or should do, one of the things that has been fruitful for us is bringing people together, who are already doing open source work, or want to be doing open source work.
(00:32:44):
The Open Source SlugFest is a spring event. This was our second year. That my colleague and our executive director, Stephanie Lieggi, spearheads. Which is meant to bring together our on-campus people, who are interested in or already doing open source.
(00:33:01):
It was kind of like a collection of short lightning talks and intros, about just cool projects people are doing. The people who came were a mix of undergrads, graduate students, faculty. It was sort of a whole spread. Everyone just gets together, eats falafel, and talks about open source.
EW (00:33:21):
Did you have a good time?
EL (00:33:22):
Yeah. Yeah. I love these events. Because I love talking to people about open source. My favorite thing is when a student walks by and they are like, "What is this event?" And then you get to say, "Well, do you know what open source is?" And they are like, "No!" And then you sort of lead them on the like, "Oh, well. Do you think you use open source?" And they are shocked to find out, "I do?" Then to find out that they can contribute to it. I really love getting to have those early conversations, is really fun for me.
CW (00:33:56):
It is funny, because we have been steeped in it so long, that the idea that somebody does not know what open source is, it is like, "What? How can you not know?"
EL (00:34:04):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
EW (00:34:04):
There is !!Con that was at UCSC a few times. Although I think it is no longer being held.
EL (00:34:12):
Right.
EW (00:34:14):
Is it similar to that? Or I guess it is a lot shorter. SlugFest is only one night, not a whole weekend.
EL (00:34:21):
Yeah. Ohh. That is a good question. I only got to go once to !!Con and I loved it. It was so much fun. But I would say, yeah, our events so far- The Open Source SlugFest is just an evening, so it is really more of a catalyst type event. To get people meeting new people, and thinking about how they might get more involved, or connect with someone new.
(00:34:46):
But we do have some longer events. We have a fall event, that sometimes has been a full day Symposium event. That is more like talks and panels with both people on campus, and industry collaborators, and foundation collaborators.
(00:35:02):
We also just hosted our first UC Open event, which was a University of California wide open source conference. That just happened this spring for the first time. That was super exciting. We are expanding Open Source Program Office work to several additional UC campuses. This was the first chance that we got together, to do something as a multi-campus team. But different vibe, I would say, than !!Con. Although we do some student events that feel a bit more like that.
EW (00:35:35):
There is a certain chaos to the !!Con-
EL (00:35:39):
Yes. Yeah.
EW (00:35:39):
That is really fun. So Open Source Program Office that- You have mentioned "office," and that is the full name of it. Is that different from Carlos Maltzahn's Center for Research in Open Source Software? The CROSS thing.
EL (00:35:57):
The OSPO kind of grew out of Carlos's work. So yeah, the Center for Research in Open Source Software, CROSS, had been around for maybe ten years or something. That was Carlos's Research Center. That had been supporting a lot of different research centric open source work.
(00:36:18):
I came on right as the OSPO started, so I cannot speak as thoroughly to that as Carlos. I know you have had him on the show. He could really speak in depth about his vision for that.
(00:36:30):
But that was supporting a lot of graduate student and faculty research in open source. That also included things like incubator fellowships, that funded some graduate students and postdocs.
(00:36:42):
Then the OSPO grew out of that, because he and Stephanie Lieggi had been doing a lot of work that started to look like related. But a little different, a little more programmatic. How does it fit? That dovetailed with the time when academic OSPOs are starting to become a thing. Like the Sloan Foundation has funded several of them, including ours.
(00:37:06):
Yeah, so the OSPO grew out of that work, and allows just a broader scope of things. Like student events and conferences, and things that are related, but not quite what a research center does. So they both still exist, and just reach different goals.
EW (00:37:30):
Cool. Okay. Here in Santa Cruz, we have Santa Cruz Guitar.
CW (00:37:39):
Company. I think that is what it is called.
EW (00:37:39):
Santa Cruz Guitar Company. Yes. That is led by Richard Hoover. He has a big idea about open source guitars, and telling people the secrets to making his extremely expensive and super awesome guitars.
EL (00:37:56):
He does! Yes.
