Page 107 – Mechanical Sympathy

Ergo-Cycle

Looking at a better fit of bike (at 6″3′ I’m a bit of a giant on the ’07 Ninja 650r), I came across Cycle-Ergo, an online simulator that shows you the shape of any number of bikes and how your frame sits on it. This is an interesting exercise even if you aren’t looking for a new bike.

The FAQ explains that the basic rider model isn’t perfect, but

does show you lean angles and other ergonomic considerations in riding. The feet on the floor option should be taken lightly (the FAQ explains there are too many factors – rider weight, thigh size, seat shape,etc – that can change it), but it still gives you a rough idea.

If you want to be a lean into it sport rider, then this will show you just how uncomfortable you’ll be looking cool. If you are looking for a long distance multi-purpose (as I am),then this will show me which bike offers me the most natural/classic riding position.

There are a lot of options in the menus to the right, so be sure to play with them. After you put in the rider height and inseam you can modify various parameters of the stock bike (handlebar locations etc). It also shows you variations in angle due to seat position. At the riding school they encouraged me to sit as close to the tank as possible, so I tend to sit forward in the seat.

I looked up my current Ninja (an ’07 650r). The bike feels too small for me, and it looks it in the diagram.

I don’t find the wrist position overly uncomfortable, even though I am at quite a forward lean angle. What I do find uncomfortable are how high the pegs are and how bent my legs are on it. At 75° it’s one of the most extreme angles I found in the knees.

My feet are flat on the floor with bent knees. The low seat means I can stand up at a light with inches of light beneath me. It’s a short bike I have to fold myself onto. When at speed I’m catching a lot of wind in the face, even with the aftermarket windshield on it. I have to lay on the tank to get out of the blast.

One of the bikes I’m considering is the Triumph Tiger 800xc. The seat height on this bike is much (much) higher than the Ninja, and the steering seems to be closer and higher, offering a less stretched forward lean.

Unlike the backward bent legs on the Ninja, the Tiger offers me a more neutral almost 90° leg angle as well. It looks like it might be a promising fit.

The Kawasaki KLR650 is also short listed as a possible contender. It too has a tall, upright stance with a more neutral riding position. At half the price of the (nicer) Triumph I’d also be much less worried about dropping it, which would certainly happen at some point if I’m exploring less paved roads.

As a bike I’ve actually sat on, I have to say this looks pretty close to accurate.

I ran the simulator with a number of other bikes just to see what various styles looked like. The vague body shape reminds you that this is a rough simulation, but if you’re considering buying a bike why not compare it to what you’re on now or what you think would be your preferred style of riding.

I wish I’d have known about this tool when I was first looking for a bike, it would have given me some stats to consider.

The Ducati all-rounder adventure bike – the seat is supposed to be horrible

I’ve always thought Gixers were cool… painfully cool

Living out my Mad Max fantasies on an Interceptor… worse lean, better on the knees than the Ninja

I was considering this bike last year, but the blandness described in reviews put me off

I’ve sat on one of these too – it felt small, it looks small in the picture, but classy!

Another rider at work has one of these, loves it, nice riding position!

The simulator lets you put a passenger on too – this is the Tiger with Max on the back

Here is what I’d look like if Ewan McGregor was my best friend…

The Norfolk Motorcycle Museum

We drove past the entrance twice. Finally, up a gravel drive we found the entrance to the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum. This was an impromtu stop between various tourist related day trips. I’d seen the sign and wanted to go for a wander. No one else wanted to come in with me, so they stayed in the rental car while I wandered into a warehouse full of bikes.

One of the things you notice in England is just how divergent the technology is, and this museum was no different. The bikes were odd, different, not a cruiser in sight, no Harleys. It was decidedly un-North American.

Many of them I couldn’t identify at all, some were so old as to be virtually steam powered. You know you’re far from the familiar when you don’t even recognize some of the manufacturers.

The building was a working restoration shop with a big warehouse space behind. Bikes in various states of repair were lined up at the entrance, the finished machines were perched up on a two layer rack that ran through the whole warehouse.

You can poke around the bikes and the father/son duo who run the museum are happy to talk about any of the examples on display.

I had to rush the walkabout because the family was waiting outside, it would have been nice to wander around for an hour taking some good closeups.

