Artful Innovation: Bill Kendrick's Impact on Digital Creativity with Tux Paint

Artful Innovation: Bill Kendrick's Impact on Digital Creativity with Tux Paint
Episode 6

Join us in this episode of "Classroom Dynamics: A Teacher Podcast"! In today's discussion, we chat with code-writer, digital artist, and creator, Bill Kendrick, the creative mastermind behind the beloved software sensation, Tux Paint. Discover the inspiring journey of this visionary developer and educator who has dedicated his life to making art and creativity accessible to children around the globe. From the inception of Tux Paint to its enduring impact on young minds, we'll explore Bill Kendrick's passion for fostering creativity, his commitment to open-source principles, and the profound influence he has had on the world of educational software. Tune in to uncover the remarkable story of Bill Kendrick and his contribution to the world of digital art and learning through Tux Paint.

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Chapters

• 2:18 Tux Paint Overview
• 5:56 The Benefits of Using Tux Paint
• 8:42 Bill Kendrick, the Creator of Tux Paint
• 34:23 Input/Output Game with Bill

Transcript

0:00

cord button, but I won't add this part and I'll just just say hi. Welcome to my closet. It's that I'm in my basement. So it all works. I get better. The good acoustics is not next to the washing machines on like a four hour clean cycle. And then the next room over is a bunch of kids playing. And yeah, I hear you. I'm pleading. It's so funny. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I have used and I'll probably mention this at some point or another, but I have used Tux paint. I don't even know how many years now. And I teach media arts technology. I'm in New York City. I see kids. I used to see kids from kindergarten through fifth grade. Now it's first through fifth grade. And I still use Tux paint as my first grade. I think I use that probably from what would be next week, starting with starting next week through probably maybe January. And every every week I, I personally introduced how to, you know, double click. We practice that because they've never done that before. And, you know, every week we go through another tool and practice that. You know, I see them for about 45 minutes or so and build on it every single time. And by the middle of the year, they're ready for anything pretty much that I throw at them. And I think it's, it's really because of Tux paint. So it is awesome to talk to you. I have no, I've texted, texted tweeted pictures from our school account for years now that you guys are probably, um, I, do you do that? Are you in charge of that? I'm on the X manager, I guess now. So yeah, so you've probably actually retweeted or liked some of the things over the years that we've posted. And I tell parents all the time, maybe they asked me, what's the best first program, you know, to, to let them use it home. And the first thing I'm out, I don't even flinch its Tux paint. So really awesome that you created that because it's made my life a whole lot easier. That's for sure. Right on. So, um, yeah. So anyway, so I'll, we'll get started. Um, I'll just do like, I've already recorded the introduction. So we're totally good with that. So I'll just, uh, introduce you and then we'll just start questions and answers. Okay. Now at, at the end, um, I have a couple of questions that I did not send you. I call it a game called input output, where I'm just going to ask you questions and ask for your first, whatever comes to mind first. So, all right. I'll try my best. Very easy questions. Don't I? I'm caffeinated. So I'm ready to go. Awesome. All right. So give me a second and I'll do the intro. It's my pleasure to welcome Bill Kendrick to classroom dynamics. Hi, thanks for having me. It's, it's such a pleasure to have you. I, I have to tell you that, I've been using TuxPaint for years with my kids, my school kids. My own kids too. They've used it as well. But the kids in school, uh, kindergarten kids, first grade kids, it has been such an impactful program for them to use to get started in using computers every day and granted their, of course, born into this stuff now, whereas you and I probably were not. And it's just an amazing tool for them to use. And I appreciate it because of all the work that they do that, that you've already put into that, that they're able to do because of that. And it just, it really makes, um, teaching a lot of fun. Cool. I'm glad. So let me ask you this. What inspired you to develop TuxPaint? And how did you envision it would be as of in today's world? Like, how did you envision it? It was, it was, it's something that you thought would be popular in schools. Did you think it would benefit them creativity with creativity? I'm going to start this whole question over again because that was horrendous. I was very tongue twat. I never get tongue tied, but that one actually got me. I'll start that one over again. So what inspired you to develop TuxPaint? And