EW (00:37:59):
This is my transition now. We go to guitars. Tell us everything.
EL (00:38:01):
<laugh>
CW (00:38:01):
<laugh>
EW (00:38:01):
It was a good transition!
EL (00:38:04):
It was a great-
EW (00:38:06):
Do not waste it!
EL (00:38:06):
It is a lovely transition!
CW (00:38:07):
"Tell us everything," is a difficult interview question.
EW (00:38:09):
Oh. Okay. How did you get into making guitars?
EL (00:38:13):
Yeah. Let us see. During the pandemic, my best friend started building hand wound pickups for electric guitars. Which are the things that go under the strings on electric guitar, that translate the string movement into sound. We had actually been building pickups together for about two years. Then he started working full time in lutherie, doing repair work and restoration work, and built his first acoustic guitar.
(00:38:45):
Yeah. I got pulled into it, through him. It started out as like a, "Oh. It would be really helpful if somebody could hold some stuff sometimes, when I need to glue it together," and, "Could you just come and hold this thing?" And then once I was there-
EW (00:39:06):
And then you bought him a C-clamp? <laugh>
EL (00:39:06):
Yeah. Yeah. <laugh> It is different.
EW (00:39:10):
Yes. It is totally different.
EL (00:39:13):
Yeah. Then once I was there, it was just like, "Oh. We work really well together." I have worked a lot with my hands. I have done some woodworking before, and loved building stuff. We just started playing around with it, and found that we really loved building guitars together.
(00:39:29):
He had already done an apprenticeship. I went and sought out my own apprenticeship experiences in guitar building, and then brought those back to the work that we do together.
EW (00:39:39):
Where do you get apprenticeships in this? How much do they cost? How long do they take? And are they super fun? They sound fun.
CW (00:39:45):
When can I start?
EL (00:39:49):
<laugh> Yes. They are super fun.
CW (00:39:49):
Are you hiring? Sorry.
EL (00:39:53):
We are not hiring. I wish. Yeah. Well, for him, his apprenticeship was- He works at Sylvan Music.
CW (00:40:00):
Oh. Okay.
EL (00:40:00):
He runs the repair shop there. But he learned from the original owner of Sylvan Music.
EW (00:40:07):
Christopher is so excited, because he needs to talk to your friend.
CW (00:40:10):
No. I am sorry, this is totally out of band, but I have three basses that I need to get fixed.
EL (00:40:14):
Oh, yeah. Bring them over to Sylvan.
CW (00:40:14):
I keep meaning to go over to Sylvan, and I keep not doing it. It has been like a year. <laugh>
EL (00:40:20):
Oh, Okay. Patrick is the best. He will set you up with whatever you need. He will solve your problems. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So my friend Patrick runs the repair shop there now.
(00:40:31):
I think lutherie is so cool, because there is so much generational knowledge. With a lot of handcraft, or things like that, I think this is true. But. Yeah. So he learned- That was his path, was working that job and learning from somebody with years of experience.
(00:40:49):
Then for me, I did two things. I went and paid to go spend a month in somebody else's shop, doing my own acoustic build, start to finish with them. And gosh, I do not remember how much it cost. It was maybe like four or $5,000. It was like a chunk of money.
(00:41:10):
Some people go to school. There are lutherie schools you can go to. I, at this stage in my life, could not really swing that, but sounds fun.
(00:41:20):
And then I also did a fellowship. There is a group called "Women in Lutherie" that is a Facebook group with other online presence. They run some years a fellowship program.
(00:41:32):
So I got to go work with this amazing boutique electric guitar builder in Tennessee. I spent, I guess ten days or two weeks with her last year, getting to use a pin router and all this really cool stuff that I do not get to do in the acoustic work that I have already done. So that was all, and that- Like, people were just volunteering. I had to pay to go visit her and she is donating her time. But that was a really cool experience too.
EW (00:42:04):
I do not know how to phrase this, without sounding like a complete jerk. It is not my intention. Why do people buy your acoustic guitars, instead of- Give me a guitar brand.
EL (00:42:20):
Like a Martin?
EW (00:42:20):
Like a Martin.