If you’re ever in the vicinity of North Walsham in Norfolk, England, drop by the museum. It’s a strange trip down someone else’s memory lane.

Like what you see? Many of the restorations are available to buy.

Mainly British bikes, but some others can be found
in the rows

A mighty Vincent!

“Made in England” – getting harder and harder
to find made in not the far East any more

Many parts in the process of being cleaned up…

Ghost In The Machine

Watching how people drive cars is a study in their true nature. In a car, much like being online, people feel anonymous and powerful. They are less fearful of physical response and more likely to be adversarial, aggressive and greedy. After driving a couple of thousand miles in the past week down and up the crowded east coast of North America I’ve a clearer idea of just how confused we are in this era of human/machine symbiosis.

Internet Disinhibition

Last night as we pulled into a parking lot after a long day of driving, a man backed out of his parking spot without so much as a shoulder check and almost t-boned us. When we yelled for him to watch out he became incensed and started screaming back about how it was our fault that he almost ran into us.

This was an interesting reaction. Had he walked into someone on the street he probably would have apologized and backed off, but in his car he immediately went on the offensive, like a small dog barking at someone from behind its owner’s legs.

People do this online all the time, it’s called flaming or trolling. They shoot their mouths off without fear of consequence. Technically this is called the Online Disinhibition Effect; an abandonment of social restrictions and inhibitions because people feel insulated by their anonymity online. They experience the same false sense of empowerment while driving.

There seems to be a dishinhibition effect whenever people identify themselves through technology. This is very odd because human beings are almost always the weakest link in any vehicle being driven or computer being operated. That they hide their inferiority in the power the machine is truly perverse.

We drove miles out of our way to get off the crowded,
angry interstates

Driving out of Virginia Beach on the worst designed freeway I’ve ever been on we were stuck in stop and go traffic for the better part of an hour while people blasted up the clearly marked merging lane to pull in at the front of the line. Their behavior was what was causing the slowdown, though they were the ones most angered by it.

The police ended up pulling up to the front and ticketing people who were driving up the shoulder to further slow down the flow of traffic. People weren’t just making use of the merging lane, they were pulling out into it to pass everyone else and further compress traffic. In their cars these people are immediately willing, in front of a large audience of their peers, to ignore everyone’s best interests in order to serve their own ends. I recently saw a link to self-driven cars and how they will be arriving soon; they can’t arrive soon enough. Human beings aren’t capable of acting in everyone’s best interests, machines are.

I’m about to return to the classroom and teach students how to make effective use of technology in their lives, but there is virtually no examination of the effects on human psychology by these technologies. I see it every day when students do inappropriate things online and are then astonished that they are reprimanded for it – they are used to online spaces being a free-for-all, the wild west. Where they actually are is in a virtual place that is recording their every action.

Whether it’s on the road or online we increasingly identify our selves and our abilities through the machines that enhance us, but the motive power of a car or the communication reach of online tools are not ours to claim, we are merely the ghosts that inhabit and direct these machines, and many people do so poorly without any idea of what they are, how they actually work, and (as a result) how to make them work to best effect.

Humility, civil interaction and a clear sense of our limits seem to be the first victims of our increasingly virtual sense of self. That so many of us, especially younger people, are wallowing in these delusions does not bode well for the future. Technology should offer us insight into our selves, instead we are using it to hide our deficiencies.

Closer To Genius

I just spent a brain busting three days wandering around Amsterdam. It was my first time there, and like all travel to new places it pushed my thinking in a number of ways.

Mastery is hard work

The Van Gogh Museum is one of those must visit places while in Amsterdam. The main thrust of the current display is his development as an artist. This has strong undercurrents for anyone in education, teacher or learner.

Like all original thinkers, Van Gogh didn’t suddenly wake up one morning full of genius. Genius is often presented to us as an unattainable brilliance, something normals can look at with wonder and awe. There is a hidden assumption of a magic, genetic advantage in this presentation of genius, but it isn’t true.

Vincent’s early career was full of formal and informal learning opportunities that he took and walked away from. His early work is rough, even poor, but he improved with practice. Van Gogh learned what he needed to learn and then moved on, usually completely out of sync with whatever the curriculum or his classmates were doing – it was a self directed curriculum. I imagine he was a failure in every way on his report cards. However formal education helped or hindered him Vincent moved on, a self-directed learner voracious for an opportunity to learn more about his craft.