how did you envision it would be so popular in schools today? Did you, did you think that children would be using this for educational experiences and purposes? So it's, it's funny. I was part of a Linux user group back in the late 90s is when it started 1999. I had just gotten into Linux and I had been writing games kind of in, in college on like the salaris, like the unix work stations, things that I would never be able to afford at home. And then I discovered that Linux existed. So I got into that. I didn't, I didn't like the alternatives. They were either not as good or too expensive. Um, and in running that club, uh, one of my friends, he, I've told the story a million times. He had, uh, two children that were four and seven at the time. And you know, I, I had done some talks at the club on GIMP, which is kind of like the Photoshop of open source. And he said, are there any kids programs? Because I mean, GIMP is hard for adults, like I can't imagine giving my four-year-old is. And I'm like, ah, sure, I can write something. I figured it'd be like a weekend or two project. And that was, uh, 21 years ago now. Um, I didn't, I guess I didn't expect it to blow up like it did. I thought I'd have this little niche in whatever Linux users were out there. I really hoped at the time, like, oh, I want Linux to become a big thing. I was very open source proponent. I was, you know, trying to get people to use Linux in schools. Um, but, you know, I figured that the bigger names out there, like the kid picks is and so forth would be, you know, the ones that normally people would go to. Um, and I kind of lucked out at one point, um, when Apple switched from Mac OS to Mac OS X, what do you call it? Um, all of a sudden, kid picks didn't work. So all these teachers were scrambling, oh my goodness, the school upgraded everything and now I can't use the tool. And word got around real fast about, about my project, which had been ported because of being open source to Windows and Mac and a bunch of other random different things, little handheld, pdas and so forth at the time back then. Um, so, so yeah, kind of, it kind of like spun out of control in a sense. Um, but, you know, I, I always hoped it would be, you know, well, well received. I put some thought into the design. I tried to keep it real simple. I tried to keep it, um, not real in your face, like, not super extreme looking. I didn't want to kind of condescend the children. Um, so I think, I think it's benefited from that. And it's kind of funny because nowadays I'm, I'm much more active on social media when it comes to touch paint. And I'm seeing these to me, because I'm old kids who are in their teens and twenties on Twitter talking about and reminiscing or using it, not always ironically. And some of them are doing some incredible work. And, you know, sometimes, you know, a person will look at it and go, man, why does that look like it's from the 2000s? And like, people would jump in and say, don't change anything because there's a huge man in nostalgia. It definitely has that like 2000 Mac OS 10 aqua style candy bright colors, gem looking thing, which I do kind of look back at sometimes I go, yeah, that's maybe a little too too much, but no, nobody wants to change it really. I so I gotta tell you though, it that's, I think that's what gets the kids so into it. I think to just the design of it, the look of it, they don't, I don't think they're looking for, you know, fancy, schmancy, you know, over the top kind of stuff. And I appreciate it because I use it as my first program to teach, you know, my first graders how to use a computer. So all your icons, all the way, it's just the design, the layout, what it does, clicking, dragging, hand-eye coordination, all of that stuff combined does what I'm trying to do, which is to teach them how to use a device, whether it's a computer or, you know, an iPad or things like that. So I appreciate that. And I think that's what does make it so popular. Excellent. Yeah, as somebody who's been using computers since the early 80s and had a particular point in time, like the Mac OS System 75 KDE 3, like that to me was peak. I love the UI, I love the way things looked, since and everything's gotten real flat. So I actually did one time a, kind of an April Fool's post of, you know, here's the professional version of Tux-Pay and it was just boring looking, just all the icons were flat, all the graphics were flat, flat, flat, flat. And it's, you know, it's a joke and some people I think maybe think, oh, maybe that would be good. Oh, that is awesome. But yeah, that's great. You know, it's the one thing I think I like the most about it. Again, besides it being so simplistic, the fact that even kids at home, you know, parents at home, they can download it. I know they've told me this, that they've downloaded it on their phones and their iPads and their computers at home. So anything that I'm doing now then extends into the home and there's that, that, you know, their school home connection