EL (00:42:21):
Yeah.
EW (00:42:24):
That was the whole question. Why yours, instead of Martins? Other than handcrafted, and people can get what they want.
CW (00:42:34):
Pretty big thing that people want. <laugh>
EL (00:42:35):
Yeah. It is true. Yeah.
EW (00:42:38):
Except for the big things that people probably want.
EL (00:42:42):
So I do not know, because I am not like our buyers. But I can speculate why I am drawn to things like what we do. You can buy an instrument that is a really well-made instrument, that is a machined instrument. Lots of people are making beautiful CNC assisted or built instruments, that sound great, look great.
(00:43:08):
I think that a lot of people who buy handcrafted instruments, really value that a human has made, or a few humans have made, this thing that becomes a part of their creative work. I take pride on the fact that everything that we build is unique. We have not built two guitars that are the same. Even if we tried to, they would not sound the same. Like wood, all wood is different. It is an organic material, and the way things come together are different.
(00:43:41):
One of my friends says when people complain about wood, he will be like, "Go talk to the tree. You have a problem with how the guitar is coming together. Take it up with the tree."
(00:43:50):
There is a lot that is just different every time you build an instrument. So I think it is really cool to have this object that can breathe life into creative work, that also has its own story behind it. I think people like that. That is something I learned from Richard Hoover from SCGC is, they are so good at telling a story about their instruments. They get-
EW (00:44:19):
The stories!
EL (00:44:21):
Yeah! They get wood from these very specific relationships that they have cultivated over generations.
CW (00:44:28):
"Here is this wood that we found at the bottom of a bog! It has been there since the Pleistocene, and we are going to build a guitar out of it."
EW (00:44:34):
"Come to Santa Cruz for the trees and the ocean and the boardwalk and the people watching and the beautiful vistas and the bike pass. But do not forget to go to the Santa Cruz Guitar-"
CW (00:44:49):
You can just walk in?
EW (00:44:50):
No. No, you need an appointment to go on this tour. But he shows you everything! And then he picks up different pieces of wood, just out of this giant pile he has. And he plays them with just a tap. And suddenly you can hear the wood sounding different.
(00:45:12):
Then he tells you this story about how this one came from the largest- What sounded like very cancerous, but that is not how he puts it- A tree that is the one of its only kind. And it is huge and it is weird. And this one comes from the bottom of the bog. And this one came from the Pleistocene, and it has been buried since...
EL (00:45:32):
Yeah.
CW (00:45:32):
<laugh>
EW (00:45:34):
You get to see all these machines. And he does not mind if you start the whole thing asking five million questions and just continue the whole time. Ask me how I know that one.
EL (00:45:44):
<laugh>
EW (00:45:44):
He was very nice about the, "Oh, yeah. I do have another question." And he- Yeah. Anyway.
EL (00:45:50):
Yes. Yes.
EW (00:45:53):
Going on that tour really made me realize how important the wood is. How do you source the wood?
EL (00:45:59):
Yeah. People have all different ways of doing this. Some of our wood, we order from suppliers that a lot of luthiers order from. Although I do always like to pick. Some places do not let you see the wood. They will just be like, "We are going to send you some mahogany." That is a no for me. I want to see the exact piece of wood that we are considering purchasing. Yeah, we order from certain suppliers.
(00:46:25):
We also work with local people. We have a local friend who does a lot of woodworking, custom cabinetry and furniture and things like that. But he also will go and get the local redwood that fell in the storm. Take it to his kiln and dry it, and resaw it for sets of wood.
(00:46:47):
So for instance, I have a- We call it the TinyTele, because I have small hands, and only play short scale guitars. I am building a scaled down Telecaster, with my mentor from the Women in Lutherie program, that is out of a local piece of redwood. I think that that is really cool, when you are able to make those connections, and use wood like that.
EW (00:47:11):
How does redwood sound, versus mahogany? Is there a-
CW (00:47:16):
Well, that is an electric guitar, so it makes less difference?
EW (00:47:19):
Oh. Oh, oh. It is electric. Okay. I missed that. Sorry. Yeah, electric, the difference, it is more in the pickups.