Self directed learning is a key aspect of mastery. Walter Gretzky once responded to a reporter who described Wayne as a natural born talent. He said this was nonsense. Before school every day, rain or shine, Wayne would be out with a hockey stick in hand. Every day after school until it got dark he’d be out with a stick in hand; mastery is never a gift.

Any talent you’re born with isn’t mastery, it’s probably something simple, like being ambidextrous. Real craft mastery is only earned through the old adage: blood, sweat and tears.

The only thing that people like Van Gogh, Gretzky or Einstein bring to their mastery naturally is a fascination, an inborn love of their area of study. That atypical fixation allows (forces?) them to ignore just about everything else in order to hone their craft in a way that the typical, disinterested, distracted, minimally engaged human being never will.

It’s vogue these days to assume that everyone is a genius is some way, they just have to find out what it is. After visiting Vincent’s museum and immersing myself in his work for a few hours I couldn’t help but think that true genius is something well beyond what most people are capable of. Most people don’t have the will power or focus to master simple skills (driving, reading, writing) let alone the relentless drive to open up new areas of human endeavor. Real genius also leads to emotional crisis and a ghettoization of the person struck by it; others find your obsessive fixation frightening. That so many geniuses suffer the fate that Vincent did isn’t a surprise. That we admire genius from a safe distance isn’t a surprise.

What I did take from Vincent’s development as an artist is that his mastery was a function of an unyielding and constant development of his skill. If you want to develop mastery in anything, anything at all, a genuine relationship with your craft is what you want to cultivate. If you’re able to nurture and maintain that intimacy with your craft you’ll find mastery.

The trick, if you’re not a natural obsessive, is not to fall out of love with what you’re learning.

In a classroom, demonstrating a genuine affection for the material you’re teaching and encouraging this in students might be the closest many of us ever come to genius. It’s a shame that education doesn’t recognize a love of a subject in learners and teachers alike. We make gestures towards the lifelong learner but do nothing to acknowledge its presence in students or teachers. A living fascination with your learning is the surest path to the most effective, most enthralling kind of education (and life) you could hope for, and, as Vincent will tell you, the only road to mastery.

Note:
I was in Amsterdam after returning my Mum’s ashes home. Her suicide was on my mind as I wandered through Vincent’s work. She too was an artist, a talented one, and her work often consumed her. I’m still not sure whether to take Van Gogh’s meandering trip into madness as a warning or a comfort. In the end we all die, it would be nice to think that our fixations, though they may eventually claim us, would also allow us to create some beauty to be left behind in the world.

One Lap of Japan

7940kms… according to Google Maps

Another dream trip.

I’ve done most of the north end of the main island in a car, and traveled as far south as Kyoto by train, but the motorbike offers a new way to see the archipelago.

Google maps suggests that this can be done in 6 days and 16 hours, that’s at a continuous average of 50kms/hr 24 hours a day. Assuming we’d want to sleep and eat, the old two to three tanks a day might be the way to go.

At two tanks a day (about 600kms depending on the bike), we’d be back to Narita in just over thirteen days. Call it two weeks of steady riding.

Being what it is (a volcanic island chain), there aren’t many straight roads in Japan, especially if we want to stick to the coast.

When you’re riding around volcanoes,
the roads get creative

The epic ferry ride to Okinawa in the south is almost a day in itself. The riding would never be boring, and it would be miles away from interstate mile making. Japan is a crowded but super organized kind of place, you can get places as long as you avoid the major urban centers.

Late summer would avoid the tsuyu (rainy season), so landing in Narita in the last week of August, then head north, do Hokkaido, then down the Japan sea coast to the south end of Honshu, a long ferry ride across the East China Sea to Okinawa, two days circumnavigating the island before taking a slow boat back to Honshu. The last leg would be up the Pacific side of Honshu, through Kyoto and Tokyo and back to Narita.

It’d be nice to do the trip while riding the Japanese bike industry. Split into four sections, we could ride Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha for a quarter of the trip each. That way we could meet up with various clubs and groups without being manufacturer specific. Riding all four big Japanese manufacturers also lets us experience the fantastic bikes Japan makes.