that, you know, I don't know if you even know, know that takes place, but it does. And I think that also helps in teaching kids how to use the computer and then the parents coming around and showing them a thing or two as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And that's another nice thing about open sources. You know, I could just one day say, I don't care anymore. I give up, I'm not doing this ever again or hit by bus or who knows what, it's not going to go away because I'm gone and it's not going to go away because, oh, now there's a new version of Windows, now there's a new version of Mac people will be able to keep it going. You know, it's not going to get stuck in any, in any particular place and just, you know, with or on the vine. So that's wonderful. Something I've always been curious about is, do you know this? I don't know if you know the numbers, approximately how many times has it actually been downloaded? Do you have those ideas? I've looked at the source forage numbers and that's only one set of numbers because who knows how many other software downloads sites out there exist that have mirrored it or like a Linux distribution, they have it just internally and just say install this thing and it just goes and gets it for their repositories. But I know at the source for project, it's been millions of mills of mills. I haven't even looked recently, but it's been millions and millions, which I try not to think about because that's really mind-boggling sometimes. Ever I mean, think about it, even if it was downloaded 10,000 times, you know, I think that's a lot, but yes, millions, whoo, that's all. You start thinking like, that was as big as the city I grew up in. Okay, that's as big as San Francisco. That's a state, you know, that's a country. That's wild. That's amazing. And there's always going to be a little kids. There's always new users. I'm telling you, I use it every year to introduce and it has not failed me once. I've been teaching, doing media arts for what now 15 years and 16 years. It's just, I'm telling you, it is my go-to, the kids love it. I love it. I have not changed the, that is the program I teach to introduce computers. Nice. Yeah, and I realize that a lot of teachers and parent, little teachers, especially out there are, you know, they're, they're, they've set it up. They're ready to do it. And that's when I'm very careful to, if I add any new features or change anything, I make it simple to disable the new stuff or, or keep it simple for the little kids, not, quote, unquote, move the cheese around too much and make it where if you had a curriculum that you created around it five years ago, it's going to still work. There might be some new features that have been added since, but you can easily ignore them or turn them off or whatever. So I try, try to be kind of cognizant of that. That, that's a good, I'm glad you said that because it's a good segue into my next question, which was, you know, when you were designing it, when you were actually we're creating it first, or even now lately, you know, what kind of challenges have you encountered when, you know, creating that, that, that kind of platform that you know, it can go either way and kids, you know, could get, you know, a little distracted or, or upset if something changed, like what, what, does that all play into the whole package? Yeah, I think so. For me, some, some of the bigger features that we added that were ones that I probably pushed back more on and part of it had to do with keeping the interface simple, but also not wanting to overcomplicate the code and, and, you know, being lazy, it's a side-bretched, right? But I benefited from volunteers working on it, was the labels feature and that's, that's the, the, we had the text feature where you could add text, text, text on the screen and it gets splatted on the, on the canvas and then you could scribble over or do the effects on it or whatever and teachers basically demanded, we need a way for the kids to go back and edit it or move it around or change the color or whatever. So that, that's where that feature came from. So that's why it's, that's why it's kind of, it's, it's a little bit of an oddball feature. It interacts a little differently than anything else in, in the program. And, and, and I've had people ask about doing kind of the same thing with the stamps. And I've thought about it. I think I have a ticket open for that, but I'm not, I'm not sure that I'm going to go that far because I, I try to focus on, on the fact that this is for little kids and there's a lot of people who are older who are like, oh, it'd be great if it did this. And I'm like, well, that's cool, but I think you're old enough to, to graduate to the professional like adult tool now. Now, isn't that amazing though that, you know, what your side, little side project has become and how teachers using it and saying, well, now I would love to do this because I see that potential. I see what I could do with it. Or if I, if it