EL (00:47:27):
Yeah. I think wood still matters, just less, like Chris was saying, in electric guitars. But yeah, I think mahogany tends to have a really mellow sound. I think redwood sometimes can, but-
CW (00:47:45):
There are definitely redwood acoustic guitars I have seen. Yeah.
EL (00:47:49):
Yeah. SCGC, they build beautiful, beautiful stuff. Some of it with redwood. We have not built a redwood guitar yet. Acoustic. We want to, but- Yeah, different wood definitely has different characteristics in how the tone comes out, combined with all the other things. Right? But, yeah.
CW (00:48:06):
You mentioned when we brought this up, that the confluence of your technology career and this side career, they are kind of different approaches. One is very technical, one is very creative. Was that a deliberate decision? Or do you feel like you need to have your feet in both places?
(00:48:29):
Saying as someone who is kind of wobbling between the two realms. I am curious your thoughts on how you approach it. Like, when I stop working for the day, I do not usually want to play with computers.
EW (00:48:48):
Wait a minute, wait a minute. When you start working for the day.
CW (00:48:51):
When I start working for the day, I do not want to play with computers.
EL (00:48:53):
<laugh>
CW (00:48:53):
That is a relatively new development. I guess where I am headed is, is one the refuge from the other? Or do they feed off each other in some way?
EL (00:49:07):
Hmm. I am curious to hear how you experience this also. I think for me, I was definitely much more immersed in creative things when I was in high school. Playing music and visual art, studio art. That is where all my energy went.
(00:49:25):
And then, I do not know, I turned 18. I graduated high school. I had this idea that I had to figure out how to pay my own bills and all that. Went to college. Was confronted. I paid for a lot of my college education. In a sense it felt like- Once I figured out that computer science could be fun, because it is like a bunch of puzzles, I was like, "Okay. Maybe this is a way that I could make money, that I do not hate."
(00:50:00):
Then it took me a while to find my way back to the creative stuff, to be honest. There was a long period- Like when I was at MIT, I got to work on all the craft stuff, because the work I was doing with Leah, which was really, really cool and fortunate. But I also did not really play music during that period in my life. Because there was just a lot going on, and I was developing a lot of that technical skillset and experience.
(00:50:22):
So I feel like it took me some time to get back to the creative part, and see that I really thrive when I feed that part of myself. And that also there are ways to make money as a creative. It looks different, and I think we do not- Those paths are not always visible to young people, or at least they did not feel visible to me.
(00:50:43):
I really felt like the messaging I got from my parents, even though they are very supportive people, was like, "You need to get a real job." So I think there has been some sort of fun full "circle-ness" of being like, "Well, guess what, Mom and Dad. People are paying a lot of money for our guitars now." But I do not know.
(00:51:08):
But in the course of that journey, I also fell in love with aspects of the technical work. So I do not think I could give that up either now.
EW (00:51:17):
What aspects of the technical work do you most appreciate?
EL (00:51:21):
I think there are pieces of it that feel deeply creative still, like trying to solve a really hard problem. And thinking outside of the box how to do that. And how to remix different tools. But probably the human aspect is the part that has kept me.
(00:51:36):
I really almost left computer science and academia at a certain point, because I just did not feel like I belonged or welcome. It was really when I found open source, that is so community centric. Then just a really different culture, that I decided to stick around. Then really saw the beauty in that, and wanted to share that with other people.
EW (00:52:01):
You talked about computational aspects to creative crafts. I think a lot about that, because when I do origami there are computational aspects. And the open source project that I am most excited about working on, which I have not, is the origami simulator from Amanda Ghassaei. I am a little hesitant because there is some pretty deep math in there.
(00:52:35):
How do you encourage students, or how would you encourage me, to participate beyond the fix typos level? I am actually okay at that now for open source, but I never really get into it. Maybe that is because it is my job, and I do not want to work on my job after I get paid to work on my job.
EL (00:53:02):
Yeah. Well, one way that I have shepherded students into that space, is using open source projects or software, as a way to grow their own understanding of some of these concepts. This maybe does not apply exactly to your circumstance, but when I was teaching at Berea College, I did teach a computational craft class.