Two weeks, some serious mileage, from a tropical 26 degrees above the equator in Okinawa (roughly in line with central India) to a northern 45.5 degrees at the top of Hokkaido (right next door to Russia), we’ll experience everything from palm trees to snow. It is entirely possible to climb five thousand feet if we’re working our way through mountainous areas and wind up at sea level again by night fall.

Two weeks would be intense, but that’s kind of the point. The route picked out avoids any repeated tarmac other than driving on and off one ferry. Every mile would be new as we circumnavigate these beautiful islands.

13 days

July 2-18th I was commuting on the bike every day from Elora to Milton. The ride took me on country highways, country backroads, down the escarpment, on a 13 km blast down the 401 to James Snow Parkway, then 5 kms of urban riding in Milton.

At 70 kms a day each way of riding, I piled up over 1820 kms on the bike in three weeks. I’d fill it up every 3rd day, costing about $16 and change and it would take me 190 or so miles (305kms) before the fuel warning light came on (it’s a 15 litre tank). I never tested the reserve too much, I think, conservatively, I can get 220 miles to a tank before things get frantic. Based on the amount I was putting in and the miles on the odometer, I was getting about 58mpg, which is impressive because it’s hard not to wind this bike up, it likes to go. 58mpg when I’m spending an inordinate amount of time in the top half of the rev range is impressive.

The coldest morning had the air temperature at 12° Celsius (53°F), the hotest ride home had me at 37°C (99°F). On those cold, rainy mornings I had the long gloves on and ended up stopping to put the rain jacket on just to warm up. On the hottest day (today), I road home in shorts and the jacket open.

Daily riding has made my shifting smoother, and I don’t think twice about riding in urban or highway settings. My first couple of goes on the 401 were tentative, by the end of the week I was getting on the highway the same way I do in a car – looking for the left hand lane. The Ninja goes from almost nothing to two miles a minute in an astonishingly short time.

This morning I rode out into ground fog, with the tops of trees and old, stone farmhouses peaking out of the mist. You can smell a river and you cross it. You can smell hot brakes on the 401 from trucks before you see brake lights. Riding is such a sensual experience. I think the quiet time without radio or music, just the sound of the wind and the distant thrum of the Kawasaki twin was centering. I got to class (computer engineering) every day oxygenated and ready to go. I came home tired but clear minded.

1820 kms, 1131 miles… after doing this I think a couple of tanks a day would be a good way to measure a long trip. At just over 300 kms each tank, 600 kms a day and I’d be ready to put my boots up and relax, having been through the places instead of driving through them.

The daily commute demystified the experience of riding for me. I found ways to stretch (stretching my legs out on the frame sliders is a nice way to get a breeze up your pant leg), and standing up on the footpegs every once in a while cools off your seat and thighs.

With familiarity I’ve found that the Ninja is a very forgiving, but very capable bike. I’ve no regrets that it’s my first bike. A more relaxed (ie: upright, proper, not cruiser) riding position would be nice, but I found that I fit the Ninja better and better as the commute went on. I always looked forward to throwing a leg over it, and when the weather was bad (almost zero visibility rain one morning), I had no regrets from riding it down. Every day was an adventure.

The Stable

My dream garage always had to be kind of huge to fit all the cars I wanted in it. With the new bike
infatuation I get to dream of a more condensed (and plausible) dream garage. It’s still got room for the necessary evil (I live in Canada, some days a bike just won’t do it), so I took the two car garage and doubled it to make a workshop in the back.

The car garage is separated by a dividing wall with a single garage door in it to allow larger vehicle access into the workshop. There is a half size roll up door on the side for direct bike access. The garage is wired in, but also has a turbine and solar collection. In the winter this runs the high efficiency heater in the workshop. In the summer is pushes a small, high efficiency air conditioner into the workshop. The goal is to keep the workshop above freezing in the winter and below 25 degrees in the summer.

The battery packs and computer controls for the wind turbine and solar inputs are upstairs, as are the heating and cooling units, both of which feed into the workshop directly. There is also room for storage upstairs. Access is made through a pull down staircase in the back of the car garage.

The workshop has space for 5-6 bikes, though I think I’d keep 3 working bikes on hand, and one project bike. I’d also keep a shed at the side for a couple of dirt bikes.