did have that feature, this is what I could do now. How awesome is that for you? That totally is. Yeah. Because, you know, when it, when I've worked on educational kind of software, and this is basically the biggest and most successful and most complete one that I've worked on, it's always been, well, this is, this is fun, but I'm not an educator and like back at the time, I don't have kids, you know, so I don't really, I don't really know for sure what is going to be good. So a lot of it was kind of like thinking back to me as a kid and of course, that was all old 8-bit days. Or I, I've often mentioned how the original pom-pilot, if we can call it that, the pom-o-s devices back then, the simplicity of those and the turn it on, turn it off, everything is back where you expected to be interface. That was something that I baked into this, even like the early T-vo, the way the T-vo worked and how simple it was. I kind of took those things into mind and that's kind of how I designed it. I wanted it to have that feeling of, it's just something that works and there's no technicality about it. There's no file dialogues or, you know, dragging from external things to get it to do stuff. It's its own little kind of enclosed sandbox. It can kind of talk outside a little bit like you can export things now and so forth, but that was not, that was never really the intention. It was, it was something that you just imagine your computers and appliance and all it can do is tux paint. That's what tux paint satisfied in the beginning. So that's amazing. So I mean, like even open source software, like tux paint has significant impacts on accessibility. What factors went into your decision to make tux paint an open source application and how is it contributed to the programs widespread adoption in an educational setting like a classroom? Well two things. One, the open source obviously, yeah, it makes it, it makes it freeze and, as in price, freeze and beer. So the, these to say, freeze and speech, freeze and beer. So the, the fact that it's freeze and beer, schools can use it. They don't need to pay for it. That is a huge benefit. But the fact that it's open source, not only does that allow contributors to work on it, but I think they, they feel safe doing so. They feel like if I contribute to this thing, it's going to remain open and free. And I'm not just giving my work to some random guy named Bill who's going to go squander someday and decide, you know, and the project or whatever. It's, it's always going to be there forever basically. And it would not be where it is right now without all the contributions from literally hundreds of people, a handful of whom I've met a few I knew beforehand, mostly from that Linux user group of middle, but like otherwise is just people all around the world that I know their names. I probably do not pronounce their names, but another names sometimes I don't. Sometimes I just know their email because they don't, they're just, they're just an email address or a nickname or whatever. But yeah, it's, it, to me, that's really weird. I, I would love one day to do a world tour, just fly around the world and meet all the people, but it's, it's going to be impossible. They're just too many of them, you know. Have you ever thought about, or did it ever cross your mind when it started to get, I don't want to say too big, but big or where you did have to rely on other people to help contribute to edit and change and modify, did you ever think of, of doing a web based version of it? I've, I thought of web based versions and I think these days it's possible. I'm, I'm going to go on a complete random tangent. There's, there's a, an old game on the original PlayStation that I really like called wipeout, which is a, you know, fast-paced techno music racing game, basically, futuristic thing. Somebody has basically, the, the source code was apparently leaked and they got it where you can run it in a browser. I literally was in a web browser running this thing that was a PlayStation game 20 years ago. And I'm looking at that. It's all 3D and, and whatnot. And I'm thinking like, yeah, with, with the kind of things that, oh, just a standalone web browser could do, yeah, totally be possible. There's, there's, there's a process of getting it into that format, which I haven't had the time to look into. I've started a few times and it was one of those situations where I go, okay, I should do it this way. And then five years later, I'm like, okay, maybe I'm ready to do that way. And people say, no, no, no, that's not the way to do it anymore. There's a new way now that Google came out with or whatever, you know, so I have never, I've never had the time to do that. But, but again, it doesn't have to be me if somebody is really interested in doing that. Have at it, you know, that would be pretty cool to have the ability to have it downloaded onto a device, but also if you are out and about and you just wanted to, you know, access the program itself just to play around just