(00:53:28):
It actually fulfilled a- What did they call it? Something reasoning credit or requirement, whatever that students had to take, because I taught them how to program in the Processing programming language. Which is a lot of working in a coordinate system and thinking about- We, in that course, would think about visual art as things that you could generate with math.
(00:53:51):
So we would generate beautiful fractal patterns and things like that, and then figure out how to output those on a pen plotter or 3D printer. So I think that things like that can be an interesting way to encourage people to start playing with the math or the technical stuff, without it feeling like, "Oh, I am not a math person," or, "I cannot do math," or whatever.
(00:54:18):
Like I failed calculus at UCSC. I think it takes finding the right context. The first time I took calc at UCSC, I failed it. The second time I took it was with a different instructor, who was teaching integrals and everything, in the context of calculating volume of bundt cake pans. That blew my mind. All of a sudden I was like, "Okay. Okay. Taking notes. Taking notes. How do I adjust my recipe?"
CW (00:54:45):
<laugh>
EW (00:54:49):
Applied calculus is so much easier! It is the same numbers. It is the same equations. But once you apply it... Yeah. Yeah.
EL (00:54:58):
Yeah! Yeah. It sounds like that resonates.
EW (00:54:59):
And bundt pans.
EL (00:54:59):
Yeah <laugh>. Totally. Yeah. I tend to be a believer that there is nothing that anybody, any individual person, cannot understand. It is just about finding the right context for your own learning in that space.
(00:55:16):
Open source has helped me a lot with that, to also embody that myself, and get over feeling like I need to be an AI person to work on AI, or a security person to work on security. So. Yeah. Not that there is not concrete technical learning, but I think a lot of it is just mental game.
EW (00:55:40):
One of the difficult things with working on open source projects is the- And we talked to Joel at RTEMS about this. That you do not know what is happening with it. People fork your repo, and then they take your code to space, and you only hear about it because they mention it in their footnotes on a paper.
EL (00:56:00):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
EW (00:56:03):
You actually did a little bit of research about measuring the impact of the LilyTiny. I was amused, because you did it partially based on how it was sold. Can you talk about that a little bit?
EL (00:56:18):
Yeah. When I was working on my dissertation research- I mean, part of it came out of we learned that I really like doing applied work. I like working with students and teachers, and how am I going to get a dissertation out of this?
EW (00:56:35):
Because of the All But Dissertation for a little while.
EL (00:56:37):
Yeah. I was doing all this other stuff. But people were like, "Okay. Sit down and write some papers." And it just ended up being the case, that ten years had passed since we released the LilyTiny. A lot of other life had happened. Leah and I had both left MIT and gone onto other projects.
(00:56:54):
So the project really had just been existing out in the world for that time. And to be honest, I did not know like, "Did anybody ever buy that thing?" It was really cool that it became a product when I was doing my master's, but I did not know.
(00:57:10):
Became a product at SparkFun?
(00:57:11):
Yes, at SparkFun. That is right.
EW (00:57:12):
You were not getting any kickbacks, so you really did not know how it was doing.
EL (00:57:15):
I really had no idea. Exactly. Yeah. I had no idea. It ended up being this really fun thing to work with my eventual UCSC PhD advisor, and then to reconnect with Leah. Leah was able to get data directly from SparkFun. Sales data for that ten year period. Then I got to do research on that and figure out-
(00:57:40):
It raised a lot of questions. It is not perfect research. Feel free to, listeners, critique how I went about that work. But we really tried to figure out, if sales data is all that you have, how can you even speculate?
(00:57:56):
Some of the things, the ideas we came up with, were like, "Okay, well, if someone is purchasing the board in bulk, they are probably not making just a bracelet for themselves or a project with their kid. There is a good chance that they are teaching a workshop or working with a school district." So that was one aspect of the work, was finding that people did frequently buy the board in quantity.
(00:58:20):
And then I did also do some sort of qualitative- Again, imperfect shot in the dark. I went and I scraped Twitter at the time, to see what people did with it. And found everything from somebody whose daughter had made a tutu for their dog, which is incredible, to people who were teaching workshops at libraries and schools and things like that.