As for what I’d fill the workshop with, at the moment I’m all about the British bike. A Triumph Street Triple, a Royal Enfield Classic with a sidecar and a Triumph Tiger 800XC would be what I’d have on had to regularly ride. The other side of the shop has the half car/half bike Morgan3 Trike.

Royal Enfield Classic with sidecar

Triumph Tiger 800XC

The Tiger is a great all rounder that can get you anywhere. A nimble adventure bike that also loves to carve up roads, this’d be my go to for long rides.

The Royal Enfield Classic with sidecar is a classic with modern technology. It would let me share the open road with my son in a way he’d truly dig.

Triumph Street Triple

Morgan 3 Wheeler

The Triumph Street Triple is a naked bike built for the road. It’s fast, responsive and sounds wonderful. This would be my dedicated road bike.

What I don’t show in the plan is the project bike. This would change quite frequently, depending on how much work the bike needs. At the moment I think I’d like to bring an ’80s Honda Interceptor back from the dead.

Honda VFR 750 Interceptor

The idea behind the dream garage is to have a workshop for bike maintenance and restoration. I’ve really enjoyed restoring the 650r Ninja I’ve got now, and I’d like to keep doing that kind of work. To that end I think I’d include a bike sized bench style spray booth, as well as a compressor in the workshop. I enjoy both mechanical as well as body work, and it would be nice to have the space and tools to do both well.

10k

I looked at the odometer today as I pulled into the parking lot after my forth straight day of commuting and realized my ’07 Ninja has finally hit the 10k mile mark. The commute got her there, it’s about 70kms each way with the first two thirds a country ride through the Niagara Escarpment, then an 11 km blast down the 401 before it slows down going into the GTA, then another couple of kms in Milton. It’s a nice ride. Less so when it’s pouring buckets of rain out of the sky, as it has for the last two days, but those were memorable rides too, even if uncomfortable, and a bit treacherous.

This weekend the Ninja gets round two of its spa treatment, a coolant flush and change and a cleanup after all that wet riding.

I was at Two Wheel Motorsport the other day getting oil filter and gaskets and the older guy behind the counter was talking about how it isn’t about how you do the miles, but about getting the miles in. I’m beginning to see his point. Wheelies and high speed corners are all well and good, but there is something to be said about being the saddle and putting miles behind you while you’re out in the world.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a movie break with the family before coming back and finishing putting the bike back together again. I got the coolant flush done (though what came out was about as perfect as I’ve ever seen used coolant), cleaned the engine while I had the fairings off, and stripped the black off the tank. The goal is to get the bike roadworthy for another week of commuting to Milton… that’ll be another 700kms behind me.

Coding Is A Hands-on Skill

Originally published on Dusty World in July, 2013 – WIRED caught up to me in 2017 with The Next Big Blue Collar Job Is Coding.

I’m frustrated at how computer science seems to own coding. In Ontario it is now an orphaned subject unto itself. There is no way someone without a degree in computer science can teach coding, though coding isn’t computer science any more than auto mechanics is theoretical physics.

This reminds me of the Big Bang Theory when Leonard’s car breaks down. He asks, “does anyone here know how internal combustion engines work?” and all the the scientists in the car laugh and nod. He then asks, “can anyone here fix a car?” And all the heads go down and they say no.

Computer science is the theoretical end of a spectrum of coding that goes from hands-on hacking through professional coding and into academic research. That only math quants who were looking for a second teachable pretty much like their first can teach it greatly limits its appeal to the general population.

Code.org agrees with me, as does Steve Jobs, as does Codeacademy, Khan Academy and many other online groups. These organizations are proliferating because we are not offering our students meaningful access to computer programming.

If we’re going to treat coding (as a part of digital fluency in general) like other basic skills (literacy, numeracy), then we need to free up coding from the bizarre limitations placed upon it by the Ministry of Education and computer scientists.

Can you imagine if all the autoshop teachers had to be theoretical physicists or engineers before they could apply that knowledge to repairing vehicles? It’s a ridiculous idea, yet that is precisely what we are doing with coding in Ontario schools. There are many ways a teacher could approach computer programming, limiting it to an extreme, theoretical end of the spectrum doesn’t respect the variety of people who get into coding, and it doesn’t offer students that variety in the classroom. Coding isn’t a theoretically biased branch of knowledge, in fact I’d argue that coding has much more in common with stochastic technical skills.