to draw just for fun. Yeah, I would love that. Yeah, it's not too big though. It's not as huge for me. Yeah, like the end, the Android port, I had nothing to do with it. I don't know, I wouldn't know the first thing about how to build it. It's all para and and and some other folks that that and that actually took quite a bit of work to kind of bring it up to a newer version of kind of underlying libraries that I've finally accepted now we're using all the time. I'm, that's the other thing. I'm always big on backwards compatibility. I mean, TuxPaint ran on Windows 95 until a few years ago when we finally said, okay, those are so old and dead and it's beneficial for us to move on. But for the longest time, it was like it is so simple that yeah, if a school or somebody's got a just throwaway computer and it's running this ancient thing and it can't run anything newer, it can store on TuxPaint. I might not run it very well, but it can still run it. But yeah, like the Android port, the iOS port exists, but that one's actually not an official one. That was kind of a third party took the source and decided to go with it and I've said, okay, that's okay for now because we don't have our own official version yet. And I think a lot of a lot of that has to do with kind of the hoopsie need to go through with Apple to actually get something in the app store that none of us really want to own yet. That's an ice thing about open source on Linux and Windows and stuff. You just go, we've built it. Here's a copy of the binary. You could just download it off our website or FTP or who knows what and not worry about it. But then you have these weird ecosystems where you have to go through certain channels and get approval and have somebody own it officially and so forth. That makes it a little bit more difficult. But even the iOS one is out there and it's again, because it's open source and they're able to take the code and do what they needed to to get a throne. So I gotta tell you, even with touch screens today, you know, forget about just iPads, but iPads obviously first, but even touch screens on PCs and Max now does help, especially with the kids in drawing it almost gives them they could use a stylus they could use their finger it gives them almost more of a realistic feel. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm jealous because I don't have a touch screen. I have a very, very old external USB wake home that I plug in every once in a while and that's when I can maybe draw a little bit better. But yeah, being able to draw the screen would would be fantastic. I don't have a tablet myself. I've got my little Android phone and it's all very small and my eyes are not great, but it's it's fun to toy with sometimes. But yeah, I see some some of these I've mentioned these kids that I see on Twitter and I look at them like, how on earth do you make that? How did you draw that in touch screen? And they go, oh, I've got a 24-inch touch screen tablet laptop. I'm I'm I don't even know those things existed. I mean, you've got like this absolute massive professional probably cost thousands of dollars device and you're running to expand on it. That's how that's how it's amazing. I've seen people use it on kind of those those I'm not sure how to describe it like the projector screens where you can Oh, the interactive whiteboards. Yeah, interactive whiteboards. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I've seen that. That looks really cool. I actually do use that in in my class. I have a 75-inch interactive white panel and I use that as incentive and for the kids who are really doing nice work or behavioral wise, I will invite them to come up and you have to see their eyes light up when all of a sudden they go from, you know, their their compact screen in front of them, which, you know, it's it's a nice size to a 75-inch. We're like, wow, you know, like I get to draw on this now, you know, it's pretty cool. You have to stand on a stool like this shorter. No, you could you could drop down and yeah, but it does work. They love it and you know, again, because they're they're using their finger or they can pick up a stylist and and really there's this giant canvas, you know, that that big white space that's in front of them, they love it. They love getting lost into that. They love incorporating the tools, the magic tools. I save that for one of the last ones and sometimes they find it on their own because they are pretty good, but I save that for one of the last lessons I do because they get so into just the magic tools alone. The magic tools are like the best thing on the face of the planet when we get that. So, uh, nice. Any special updates that are being worked on that you can share with us or any sneak peeks into things along those lines? No, I I as we had our um, 20th anniversary birthday last summer, last June and I wanted to make sure we we had a new release out. So, I made sure everything was all all the those tied and whatnot. And got that out and then like I