(00:58:45):
So yeah, it is hard to say for sure, but we know that over 80,000 units of that hardware sold in that ten year period, with a couple different programs running on it. And a lot of people were buying it ten at a time.
EW (00:59:04):
Could you get any information from scraping the educational infrastructure, or the resources you had put together?
EL (00:59:13):
No. That- <laugh>
EW (00:59:16):
You were not at MIT anymore?
EL (00:59:17):
Well. Yeah, I was not at MIT anymore. And, yeah, I do not know. I do not think I knew where I was going in life. I was one step at a time.
(00:59:29):
Looking back, I am like, "Why did you not put some kind of tracking, right, on downloads?" I just did not have the forethought to- I had no idea that anything would happen with the project, let alone that I would want to know how many people downloaded the resources or anything like that.
EW (00:59:47):
Yeah, it was something you did and it was cool. You gave it to the world, and the world took it, and you never really knew. I wonder how many of those things are happening now. Things that I will look back and think, "Well, I really should have tracked that," or "I should have promoted it better."
EL (01:00:06):
Yeah.
EW (01:00:07):
I do not know. Okay. What kind of guitar are you working on now?
EL (01:00:13):
<laugh> Right now we just finished a L-00 model out of Brazilian rosewood, which is our first Brazilian guitar, which is exciting. That is a very fancy wood that people like.
EW (01:00:27):
Yeah, that is pretty.
EL (01:00:28):
And right now, later today, I will be working- Going into the shop to work on an OM model acoustic, that I will be taking with me to Japan later this year, to bring to a shop of someone we know there.
EW (01:00:44):
Konnichiwa.
EL (01:00:45):
Yeah. <laugh>
EW (01:00:46):
It is all I know. Emily, do you have any thoughts you would like to leave us with?
EL (01:00:52):
I am actually still thinking about this comment you made a moment ago about what are you working on now and where will it be? Yeah. I do not know. I think it is just cool to think about looking back on the things you have done, and I just hope that people take risks and try new stuff. Because I feel like I have done a lot of reckless things in my career, that people told me not to do <laugh>.
(01:01:18):
It is neat to have these conversations and get to think about where different projects ended up, and feel really lucky for that.
EW (01:01:27):
Well, are you going to close the recklessness and say, "And it all turned out fine," or are you just going to leave us with, "I did some reckless things. I am not in jail anymore."
EL (01:01:40):
<laugh> It still feels a little reckless. Maybe what I can say, is that my gut has always led me in really exciting and beautiful, fruitful directions. I think it is only recently that enough has come full circle, for me to trust that. So, I do not know. When I work with students now, I try to encourage them to chase after those gut feelings. See where they go.
EW (01:02:06):
I think that is good advice. I think there have been too many times that I have been, "No. I have to stay straight and narrow." And I wonder what those paths would have led me to, and I do not think it would have been bad. It might have been different. But not bad.
EL (01:02:20):
Yeah. I think for me, I spent years being really stressed out about what an academic should be, and trying to keep my guitar life separate from my academic life. It feels special now to feel like I do not care anymore, maybe. Or that, yeah, there are all these different ways to be an academic.
EW (01:02:39):
You can be both.
EL (01:02:39):
Mm-hmm.
EW (01:02:41):
Two things can be true.
EL (01:02:43):
Totally.
EW (01:02:44):
Our guest has been Dr. Emily Lovell, computer science researcher and educator at UCSC, and luthier at Aberdeen Guitars.
CW (01:02:55):
Thanks Emily.
EL (01:02:56):
Thank you so much.
CW (01:02:57):
Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Kathleen Tuite for the introduction and some excellent questions. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for their support. And of course, thank you for listening.
(01:03:12):
You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on the embedded.fm website, where you can also find show links, show notes. Links based on this show.
(01:03:24):
And the newsletter you can sign up for.
EW (01:03:26):
You can sign up for the newsletter. You can sign up for Patreon. You can give us a buck on Ko-fi. There are all kinds of stuff there. It is like we spend time and effort on that. You would be surprised.
(01:03:36):
And now a quote to leave you, from Augusta Savage. "If I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work."