We are killing a vital 21st Century fluency stone dead with arbitrary limitations. Coding should be a technology course, it should be hands on, and it should work hand in hand with engineering (because that is what it is and what it does). That it is artificially separated into a null space between mathematics and computer studies helps no one other than old school computer scientists, and there aren’t many of them. The irony is that many of the math teachers with comp-sci as a teachable don’t want to teach it because they never kept up with it other than as a theoretical/academic course of study in university; they don’t love coding, it was simply an easy way to extend their mathematical degree work.

Computer science, like theoretical physics, is a vital subject, but it’s highly specialized and how we teach it should recognize that. Coding is a skill anyone can learn, and should.

Changing My Mind About PD

OISE’s Senior Computer Tech AQ

I’m about to head into the senior part of my computer technology AQ with the University of Toronto. My instructor is an outstanding fellow, we’re in a new school with a fantastic lab and if it’s anything like last year I’ll expand my knowledge in a subject I really enjoy both professionally and personally.

I’ve found myself at times falling in to the negativity that many teachers feel around PD, but it’s easy to get excited about this course. I could get all long in the face about how much it’s costing me, how many weeks of my summer I’ve got to spend doing it, why I have to take an AQ in this subject when I see so many other teachers with no background or qualifications in the subjects they teach not doing it. I could wallow in the negativity, but I won’t because I don’t want it to spoil the learning opportunity. Learning dynamics are so closely tied to the emotional approach of the student that I’m making a conscious choice not to. This has left me wondering at all those teachers who hate on PD.

I work with a number of teachers who don’t do the AQ thing. They think it’s a waste of time and money, they think it’s just a money grab with no real value. These teachers often end up teaching subjects they have no background in. Over time they learn how to teach the subject because they are smart, capable people who want to do the job well, but they consider teacher training to be beneath them.

I first came across this attitude in educators in teacher’s college and I found it demoralizing and unhelpful. I didn’t sign up for teacher’s college to go through the motions just to get an empty qualification. As I began teaching I found that cynical negativity surrounding professional development. PD was treated by a surprising number of teachers as a waste of their time, something beneath them.

Teaching is one of those jobs that demands a degree of arrogance in order to survive. If you’re timid or unsure you’ll get eaten up by a difficult class. Confidence, even over-confidence, is an important survival tool. The spill-over into our own learning is distressing though. Teaching is a challenging discipline, if anyone thinks they’ve got it all figured out they are kidding themselves. By turning that self-defensive cockiness on our own learning we effectively limit our ability to perform our work well.

I’m not a fan of mindless optimism. An accurate assessment of what is going on is more important than mindless positivity. I see a lot of management types who do this and it drives me nuts. The easiest way to lose me as a team member is to ignore facts in favor blind positivity, but that doesn’t mean blind cynicism is any better, in fact it’s worse.

A teacher who won’t be taught is about as useful as a mechanic who can’t drive or a doctor who ignores health; in both cases these are people are can’t make use of what they claim to be experts in. A negative approach to learning affects a teacher’s ability to teach. Beyond the professional problems, teachers who are bad students are hypocrites; they berate a student in class for doing what they themselves do at PD. Unless you’re able to model productive learning you aren’t showing your students what you’d like them to do, and you probably don’t have a good grasp on what it is you’re supposed to be doing in a classroom.

Those teachers who don’t make productive use of professional development, including taking AQs, do themselves and their profession a disservice. Those administrators that trivialize teaching by ignoring qualifications aren’t the kind of educators I enjoy working with. There is something to be said for objectively taught professional designations. They certainly have more credence than someone simply giving a teacher a class because they like them or think them capable.

So, tomorrow I begin a two hour daily commute and eight hours a day in class for three weeks to study a subject I worked in professionally for years before I became a teacher. I could turn my nose up at it, trivialize the experience, make it less than it could be, or I could approach it the way I’d like a student to approach my own class, with curiosity, humility, positivity and integrity.

Next time you find yourself dismissing professional development, consider how changing your mind might make you a better learner and teacher. And if you’re avoiding an AQ because you think it beneath you, perhaps you shouldn’t be teaching that subject in the first place. It’s hard to argue for teaching as a profession if it doesn’t have credible, valuable training that is a requirement for the job. It’s even harder to understand a teacher who refuses to be taught anything.