was kind of on a roll and I just kept having ideas and I kept going in the shower and like watching the water review. Let's go down the I'm like, oh, what if I try to do something like that? I never got that one working, but I did I was just brainstorming constantly and it was a real nice break from the kind of more stressful, dryer day job work. So I was just we just cranked out so many releases in the last year. Um, and the latest one I think was, oh, was it may? I don't remember anymore. I can't remember anymore. Um, and right now there's been almost no activity. The main activity we've had is a bunch of translation updates that some people have been catching up, but there's like almost all the documentation is in French now. Um, just got a bunch of Portuguese updates today. Um, but I've, I've I'm taking a breather for now. So nothing new, nothing big and new to to announce now. I think, um, one of the next features, uh, that I'll probably tackle that is it a more complicated thing and a lot of it has to do with the UI is, um, people have requested a lot of people requested. Again, these kids on Twitter, um, the ability to change the size of brushes. We recently added a way to change the spacing of the brushes with a little meter at the bottom. So you can have a little dotted lines and whatnot or make them real thick next to each other. Um, and somebody said, well, I don't like that. I only have the the brushes and those sizes on the screen. I want to be able to make that circle be really big or that flower be really big. Um, so that's that's one of the big ones I'm gonna have to tackle, um, as a major feature enhancement. But, uh, yeah, for a lot of this last year, it's bill going crazy adding magic tools basically. And I said, I'm kind of, I wonder what the other developers think of me like, Oh, God, what is he doing now? That's the best place to add things. I gotta tell you. I know I said it right, but the kids, they, the magic tools is it really is magic for, for lack of a better term. They just, they, they really do utilize them and they, they, you have to see sometimes the way, just the way they think they're, they're thinking process. I, you know, I'm going to use this particular magic tool with what I drew because it works, not just because. And it really does spark creativity. It really does push their thinking. And even their communication because once one kid is doing it and someone sees, now it's, well, how did you do that? You got to show me how to, and these are first graders, you know, they're seven, you know, and they're, they're really amazing with the communication and teaching each other. That's awesome. I've had, I've had absolutely that question come up. I'll look at something on Twitter and they'll say, I made this in touch, but I go, no, you didn't. What? How did, how did you do that? And they'll, they'll post a video or they'll explain exactly their steps. I go, wow, you can, like, they do that. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can make a pretty realistic looking starfield. And it was just they spam it with noise and then they do the contrast thing and then they just have a couple of steps that they, they figured out. One of them, it looks like you're looking through like a macro lens at like some water droplets or something. I'm going to go, how did you even do that? Like, you didn't draw that. And they said, no, I just did this thing over and over and over again until it spread out. And I go, wow, I never, I never tried clicking it more than a few times. Look at that. Isn't that amazing? And to me, it's like, some of the stuff is things I didn't write. A lot of its stuff, where I don't quite understand the math, but I got it to work. And it's, it's just really fascinating to see what people can make, can make it do that. I never expected. And or maybe didn't intend. So yeah, that's, that's fun. And that's what's going to probably continue to happen where people start to play around and experiment and try and all of a sudden it's like, okay, I guess because I've actually seen some of the pictures too online and they look realistic some of them. They really do. They look like someone took a digital picture using their phone or their or camera, whatever. And it just has a very realistic look to it, some of them. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's one I got the, the idea that was one of the things that I did recently was I went through and I interviewed a number of these artists that I found online and, and I'm like, I'm fascinated. Like, I know it's a little greedy of me, like, but I want you to spend some time explaining like, who are you? How did you, like, how did you get into this? And some of these people are like, a lot of them are, you know, 20 something, some of them are close to my age, some of them are teenagers. I made sure they got parent approval to send me their responses and so forth. Um, like, how do you find it? How do you get into it? Why are you still using it as, you know, not a five year old or whatever. Um, what's your go to tool? Um, what are other kind of artistic stuff to do? What other hobbies do you have? Like, I wanted to like, who are these people? Because all I see is icon, weird name, photograph on Twitter or drawing, sorry, drawing on Twitter. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I'm very interested. Like, I have this opportunity to figure out like, where have you come from and how did you figure out how to do this stuff? So, so that was a lot of fun. And they all loved seeing each other's responses to, which is cool. I think more times than not. I see, hey, does everyone, anyone remember this program for when they were in elementary school and I'm in college now and look what I just created? I see, you see that time and time again. Yeah, amazing. We have a couple of minutes left. We're going to play a game called that I like to call input output where I'm just going to ask you a question. Just, you're just giving me the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay. If you get garbage, if you get garbage, you're getting garbage, garbage, you're gonna get good stuff. Yeah, it's what's coding right here, right? Favorite app that's on your phone, it can't be touch screen though. Favorite app that's on your phone that you can't live without? Podcast at it. Oh, that's a good one. I like that. I'm always with the headphones on. Cooking dinner because I can't hear anything else of the fan and stuff on. So yeah, favorite tool in touch screen. You have to stump me. I did stump you. I think I just stumped the creator of touch screen. Oh, yeah. I made it probably depends on the day of the week. Boy, like the one tool you just you find yourself going to all the time. I guess any of the things that mess with the colors, like the negative, the invert, those kind of things where you can take a picture and just like, photocopy X-ray, whatever, how about those? Works. Favorite feedback that you've ever received from someone who's used touch screen. Oh, man, you stumped me again. I've had some stories, I think a couple times from people who, basically they were having a real bad time of their life, maybe with health or something, and they used it as an outlet to relax, to forget about cancer or something, for example. And I've had a few of those and that brings a tear of the eye, you know, like, oh, I'm helping. It's not just having fun, but I'm actually mental health helping somebody somehow. So that makes me happy and proud. That's inspirational. That's fantastic. Best piece of advice that anyone ever gave you. This is going to sound horrible, but, um, but right before my kids were born, another parent said, you're going to want to kill them. Don't kill them. I have two kids by the way, I understand exactly what you're having. Success is always good to have, but what's one failure that you've had that people may not be aware of? related to tux paint or I could be anything. Well, have I ever failed? No. I guess I'm, so I guess to get personal, and this is coming up, and this also has to do a little bit with my hearing loss lately, but communication issues. I have some communication issues that, that my wife is extremely patient with, and she's super smart. So she helps me understand, do you realize what you just did? And I go, no, but now that you mention it, okay. Finally, if you can go back in time to when you were a kid and give yourself one piece of technology from today, what would it be? Oh, man, all of it. I'm so jealous of my children. My teenager plays with scratch, and he's doing stuff in 3D and all these things that I only dreamt of as a kid, and learning things that I still haven't had the chance to learn. And yeah, so I'm jealous of the high-tech stuff. I mean, I was into the high-tech stuff as a kid too. I had the computer as a kid. It was pretty rare back then, but I mean, it was nothing compared to these days. Right. Exactly. You had what you had at the time, and it was probably pretty good at the time. A little side note, I actually still do have my original 8-bit computer from 40 years ago, and I still play with it. Wow. And I was just on vacation, and I spent the mornings when everyone was sleeping in working on a game, but I haven't finished yet, but yeah, I'm-- It still powers up. Oh, yeah. It's on the internet now. It's, there's people-- Right. People bring these things to life in ways that you would not have imagined back in the day. So it's pretty fun. So before we go, just explain to everyone who's listening, where can teachers and families go to get TuxPaint, and what do they have to do for it? Just go to tuxpaint.org, and there's a download link on the side, and you pick whatever platform you're using, and you click the download that'll lead you over to SourceForge, which is where the project is hosted, SourceCode and Files, and all that good stuff, and it'll download from there. So awesome. And email me if you have questions. Awesome. What you want to give your email, you can. Sure. Bill at newbreedsoftware.com is long, but it's a lot easier to say than my actual personal account, which is just jibberish. That's fantastic. I guess people are going to send you now their ideas that they want for the next couple of updates that-- And I accept artwork for consideration into the gallery. So that's awesome. Yes. Listen, this has been fantastic. Like I said, I've been using TuxPaint for many, many years, so this is really a nice highlight for me, and a fun chat that we've had today. So I really do, you know, a love TuxPaint, I know the kids that I work with love TuxPaint, I know their family's love TuxPaint, and this has been a lot of fun just chatting with you today. Yeah, thank you. And thank you so much for finding it and sharing it, and I'm glad you all enjoy it. So absolutely. All right. Thank you very much. Okay, awesome. Thank you. That was fantastic. That was good. Thanks. Don't worry about those long spaces of thinking. I'll edit it so that it sounds pretty good. So don't worry about that. And it's funny that you just said scratch because on this upcoming Tuesday on the podcast that I have, we're talking with Elaine Atherton, who is the head of programs for scratch. Oh, right. So that's awesome. I'll send you that link so you could listen to it too. Yeah, I got to add you to my podcast. Yeah, that would be awesome. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I would love that. All right. So thank you very much. Appreciate the time. And I'll probably, I think I'll let you know the date. It'll probably be toward the middle to end of this month coming up. And um, yeah, I know. I'll share it on whatever social media is still exist. Yeah. If you, if you, if you stick that on TuxPaint, I think we'll, we'll get a lot of hits. And I think I think I think people will really enjoy listening to you because, you know, sometimes you don't realize there are people behind the things that get that people use. You know, and you don't realize there's an actual person there. That was an interesting one of the suggestions I had for when I was doing the interviews. I kind of like did a little sneak preview with one of the people I wanted to interview. And it turned out he was closer to my age, which was funny because I'm like, I have no idea how this guy was. Um, one of the suggestions was maybe people could ask you questions. So I added one of the questions of what would you, if you could ask me or someone else on the project question, what's the question? So that was kind of fun to do. Um, yeah, I have been on podcasts and in like, um, uh, this week in tech and stuff a couple times, but this is like, approaching 20 years ago now, you know, it's been a while. So, um, so yeah, now I'm just kind of like, the faceless penguin on Twitter. Um, trying not to be too sassy. All the kids know, and it's so funny. That's, and it's funny. You mentioned that that's how I teach them when we, when we start with the double clicking, right? Because that's, you know, kids who have never really used a mouse before, whether, you know, a hand mouse or on the laptop or, or, or device itself, we practice double clicking. And what do I teach them? It's to, to press on, uh, tuxus belly two times. So they have to double click and, and press on his belly two times. And we actually practice that before we actually go and do it. And like, that you got to see their star, because I have them hold their hand up and use their other finger to pretend that's, that's where they're clicking. And I tell them we're gonna, now we're gonna double click on his belly two times. Go ahead. Yeah. Click on his belly. And if they all do it, they go click, click, click, click, click, it's really funny. That's funny. One of the things I did with touch, man, really early in the beginning was, um, make up where you can't launch it multiple times. So if you get like, click, click, click, click, click, click, you didn't want like 40 of them. Yes. Loading up. So I did that. Um, you're talking about, you know, how to use a mouse and stuff. One of it, one of these kids I interviewed, and I think they were like 18 years old, and they're like in college. I said, I sent you, you know, tell me what your mail address is. I'll send you the interview. And they said, I've never used email before. I hope I could do it. Okay. I'm like, what? Yep. I was doing email like in 1991. Yeah. Now the kids today, they, they're used, they're using Google Drive and they're sharing documents and they're building websites and an amoeia. It's, it's the stuff that they're like in the last five years, it is, it's, it's really blown my mind. I can't even imagine what five years from now would be like, because I know. Yeah. The leap has been just tremendous. It just reminds us. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Appreciate it. All right. So I'll get in touch. Definitely. This has been a lot of fun. Okay. Cool. Take it. Thanks. Good podcast. Thank you very much. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye.