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Mishmash: the Publication | Mishmash: the Publication
Photo courtesy of Karim Ghantous | Unsplash
Hello and welcome to Mishmash! Here we value stories that might not fit in other places, whether they don’t exactly fit into any particular category or they fit into too many. From essays, to articles, to all nonfiction literature in between, we host writings from all walks of life about people’s personal experiences.
How to Write With Us
As stated, we’re open to people from all walks on life. If you find yourself wanting to join us in this journey follow the guide below!
The current process to become a Mishmash writer is to fill out a google form for intake, to which we will email you back if we find you suitable for our publication. It’s not as daunting as it sounds, though! Novice writers are welcome to apply as much as those seasoned in the craft.
The application (as seen above) requires a link to your profile, a link to a draft you’d like published with us, and your email so that we can contact you. We also ask for an introduction as well as why you would like to work with us, but those sections are completely optional.
Please give us around a week’s time to reach out to you before assuming we’ve passed. At the current moment, only one person is running this entire publication.
For Those Writing With Us
While we accept many diverse pieces of work, we do have a few requirements.
Some do’s of writing for Mishmash:
Do share your own personal experiences. Your stories/articles/essays/etc. posted here must relate to yourself and your life somehow.
Your stories/articles/essays/etc. posted here must relate to yourself and your life somehow. Do feel free to branch out with topics. Casting a wide net when writing can be beneficial in gaining more viewership as well as getting insight from different walks of life. If you have a niche you write about though, there’s absolutely no problem with sticking to that.
Casting a wide net when writing can be beneficial in gaining more viewership as well as getting insight from different walks of life. If you have a niche you write about though, there’s absolutely no problem with sticking to that. Do support your fellow Mishmash writers. Applaud, read, and comment on their work. We’re here to create a community around sharing our own experiences, not to just push literature onto others.
Applaud, read, and comment on their work. We’re here to create a community around sharing our own experiences, not to just push literature onto others. Do meter your stories if you prefer. Writers who are with the Medium partner program are more than welcome to publish with us as well as meter their content.
Some dont’s. | https://medium.com/mishmash-publication/mishmash-the-publication-8eaea218c36c | [] | 2020-12-18 22:30:30.667000+00:00 | ['Reflections', 'Life', 'Publication', 'Experience', 'Inclusion'] |
I’m Not Just One Person Anymore | Diary comics about my first pregnancy
On May 5, 2016 around 5:00pm I started having contractions in the parking lot of my OB GYN’s office. (Only I didn’t know yet that they were contractions.) | https://medium.com/spiralbound/im-not-just-one-person-anymore-36c6b4f782f0 | ['Anna Moriartylev'] | 2018-11-07 14:01:01.924000+00:00 | ['Motherhood', 'Comics', 'Pregnancy', 'Birth Story', 'Anna Moriarty Lev'] |
How Can I Protect My Mental Health During The Holidays? | How Can I Protect My Mental Health During The Holidays?
Photo by Total Shape on Unsplash
Did you hear that?
Your mindset has the power to dictate the direction of your life. That is powerful stuff, friends. And it is exciting.
That said, let’s cut to the chase here. The holidays are stressful. Christmas is sort of like an influencer’s Instagram page — shiny on the outside, messy on the inside.
That picture perfect view of twinkling lights, lovely pine trees and delicately wrapped presents does a good job of disguising family drama, the stress of gift-buying, and forced niceties between people who just don’t get along.
Whether you are a Scrooge or a chipper Elf, I give you 4 ways to reframe your mind in a positive light as you skip merrily along to your in-laws.
Here are 4 tips to make the Holidays enjoyable this year (especially when you’re not a holiday person)
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
#1 PLAN your get togethers ahead of time, dedicating the most time to people you actually want to be around — not who you feel forced to spend time with
If the theme of this holiday season is prioritizing yourself, we’ve got to really commit to it. And that can’t happen unless we stick to a plan of what some would refer to as being selfish.
If you’re planning on (safely) seeing anyone outside of your quarantine bubble, let me paint you a picture: Aunt Trudy wants a fancy Christmas dinner party at her house, followed by a gift exchange with the grandkids, ending with a family picture by the fireplace. Meanwhile, Good Friend Jon wants to host a small, low-key garage party, where he will serve Bud Light cans and meat and cheese appetizers.
The garage party sounds more appealing to you this year. But you don’t want to disappoint anyone, so what do you do?
In order to prevent hurt feelings, lay out the expectation now that you are happy to attend both gatherings (if you feel comfortable), but will be spending the better half of the evening at Good Friend Jon’s.
This will nip those feelings of guilt and anxiety in the bud, and ensure you will enjoy your socially distanced get together.
#2 Utilize this 30-second mindfulness trick when your outspoken brother-in-law gets on your last nerve
Referred to as the “half-minute shift” from Dr. Rick Hanson, a psychologist specializing in the science of positive brain change, this is a powerful way to get your mind right in moments of duress (or plain annoyance).
Here’s how to do it: (1) Take a long, slow, deep breath. (2) Take a deep breath while thinking of everyone you care about. (3) Take a deep breath while thinking of everyone who cares about you.
Step outside for some fresh air to really utilize this (quick!) mindfulness trick. I promise it works in reframing your mind to a place of gratefulness. Especially when you’re feeling irritated.
#3 Let the judgment from the “responsible” sibling roll off your back by owning yourself
What do I mean by “owning yourself?” I mean own who you are, where you are in your life, and what you represent, despite familial dismissals and eye rolls about your appearance, occupation, or place of residence.
Being back in our family cohorts (whether a physical place or presence of family members) can dredge up real emotional trauma. We walk into our old bedroom and BAM! We’re 15 again, feeling guilty for sneaking out the night before.
So, it makes sense that a condescending remark about your risqué blouse or expensive car can quickly trigger feelings of rage or guilt. Try and refrain from letting one comment about your lifestyle dictate your mood by gently reminding yourself that you are capital ‘S’ Satisfied with the person you are.
What to do? Simply change the subject and move on. Keep in mind that it is no one else’s business how you spend your money or what you do for a living. If your lifestyle makes you happy, it truly DOES NOT MATTER what other people (family members included) think about it.
That said, keep living life on your terms. And don’t apologize for it.
#4 Remind yourself that you are in control of the situation
Sometimes all we need is a reminder that we are in charge of what happens. We hold more power than we think when it comes to enjoying our lives (instead of complaining that the holidays look “different” this year).
Happiness is a choice, just like letting your aunt’s judgy comments get to you (or not) is a choice.
Photo by Jeffrey Blum on Unsplash
Takeaways
Life truly is what we make of it. If we head into our parent’s house dreading predictable conversations about politics, that fraction of time spent there is going to feel heavy and resentful.
On the other hand, if we swing the door open with a smile on our face and a positive mindset that the weekend is going to be great, that could very well change the course of the entire stay, and maybe even the rest of the holiday season.
Thank you for reading! :) May you have a fabulous holiday season, no matter how you’re choosing to spend it.
For more happiness hacks and ways to live life more vibrantly, sign up for my newsletter: Take A Sip | https://medium.com/@ashleyalt/how-can-i-protect-my-mental-health-during-the-holidays-58d377da4cb3 | ['Ashley Alt'] | 2020-12-16 14:43:55.911000+00:00 | ['Authenticity', 'Womens Health', 'Mental Health', 'Millennials', 'Mindfulness'] |
Create Affiliate links for Amazon Singapore | Affilate links is great way to earn a lot of money, Amazon offering to user’s to promote affiliate links and earn some commission on the base of product sale, Even though affiliated user who click your link and does not buy that item but within 24 hours he bought any items you will still get some commission from amazon. What you need to do?
1- Create your account on Amazon Affiliate programme
2- Put all the information they mentioned in form
3- add your payment detail for earnings
4- You are ready to go to use links now.
5- Tip: open amazon.sg there you can see “stripsite” using that one you can get links for promotion.
You can use a lot of marketting tools and strategy to build audience for your affiliate links. some example of affiliate links are below that generate high commission.
Amazon Seller offering 20% off if you buy stuff from these affiliate links. use demanding items for your affiliate links, like BPA Free Water Bottle, Chew Proof · Rip Proof · Nontoxic, Balance Oil Production, Wrinkles, Fine Lines, Rashguard Surf Shirt
https://amzn.to/3paxE67
https://amzn.to/2WA56qA
https://amzn.to/34yOFiF
https://amzn.to/34xdYS7
https://amzn.to/2KNFMLa
https://amzn.to/3rd75PA
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https://amzn.to/3pbiVbg
https://amzn.to/3rhNaPC
https://amzn.to/38gh3H6 | https://medium.com/@shauketsheikh/create-affiliate-links-for-amazon-singapore-7247b43920d2 | ['Shauket Sheikh'] | 2020-12-21 11:25:32.528000+00:00 | ['Shopping', 'Bpa Free Water Bottle', 'Amazon Selling Tips', 'Discount Coupon Codes', 'Singapore'] |
Writing Goals: 2021 [Part 10] — Trust the Process | 10 part series for writers to consider what we did in 2020 and will do in 2021.
We pick up from last week with our year-end attempt to help Go Into The Story readers set and achieve their writing goals for 2021. To revisit the process of self-reflection from last week, here are the links:
Part 1: Looking Back
Part 2: Assessing Where You Are
Part 3: Where Do You Want To Go As A Writer?
Part 4: Practical Matters
Part 5: Going Public
This week we shift the focus to a more pragmatic part of the discussion, considering a variety of tips about how to manage time and projects more efficiently. Here is what we have thus far:
Part 6: Schedule
Part 7: Time Management
Part 8: First Draft
Page 9: The Only Way Out Is Through
Today: Trust the Process
This is probably my favorite writing mantra. It’s both practical and spiritual, which pretty sums up my experience of the act of writing.
Trust the process.
There is prep-writing (brainstorming, research, generating plot elements, developing characters, story structure, scene breakdowns, outline), then there is page-writing (type FADE IN and continue writing until you type FADE OUT). Those two components represent the practical part of the process, but out of that ‘grunt work,’ a more spiritual aspect emerges: suddenly, you hear a character say something to you, or a character may refuse to act the way you planned, or a scene sequence you worked out in advance implodes once you start writing it, or a whole other way of approaching a subplot may leap to mind.
Whatever happens at every step of the way, a writer must learn to trust the process.
For some writers and some stories, the process can be neat and straightforward. For others, the process can be confounding and circuitous.
Every writer is different. Every story is different. Every process is different.
The writer must learn to accept that and trust that they are where they are for some reason.
M. Night Shyamalan supposedly wrote five drafts of The Sixth Sense until he had this startling realization: the Protagonist, Malcom Crowe (Bruce Willis), was dead.
J.R.R. Tolkien finished the first chapter of what would become “The Lord of the Rings” in February, 1938, then didn’t turn in the final manuscript until 1950. On two occasions, after writing hundreds of pages, Tolkien went back to page one and started all over. What if Tolkien had not trusted his creative process? We might never have known one of the world’s most remarkable pieces of literature.
Trust the process.
I hit upon that phrase when I was teaching one of my online screenwriting courses in response to a student who was seemingly stuck in their story. A year or so later, I stumbled onto this book, “Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go”. It’s an excellent read, one I highly recommend, and it raises an interesting point about trust, that second part “letting go.”
Letting go of what?
Often what happens when we get ‘stuck’ in our writing, it’s not so much about the story, it’s about what we bring to the writing process — expectations, plans, fears, doubts. Any time we step out of the story, our active engagement in the writing process, we run the risk of losing ourselves in the day-to-day world as well as our hopes and dreams. For example, we may get caught up in seeing the story as a bridge from our life today to our imagined life in Hollywood as a working screenwriter. To carry that weight of ‘responsibility’ into a writing session, that attachment, can easily encumber our actual writing — and soon we’re stuck, not because of the story, but what we are bringing to the writing.
Trust the process / let go — all very Zen, yes? I guess. It also suggests that we look at the Writer in relation to Story not as an “I — It” relationship, but an “I — You” dynamic, something we explored here.
Trust the process.
Try tacking that mantra up onto the wall where you write.
And then believe it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed and benefited from this 10-part series. Would love to hear your reactions and reflections in a RESPONSE.
Good luck with your writing goals in 2021! | https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/writing-goals-2021-part-10-trust-the-process-b34a9b3a7a0e | ['Scott Myers'] | 2020-12-19 13:13:04.087000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Fiction', 'Creativit', 'Screenwriting'] |
A Writer’s Guide to the 2 Most Popular Story Archetypes | Steve Jobs (left) told three stories in his 2005 Stanford University commencement address, each employing the Hero’s Journey story archetype. Dr. Martin Luther King told just one in his famous 1963 ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, employing the archetype The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be.
A Writer’s Guide to the 2 Most Popular Story Archetypes
Know your heroes
Although I know several great writers, I know very few great storytellers.
Because a story is a particular type of writing that emphasizes an emotional arc of challenge, personal growth, triumph or tragedy, writing a story is a different experience (for the writer) than journalism, or technical writing, or ad copy. To create an emotional arc for the characters, many writers must experience the negative emotions for themselves, and this is why great story-telling is so difficult — because it requires the storyteller to be vulnerable in ways that most writers are unwilling to experience.
Nonetheless, there’s lots of great advice for story writers and most of it you’ve heard already, whether it’s “good stories always have conflict,” or “torture your protagonist.” For example, one of the most successful group of storytellers is at the computer animation movie studio Pixar, and they’ve published ’22 Rules for Storytelling,’ in case you want to know how they do it. But none of Pixar’s rules describe the essential difference between the two most popular story archetypes.
Hero’s Journey
One of the most famous and powerful story archetypes has been described by Joseph Campbell as The Hero’s Journey. It’s the topic of several good articles on Medium, but for the sake of convenience, I’ll recap it briefly here.
There are two “worlds” in the Hero’s Journey: the familiar and the unfamiliar. The “journey” describes the Hero’s departure from the familiar world, into the unfamiliar, and back again.
In the archetype, the Hero is motivated to leave the familiar world by a Call to Adventure. According to the archetype, the Hero declines the first invitation, and the effect is to increase the attachment between the audience and the characters, and increase the dramatic tension in the story. For example, the most popular instantiation of the Hero’s Journey is Star Wars, and in particular Episode 4 — the original Star Wars movie. This is the scene that represents the Call To Adventure.
True to archetype, Luke declines the Call. In the Hero’s Journey, it is not until the stakes are raised and the Call becomes overwhelming that the Hero will commit.
In Star Wars, that moment is found here:
After Luke is separated from his adopted family by the destruction of his familiar world, he has little choice but to accept the challenge of the unfamiliar. There, he will be tested and he will despair.
According to Steven Pressfield (Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh!t, 2016) all great Heroes reach what a moment in the story he call “All is lost.”
It is the emotional nadir, at which the Hero’s failure seems certain and death is imminent.
In a great story, the Hero will receive the aid of a Mentor, overcome the trials of the unfamiliar world, and eventually return to the familiar world a changed (and better) person.
The key to the Hero’s Journey is to create a Hero who is likable and identifiable to the audience. When they identify with the Hero, they live the adventure vicariously thru him, and experience the same emotions and triumph that the Hero experiences — albeit without the possibility of existential threat.
Thus, the Hero’s Journey archetype gets its power by tempting the audience to consider that the possibility of personal growth may exist inside themselves, without actually challenging the audience to the risks that only a true Hero must take.
The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be
There is another powerful story archetype called The World the Way It Is/The World the Way it Could Be. It also creates two different worlds — one familiar by the fact that it is the current experience of the audience, and the other unfamiliar in that it springs from the imagination of the storyteller.
The most popular application of this story archetype may be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech I Have A Dream.
Listen to how Dr. King describes the current condition of the American Negro “100 years later” — after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves.
His description of the World the Way It Could Be for the Negro is “a lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of prosperity… (in which) he finds himself in exile in his own land.”
In his poetic verse, “Now is the time…” he compares the World the Way It Is to the World the Way it Could be when he says, “… to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”
He returns to The World the Way It Is in his cadence “We can not be satisfied… as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro in New York City believes he has nothing for which to vote.”
And finally, he completes the transitions to the The World the Way It Could Be in the most famous phrases in his speech:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Dr. King’s dream, there is only brief mention of the World the Way It Is (e.g., “sweltering with the heat of injustice”) in favor of his description of the World the Way It Could Be.
Who Is the Hero?
The principal difference between the two story archetypes is the position of the Hero.
The Hero’s Journey is effective when the audience identifies with the Hero, and travels the Hero’s emotional trajectory vicariously thru them.
By contrast, The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be is effective when it challenges the audience to become the Hero themselves.
Notice that Dr. King prepares his audience for his Dream by acknowledging that his audience is, at the moment, already in the unfamiliar world of Washington DC. Thus, they have already accepted the Call to Adventure. They need only return to their familiar world as changed men and women to complete the Hero’s journey.
He challenges them to do just that when he says:
Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to South Carolina. Go back to Georgia. Go back to Louisiana. Go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Autobiography and the Hero’s Journey
Contrast Dr. King’s Dream with Steve Jobs famous commencement speech at Stanford University, in which he “tells three stories from my life.”
His first story describes his separation from his biological Mother who put him up for adoption, and his rejection by the first couple who had selected him. As he describes it, his decision to drop out of Reed College was the moment he left his familiar world of the parents who eventually agreed to take him, and who supported him in his biological Mother’s mandate that he should have a college education. He emerged from his adventure a changed man, and as a consequence of his adventure, typesetting and word processing on computers were changed forever.
His second story describes the second most important rejection of his life, being fired from Apple Computer. He describes the experience as “devastating,” until “something slowly began to dawn on me.” He decided to start over, and “enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” Again, having been forced from his familiar world, he accepted the Call to Adventure to enter into the unfamiliar world of Next and Pixar, overcome the challenges there, and eventually return to the familiar world of Apple Computer a changed man. As a consequence, he (again) changed the world of computing forever.
His third story has no such triumphant return. It is an example of the Hero’s Journey in tragedy, although he doesn’t tell the story in that way. At the time of his speech Jobs was living with pancreatic cancer. Although he was convinced that he had overcome his fatal diagnosis and returned to the familiar world a changed and healthy man, the cancer killed him six years later.
Although Jobs gives direct advice to his audience when he implores them “don’t waste (your limited time) living someone else’s life… follow your heart and intuition, they somehow know what you want to become…” there is little in Jobs’ speech that suggests a Call to Adventure specific to the graduates. The story is moving, not because we have experienced his rejection, his impoverishment, or his despair. We only imagine these. And because we admire Jobs and we sense just enough of ourselves in him to identify with him, we experience the powerful emotions of his journey without having to accept his risks ourselves.
Therein lies the difference in the two most popular and powerful story archetypes. At its best, the Hero’s Journey entertains us, while The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be inspires us. | https://medium.com/storygarden/guide-to-popular-story-archetypes-592b34802b02 | ['Thomas P Seager'] | 2020-12-27 12:46:20.956000+00:00 | ['Martin Luther King', 'Storytelling', 'Steve Jobs', 'Heros Journey', 'Story Archetypes'] |
HAVING FEWER CARES | Between Covid, politics and elections, the economy and the environment, there seems to be no end to the number of things that one might be anxious about. Unfortunately, anxiety is inversely correlated with well-being: the more anxious you are, the less you will feel well.
In the last few months, I have decided to:
· stop watching the news before I go to bed,
· avoid the newspapers with their sensationalist take on everything,
· largely boycott violent or pointless movies.
Essentially, I have put myself on a diet of reduced negative or unhelpful stimuli. I have removed from my agenda matters which are beyond my control or influence to positively improve. Instead, I look for hopeful or helpful experiences which can encourage a sense of gratitude and optimism.
Letting go of so much noise certainly has made my world much lighter and more manageable. I have less concerns to worry about and feel less overwhelmed. Having fewer cares is most empowering as you become more carefree. This focuses your attention on what really matters, where to put your energy and resources and how not to get caught up in concerns beyond your control. There are about a dozen things on my agenda that I pro-actively care about and for each it is solutions, not complaints, that I concern myself with.
One of the upsides is in realising where I can make a difference. I can align my priorities with my worries. Take Covid, something on everyone’s hitlist of angsts. Are you going to get all worked up about finding a vaccine, where the next hotspot is, who isn’t wearing a mask or how we are going to pay for the consequences? Or will you sensibly, caringly, and non-judgmentally use physical distancing, wearing a mask and a smile to reduce its spread? Or the environment: how about just doing your part to reduce your eco-footprint and picking up the litter near your home?
Having fewer cares actually means caring more about your local situation. It involves thinking about how you can enact change in line with your values. It significantly improves your wellness. The calm which this optimism encourages naturally evokes gratitude, the ultimate well-being vitamin.
Physically distance (when required or helpful), never socially distance.
Reflection Source: www.Smallercup.org
Please freely share and widely, there are no copyright concerns. | https://medium.com/@smallercup/having-fewer-cares-afe86b624908 | [] | 2020-12-14 13:37:24.363000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Stress Management', 'Positivity', 'Stress Relief', 'Worried'] |
Ephemeral Life | Johannes Plenio/Unsplash
In solitude, I listen to the voice of Spirit. I am guided by an unseen presence, an energy that sparks my intuition and allows me to navigate the physical realm. Our telepathic dialogues bring me peace amidst the turbulence of life. When the seemingly endless storms tyrannize the atmosphere of my experience, I am centered in the presence of Divinity, a watchful observer of transient images.
And for a moment, I become nothing. I become the formlessness of pure being, and in this state, I realize that the world is an illusory fog that will one day dissipate into the ethers. It is like winter vapor released from the lungs of creation, disappearing as quickly as it appeared.
I let go. I don’t hold on, for what is there to hold on to? None of this is real. It only feels real in the moment, while we’re living in it. Once it passes, it becomes the past, a phantom in the distance that travels on subconscious roads before encountering a black hole, an ancient monster that consumes the lost souls of time. And all becomes still again. | https://medium.com/@Roy_Gillett/ephemeral-life-94b6c111f17c | ['Roy Gillett'] | 2020-12-23 04:59:07.677000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Spirituality', 'Memoir', 'Fiction', 'Poetry'] |
Sharing stories of FCJ Refugee Centre volunteers: | Sharing stories of FCJ Refugee Centre volunteers:
My name is J.P. and I am a 1st year law student at the University of Toronto
Volunteering at FCJ was undoubtedly one of the highlights of my first semester. I can truly say that I’ve never been in a place where so many people are helping others in such critical ways. Each Friday, I observe FCJ staff running educational workshops for youth, meeting with a seemingly constant stream of clients, and liaising over the phone with Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada to resolve client issues. It’s easy to get disconnected from real world issues in law school, so I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to watch the staff at FCJ expertly help those with daunting immigration related problems.
Moreover, while other opportunities for beginner law students often only involve clerical work, at FCJ I’ve had the opportunity each shift to handle real files for real clients. While this prospect seemed overwhelming at first, the FCJ staff does an amazing job preparing volunteers. It started at orientation when Francisco thoroughly explained the ins and outs of refugee advocacy. Each week, Diana clearly explains to me the approach I should take on a file, and Devyn, the staff lawyer, expertly synthesizes case law that is always of great assistance. Finishing my first written appeal was an incredibly exciting and rewarding experience and I am very excited to continue volunteering in the coming months! | https://medium.com/@RefugeeCentre/sharing-stories-of-fcj-refugee-centre-volunteers-6d8941a821e8 | ['Fcj Refugee Centre'] | 2019-03-18 16:37:45.405000+00:00 | ['Support', 'Law', 'Newcomers', 'Refugeeswelcome', 'Refugees'] |
Did You Achieve Your Goals on Medium? | Did You Achieve Your Goals on Medium?
Photo by 金 运 on Unsplash
Did you happen to get a nice Christmas present from Medium?
Did lots of views, reads, and money come your way?
Did you make it to the coveted $100 a month mark on earnings
or are you one of the top earnings on Medium?
Maybe you were fortunate enough to achieve those goals.
Maybe you missed the mark and have not gotten there yet.
It is almost another year and time for a new start.
Those things may come to you if you keep trying.
Don’t give up and abandon your dreams.
You can do it, and you can succeed. Keep trying. | https://medium.com/illumination/did-you-achieve-your-goals-on-medium-700e16f30d48 | ['Floyd Mori'] | 2020-12-26 06:23:06.284000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Success', 'Goals', 'Medium', 'Poetry'] |
Are Cyberattacks the Result of Conflict Culture? | By Cy Nelson, December 27, 2021
As a cybersecurity legal researcher and member of Infragard[1], I’ve been attending FBI briefings to help organizations deal with one of the biggest cyberattacks to ever target the USA government. On December 8, 2020, FireEye discovered a Trojan Horse in a SolarWinds software update that has infected more than 18,000 organizations in the USA including our government. Unfortunately, this malware has been silently spying on the government since March 2020.[2,3,4] How did this happen? And more importantly, how can we prevent a future attack? The answer may surprise you.
Bad actors planned this attack carefully. They most likely learned technical details by pretending to be SolarWinds customers or by posing questions to online technical communities who routinely answer questions asked by strangers. They may have chosen this supply-chain attack when they discovered that SolarWinds recommends turning off anti-malware checks when updating their software.[5] The vulnerability was not purely technical. Social engineering or “the art of the con” was also involved.
Let’s face it, forensic analysis will identify where to add new technical controls. While that is important, bad actors will find new ways around them. Let’s attempt to understand and to resolve the root cause of this cyberattack. Why do bad actors want to attack the USA? For the past four years, our foreign policy has glorified the “conflict culture”. USA leaders filled the media and social media with blaming, shaming, lying, name-calling and all the drama that make TV reality (Reality TV) an addictive, adrenaline high. Sure, ratings soared, the stock market roared, and we were entertained but did this conflict culture cause cyberattacks?
Rewind to 2014 and remember when Sony was attacked. Bad actors called, “Guardians of Peace”, demanded that Sony not release a film because it showed Kim Jong-un being humiliated and assassinated.[6] Kim Jung-un is the leader of North Korea who recently taught us the English word “dotard”. When Sony ignored the Guardians, they leaked confidential data about Sony including social security numbers for 47,000 employees. Then, they erased Sony’s computers. It wasn’t until they threatened another 911 terrorist attack that Sony cancelled the New York premiere. United States intelligence officials believe that the attack was sponsored by the government of North Korea.[7] Did Sony’s participation in conflict culture cause this cyberattack?
Fast-forward to 2020, the California Employment Development Department (EDD) has been scammed out of about 2 billion dollars due to false unemployment claims.[8] The Saturday, December 19, 2020, Los Angeles Times reports that a former contract employee allegedly used her expertise of the EDD system to file fraudelent, pandemic-related, unemployment claims to pay her boyfriend and his friends. Her boyfriend is serving 94 years to life at California State Prison on a murder conviction. Federal investigators say other bad actors are being investigated for similar crimes. Did our conflict culture cause this cyberattack?
All of these cyberattacks have many things in common, but let’s look for the root cause. Sony made a film where talk show hosts humiliated then assassinated the leader of North Korea. We may or may not agree with North Korean policies, but we can agree that public humiliation often leads to revenge attacks.
The EDD attack was perpetrated by an insider who allegedly stole credentials and gave them to a criminal. Certainly, EDD needs funding to properly vette their new hires and to update their computer controls, but, perhaps our conflict culture contributed to this individual feeling disenfranchised. Her name is Nyika Gomez.
Conflict is the root cause of most attacks including cyberattacks. Here’s the surprise. Compassion is more profitable than conflict. When I led projects in China, our success depended on newly formed teams trusting each other. On my first trip, I looked across the conference table as Chinese scientists blushed and stammered struggling to introduce themselves to me in English. During the project, they were shy about telling the true status. The project took longer than expected. As soon as I got home, I bought Pimsleur, the study guide used by CIA agents to quickly learn languages. On the second trip, I introduced myself in Chinese. My accent was poor and I stammered but I saw smiles of compassion on the faces of my colleagues. They spent the rest of our spare time teaching me to speak Chinese. We finished ahead of schedule. This is one example of the notion of good manners and the golden rule, “treat others the way you want to be treated.”
In our reality TV world, some people may believe that good etiquette or religious teachings are old-fashioned. How about basic self-protection? I was hiking in the desert and came upon a baby rattlesnake who was coiled up sleeping in the sun. Baby rattlesnakes are vital to their desert ecosystem, but they are deadly poisonous to humans. I could have poked it with my hiking stick to see it jump. That conflict between me and the snake would have been exciting. But I am a visiter to the desert. The snake would have been justified in protecting itself by biting me on the ankle and killing me.
The Chairperson of the Sony Motion Pictures Group took the opposite approach when she failed to respect the leader of North Korea. The result, Sony reported paying $35 million to restore their financial and IT systems.[9] The total actual cost of the attack is unknown. Numerous lawsuits were filed by employees due to the indentity theft.[10] Sony was asked to explain the gender pay gap that was uncovered.[11] The Chairperson stepped down. Sony’s reputation was damaged. When I interviewed for a cybersecurity position at Sony in 2017, human resources and management personnel told me they were still having difficulty attracting well-qualified talent. I passed.
As a society, an organization, a cybersecurity professional, or a news reporter, let’s re-think promoting conflict culture. Can we protect ourselves from attack by creating a culture of compassion? Perhaps the first rule of Compassion Culture could be: don’t poke a rattlesnake.
Please share your thoughts about Compassion Culture on twitter: @RoboThot_ai
References:
[1] Infragard, 2020. https://www.infragard.org/
[2] Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails. Christopher Bing, Jack Stubbs, Joseph Menn, and Raphael Satter; Editing by Chris Sanders, Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft. Reuters, December 13, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/BigStory12/idUSKBN28N0PG
[3] Explained: A massive hack in the US, using a novel set of tools, 2020. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/us-solarwinds-hack-cybersecurity-fireeye-russia-7110550/
[4] CISA Updates Alert and Releases Supplemental Guidance on Emergency Directive for SolarWinds Orion Compromise, 2020. https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2020/12/19/cisa-updates-alert-and-releases-supplemental-guidance-emergency
[5] What Data Center IT Security Pros Must Know About the SolarWinds Vulnerability, 2020. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security/what-data-center-it-security-pros-must-know-about-solarwinds-vulnerability
[6] The Interview. Wikipedia, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview
[7] Sony Pictures hack. Wikipedia, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_hack
[8] California unemployment fraud amid COVID-19 pandemic may total $2 billion, Bank of America says By Patrick McGreevy. December 2020.
[9] Hack to cost Sony $35 million in IT repairs by By Tim Hornyak. February, 2015. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2879814/sony-hack-cost-15-million-but-earnings-unaffected.html
[10] Sony Pictures hack has cost the company only $15 million so far by Steven Musil. February, 2015. https://www.cnet.com/news/sony-pictures-hack-to-cost-the-company-only-15-million/
[11] Amy Pascal, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Pascalhttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-07/bank-of-america-estimate-2-billion-california-unemployment-fraud | https://medium.com/@cy-nelson/are-cyberattacks-the-result-of-conflict-culture-3dcba44c8858 | ['Cy Nelson'] | 2021-01-04 00:37:48.125000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Politics For Tomorrow', 'Ethics', 'Cyberattacks', 'Compassionate Leadership'] |
Like a Child | I am a warrior of life, striving to be a better person every day. Finding my voice on writing.
Follow | https://medium.com/blueinsight/like-a-child-c6befd08ffa8 | ['Ivette Cruz'] | 2020-10-06 12:41:29.179000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Children', 'Micropoetry', 'Moon', 'Blue Insights'] |
FOMO | FOMO
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash
I’ve been in a position where I’ve recently bought Apple stock at such a high price of $260. The reason I bought was simple, I was willing to pay a higher price so that I do not miss the fun. This phenomenon is called Fear of Missing Out or FOMO in short.
Control your fears
There are so many reasons why people panic buy and sell or panic in general regarding anything. They do not want to miss. The crowd mentality takes over them and they either opt out of the cult or they feel left out of the cult. | https://medium.com/slowly-richer/fomo-be1f2c09a0be | ['Iqbal Preet Aytan'] | 2020-12-24 00:03:46.260000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Slowly Richer', 'Stock Market', 'Stocks', 'Apple'] |
My Experience Getting Confluent Certification for Apache Kafka [CCDAK] | I have predominantly been a Java developer for over 10 years and worked with various message queuing technologies in recent years. I had the opportunity to get exposure to Kafka as one of our clients wanted to use Kafka in their Proof of Concept. While I had heard about Kafka for a long time, I never really understood its features and depth. Once I actually understood its power, I immediately saw how well it solved a host of challenges I had faced in my previous work where I had to work around them.
Since then, I’ve used Kafka on two client projects and I have a working knowledge of Kafka and with that, I felt I was ready to take up the certification. The challenge was to find time to study for the certification especially when I was busy on client work all day. Thankfully DigIO allowed me to take time off client work to study as well as paid for the certification itself.
I’m sharing my experience of how I went about studying and getting the certification, it will vary for others with different circumstances.
In Sydney, we have been extremely lucky to have COVID-19 under control and I have been working from home since the start of the pandemic. All Confluent training materials and certification are online so it hasn’t really affected my experience beyond what COVID-19 has done to our daily lives.
I had started off with the Udemy course to gain a basic understanding of Kafka and it definitely helped me understand the concepts and how Kafka is actually implemented in real-world projects. However when I wanted to take the certification, it had been a while since I had done the initial course and as Confluent Partners, DigIO had access to the Confluent training material. Rather than studying alone, we created a study group to keep us all accountable. This was the biggest factor in actually getting the certification as we would catch up every week and discuss our progress and challenges. Sometimes we even watched videos from the Kafka Summit together to share our experiences and learnings.
It was hard to finish the course material without investing a significant amount of dedicated time. Depending on the week, I sometimes made a lot of progress and other weeks, hardly any progress. Going too long with no progress also meant I had to backtrack a bit and revise previous material. As a group, we were moving slow and based on our speed, it seemed like we would not even finish the course material within 6 months.
Luckily, I had a break between clients and decided to plan some study leave with DigIO. It was astonishing how effective focussed time is. I was able to finish the course material in two days as opposed to months I had been spending on and off in my free time.
When I had tried looking for Practice tests, I only found one course in Udemy which contained 3 practice tests. I was quite anxious to see where I was at after finishing the study material and quickly revised my notes before taking the Practice tests. The Practice tests were 50 questions and it took me 30 mins to finish the test. I was quite happy to have scored 74% and it made me feel very relieved.
After a short break and working on the questions I had got wrong in the first practice test, I gave the second and third test a go. While I passed all of them, there were questions in each test that I was quite unsure of as they caught me off guard. They were mostly just unique ways of asking concepts I knew but the way it was worded threw me off. Some of them were very specific configurations which I had not focussed on to remember them specifically. However, after some revision, I was ready to take the actual exam.
I wanted to take the exam with a fresh and relaxed mind. It was quite amazing that I could book the proctored exam in less than 30 mins by paying $5 USD more. This option was really helpful as I was able to start the test when I was ready on the day instead of planning my day around the offered test times. So after my coffee, run and shower, I was ready and I booked the test. There were quite a few restrictions because it was an online proctored exam.
Alone in a room and please have a government-issued ID
Empty Desk and Area
Connected to a power source
No phones or headphones or dual monitors
No leaving seat or talking
Webcam, speakers, and microphone must remain on throughout the Test.
There were some initial hiccups as Zoom updated itself when I tried to launch the exam, but I got a call from support and had a new Zoom session started.
After the initial verification and instructions, the timer started and I had 70 questions to finish in 1.5 hours. I remember the first thing I felt was a weird feeling of being watched because, well, I was being watched. I used my usual strategy for any MCQ exam and went through all the questions and answered them quickly while marking the ones I wasn’t sure of for later. This was really helpful as I realised that I was sure of my answers for 70% of the questions. I had done my first pass in 30 minutes. With a lot of time in hand, I double-checked the answers I was sure of, then spent my time on questions I wasn’t sure of and proceeded to submit my answers within the hour. After a couple of survey questions, the results were on the screen, I had passed. Confluent doesn’t share the pass percentage though.
The certificate was also in my email immediately. I was quite happy with the result. Kudos to Confluent & Examity for such a smooth exam experience.
The certification personally felt significantly easy however I wish I had taken a mock test before starting to study to compare results. I was lucky to previously attain a working knowledge of Kafka and combined with the training courses offered by Confluent, was more than enough to get the certification. The practice tests were a good way to feel confident before the exam. I would love to know more about where you are in your journey with Kafka. Please comment below and share your goals & experiences. You can also find me on Confluent Community Slack. | https://medium.com/digio-australia/my-experience-getting-confluent-certification-for-apache-kafka-ccdak-554201ba4828 | ['Sougata Khan'] | 2020-12-02 04:04:30.632000+00:00 | ['Confluent', 'Technology', 'Ccdak', 'Kafka', 'Education'] |
Redesigning the AED Department Site | Redesigning the AED Department Site
architecting and designing for a different brand of architect and designer
Project Description
The Architecture and Engineering Design department at Utah Valley University is one of the oldest at the school. It has a rich history, a lot of past and current success, and a ton of really cool projects (some involving drones!). You’d never guess that by looking at their website, though. In fact, their site is so bad, and they’re so embarrassed by it that they make a conscious effort to avoid telling people to visit it. It’s hard to navigate and it doesn’t even begin to tell the story of this great department. For this project, we were tasked with redesigning it. Our main goals were to increase usability and to turn this site into something the department can be proud to show off.
Planning & Discovery
To begin the design process, we met with the heads of the department to discuss their goals for the site, among other things. From this, we gained crucial insights into the project like who the site’s target demographic was, what they were hoping to see on their site, and why they wanted a redesign in the first place.
Research
Meeting with our stakeholders was incredibly informative, but there were still some pieces missing. To fill in these informational gaps, we conducted interviews with students and sent out surveys to people within our target demographic (college students, high schoolers, and parents of middle schoolers) in order to figure out peoples’ expectations for such a site, as well as more general information like what they find most fulfilling and interesting when deciding on a potential career path.
data from one of the questions on our survey
Design
Armed with this knowledge, we hit the ground running. We began by taking inventory of the information and features already on the site — Analyzing, prioritizing, and organizing. | https://medium.com/taylor-fletcher-design/redesigning-the-aed-department-site-7da88a727228 | ['Taylor Fletcher'] | 2020-12-05 17:55:23.041000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Work'] |
Liberal Arts Blog — The Pituitary (the “Master Gland”) | Liberal Arts Blog — Wednesday is the Joy of Science, Engineering, and Technology Day
Today’s Topic — The Pituitary (the “master gland”) — What should every 8th grader know? 12th grader? college graduate?
Last week, the brain. Today, a tiny structure of out-sized importance and a strange history. Half of it grew upward out of the mouth (the anterior pituitary), the other half grew downward out of the brain (the posterior pituitary). But both ended up linked to the hypothalamus (but not to each other). Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
A PEA-SIZED ORGAN THAT PACKS A LOT OF PUNCH
1. Located under the hypothalamus which controls it.
2. The hypothalamus is the bridge between the nervous (electrical) system and the endocrine (chemical system). This is a rough generalization. The nervous system also uses chemicals (eg neurotransmitters).
3. The pituitary sits in the “Turkish saddle” (sella turcica), a “bony hollow in the base of the skull …behind the bridge of the nose.”
THE ANTERIOR AND THE POSTERIOR: the division of labor
Anterior pituitary makes hormones (eg. growth hormone). The posterior just stories them (eg oxytocin and vasopressin which are actually produced in the hypothalamus.) Anterior hormones: ACTH regulates metabolism through its control of the cortisol-producing adrenal cortex, GH (growth hormone) stimulates growth of bone and muscle, TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) manages the iodine-dependent thyroid which regulates the body’s metabolic rate, controlling “heart, muscle and digestive function, brain development and bone maintenance,” the gonadotropins drive the production of sex hormones in the ovaries and testes as well as egg and sperm maturity. Posterior: oxytocin stimulates uterine contraction during labor, milk secretion during breastfeeding, and is responsible for both sexual pleasure during and after sex. It also promotes bonding between mother and baby as well as trust, generosity, and romantic love more generally. Vasopressin is an “anti-diuretic” meaning it tells the kidney to retain water, impacting blood pressure. (Alcohol suppresses vasopressin production which results in excess urination which results in dehydration which causes
hangovers.
NB: The anterior pituitary is linked to the brain by a vein-to-vein delivery (“portal”) system analogous to the hepatic portal system linking the digestive system to the liver. The posterior is connected to the brain via the “pituitary stalk” also called the “infundibulum” a combination of axons and vascular tissue.
DAVID AND GOLIATH — the consequences of a pituitary adenoma or not?
1.How did David take down Goliath? Well, some scientists now say it may have been Goliath’s poor peripheral vision. Goliath probably suffered from acromegaly, a disease of the pituitary that causes gigantism.
2. With acromegaly, an expanding pituitary puts pressure on the optical chiasm which sits above it. This pressure causes shrinkage of peripheral vision.
3. David took advantage of Goliath’s tunnel vision and whacked him at his most most vulnerable point — his temporal lobe.
NB: In his book, “David and Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell told this “scientific” version of the ancient story and was accused of practicing pseudo-science and anachronistic “now-ism.”
Pituitary gland | You and Your Hormones from the Society for Endocrinology
Development and Anatomy of the Pituitary Gland
Thyroid gland | You and Your Hormones from the Society for Endocrinology
Oxytocin
Pituitary Adenoma
Pituitary Adenomas: Definition, Symptoms, Treatment & Diagnosis
http://israelbehindthenews.com/faulty-peripheral-vision-of-goliath-may-have-aided-david-in-his-historic-battle-in-the-elah-valley/3205/
Slaying a biblically bad idea
A LINK TO THE LAST THREE YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to science, engineering, or technology. Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to science and engineering.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought. | https://medium.com/@john-muresianu/liberal-arts-blog-the-pituitary-the-master-gland-37ef2015f2eb | ['John Muresianu'] | 2020-12-16 20:32:38.088000+00:00 | ['Liberal Arts Blog', 'Brain', 'Medicine', 'Biology', 'Anatomy'] |
Everise bets big in Asia | Everise announces plans to launch a Digital Innovation Hub in Singapore and add 700 jobs in Malaysia, Japan, and Singapore by the end of the year
Sudhir Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Everise
7 September 2021, Singapore — Everise, a digital customer experience outsourcing company that serves global Fortune 500 and high-growth technology firms, announces plans to open a Digital CX Innovation Center in Singapore. Along with focused investments in Malaysia and Japan, Everise plans to add a total of 700 jobs by the end of the year.
Everise has experienced strong revenue CAGR growth of 33% over the last 3 years and will employ 15,000 people globally in 7 countries by the end of 2021. Previously operating in Malaysia and Japan through a joint-venture, Everise chose to exit the partnership on August 26, 2021, to drive the business itself.
“Over the past three years, we have seen the opportunity to expand our services in Asia. Companies that are rapidly growing and new market entrants have demand to deliver innovative, multilingual brand experiences,” says Everise founder and CEO, Sudhir Agarwal. “We also intend to open a first-of-its-kind center for innovation for our regional clients in Singapore in the last quarter of 2021.”
Everise has already recruited 300 native Asian language speakers in Kuala Lumpur and Japan to support its multinational technology clients, and this will grow to 600 by the end of the year. In Japan, Everise is pioneering the work-at-home as a service model.
In Singapore, Everise will establish a Digital CX Innovation Center, for high-growth companies in the Southeast Asian region, as well as to service its US-based clients that wish to economically scale omnichannel customer experiences in Asia. For example, using Everise’s proprietary exageTM technology ecosystem, Everise pairs its integrated Automation and Artificial Intelligence solutions with customer support services. This provides an agile solution that optimizes people and technology to deliver best in class customer experiences.
Singapore is a greenfield project, and the company plans to employ 100 Singaporeans by the end of the year and 400 by the end of 2022.
Over the past two years, Everise has received a great deal of peer recognition in the form of multiple awards lauding its technology, people-first culture, and business management strategy. Founder and CEO Sudhir Agarwal has been named Executive of the Year and Outstanding Leader by several prominent award committees, as well as Business Insiders Top 100 People Transforming Business.
Everise is also an employer of choice, receiving the highest rating in the industry on employee review website Glassdoor.
-//-
About Everise
Everise is a global technology-enabled customer experience firm with expertise in the healthcare and technology industries. The Company’s unique approach combines customer and technical support services with AI, robotic process automation, analytics, and secure cloud-based technology. Some of the world’s most loved brands have products and services that are perfected, protected, supported, and sold by Everise. To learn more visit: https://weareeverise.com/ | https://medium.com/everise/everise-bets-big-in-asia-5632355ab | ['Jade Randall'] | 2021-09-08 01:52:38.855000+00:00 | ['Outsourcing', 'Asia', 'Customer Experience', 'Business', 'Growth'] |
What Happens When Your Third Eye is Open? | Photo on Pxfuel
The third eye is also known as the sixth chakra, It is located just above the eyebrows in the center of the forehead. When the third eye is open you can experience clairvoyance, visions, and extrasensory perception. The third eye opens the doorway to the subconscious, to enable you to communicate and to receive messages and information from the higher consciousness and other dimensions of consciousness.
Based on my experience when my third eye chakra naturally opened. I sometimes feel a tingling or pressure on my third eye chakra or around the forehead area. In my mind’s eye, I can see colors mostly purple. When the color starts to disappear. I can see images of people, objects, sacred symbols, and I sometimes have visions.
Once your third eye is open your other physical senses is heightened as well:
Hearing — Clairaudience
Feeling — Clairsentience
Tasting — Clairgustance
Smelling — Clairalience
Touching — Clairtangency/Psychometry
Seeing — Clairvoyance
The higher consciousness or other dimensions of consciousness sends you messages through your subconscious. The subconscious processes the messages and then sends it to one or more of your physical senses. Usually, the information is sent to your strongest physical sense first, if not it will be sent to two or more together, to make sure you receive it.
You will receive information or knowledge that can help your personal and spiritual growth, or receive knowledge and information to help others.
Constant practice is needed to strengthen the physical senses and to listen and to interpret the messages that you are receiving. It can take months or even years of practice. Practicing meditation to still the mind can help you to be more aware of the messages or information coming through.
Sometimes it is possible to misunderstand the message because of a lack of trust in your ability in what you are receiving or the message does not make sense to you, but may make sense to someone else or to you in the future.
The downside to having your third eye open
The downsides that I have experienced are that I get migraines that can last for hours or days. This happens when your physical body is still getting used to receiving intuitive information or the third eye is not fully open and the chakra is over-active; too much energy is in the third eye area and needs to be released. Doing anything that is grounding, that helps to keep you centered brings the third eye chakra back into balance.
Another downside is you may see things that you may find upsetting. Especially if you have an unsettling vision of the future, that came true.
Remember spirituality is love, we need to maintain a high vibration, a vibration of love. So that you will, not attract unwanted negative energies or experiences in your space. | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/what-happens-when-your-third-eye-is-open-c4bafcc5fac6 | ['Avis J. Williams'] | 2020-11-26 16:41:21.789000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Consciousness', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Self', 'Psychic'] |
Build Your Own VPN Using Google Cloud Platform | Creating Your Own VPN
Go to the OpenVPN website and find “Access Server on GCP.” Then click “Get Started.” Once clicked, it will forward you to the Google Cloud Platform website. You should see the OpenVPN access server with a launch button beneath it. Click “Launch.” It will prompt you to create (or log into) a GCP account. For new members, it comes with a one-year free trial and $300 USD in credit (must be used in the trial period). After you create or log into your account, it will bring you to the GCP deployment manager with all of the OpenVPN settings. Scroll to the bottom and press “Deploy.”
OpenVPN GCP configuration
5. It should take a while to deploy OpenVPN. Once deployed, navigate to the Virtual Machine instances control panel (Navigation menu < Compute < Compute engine < VM instances). There, you should see a virtual machine named “openvpn-access-server-vm.”
Navigation to VM instances
6. In the OpenVPN Virtual Machine panel, you should see “SSH” under “Connect.” Click it. It should open a new window with a terminal in it. This is your virtual machine.
Navigation to the SSH
7. We have officially created the VPN. Now we have to access it, but before that, let’s change the password to the VPN by typing sudo passwd openvpn into the terminal. It should output an input field. Type your passwords. When typing your password, it looks like you’re not typing anything, but it’s just hiding what you’ve typed.
8. Go back to the GCP website, specifically the VM instance control panel. Go to the OpenVPN VM and there should be an external IP column. Copy that string of numbers.
Navigation to the Virtual Machine external IP
9. Open a new tab and type:
https://{external IP}/admin
Tip: If it says that the connection is not private, click “Advance,” then click “Proceed to external IP” if you want to proceed to the next step.
10. A login page will show up. The username is OpenVPN and the password is the one you set in the terminal. Log in.
OpenVPN login
11. A dashboard will show up. This is where you can edit your VPN. At the beginning, there are only a few settings you have to change. The first one is so the client’s traffic goes through the VPN. To enable it, go to Configurations < VPN Setting < Routing < ”Should client Internet traffic be routed through the VPN?” < Enable. And the second one is to change the network setting. To edit it, go to Configurations < Network Settings. Make sure to save your changes.
OpenVPN dashboard
12. To enable the VPN on a device, go to:
https://{external IP}
And download the supported app for the selected device.
OpenVPN download page
13. After downloading, open the app. It should already be logged into your IP address. Enable the VPN. Now all of your information passed from that device is encrypted. | https://medium.com/better-programming/build-your-own-vpn-using-google-cloud-platform-2e22b0a7d489 | [] | 2020-12-23 16:50:33.671000+00:00 | ['Google Cloud Platform', 'Security', 'Programming', 'VPN', 'Cybersecurity'] |
How Amazon Do Chooses Their Freight Forwarder Service Provider? | Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
When we see on the global maps of the international online market, there is one name flashing around the whole map, i.e., Amazon. Being the most prominent company that sells almost everything in the world, Amazon has to do a lot of tasks. From picking up the shipment to delivering it to the door of the person, Amazon is responsible for every single work.
Now, as the company’s workload increased, they have started hiring many freight forwarder companies all around the world who can take up their whole task related to logistics. Now the amazon is a huge company that has gained popularity in a very long period. It means that they will choose the logistic company only after seeing something special that can match their work level.
Photo by David Travis on Unsplash
Let us discuss in detail what the points that Amazon notices in the logistics company before hiring them for their logistics task are?
Checking the destinations
The first thing that amazon checks in the freight forwarder service provider are that they must be delivered to all the world destinations. Some providers write on the website description that they provide the services, but later when it is time for the delivery, they say a single line that this area is not serviceable. That is why while giving work to the freight forwarder, amazon always checks out that do they provide service in all the areas that they need.
If the answer is yes and they provide the services, then the company will choose them.
Insurance
The damages caused in the shipment are a very common aspect of the shipping. Now the amazon has to pay the customer if the product delivered is found damaged by the customers, and in return, the value o the product becomes zero. While choosing the freight forwarders, the amazon chooses that the person who is providing them the services also provides the insurance for the same.
This way, the company’s money is the same, and the freight forwarders have to pay out if they make a mistake. Two types of insurance are the basic and damage types of insurance. The company selects both of the insurance types but according to the fragility and the pricing of the product.
Tracking system
Whenever you make an order, then after some time, you keep on checking your order’s status. Almost every person in this world has this habit of tracking their order from time to time till the order doesn’t arrive. Now, this tracking of the orders comes under the services that Amazon provides to its customer. If Amazon is handling all the stuff by themselves, they will surely provide the shipment’s detailing.
But in the case of third-party logistics, this task is handled by the freight forwarders. Now the Amazon will surely demand that the tracking system that is available with the company should be precise. The more precise reading the system provides, the much better is the service that Amazon will provide. That is why Amazon chooses the company that can provide them the best and precise tracking every time during the shipment.
Packaging services
Amazon also gives away the packaging services work to the freight forwarders. All they need to do is pick up the shipment from the seller or the FBA center and take them into their warehouses. Now they have to pack up the shipment and later on do all the stuff of the transportation accordingly. The packaging needs to be done in order to provide proper safety to the shipment. Let us suppose that the equipment present with the company for the packaging is not good enough. Due to this, the chances of destroying the shipment are very high.
If the packaging material and system are of high quality, then the shipment will be much safer during transportation. That is why Amazon always chooses the providers that have higher packaging services quality.
Conclusion
So these are the points that Amazon takes care of when they are looking out for freight forwarding services. There is one more factor that Amazon looks out for, that is the money factor, but this factor is not that persistent. The reason behind this is that Amazon always looks out for the quality of the service instead of the money they have to spend due to their reputation in the market. But if there are some points when the quality of the service of both the companies are good, then the price factor matters. | https://medium.com/@rene-payne/how-amazon-do-chooses-their-freight-forwarder-service-provider-ce0b8bd95563 | ['Rene Payne'] | 2020-12-24 06:35:27.527000+00:00 | ['Third Party Logistics', 'Freight Forwarder', 'Amazon', 'Choosing', 'Fba'] |
by Cambria Covell | Two men stood before me. One was dressed impeccably, in a suit that must have cost a fortune and he was smoking a cigar. The other man was dressed in well worn, humble looking clothes. He had lines on his face, which was tanned from spending so many hours in the sun.
“What do you do?” I asked them both.
The man in the suit smiled. “I work for a firm. I make more money than you could ever imagine. Some of that money I keep and some of it I donate to charity. When I get home I eat dinner by myself, read a book, and then go to sleep.”
The other man, the one that was poorly dressed, said, “I’m a farmer. I get up early and I work all day in the fields. By the time I’m finished I’m exhausted but at the end of the day, I sit down to dinner with my wife and family.”
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Yes,” they both said. | https://medium.com/@cambriacovell/two-men-stood-before-me-fa45a86c199c | ['Cambria Covell'] | 2020-12-19 00:01:39.265000+00:00 | ['Flash Fiction', 'Fiction Friday', 'Prose', 'Writing', 'Fiction Writing'] |
Digital marketing | Businesses and advertising have found new ways.
Especially with Covid-19 disease, online shopping and cyber advertising are booming.
For influencers and those who have a brand or product, I have a suggestion.
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More Information… | https://medium.com/@behzadbs/digital-marketing-a5975a10d6ec | ['Behzad Bs'] | 2020-12-24 17:43:14.323000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Instagram', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing', 'Marketing'] |
Take This Into the New Year 2021 | Take This Into the New Year 2021
To live an aware life.
We live mechanical lives, generated from automatic thoughts and emotions in reaction to whatever the outside world is doing or not doing at the moment. A mechanical life is perpetually focused on what is happening out there and reacting to it, trying to control conditions, giving little or no attention to understanding what is happening on the inside. We always want someone else or some situation to change so that we will feel good. This means our capacity for happiness is constantly at the mercy of people and events. Has it struck you that even if your wife changes or your job changes, what does that do to you?
You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as foolish as before; you’re just as asleep as before. Until we see this we will keep functioning from the premise that I will feel good when the world is right.” Wrong premise! The world will be right when I feel good.
You can come home to yourself and the good news is that you will not have to bring it about. Change happens through a simple practice of awareness. As the life of awareness settles on your negative, self-defeating tendencies, whatever is fearful will disappear. Whatever is good and true in your beautiful essential nature will be fostered, but you will have to practice awareness to experience that for yourself. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is get in touch with negative feelings that you have not been aware of, which begins with observing yourself.
How?
Watch everything inside of you and outside. Especially, get in touch with the negative thoughts and feelings controlling you that you are probably repressing and therefore unaware of.
What negative feelings?
Gloominess, for instance. You’re feeling gloomy and moody. You feel self-hatred or guilt. You feel nervous and tense, stressed and overwhelmed. You feel disappointment or discouragement or that life is pointless and makes no sense. You have got hurt feelings or anger and blame. Get in touch with those feelings first. Notice when you get angry with somebody or overwhelmed by some situation, are you aware that you were angry or overwhelmed? Or were you simply identifying with your anger which made you feel guilty, or identifying with your overwhelm which made you feel inadequate? Drop that, and simply be aware of the what you are thinking and feeling.
To own my negativity so I can shift it
The next step is to own the negativity by recognizing that the negativity is in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That’s crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. Stop trying to change external circumstances. Accept the situation exactly as it is. We spend a great deal of time and energy trying to change our spouse, our boss, our friends, our enemies, our life situation. We don’t have to change anything. If you’re upset because rain washes out a picnic, who is feeling negative?
The rain or you?
The rain is just the rain but your negative reaction is in you.
Wake up to this: No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person.
To stop identifying myself with negative emotional states.
The reason we suffer from our depression and anxiety is because we identify ourselves with our mental states. We say, “I’m depressed.” But that’s mistaken. We are not our depression or anxiety — though we are not aware of it — we are simply experiencing a depression or anxiety or even our delight at the moment. Depression or delight may be what we experience at times, but just wait, it will change; it won’t last: it never does. Emotions are always changing. Negative emotions are like clouds that come and go. Some clouds are black, some white, some large, others small. We are the blue sky behind it all, observing what comes and goes. This blue-sky state of being is your essential self.
So, don’t say, “I am depressed.” If you want to say, depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say anxiety is there, that’s fine. But not: I am fearful. When you do, you are defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, there are hurt feelings there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are the swings of the pendulum.
To stop fixing myself, understand yourself instead.
Your essential self is a passive, detached observer, looking down on this experience called life, without interfering, without fixing anything. It recognizes that all is well and nothing needs to be fixed; the suffering we experience just needs to be understood. If we understood the pain and negativity it would change all by itself. So, reflect on your experience, opening to it in an attempt to understand it better, asking yourself, where did this reaction come from?
What brought it on?
To embrace life exactly as it is.
There is no other way than awareness for freeing yourselves and it is a specific kind of awareness that embraces life exactly as it is with no judgment, no commentary, no attitude. You simply observe, you reflect, you watch without the desire to change what is. It is observing oneself with curiosity, as a scientist observes the behaviour of ants possessing no further end than to study ants in order to learn and understand as much as possible about them. A scientist has no other aim. Apply the same orientation to your own negative pattern of thinking, reacting and behaving.
To be happy unconditionally.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that happiness is a smooth complexion, a fancy suit of clothes, a sports car, a holiday resort, a brand of alcohol. The list is long. Real happiness, unconditional happiness is none of these things, but we have subtle ways of making our happiness depend on other things, both within us and outside us. We say, “I cannot or will not to be happy until my neurosis goes . . . until I make more money . . . unless I get the promotion.” I have good news for you: You can be happy right now, with the neurosis.
You want even better news? There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing happiness at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss.
Make 2021 a year of happiness; it’s yours for the taking. | https://medium.com/@trinndjtrinn/take-this-into-the-new-year-5c1fd853e359 | ['Trinity'] | 2020-12-22 13:10:23.086000+00:00 | ['Self Coaching', 'Awareness Intelligence', 'Happiness', 'Change', 'Transformation'] |
12 Best Email Marketing Strategies — Backed by Science | Do you know that more than 290 billion emails are sent every day and email marketing continues to be the most effective marketing channel?
Email marketing has outperformed all other forms of online marketing and to make effective use of it, one needs to design an appropriate Email Marketing Strategy.
An effective email marketing strategy will help you to convert prospects into customers. If you do not develop the right email marketing strategy, your emails may get lost in the inboxes of the recipient or sent to the spam folder.
You will find that the costs of implementing an email marketing strategy will be relatively low and the risks would be less but it will deliver you the highest ROI.
You can create and customize your email marketing strategy according to the results you want to achieve with your emails.
When you have chosen your goal and audience you can build your email list, draft the email content, and send it. Then you must be ready to track your emails, document the results, and analyze how your customers responded to your email.
It may surprise you to know that 92% of internet users have at least one email account and 91% of them access their email at least once a day. These statistics show you that there is no room for doubt about the potential of email marketing.
Email marketing has an ROI of 4400% and you should remember that email usage is expected to increase in the coming years also. Email marketing will remain effective and it will outrank other popular marketing channels.
You might have noticed that email marketing has evolved and changed over the years but it has managed to remain effective and grow more popular.
Here are the 12 Best Email Marketing Strategies you should implement.
1. Establishing your goals and segmenting your subscribers
Setting goals for your email marketing campaign is important because if you don’t know what you want to achieve then you will never get it. When you are setting goals be specific in what you want to achieve.
You can have a goal like boosting sales, making people attend an event you have organized, informing about new products, or just a newsletter. Your goals must be realistic and attainable and in the end, you should be able to measure the results.
If you are not able to measure the outcome of your email campaign then you cannot make changes and tailor your campaign to succeed in your business.
Before setting your goals it is important to identify your target audience. You can segment your audience into groups according to their location, demographics, gadgets they use, and their personal preferences.
Your goals and the metrics you want to track will change depending on the segment of the audience. You can send different types of emails to different segments of the audience and track the results.
2. Building an email list
Your email list plays the most important part in your email marketing strategy. Email list building is essential to grow your business and only when you have a list of email addresses you will be able to promote your business or showcase your products.
You have to find people who are interested in the services you are offering and then you need to collect their email addresses. One of the best places where you can find people is on your website and blog.
You have to target people who are looking for something specific in your website and blog.
You don’t have to worry even if your website is small because all you need is a good landing page with a CTA.
You can try to make them subscribe to your email list through the CTA , a pop-up form or a contact form. You should understand that people would not give their email address unless they get something in exchange.
You can entice people by offering them something, like ebooks, guides, discount coupons and free downloads, in return for joining your email list.
If your business has social media accounts then you should try to convert your followers into subscribers. You can add a link to join your subscription list in your social media account.
You may already have a list of email addresses from your Gmail but you should always find a way to include more contacts to your existing list.
3. Choosing an email campaign type
There are different types of email marketing campaigns and you should choose the one that will suit your audience and also help you to achieve your goal.
Welcome email: When people join your email list the first email you send them will be a welcome email. In that email you can share with the subscriber all the relevant information which they would like to know about your business.
Newsletter: This is the most popular type of email through which you share information about your company with your customers. Newsletters help you to build a trustworthy relationship with your audience.
Announcement: You may want to update your customer about a new feature that you have introduced in your services. You can send this type of emails to your subscribers to make announcements and give them a chance to avail new services.
Invitation: You need to send invitation emails to increase awareness of an upcoming event and encourage your customers to participate in it.
Marketing offers: You may want to boost sales by offering discounts or introduce a new service with a promotional offer. You can send offers through email and it will get you direct response from your customers by having CTA in your email.
4. Personalizing your messages
Personalizing your email messages will make your customers happy and get you great results. You can not send the same type of emails to all customers since each of them will have a different need.
Only when you know your customer well you can send them messages according to their needs. To find out about your customers you have to collect data from them through sign-up forms on your website.
Once you have all the data you can tailor your email messages according to their preferences. You should write a killer subject line based on all the data you have collected.
The subject line plays a very important part in your email as it makes the customer decide about opening the email. The right subject line will lead to higher open rate and conversion.
You can create the email content based on the customer’s gender, age, location and other preferences. Targeted personalization will increase customer engagement and all customers are happy when the content is relevant and personalized.
You must choose the right words to grab your customer’s attention and make them read your entire email. Make sure that your content is clear and brief without any unnecessary details.
5. Including a CTA (Call To Action)
You must include a CTA in your email to drive your customers to action . When your customers click on the CTA it should take them to a relevant page on your website.
Before including a CTA you should know what your customers expect from you. They will be looking for something specific and your CTA should be able to lead them towards it.
Your CTA button should stand out from the rest of the content so that it will get noticed easily. You can surround the button with white/blank space and place it strategically to draw the customer’s attention.
CTA buttons make a strong and powerful impact on the customer so a small change in the words in the CTA will make a huge difference.
You should make sure that the CTA links to a page that compliments your email content and ensures that the customer has a cohesive experience.
6. Optimizing your email messages for mobile experience
You should make your email marketing strategy to be mobile compatible as most people will be viewing emails on their mobiles and tablets. Optimizing your campaign for mobile phones is essential to increase the open rate and click rate.
You must use an email template that will look great on desktops and handheld devices. You should write a compelling and concise subject line with the right number of characters so that it is fully visible on mobile devices also.
Your preheader text is also critical and it should not be too long. Your customers will view the preheader text first and decide whether they should open your email or not.
The size of the image and text in your emails must be easy to view on mobile devices. If they are very small the customer will find it difficult to view and your email may not be read completely.
You should try to add big CTA buttons and distinctly visible hyperlinks to make it easy for the customers to click through. Your customer must be taken to a mobile-friendly landing page after he clicks on the CTA.
7. Use lead magnets to grow your email list
Even when customers like your brand they may not sign up for your email list easily. They may be looking for something in return for giving you their email address.
You can use lead magnets to increase the number of people joining your email list. The Lead magnet is something you offer to your customers free of cost for subscribing to your email list.
You can offer useful content in the form of a free download, ebook, checklist, planner or tutorial. Your lead magnet should be something that your customer needs and it should tempt them to join your list immediately.
When your customer is taken to the landing page of your website by clicking on the CTA you can ask them to fill out a form to collect their name, email address and any other information you need from them. Then you should take them to the thank you page from where they can download the freebie and get added to your email list.
Once people join your email list they have started their customer journey and you should continue to nurture them so that your brand makes an impact on them.
8. Automating email campaigns
Automating email campaigns allows you to send the right messages to the right customers at the right time. Email automation tools will do repetitive tasks and save you valuable time.
Email automation works on the trigger and action system and as soon as a prospect or customer meets a specific trigger that you have defined, the email automation tool will start sending emails to them.
You should segment your prospects and customers based on their activities and send relevant automated emails to each group.
You should know that when you send relevant emails they will be opened and clicked more frequently and they will generate more revenue for your business.
These automated emails which you send will be timely and personalized and you can expect a better response from your prospect or customer.
You can also keep in touch with your customers by sending automated emails at regular time intervals. These emails will help you to nurture your customers and develop a strong relationship with them.
9. Setting ideal email frequency
You should note that you do not bombard your customers and prospects inbox with your emails. When you send emails very frequently it may irritate your customers and they will stop opening your emails or even unsubscribe from your email list.
By understanding your customers you can determine the frequency of the emails you send to them. When you understand the nature and duration of your customer’s journey with you it will be easier to plan the perfect time to send emails.
You can also plan to send different types of emails at different times so that your customers will be reading a different type of content in each email. You can choose and experiment with different frequencies for different segments of customers.
Your frequency should depend upon the goal you want to achieve through your email campaign. You must make changes to the email frequency whenever you find low open rates, low engagement and spam complaints.
It is necessary that you must provide an option, in each email, to stop receiving your emails if your customers are not interested in reading it.
10. Using a professional email marketing tool
You should use an email marketing tool to create, send, test, optimize and analyze emails. These tools will help you to craft professional emails and deliver personalized messages that will engage your audience and improve your relationship with customers.
Without an email marketing tool, you will be spending too much time creating and sending perfect emails.
You should choose an email marketing tool with features that suit your business goals. Most tools will allow you to choose a template and customize it with text, image and videos.
You can also personalize your email to each recipient and create a big impact. You should make sure that your email marketing tool has a simple user interface.
Your email marketing tool must ensure that your emails do not land up in the spam folder of the recipient.
By using an email marketing tool you can easily measure the open rate, click-through rate and other metrics which will help you to optimize your email campaigns.
11. Measuring your results
However well you optimize your emails if you are not able to see the results of your efforts then you cannot make any improvement.
You should track certain metrics, like open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate and bounce rate, of your email to figure out whether you are making any progress towards your goal.
If you are determined to reach your goal then you should monitor your metrics closely. These metrics provide valuable data about the email campaigns and also a clear insight into the user activity
By measuring these metrics you will learn about the success of your email campaign and if necessary make adjustments to improve your strategy. You should try to establish a tracking schedule which can be once a week or month.
By checking the results with previous performances you will be able to detect whether you are improving or not.
12. Re-engaging inactive subscribers
You may find that some people from your email list have become inactive and stopped interacting with your email. You should not remove them from your email list immediately but try sending them re-engagement emails.
The main aim of your re-engagement email is to make the inactive customer respond to your email. You can send re-engagement emails only after segmenting the inactive customers from active customers.
Your re-engagement emails must grab the attention of the inactive customers and make them think about the reason they had for joining your email list. They may be leading a very busy life and forgotten that they had signed up for your email list.
You can try to get them back by offering them additional discounts or offers. Remind them of their past journey with your business and how happy you would be to see them active again.
If the customer does not get interested even after viewing your re-engagement mail then you should allow them to decide whether they want to receive your emails or not.
You should analyze the results of re-engagement emails and segment those who responded to your email. You should clean your email list by removing those customers who did not respond to your re-engagement email.
After cleaning you may have a shorter list but customer engagement is the goal of email marketing. Customer engagement will improve your reputation and give you a more accurate view of what is working and what is not working.
Conclusion
Email marketing will help you to succeed in your business as it is the most cost-effective and preferred form of marketing in the world.
It is very beneficial as you will be sending emails only to those people who are interested in your services and have already signed up to receive your emails.
You can segment your customers and send targeted messages to each segment which is not possible in other marketing channels.
Email marketing tools are very easy to use and you will not require a large team for marketing purposes. You can measure and tailor your marketing strategy and achieve the goals in your business by planning carefully. | https://medium.com/@contactbookapp/12-best-email-marketing-strategies-backed-by-science-fe140b4de0ef | [] | 2020-12-03 10:00:10.482000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Email'] |
Product Backlog — Assessment and Recommendation | Product Backlog — Assessment and Recommendation
Simple model to quickly assess your backlog maturity level. Use it often to improve and make your backlog special.
Original meaning of the word “backlog” is— a large log placed at the back of a fire to keep the blaze going. We groom/prepare the log using various techniques. Similarly, an agile product development team uses a backlog to blaze/inspire and a grooming technique to charge/fire.
In my previous article “Product Roadmap — Five Key Points to Keep in Mind”, I mentioned some points to consider while building a product roadmap. I also provided a high level preview of a product backlog and demonstrated how a product backlog aligns to a product roadmap. To summarize — a product roadmap is a strategic plan and product backlog is a tactical execution plan. In a typical lean-agile setting, product manager is accountable for the product roadmap and product owner is accountable for the product backlog.
Every item on a product roadmap should align to the product vision through product strategy. If any roadmap item doesn’t help us get any closer to the product vision, strategy says — NO. Product strategy rule #3 in my article “Top Five Rules of Product Strategy” demonstrates this in detail.
Similarly, every item on a product backlog (tactical execution plan) should link to an item on the product roadmap. If you are not able to find that connection, say “no” to that piece of work.
Below is a comprehensive visual representation (including summary roll ups and linkages) of the alignment/connection between various product terminologies described above. | https://medium.com/product-center-of-excellence/product-backlog-assessment-and-best-practices-293dd39f22f0 | ['Harsh Vardhan'] | 2020-10-12 01:34:54.096000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Leadership', 'Agile', 'Technology', 'Product Management'] |
Will Lamelo Ball Adjust To The Speed Of The NBA? | Will Lamelo Ball become a dominant figure in the NBA?
While Lamelo Ball was dropping some of the smoothest passes during the NBA Preseason, he struggled in his NBA debut against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Playing for just over 15 miuntes, and shooting 0–5 and 3 missed 3’s, it wasn’t the best “start” to an NBA career we have seen.
When you are the 3rd overall pick in the NBA draft, have played professional ball outside of the U.S., and have LaVar as a father, most people were expecting more out of you tonight.
While I enjoy watching how crazy LaVar can make the media and how he has constantly been under fire for so long, Lamelo is starting to feel the heat. During the NBA Preseason, we watched him make no look passes that were as smooth as butter. So what happened tonight?
Well we don’t necessarily know just yet. Was he just having an off day? Was he nervous to start in his first NBA game? Was he not feeling well? What was it?
If Lamelo Ball can start making passes like he was during the preseason, I have no doubt this will be a fantastic season for his rookie year. He might not be the top scorer, or earning any scoring awards, but he very well might earn some assist awards. As the season goes on, I am sure we will watch Lamelo transform into a better & better player. The way he is able to twist, move, and bend is very different than what a lot of NBA players are currently use to.
Lamelo just needs to keep his head down & focused and block out all of the noise that is around him. Over time we hope to see Lamelo progress into a starting NBA point guard, but until then you might want to keep your eyes on Lonzo, the first Ball brother to enter the NBA.
After his short stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, Lonzo got traded to the Pelicans where he is starting to progress quicker & quicker as he adapts to the play style in the NBA and finds his own play station that works for him.
It will be interesting to come back at the end of the year & see how both Lonzo & Lamelo are doing in the NBA. I want to see them do well and succeed, and hopefully Gelo gets NBA game time soon. | https://medium.com/@learnwithjacob/will-lamelo-ball-adjust-to-the-speed-of-the-nba-f8cd5f766309 | ['Jacob Bates'] | 2020-12-24 07:53:14.742000+00:00 | ['Rookie', 'NBA', 'Basketball', 'Big Baller Brand', 'Lamelo Ball'] |
What Is QA Testing? Why it is important in Software Development? | There is absolute agreement that the quality of services & products is what brings any organization to success! Quality management has been part of many industries over history but was brought into software development cycles relatively late. Nowadays it is a survival component for every business! When it comes to software development companies, Quality Assurance is a part of software quality management held by a QA team that ensures the procession and delivery of flawless products that align with the business goals and regulatory standards.
Although The term QA is often related to its fellow quality control, software testing, and automated testing, they are very different with different roles and scopes. It often drives confusion of what is quality assurance? What roles does it play? and how it fits in today’s fast-paced development process?
Simplifying concepts
What Is Quality Assurance Testing?
Quality assurance testing(QA or QAT) is a continuous process of proactively identifying defects, bugs, and errors in developed applications, websites, or any software in order to take relevant measures and ensure the improvement of the development & maintenance processes, the consistency of products & brand reputation, the alignment with the initial requirements, application of regulatory standards and eventually the delivery of flawless software.
What is the difference between QA and other phases of software quality management?
Quality control or QC: is a process that ensures the quality of the developed product yet is different from QA, as QA operates during the entire development lifecycle while QC interferes in the end and focuses on the final outcome only.
is a process that ensures the quality of the developed product yet is different from QA, as QA operates during the entire development lifecycle while QC interferes in the end and focuses on the final outcome only. Software Testing: Testing refers to the actual final activities taken to test a product to meet QC standards and make sure it reacts according to the development inquiries. Unlike QA that takes a general approach of improving the product throughout the development lifecycle, ST only explicitly identifies defects in functionality and security before the product goes live.
Why is QA so important in Software development?
It is unfortunate that sometimes customer-centricity can get often lost through battles to keep up with market demands and delays. But QA is to address different issues, even usability issues that might not be technical in nature. QA testing for software is centered on delivering the best possible outcome. It is not only about technical defects, it also involves any problem that impacts the end-user experience and can negatively affect customer satisfaction Concept and design cannot justify any structural flaws which would have been avoided easily. Here are The reasons why quality assurance is crucial to the success of software development:
QA is cost-effective: A faulty digital solution can cause huge financial losses to both the development and the customer’s company. Prevent those defects help save costs of repeating and reviewing the development process
A faulty digital solution can cause huge financial losses to both the development and the customer’s company. Prevent those defects help save costs of repeating and reviewing the development process Boosts reputation and trust in the product: A default digital solution can not only cause financial losses but also your reputation. QA testing builds trust in both the company and the products which leads to boosting reputation and long-term partnership.
A default digital solution can not only cause financial losses but also your reputation. QA testing builds trust in both the company and the products which leads to boosting reputation and long-term partnership. Elevates user experience: software development should be customer and user-centric. The user experience is a major decisive factor in the success or failure of an IT product. QA ensures to provide the best user experience possible.
software development should be customer and user-centric. The user experience is a major decisive factor in the success or failure of an IT product. QA ensures to provide the best user experience possible. Increase profits: A satisfied customer means a better reputation that leads to higher profits
A satisfied customer means a better reputation that leads to higher profits Avoid the waste of time: The proactivity of QA enables the company to operate smoothly and more productively without wasting time on unpredictable bugs.
How QA and software testing work together?
To ensure a product is free of defaults, digital products go through different rounds of testing with different purposes and scenarios to prevent hacking attempts or bugs end-users’ dissatisfaction.
Software testing and quality assurance testing go hand in hand in ensuring product quality but they act differently
QA’s process is ensured by a QA team and consists of making estimations and developing a plan with the necessary documentation for finishing a products
Agile QA testing is less about performing the tests and more about providing the understanding of how to perform the right tests to meet expectations, establish quality standards and implement the checks and balances needed to ensure the end-product standards
Meanwhile, software testing is performed as a sequential step to code development, software quality assurance spans the entire software development life cycle, right from the planning stage till the very end.
Our quality assurance services at IndiaNIC
At IndiaNIC we prioritize quality over any other aspect we quote prevention over regretting. Our QA Testing services are integrated into our software development lifecycle. We work on delivering successful solutions throughout relying on our QA experts and our rigorous software testing practices to ensure functionality, security, performance, scalability, compatibility, etc. here’s a glimpse at our QA services | https://medium.com/indianic/what-is-qa-testing-why-it-is-important-in-software-development-1a72d4e9ce18 | ['Rania Mdimagh'] | 2020-12-29 12:40:50.176000+00:00 | ['QA', 'Security', 'Software Testing', 'Software Development', 'Quality Assurance'] |
Class Inheritance | Class Inheritance/Single Inheritance:
Class inheritance/Single Inheritance is when a subclass gains access to the behaviors and attributes from the superclass. We use class inheritance when we the relationship between the subclass and superclass are tied together.
Let’s take a look at this example: | https://medium.com/@josephochoa91/class-inheritance-c4daee3cd3b1 | ['Joseph Napoleon Ochoa'] | 2020-11-12 23:18:36.543000+00:00 | ['Launch School', 'Oop Concepts', 'Ruby', 'Object Oriented', 'Class Inheritance'] |
Adding Amazing Transitions to Your Android App Easily Using Material Motion | Adding Amazing Transitions to Your Android App Easily Using Material Motion Shivam Dhuria Follow Aug 18 · 4 min read
Image Source https://material.io/design/motion/the-motion-system.html#container-transform
Getting Started 🎬
We will add transitions to an app that has two fragments. DogListFragment contains a recycler List while the DogDetailsFragment contains just an Imageview and a textview.
Setting up ⚙️
To observer the transitions more carefully, you’ll need to slow down animations on your device. In the terminal, run —
These commands will slow down animation in all your apps. To reset at any time, run —
For this guide, we will add a transition when an item in the recycler is clicked. The DogListFragment and DogDetailsFragment will be be visually linked thanks to this transition.
Make sure you add Material 1.2.0 to your app’s dependency.
implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.2.0'
Dog List Fragment Set Up
The dog_list_fragment.xml contains the layout for the item_dog that will be populated through the Recycler Adapter. It’s a pretty basic view that contains an Imageview to display dog’s picture and a textview to display breed’s name.
The only thing to notice here is the —
android:id="@+id/item_container"
This will be the “Start” view of the Transition.
This is the ID of the Material Card View which wraps around the Imageview and Textview. We will need this ID, as this is the view that gets animated/shared.
Now in your recycler Adapter —
Add an interface in the recycler with a function that returns the selected item’s view and selected Dog object.
Set a unique transition name to the view ( item_container ), in this case I set it as dog.imageUrl as this will be unique for each dog.
Now in DogListFragment.kt, implement the interface, and override the onItemClicked() method.
For the DogDetailFragment.kt , we need the imageUrl and the breed name of the selected Dog item. I use SafeArgs to pass them.
Along with this you also need to pass the selected View(item_container) along with a unique transition name (imageUrl). You can pass them by using Fragment Navigator Extras.
FragmentNavigatorExtras(view to dog.imageUrl.toString())
to creates a mapping between the View and the transition name.Now pass them to navigate() method.
DogDetails Fragement Set Up
For DogDetails Fragment layout we have —
The view with “@+id/detail_container” will serve as the “End” view of the transition .
The transition names for both the “start” view and the “end” view should be same. This helps android understand the shared elements involved in the transition. Set the transition name (imageUrl) for the end view.
Shared Element Transition
In the onCreate Method, set the sharedElementEnterTransition. Android Transition will automatically reverse the transition when you hit back, so there’s no need to set a return transition.
You would have ended up with something like this. Notice the image doesn’t snap back in the recycler list when you press the Back button.
Making Animation smoother and more intuitive
To fix this, Add this to the DogListFragment.kt
This will ensure that the DogListFragment is loaded before the return transition is run. Now the transition should look like this.
If you notice carefully when the Dog item is clicked, the DogList Fragment is immediately replaced. We want it to stay until the DogDetail fragment loads up.
Also on re-entering the Dog List Screen on pressing back, I want the DogList fragment to scale up a bit(just a bit of animation). In the onItemClicked() method set the exit and re-enter transition before navigating.
And you’re done 🚩
You should have something that looks like this. This type of transition is called a Container Transformation.
Reference | https://medium.com/swlh/adding-amazing-transitions-to-your-android-app-easily-using-material-motion-f0cd92463b39 | ['Shivam Dhuria'] | 2020-08-20 09:25:02.432000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Kotlin', 'Material Design'] |
Day 9/100 Ted Talks — Procrastination Monkey by Fave Writer on the Interwebs | I’m watching 100 Ted Talks in 100 days and tracking the result to see how much it will effect my state of mind & work. You can check out the details and my very first check in HERE.
First off, Holy Shit is Tim Urban an amazing writer. I’ve been a fan of Wait But Why for ages, for eg his epic on Artificial Intelligence is where I tell everyone to start if they want to learn about it. It’s DEFINITIVE. And fun AF to read. I went to the site this morning to get a link for the A.I. article and “accidentally” clicked on his most recent post. 20 minutes later I was screaming OH SHIT in my head because the goal this morning was to try to get this banged out before #coffee starts at 10am. He just GRABS you. It’s awe inspiring!! Anyway… at the top of his site it reads:
Every Sometimes.
Every Sometimes. ;-) I Love Him. This Ted Talk is about procrastination. Let’s Begin.
https://youtu.be/arj7oStGLkU
As I’m watching I can’t stop thinking about Adam Grant on procrastination. We have his Ted Talk about the Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers on the list but if you want to jump ahead save THIS LINK. Also his episode w Tim Ferris is in the top percentile of all time value add podcasts. HERE.
Moving on. As I have the video paused just now it’s creeping in how much I’ve designed my life to combat my own brutal capacity to procrastinate. Small bits each day with the intention of building an over-arching large project. Social pressure to keep me coming back each day. Oh and guilt free video games after I’m done work in the mornings! Which often turns into more “work” researching or thinking about other stuff but I find my monkey mind attaching itself to the idea of just being free to do whatev after I get my articles done in the morning. There may be a secret key here.
The Instant Gratification Monkey
The Dark Playground
He describes the place your in when you’re letting the gratification monkey drive and just do fun stuff. Its not fun. You end up feeling all kinds of Guilt, dread, etc. TESTIFY!!
Panic Monster
Shows up in your mind when there are Deadlines or the possibility of public embarrassment,
There are 2 kinds of procrastination.
Is where there are deadlines, which works because the panic monster gets involved. I’m starting, in this moment, to realize the power in what I’ve just started with the 100 day challenges. Micro deadlines.
2. No deadlines, eg. a career where you’re a self starter or artist. This might effect things like seeing your family, working on your health, avoiding depression, doing anything big that you can be proud of, etc, “Long Term procrastination has made people feel like spectators in their own lives” Long term procrastination has been one of the biggest negatives in my entire life .Hot damn this is hitting me right in the brain.
Long term procrastination has been one of the biggest negatives in my entire life. Ok wow.
Calendar of weeks in a 90 year life. He shows a picture with 450ish little blocks. All the weeks in a 90 year life. Showing it like that provides so much urgency! It goes back to the recurring theme about feeling and experiencing TIME differently now that I’ve started the 100 Day arcs and even started a 100 Week arcs w the Updates. I’m looking forward much more clearly already, and per the first post looking backwards over the week… its almost infinitely more rich. I did ALOT. And now there’s a record of the big important bits, and some reflection on improvement and progression. This changes everything. This just changed my whole life.
Wow indeed.
If you want to start your own 100 Day Challenge PLEASE join us over in the 100 Days FB Group and get after it!! Do it!! STOP PROCRASTINATING YOUR LIFE AWAY!!!
Like I was.
Ps. look out for the 100 MONTH arc coming soon.
****
Hello! You’re still here???!! Cool.
Im making it a habit to make it as easy as I can to LET people support my work in whatever ways they can or want to. For more on this check out Day 3/100 Ted Talks where I watched and discussed Amanda Palmer’s Talk “The Art Of Asking”
The BIGGEST favor you can do for me right now is to share this to social media and tag someone specific you think might need to read it. I am deeply grateful in advance!
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I’m a musician and podcaster and experimenter, this work is supported by people like you who donate/subscribe or find other ways to support my work.
You can check out my podcast @ MovingForwardPod.com
& my morning talk show #COFFEE @ Youtube.com/c/coffeelive
The best place to catch live music sets is on my music FB Page: fb.com/coreycottrellmusic, I try to go live every Saturday night @ least.
You can snag my latest jam release on Bandlab for 3$. HERE | https://medium.com/@coreycottrell/day-9-100-ted-talks-procrastination-monkey-by-fave-writter-on-the-interwebs-686159128704 | ['Corey Cottrell'] | 2020-05-15 13:43:32.551000+00:00 | ['Tim Urban', 'Depression', '100 Days', 'Ted Talks', 'Procrastination'] |
One Take Songs | Songs had been an integral part of Bollywood movies. Songs not only takes the narrative forward but also adds a lot of value to the movie. Songs often requires planning by the director, cameraman and the choreographers before shooting. Some songs demands location to support the song lyrics and the story, some demands an atmosphere created to support the tempo of the song.
Photo by Natalie Parham on Unsplash
A song is a collaborative effort of the Lyricist, Music Director, Musicians, Singers, Cameraman, Choreographers, Actor Performing, Background Dancers and the Director. The Costume Designer, Set Designer and the Editor adds the visual feel to the song.
Generally songs are made with many cuts but there are only a handful of songs made without any cut. Songs made without any cut requires a lot of planning from both the director, cameraman and the choreographer and may need hundreds of background dancers who would fill the transition gap and lot of camera movements. And let me remind you, it’s not at all easy work to execute.
I’ll list the “One Take Songs” sorted year wise. If I missed any, do let me know in comments. So, here we go -
Roop Tera Mastana — Aradhana (1969)
Aradhana, starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore was released in 1969. The song was sung by Kishore Kumar, lyrics were composed by Anand Bakshi and music was composed by SD Burman was a massive hit and still loved today. Lesser known to people that it was shot in a single take under the guidance of cinematographer Aloke Das Gupta.
Barson Ke Baad — Anjaam (1994)
Anjaam, better known for Madhuri’s “Chane Ke Khet Mein” and Shahrukh’s portraying a character with grey shades. Other Popular songs from this movie are “Badi Mushkil Hai”. You can also see Madhuri’s handling herself against wind and managing her Yellow Saree with ease.
Chalein Jaise Hawayein — Main Hoon Naa (2004)
This movie is known for Farah Khan’s debut movie as a director, Shahrukh Khan’s rickshaw stunt, Sushmita Sen as Miss Chandni and also one of those songs pulled in one shot. This song didn’t had a single camera instead each actor was given a camera which followed them as the song progressed. This one is Farah’s commendable job in pulling off this song so well with giant number of extra and crew members.
I Want To Make Love To You — Aitraaz (2004)
Adaptation of Hollywood movie Disclosure, Priyanka chopra in Aitraaz was critically acclaimed for her bold and negative role along with her charming looks. This song was not as popular as the movie but this song was shot beautifully in one shot.
Ae Chhori Zara Nach Ke Dikha — Cash (2007)
This song from multi-starrer movie Cash starring Ajay Devgn, Dia Mirza, Sunil Shetty, Riteish Deshmukh, Zayed Khan, Isha Deol and Shamita Shetty became popular for its location which appeared like maze. This song was shot in one take and you can see the actors performing and running through the walls of the maze structure. In the last you can also see the actors getting exhausted.
Raabta — Agent Vinod (2012)
Raabta does not have any dance moves instead has the action sequence where Saif is saving Kareena from goons in a hotel. If you have not watched it is recommended to watch as it will show Sriram Raghavan’s direction skill.
Gallan Goodiyan — Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)
I love this song not only because of its lyrics and great dance but also for the smooth camera transitions through the crowd and then focusing on one actor then widening the screen to accommodate more of them. This is one of the best one when comes to camera movement, clean and smooth direction and maintaining high energy throughout the song. Zoya, Bosco Caesar and their team had done a great job. The background dancers have not only supported the high energy of the song but also helped in the smooth movement of camera from one actor to another.
Sexy Baliye — Secret Superstar (2017)
Aamir Khan is known as “the perfectionist”, and that is for a reason. Watch this song to see him playing a character who is very self centred and is launching his music video. This is hilarious watching how Aamir Khan punches the background dancers in the flow and ends up messing the music video and trying to keep up the momentum. You will both end up laughing at the end and appreciating his effort.
Dil Bechara — Dil Bechara (2020)
Unfortunately this was the last movie of late Sushant Singh Rajput but the choreography of this song is at par. Also, it shows the skill of Sushant to pull of longs shot song.
Few Other Songs With Long Shots But Not One Shot Song
Ek Se Bure Do (2009)
Starring : Arshad Warsi and Rajpal Yadav.
The title track of this movie has only two shots and it may appear one shot song. The transition of the shots are also very smooth. Unfortunately, I didn’t found the video clip, but you can watch it on youtube.
Ni Jana (2021)
Starring : Jasleen Royal ft. Radhika Madan
This song is shot beautifully and has amazing smooth dance moves. Again this song has two long shots and it would be difficult for the viewer to find the transition.
There are other songs too having two long shots with very smooth transitions. | https://medium.com/@lightscamerachandan/one-take-songs-d843b71227e8 | ['Lights Camera Chandan'] | 2021-12-31 08:55:41.417000+00:00 | ['Bollywood Songs', 'Bollywood', 'One Take'] |
How a Seventyish Woman Collects Joyful Moments During This Holiday | How a Seventyish Woman Collects Joyful Moments During This Holiday
I was skeptical but not to worry…
Photo courtesy of the author
After seventy years, I have learned some important things about myself and my expectations. For one thing, expectations are imaginary. We can use them in ways that help or hurt us.
This morning, for example, my husband went into the shower whistling and came out sullen. Turns our he’s been thinking about a non-masking co-worker whom he might encounter on Tuesday. Getting all upset and planning to quit if the guy doesn’t quarantine, etc. Now, this imaginary story is going on on Saturday morning and ruining his mood as well as the atmosphere in the home. Why purposely plan on something bad happening four days from now and get all worked up about it??? Honestly. Of course, I do sometimes too, and probably you do, too. But it sucks. The joy out of us.
You can also use these imaginary stories to help yourself and that was my plan for this post. To help myself be more joy-filled by planning for it.
Writing for an audience always helps me be my best self. I may need to talk about my flaws in the story, but I am reminded to be reasonable and present all the sides of an issue even if I’m feeling stuck in the negative at the time. So, my dear readers, writing these stories helps me not only to write better, but to do better.
I am planning this post several days before submitting it with the intention of looking for these moments of Joy, collecting them here and giving them to you as a gift for the holidays.
My twelve joys of Christmas 2020 | https://medium.com/crows-feet/how-a-seventyish-woman-collects-joyful-moments-during-this-holiday-3cc8ac8694a3 | ['Jean Anne Feldeisen'] | 2020-12-26 18:40:57.723000+00:00 | ['Seniors', 'Aging Well', 'Life Lessons', 'Christmas', 'Holidays 2020'] |
How Spotify’s changing the production and marketing of music | For the first time in the 21st Century, music executives are expressing an emotion that many within the industry assumed had permanently evaporated: optimism. That’s because, after more than 15 years of declining revenue, the music industry recently saw its first gains. This can almost entirely be attributed to the rise of streaming apps like Spotify. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, music revenue increased by 16.5 percent in 2017, the second straight year of gains, with music streaming services representing two-thirds of overall revenue.
But not everyone is breaking out the champagne bottles. The industry isn’t simply reverting to its pre-2000 self — what the labels would consider the golden age before Napster gutted music sales and iTunes atomized the expensive album into its 99 cent song components, further eroding revenue. The subscription-based approach that’s been adopted by most streaming services has not only led to a change in music consumption habits, but it’s also impacted how music is produced and distributed. Unsurprisingly, industry shifts this large produce both winners and losers.
Case in point: while industry revenue is on the rise, songwriters are feeling the squeeze. A recent piece in Pacific Standard detailed the case of Andre Lindal, a songwriter who composed “As Long as You Love Me,” a pop song that was performed by Justin Bieber and subsequently hit №3 on Billboard’s Top 40 rankings.
Streaming numbers were Lindal’s friend that year, at least until he got paid. When he did, he found that the 34 million YouTube views had earned him $218, and the 38 million Pandora streams had netted him only $278. Dismayed, he sidelined his decade-long songwriting career and started a firm that develops artists as musicians and brands, which he called “a necessity, given what the songwriter income is.”
It turns out that royalty rates for songwriters were established in the early 20th Century, back when the radio was still a burgeoning medium and long before the establishment of the current music landscape. While 75 cents of every dollar Spotify generates goes to music royalties, a paltry portion of this flows toward the songwriters themselves. “The performance royalty rates paid by Spotify, YouTube, and other ‘interactive’ streaming services are actually the only form of songwriter royalty pay rates that aren’t set by the government,” wrote Pacific Standard. This means that songwriters are only receiving $90 for every 1 million streams on Spotify. Given these harsh economics, it’s becoming increasingly impossible to make a living from songwriting alone.
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Streaming apps are also changing how new music is discovered — in a way that I would argue is for the better. For several decades, whether a song became a hit was almost entirely dependent on it being discovered and played by radio DJs. This was all fine and good when there were thousands of locally-owned radio stations spread out across the U.S., which ensured multiple potential entry points for a new song, but loosened regulations in the 80s and 90s, first enacted by the FCC and further cemented into law by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, ensured a massive consolidation of media ownership that further led to a decline in music diversity across the airwaves. Before the law passed, media companies could only own a maximum of 40 stations, but the Telecommunications Act opened the doors to virtually limitless acquisitions. A 1999 article in Washington Monthly reported that, in the year following the passage of the Telecommunications Act, 2,045 radio stations were sold to larger conglomerates. Just two companies account for half of all radio station ownership.
And with the consolidation of radio station ownership came the homogenization of radio playlists. Once-independent DJs who had been accustomed to choosing their own song lineups were given corporate-approved titles to play instead. Playlist song overlap between stations owned by the same company is as high as 76 percent. This means that a very small number of radio executives are serving as the gatekeepers, determining which songs become hits and which ones fall quickly into obscurity.
Streaming apps have changed the equation considerably. Spotify playlists, which are maintained by a mixture of users, Spotify staff, and algorithms, account for the majority of music listening on the app, and there have been several cases in which a previously-unknown artist has been catapulted onto the Billboard charts after getting prime placement on one of them.
This has led to more song diversity among the top hits. An engineer named Michael Tauberg performed an analysis comparing the Billboard charts in the eight years leading up to the launch of Spotify to the eight subsequent years. “In the pre-Spotify era of the 2000s, there were a total of only 3,092 songs on the Hot-100,” he wrote on Medium. “In the same amount of time from 2009–2018, there were 3,933 songs on the chart, an increase of 27%.” Songs spent less time, on average, on the list, but that meant more artists had a shot at breaking out into the mainstream.
Of course, this hasn’t eliminated all problems pertaining to music diversity. Because a song needs to make it onto multiple influential playlists in order to achieve virality, songwriters are composing songs that can fit within several categories at once, a trend that some would argue leads to bland compositions that don’t take chances or break out of already-established genres. Also, the rising influence of playlists has resulted in the establishment of a pay-for-play black market in which the curators for influential playlists are paid off in exchange for prominent placement of a new song — something that was outlawed years ago and is against Spotify’s terms of service.
So yes, the music industry is on the upswing, but this renaissance brings with it a paradigm shift for how music gets made and how we as consumers discover it. With Big Radio no longer maintaining a stranglehold over the Billboard Top 100, we’re seeing more diversity in our music offerings, but at the same time songwriters, the lifeblood of the industry, are struggling to make ends meet. Streaming just may well save the music business, but it’s important to stay mindful of those who, without the proper interventions, could end up getting left behind.
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Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at [email protected]. For a full bio, go here. | https://medium.com/the-business-of-content/how-spotifys-changing-the-production-and-marketing-of-music-34c02c5c4061 | ['Simon Owens'] | 2019-05-13 17:56:19.139000+00:00 | ['Spotify', 'Marketing', 'Music', 'Media', 'Streaming'] |
Installing OpenCV in MacOS Catalina for Python 3 (2019) | Steps in Brief
Install Xcode.
Setup Homebrew.
Install Anaconda.
Setting up required libraries for python 3.
Testing it.
Step 1: Install Xcode
A) Direct and simple way
Follow this link to download Xcode. Follow the installation instructions there.
OR
B) Install using terminal
Open Terminal(Application->Utilites->terminal)
Type this to install: sudo xcode-select --install
Step 2: Install HomeBrew
Open Terminal(Application->Utilites->terminal)
Write this following in terminal:
- ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
- brew install python python3
- brew link python3
Step 3: Install the Anaconda Python Package
Download File from here. Click on python 3 version and download it.
2. Follow the Installation instructions, should be pretty standard, however Continuum has a guide here.
After installing conda type conda info to check verison in terminal.
Check the output of python version after running the above command as it will show 3.x version
Note: If you want to customise your evnironment then continue with STEP 4b else directly install Conda Environement file Step 4a
Step 4a: Installing OpenCV through Conda with python3 (Shortcut)
Download Script file here(environmentComputerVision.yml) Open Terminal Change location to Downloaded file
cd Downloads/
bash script.sh
4. Run environment: source activate ComputerVision
5. That’s it. Go to Step 5 to run your code.
Note: If you failed to install it due to any kind of issue then remove environment and try to again set it up.
- To remove type conda env remove -n ComputerVision
Step 4b: Installing OpenCV through Conda(Custom)
Open terminal Create a new environment “Computer Vision” and Package name : “Python = 3.7”
conda create --name ComputerVision python=3.7
3. Activate our new environment “ComputerVision”.
source activate ComputerVision
4. Install reqiured libraries:
Python 3: conda install -c menpo opencv3 or pip3 install opencv-python (Install pip: sudo easy_install pip )
conda install -c anaconda numpy
conda install pandas
conda install -c anaconda sqlalchemy
conda install -c conda-forge matplotlib
For other additional packages: Click here
Step 5: Now lets try running OpenCV
Open terminal Write Command:
cd
source activate ComputerVision
jupyter notebook or ipython
3. Open New -> python 3 in jupyter notebooks.
4. Type the following lines of code
import cv2
import numpy as np
print ('Importing Libraries')
Press shift+enter to excute single cell.
That’s all Folks.
Futher for more information refer to the link is given here: Link to anaconda Cheatsheet.
Facing any issue? Leave a comment below.
If you want to checkout my Projects, head over to My Website. | https://medium.com/@bhalodiarishi1/installing-opencv-in-macos-catalina-for-python-3-2019-40af1a17d9b1 | ['Rishi Bhalodia'] | 2019-12-02 07:52:34.442000+00:00 | ['Computer Vision', 'Opencv', 'Mac', 'Python', 'Installation'] |
Big Data Machine Learning with SparkML — Part 2 — Ensemble Methods | In my previous blog I showed how to setup Apache Spark in Google Colab and use Spark ML to run distributed machine learning. In this blog I am going to discuss about how to improve the efficiency of spark machine learning models using ensemble methods.
Before we jump in here is a quick take on what Ensemble methods do.
We basically train various Trees and then use these trees together to get to the final result. The below diagram shows exactly how this is done.
In SparkML we have two main algorithms for ensemble methods, Gradient Boosted Trees and Random Forests. Even though both use tree based models we will see later on that using Random Forest model not only speeds up (as the trees are trained in parallel vs GBT training one tree at a time) it also improves the model accuracy as this is less prone to overfitting.
Using the same Boston housing data set we used last week we will run both of these models.
This is what we had last week in our training data.
train.show()
We can now just take the last ‘features’ column that we built using VectorAssembler and use that. But we cannot use this directly and would have to convert this into ‘LabeledPoint’s. We do that using the following code.
from pyspark.mllib.regression import LabeledPoint rdd = train.rdd.map(lambda row: LabeledPoint(row['MEDV'] \
, row['features'].toArray())) rdd_test = test.rdd.map(lambda row: row['features'].toArray())
Here we first look at the GradientBoostedTrees.
First we import the required libraries
from pyspark.mllib.tree import GradientBoostedTrees, GradientBoostedTreesModel
Second we fit this model to our train data
gbt_model = GradientBoostedTrees.trainRegressor
(rdd,categoricalFeaturesInfo={}, numIterations=100)
We run our predictions
gbt_predictions = gbt_model.predict(rdd_test)
gbt_labelsAndPredictions =
test.rdd.map(lambda row: row.MEDV).zip(gbt_predictions)
Finally we calculate RMSE for these predictions
gbt_testMSE =
gbt_labelsAndPredictions.
map(lambda row: (row[0] - row[1]) * (row[0] - row[1])).sum()
/float(test.rdd.count()) print('Test Root Mean Squared Error = ' +
str(math.sqrt(gbt_testMSE)))
Now lets try the same thing with ‘RandomForest’ model.
model_RamdomForest = RandomForest.trainRegressor(
rdd, categoricalFeaturesInfo={},
numTrees=30, featureSubsetStrategy="auto",
impurity='variance', maxDepth=4, maxBins=32)
Once the model is trained on the training rdd we can use this for predictions.
predictions = model_RamdomForest.predict(rdd_test)
Here are the final metrics
rf_labelsAndPredictions = test.rdd.map(
lambda row: row.MEDV).zip(predictions) rf_testMSE = rf_labelsAndPredictions.map(
lambda row: (row[0] - row[1]) * (row[0] - row[1])).sum() /float(test.rdd.count()) print('Test Root Mean Squared Error = ' + str(math.sqrt(rf_testMSE)))
As you can see this gives us a much better RMSE compared to the GBT model even though we trained our RandomForest models with only 30 trees.
Hope you enjoyed reading about ensemble methods in Spark.
Happy reading !!!
References | https://medium.com/@sailajakarra/big-data-machine-learning-with-sparkml-part-2-ensemble-methods-4bad3ee66222 | ['Sailaja Karra'] | 2020-11-18 00:26:34.694000+00:00 | ['Spark', 'Python', 'Regression', 'Machine Learning'] |
30 – How could you even imagine | Thoughts on the mind boggling progress of the human species
That can’t Be done
This morning I had a thought… I want you to think back to the caveman and his simple life. Gathering food in the day, hunting occasionally and communal eating at night (perhaps). Fighting off threats. Possibly crafting spears and starting fires. Nowadays, this sounds quite therapeutic!
Try to think from the mind of a caveman. In his/her world, there is nothing but sticks, stones, plants, trees, animals and other cavemen. Not even metal exists…
Now… you’re In the mind of a caveman and thinking like a caveman.
I want you to then imagine communicating through an invisible signal to your caveman friend on the other side of a big rock (Uluru maybe) 😂 Impossible, you might say. How can he even imagine that… it’s invisible after all.
And that’s Exactly my thought!
Enter the future
It’s Amazing to think that once upon a time, we could not have even imagined such a device as the telephone. Yet now it is so common it would be considered ‘normal’.
Huh… that’s Interesting.
If something so impossible and so inconceivable is now true in this world. I wonder what else is possible?
I wonder what the world will look like in 1000 years… I’d guess that it’s currently inconceivable. | https://medium.com/@george-kettle/29-how-could-you-even-imagine-3a60559c8928 | ['Learning To Startup'] | 2020-10-25 08:10:33.882000+00:00 | ['World', 'Humanity', 'Awe', 'Humans', 'Progress'] |
Alexa Mimics Android, Debuts New Auto Mode and Commute Routine | The Amazon Alexa Auto Mode feature has been introduced that can enhance the user’s vehicle experience by allowing them to easily navigate, stay connected, and entertain the passengers while driving. The new feature works on Amazon Echo Auto devices and connects with users’ smartphones, and uses its screen to display information. The latest development equates Amazon Echo Auto with Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay. The company says that the auto mode has four screens — Home, Navigation, Communication and Play — and a menu bar that allows users to switch quickly with them.
It allows users to navigate, communicate and play media while driving — just like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. The feature uses a smartphone’s screen and converts it into a source to display information on four different screens — home, navigation, communication, and play. There is a menu bar that allows users to quickly switch between these screens, ultimately improving the in-voice experience.
Home screen:
This is a central screen that provides one-touch access to the driver’s frequent actions with shortcuts to play and pause the current music source, navigate to locations, and make calls. A simple tap on the shortcut initiates the action, or the driver can use voice commands to control it. For example, the driver might say, “Alexa, continue my music to play songs”.
Navigate:
The Navigate screen provides access to locations stored in the Alexa app. Once you choose a place to travel, the Amazon Alexa Auto Mode feature opens a navigation app, like Google Maps or Apple Maps, and starts navigation. Drivers can only return to the Alexa app by giving voice, “Alexa, go back to the Alexa app.” Besides, drivers can also find space only by voice. For example, “Alexa, search nearby coffee shops.”
Trending Bot Articles:
Communication:
Another thing that Amazon Alexa Auto Mode does is allow drivers to call quickly, drop-in, or announce their Alexa devices. Amazon says drivers can ask Alexa to initiate action, and the feature will read a list of recently placed calls and devices.
Play:
Amazon Alexa Auto Mode also entertains users as they drive. This screen is shown to the most recent media using any Alexa device. Drivers can now choose a song to sing on the playing screen, which provides specific control for the type of media and service (Spotify, YouTube Music, etc.) used.
The auto mode was designed to help you stay focused on the road with visual, large touch targets and intuitive features, including shortcuts. Besides, it also guides you with shortcuts for the most common Alexa interactions used in a vehicle, such as saved Navigating places, calling contacts and Alexa devices, and recent media games. Auto mode will be rolled out for Android and iOS in the coming weeks. It will be available in India, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 ! | https://chatbotslife.com/alexa-mimics-android-debuts-new-auto-mode-and-commute-routine-a0f14e347654 | ['Tapaan Chauhan'] | 2020-12-17 15:44:27.003000+00:00 | ['Amazon Echo', 'Voice Assistant', 'Amazon', 'Bots', 'Alexa'] |
Alpaca City is Landing on Binance Smart Chain with 5,000 Alpaca NFTs Airdrop | Alpaca City was launched in late October, 2020. Ever since the launch, we’ve been grateful for the support from our community. Over the last few weeks, Alpaca City has achieved unprecedented growth with the following milestones:
Ranked №1 on Dapp.com & Dapp Review Gaming category according 24h transaction volume
Ranked №3 on Open Sea collectibles category and №9 overall based on 7-day NFT trading volume
In total of 500,000 ALPA (~150K USD) were burned through breeding fees in the past 2 weeks
We’ve had a lot of feedback regarding the high gas fee on the Ethereum network. While we are working on ways to reduce gas spending by optimizing our smart contract, we see the needs to explore different options that can reduce transaction cost significantly.
We are now excited to work with Binance Smart Chain to solve this problem. Alpaca City will be live on Binance Smart Chain on December 3rd, 2020 at 6am PST with 5,000 Alpaca NFTs airdrop. We are also thrilled to announce official partnerships with other notable projects to celebrate the launch on Binance Smart Chain. Details will be announced at a later time.
Join Now to Get a Chance to Win 5,000 Alpaca NFTs Airdrop | https://medium.com/alpacacity/alpaca-city-is-landing-on-binance-smart-chain-with-5-000-alpaca-nfts-airdrop-26ba8f0f29c3 | ['Alpaca City Team'] | 2020-12-01 12:01:08.817000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Collectibles', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Defi'] |
Why Trump is Not The Real Threat to American Democracy | And this begs the question — what will you do when the next Trump comes along? Because this one might go to prison and you can rest assured that another one will be coming. Why? Politicians want power. And there’s a base of 73 million ready to give it to them. Add to that it takes record-breaking numbers to beat that, and you’ve got a recipe for an almost guaranteed victory every time.
Firstly, you can’t count on people suddenly seeing reason. Remember how I said I saw tyrants “come back from the dead” and win elections? They were in exile for ten years. They went from invincible to irrelevant. And yet…You see, you can’t explain these things using rationalism. They are, by their very nature, irrational. Take all that’s happened in America in the last four years and you’ll see what I mean — gun violence, racism, politically-motivated hooliganism, fascism, democracy being held at gunpoint and 286,000 people dying from Coronavirus. You’d think that this would be enough for people to realise what Trump is and what he’s doing to America.
Secondly, like I said, you can’t count on Trump going to prison being the solution. Personally, I have a hard time believing that he will. But that’s just because I’ve seen that it takes a completely fearless opposition and judiciary to put away people like him. In our world, the rich and powerful somehow always find a way. But putting that to one side, Trump being out of the running, in any case, isn't going to put a damper on Trumpism. Sure, the movement will die down for a while. But that’s only till they find their next champion. And given that Trump is leaving behind a crystal clear roadmap to power and a base that’s ready to hand it over, that won’t take long.
Your best bet is to vote the way you did this time. Why? Remember how I said Trump left his successors a roadmap? The only reason going down that path is going to to be enticing for politicians is because they know the vote-bank that comes with it is good enough to win. You need to show them that it isn't. Because the version of America Trumpists are fighting for will likely never die. What you can do is stop it from becoming a reality.
It’s about understanding politics and how it works. You see, if Trumpism keeps losing, there will come a point where politicians will have to sit back and wonder if it’s even worth it. Why should they alienate half the population (with the winning vote) by standing with the losing side? And this goes both ways. If the message for democracy keeps losing, then even the “good” guys will wonder if it’s worth it. I mean, if they’re running for president, that's what they want, isn't it? To be president? | https://medium.com/the-purple-giraffe/why-trumpism-is-the-real-threat-to-american-democracy-2457d799c861 | ['Sikander Hayat Khan'] | 2020-12-05 19:50:34.250000+00:00 | ['World', 'Politics', 'Donald Trump', 'Election 2020', 'Government'] |
Back to the Future: Robotronica Changed the Course of Marisa’s History | Two years into her optometry studies and a call for help put Marisa on a path she’d never imagined.
QUT mechatronics engineering student Marisa Bucolo is developing a navigation algorithm for a robotic hexapod.
Her friend, David Hedger — a mechatronics engineering student — called on anyone to help construct a troupe of robotic ‘performers’ for QUT’s Robotronica 2015 — Australia’s largest one-day robotics festival.
“Anyone who knew what a screwdriver could do was asked to help assemble robots designed to dance on stage during a Deep Blue performance,” Marisa said.
“While helping I spoke with professors and other students, and I knew then they were more… me.”
Marisa chose to reboot her career and enrolled at QUT as an engineering student majoring in mechatronics with a minor in robotics.
Skip ahead another two years to Robotronica 2017 and Marisa was helping the same friend build robots for The Travelling Garden of Life — a sci-fi performance about robots maintaining seed banks and a preservation garden in an orbiting space station.
“I was a dancer and singer growing up so building robots to dance and interact with people was fun. I got to use both halves of my brain,” Marisa said.
“I was also engineering by then so I could do more.”
Now, in her fourth and final year of undergraduate study, Marisa is working with CSIRO Data61 to develop her own robot for Robotronica.
Marisa Bucolo (left) is a QUT Engineering (Mechatronics/Robotics) student working with CSIRO Data61 and QUT roboticist Professor Jonathan Roberts to develop a navigation algorithm for the hexapod robot.
“I’m developing the navigation algorithm for ‘Gizmo’ — a remote-controlled six-legged hexapod robot used for science and education demonstrations,” Marisa said.
“My thesis is to copy the Gizmo design and add extra sensors to get it walking on its own.”
Dubbed ‘Wizmo’ for its anticipated speed, Marisa’s robot will be capable of autonomous wandering without bumping into anything — or anyone.
Wizmo’s navigation algorithm is part of her honours thesis under the supervision of world-renowned roboticist, QUT Professor Jonathan Roberts.
“Marisa’s commitment to our Robotronica shows has been fantastic to witness,” Professor Roberts said.
“Engineers tend to be keen on delivering on their promises but sometimes that means they can miss a deadline. Engineering for public performance is an incredible experience and great way to learn under the pressure of an unmovable deadline.
“Marisa has a background in performance from her school days and so she totally understands the ‘show must go on’ attitude of professionals in the arts. This makes her an amazing engineer.”
With another six months of algorithm development ahead of her, Marisa will introduce remote-controlled versions of Wizmo and Gizmo to crowds at Robotronica — Sunday 18 August, QUT Gardens Point (9am-4pm).
The robots are the first in a growing family of CSIRO hexapods, which will soon include a lighter model called ‘Zero’.
“Zero will be made with much cheaper parts so it will be like the zero sugar version of the Gizmo range.
“We didn’t want to call it ‘Gizmo Lite’ because that name is too long.
“Robot names need to be two syllables or less because you want to be able to yell it out in frustration when it doesn’t do what you want — and, for sure — when someone walks into the room to see it, it will break.”
Marisa introduced herself to CSIRO researchers while volunteering at the QUT-hosted International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2018 in Brisbane.
“CSIRO offered me a vacation research project working on their DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge entry. After the project they agreed to let me stay on and do my honours thesis,” Marisa said.
Marisa said she hopes to stay with CSIRO as an engineer after graduation working on practical robots before one day returning to QUT as a researcher.
“I want to make meaningful robots — not like a butler, or a doctor necessarily, but robots that make a real impact in their task, and serve a purpose,” Marisa said.
“Science education is also super-duper important and needs to happen before kids’ interest drifts away.
“Engineering is not easy. You have to work hard to get there and work hard to stay there, so the younger kids build their interest the less they will need to catch up on.
“You learn most of the fundamental maths concepts and other scientific foundations by the end of Year 10.
“I remember my teacher in Year 1 or 2 threw water on the ground and the class watched it evaporate as a simple experiment — that is still science and I still found that interesting.”
Marisa maintained her interest in science from a young age, but engineering was not on her radar during high school.
She wanted a scientific career after participating in the National Youth Science Forum but later thought optometry would be the safer career path.
When she graduated from Mount St Michael’s College in 2013, Marisa entered Optometry at QUT but says she doesn’t regret her decision to change.
“I connected with the work and people so much in engineering that it didn’t feel like a chore.
“Robotic vision was also an interesting cross-over from optometry in that it helped to know how the eye worked and translate that into a robotic capability.”
Marisa found her tribe through student-run activities like the annual Droid Racing Challenge — an autonomous vehicle competition, and has always been a part of the Robotics Club which included a stint as executive in her third year.
“Robotics Club organises a lot of introductory workshops — like CAD and PCB design — that are great for filling in the gaps from high school and what you can get done in your spare time. We also host a trivia night — that’s fun.
“I made most of my friends through the club in first year we are still friends now.
“It’s too easy to scare people away from engineering and hard to convince them it’s a good idea.
“Australia has a big robotics start-up scene but bigger companies don’t have a lot of robotics. Some are used for assembly but robotics here is still new comparably.
“It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 years and what the public thinks — robots are not scary terminators.” | https://medium.com/thelabs/back-to-the-future-robotronica-changed-the-course-of-marisas-history-eaa5680ab33 | ['Qut Science'] | 2020-09-24 00:17:04.799000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Engineering', 'Science', 'Students', 'Robotics'] |
Being a Teacher | I’ve wanted to share my experience about being a speaker in the digital realm for a while. Officially, I have been a speaker in this field since 2015. I teach several classes on User Experience, including User Research, Interface Design (Web, Interactive Installation, AR / VR), Ideation and Decision-Making Workshops. I like to draw from real-life situations in the workplace, talk about joining a company, Junior vs Middle vs Senior positions, how to pitch ideas, how to make your point, in short — what I have personally experienced and witnessed first-hand.
I’ve been thinking about this article for a few months now, while at the same time questioning myself about my own role as a speaker, what I could offer to my students and how I could help the ones facing difficulties, especially during the pandemic.
Teacher vs. Speaker
Why do I differentiate these two terms? I believe that a teacher has been taught how to teach. They have learnt specific methodologies and acquired certain tools to know how to share their knowledge. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), I have not been trained to do this. I have simply observed my peers, tried to take the best out of what I’ve witnessed and added my personal touch. I consider myself as more of a speaker, a mentor.
I like the definition of mentorship.
Mentorship is about creating an interpersonal support relationship, for helping, sharing and learning, whereby an experienced person — the mentor — offers their wisdom and expertise in order to foster and encourage the personal development of another person — the mentee — who is less competent or knowledgeable in the subject-matter or wishes to achieve certain professional goals.
src : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentorat
I think it is important to draw from personal experience, use common sense and intuition. I like to try to decipher and understand what the other person needs. That is why it is important to adapt, and go over the basics if needed, or skip ahead in the course outline and speed up the pace if needed.
What is it like to be a teacher?
Being a teacher in the digital realm is both cool and terrifying. We have inherited trades where basic principles already exist, like for example in Print and Graphic Design, where basic ergonomics principles and cognitive science are important. But these digital professions are still quite new, and are rapidly evolving. It is therefore important to stay up to date.
We cannot teach the same course outline year in and year out. We need to adapt it, tweak it, and of course, improve it. We must also take into account the human factor and adjust to our audience.
Areas of expertise are increasingly specialized — as reflected in job titles (especially French job titles as I have previously discussed here) — and corresponding skills are even further enhanced, we are constantly striving for progress. Fascinating, isn’t it?
The world is rapidly evolving
I remember what a speaker once said to us:
“This is how I did things with this software 10 years ago, but this is how you can do it now. I will explain to you how we got to this point.”
[20 minutes later…]
“Now, it can be done in less than 2 minutes by using this button.”
I found it really interesting to see the demo and fully understand the evolution.
But I have also sometimes felt like I was learning notions from the past, which aren’t really in sync with the reality of today’s market. It’s uncomfortable, both for the students and the teacher, and I don’t want to put anyone in this position.
Me vs YouTube or any other platform
I asked myself what is my added value as a mentor, compared to the plethora of resources available online. I got my answer a while ago: the value is in sharing my personal experience. This is priceless. Explaining the context, how we succeed but also, most importantly, where we have failed, in order to provide useful feedback and tips based on experience. We should not see these platforms as competitors, but rather work with these to provide as much knowledge as possible.
Steer your students toward useful resources, sort through that massive information and use applicable content in your classroom.
Striving for more as a teacher
What type of teacher do I want to be? Do I want to be strict, cool, or in-between? I am still rather young, and look even younger. So, my students are often not that much younger than I am. This sometimes triggers somewhat funny situations.
This reminds me of a scene in How I Met Your Mother, where Ted wonders what type of teacher he should be and how he should behave in a classroom. I never found the answer to that question. I usually try to go with the flow and with the energy in the room, and try to figure out how to connect with the class. This technique has its upsides and its downsides, but in most cases, it has enabled beautiful moments, and has fostered progress, desire to learn, and success.
After a few years, I have truly understood the importance of teaching. We help shape our future co-workers, or even people who will end up doing the exact same job as ourselves. We carry the knowledge that we have acquired, before transforming it and sharing it in turn.
It is very important not to idealise, but to stay as close to reality as possible, to allow projection. Knowledge sharing means sharing experience and being as pedagogical as possible. It means being creative! One approach may work on one person but not on another, and group dynamics depend on so many different factors. Finding what works best for your audience is a real challenge, but isn’t it also the coolest thing?
I try not to share just one point of view as gospel. Though I usually convey messages and teach things the way I see them. But I do believe that my knowledge and teachings are the result of multiple people, sources, and point of views.
When I see that students fully grasp notions that I wish to teach, I take a step back and try to share my feedback in a different way (for example, in a project management way, by challenging and giving my opinion).
Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic
Well, that was definitely not easy! The interaction is different, everyone is in a different setting, we don’t share the same space and each person has their own take on the situation. I will not write about how each administration handled the situation — what happened, happened. It is now up to us to learn from it, and see how we can do better.
On my side, I had to rethink the way I teach. I had to change the way I interact, how I present things, and how I stay alert to misunderstandings. Picture this: you are behind your screen, teaching a class, and each student is — more or less — there, also behind screens. Level of fun: close to zero.
On the technical side, we quickly adapted. We used a second screen for managing the various media, a good microphone for clear sound, prepared course material accordingly and relied on interactive services like Miro, Figma or Klaxoon.
On the organisational side, we laid out the outline, scheduled the various meetings, and then everyone worked autonomously. Depending on the energy of the class, I would sometimes nudge a student who seemed a bit behind or not entirely focused. If the same question was asked by several students, we organised a full class moment and answered the question for everyone. As a general rule, do not hesitate to switch up the class organisation throughout time in order to keep everyone on their toes.
I know that returning to face-to-face teaching will be a huge relief for many, but I do think that we have learnt a lot about how we interact with each other and how we can improve. Perhaps a mix of both face-to-face and remote learning will be part of every curriculum. I am pretty convinced this will be the case in the near future.
To conclude, I would say that being a speaker, teacher, mentor — no matter what you want to call it — is a great opportunity, a responsibility and a challenge. It is my passion to be able to interact and share my knowledge with people and watch them grow. It is like a breath of fresh air from my regular job.
👉 These are the 13 tips I would have liked to know before starting:
1- Be as demanding with yourself as you may be with your padawans. I hate being late, so my students know to be on time.
2- Share limitlessly, but keep in mind that the key is to not give all the information at once; the process is sometimes more important than the goal.
3- Ask for feedback regularly, concerning the rhythm, the content. Classes are designed 80% on your own and 20% with your students.
4- Not everyone will like you, deal with it. People get attached to personalities that stand out, so just be yourself.
5- Take the time to provide feedback, at least to the whole class, and if possible one-to-one with students. You can do this in many ways: in writing, visio conference or face to face. This can allow you to collect questions that may be shared by many and provide a collective answer.
6- The magic ratio is 40% theory, 55% hands-on practice and 5% anecdotes. The more you move forward in the curriculum, the more the hands-on practice takes over theory.
7- Prepare quizzes at the beginning of class. They don’t have to count or be graded, but they are useful for reviewing certain aspects and checking if everyone is on the same page.
8- Do not give homework that you do not have time to correct or provide sufficient feedback on.
9- Prepare class material that can be easily shared with students.
10- Be honest but not hurtful, just get to the point.
11- Awkward situations can take place, just diffuse the tension with humility, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
12- You don’t need to have an answer to everything. If you don’t have the answer to something — do not make something up! Take the time to find the answer or call a friend.
13- Build a relationship of sharing and mutual trust, welcome contradiction and free speech in mutual respect. | https://medium.com/@gavedikian/being-a-teacher-b4e112e3398b | ['Gabriel Avedikian'] | 2021-09-07 09:27:37.983000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Pandemic', 'Teaching', 'Schools', 'Mentoring'] |
Speak up. Because it matters. | I can’t speak to experiences I’ve never had because of the privilege that exists by my mere existence and the convenient shield of falling into the model minority model.
But what I can speak from is my experience with complicity having the most serious of consequences. I know the current moment is not about me nor am I trying to insert myself where I have no place. This is merely a personal reflection.
I worked in an industry (and work in yet another) where the rules of ethics and decorum were written by white men. And there is seldom questioning of it. Less than one percent of people in the newspaper industry looked like me.
I worked for a news organization in rural America that through no fault of its own other than complicity failed to deeply examine issues in the community. When more immigrants moved to the community years later, the true problems emerged. Could I have helped change that by being a louder voice?
At 17 and too young to vote still I worked for Sen. Carl Levin’s reelection campaign and Obama for America in Michigan. I saw hope and change.
I thought I was doing the right thing and knew enough about policy to apply it in an even-handed manner. I sat back as I saw policies I help write lead to the most tremendous of consequences.
-Live stream video guidelines I helped write led to the original censure of the story of the tragic killing of Philando Castile on social media.
-Curation guidelines I wrote regarding hate speech have evolved and been used to stifle conversations about race and the very things those rules sought to work against.
-I stood by as I used curation guidelines and then saw subsequent lack thereof let false stories run rampant, fueling hateful rhetoric affecting the 2016 election. Putting aside any partisan politics or other issues that have arisen in the past four years, a politician who threatens to use the might of the military against his own people should be troubling to all.
I’ve worked in or adjacent to journalism for half my life and am of course a proponent of free speech. The line stops when the speech itself amounts to violence or a threat in and of itself.
I vowed to never sit idly by and be a bystander if I knew there was a clear right or wrong. I long covered “both sides” or “all voices.” This cannot be the case any longer.
I’m proud to have worked for an organization that spoke up and uncovered a dark truth about the issue of military sexual assault. I saw firsthand how my friend and coworker, an injured war veteran, came under fire for simply saying the truth — that men and women who laid their lives on the line to serve this country were being violated and attacked by the very men and women who also swore to serve and protect this country and vowed to be brothers and sisters in arms with them.
Threats were lodged against his elementary-age daughter. For telling the truth: a simple inconvenient truth that was enough to disrupt the power structure that runs from a local recruiting office in Everytown, U.S.A. to the Pentagon, Capitol, and White House.
A few years ago, as I reckoned with my complicity, I came to the realization that I would only work in spaces where I could make as much impact as possible with the skills and labor I share. I am incredibly timid and afraid to speak up because I had always been told my voice didn’t matter by everyone. I was the quiet timid Asian girl. Because that’s what I was supposed to do. Because I was told I couldn’t speak on oppression because I had grown up with the privileges of being a middle-class model minority. Because we’ve assimilated so we should stay quiet so as not to rock the boat.
For the longest time, I thought I couldn’t be a trial attorney and speak in the courtroom on behalf of others. I gravitated to legal assistance work that could be done behind a desk and speak to people one-on-one.
I loved direct legal services and found the biggest service provider of them — the United States Army. This job description of being able to both serve and protect my country, serve and protect servicemembers, and being able to help called to me in the most profound way.
I worked to make myself fit for the job not just physically but to become a better advocate. After being terrified my entire life to use my voice, I worked to finally leverage it. I was so afraid of standing up in front of people and arguing, I put off writing a moot court brief until the day before it was due because I knew turning it in would mean the next step of preparing for oral arguments.
Unbeknownst to anyone, even one of my closest friends and teammates, everything changed for me the day we stood up on stage together to make our arguments in front of decorated judges. That day, I made a commitment to inserting the voice I found into the place where it could make the most impact.
Less than 10 percent of the United States Marine Corps is made up of women. That percentage is even lower in the officer ranks. In January, I set off to begin the journey. In February, I was limping and down for the count. I beat myself up each and every day for not being able to physically withstand the training that would have allowed me to earn the honor and privilege of serving my country and use my voice — as an attorney, as a leader, as an American — to help others.
I’m a first-generation American — a daughter of immigrant parents who grew up in a country marred by the violence of war. They are exhausted and reckoning with their own trauma. This has caused a deep misunderstanding between us as they beg me to not go to such extremes so help others.
It’s been deeply painful to try and explain my existence and passion to them. We haven’t spoken meaningfully in months. I’ve cut myself off from one of the most important support systems one could have. All because they don’t believe I should have a voice, nor should I use it.
I don’t know what’s next, but it’s deeply important that I be able to use my voice. It’s not the most important, nor is it always right. But I’m here to learn. I can’t begin to understand, but I can help amplify after my history of using existing power structure to stifle voices in the name of evenhandedness. | https://medium.com/@kaynguyen/speak-up-because-it-matters-c8b9f7cc6f92 | ['Kay Nguyen'] | 2020-06-03 14:27:50.697000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Journalism', 'Asian American', 'Social Media'] |
4 Ways Traveling is Harder as a Black Woman. | 1. Research
For many, research before departure consists entirely of the best locations for photos, restaurants, and beaches. In contrast, researching for a trip as an African-American woman feels much more daunting.
Before any trip, there is always extensive research. Questions googled may include: safest countries for Black people/women, racism in [insert country here], Black women in [insert country], etc.
Even with all this googling, we may still decide to travel to countries that are not considered the safest. Though having this prior knowledge is necessary for our peace of mind.
2. Loneliness
While traveling alone as a woman can be a very scary experience, traveling alone as a black woman maybe even more jarring. We are not seen as the same as other female travelers and are irrationally expected to be more independent and strong. Which, in turn, makes us more vulnerable to those in a society supposedly there to protect us.
We are often taught when traveling to “mind our business” and not involve ourselves with those who aren’t already reaching out to involve us. This can lead to a rather isolating experience, especially when solo traveling. It can be even scarier to put yourself out there when one bad interaction targetted at your race can dampen your emotional and mental health for the rest of the trip.
3. The Stares
Every country is different, but some people have never seen a black person in real life. This can lead to awkward staring and sometimes even more awkward questions for photos. Or even worse uninvited hair touching or shoulder-grazing simply because we seem “exotic”. While this may seem intriguing for those reading this, getting called out and treated like a prop is not fun.
I experienced this personally while traveling in China and staying in a smaller city. I was constantly making eye contact with others who simply wouldn’t look away. I even experienced this from a taxi driver, who wouldn’t stop looking back at me through his rearview mirror as though he couldn’t believe someone who looked like me was in his taxi.
4. Unpredictable Situations
As most of you likely now know, interactions with law enforcement at any time anywhere can be deadly for black people. When traveling abroad these same fears carry along with us and can impact what we decide to do and when.
Getting drunk and making split-second decisions might sound fun while traveling, but it can be dangerous for Black women. It can also be scary to make decisions to go to places with people whose intentions we do not know. Taking in to account the multitude of dangerous situations one wild night out could lead to, sometimes it’s just not worth the risk. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/4-ways-traveling-is-harder-as-a-black-woman-c91d4d02a663 | ['Vera Laurent'] | 2020-06-25 16:43:51.634000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Society', 'Women', 'Equality', 'Race'] |
Book Review: Electromagnetism | Book Review — Electric Body, Electric Health
Book: “Electric Body, Electric Health: Using the Electromagnetism Within (And Around) You to Rewire, Recharge, and Raise Your Voltage,” Eileen Day McKusick, St. Martin’s Essential, 2020
Book Review by Mary Mikawoz
Book available: January 26, 2021
I found this book literally in a way that others have spoken about when a book falls out of the shelf in a book store. It just kind of jumps out at you and you feel compelled to look at it and read it. This happened to me but in an electronic and digital kind of way. I was perusing books to review next from the selected options and this one just popped up on my website page. It literally was not there a moment ago and then it was there. It was as if Divine intervention had helped me along my path.
It is interesting that its sub-title is saying the same kind of thing — that using the electromagnetism within and around you can and does affect you and your life.
I was absolutely mesmerized by the first half the book. I found incredible insights and meanings. For example, I always assumed there was only three states of matter being solid, liquid and gas but Eileen explains there is a fourth state called plasma and that it is an electrically charged gas taking up 99.99 percent of space which connects stars, planets and galaxies in webs of light. That is phenomenally important news. She reviews recent science information to support her work.
Most importantly, Eileen Day McKusick, has mapped out the body with varying levels of information stored in it. She uses tuning forks to smooth out and change blocked passages of information found in the energetic fields around our body.
I think one of the healthiest and most important pieces of advice she gives is the point that “This is the single greatest trick to being high voltage to not judge or suppress any of your emotions but rather to seek to mange them appropriately.” This means, we have to deal with problems as they will not magically go away on their own. To flow through it and get to the other side, you need to deal with emotions, problems and issues.
Eileen has taught many other people how to work on people’s energetic fields with tuning forks. People like Dr. John Gray who is author of “Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus,” along with Marci Shimoff who is author of “Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul” both have taken courses from her and support her work.
She has previously published “Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy” in September 2014. She has an informative website with her name — https://www.eileenmckusick.com. Further, she has a store that sells her specifically designed tuning forks at her website — https://biofieldtuningstore.com.
The only issue I had with the book was the second half was when she was going into the various chakras. Honestly, my reaction was “Oh Great! Another chakra book.” Having said that, Eileen was able to show she has been working and mapping the energetic body field well because there was quite a few insights into the various respective chakra areas that made a lot of logical sense in the problems and issues people were dealing with.
I give this book a 4.25 out of 5 for a rating. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in self-healing or wanting to “increase their voltage” so that they can be a more positive force in their life and that of the world around them.
Tags: Eileen Day McKusick, Mary Mikawoz, Spiritual, spirituality, science, quantum physics, energy, electromagnetism, rewire, recharge, raise, voltage, book, book review, jump out, meant to be, electronic, God, Divine, intervention, states, matter, solid, gas, liquid, plasma, stars, planets, galaxies, energetic fields, chakras, Dr. John Gray, Marci Shimoff, Men, Mars, Women, Venus, Chicken Soup, Woman, Soul, courses, tuning forks, body, healing, voltage, positive, forces, life, world, impact, biomedicine, potential, health, problems, issued, emotions, physical, mental, aspects, selfhelp, selfimprovement, selfdevelopment,
#EileenDayMcKusick #MaryMikawoz #Spiritual #spirituality #science #quantum physics #energy #electromagnetism #rewire #recharge #raise #voltage #book #book review #jumpout #meanttobe #electronic #God #Divine #intervention #states #matter #solid #gas #liquid #plasma #stars #planets #galaxies #energetic fields #chakras #DrJohnGray #MarciShimoff #Men #Mars #Women #Venus #ChickenSoup #Woman #Soul #courses #tuningforks #body #healing #voltage #positive #forces #life #world #impact #biomedicine #potential #health #problems #issues #emotions #physical #mental #aspects #selfhelp #selfimprovement #selfdevelopment | https://medium.com/@mikawoz/book-review-electromagnetism-4c15000f7d2 | ['Mary Mikawoz'] | 2020-12-19 20:06:01.616000+00:00 | ['Self Development', 'Spirituality', 'Self Improvement', 'Energy', 'Self Help'] |
How China’s internet death squads bully & suppress its critics into silence on the Western Internet | It’s been an open secret for years now that the CCP and its associated arms of influence are active in promoting propaganda on behalf of the totalitarian Chinese regime. To use a recent example, I have been hearing a lot lately — more than is necessary — about the “help” that China has been given to Italy amidst the Wuhan Virus pandemic that they started. It seemed that anonymous voices across the Internet — for example Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit among others — were suspiciously quick to lavish praise upon a regime that killed over 10,000 peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. My point? The CCP believes that performing an occasional act of charity — however fake — will make some people forgive its history of genocide, invasion, lies and deception.
Which brings us to the here and now. Or should I say, my own encounters with the apologists of the totalitarian regime. Whoever they might pretend to be — often claiming to be ‘ordinary’ Americans — they are here, much like their Russian counterparts, to push an evil agenda and more recently to push state-sponsored lies and hatreds upon the West.
Case in point: I have had no less than 12 Twitter accounts, several Facebook accounts, and 4 Reddit accounts either hacked or censored after each one of those accounts was spotted by CCP operatives. In every case, the story was the same. They took objection to what I wrote, and descended in a locust like fashion upon my post, often using insults and death threats. Shortly afterwards, my account would be banned, presumably after being mass reported by the very same people who had threatened to kill me.
On Facebook for instance, I once found my passwords mysteriously changed after I made a post critical of the CCP’s continuing genocide in East Turkistan (which the CCP imperialists refer to as ‘Xinjiang’). Ditto when I posted an article supporting the peaceful pro-Democracy protesters in China-occupied Hong Kong. On other occasions, I would be blocked from posting for 30 days simply due to a very innocent post.
On Reddit, I was accused of “ban evasion” by someone whose entire posting history consisted solely of denial of the genocides in Tibet and East Turkistan. It must be mentioned here that Reddit is partially owned by TenCent, a company with strong links to the CCP. Reddit for instance, a system of ‘upvoting’ and ‘downvoting’ allows users to ‘rank’ comments and posts. On several occasions I found that after making a midly critical comment of the Chinese government’s policies, I would be baragged with dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of downvotes, and then have my account shortly deleted by the reddit admins for “ban evasion”.
Similarly, on YouTube, channels which criticize China have been demonetized and even shut down, while channels that praise China are allowed to exist and are even promoted. On Twitter, a similar problem exists. During the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, for instance, it was found that Twitter was deleting pro-Hong Kong accounts on spurious grounds.
At least with Reddit, the reason for my account deletion could NOT have been “ban evasion”. I maintained two pro-China accounts on that platform, and none of them has ever received so much as a warning despite espousing extremist and genocidal views. Under one account, I suggested a nuclear attack on America, the extermination of all African-Americans, and clearly voiced ‘support’ (in character) for Han Chinese supremacism. In other cases, I would first pretend as if I was supporting the Chinese government, only to be banned later on when I changed my opinions. If my crime was truly ‘ban evasion’ then they should have banned all of my accounts. They should have banned the accounts that were pro-China and not just when they were changed to anti-China opinions. Yet these pro-China accounts are allowed, day after day, week after week, to spread hatred and filth against the West.
This for me is proof positive of pro-China favoritism across platforms. Of course I should point out that such behavior is not unique to China’s supporters. I have encountered similar intimidation from Trump supporters, as well as hardcore Christians and Muslims.
The CCP’s destructive romp thorough the Western Internet is an affront to free speech and freedom of expression that simply cannot go unopposed. Rather, the vast scope of its criminality (it really is criminality) and hatred of human rights must thoroughly be exposed, as must its collaborators who allow the CCP agents to run rampant. I, as a human being with a conscience, look with horror at the CCP’s ill-bred fairy tales and can’t help but think that honor means nothing to it. Principles mean nothing to it. All it cares about is how to unfurl the flag of deception, hatred, and genocide.If you don’t believe me, then consider that tangible progress toward stopping the CCP cannot depend on resolving “subtleties” or “technicalities”. | https://medium.com/@pjx/how-chinas-internet-death-squads-bully-suppress-its-critics-into-silence-on-the-western-internet-5233a622cefb | ['Martin A. Peterson'] | 2020-03-17 12:30:19.272000+00:00 | ['Propaganda', 'Censorship', 'China', 'Hong Kong'] |
7 ways to cure your fibromyalgia | I once came across these ‘ways’ or ‘tips’ on how to cure your fibromyalgia, from a blog called ‘Chronic Mom’.
Read and consume at your own peril.
1) Drink all the shakes. Take all the pills. Drink milk from a Himalayan mountain goat by the light of the full moon
2) Just use a positive attitude
3) Just use more faith
4) Just try harder
5) Just exercise more
6) Eat healthy food
7) Listen to your doctor
Obviously, these are sarcastic comments and tips. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of chronic pain disorders knows that you cannot ‘think yourself’ out of pain. It’s just not possible. In fact, I’d say it’s quite irresponsible. Because, there is a time and a place for everything, and the time to be happy and positive is not when you’re lying down on the ground, feeling like you’re being impaled by 10,000 red hot glowing nails the size of crowbars.
Tell that to any happiness guru out there.
They really don’t have the slightest clue what they’re talking about.
However, the whole list illustrates and important, yet negative point.
And it is explained by the list’s very own existence. If the world of fibromyalgia wasn’t rife with poor advice, any such sarcastic list wouldn’t have existed in the first place. Why make a joke list about something that doesn’t exist in the first place?
Right?
So, that means that there actually are lots of people out there who hand out such stupid advice and even charge for it.
Especially a lot of people who adhere to the profession being describe in point number seven.
Yes, I’m talking about all the hopeless doctors and so-called medical professionals who give bad advice. Note that I myself *am not* a medical professional, so I cannot possibly recommend for or against anything.
What I can do, however, is let you know of the literal hundreds if not thousands of cases I’ve heard about patients who have gotten advice from their doctors that didn’t help them at all.
That and even prescriptions for drugs that didn’t help the slightest.
Actually, that’s not true.
The drugs helped with one thing.
Trimming down the weight of the patients’ wallets without removing their pain.
Which is obviously not what you want.
Look, at the end of the day, fibromyalgia is a very complicated matter, and it can have multiple causes. There is no sole explanation for why some develop fibromyalgia and some don’t. However, there certainly are loads of poor advice being handed out left and right when it comes to suggested treatment methods for fibromyalgia.
Yet, I want to just give you my advice.
And that is, instead of having to psychologically and mentally prepare you to fight for your prescription so that you can get the painkiller drug you so badly want, what about going a different route?
By taking something that doesn’t require a prescription.
That doesn’t make you addicted or have any known side effects.
And that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?
If this sounds interesting to you, I’ll just name drop the thing right here and I’ll leave the rest up to you.
Sound fair?
Alright.
It’s called CBD oil.
And that’s all you need to know. | https://medium.com/@aaryningen/7-ways-to-cure-your-fibromyalgia-1ba9b7149bfc | ['Aasmund Ryningen'] | 2020-08-20 19:25:11.999000+00:00 | ['Hemp', 'Medical Marijuana', 'Marijuana', 'Cbd', 'Holistic Health'] |
Laravel — Testing — Mocking (官方文件原子化翻譯) | Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
# 版本
Laravel 8.x
# 前言
我喜歡使用 Laravel 開發的感覺, 除了開發快速, 程式碼簡潔且優雅之外, Laravel 框架本身也是一個很好的學習參照物。 本篇主要將官方文件重點整理成 Q&A 的形式呈現, 原子化的概念, 這方式並不適用於每個人, 但若對你有幫助, 我會很開心。
# 目錄
Laravel — 官方文件原子化翻譯 — 目錄
# Mocking Objects
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use App\Service;
use Mockery;
use Mockery\MockInterface;
public function test_something_can_be_mocked()
{
$this->instance(
Service::class,
Mockery::mock(Service::class, function (MockInterface $mock) {
$mock->shouldReceive('process')->once();
})
);
}
Answer: 將 service::class 綁到 service container 當中, 當完成綁定後, service container 將會使用 mocked class, 而不是原本的 object, 並指定 process method 會被呼叫一次
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use App\Service;
use Mockery\MockInterface;
$mock = $this->mock(Service::class, function (MockInterface $mock) {
$mock->shouldReceive('process')->once();
});
Answer: 將 service::class 綁到 service container 當中, 當完成綁定後, service container 將會使用 mocked class, 而不是原本的 object, 並指定 process method 會被呼叫一次
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use App\Service;
use Mockery\MockInterface;
$mock = $this->partialMock(Service::class, function (MockInterface $mock) {
$mock->shouldReceive('process')->once();
});
Answer: 使用 partialMock() 將 Service::class 綁定 container, 所以 container 會使用 mocked class, 而不是實際上的 object, 並使用 shouldReceive() 宣告 process method 會被呼叫, once() 定義次數 partialMock 只 mock 被呼叫的 method, 其他 method 如果在 testing 過程中有被呼叫, 則正常執行
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
namespace Tests\Feature;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithoutMiddleware;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;
use Tests\TestCase;
class UserControllerTest extends TestCase
{
public function testGetIndex()
{
Cache::shouldReceive('get')
->once()
->with('key')
->andReturn('value');
$response = $this->get('/users');
// ...
}
}
Answer: mock Cache facade, 並使用 shouldReceive 斷言 get() 將被呼叫, once() 代表次數, with() 代表 parameter, 而 return value 代表回傳的值, 如果沒有達到以上的斷言, 則 fail
Laravel testing 中, 如果要 mock config, 該使用？
config::set
Laravel testing 中, 如果要 mock http testing, 該使用？
http testing method
# Facade Spies
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;
public function test_values_are_be_stored_in_cache()
{
Cache::spy();
$response = $this->get('/');
$response->assertStatus(200);
Cache::shouldHaveReceived('put')->once()->with('name', 'Taylor', 10);
}
Answer: 使用 spy() method 來紀錄下所有 testing 過程與 Cache facade 的互動, 並在最後 assert, 若不符合 assertion 則報錯
# Bus Fake
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
namespace Tests\Feature;
class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
public function test_orders_can_be_shipped()
{
Bus::fake();
// Perform order shipping...
Bus::assertDispatched(ShipOrder::class);
Bus::assertNotDispatched(AnotherJob::class);
}
}
Answer: 使用 Bus facade 的 fake(), 任何使用到 Bus facade dispatch 的 job 將不會真正的被 dispatch 最後可使用 assertDispatched(), assertNotDispatched() 來斷言哪個 job 被 dispatch 了, 哪個沒有
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Bus::assertDispatched(function (ShipOrder $job) use ($order) {
return $job->order->id === $order->id;
});
Answer: 當使用 Bus facade 的 assertDispatched(), assertNotDispatched() 時, 可帶入 closure 來判定被 dispatched 的 job 有通過一定的規則
# Job Chains
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use App\Jobs\RecordShipment;
use App\Jobs\ShipOrder;
use App\Jobs\UpdateInventory;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Bus;
Bus::assertChained([
ShipOrder::class,
RecordShipment::class,
UpdateInventory::class
]);
Answer: assert 指定的 job 有被 chained 且 dispatched
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Bus::assertChained([
new ShipOrder,
new RecordShipment,
new UpdateInventory,
]);
Answer: assert 指定的 job 有被 chained 且 dispatched, 除了可帶入 class name, 也可帶入 class instance
# Job Batches
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use Illuminate\Bus\PendingBatch;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Bus;
Bus::assertBatched(function (PendingBatch $batch) {
return $batch->name == 'import-csv' &&
$batch->jobs->count() === 10;
});
Answer: 使用 assertBatched() 來斷言 batch of jobs 已被 dispatched, 可在 closure 內取得 PendingBatch, 取得該 batch 的資料, 並定義該 batch 應該要有的條件
# Event Fake
以下的 Laravel example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
public function test_orders_can_be_shipped()
{
Event::fake();
// Perform order shipping...
Event::assertDispatched(OrderShipped::class);
Event::assertDispatched(OrderShipped::class, 2);
Event::assertNotDispatched(OrderFailedToShip::class);
Event::assertNothingDispatched();
}
}
Answer: 使用 fake(), 則該 event 的 listener 將不會真正的 dispatch assertDispatched() 斷言指定的 event 需被 dispatched assertDispatched() arg2 代表該 event 需被 dispatched 2 次 assertNotDispatched 斷言該 event 沒被 dispatched assertNothingDispatched 斷言沒有任何 event 被 dispatched
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Event::assertDispatched(function (OrderShipped $event) use ($order) {
return $event->order->id === $order->id;
});
Answer: 使用 closure 來斷言, 符合定義條件的 job 有被 dispatched
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Event::assertListening(
OrderShipped::class,
[SendShipmentNotification::class, 'handle']
);
Answer: 斷言指定的 listener 有 listen 定義的 event
以下的 Laravel testing 中, 如果有使用到 Factory 的 model event, Event::fake() 需使用在 Factory 之後, 原因為何？
因為一旦使用了 Event::fake(), 所有 event 都不會被執行
# Faking A Subset Of Events
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function test_orders_can_be_processed()
{
Event::fake([
OrderCreated::class,
]);
$order = Order::factory()->create();
Event::assertDispatched(OrderCreated::class);
// Other events are dispatched as normal...
$order->update([...]);
}
Answer: 可帶入 class 到 Event::fake(), 這樣只有該 event 會被 fake, 其餘的 event 照常執行
Scoped Event Fakes
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
public function test_orders_can_be_processed()
{
$order = Event::fakeFor(function () {
$order = Order::factory()->create();
Event::assertDispatched(OrderCreated::class);
return $order;
});
$order->update([...]);
}
}
Answer: 只有 fakeFor() 內, closure 範圍內的 event 才會被 fake, 其餘的照常執行
# HTTP Fake
可參考 Fake HTTP Client
# Mail Fake
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function test_orders_can_be_shipped()
{
Mail::fake();
Mail::assertNothingSent();
Mail::assertSent(OrderShipped::class);
Mail::assertSent(OrderShipped::class, 2);
Mail::assertNotSent(AnotherMailable::class);
}
Answer: 使用 Mail::fake(), 模擬 mail 寄出 testing, 實際上不會真的寄出 assert 沒有任何 mailable 被送出 assert 指定的 mailable 被發送 assert 指定的 mailable 被發送兩次 assert 指定的 mailable 沒有被送出
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Mail::assertQueued(OrderShipped::class);
Mail::assertNotQueued(OrderShipped::class);
Mail::assertNothingQueued();
Answer: 當要測試用 queue 發送的 mailable 時, 使用 assertQueued() assert OrderShipped mailable 由 queue 發送 assert OrderShipped mailable 沒有由 queue 發送 assert 沒有任何 mailable 經由 queue 被發送
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Mail::assertSent(function (OrderShipped $mail) use ($order) {
return $mail->order->id === $order->id;
});
Answer: assertSent 以及 assertNotSent 也可帶入 closure, 判斷是否有通過 closure 內條件的 mailable 被發送
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Mail::assertSent(OrderShipped::class, function ($mail) use ($user) {
return $mail->hasTo($user->email) &&
$mail->hasCc('...') &&
$mail->hasBcc('...');
});
Answer: 除了 assert 指定 mailable 被送出外, 還可以 assert 寄給誰 cc 給誰 bcc 給誰
# Notification Fake
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function test_orders_can_be_shipped()
{
Notification::fake();
// Perform order shipping...
Notification::assertNothingSent();
Notification::assertSentTo(
[$user], OrderShipped::class
);
Notification::assertNotSentTo(
[$user], AnotherNotification::class
);
}
Answer: 使用 Notification::fake() 斷言沒有任何 notification sent 斷言指定的 notification sent to a given user 斷言指定的 notification not sent to a given user
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Notification::assertSentTo(
$user,
function (OrderShipped $notification, $channels) use ($order) {
return $notification->order->id === $order->id;
}
);
Answer: assertSentTo 可帶入 closure, 若有符合 closure 內條件的 mailable sent, 則 assertion 成立
# On-Demand Notifications
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
use Illuminate\Notifications\AnonymousNotifiable;
Notification::assertSentTo(
new AnonymousNotifiable, OrderShipped::class
);
Answer: 當測試 On-Demand notification 時, 原本帶入 user 的 arg1, 改帶入 AnonymousNotifiable instance
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Notification::assertSentTo(
new AnonymousNotifiable,
OrderShipped::class,
function ($notification, $channels, $notifiable) use ($user) {
return $notifiable->routes['mail'] === $user->email;
}
);
Answer: 當測試 on-demand notification 時, 可帶入 closure, assert 實際上發送的 mail 與指定 user 的 mail 相同
# Queue Fake
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function test_orders_can_be_shipped()
{
Queue::fake();
// Perform order shipping...
Queue::assertNothingPushed();
Queue::assertPushedOn('queue-name', ShipOrder::class);
Queue::assertPushed(ShipOrder::class, 2);
Queue::assertNotPushed(AnotherJob::class);
}
Answer: fake queue facade, 所以不會真的把 job push 到 queue 當中 assert 沒有任何 job 被 push assert ShipOrder job 被 push 到 queue-name assert ShipOrder job 被 push 兩次 assert AnotherJob 沒有被 push
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Queue::assertPushed(function (ShipOrder $job) use ($order) {
return $job->order->id === $order->id;
});
Answer: 可 pass closure 到 assertPushed(), assertNotPushed(), 更明確的斷言是哪些 job 被 push 或沒被 push
# Job Chains
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Queue::assertPushedWithChain(ShipOrder::class, [
RecordShipment::class,
UpdateInventory::class
]);
Answer: 斷言哪些 queue 被 queue chained, arg1 為第一個 job, arg2 為其餘的 jobs
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Queue::assertPushedWithChain(ShipOrder::class, [
new RecordShipment,
new UpdateInventory,
]);
Answer: assertPushedWithChain() 可 pass class name, 也可 pass instance
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
Queue::assertPushedWithoutChain(ShipOrder::class);
Answer: 使用 assertPushedWithoutChain() 來斷言 ShipOrder job 沒有被 chained
# Storage Fake
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function test_albums_can_be_uploaded()
{
Storage::fake('photos');
$response = $this->json('POST', '/photos', [
UploadedFile::fake()->image('photo1.jpg'),
UploadedFile::fake()->image('photo2.jpg')
]);
Storage::disk('photos')->assertExists('photo1.jpg');
Storage::disk('photos')->assertExists(['photo1.jpg', 'photo2.jpg']);
Storage::disk('photos')->assertMissing('missing.jpg');
Storage::disk('photos')->assertMissing(['missing.jpg', 'non-existing.jpg']);
}
Answer: 使用 Storage fake() 一個 fake disk 產生 fake image 斷言 fake disk photos 存在某些檔案 斷言 fake disk photos 不存在某些檔案
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
$response = $this->json('POST', '/photos', [
UploadedFile::fake()->image('photo1.jpg'),
UploadedFile::persistentFake()->image('photo2.jpg')
]);
Answer: 使用 fake 時, 該 fake file 會在 testing 結束後從 temp dir 中被刪除 若要保留, 可使用 persistentFake()
# Interacting With Time
以下的 Laravel testing example code 的意思是？
Example:
<?php
public function testTimeCanBeManipulated()
{
$this->travel(5)->milliseconds();
$this->travel(5)->seconds();
$this->travel(5)->minutes();
$this->travel(5)->hours();
$this->travel(5)->days();
$this->travel(5)->weeks();
$this->travel(5)->years();
$this->travel(-5)->hours();
$this->travelTo(now()->subHours(6));
$this->travelBack();
}
Answer:
<?php
public function testTimeCanBeManipulated()
{
// Travel into the future...
$this->travel(5)->milliseconds();
$this->travel(5)->seconds();
$this->travel(5)->minutes();
$this->travel(5)->hours();
$this->travel(5)->days();
$this->travel(5)->weeks();
$this->travel(5)->years();
// Travel into the past...
$this->travel(-5)->hours();
// Travel to an explicit time...
$this->travelTo(now()->subHours(6));
// Return back to the present time...
$this->travelBack();
}
可使用 travel() method, 定義當前時間以方便測試 | https://medium.com/learn-or-die/laravel-testing-mocking-%E5%AE%98%E6%96%B9%E6%96%87%E4%BB%B6%E5%8E%9F%E5%AD%90%E5%8C%96%E7%BF%BB%E8%AD%AF-7b81ea230744 | ['Ray Lee'] | 2021-04-04 12:16:01.287000+00:00 | ['Laravel', 'Mock', 'Documentation', 'Backend'] |
What 40 Yard Dash Times Produce The Best Running Backs | From the data obtained the above table displays the percentage that an athlete who ran a specific time will be in the top 10% for career yards. For example, if a running back runs a time between 4.50-4.59 they have only a 6.6% of being in the top 10% for yards.
Best and Worst 40 Yard Dash Times
As we get a look at a more broad view of the top athletes in yards we saw that running backs in other time intervals start to appear on the list, and we get a different view of each time interval.
Using the data that was found and from each analysis, I’m going to give my opinion of the best and worst 40 yard dash times.
Best: 4:40–4:49
Running backs who run a time between 4.40-4.49 appear to have the most success in the NFL. It may appear that those who run in the 4.20's are better but since there’s only 1 athlete in that time the sample space is too small to be sure, while 4.40–4.49 have multiple running backs as evidence.
Adrian Peterson (above) ran a 4.40 and has the most career yards over the last 20 years
These running backs have the highest chance to be one of the top running backs in yards, play in the NFL for one of the longest times, and have 6 running backs in the top 10 rushers in yards over the last 20 years. Also if we viewed the times where there are more than 5 running backs they average the most in yards per attempt at 4.14 yards.
Worst: 4:60–4.69
If a running back runs in the 4.60's statistically they are already at a disadvantage to be a top running back.
Arain Foster (above) ran a 4.69 and is currently out fo the NFL due to a long list of injuries
These running backs typically don’t last in the NFL for that long only averaging 4.6 seasons. This results in them obtaining less yards during their tenure in the NFL. They are also the second worst time in yards per attempt, and in the bottom half of ranking of running backs in the top 10%. There’s a debate that running backs who run in the 4.80’s are worse but since the sample size is too small compared to 4.60–4.69, there’s more confidence that the stats for the 4.60’s are more accurate and closer to the actual result.
Conclusion
The 40 yard dash is the most popular event in the NFL combine and by doing simple analysis we got a better view at which running backs may have the best chance to have the best careers. This obviously isn’t 100% accurate, but by using even more stats from the combine we may have better confidence at what running backs will be successful in the NFL even before they take their first snap. | https://medium.com/the-sports-scientist/what-40-yard-dash-times-produce-the-best-running-backs-dd5d35eab471 | ['Christopher Zita'] | 2020-04-29 13:25:52.601000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'NFL', 'Football', 'Data Science', 'Sports Analytics'] |
ModelHub categories data-analysis and research November 2020. | Hi!
My name is Johnny. I’m an amateur-model on PornHub and data-analyst IRL. In order to do my job well I monitor the market my colleagues and regularly conduct small data studies. In this article I want to share one of the latest.
This research is an overview and is designed to help models better understand the Modelhub platform and trends among colleagues in the genre on this platform. The data used in this study is public, freely available and doesn’t contain personal data of anyone.
The study period covers one month — November 2020.
The objects of research are three categories on the Modelhub site: Gay, Verified couples and Verified models.
Questions that I asked myself and answered using data:
1. How many videos were uploaded to the platform in these categories?
2. What is the total number of views in categories?
3. What is the number of unique models, average age and frequency of video publication?
4. Different ratings. TOP-uploaders, — countries, — categories, — words in titles, — models.
5. What is the video quality, average duration and cost?
6. Distribution of views by day of the week. | https://medium.com/@hornyjohny66/modelhub-categories-data-analysis-and-research-november-2020-85dc6d7d4575 | [] | 2020-12-03 15:38:23.803000+00:00 | ['Analysis', 'Research', 'Data Journalism', 'Pornhub', 'Pornography'] |
Tracking Success by Doing “The Daily Double” | Here’s something you can do for your relationship today. It’s called The Daily Double and it’s a way of tracking success in your relationship. You earn two points today by doing two positive things on the positive list below, while avoiding doing any of the negative behaviors from the list at the end.
Let’s up the ante and go for the Thirty Day Challenge. Do The Daily Double for 30 days straight. If you slip up and do one of the negative behaviors in the box at the end of this article, start over again at Day 1 until you have 30 consecutive Daily Doubles. Be sure to track your accomplishments every day.
Why do this practice? Your brain cannot be appreciative and simultaneously be angry, fearful or resentful. It’s like trying to breathe in and out at the same time — you can’t do it.
The more you practice being appreciative and take positive action, the more you crowd out fear and resentment.
So, put this list where you can review it daily. Keep a fresh reminder and do your part to create a better connection.
This simple (but not easy) exercise will definitely make a positive impact on your connection with each other. This is the marriage equivalent of an out of shape person getting into shape. It won’t happen without effort!
Even better, you are the one in control of whether or not you do The Daily Double for thirty days. You can’t blame your partner if you don’t do it. Actually you can blame your partner, but it’s you opting out.
Twenty-Four Ways to be Positive
I listened to difficult comments and kept my cool. I was able to recap what I was hearing in a conversation. I expressed compassion in a difficult situation. When I felt I needed to solve a problem, I first asked my partner if they wanted advice. I used some appropriate humor, which my partner appreciated. I asked several questions before butting in with my reactions. I took several relaxing breaths instead of negatively commenting on an annoying habit. I expressed appreciation at least twice today. I took this further and expressed why I was appreciative of what my partner did. I took a time out to stop a downward spiraling argument. I apologized for my part in a bad situation or conversation. I went out of my way to do something nice for my partner. I had kind and loving thoughts about my partner today. When I had negative thoughts about my partner, I shifted to thinking of what I appreciated. I emailed my partner at least one appreciation today. I texted my partner at least one appreciation today. I said both “please” and “thank you” today. I made better eye contact today. I kept my voice tone positive during a difficult discussion. I told my partner how I would like them to respond to me before talking about a difficult topic. For example, “I just want you to listen with concern. No advice needed, just support.” I looked for something positive in my partner today then expressed it. I asked a series of questions about my partner’s perspectives and reality. I genuinely was curious. I took the initiative doing something I know my partner would value. I expressed empathy for my partner’s feelings or experience.
Important note: Think about how you aspire to be before having a difficult discussion. For example, be curious about your partner’s perspective, be patient, be calm, be assertive, be concise, be considerate, be understanding, etc.
Focusing on how you aspire to be is an exceptionally good way to have better discussions immediately.
If you do something positive today that’s not on the list, write it down and count it — and congratulate yourself. You’re tracking your success!
Today I practiced being:
Affectionate
Kind
Generous
Supportive
Caring
Curious and asking good questions vs telling or preaching
Understanding vs pushing my perspective
Thoughtful and considerate
Grateful for things I usually take for granted
Today I avoided these negative behaviors:
Sarcasm
Cold shoulders
Saying “never”
Interrupting
Name calling
Blaming/accusing
Guilting and shaming
Being resentfully compliant
Raising my voice inappropriately
Being vague about what I wanted
Criticizing what my partner wanted
Changing the topic during a difficult discussion
Asking blaming questions like, “Why do you always…?”
Psychoanalyzing my partner during a difficult discussion
Pouting
Withdrawing
Acting like a victim
If you have any questions or want to learn more, please click here. | https://medium.com/@couplesinstitutecounseling/heres-something-you-can-do-for-your-relationship-today-74537232b015 | ['The Couples Institute Counseling Services'] | 2021-06-08 12:58:22.475000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Couples Therapy', 'Couples'] |
Which “Miracle on 34th Street” Made You Believe Again? | Believing — accepting something as true — is under constant attack.
At least six different versions of “Miracle on 34th Street” (two in film, two made for TV as well as Broadway and radio versions) show how hard it is to believe in love, relationships — or anything bigger than yourself.
When the original film debuted in 1947, Americans agreed on much, including God, family, and country. Now? Not so much. Polls show 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, but fewer agree on the meaning behind it.
The original 1947 film, featuring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, and young Natalie Wood, tried to blend romance, comedy, tenderness, and a bit of excitement.
The studio originally didn’t stress the Christmas theme (the film was released in June, and Santa was diminished, wearing civilian garb in the above poster).
The original is considered the classic, one of the best films of all time, and more beloved. Dr. Thomas Graves tells us to look at the image of the little girl with Santa, and we can see what all children see: “She wants to believe….but struggles the way we do.”
“But rather than react to her hesitation, he shines even more,’’ Graves said. “If we can imitate this kind of love…Patient, kind, and not self-serving, we will help many people have a very Merry Christmas.’’
The 1994 remake starring Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, and Dylan McDermott, and a young Mara Wilson, is considered “more serious,’’ exploring deeper questions about belief and believing in love, relationships, and faith.
TV Guide called the 1994 remake “curiously depressing,” while Michael Medved, the culture critic, called the same film “the new holiday classic America has been waiting for.”
The impact of divorce and all broken relationships is more obvious:
Dorey Walker (played by Perkins) was married in college to an alcoholic who “took off,” right after their daughter Susan was born, never to be heard from again. The divorced Dorey is filled with “bitter thoughts… dragging” her child with her.
Dorey focuses on knowing “the truth and always being truthful with others and, more importantly, with yourself. Believing in myths and fantasies just makes you unhappy.’’
She teaches her daughter not to believe in anything or anyone, including Santa Claus, but her daughter, Susan, pushes back when she encounters Kris Kringle.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ― Philip K. Dick.
Dorey tells young Susan, “Now, I’ve told you the truth, but if I’m wrong, I will be glad to admit it. I’ll tell you what. You ask Mr. Kringle for something that you would never ask me for, and if on Christmas morning, you don’t get it, you will know once and for all the truth about Santa Claus.’’
Non-believers “doomed for a life dominated by doubt’’
Kris Kringle, aka Santa, tells Dorey: “I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.’’
He then takes the unbelief as a challenge, adding, “I think you’ll make an excellent test case for me, you, and your daughter. If I could make you believe, then there’d be some hope for me. If I can’t… Well, I’m finished.”
Kris Kringle then makes Susan, Dorey's Christmas wishes, and Dorey’s boyfriend Bryan a top priority, going further than his character went in the 1947 version.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” ― J. M. Barrie, “Peter Pan.”
Dorey’s lack of belief in Santa, aka Father Christmas, extends to all father figures, including potential mates. When her boyfriend Bryan proposes, she rejects him with a cold denunciation of marriage and all relationships.
“Have I ever given you any sign that I wanted to marry you?’’ she declares. “Then, tell me, whatever possessed you to make a presumption?
Like most people in secular America, we tend to believe what we want to believe “and disregard the rest.”
“I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.” — Neil Gaiman, American Gods.
Bryan tells Dorey, “You know, I’ve done everything I could to try to make you happy. I love your daughter like she’s my own. I loved you, getting nothing in return, never asking for anything in return. I put my faith in you.’’
Dorey shoots the wounded man harder in the heart, telling him in disgust, “Well, if that’s true, then you’re a fool.’’
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ― Mahatma Gandhi.
The Post Office and dollar bill show America believes more
Bryan (called Fred in the original) is the lawyer who makes the legal case for Santa. In the 1947 film, Fred uses the U.S. Post Office, delivering mail to Kris to make the case that the federal government recognizes him as real. In the 1994 version, Bryan hands the judge a dollar bill, circling “In God We Trust.’’
If the federal government sanctions believing in God, a higher power above government, the judge concludes, who was the court to doubt another traditional belief?
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The arc of the entire remake uses the story of Santa aka St. Nicholas, as a metaphor for God, showing the skeptics as negative, angry, and down. At the same time, true believers are shown as more loving, hopeful, and joyful.
Faith, believing in something bigger than yourself, is shown to be the true spirit of Christmas. Believing in love, relationships, and giving to others are the fruits of that belief.
We ultimately see believer Bryan make his most convincing case for love after midnight Mass in a Catholic Church, leading to every dream coming together.
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”― Gordon A. Eadie. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/which-miracle-on-34th-street-made-you-believe-again-2ae7e71defc0 | ['Joseph Serwach'] | 2020-12-14 15:06:24.168000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Faith', 'Culture', 'Relationships', 'Psychology'] |
MongoDB with Realm, an upgrade from Stitch | MongoDB Inc. made it clear in their debut that they won’t change on how Realm works, but will instead improve it.
Realm won’t change to become a JSON database, but it will be compatible with new data types like Dictionaries, Sets, Mixed/Any data types and more database functions that will make developing for different platforms much easier.
Empty dictionary written in Swift
They’ve also introduced ‘universal’ sync solutions for all platforms which will make backups much easy, especially for app users who might shift from one mobile operating system to another. | https://medium.com/thecodr/mongodb-with-realm-an-upgrade-from-stitch-cbdcf9170197 | ['Daniel Kioko'] | 2020-06-12 13:45:13.877000+00:00 | ['Mongodb', 'Programming', 'Database', 'Sofware Development', 'Realm'] |
World Largest Ravn-X Drone Ready to Launch satellites into orbit. | Hometech news World Largest Ravn-X Drone Ready to Launch satellites into orbit.
T he world’s largest drone is ready to launch satellites into space unveiled by a US startup rocket company.
The Ravn X drone can fly from any runway . It is 80ft long and 60 ft wide. It can drops a rocket in midair that shoots small satellites into orbit.
Aevum CEO and founder of Jay Skylus, who unveiled this drone, said they will be able to launch payloads within three hours of receiving them at spaceports. Once the drone reaches the right location , altitude and speed, its second-stage rocket drops and ignites within half a second to launch a 220 pound payload into low-Earth orbit.
The Ravn X actually has a smaller wingspan but beats it on mass, weighing in at 28-tons. Aevum says that the drone is actually similar to a traditional plane and can fl y on jet fuel.
“We don’t need a launch site. All we need is a runway that’s one mile long and a hanger,” Mr Skylus tol d .
Mr Skylus says that the company’s software are too smart and has automated much of the necessary launch paperwor k.
“What we’re proving is responsiveness, flexibility, and operational efficiency,” he said.
“This is a brand-new architecture, and a brand-new launch vehicle that’s never been conceived.”
The company says that For the safety of Ravn X it is working with the Federal Aviation Administration .
“ If you start looking into all of this … the line between a piloted commercial airliner v/s our launch vehicle really starts to blur,” Mr Skylus said.
“It’s hard to tell where one’s more safe than the other, and why a person might feel more comfortable with a giant Boeing airplane flying over you, every single day, versus this one.”
Mr Skylus have trained physicist and founded the company in 2016 after working with NASA and a number of commercial space companies. | https://medium.com/@mhamzasakhi-07/world-largest-ravn-x-drone-ready-to-launch-satellites-into-orbit-16dae1eb09a7 | ['Technical Meer'] | 2020-12-13 16:31:58.973000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'USA', 'Drones', 'Technology', 'Technews'] |
Trump’s 2024 Gambit. “We have on the one side a silent and… | “We have on the one side a silent and dovish Republican party unwilling and unable to challenge Trump for fear of the wrath of his loyal supporters. On the other we Donald Trump, willing and able to wield the power of his supporters as a defensive shield against any potential challengers that may emerge on the long road back to the White House.”
Photo Credit Gage Skidmore
Mr. Trump has changed many things, the Presidential election cycle being one of them.
It used to be that an American election would begin about twelve months prior the election with the launch of candidates’ campaigns. This would be first step to winning their respective party’s nomination for the presidency and then the presidency itself. A well established norm of the American election cycle.
Until Trump.
In a surprising move by an incumbent President, Trump officially filed his 2020 campaign with the Federal Election Commission on the day of his inauguration in 2017. He’d already begun his reelection effort weeks earlier, a short time after winning the election.
By July 2017 he’d already held six rallies, launched his first advertising campaign, had his first fundraising event, and visited key swing states. By September 2020 he, along with the Republican National Committee had spent over $800 million dollars on the campaign.
This time he’s started even sooner. Every erratic tweet, impromptu news conference and untrue statements about election fraud are elements of his 2024 presidential campaign.
For more than two weeks after the November election, the U.S. General Services Administration held off on releasing funding and other federal resources to assist the transition of power between the Trump and Biden administrations. The formal transition process only began on November 23.
It can be argued that until this point Trump still held onto the belief that the election result could be overturned through the courts with the allegation of election and voter fraud. Thus it was logical for him to insist on the falsehood of large scale fraud to affect the outcome of the election. But these statements didn’t stop, even after allowing the transition to begin and de facto recognising Joe Biden’s win.
So it needs to be asked why has the rhetoric continued? Why is the insistence on election fraud as strong today as it was in the days following the election? Even as each of the legal cases raised by the Trump legal team are being thrown out of court one by one.
Because he is already in campaign mode. He has never left campaign mode.
Sources were reporting as early as November of Donald Trump’s intention to run again in 2024. By late November they were leaking his intent to launch his campaign on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Sound familiar?
This was proven on 5th December in Georgia by Trump himself. He’d said “we’re going to win back the White House in 2024’ and that he hopes he won’t “have to be a candidate”. | https://medium.com/@writingsbypasha/the-2024-election-has-begun-2d6db0e7cca0 | [] | 2020-12-14 01:42:19.265000+00:00 | ['Election Fraud', 'US Elections', 'Donald Trump', 'Republican Party', 'Joe Biden'] |
A Short Guide on How to Create Glassmorphic Elements in Pure CSS | Glassmorphism — The CSS Way
Glassmorphism is pretty easy to achieve for front-end developers. There is one main CSS property that we can use: backdrop-filter . This property allows you to apply multiple effects such as blur, sepia, and greyscale to the area behind your component. Since it applies to everything behind the component, to see the effect, you must make this element at least partially transparent.
To create the glassmorphism effect, you should use backdrop-filter: blur() .
<div class="basic">
<div class="blur"></div>
</div> .basic {
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.4);
position: relative;
}
.blur {
position: absolute;
bottom: 25px;
right: 162px;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.4);
backdrop-filter: blur(5px);
}
Basic component
The image behind has straight background: rgba(255,255,255,0.4) . The element above is a copy of the first one but with an additional backdrop-filter: blur(10px) property.
This is the simplest example of a new trend. But we can go even further. You can add, as recommended by Michał Malewicz, a border radius, white border, and a little bit more blur.
The last thing you can try is to add a 1px inner border with some transparency to your shape. It simulates the glass edge and can make the shape stand out more from the background.
<div class="basic">
<div class="blur"></div>
</div> .basic {
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.4);
position: relative;
}
.blur {
position: absolute;
bottom: 25px;
right: 162px;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.4);
backdrop-filter: blur(10px);
border-radius: 10px;
border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,0.2);
} | https://medium.com/better-programming/a-short-guide-on-how-to-create-glassmorphic-elements-in-pure-css-4d52f81089ab | ['Albert Walicki'] | 2020-11-30 16:05:03.704000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Glassmorphism', 'Programming', 'CSS', 'UX'] |
The “What Do I Want to Do?” Question Is a Trap | The opposite of happiness is not sadness. It is boredom. This feeling of emptiness permeates every cell of your being and destroys every trace of energy and will. Everything seems useless. Purposeless.
When I was a child, I used to spend the summer months at my grandparents’ house by the sea. On some hot afternoons, when the atmosphere was filled with a damp calm and the song of the cicadas, I would go to see my grandmother and, idle, tell her that I was bored. Invariably, she would reply, “Boredom is very healthy! Go on.”
It took me a long time to understand what she meant by that. It was only later when I realized that I wasn’t bored enough that it became clear. Boredom brings emptiness, and emptiness brings space to think. And that space is vital.
But there is one subtlety. The “unhealthy” boredom must be differentiated from the “healthy” one. The latter is previous.
The “unhealthy” boredom happens when you are bored in your life. When you wake up in the morning without much motivation. When everything seems meaningless and uninteresting, but you keep going anyway, because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do. After all, life is not meant to be pleasant every day.
That’s not what we want. But that’s exactly where you’ll end up if you ask yourself the wrong question. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/the-what-do-i-want-to-do-question-is-a-trap-91c58d64a006 | ['Auriane Alix'] | 2020-12-17 21:02:45.111000+00:00 | ['Ambition', 'Life', 'Self', 'Purpose', 'Goals'] |
Rewriting elixirstream.com from Rails to Phoenix | The title seems a little bit strange at first but just hang on here for a second, I will explain it bit by bit. We launched http://elixirstream.com with existing code base from http://emberflare.com to have a blog post and article sharing platform for fellow Alchemists. The code base itself was written in Rails and we wanted to launch it as quickly as possible bearing in mind that we will rewrite it to Phoenix and Elixir as soon as we can. And what you know, it happened! The purpose of this blog post is to share my findings in regards to Phoenix as a framework from a technical standpoint and give a brief overview of user authentication process, which covers most of the necessary parts of the web development and will allow you to start building “real world” apps. I want to warn you that is is my first Phoenix app so some of my understanding about the conventions might be wrong. Anyways, the critique is always welcome. :)
Registration process
The first bit of the application I wanted to tackle was the registration and logging in of the user.In the previous Rails app we used has_secure_password that is built in Rails to hash our passwords. Under the good it uses the Bcrypt encryption algorithm that generates different hashes each time you do an encryption, yet allowing to compare them for equality. For Elixir side of things, I found an amazing library to do password encryption and compare the encrypted password to the unencrypted counterpart: http://hexdocs.pm/comeonin/. I checked it against my own encrypted password and it worked like a charm. Let’s take a look at the users model:
The purpose of the ecto model is to define validations and to transport the data. I really enjoy the concept of changesets. Once you call the following code:
The changeset is being created with the name of our model as a first argument and the parameters for a given model as a second argument. Both required and optional parameters are being cast to corresponding model columns, or more precisely, values on our %User{} struct. After that is done, we simply pipe the changeset to a chain of validation functions. One thing to note here, that Ecto can also be validated the data against our repository (database) like so:
After the data has gone trough the validations, the changeset is being returned to us. It is either valid or invalid. The thing to note here is that User does not store the actual password in the database, that’s why we had to use a virtual attribute on the model to achieve that. The line field :password, :string, virtual: true allows us to set this attribute, yet not store it in the database on the insert or update. The line use Ecto.Model.Callbacks allows us to define callback functionality to our models. We set the password digest at before_insert :set_password_digest. This made me cringe at first, and if you check commit history, you can see that my attempt was to avoid callbacks at any cost. The reason behind my cringing is simple — I have been bitten by ActiveRecord callbacks multiple times, but this is different since this is the data that has to be there at any insert and after a brief discussion with my colleague, we agreed to use callbacks password hashing. In the function set_password_digest we see that we get the password field of the changeset and then update our password_digest with it’s encrypted counterpart:
After this function is done with its task, we have a changeset that we can store.
I want to abstract from the framework as much as possible, so I created a RegisterAction in /lib folder.
As you can see, it just casts the parameters to a user struct and performs validations on it. If is valid, then we return {:ok, user} tuple and if the changeset is invalid, we return an {:error, changeset} tuple. In the first case, we return the user to have the ability to add user.id to set a session in the controller. In the second case, we need to return a changeset to show error messages on the form. The code in controller looks like following:
Please note the line put_session(:user_id, user.id) where we put a user.id in a session. In Phoenix controller actions, you always have a connection or conn for short. This is where the all connection data is stored, including sessions, assigns (We will talk about that later), headers e.t.c.
So, after this we have a session set and how do we provide a user’s context to the application? After a brief research, I decided to go with writing a custom plug and adding current user to conn assigns. Let’s see example:
We import Plug.Conn and Plug.Session to import all functions that can work with sessions and the connection data set itself.
To have a plug that we can use in our controllers, we need to have call implemented with two arguments. First one is the connection and the second one is the options we pass. Since we don’t care about the second argument, we just ignore it.
We try to get user_id from a session user_id = get_session(conn, :user_id). If the session is set, we find given user in the database in line assign(conn, :current_user, ElixirStream.Repo.get(ElixirStream.User, user_id)) and put it in to the connections assigns. This allows us to maintain current user across all the actions.
If we want to use this authentication mechanism and setting of the current_user, we just add this plug to our controller in following way:
Now, each controller action’s conn will or will not contain current user in assings. We can access our assigns like so @conn.assigns[:current_user] which in turn will return nil or a %User{} struct containing logged in user.
So how can we use it in templates to see current user’s avatar or username? The answer is view! In the web/views/layout_view.ex we define the following function:
If we want to get current user in view, we can do it in following way:
This about concludes the brief overview of the registration process of http://elixirstream.com
Conclusions
What I love about Phoenix, is that it gives an ease of mind. All the things that are happening are under your nose and you don’t get lost in all the objects that are flying around. I am looking at you Rails!
Even if documentation sometimes is scarce, it is a great pleasure to write a web app in Phoenix. It took some time to understand all the concepts behind it, but now that I’ve done the full cycle, the next one will be easier.
Love your craft!
P.S You can check the source code for ElixirStream here: https://github.com/janjiss/elixir-stream-phoenix P.S.S I would like to thank my friend Dainis Lapins, for helping me with this app. | https://medium.com/coding-with-axe/rewriting-elixirstream-com-from-rails-to-phoenix-c2035fc877fc | ['Janis Miezitis'] | 2015-12-14 13:47:24.671000+00:00 | ['Elixir', 'Web Development'] |
Best tools for Designer 2019 | Over the past serval years, I used so many tools for designing and mostly I learned from itself by watching youtube and experimenting every day!
I categorized my tools in the different category because I am a freelancer, I am doing so many things like designing, coding, content creating youtube, Instagram and working with clients!
In this article, I am sharing with you my favorite tools and Why you should use. Also, this article will help you to make the combination of your perfect tools 2019
Here we go… 🏄🏻♂️
Design Tools
In designing, I used mostly Sketch and Adobe XD because both tools are really powerful and have an intuitive interface with great functionality! Its help me to design beautiful interface, prototype and also easily share my work with clients!
Adobe Photoshop
Basically nowadays for me just editing software I just use for photos editing!
Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator still a great tool for designing illustrations and graphics, I use for only designing icons and graphics!
Sketch vs Adobe XD
If you have the question that what is the best tool then my answer will be that both tools are great It depends on you on you, How much you feel comfortable when you are using tools!
But? The sketch is supporting only MacOS and Adobe XD is supporting both platforms that’s a big difference in these tools! | https://medium.com/fazurrehman/best-tools-for-designer-2019-c6f744b17750 | ['Faizur Rehman'] | 2019-01-11 09:51:42.421000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Designer', 'Tools', 'Education'] |
Curious and Dangerous — Nonbinary Identities in Participatory Design | Part of Nonbinary Identities and Individuals in Research, Community, and the Academy: A Series Beyond the Gender Binary
Sasha is a curious child, who loves to play video games and to draw doodles and comics day in and day out. These interests make for a perfect collaborator in participatory design research, and so we met every other week for a year, prototyping technologies together.
Participatory design is a field of research focused on involving people in designing technologies. Involving marginalized people is particularly relevant, as hegemonic structures within the research (and technology design) communities mean that the lived experiences between researchers and participants often differ significantly. The processes are different from case to case, spanning from single sessions with initial prototyping to involving participants throughout ideation, conceptualization, prototyping and testing. The cases discussed in this piece stem from collaborations with disabled children over the span of several months each to create technologies that provide meaningful experiences to children, engaging with them holistically instead of focusing only on disability.
Sasha, one of our research participants, was assigned female at birth — but expressed on multiple occasions to us and to other adults in their* lives that they feel stifled by gendered expectations on their behavior and mannerisms. For example, they perceived being interested in video games as strictly associated with boys. Their parents felt they did not know how to support Sasha in fully and freely exploring their interests, and actively sought the counsel of the queer-presenting researcher. Counseling the family on queer issues was not part of our research and professional missions. We, however, have ourselves been children; children who had the painful experience of not having been supported by our parents when breaking gender norms and adopting gender-transgressing behaviors. We decided to provide external resources about gender non-conforming identity development in children to the parents.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Sasha’s example, though, comprises a best-case scenario. More children have experiences like ours, or like Sam, who loved playing with dolls and monsters and, similarly, enjoyed drawing and even communicating through drawings. However, Sam’s immediate family reinforced strictly binary gender boundaries. Breaking these would have meant actively fueling an ongoing conflict in Sam’s life without being able to take up the responsibility to deal with the potential fall-out with their family of said conflict. With Sam, we had to consciously make gender a secondary topic in design workshops, addressing gender if and only Sam brought these topics up very explicitly. Even though within our project guidelines, we had intended to engage the children holistically, we made a choice here that actively ignored part of their experience around gender in the interest of keeping Sam safe.
Not discussing queer experiences is also a mean of keeping ourselves, as nonbinary individuals, safe from professional backlash. We are used to answering questions about our ‘real’ gender, especially in public settings. Children point at us and ask out aloud ‘Look! What is that person?,’ with answers from adults in the vicinity ranging from casual neutrality (‘You have to ask that of themselves’), active ignorance (‘We do not discuss this’) to the all too familiar assumption of monstrosity. Even though our experience in working and engaging with children spans several years across different contexts, within our research, we struggle being taken seriously as non-binary and as researchers. This constant need for repositioning ourselves is all the more complicated by the circumstance that we work with participants in French or German, both heavily gendered languages. Interestingly enough, children tend to be much more flexible and assign us with genders they associate with certain activities or body parts. Regardless, formal and informal caregivers identify us with binary genders, feeling compelled to ‘rectify’ the use of pronouns along their particular, mostly binary, assumptions. To not endanger the rapport and relationship with the adult environments of the children, which was paramount to being able to collaborate with the children at all, we only pushed back mildly on such attempts at gendering us chiefly within a binary.
Being queer researchers places us in a precarious situation, in which our gender performance is continuously dependent on who we engage with. This circumstance creates challenges for building rapport, although being genderqueer creates unexpected opportunities in design: By not conforming to the children’s expectations, we implicitly invite discussions on gender identity and pro-actively trouble children’s representations of what ‘girls’ or ‘boys’ can do. These opportunities, however, are uncharted, as cisgender [non-trans] researchers predominantly fail to discuss how their gender identity affects the roles they have with children and how other adults that come to be involved in participatory research perceive them.
“Being queer researchers places us in a precarious situation, in which our gender performance is continuously dependent on who we engage with.”
Our different approaches to Sasha’s and Sam’s cases were, however, also influenced by our relationships with gender-conforming, cis research peers. While they seemed to have fewer problems with addressing Sasha’s gender identity as the family presented a somewhat unified front, the non-binary researcher within the team received significant push-back when it came to attending to Sam’s interests and transgressions from their expected gender roles. Accusations were made that the focus on gender was only due to an obscure queer agenda, which would impose a trans identity on them; contemporary gender panic.
When non-binary researchers conduct participatory design with potentially genderqueer children, particularly in cases like ours, where gender is not the main focus of the work, we might share some experiences around contextual disclosure along perceived safety around different people. We want to underline that trans researchers, including nonbinary researchers, are under heightened observation from a society structured on binary genders. It expects them to explain their actions and how they understand and interpret research contexts, while at the same time discrediting our embodied experiential knowledge as too personal and, ultimately, invalid. We are particularly pressured to reflect on how our identities impact participatory processes. However, cisgender people bring their own normative identities and shape the process alongside without being expected to reflect much on how their identity affects their research, for example, by assuming participants to be hetero and cis. Such double standards are particularly curious considering that participatory research approaches require researchers to be transparent about their personal selves within the process, given that they shape the interaction with collaborators so fundamentally.
“W e want to underline that trans researchers, including nonbinary researchers, are under heightened observation from a society structured on binary genders. It expects them to explain their actions and how they understand and interpret research contexts, while at the same time discrediting our embodied experiential knowledge as too personal and, ultimately, invalid.”
Well, it might be curious for an outside observer. However, for nonbinary researchers, pushing back on cis- and heteronormative tendencies in such research comes with the potential of endangering future opportunities in an ever-so-hostile academic job market.
Given these far reaching consequences, not only within participatory design projects, but ultimately for all nonbinary individuals in academia, reflecting on our gender identities as a formative part of participatory design cannot only be required from researchers (or participants) with marginalized gender identities. The reflection is even more necessary for researchers feeling comfortable with the status quo. Indeed, this is an opportunity to reflect on their individual role and participation in reinforcing gender norms, and othering and excluding those who do not fit into neat normative categories.
*We use they/them pronouns in this case, as we are not entirely sure which pronouns Sasha would choose in English. | https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/curious-and-dangerous-nonbinary-identities-in-participatory-design-8ee133f0439a | ['National Center For Institutional Diversity'] | 2020-05-25 20:49:25.928000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Nonbinary', 'Gender Identity', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ'] |
Ek Kadam- “ Things will Change” | “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world.”
So, after putting our 60 second pitch in the virtual meeting regarding mega project, our group witnessed many amazing ideas from everyone. In every idea, there was something that reflected their emotions towards community services and issues that our society is facing. I first listened to the fellow members and in the end placed my pitch in front of them. This is the idea about which I discussed few things in my previous blog already. Actually it was a pitch of 60 seconds. But when I started presenting my pitch, everyone started liking it and started relating it to their own personalities. As it’s name Ek Kadam is so diverse.
i) Why there is a need of Ek Kadam?
ii) What kind of initiative it is?
iii) How it came into my mind?
iv) And why is it so diverse that at the end of session it had all the votes for the best mega project topic for Group 3 Batch 173 -Amal Academy?
You will get all the answers when you get to know about the initiative behind this idea. So let’s embarked on this journey. When my 5th semester of BSc Mechanical Engineering started , I started thinking that I should start working on something different or I must have my own startup. So, every night I plunged into the black hole of my brain . Later on, I came up with 2 to 3 ideas. Then I started thinking about the possible ways to accomplish them . You can say two were Entrepreneurial ideas that are meant to earn and 1 idea is to do something for my society, my community and for my Pakistan. As our country Pakistan is facing many social issues that hinder it’s way to progress. So any issue just need one step to resolve. These issues include lack of skilled personnels , lack of guidance towards education , lack of career counseling of our youth, poverty, illiteracy, rape and women harassment cases are top on the list.
The main idea of Ek Kadam is SDP (Skills Development Program). To teach skills life MS Ofiice, freelancing, Content writing , Adobe Illustrator for Graphics Designing to the students of secondary and Inter along with the proper guidance and counseling regarding their future. This initiative will help the students to avail the opportunities once they have proper mindset about their future and can also utilize these skills in future to become financially independent.
The target audience is especially students of 9th,10th, 1st Year and 2nd Year with less guidance and opportunities. And in this time of pandemic where every thing is shifted virtually. We will proceed through virtual platforms like youtube, facebook and instagram and when everything gets back to normal we will visit orphanages low standard schools .
The initiative behind it is to make the students skillful and more aware with the pros and cons of the things. This will eradicate the roots of illiteracy and child labor in our society.
Furthermore, by visiting such places we will also have small activities sessions and self defense seminars in which we will teach self defense techniques, how to tackle such situations and other techniques especially to girls and children. This step is to stop sexual harassment and rape in our society.
So in short, virtually we will career counsel them, guide them to take their step in future with more clear mindset. And to make small guidance tutorial like videos on skills that we want them to learn. So everything will cover under the same roof. And by visit to the orphanages and other places we will bring our laptops their in case if there will be no such facility there to let them practice the skills.
Previously, few months back I made a video on self defense after Lahore motorway incident, and I spread it to the best of my strength and get many positive feedbacks. So , if our group of 5 will start spreading on their behalf we can leave impact and can have access to more people.
The main purpose behind this initiative is to sort out all the social issues that currently our country is facing. And In sha Allah, Allah will help us to put our idea into in person efforts. | https://medium.com/@muhammad-hammad173/ek-kadam-things-will-change-5070e5a4780a | ['Muhammad Hammad Javed'] | 2020-12-27 07:55:46.096000+00:00 | ['One Step', 'Self Defense', 'Poverty', 'Counseling', 'Opportunity'] |
Modefi Sale Details / Tokenomics | Venture — 3 M MOD tokens — $0.12 each
20% unlock on listing Vested for 90 Days
Strategic — 1.4 M MOD tokens — $0.18 each
15% unlock on listing Vested for 90 Days
Public — 7 M MOD tokens — $0.20 each
20% unlock on listing Vested for 60 Days | https://medium.com/@modefi/modefi-sale-details-tokenomics-1dbc2e90296 | [] | 2021-01-27 06:32:47.252000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Oracle', 'Ethereum', 'ICO', 'Token Sale'] |
We need a new way to pay for antibiotics — Dr David Payne | We need a new way to pay for antibiotics — Dr David Payne
There is currently little incentive for pharma companies to develop antimicrobial drugs.
by Gary Finnegan
We tend to take antibiotics for granted and not value them in a way that matches their lifesaving role, says Dr David Payne, head of the antibacterial discovery performance unit at pharmaceutical company GSK.
He says that partnerships between governments and companies can help to accelerate the development of antibiotics but a new commercial model is needed to unblock the research pipeline.
How urgently do we need new antibiotics?
‘A report for the UK government estimates that without decisive action, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will cost 100 trillion dollars and cause 10 million deaths per year (by 2050). It’s hard to predict the precise impact but it’s on that scale. It would mean that a lot of the advances we’ve seen in modern medicine would be compromised. If we can no longer manage infections we wouldn’t be able to do open heart surgery, for example, and the benefits of transformational medicines for cancer and heart disease would be lost for many.’
Why is the search for new antibiotics more challenging than drug discovery in other areas?
‘One of the really fundamental challenges comes at the very beginning of the drug discovery process. A lot of investment has been made in running high throughput screening experiments (which allow researchers to quickly conduct millions of tests) to look for early chemical starting points for novel antibiotic targets. Larger pharmaceutical companies — mainly GSK, Pfizer and Astra Zeneca — have put hundreds of millions of dollars into this without seeing much return at all. We have a huge problem finding promising early chemical starting points for the first phase of research.
‘In addition, some complex infections require high doses of antibiotics, up to 7.5 grams a day. This is much higher than most medicines where doses are measured in milligrams. As a result, we often lose promising drug molecules to toxic side effects. We are looking for something that is really safe at very high doses and that makes our task distinct from drug discovery in other areas.’
What are the commercial barriers to developing new antibiotics?
Dr David Payne says that there is currently little incentive for pharma companies to develop antibiotics. Image credit — Dr David Payne
‘It takes a lot of effort, time and funding to get a new antibiotic to the approval stage. Then the big challenge is that there is no real commercial reward for licensing a new antibacterial. Antibiotics are used for perhaps seven to 14 days rather than for the rest of a patient’s life. That’s a good thing but it means the use of the product is short-lived.
‘While the demand and urgency are high, the market can be quite small. Take urinary tract infections, for example. Millions are affected but we would only want to use a new antibacterial in a small subset of the patient population. So if we create a new antibiotic — which is the right thing to do for society — the number of prescriptions will be low. The return on investment is just not there.’
‘Antibiotics have been taken for granted — they are not priced in a way that matches their lifesaving potential.’ — Dr David Payne, Head of the Antibacterial Discovery Performance Unit, GSK
Do you think antibiotics are underrated?
‘I think we tend to think the miracle of antibiotics happened a long time ago when Fleming discovered penicillin, but the life-saving role of antibiotics continues everyday — I think we have forgotten that. We tend to take antibiotics for granted — they are not valued in a way that matches their lifesaving potential, unlike some other new medicines.
‘It’s the perfect storm: a very challenging research problem coupled with limited incentive to solve it. That is why many companies have stopped working in this space.’
How can that be overcome?
‘A new commercial model is needed. Academics and people from biotech or pharma companies have been saying this for years but now we are hearing multiple governments and other global stakeholders calling for the same thing.
‘There are lots of alternatives to the current approach. For example, instead of companies getting a return based on the number of prescriptions sold, there could be lump sum payments. That would also remove the incentive to try to sell more antibiotics. This would encourage appropriate use of new antimicrobials and attract investment.’
How can collaborations between public funders and industry help?
‘Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are propping up the antibiotic pipeline by helping to share the risks associated with drug development in this space. One of the most important PPPs is the Innovative Medicines Initiative’s (IMI) New Drugs for Bad Bugs (ND4BB) which is working on just about every aspect of the problem.
‘The ND4BB project, TRANSLOCATION, focuses on the very early stages of antibacterial drug discovery and looks to improve our understanding of designing molecules to optimally penetrate bacterial cells. (Another element called) ENABLE provides a platform for running antibacterial discovery projects, COMBACTE has developed clinical trial networks to support clinical trials of new potential antimicrobials (and) DRIVE-AB is a group of economists, academics, public health researchers and experts from industry, working to find a more viable commercial model. The DRIVE-AB group will report in the coming months and will make proposals which could be embraced in Europe and elsewhere.’
How can the US and the EU join forces to tackle AMR?
‘There is some discussion between clinical trial networks in the US and the ND4BB networks which aim to overcome the challenge of running global trials. We have also seen progress on harmonisation between regulators in the EU and US. The European Medicines Agency and US Food and Drug Administration are working towards aligning the requirements for bringing a new antibiotic to patients.’
Are you optimistic for the future of antibiotic development?
‘I’m really impressed with what has been achieved in several areas. Ten years ago, the PPP approach was non-existent but is now accepted as absolutely critical to the pipeline we have today, fragile though it may be. Without the IMI and some US initiatives we would be in an even worse position. Progress in the regulatory areas has also been very encouraging.
‘My big concern is around the commercial model. If we don’t work out a solution to that we’ll push investment away from this area and have even fewer companies working on the problem. If we manage to create a new commercial model, I would be very optimistic about the future.’
If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
More info
ND4BB
Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)
See also | https://medium.com/horizon-magazine/we-need-a-new-way-to-pay-for-antibiotics-dr-david-payne-cd1f5bfd2ca | [] | 2017-11-23 15:26:11.003000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Health', 'Medicine', 'Antibiotics', 'Resistance'] |
Righting a Wrong Choice | 1. Reflection (Take some time to think about the choice you made and what else you could have done)
2. Recognize (Acknowledge that what you did was wrong, disrespectful, or unkind)
3. Remorse (Sincere feeling of sadness in your heart that it happened and that you either knowingly or unknowingly hurt someones. Express it in an apology)
4. Restitution (Try to make it better by returning, repairing, or restoring, if possible. What do you think is fair?)
5. Resolve (To make wiser choices in the future by thinking of options and the kind of person you want to be)
Everyone and everything deserves a second chance.
Connect with Judy Helm Wright — Author/Coach/IntuitiveWiseWoman | https://medium.com/ask-auntie-artichoke-anything/righting-a-wrong-choice-fbd112fecae7 | ['Judy H. Wright Author Historian Intuitivewisewoman'] | 2020-12-12 22:41:15.723000+00:00 | ['Mistakes', 'Forgiveness', 'Failure', 'Coaching', 'Choices'] |
10 best customization apps for Android | 10 best customization apps for Android
customization apps for Android
Despite more restrictions than years ago, Android is still a vastly more open platform than its competitors. You can still do almost whatever you want within reason. There are a variety of apps that change your experience. You can change your email app or your launcher for different experiences. However, that’s easy stuff. There are a variety of other entertaining ways to customize your Android device. Here are the best customization apps for Android!
We’d also like to give an honourable mention to OEM tools to change things up. For instance, stock Android lets you choose between navigation buttons and gestures. Samsung has Good Lock and that lets Samsung users do all sorts of crazy things to their devices. It’s worth Googling around a bit to see if your phone OEM has some hidden or extra tools to customize your experience.
10 best Android themes, theming apps, and customizations | https://medium.com/@everythingcj/10-best-customization-apps-for-android-5112ff683e51 | ['Everything Cj'] | 2021-02-06 21:07:52.612000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Best', 'Apps', 'Customization', 'Top 10'] |
GO | Photo by author.
You hadn’t planned to go alone to Paris. Through some unforeseen circumstances, you came into some money, enough for two but your friends and sometime boyfriend were not interested in going. You hesitated. You wanted to go but the Yellow Jackets were rioting every Saturday and you were worried that the trip wouldn’t be as enjoyable by yourself. You feared being alone. All alone.
But your friend, Marie, said, “Go.” Go to Paris. Be your own woman. You don’t need another person. You definitely don’t need the sometime boyfriend. The sometime boyfriend who tried to talk you out of it.
“No,” Marie said. “If you don’t go now you’ll never go. They always riot in Paris. Go.”
So you go.
It was you who saw the oldest building left standing in all of Paris at 51 and 52 Rue Montmorency. You who walked through Notre Dame six days before it burned. You who walked down the old cobblestone streets to sample the wine, and cheese and the bread. It was you who went to a reading at the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop, and you who carried so many books that you left useless items behind in order to make room in your suitcase for new treasures.
You spoke your broken French. You marveled at the kindness of strangers and the rudeness of one shopkeeper. You joked with your tour guide of how you mispronounced a word turning it from a world leader’s name into a wicked profanity.
You, yes you, received directions in French to the Père-Lachaise Cemetery and understood them well enough to get there on your own. You stood next to Oscar Wilde’s grave and decided against kissing it as so many have done because you thought to yourself that you didn’t want to get an STD posthumously, even from Oscar Wilde. You stood under the Arc de Triomphe at night and you marveled as the Eiffel Tower glowed in the distance.
It was you who drank the best wine with your boeuf et frites and it was you who stifled a laugh when you asked for mineral water and the confused waiter asked, “You mean you want the water with the gas?”
When you walked around the Seine River and gathered gifts from the street vendors, it was you who finally realized how lucky it is to be in Paris. Even alone. Especially alone.
And now over a year later, when there is a pandemic and when California burns more intensely than Notre Dame ever did and Americans have become ruder to each other than any young French shopkeeper could be, you go. You go on to work. You go virtually to school. You go and stand six feet away from your friends. Somedays you go home and cry because really, it’s the whole world that is burning. But still you go because the scared young woman went 4,200 miles east by herself and went there because she could go. | https://medium.com/@amyvonbee/go-544ee5b39781 | ['Amy Von Blickhahn'] | 2021-11-27 04:45:24.733000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Independence', 'Paris', 'Current Events'] |
Baby Sleep Secrets | * Disclaimer: Of course I can’t guarantee that you will have exactly the same success in the same time as I or the many other parents had since every child is unique.
But first, forget all the things you have been told about your baby’s sleep in the past..
Unfortunately, most information is dangerously outdated and usually reduces your baby’s chances of a calm and deep sleep.
The absolute worst you can do is to begin with a sleep training for your baby without a proven and sophisticated plan (I’m sorry to say, but that’s how most parents still do it).
Sadly, I am speaking from my own, very painful experience…
I now want to share a revolutionary method with you that puts even the most stubborn child consistently to sleep every night.
The best thing about it is that you and your little one will be done with the training in no time!
But first let me introduce myself:
My name is Susan, and I would describe myself as an ordinary woman and mother. I’m originally from Germany and moved to Portland several years ago, so please excuse any grammatical errors ;).
I also have 2 kids who monkey around all day but who I of course love very, very much!
But unfortunately, our second child Martina confronted us with a problem which quickly became unbearable:
Our little girl simply never fell asleep!
I want to share with you here on my website my very own personal story and how I came across an effective system for a baby’s sleep nearly be sheer accident (and which actually works!).
When I was twelve, I already wanted to be the proud mother of 9 children one day
…and today I take care of more than 70 children
Sometimes life is strange: Instead of having 9 kids of my own, I nowadays take care of 73 children at a day care center I founded 4 years ago.
That’s why I can credibly tell you that — through my own two kids and the children from the day care center — I am confronted with the topic of baby’s sleep almost every week.
While the majority of the children from the day care center have outgrown any sleep problems, a lot of the parents also have newborns at home…
For that reason, I heard countless desperate stories of sleepless nights over the years…
However, I only realized the significance of the problem once I experienced it first-hand with my own daughter Martina.
In the beginning we still had hope that Martina’s sleep would improve by itself over time
Unfortunately that did not happen. Actually, quite the opposite happened…
Sometimes it took several hours until Martina finally fell asleep!
Her eyes often were swollen and red from all the crying — it broke my heart every time I saw my daughter in this terrible condition!
That was the point when I realized that now is the time that I simply MUST find a solution for this problem.
Not just for my own child, but also for the suffering parents and children from my day care center…
In hindsight, I have to admit that I clearly regret not having started researching this topic earlier since I was asked so often for advice by other parents.
So I got down to work, researched the issue for weeks and truly read everything I could find in regards to a child’s sleep
And to be completely honest, there definitely wasn’t a lack of literature on the topic…
I went through tons of specialized literature both national and international.
I selected all the techniques I considered most promising and wrote them down in my “baby’s sleep notebook”, which grew daily by several pages.
But the following problem remained:
The majority of the sleeping methods either did not work at all, or only for a very short time.
I also realized that there was a lot of contradictory advice with many inconsistencies, for example “just let your baby cry” and “never let your baby cry”…
Who was supposed to make sense out of all of this?
Luckily, I had an epiphany and a wonderful idea…
Completely overwhelmed by the mass of contradictory advice, I consulted with a renowned expert on sleep
His speciality? The process of sleep for newborns and infants
Well, to be completely honest, it was actually my husband who led me to this idea initially…I went through tons of specialized literature both national and international.
An old college friend of his knew this sleeping expert personally. And this specialist just recently published several new studies — with in some cases extraordinary results.
His fee for a three hour consultation was not low at all, but I was so determined to find a working and reliable method for falling asleep that I went for it anyway…
After a few emails and phone calls we arranged an appointment for a consultation and I showed him all my notes I collected so far — and of course asked a lot of questions.
He praised my stock of knowledge on the topic which I naturally found very flattering 🙂An old college friend of his knew this sleeping expert personally. And this specialist just recently published several new studies — with in some cases extraordinary results.
However, he quickly told me that I completely missed several crucial aspects of the matter…
Eventually, we talked for far more than the initially arranged 3 hours and I felt like having an epiphany every 5 minutes.
He shared information and other practical advice with me which I have never encountered in any book or other sources (including the internet) before.
At the end of the consultation my notebook had grown again, this time by a lot of new pages, and I couldn’t wait to test my new knowledge in the real world!
Once I was at home, I quickly started with the new “sleeping protocol”.
I knew of course that I shouldn’t expect any results overnight, however I had already noticed in the same night that Martina was much calmer than before!
But the biggest surprise was: Within days, Martina could fall asleep completely independently!
I was completely overwhelmed by pure joy and also felt a great deal of relief!
She finally could fall asleep without any problems and also only rarely woke up during the night.
But after I caught up on some sleep for several days, I asked myself:
Mabye this all happened by pure chance?
Thankfully, I had the ideal preconditions to test my new method with more children than just my own Martina…and that’s when I informed the parents of my day care center.
I summarized all my notes, processes and methods in an easy-to-follow guide and handed it to several of the parents of whom I knew that they had to deal with the same problems I had every day.
Already after about a week, I received countless of calls and mails from parents who applied my technique
Nearly all of the parents who received my system reported a similar success to the one I had with Martina!
Here are several of the thankful reactions and messages I received: | https://medium.com/@manishgarg56760/baby-sleep-secrets-67e91dd5eea7 | [] | 2021-02-26 15:23:53.995000+00:00 | ['Baby Sleep', 'Baby Sleep Secrets', 'Baby'] |
How To Bring Passion Back Into A Relationship/Marriage? 11 Tips For You! | Passion fades easily, YES.
In a relationship, you’ve been together for so long, maybe for many years. On Valentine’s day, you don’t interact with gifts; you don’t surprise each other; you don’t sleep with hugs; you have sex once a month (or worse, half a year); you don’t want to kiss each other, or kissing is just “routine”; every detail of getting along becomes a habit.
Too bad, just listen to me describe these, you can know that in a relationship to find passion is an very urgent thing! How to bring passage back into a relationship / marriage?
Generally speaking, it can be solved from two aspects:
One is daily life. Daily life can kill human emotions, so the details of daily life need your attention, which is also a sustainable way to find passion.
The second is sex. Sex is the quickest way to find your passion back, and the occasional exciting sexual experience will be a special medicine for your feelings to warm up.
Daily Life
1. Listen
How long have you not heard her talk about what happens every day? Not even complaining. That is not a good sign.
You can often ask, “how was your day?” “Is there anything interesting?” It definitely shows you care about her.
2. Dress
Have you become very untidy now? Not thinking about keeping her in shape? How long has your cologne not been turned on?
This is too bad. One thing you need to understand is that even if you don’t pay attention to your appearance for anyone, you should be “refined” for yourself. A good day requires a good mood, and a good mood is not the result of looking in the mirror and seeing yourself so sloppy.
Wake up! Won’t your partner rekindle love when you’re charming?
3. Housework
Life and marriage always let romantic love become greasy smoke.
There are always two sides to everything. Love can not always float in the air, but also needs to land. True love is to deepen your ties in the long-term company. The trivia of life, the heavy housework, you can reflect the fairness. No one wants to be occupied by housework, so you can choose to do housework together.
4. Travel
Travel is always reminiscent. Even if you just go to the nearest town for having fun, you can escape from the “cage” of “real life”. In a totally strange place, you only have each other, which will make you find the meaning of “dependence”. Dependence and company are the warmest feelings in the world.
5. Praise
Do you often praise each other? “You are beautiful today.” “Your dress is so charming today.” “I like your shirt today.”
Even praising strangers will bring your relationship closer and make the atmosphere of chatting very beautiful. What’s more, you are the partners who live together every day? Set yourself a goal: praise each other at least three times a day.
Sex
Most of the time, sex becomes boring because you’re so familiar with you partner. If you have sex in a different way, both of you’ll have a great surprise and pleasure.
1. Sexy underwear
What do you wear to sleep every day? Pajamas, nightdresses, or sleeping naked?
But when you want to have sex, try wearing a sexy underwear or a professional lingerie. No matter how long you get married, I swear, your man will be attracted by you! Who can resist a sexy woman waiting for herself in bed? No matter what type of clothing, you can try. At the end of the discussion with your partner to find out what kind of lingerie he likes. The man is very pitiful, does not have the sentiment underwear to be able to wear, therefore the sexy woman seizes own opportunity, exposes own body!
2. Sex toys
Vibrator, jump egg, anything. Not used? Then go and buy one. You can try different types, don’t be shy, only you and your lover in this bedroom, be bold.
It’s a very novel way. Many people like to use video sex to seek a different sexual experience. You can discuss on which day you want to have sex. To understand the process, I have an article on how to have a perfect phone sex
4. Masturbation in the eyes of your partner
It is very exciting and hot. Your previous masturbation experience must have been lying in bed alone at night, opening pornographic novels or movies, and starting to bring happiness to yourself. Oh, ordinary! We should give “masturbation” new play space! Masturbation in the other person’s eyes is a very bold attempt. But it needs you and your partner to be open enough. After all, many women are very shy.
5. Watch porn together
Maybe you saw porn movies together when you were in love. But have you ever discussed the action and plot in porn? Which one do you prefer? Try to understand your partner’s sexual preferences, even BDSM. You can prepare one day and surprise her / him!
6. Make love in another place
If the bedroom is too familiar, try the sink in the kitchen or bathroom; the dining table must be very welcome; explore the garden late at night when the neighbors are sleeping; and wear only an apron when cooking.
There are so many ways! Use your imagination. Sex is beautiful. It’s not a simple game just lying in bed.
When you have tried the above methods, your relationship and marriage must be restored to the passion of the past, and even become hotter than when you are in love.
You might also be interested in: What Will Make A Man Flirt With You? | https://medium.com/@bothliveapp/how-to-bring-passion-back-into-a-relationship-marriage-11-tips-for-you-9ff6a253b399 | ['Cedric Statham'] | 2020-12-11 06:58:18.189000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Tips', 'Passion', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
Hello World! | Hello World!
I’ve decided to start a blog to record my random journey in learning various things. I love to draw and craft stuff since I was little. When in school, I start to take interest in math & science courses. Since I’m interested in both, I love to combine my knowledge to build something unordinary.
Art & science, they’re usually considered an opposite topic.
However I find that my math knowledge always helps me in my crafting, and my artistic mind helps me in making a less intimidating science presentation.
I’m currently work as a lecturer in a university in my hometown. I live in Bandung, Indonesia. I teach computer science, especially programming & algorithm. My hobby includes teaching, programming, playing online games, cosplaying, costume making, drawing, etc. Really…, I have too many stuff that I like ( ´ ▽ ` ).
I’m a BIG fan of Japan.
It’s true I started as a regular “fujoshi”. I read manga, watch anime, play Japanese games, listen to Japanese songs. But later on I started to learn the language and observer their culture. There are many things that I love a bout them, really (o^▽^o). But I’m a lazy and moody person, so I think living in Indonesia suits me better hahaha… .
Now I will talk about my pen name.
“Tsuki Kitsune” is the name that I choose as my cosplayer name. Tsuki means moon, I always love clear starry sky with full moon, it’s very pretty! Kitsune means fox. I actually loves cat (too much), but I choose fox because I cosplayed “Rin Kagamine — Amatsu Kitsune Ver.”. This is one of my favourite cosplay (* ^ ω ^). This vocaloid song is written by my favourite pianist, Marasy-san.
“Cruithne” is the name that I use in many online games I play. It is the name of an asteroid that orbits the Sun next to earth. It is very close to earth, so that initially researcher thought it is Earth’s 2nd moon. Only later one they figured out it’s not.
So I choose this name, Cruithne Kitsune, because it’s basically sums up my two worlds ! One represents my geek side, the other represents my artist side. | https://medium.com/@cruithne-kitsune/hello-world-5c764ba3828 | ['Cruithne Kitsune'] | 2020-12-25 07:10:50.827000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Introduction'] |
Community Launch | Today marks a major milestone for OE: with our latest protocol changes running stably on mainnet, it’s time to begin opening up deployment! Anybody who meets our launch criteria can apply to be whitelisted on mainnet and will be approved within 2 weeks.
With over 750,000 transactions since our last protocol release, it’s. finally. time. The days of scalable, composable ecosystem growth are upon us. Additionally, this will kick off the process of increasing our TPS limit, starting with a doubling next week.
Why no full deployment?
While we are incredibly excited to be opening up to more projects, the OVM is still in beta. We have not fully disabled the whitelist just yet, and we’re still keeping the transaction throughput limit below L1 levels.
We have one more major upgrade upcoming in the next 3 months that will remove a majority of the remaining OVM DevEx hurdles. In general, if you will have to maintain a significantly different base of contracts (e.g. due to code size or gas) to maintain OVM compatibility, we suggest waiting for the next release to smooth things out. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on discord if you have questions!
What do I do?
If you’re as excited about this as we are, come deploy! You can check out the whitelisting criteria here, and when you meet the criteria, you can apply here. | https://medium.com/ethereum-optimism/community-launch-7c9a2a9d3e84 | ['Ethereum Optimism'] | 2021-08-19 19:21:37.973000+00:00 | ['Rollup', 'Optimism', 'Ethereum', 'Layer 2'] |
How Businesses Can Keep Their Properties Safe and Secure? | During the lockdown, businesses were worried about office spaces and storage spaces as they didn’t know how long it would be left unattended. For small or large companies, specific measures have to be in place to help prevent destruction, theft, arson or property damage. But most businesses don’t have any security measures in place.
Out of the total burglary cases recorded by businesses, almost a third won’t report the crimes as they believe the police won’t cooperate. Often business owners take property security into their own hands!
Burglary can have a permanent impact on both business and team morale; it is an appalling situation to be in! Owners and workers can experience emotional distress; plus, vandalism to the property can be long-lasting and require a lot of money to rebuild. There are many measures businesses can employ to protect themselves and their organization from vandalism, burglary, arson and property damages.
Here are some of the best ways of managing those crimes.
Guard Valuables
Burglaries happen because they are intrigued by what’s on display. Practice lockers for your employees to secure their belongings so that they aren’t left exposed. Make sure other valuables are locked as well. Businesses can invest in a fireproof or a high-security safe for securing their money, valuable documents, or belongings kept on site.
Install Surveillance and Monitoring Systems
Surveillance systems will safeguard personnel and property, as well as prevent both internal and external criminals. If someone vandalizes your property, you can establish proof for insurers and even catch the culprit. Hardwired cameras with a base station and wireless surveillance cameras with connections like Wi-Fi or cellular data are available in the market.
IP CCTV camera systems record the images digitally and are the most effective IP-based security systems.
Examine and Replace Your Locks
A properly installed deadbolt can guard your doors against intruder attacks. Even though smart locks have a higher initial expense, you can take hold of features such as audit trails and access control that can help.
Fireproofing Your Business
In the adverse event of a fire, most of your businesses will be destroyed. Fire alarm systems have smoke detectors and heat sensors that notify you earlier in case of a fire. Nowadays, addressable fire alarm systems are available in the market that find the exact location of a fire and extinguish it, which is not possible in conventional fire alarm systems.
A fireproof cabinet or cupboard could be an added advantage in your business. Beyond developing your security strategy, combining other building systems with security systems can undeniably change sustainability and operational capabilities. For both insurance plans and the business and its workers’ security, following these easy steps can make a significant difference to your day-to-day. | https://medium.com/@cindywilliamsa/how-businesses-can-keep-their-properties-safe-and-secure-10d9285f5dcb | ['Cindy Williams'] | 2020-12-04 04:08:14.181000+00:00 | ['Security Services', 'Ip Cctv Camera', 'Cctv', 'Security Camera', 'Addressable Fire Alarm'] |
New President, New Vision of Infrastructure | For much of history, ‘infrastructure’ has referred to little more than roads, ports, and waterways. As the world industrialized, infrastructure extended to rail and telegraph, and then to sewers, subways, and telephone. Electricity replaced steam. ARPANET ushered in the internet and a networked nation embedded itself further into a networked world. Progress.
Behind the veneer of infrastructure’s advancement has always been a world of dysfunctional politics, amplified by the often unclear allocation of responsibilities between federal, state, and local government. On top of that, for some good time now, it hasn’t been clear what ‘infrastructure’ is nor has there been an ambitious reimagining of what it could be.
In the US, unlike the majority of the world, infrastructure is a matter largely relegated to subsidiary units of government. Today, nearly three-quarters of infrastructure spending happens at the state and local levels[i]. This arrangement, which does have a logic to it, also leads to a disconnect between the responsibility to build, the authority to permit, and the ability to fund.
A case in point: NYC’s public transit system is over 100 years old. It is the busiest in the nation by a factor of 10[ii] and the largest in the world in terms of stations (over 472)[iii]. Over half of all of New Yorkers rely on the transit system[iv]. Congestion pricing was meant to fund[v] a substantial portion of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s upgrades and capital plan, but it has been held up at the federal level for seemingly political reason masquerading as regulatory ones. This dysfunction can’t be overstated and neither can its impact. During one of the lowest interest rate environments in history, the MTA’s last round of debt issuance (October 2020) priced in at 4.49%. That is a yield that is similar to junk and emerging market debt even though the MTA carries investment-grade level ratings and is a crucial element of ‘national’ economic infrastructure.
Toby Old 1978. MIA
This is not a new problem. The story of how to do ‘infrastructure’ (and who does it) in America is an old one. The question of “internal improvements” or “public works” as it was referred to then, has vexed the United States since its founding[vi]. Adam J. White, a legal scholar goes so far as suggesting that infrastructure considerations were core in the founders thinking in the formation of our constitutional system of government[vii].
The relationship between national and state policies effects the trajectory of ‘infrastructure’ and development. The more mis-aligned the two positions are, the greater are the aforementioned dysfunctions. It should not surprise us then that in the last twenty years we have not seen a major national infrastructure bill passed. Infrastructure is still largely seen as a local ad-hoc matter rather than a national or regional systems-level asset.
Our recent administration has not been able to resolve any of these longstanding issues. The last four years were dotted with “Infrastructures Weeks”, instead of the $1 trillion infrastructure plan promised. In addition, most contemporary funding initiatives from the federal government, the 2009 ARRA[viii] and the 2020 CAREs Act, provisioned funding almost exclusively for ongoing repairs and maintenance reflecting larger trends in infrastructure spend away from new capital projects to repairing aging assets. In fairness, holistic inaction predated the current administration and congressional sessions.
And ultimately, the problems underlying our nation’s infrastructure mess must be reproached more fundamentally, not just as a structural problem but one that is also philosophical. It is hard to reconcile a systemic and ideological impasse without a collective agreement on what infrastructure is. So, at the core of what needs updating is not just our infrastructure, but our concept of infrastructure. The term “infrastructure” is relatively new. Borrowed from French, it emerged in the English language between 1879 and 1927 to refer to a collection of ‘enabling works’[ix] as nations worldwide were competing to develop urban, industrial societies. Later, NATO, repurposed the term to refer to the investment and installations that were ‘mission critical’ to the security of Western Europe.
The idea of infrastructure as an enabling agent that is ‘mission critical’ should be the basis of our strategic concern and at the root of our strategic approach. Not all projects or infrastructures are critical. Not all are virtuous. But the ones that are shape more than just economic and social activity — they define national trajectories and the course of human history.
We may never achieve a National Infrastructure Strategy as ambitious as that of the UK’s. A strategy that while criticized for its lack in details at least is a ‘national strategy’ to organize around.
I had to the honor of serving on Biden’s Infrastructure Policy Committee in 2020 leading to the election. For the first time in a long time, we have a political vision and economic conditions to change both how we define infrastructure and align the different levels of government in its execution. A vision that pays attention to how infrastructure serves us in a modern context, how it can better enable our economy, and better serve all its citizens. Biden’s Infrastructure Plan is prepared to offer a long-run vision for infrastructure, a strategy, and pragmatic short-term remedies.
Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan is as close as we have been in understanding infrastructure they way the rest of the world does; as an important piece of national and geo-political strategy. The plan is built around three defining objectives: clean energy, modernizing the current system, and ensuring equity. It makes sense. It repositions infrastructure, and by extension its role in our current and future socio-economic systems. Finding common ground in congress and getting buy-in from an exhausted and distracted nation will prove to be difficult. But unless we can organize around a common future we will end up forfeiting it to a patched-up and obsolete past.
[i] Congressional Budget Office: Trends in Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure 1956–2017
[ii] NYC Subway ridership is estimated at 2.27 billion and Washington DC in second place with 237 million. Source: Transit Ridership Report Fourth Quarter 2019" (pdf). American Public Transportation Association. February 27, 2020. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
[iii] Metropolitan Transportation Authority
[iv] 56 % of New Yorkers rely on the system. Source: US Census Bureau, 4–2013
[v] the plan would have generated an estimated $1 billion annually backing a $15 billion bonds issuance by the agency
[vi] Robert G Natelson University of Montana and Senior Fellow Independence Institute. https://i2i.org/is-federal-infrastructure-spending-unconstitutional/
[vii] Infrastructure Policy: Lessons from American History, Adam J. White. The New Atlantis
[viii] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 revised to $831 billion allocated $105 billion to infrastructure.
[ix] Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion edited by Penelope Harvey, Casper Bruun Jensen, Atsuro Morita; Ch2. Keyword: Infrastructure. How a Humble French Engineering word Shaped the Modern Word (Ashley Carse. pg. 29) | https://medium.com/@metrofutures/new-president-new-vision-of-infrastructure-8f2d9ab05698 | ['Francisco X Pineda'] | 2020-12-22 05:43:30.305000+00:00 | ['Cities', 'Biden', 'Economy', 'Infrastructure', 'Politics'] |
Would a Carbon Tax Really Hurt the Poor? | “Energy is the lifeblood of any economy,” writes H. Sterling Burnett, a fellow at the Heartland Institute. “A carbon tax would increase energy prices and thus cost jobs, making it difficult U.S. companies to compete with foreign rivals and punishing the poor.”
The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce agrees. In an article for the National Review, he tells us that a carbon tax would “disproportionately hurt low-income consumers,” especially those who “live in rural areas and must drive long distances to get to and from their job sites.”
The American Energy Alliance echoes that sentiment, placing the “it will hurt the poor” argument in the third spot on a list of 10 reasons to oppose carbon taxes:
The carbon tax is by nature regressive, because it will raise the prices of gasoline, electricity, and other goods by the same dollar amount for all consumers, regardless of their incomes. This disproportionately affects the poor, because energy costs are a bigger portion of their overall budgets. A carbon tax will therefore hurt low-income families and seniors more than it will hurt middle- and upper-class households.
It is true, as we will see, that poor households do devote larger shares of their incomes to energy than do those with higher incomes, but there is more to the story than that. If we properly measure the impacts of carbon pricing and look at the full range of policy alternatives, there is no reason why concern for the poor should block policies to protect the environment.
The wrong way to help the poor
Let’s begin with the conventional wisdom, which holds that low-income households would be disproportionately impacted by a carbon tax since they devote a relatively high share of their incomes to energy. For example, a 2009 study by Corbett A. Grainger and Charles D. Kolstad found such a pattern, as shown by the blue bars in the following chart:
The population is divided into five income quintiles, from lowest to highest. The blue bars show how many kilograms of carbon each quintile emits per dollar of income; this proportion is much higher for the lowest quintile than the highest, indicating that the poor do spend more of their budgets on energy. But the red diamonds indicate the proportion of national carbon emissions emitted by each quintile, and they move in the opposite direction. In other words, as you move up the income ladder, a smaller portion of your budget goes to energy, but you still emit more. As a result, the top income quintile is responsible for almost 35 percent of total emissions, compared to just under 10 percent for the lowest quintile.
Even if we take these numbers at face value, it is clear that forgoing a carbon tax in order to keep energy prices low is an absurdly inefficient way to help the poor. Based on their share of national emissions, the top two income quintiles would capture 58 percent of the benefits of such a policy, compared to just 24 percent for the bottom two quintiles. The very richest households would gain three-and-a-half times more than the very poorest.
Furthermore, looking only at incomes and energy use gives a misleading picture of the degree to which the effects of a carbon tax would be concentrated on the poor. A more recent study by Julie Anne Cronin, Don Fullerton, and Steven E. Sexton took a different approach. Cronin et al. considered not only the direct impact of a carbon tax on household energy prices, but also indirect impacts on the prices of goods like housing, food, and clothing. In addition to income, they also looked at the impact of carbon taxes in proportion to household consumption expenditures, which are more stable from year to year than incomes. They also accounted for the fact that transfer payments to low-income households are indexed to rise automatically when prices increase, whether because of general inflation or due to a policy change like a carbon tax.
When all of those factors are considered, Cronin et al. found that the impact of a carbon tax is more equally distributed in proportion to household income and consumption than the conventional wisdom assumes. As the next chart shows, the burden of a carbon tax as a percentage of household income varies only slightly, from 0.54 percent of income for the poorest income decile to 0.46 percent of income for the wealthiest decile. If the calculation is done as a percentage of consumption rather than a percentage of income, the impact of a carbon tax on wealthy households is actually proportionally greater than on poor households.
If we judge by the Cronin method rather than the earlier Grainger method, the idea of helping the poor by keeping carbon prices low is even more suspect. According to the Cronin data, the top two income quintiles would capture 77 percent of the benefit of forgoing a carbon tax, rather than the 58 percent they would capture based on the older data. Meanwhile, the poorest two income quintiles would receive only 10 percent of the benefit of a low-price policy, rather than the 24 percent they would get based on the older data.
Still, though, a carbon tax would have some adverse effect on the poor, even if its impact would not be as regressive as the conventional wisdom suggests. If forgoing a carbon tax is the wrong way to help the poor, what is the right way?
How to help the poor and the planet
The right way to assist low-income families would be to give them extra income to pay the higher prices that a carbon tax would bring. Every serious carbon pricing proposal that I have seen includes some such compensation scheme.
For example, the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, one of the leading backers of a carbon tax, proposes distributing the tax revenue equally among the entire population as a “citizen’s dividend.” A group of 45 prominent economists recently wrote an open letter in support of a carbon tax that would take the same approach.
Alternatively, some favor a revenue-neutral tax swap that would offset carbon tax revenues by reducing the rates of other taxes. If enough of the rate reductions were focused on payroll taxes or other taxes that are disproportionately burdensome for low-wage households, the net impacts of a revenue-neutral tax swap could be made neutral with respect to income, or even moderately progressive. Still other carbon tax backers propose distributing all or part of the compensation in the form of increased benefits for existing income-support programs, such as food stamps, Social Security, and the earned income tax credit.
Finally, some backers favor spending carbon tax revenues to address climate change directly, for example, by investing in clean-energy infrastructure or adaptation. If the benefits of slowing climate change are enjoyed equally by everyone, regardless of income, the distributional effects of such a policy would be similar to those of a tax-and-dividend scheme. If, as is sometimes claimed, climate change hurts the poor disproportionately, using carbon tax revenue for climate mitigation would could be even more progressive than a citizens’ dividend.
These are not either-or options. Carbon tax revenue could be divided in some way among all of them. In a report for the Brookings Institution, Aparna Mathur and Adele Morris calculate that compensating low-income households for the impact of a carbon tax could take as little as 11 percent of the tax revenues. In an analysis of the 2018 Market Choice Act, researchers from Columbia University and Rice University found that allocating 10 percent of carbon tax revenue to transfers to the lowest 20 percent of income earners increased household wealth and especially benefited younger workers.
However, Cronin et al. add a big caveat. They point out that not all families in a given income bracket are equally affected. Those who live in temperate climates use less energy for heating and cooling than do those in more severe climates. People who commute to jobs use more energy than retirees with equal incomes, and so on. The impacts from family to family within an income bracket can vary more than the average effect of the tax across income brackets. The implication is that to be sure that most in the poorest quintile were not hurt, it would be necessary to spend more on compensation than Mathur and Morris’s 11 percent, or to target compensation to regions or activities with high carbon consumption.
One final point regarding compensation: The basic point of carbon pricing is to incentivize conservation of energy, investments in low-carbon technology, and other behaviors that reduce emissions. There is a trade-off between compensation and incentives. On the one hand, to make compensation more effective, it makes sense to tailor it to the specific circumstances of beneficiaries, so that fewer are undercompensated or overcompensated. On the other hand, it is important not to allow the compensation plan itself to undermine incentives.
For example, low-wage workers who have to drive a long way to their jobs will be more severely impacted by a carbon tax than those who have access to public transportation or can work from home. It would be a mistake, though, to automatically offer extra compensation in proportion to miles driven, or to provide vouchers to allow purchase of gasoline at pretax prices. Any such forms of compensation would remove incentives to move closer to work, use public transportation, or buy a more efficient car. Similarly, fully compensating people who live in hot or cold climates for their extra home heating costs could erode incentives to make their homes more energy efficient or even to move to more temperate areas.
The bottom line
When considerations both of efficiency and fairness are taken into account, “It will hurt the poor” does not ever have to override “It’s good for the environment.” In any democratic political system, there are going to be differences of opinion on the relative priorities of distributional equity and environmental protection, but to say we must abandon one goal to pursue the other is simply false. It is perfectly possible to protect the environment and, at the same time, to protect low-income consumers from any undue effects of doing so.
Previously posted at NiskanenCenter.org | https://dolanecon.medium.com/would-a-carbon-tax-really-hurt-the-poor-a1b0d7c019cf | ['Ed Dolan'] | 2019-03-28 18:42:47.918000+00:00 | ['Carbon Tax', 'Environment', 'Economics', 'Politics'] |
Real-Time Sentiment Analysis For Twitter Data Using AWS | The solution enables you to gain insights into your customer’s conversations and deepen brand awareness by analyzing social media interactions.
This solution automatically provisions and configures the AWS services necessary to capture multi-language tweets in near real-time, translate them, and store both the raw and enriched datasets durably in the solution’s data lake. You can then analyze this data and create meaningful dashboards powered by Amazon QuickSight to visualize and understand customer sentiment.
My Background: Cloud and Big Data Enthusiast | 5x AWS Certified | 3x Oracle Cloud Certified | 3x Azure Certified | Big Data Certified | AWS Community Builder.
Implementation overview
AI-Driven Social Media Dashboard monitors and ingests specified tweets using stream processing and leverages a serverless architecture and ML services (Amazon Translate and Amazon Comprehend) to translate and extract insights from those tweets. The diagram below presents the architecture you can deploy in minutes using the solution’s implementation guide and accompanying AWS CloudFormation template.
Implementation architecture
This solution deploys an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance running in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) that ingests tweets from Twitter. An Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream loads the streaming tweets into the raw prefix in the solution’s Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket. Amazon S3 invokes an AWS Lambda function to analyze the raw tweets using Amazon Translate to translate non-English tweets into English, and Amazon Comprehend to use natural-language-processing (NLP) to perform entity extraction and sentiment analysis.
A second Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream loads the translated tweets and sentiment values into the sentiment prefix in the Amazon S3 bucket. A third delivery stream loads entities in the entities prefix using in the Amazon S3 bucket.
The solution also deploys a data lake that includes AWS Glue for data transformation, Amazon Athena for data analysis, and Amazon QuickSight for data visualization. AWS Glue Data Catalog contains a logical database which is used to organize the tables for the data on Amazon S3. Athena uses these table definitions to query the data stored on Amazon S3 and return the information to an Amazon QuickSight dashboard.
Prerequisites
Before you launch this solution, you must have a Twitter consumer key (API key) and secret, and a Twitter access key and secret. If you do not already have these keys, you must create an app in Twitter.
You must also have an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) key pair. If you do not already have a key pair, see Creating a Key Pair Using Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.
Steps
The procedure for deploying this architecture on AWS consists of the following steps. For detailed instructions, follow the links for each step.
Step 1. Launch the Stack
This automated AWS CloudFormation template deploys the AI-Driven Social Media Dashboard on the AWS Cloud. Please make sure that you have completed the prerequisites before launching the stack.
You are responsible for the cost of the AWS services used while running this solution. See the Cost section for more details. For full details, see the pricing webpage for each AWS service you will be using in this solution.
Sign in to the AWS Management Console and click the button below to launch the ai-driven-social-media-dashboard AWS CloudFormation template.
You can also download the template as a starting point for your own implementation. The template is launched in the US East (N. Virginia) Region by default. To launch the solution in a different AWS Region, use the region selector in the console navigation bar.
This solution uses Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Athena, Amazon Translate, Amazon Comprehend and AWS Glue which are currently available in specific AWS Regions only. Therefore, you must launch this solution in an AWS Region where these services are available. For the most current service availability by region, see AWS service offerings by region. On the Select Template page, verify you selected the correct template and choose Next. On the Specify Details page, assign a name to your solution stack. Under Parameters, review the following parameters for the template and modify them, as necessary. This solution uses the following default values. Select Next. On the Options page, select Next. On the Review page, review and confirm the settings. Be sure to check the box acknowledging that the template will create AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) resources resources. Select Create to deploy the stack.
You can view the status of the stack in the AWS CloudFormation console in the Status column. You should see a status of CREATE_COMPLETE in approximately five minutes.
Step 2. Build the Queries
Navigate to the Amazon Athena console. In the navigation pane under Database, select ai_driven_social_media_dashboard . Use the Athena Query Editor query pane to run queries on the data. The following table contains a list of queries and their descriptions
FROM tweets limit 10; Returns information for the last 10 tweets.
SELECT * FROM tweet_sentiments limit 10; Returns sentiment information for the last 10 tweets.
SELECT * FROM tweet_entities limit 10; Returns entity information for the last 10.
SELECT type, count(*) cnt FROM tweet_entities GROUP BY type ORDER BY cnt desc Returns a count of the number of entities for each entity type.
SELECT lang, count(*) cnt FROM tweets GROUP BY lang ORDER BY cnt desc Returns a count of the number of tweets in each language.
Step 3. Create the Data Source
Navigate to the Amazon QuickSight console. Select Manage data. Select New data set. Select Athena. For Data source name, enter a name (for example, tweet_sentiment ) and select Create data source.
After a few minutes, a success message should appear that shows that the Amazon Athena data imported into Amazon QuickSight. Select the ai_driven_social_media_dashboard database. When the list of available tables populates, select the tweet_sentiments table. Select Edit/Preview Data. Enter the following custom query to count the distinct tweet IDs:
SELECT s.*, e.entity, e.type, e.score, t.lang as language, coordinates.coordinates[1] AS lon, coordinates.coordinates[2] AS lat , place.name, place.country, t.timestamp_ms / 1000 AS timestamp_in_seconds, regexp_replace(source, '\<.+?\>', '') AS src FROM ai_driven_social_media_dashboard.tweets t JOIN ai_driven_social_media_dashboard.tweet_sentiments s ON (s.tweetid = t.id) JOIN ai_driven_social_media_dashboard.tweet_entities e ON (e.tweetid = t.id)
10. Select Finish.
You should be able to see the sampled data.
11. In the navigation pane, select Fields, timestamp_in_seconds, Change data type and select Date.
12. Select Save and Visualize.
Step 4. Build the Dashboard
On the All analyses tab of the Amazon QuickSight start page, choose New analysis. You are taken to the Your Data Sets page. Choose the data set and then choose Create analysis. Choose Add on the application bar, and then choose Add visual. In the Fields list pane, select the drop-down menu and select type and tweetid. If the Fields list isn’t visible, choose Visualize to display it.
The field wells display the fields that are visualized. Select Field wells to access the options. In the Fields list pane, drag the tweetids field to the Value field wells. Select tweetid, Aggregate, Count Distinct. For Visual types, select the pie chart icon.
Amazon QuickSight creates the visual. Select + Add to build the second visual for the dashboard. Resize the second visual so it matches the size of the first visual and position it next to the first visual.
11. In the Fields list pane, select the drop-down menu and select sentiment and timestamp_in_seconds.
12. In the Field wells, zoom either in or out of the time element until hours is shown.
Amazon QuickSight creates the second visual.
13. Optional: Open the context menu (right-click) for the neutral line and select Exclude NEUTRAL.
Do this when there are a disproportionate number of neutral tweets affecting the visual display of the data range of the other tweets.
14. Select the + Add option to build the third visual for the dashboard.
15. Position the third visual in the bottom half of the workspace.
16. For Visual types, select the table icon.
17. From the Fields list, select the following (to add the translated tweets to the visual):
language
text
originalText
18. On the toolbar, select Filter.
19. Select One: language.
20. Select Custom filter, Does not equal, and enter en .
Now you can view graphical representations of your tweet entities, tweet sentiment over time, and translated tweets.
You can create additional visuals to create a more robust visualization of your tweet data.
hope all of you Understood AWS Implementation Architecture and How to Use Sentiment Analysis with AWS. If you have any doubt regarding the examples provided or are unable to understand how AWS Services work and how to implement different AWS Solutions do reach out to me.
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https://www.youracclaim.com/users/adit-modi/badges | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/real-time-sentiment-analysis-for-twitter-data-using-aws-243b08fd5ce8 | ['Adit Modi'] | 2020-12-29 03:37:53.060000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Cloudformation', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'Machine Learning', 'Serverless'] |
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Paper Journal — 2 | Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Paper Journal — 2
By Kitanya Harrison, writing as Harrison Kitteridge
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Were it not for Sherlock’s Personal Archive File, I would have assumed that, like me, he had no family to speak of. He never mentioned his childhood home or his people — it was almost as if he had taken an omerta against doing so. I assumed there must have been some horrible estrangement even though Mycroft and his parents checked up on him at fairly regular intervals and kept him afloat financially. The overtures never came from the other direction, though, and his eldest brother, Algernon, remained mysteriously absent. Sherlock’s self-imposed isolation seemed to be the product of some deeply-felt aversion to any sort of emotional connection. His File showed only one close relationship — a friendship he had struck up at university with a young man called Victor Trevor (or, more accurately, a friendship Victor Trevor had struck up with him). They met when Victor’s dog bit Sherlock on the ankle, and Victor was rather insistent about looking after Sherlock while he recuperated. I often wondered if getting close to Sherlock was just that simple — a matter of persistence, pushing past his boundaries as carelessly has he would yours. Their friendship had ended badly following the death of the boy’s father. It wasn’t clear what had precipitated the falling out, but it is not difficult to imagine that turning to Sherlock in a time of grief might have been a recipe for disaster.
It should have bothered me more, Sherlock’s nonchalant misanthropy, but the truth is that it enabled my own. I too craved alienation from the world and its demands to “be more sociable!” I appreciated being able to eschew many tedious social rituals when I was in his company. He abhorred “small talk” and would sometimes sit in absolute silence for days. At first, I found it strange, but then I gladly embraced those prolonged moments of quiet as peaceful respites for my febrile nerves. It also helped that my psychiatrist was so pleased I had found a friend I liked and esteemed that she encouraged my neglect of Harry and was optimistic that I could give up having a Virtual Sociability Companion far sooner than she had hoped. She was over the moon when I began to write up Sherlock’s cases (thus far, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez) in an Archive Journal I titled (somewhat grandly) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I never told her about the drugs, and she never took a close enough look at Sherlock’s File to find out. She noted that forming my friendship with Sherlock was the turning point in my treatment. The marked improvement in my mood and outlook on life were evidence of the truth of her assessment, but “friendship” seemed like the wrong word for whatever it was Sherlock and I shared — it hints at a kind of intimacy neither of us was truly capable of. While I was hesitant to classify my relationship with Sherlock, I could freely admit that we were strangely well-suited companions, and I was curious to meet a member of his family in person.
“What is your brother like?” It was the sort of question one asked without thinking — a way to fill dead air.
“You’ve been through his File, haven’t you?” Sherlock asked, one brow raised — a signal to remind me that he disliked redundant conversations.
“Of course,” I replied, colouring for a reason I couldn’t quite place. Examining the Personal Archive File of anyone you had met or could expect to meet was commonplace and expected. In fact, it is often considered rude not to do so soon after making a new acquaintance. If at your next meeting you couldn’t list all their high school sweethearts, you could find you had made an enemy instead of a friend. As usual, basic etiquette seemed not to apply to Sherlock, and, where he and his family were concerned, I felt as if I had been snooping.
“If you’ve been through his File, then you know what he’s like,” Sherlock said.
“I know who he presents himself to be,” I replied. I could tell I had surprised Sherlock, a vanishingly rare occurrence.
He regarded me closely for a moment then said in that cryptic way of his, “You are more than a mere conductor of light, aren’t you, John?”
“I don’t know what that means,” I replied in fond exasperation. “Is he anything like you?” I immediately regretted my question. Sherlock’s face darkened noticeably. Comparing him to his brother had obviously struck a nerve.
“He’s much cleverer than I am.” I could see what it cost him to make that admission. He loathed false modesty, so I knew that even though “cleverness” is a somewhat slippery concept, by Sherlock’s definition, Mycroft had the superior mind.
“Just because he did well in school, got better marks than you, doesn’t mean he’s cleverer.” Sherlock’s expression was absolutely scathing, but something made me press on. I desperately wanted his haughty insouciance to return. His defensiveness had to be quelled. “I’m sure he can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to making deductions.” I smiled confidently, knowing my statement to be true with my whole heart. Before that moment I don’t think I had realised just how highly I esteemed him. It had never occurred to me that he wasn’t unique.
Sherlock’s answering smile was a near grimace, his expression marooned between reflecting appreciation for my faith in him and dejection at the truth my mistakenness had revealed. “He’s better at it than I am.”
“What?” I said stupidly. I felt as if I had been struck.
“He’s better at it than I am.” Sherlock enunciated each word viciously. He hated repeating himself. Coupled with the air of self-flagellation in his tone, I was beginning to think going to meet Mycroft was a terrible idea, a reprieve from the taking of synthetic stimulants be damned. “He is quite well-known for it in certain circles.”
“Does he work with the police?” I was utterly confused. Mycroft’s File indicated that he met his Professional Skills Utilisation Requirements as the Chief Technical Officer at The Archive Liaison Office — an obscure branch of the Ministry of Information. All government record-keeping was done by Alexandria, the parent company of The Archive, and things ran so seamlessly there were virtually no complaints. The Archive Liaison Office seemed to do little more than virtual ribbon-cutting whenever a new government-related feature was launched or updated on The Archive.
“The police work for Mycroft,” Sherlock said.
“The police work for The Archive Liaison Office?” The conversation seemed to be happening in a foreign language — I could make neither head nor tail of it.
“No. The police work for Mycroft. Or at least they will soon.” I could do nothing but stare stupidly. “Do you know what scarlet is?”
Scarlet, the police, The Archive Liaison Office — my mind began to put it together (not quite fast enough for Sherlock, though, who sighed impatiently). “Scarlet — that’s the acronym for some new police database or something, isn’t it?” I asked. “Special Crime Avoidance Something…”
I was relieved to see Sherlock grace me with a barely perceptible smile. “It was originally called the Serious Crime Abatement Rubric, but the acronym S.C.A.R. evoked too many associations with violent knife crime. Since its instalment on all Law Enforcement Technology Units will be mandatory, someone thought to massage it into the Serious Crime Abatement Rubric for Law Enforcement Technology or S.C.A.R.L.E.T. It rolls off the tongue much more pleasantly, don’t you think?”
“It makes me think of blood,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“I suppose it does.”
“So this database — ”
“It’s not a database,” Sherlock interrupted. “It is a highly advanced data analytics program that reviews unsolved crimes and queries The Archive for further clues. It is currently in the beta stage, but it has been a smashing success, and when it is rolled out in a few months’ time, its application will be the first step in criminal investigation not a stop-gap after the usual methods fail.”
“But that means…”
“It will be possible to solve very nearly any crime without ever having to leave your chair.” I heard the unspoken implication — detectives would go the way of the dinosaur.
“And your brother, he supervised all this?”
“The algorithms S.C.A.R.L.E.T. uses are based on his very particular method of deductive reasoning.”
It was like something out of a turn-of-the-millennium film: sentient computers taking over the world and destroying people’s lives. “So your brother’s mind has been copied into some sort of artificial intelligence that’s going to make every C.I.D. in the country irrelevant?” I very nearly said “make you irrelevant” but caught myself just in time.
“It’s not an A.I. — not strictly speaking. It can solve a specific subset of very complex problems faster than any human being could ever hope to, but it can’t learn or adapt; it can only take in more information and run it through its algorithms. It’s essentially still just a logic machine, but, yes, it will remove the necessity of employing human beings to investigate virtually all crimes.”
I felt as if I had been plunged into ice water. Once S.C.A.R.L.E.T. came online, the police officers who sometimes called Sherlock up to crib off of him would be made redundant, and his already meagre case load would shrink even more. In fact, S.C.A.R.L.E.T.’s beta testing was the likely cause of the drought Sherlock was currently experiencing. Things would get only worse. I willed myself not to grab the morocco case and hurl it out the window. Instead, I asked, “So, if Mycroft has S.C.A.R.L.E.T., what sort of case could he need solved?”
“There are always all sorts of intrigues in government agencies. He’s probably determined that someone somewhere is untrustworthy but doesn’t want to send up any flares by using S.C.A.R.L.E.T. in case the guilty party has access.”
It all sounded very cloak and dagger, and that gave me a thought. “The security services will probably want their own version of S.C.A.R.L.E.T., won’t they?”
“They’ve probably already seen the beta testing and put in a request. The spy masters will have to give Mycroft full access if they want similar results.” He hesitated a bit. “Once it’s fully deployed, S.C.A.R.L.E.T. will save billions of pounds. Mycroft always understood that whoever could balance the books was the most important person in the room. He’s made himself the most powerful man in England.”
Yes, I thought, going to meet Mycroft is the worst idea any person in the history of ideas had ever had. I had half a mind to knock Sherlock out and lock him in a cupboard. His brother was a dangerous man. I was certain of it. A man of his superior intellect and vast ambition could very well have become Prime Minister. He was made for it. He probably could have obtained any posting he wanted after university, but, in a move that must have earned him the derision of his peers, he left the most coveted positions to others and joined what was essentially a joke department because he was the only person to recognise where the true locus of power was hidden. Mycroft didn’t want the trappings of power; he wanted actual power. Vain men can be easily placated once you discover what flatters them. Mycroft, on the other hand, had ignored the demands of his ego for the better part of twenty years and was pleased to remain hidden in the shadows. I imagined him as a great spider, but the sort that was far too clever to do anything as unimaginative as build a web to trap its prey.
Sensing my worry, Sherlock said, “You’re right to be wary of him, but he’s of no danger to us.”
“Not to you, maybe — you’re his brother. What about me?” I was half-joking, but Sherlock’s face became hard, and his eyes were positively lethal.
“He wouldn’t dare.” That was all he said, but behind the simple phrase lay a very real threat, some terrible consequence to be paid for an injury to me. The flare of emotion burned white-hot — like magnesium that had been set alight, but it was extinguished almost immediately. Some greedy part of me wanted more, and I thought that it would be worth being hurt (not too badly, mind you) so I could catch further glimpses of the generous heart he hid so ably. His sudden surge of protectiveness seemed to bring him back to himself, and his usual air of maddeningly unruffled calm enveloped him. We were due to meet Mycroft at his office in Whitehall, and he burst out the door, throwing an imperious “Come along, John” behind him. As always, I followed.
The Archive Liaison Office was tucked away in the warren of Ministry of Information departments. It had been overlooked during the last round of renovations and was stuck in turn-of-the-millennium interior design. I found the almost aggressive minimalism and monochromatic paintings of nothing but lines and whorls deeply unsettling. That kind of deliberate attempt to create a space devoid of any context had always seemed prevaricating to me. Mycroft came out to greet us. He and Sherlock could not have been more opposite physically. Sherlock was very tall (about 190 cm) and whippet thin. His face was too severe to be considered truly handsome, but his strong, hawk-like features combined with his regal carriage gave him a potent physical charisma, which when joined with the force of his personality always threatened to overwhelm. Everything about Mycroft was… softer. His hair was fair and made up of fine, straight strands that were easy to groom. Sherlock sported a mane of raven curls that often resembled a nest constructed by a very angry, unworkmanlike bird. Mycroft was nearly the same height as Sherlock but much stouter, outweighing him by several stone. This difference in weight was clearest in their faces (the immaculate tailoring of Mycroft’s suit did much to camouflage his considerable girth). Sherlock was almost gaunt, his cheekbones like knives edges, while Mycroft’s plump visage was almost cherubic. They should have had the same eyes: light grey and shaped like almonds, but Sherlock’s seemed brighter. Perhaps it was the contrast of his dark lashes. The family resemblance was all in the sharpness of their expressions. They conveyed that they were incredibly intelligent men without having to speak a word.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft said warmly.
“Mycroft,” Sherlock replied, shaking his brother’s hand.
“And this must be your Dr Watson.” He turned to me, and I could feel him analysing me much the way Sherlock had at our first meeting.
“Mr Holmes,” I said, offering my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Please call me Mycroft.” He shook my hand firmly.
“And you must call me John,” I responded. Sherlock sighed shortly, already impatient with the social ritual of making introductions. Mycroft smiled indulgently at him.
“Let’s step into my office and get down to brass tacks before Sherlock sets fire to something.”
Mycroft’s office was of a moderate size and was tastefully decorated — the dark wood and rich upholstery made it much warmer than all the cool glass, sharp edges and stainless steel in the reception area. We sat together at a small table where tea and cakes were already laid out. Mycroft set about serving us, pouring the tea with the skill of a Victorian maiden.
“Cake not biscuits, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, stirring a tooth-rotting amount of sugar into his tea. “It’s something serious, then — to do with your precious S.C.A.R.L.E.T.” Mycroft’s large hand grasped the preposterously small serving tongs with remarkable deftness, and he placed an assortment of delicate, lightly frosted cakes onto each of our small china plates. They were delicious and obviously expensive, as was the wonderfully fragrant tea.
“Beta testing hit a snag?” Sherlock needled through a mouthful of cake.
“Not a snag per se,” Mycroft responded, managing to devastate his serving of cake in short order while maintaining faultless table manners. “I know it is not the impression we give, but The Archive does not, cannot capture everything. Human beings are too inherently mendacious. The lies they tell themselves litter their Files. Nevertheless, between the psychological assessments in their Health & Well-being Sub-Files and the plethora of video and holograms we have of them to compare and analyse, S.C.A.R.L.E.T. can root out and even predict deception rather accurately. Nevertheless, there are certain… gaps we knew would prevent S.C.A.R.L.E.T. from closing 100% of the cases it analyses. The success rate is actually higher than our predic — ”
Sherlock interrupted. “You deliberately down-sold the efficacy to make yourself look like a genius when it surpassed expectations.” Mycroft’s mouth curved into a small smile of confirmation.
“We always knew the need for human input would remain, that there would sometimes be legwork.” He said the word “legwork” the way one might refer to a suppurating boil.
“So, it turns out you can’t solve every mystery from your armchair, not even when you have the power to access all the data in The Archive.” Sherlock was gleefully smug. Mycroft ignored him.
“When S.C.A.R.L.E.T. lacks the data to formulate a conclusion, it returns a message depending on the nature of the failure: ‘Analysis Inconclusive’ or ‘Anomaly Detected’, etc., all under the umbrella of ‘Needs Human Interpretation’. We have recruited human interpreters from every branch of law enforcement — only the best, of course.”
“Of course,” Sherlock said, his smugness now so thick it was very nearly corporeal. If things carried on the way they were, we would have to name it, hire it a nanny, and choose a primary school for it to attend.
“With the detailed reports S.C.A.R.L.E.T. generates in hand, our interpreters usually have no trouble. It is all generally quite straightforward — a matter of a few interviews. There are, however, a category of cases that remain impenetrable even with S.C.A.R.L.E.T.’s analysis and our best interpreters burning the midnight oil.”
“I suppose you’ve had a go at them too,” Sherlock said, practically writhing in gloating satisfaction.
“I have managed to close a few,” Mycroft said. “And I was able to suggest a few tweaks to the algorithms and the interpreters’ training that have narrowed the gap even further. However, my other duties preclude me from intervening on a regular basis. There remains a group of cases that the interpreters have taken to calling ‘greeks’.”
“Greeks?” Sherlock asked.
“Generating Rectal Engrossments of the Excruciating Kind. Colloquially, one would say enormous pains in the arse.” Mycroft sitting there in his bespoke dove-grey suit with his 19th century manners talking about rectal engrossments and arses was surrealistic. “Our Chief Interpreter, Gertrude Lestrade, keeps her finger on all the G.R.E.E.K. cases and keeps me apprised of the progress being made. There is a particularly sticky one that has them completely stymied. They have no idea where to even begin.” He paused a bit. “My suggestions on how to proceed have made no discernible impact.”
Mycroft did not seem to suffer the same acute sense of defeat Sherlock experienced when he failed to unravel a problem. It had happened only once that I had observed, and I had no desire to relive the aftermath. Thus far, I had found Mycroft pleasant and accommodating. He was the perfect host, and I appreciated the way he seemed to absorb Sherlock’s barbs without mustering any perfectly justifiable ill will. He put up no defences or hard edges of his own, and, while his desire to protect Sherlock (even from himself) was clear, he restrained the urge to interfere out of respect. In his demeanour was the admission that Sherlock was free to make his own choices. I quickly developed a grudging respect for Mycroft and his mature approach to sibling rivalry. I wasn’t sure I trusted him not to descend into the kind of knavery worthy of a Bond villain, but I trusted him to keep Sherlock’s best interest at heart. In spite of all this, I was worried that deputising Sherlock as some sort of “G.R.E.E.K. interpreter” was courting disaster. If S.C.A.R.L.E.T., Mycroft and his team of interpreters were at sixes and sevens over the case, it seemed likely that Sherlock would be stymied as well. As always, Sherlock could read my thoughts, and I caught a quickly disguised look of hurt disappointment flash across his face.
“I assure you, John,” Mycroft said, demonstrating his own clairvoyance. “I would not have sought my brother’s input were I not confident he would get as close to settling the matter as was possible. If he is unable to cut this Gordian knot, then we shall have to remain at a loss until further information is gathered. The Archive is always pulling new data, and S.C.A.R.L.E.T. re-assesses the G.R.E.E.K.s periodically, so a favourable resolution of the matter is possible.”
“But not probable.” Why was I speaking?
“Sherlock’s involvement shortens the odds considerably,” Mycroft said matter-of-factly.
“I know,” I said, looking over at Sherlock, hoping to convey that my concerns had nothing to do with lack of confidence in his abilities but the Matterhorn-sized problem itself.
There was a knock at the door.
“That will be Lestrade,” Mycroft said. “I’ll have her give you access to S.C.A.R.L.E.T. and take you through the case.”
“Off to Downing Street?” I asked in jest.
“Yes,” Mycroft answered, standing and buttoning his suit jacket.
Gertrude Lestrade, the Chief Interpreter, formerly of New Scotland Yard, was not pleased to have civilians poaching on her territory. That Sherlock’s relationship to Mycroft screamed nepotism put her in a state of slowly simmering rage. She kept mumbling about “protocol” and “proper security clearance” and “family connections”. As she logged into S.C.A.R.L.E.T. to grant Sherlock access as a Consulting Interpreter, “this is most irregular” was her near constant refrain. In a fudge of my medical credentials, I was listed as a Forensic Science Associate. Lestrade continued her litany of disapproval as she introduced us to the software and used a few active cases as examples to show us how to use the interface. To Sherlock’s credit, he ignored Lestrade (although I suppose that was down to his captivation with S.C.A.R.L.E.T.), and Lestrade soon changed her tune when Sherlock solved three of the “Needs Human Interpretation” cases after glancing over their S.C.A.R.L.E.T. reports. The G.R.E.E.K. cases were much murkier, but he did offer a few suggestions, of which Lestrade gladly made note. I saw (with some distaste) that, following each of Sherlock’s revelations, Lestrade entered her own name into the field for “Current Interpreting Agent” before updating the case files, essentially taking all the credit for Sherlock’s work. I disliked her intensely. Sherlock caught the stony glare I was directing at Lestrade and smiled. The dark and light in Sherlock expressed themselves so unpredictably: he was almost irretrievably arrogant, but he wasn’t proud.
Once Lestrade had taken us through the basics of using S.C.A.R.L.E.T., she sent us secure links to the User Manual, which bore the somewhat esoteric title: A Study in S.C.A.R.L.E.T. “Mycroft does so love to indulge his little eccentricities,” Sherlock remarked disdainfully. I laughed aloud at the notion that Sherlock Holmes of all people could have the temerity to deride anyone, much less Mycroft (who practically radiated steadfast reliability), as being too indulgent of their foibles. He at least had the good grace to look slightly chagrined when faced with the preposterousness of his position.
Our orientation complete, Lestrade pulled up the G.R.E.E.K. case on which Sherlock had been brought in to consult — the unsolved murder of a woman called Edwina Lucas. The facts of the case are as follows:
At 21:37 on the night in question, thirty-four year-old Edwina May Lucas posted to her File that she was making a night of it. Ninety-six hours later, after she failed to respond to a barrage of Sociability Reminders and a Request for Confirmation of Health & Well-being, Fire & Safety Officers entered her flat and found her lying dead from a stab wound to the heart. The wound had been expertly inflicted, the incredibly sharp knife having slid up between her ribs for the killing blow. The post-mortem revealed that she had died almost instantly and was killed not long after she had made her final Archive entry. The case had the clear markers of a professional hit.
“We can find no motive,” Lestrade said. “There is no reason we can ascertain for anyone to have wanted Edwina Lucas dead, none at all. By all accounts she was shy, retiring and hard-working. Her psychological profile shows that she was almost preternaturally afraid of conflict — a classic people-pleaser.”
“Maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have,” I suggested.
“Nothing in the geolocation data from her Life Management Device puts her near any suspicious activity. And S.C.A.R.L.E.T.’s examination of her Archive entries didn’t show any of the behavioural changes one would expect from the stress of an experience like that, having to hide it,” Lestrade countered.
“Maybe she didn’t know what she saw, didn’t understand that it was important,” I replied. Sherlock beamed at me the way one might at a child who had demonstrated the ability to tie his own shoes for the first time. “Is that what you think it might be, Sherlock?” I asked, hoping for his explicit agreement and approval.
“One should never theorise ahead of the data,” he replied. Some flicker of disappointment must have shown on my face because he went on to say, “But the notion that she somehow came to possess knowledge she didn’t realise was dangerous to her must be considered.” I couldn’t help a pleased smile.
“Was anything stolen?” I asked, buoyed by Sherlock’s acceptance of my contribution and overcome by the sudden urge to “detect”.
“That’s listed as one of the anomalies S.C.A.R.L.E.T. picked up,” Lestrade replied. “The only thing of any value that was missing was a book.”
“A book?” Sherlock asked sharply, his already piqued interest ratcheting up another notch. “A paper book?”
“Yes,” Lestrade replied. “A turn-of-the-millennium autographed hardcover copy of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. It’s not very valuable, though — only worth a couple of hundred quid or so — no reason for some Carlos the Jackal type to get involved. We’re not sure when the book went missing. The last archived photo of her flat was from three days before her death. The book was there then but not when she was found. She could have lent it to someone, although they probably would have posted about it. Or maybe it was damaged somehow, and she didn’t want to own up to it because it was a gift from a group of childhood friends. And even if someone wanted the book, why not just steal it? Why kill her? We’re still left without a proper motive, even if we assume the book is relevant, which it doesn’t seem to be.”
Lestrade was clearly frustrated by the strange case and its impenetrable clues. For Sherlock, though, it was like Christmas. He was scrolling and clicking through the S.C.A.R.L.E.T. report faster than Lestrade or I could follow and was soon typing an Archive query for “confetti” linked first to Edwina Lucas and then to the serial number of the book. S.C.A.R.L.E.T. generated a Report Update. Sherlock had identified another anomaly. Lestrade was thunderstruck to see new information uncovered so quickly and read the short update greedily. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“When Edwina read the book bits of confetti would sometimes get stuck to her fingers or forearms. She posted photos of it.” He navigated to one of the relevant posts (now linked to the S.C.A.R.L.E.T. report) so Lestrade and I could see the photos. What looked like perfectly circular black moles littered Edwina’s hands and forearms. “Sticky book confetti!” she had captioned one of the photos. Sherlock continued, “The trace evidence log catalogued a few bits as well. Confetti is quite rare these days — ”
“But it wasn’t at the turn of the millennium,” Lestrade argued. “It might have gotten into the book then.”
“The provenance of the book is quite clear,” Sherlock said impatiently. “It spent time at Coxon & Woodhouse’s before being bought by Edwina’s friends from Mawson & Williams.”
“The auction houses?” Lestrade asked, trying to put things together.
“Among the most reputable,” Sherlock replied. “All the items put up for auction are scrupulously examined and cleaned. They would have examined every page for damage, and they certainly wouldn’t have left oodles of confetti littering up one of their lots. One or two stray pieces may have survived, but certainly not the veritable colony Edwina found. The Archive shows nothing else in the book’s history or Edwina’s that can explain the presence of the confetti — it’s an anomaly. Her friends gave the book to Edwina the day after they bought it. It was still in the auction house packaging. She didn’t post about starting to read it or the confetti until a week later. Sometime in that week, the confetti was introduced. If she’d been to a party where they released confetti, she would have just said so. That means we’re missing something about her life — somewhere she went, someone she met perhaps. There is no indication of deception or concealment in her Archive entries, no discernible change in her behaviour, but that book and the unseen action involved in altering its pristine state will explain why it was taken and why she was killed. The book is at the heart of the matter; I’m certain of it.”
Lestrade looked as dubious as I felt. The addition of the new information to the problem seemed to make the solution only more opaque. A missing children’s book and some confetti — it was an inauspicious beginning. Edwina was killed months after receiving the gift and posting about the confetti. If whatever was at stake was important enough to warrant a killing for hire, shouldn’t the theft and murder have happened sooner? No; there were other events that had brought the matter to maturity, and they remained thoroughly hidden from us. Sensing our incertitude, Sherlock said, “I’m not saying the matter doesn’t remain shrouded in mystery — much like poor Edwina. The motives of people who fear confrontation and so readily supplant their will to that of others are so inscrutable. Their most trivial actions may speak volumes or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon their choice of beverage that morning.”
Sherlock’s admission that we were all grasping around in the dark together had the ironic effect of boosting my and Lestrade’s morale. “So we’ve got to find out where the book came into contact with the confetti, then,” I ventured.
“Precisely,” Sherlock replied.
Sherlock and I spent the rest of the day reviewing the S.C.A.R.L.E.T. report and the evidence. We took a trip to the off-site S.C.A.R.L.E.T. Forensic Support Centre, which was located in a block of warehouses by the Thames. Everything was state-of-the-art, of course (Mycroft would have demanded nothing less for his pet project). The holographic projector was particularly impressive. A high-resolution 3-D scanner recorded a defined space and its contents in fine detail, accurate down to the nanometre. The holographic projector then reproduced the image to scale and projected it up from the floor into a giant room with unmarred white walls. The projected images were incredibly realistic, and, as we walked through the hologram of Edwina’s apartment, I found myself skirting the furniture to avoid knocking my shins. The projection of her dead body was disconcerting, though, and not because it was a perfect reproduction of the corpse of a young woman who had been horribly murdered and died in fear — Lord knows I had seen far, far worse. It wasn’t even the blood stains all down the front of the virginal, lace-trimmed white nightie she was wearing (although something about that did make me sad). It was something to do with knowing that the cadaver wasn’t real even though it appeared to be. Its falsity was putting me off. It was like being in a room with a ghost, or a ghost of a ghost, to be more precise. When you take a cold wrist into your hand and feel no pulse, when you listen and there is no breath in the lungs, there is no doubt that life has gone. There in the hologram theatre, however, Edwina seemed trapped, unable to pass through the veil to whatever was on the other side. The medical man in me wished to examine the body itself.
“Anything?” I asked Sherlock.
“Several things,” he replied making notes to himself on his L.M.D.
“Care to share?” Lestrade asked.
“In good time,” Sherlock responded — code for “I’m not sure what any of this means, but I’ll be damned if I let on”. He continued his minute examination of the crime scene then swept out of the room, leaving me to bid our goodbyes to Lestrade.
When we returned to Baker Street, Sherlock immediately flung himself onto the sofa. As he reclined, his eyes became unfocused as his brain went into high gear, turning over the information he had learned that day. I knew this process could last an hour or two or stretch on until the next morning or even the following night. I regretted not having thought to stop for something to eat on the way home. Sherlock became positively ascetic when he was on a difficult case — fasting to sharpen his mental faculties even further. There was something about the euphoria intense hunger can bring on that he could corral into keenness of thought. I tried not to mother-hen him, but medical training is not the sort of thing one can simply set aside at will, and watching him abuse his body was anathema to me. The few times I tried to intervene, he dismissed me, claiming he could not afford to divert any of his blood to something as trivial as digestion, not when his brain needed it so much more. I tried to argue that his brain also needed nutrients and hydration, but he would not budge an inch on the matter, going so far as to describe his body as vestigial. He saw himself as a brain in a jar. I worried that there was some sort of underlying psychological disorder at work, some condition marked by the need to demonstrate an iron will that manifested itself in extreme self-deprivation. Over time, I began to see it as more akin to a religious experience — mortification of the flesh to access higher realms. I dared not tell him so, though. His scornful attitude towards spiritualism was equalled only by his disdain for its practitioners, and he would have taken being labelled as such (even in a tangential manner) as the gravest insult. He deplored anything that undermined rationality and wished fervently that society would once and for all sweat out the fever of superstition and illogic.
“It halts the progress of humanity,” he would argue. “And isn’t the beauty of nature made more gratifying, the observation of the heavens made more inspiring of the numinous by your understanding of the processes underlying it all? Doesn’t knowing we can penetrate the mysteries of life fill you with hope? It is almost the 22nd century. Can we not cast off these shackles? Is it not time?” His eyes would shine and high colour would crest across his cheekbones. He always looked so well in those moments, so human, when he allowed his passionate nature to reveal itself, and he ceased being a cold reasoning machine. I would sometimes engage him in debating the issue, but my arguments were ill-formed and half-hearted. I knew virtually nothing of religious life, having been raised (as had he) in an entirely secular community. However, at the time of my devastating injury in Afghanistan, I had felt myself reaching across a great void and felt certain there was something on the other side, something much more powerful than I was, something that could help me, reaching back. When I told him so, his expression softened. “While I believe your experience was the result of all the neurochemicals surging through your brain as the blood loss sent your body into shock, I shan’t begrudge you your feelings on the matter, John. If it gave you the strength to survive, then I am glad for it.” This concession was monumental, and I felt he would have made it for no one else.
I watched Sherlock thinking on the couch for a few minutes then set about preparing a modest dinner of spaghetti bolognese with the help of our virtual housekeeper, which we had taken to calling Mrs Hudson for reasons (outside of the pleasant female voice interface) I can’t quite recall. I optimistically set some food aside for Sherlock and ate quietly, navigating through the G.R.E.E.K. case file on my L.M.D. When examining evidence, Sherlock tended to focus on things — like the bits of confetti. I, on the other hand, always took an interest in the people involved, and I spent most of my dinner scanning Edwina Lucas’s File. She had led a thoroughly conventional life, fulfilling her Professional Skills Utilisation Requirements as a receptionist at an old-fashioned law office whose partners found the virtual alternative vulgar. More curious about her personal life, I navigated to her Relationships Sub-File. She had a small group of old friends from secondary school, with whom she corresponded the most. They are the ones who had put together to buy her the Harry Potter book. One of them, a woman called Mary, had a sweet, pleasant face and showed a slightly ribald sense of humour in her postings. It’s exactly the sort of thing that would pique my interest but earn Sherlock’s disdain. I clicked into Mary’s File and saw that she was a Sociability Maintenance Engineer at the British Museum. I skimmed her Professional Skills Utilisation history and almost choked on my food when I saw the name of her previous employer: Charles Augustus Milverton. | https://medium.com/@kitanyaharrison/sherlock-holmes-and-the-adventure-of-the-paper-journal-2-23d364864705 | ['Kitanya Harrison'] | 2021-03-05 21:52:55.289000+00:00 | ['Ficton', 'Mystery', 'Sherlock Holmes', 'Romance', 'Long Reads'] |
6 Git tips for everyday use | I’ve recently noticed how many things I’ve learned with experience, I assume, to be common knowledge. Although, not everything that is obvious to me can be obvious to someone else. I hope you’ll find something for yourself.
Start fresh, merge fast, merge often
There are many branch strategies that you may use for managing your source code. Still, I know for sure that the longer the branch lives, the more chances it will cause you massive headache merging the changes.
Every time you start working on a new piece of code or fixing an existing one, make a branch specifically for it from the latest source code. As soon as you’re done, and change has been approved and merged, delete the branch. You might say, but hey, this next thing I need to build depends on this work, why wouldn’t I keep working on this branch?
I’ll answer, sure you can, but in this case, you need to make sure you keep rebasing the latest code in your working branch and help you God if somebody else is working on the same files.
The general best practice for Git is to commit fast and often. I will add that you also need to merge fast and often. Going in small increments allows you to avoid merge conflicts. It exposes your work to the team sooner so you can get feedback more quickly. In case the work you’re doing contains flaws, you would know about it before you’re too deep in the rabbit hole.
Make Amends
Did you make a commit and then notice a typo or a missing space right after? Instead of making a “fixed typo” commit, you can add it to your previous one. Just make a change, stage your file and then do `git commit — amend` this way it will add your fix to the last commit and will also allow you to change the name your previous commit.
Note: if you have already pushed your changes to remote and then made an amend, you will need to git push — force
Backup before doing wonky stuff
There are situations when your branch becomes all messy and full of merge conflicts, and you’re not sure if your next command is going to fix it or break it for good? Before proceeding, make a backup branch, just in case, to have your changes somewhere. If you override the history of your working branch by accident, then parts of your work might be gone!
Use aliases
Using aliases saved me ample of time typing “checkout” or “commit” every time. Setting aliases is as easy as that:
$> git config — global alias.co checkout
$> git config — global alias.br branch
$> git config — global alias.ci commit
$> git config — global alias.st status
For some more advanced aliases check this article
Use stash
Have you ever started working on something only to realize that you’re in the wrong branch? Or have you ever found yourself in a situation that you’ve changed something, and your program stopped working? Now you’re commenting out a piece of your code or reverting line one by one to find a problem? Maybe your project has some configuration file that you need to change every time you work on your code locally?
Look no further than git stash to solve all the above scenarios for you. This command will take all your uncommitted changes and save them to a safe space independent of any branch and revert all your uncommitted changes on the current branch.
If you started making changes in the wrong branch and realized that before committing a change, do a git stash, switch to the branch you need. Then hit a git stash pop, and all your changes reappear but on the correct branch now.
Once the stash is popped, it is not going to disappear. You actually may see all your stashes by using git stash show. That means that you can pop stash multiple times. So if you have that annoying config file that you have to change back and forth, you can simply stash and pop it as you need. You can do it via `git checkout stash@{0} — <filename>`
Also, useful when you do your work and suddenly completely unrelated unit test starts failing. Now you’re not sure if you broke it or it was broken before you’ve started. Stash your changes and rerun your tests to learn the truth.
GitLens extension for VS Code is super convenient for managing your stashes, just FYI.
Don’t delete your local repository
Not once I’ve seen people working on the local branch then pulling the latest code into local and being overwhelmed by the number of merge conflicts. In fact, they were so overwhelmed that deleting a local repository and downloading it again seemed like a valid option. What a surprise was for them to realize that all of their work was now gone.
In reality, deleting your local repository to fix a problem is never a viable option. So if you ever considering removing a local repository, do this thing first: Ask for help.
Do not hesitate to ask for help. It takes time to get used to Git. Being afraid of asking questions and appear not knowledgeable is not as bad as not asking questions and staying unknowledgeable.
Hit me up on Twitter to tell me what a bunch of nonsense I’ve written. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/6-git-tips-for-everyday-use-a4a0951906fa | [] | 2020-06-18 19:16:56.612000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Source Control', 'Git'] |
Pointless Travel — Reducing Travel Costs and CO2 Emissions by Rewarding Employees | How would you describe your business idea to a potential investor?
With Pointless Travel, we help companies to reduce their travel cost as well as the associated CO2 footprint.
This is accomplished by rewarding business travelers when they help to achieve these savings. Employees can choose a cheaper offer, a video conference instead of a trip, an earlier booking, an eco-friendly alternative or a private accommodation instead of a hotel stay.
What problem do you want to solve? What is your goal?
Today, the interests of employers and employees are not aligned when it comes to traveling for work:
Firstly, for the same trip the average spending on business trips is twice as high compared to private trips. For business travelers the price has a low priority. Additionally, when the company permits the use of bonus points from loyalty programs for private use, there is an even higher incentive for the traveler to spend more, since the increased spending results in more points.
Secondly, with ambitious climate targets the pressure on companies to not only offset but also to limit CO2 emissions on business trips is steadily increasing. At the same time, many business travelers do not see reducing emissions as a high priority.
A company could solve this misalignment with strict internal travel policies. Though, this approach would demotivate employees — feeling a loss of autonomy and comfort.
With Pointless Travel employees are incentivized to spend less and travel eco-friendlier by receiving a share of the actual savings that they generate for their employer.
The Pointless Travel team (left to right): Mario Blatter, Katharina Riederer, Sarah Benarey (top row), Lucas Ritter, Sebastian Friedrich (bottom row)
How did you come up with your idea/concept?
During her time as a strategy consultant our CEO Katharina took notice of the eagerness with which business travelers collect miles and bonus points from airline and hotel loyalty programs — no matter at which costs. Oftentimes, even despite extra efforts. They would accept a longer taxi drive to the client’s site, just in order to stay in the hotel chain of their preferred loyalty program and thereby collect more points. Something had to be done about these wrong incentives to spend more.
What is your business model?
We offer our product as a B2B software as a service (SaaS) solution. By charging a monthly fee per user based on the expected savings, we provide a low-risk pricing model for our customers.
Our product can be seamlessly integrated into our customers’ existing business travel booking solutions and comes with an additional user webtool.
Since COVID-19, the travel industry is facing tough times. How are you coping with the situation?
2020 was a tough year for launching a start-up within the business travel sector. On the other hand, we have noticed that the pandemic increased companies’ cost and environmental awareness. A lot of travel managers are now even more interested in implementing innovative solutions to be prepared once the business travel volume picks up again. We therefore use the current times to reach out to new customers and to finetune our product and algorithm.
Why did you decide to work with XPRENEURS?
XPRENEURS offers the perfect combination of networking, knowledge and industry contacts. These are important resources for a start-up, especially in an early stage, where there are many different topics that need to be considered.
We very much enjoyed our time in the program and have vastly benefited from the content and contacts. Therefore, we highly appreciate the opportunity to be part of this great incubator network.
Get more information about Pointless Travel on their website or follow the team on LinkedIn.
Pointless Travel is part of XPRENEURS Batch #7.
You want to join the XPRENEURS Incubator program as well?
Get more information and apply at xpreneurs.io.
Visit our website | Meet our alumni | Connect on LinkedIn | https://stories.xpreneurs.io/pointless-travel-reducing-business-travel-cost-by-encouraging-employees-to-save-on-their-trips-5bd330d8165a | ['Xpreneurs Incubator'] | 2021-02-09 08:00:54.607000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'Startup', 'Smart Enterprise', 'B2B', 'Female Founders'] |
How Even a Free Spirit Can Implement a Morning Routine | How Even a Free Spirit Can Implement a Morning Routine
I have a great relationship with my morning routine now, and I don’t feel I’ve lost an ounce of my freedom Steven R. Durgin Jun 4·9 min read
Image credit: Jovana Stojanovic.
Schedules never came naturally to me, so I assumed morning routines were for a different sort of person.
By the time I had worked several jobs and finished my master’s, I had experienced the benefits of having structure imposed on me, but I didn’t know how to create it for myself.
After trying Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning for a year, I discovered that I can keep a morning routine. It took a great deal of trial and error and customizing to get something that worked for me. But I’ve realized that my pattern of resistance to structure had more to do with the how than the what.
I have a great relationship with my morning routine now, and I don’t feel I’ve lost an ounce of my freedom. For those prone to wander, here are four keys to building that relationship for yourself.
1. Stop “Shoulding” Yourself
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
Everyone has their recurring “shoulds.”
I should be more productive.
I should de-clutter.
I should respond to messages more quickly.
It’s freeing to frame your morning routine as something you get to do for yourself, not as something you “have to do.” It is an indulgence.
Delight takes us further than duty. What gets lost in all of the “shoulding” is our ability to access what we truly want. If your routine feels like a dreaded burden, picture what you want out of it.
What feeling are you after? What sort of person do you want to be?
Speaking for myself, I want a healthy body, a calm mind, a grounded sense of purpose, clear intentions for the tasks of each day, the thrill of learning something new, and a habit of creating content that makes the world a better place.
It’s no coincidence that my morning routine is designed to cultivate these very qualities. (Exercise, Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Reading, Writing).
Once I’ve paused to imagine what I deeply want, I feel drawn to my practices. Why? Because I am tuning myself to see them for what they truly are: the path to awesome.
If framing is the pre-game, then savoring is the afterparty. If even one part of your routine goes well, give thanks. Slow down and sigh a bit. Maybe even smile. Celebrating your wins is a powerful way to reinforce what you want, increase your sense of agency, and set yourself up to do it again next time.
What are your personal, pesky “shoulds?” As you grow in awareness, you will see them show up in self-talk, journaling, and conversation. Those are places to pause, get curious, and rewrite the script, always returning to those things that pull your heartstrings and make you come alive.
2. Make It Your Own
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
Our routines are as unique are our individual lives. Don’t go by the book, unless that book explicitly tells you to experiment. To Hal’s credit, The Miracle Morning (TMM) does.
If you’re unfamiliar, TMM is made up of six practices:
Silence
Affirmations
Visualization
Exercise
Reading
Scribing
While the second “S” is a bit forced (Who even says “scribing”?), SAVERS is a fitting acronym, because Hal’s argument is that these practices save time. It was also helpful when I was just getting started, because I could easily remember the routine, and didn’t want to keep writing out the full steps into every page of my planner.
Although Hal encourages us to do these six specific things every morning, they can be done in any order (nifty acronyms be damned). They can also be done in six minutes or in 60. You could run a ten-mile or just do squats for one minute. It doesn’t matter.
Morning practices are less about time or intensity and more about intention.
In my own process of trial and error, I reordered TMM to fit my needs: Exercise-Silence-Affirmations-Visualization-Reading-Writing. (I also ditched the word “scribing.” Sorry Hal.)
Exercise . If I didn’t start my day with a short workout, meditation was more like an invitation to fall back asleep. Even when I managed to stay awake, I found the quality of my “silence” lacking. In my waking moments, I am either too wired or too sluggish to enjoy the practice. Instead, I found a sweet spot with jogging one mile — intense enough to wake up my body, but short enough that I would never be drained afterward.
. If I didn’t start my day with a short workout, meditation was more like an invitation to fall back asleep. Even when I managed to stay awake, I found the quality of my “silence” lacking. In my waking moments, I am either too wired or too sluggish to enjoy the practice. Instead, I found a sweet spot with jogging one mile — intense enough to wake up my body, but short enough that I would never be drained afterward. Silence. I went against Hal’s advice on eating breakfast after the entire Miracle Morning sequence. After a quick shower and breakfast, I made “silence” my second step, and the payoff was tremendous. I had no jitters and no lethargy. I personally use the Headspace app to guide my meditations, typically for 10–15 minutes. What often follows is a state of calm and centeredness that I carry into the day.
For this reason, I think of the silence step as “making room” for my affirmations — carving out the posture of mind and body that is actually receptive to the messages I most need to hear.
Affirmations . Next, it takes about three minutes to read my affirmations. I often read them aloud to engage my brain as fully as possible. In the background, I play a curated playlist of lyricless songs, which I’ve identified over time as being moving and motivating, but not distracting. My affirmations are deeply personal, powerful, and designed to cut into my unwanted thought patterns. Crafting your own can be a process, but it is absolutely worth the feelings they produce.
. Next, it takes about three minutes to read my affirmations. I often read them aloud to engage my brain as fully as possible. In the background, I play a curated playlist of lyricless songs, which I’ve identified over time as being moving and motivating, but not distracting. My affirmations are deeply personal, powerful, and designed to cut into my unwanted thought patterns. Crafting your own can be a process, but it is absolutely worth the feelings they produce. Visualization . At this point, I work through a task flow process that I specifically designed for distractable people, which has its own infographic and steps. Identifying my tasks for the day gives me specific things to visualize. Taking my cues from the Olympians, I imagine myself actually doing every major task that I’ve scheduled for the day, and ask myself, “What energy or feelings do I want to bring to this task?” I choose the two to three words that capture my answer and write them into my planner next to that event. I have found that this habit produces a noticeable difference in my mood, motivation, and the quality of my work.
. At this point, I work through a task flow process that I specifically designed for distractable people, which has its own infographic and steps. Identifying my tasks for the day gives me specific things to visualize. Taking my cues from the Olympians, I imagine myself actually doing every major task that I’ve scheduled for the day, and ask myself, “What energy or feelings do I want to bring to this task?” I choose the two to three words that capture my answer and write them into my planner next to that event. I have found that this habit produces a noticeable difference in my mood, motivation, and the quality of my work. Reading . In my case, reading is the weak point. It is the one aspect of TMM that I have neglected the most, partly because I am a slow reader, which makes reading even a single page a potentially discouraging event. It’s a work in progress.
. In my case, reading is the weak point. It is the one aspect of TMM that I have neglected the most, partly because I am a slow reader, which makes reading even a single page a potentially discouraging event. It’s a work in progress. Writing. Finally, I write down my answers to some brief journal prompts. I jot down “Today’s message to myself,” a habit I’ve picked up from Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner. This message could be unique to the day, or it could simply be a snippet from my Affirmations.
So there it is. I broke one rule and bent some others, but it doesn’t take much forum surfing to realize morning routines look different for everyone, even those within The Miracle Morning community. And this is why customization is key.
At the outset, play with the duration of your morning practices. Play with the order. Explore each practice with curiosity rather than tense shoulders and an itch to “get it right.”
If a specific method doesn’t serve you, give it up. Whatever you do, don’t assume that “it isn’t working” after trying only one version of your routine a few times.
3. Turn Your Routine Into a Fun Visual
This one was inspired by Tiago Forte’s Second Brain methodology.
“By offloading our thinking onto a ‘second brain,’ we free our biological brain to imagine, create, and simply be present. We can move through life confident that we will remember everything that matters, instead of floundering through our days struggling to keep track of every detail.” — Tiago Forte
Who wants to carry the burden of constantly reminding themselves? As a highly distractible person, I ran with this. I externalized my processes, morning routine included, and designed crisp infographics for each one in my workspace.
Here’s my modified Miracle Morning:
Image by the author.
The benefits of visuals are worth highlighting here:
It’s attractive. I’m no graphic designer, but I’ve made my morning routine something I like to look at. Even if I decide not to do everything on the list (for me, it’s often writing that goes on the chopping block) it feels inviting rather than confining.
I’m no graphic designer, but I’ve made my morning routine something I like to look at. Even if I decide not to do everything on the list (for me, it’s often writing that goes on the chopping block) it feels inviting rather than confining. It curbs my tendency to dive into work. I get tenacious. Not long after the morning coffee, I have a nervous energy about the day that can get the better of me at times, and I dive into work from a mindset of scarcity (i.e., “What if I don’t get enough done today!?”). With visuals, I’ve literally put my priorities in front of me. It’s hard to miss them, more reliable than reminders on my phone, and allows me to start the day screen-free, carving out the space I need to do deep, mindful work.
I get tenacious. Not long after the morning coffee, I have a nervous energy about the day that can get the better of me at times, and I dive into work from a mindset of scarcity (i.e., “What if I don’t get enough done today!?”). With visuals, I’ve literally put my priorities in front of me. It’s hard to miss them, more reliable than reminders on my phone, and allows me to start the day screen-free, carving out the space I need to do deep, mindful work. It’s flexible. In my first few months with this routine, I had attempted to put down six Google Calendar events for the six practices. It was cumbersome, and I felt like I was doing something wrong if I didn’t follow the allotted times. Then I tried making a single block event. But with my variable schedule, I still ended up wasting time moving around digital items instead of doing them. Now, I love having a representation of my routine that is time-stamp-free.
All in all, I believe visuals were the standout factor in helping me connect with my routine. But there’s one more piece that I found necessary for the free spirit to truly connect with structure, and it comes from the world of dieting.
4. Give Yourself Permission to Cheat
Photo by Amina Filkins from Pexels
Most New Year’s resolutions fail for the simple reason that they are framed in all-or-nothing terms. Once we’ve made one mistake, we feel that the resolution has been broken, and if the whole point was to “get it right” for a year, then it’s a bust.
But that shouldn’t be the whole point. If we loosen our grip on fantasies of overnight change, we begin to appreciate the slow, complicated growth that marks our real-world experiences. And that growth includes the freedom to break the rules, to notice the feeling of one day with the routine and one day without.
Photo by Lum3n from Pexels
Direction, not destination, is the key.
When introducing new habits, we must recognize the profound rescripting that is taking place. Habits do not exist independently of each other. Most of us have no idea how entrenched we are until we try to adjust something.
It’s okay to be messy.
It’s okay to discover things that change the routine or the goal.
And especially on the on-ramp, it’s okay to cheat.
Some treasures can only be found when we wander.
So wander. And once you’ve wandered a bit, gently return to your structure with a deep sense that you are choosing to. Again, it’s only there because it will help you get what you truly want (See #1), it should only be something that fits your needs (See #2), and it hangs at your desk to remind you of what you can come back to when you’re ready (See #3). | https://betterhumans.pub/how-even-a-free-spirit-can-implement-a-morning-routine-245ee46158ae | ['Steven R. Durgin'] | 2021-06-04 17:28:39.071000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Productivity', 'Habits', 'Morning Routines', 'Time Management'] |
Children’s Wall Decals To Decorate Any Room | At MyCuteStickons we have a wide variety of children’s wall decals to decorate the room of children of any age, although they can also be used to personalize kitchens, bathrooms, and even commercial premises
Decorating any room in the house is an opportunity to personalize it, giving it a touch that reflects the personality of its occupant. Especially if it is the room of the little ones because within its walls an important part of their development will take place.
Therefore, it is necessary to decorate this space in such a way that creative and emotional stimulation is never lacking. The children‘s wall stickers are a good choice to completely change the decor of the rooms of the smallest at an affordable price.
In this sense, MyCuteStickons children’s wall decals are an excellent decorative option for children’s rooms of any age. The variety of their designs is so wide that they can also be used to personalize kitchens, bathrooms, and even commercial premises.
Thus, children’s wall decals have become fashionable, thanks to qualities such as their price, easy application, and professional finish. Also, it is a DIY product, in whose installation we can involve the little ones.
Existing types
Due to its great popularity, children’s wall decals have diversified offering different shapes and styles for all tastes. In the market, it is possible to find all kinds of children’s designs. It’s easy to fit wall decals types into a few general categories.
According to age and gender
Boys and girls as the years go by, define and change their tastes. Thus, at each stage of its development, it is possible to decorate your room in such a way that it expresses the preferences of the moment.
Funny names and messages
This is a very common option for boys and girls, a way to record inspiring or funny messages on the walls of the room. They are also used to identify the name of the little resident of the room.
Nature
Wall decals of trees, animals, skies, are the kind of motifs that seem to have no prescription date. They are liked by young and old and are perfect for creating magical environments. They are not only used in bedrooms, their use is equally common in stores, schools, and other areas of the home.
Fairies and tales on wall decals
Although these wall decals are often preferred by the princesses of the family, fairy and story wall decals offer a wide variety of designs. The available motifs are capable of enchanting girls, boys, and even the oldest. Also, some models offer castles and medieval designs to adorn the men’s space.
Heroes and villains
Heroes, heroines, and antiheroes, are always in fashion. Therefore, many want to have them on the walls of the room. These can cover unisex tastes, although in general they are used more to decorate the children’s bedroom. And more recently other types of spaces due to their popularity.
Cartoon
From the classic Disney characters to the most modern of today’s television. A selection of wall decals that every child will enjoy having on the walls of their room.
Cost and durability
The decorative wall decals offer great advantages, one of the most notable is the resistance and durability of the material. The quality and sharpness of your images are simply superb. The nobility of this material allows the colors to survive the passage of time.
Also, MyCuteStickons children’s wall decals are particularly inexpensive. Especially if you compare them with other decoration methods, how to paint the walls.
On the other hand, the installation of wall decals applications does not require hiring decorators or specialists. Also, save a lot of money on professional installers.
Thus, it is possible to transform the room of adults and children in a few minutes and with a professional finish. Only the manufacturer’s instructions should be followed.
Finally, it should be noted that despite its low price and its self-application nature, the finish of children’s wall decals is exceptional. In this sense, many might be surprised to observe the final results and the change they can bring to a room. | https://medium.com/@digital-webfrog/childrens-wall-decals-to-decorate-any-room-a4b9cf65e1bf | ['Digital Webfrog'] | 2021-04-25 16:13:32.033000+00:00 | ['Kids Room', 'Wallpaper', 'Home Decor', 'Wall Stickers'] |
The beginning — A European odyssey | Often times I find writing about my experiences the most difficult of all tasks. Sure, it’s easy in that there’s plenty of things to write about, no fact checking, and it’s always nice to be able to re-live experiences. But what I find daunting is the burden of doing justice to the experience per se. I’m terrified of underselling what has been the most out of the world experience as yet another semester abroad experience. And that is me exactly at this hour as I try to write about my time in Italy as an exchange student to Bocconi University in Milan.
When I first got to Italy, in the chill of December, I was welcomed by an empty cold city. Well, who was to blame — I booked myself a flight on the day after Christmas. As I got to the mainland from the airport, I noticed two things — well-dressed people, and coffee. And I’m not complaining about either. To this day, whenever someone asks me to describe Milan, I always begin with ‘..such good looking, well dressed people’. I admire people who strive to be their best versions, and Milan is the homeland of such people. I believe it’s in the Italian culture to dress well, and boy do they dress well!
I took the opportunity to go around the city visiting some Christmas markets, and my bread fantasies were coming to life (Note: They call me a BREAD FIEND). In the middle of winter, I found myself walking around Duomo Di Milano (the famous Cathedral of Milan). It is by far the most iconic and underrated man-made structure I have ever seen. I think there’s no way to describe the aura surrounding the Duomo in the chill of winters. It’s either that, or I was severely jetlagged. I choose to believe in the former.
I couldn’t understand anything that was written. I’d read some Visiting Italy articles beforehand, so I was familiar with Ciao and Grazie. However, it was impossible to get by without knowing some of the language — and I knew none. By the way, that’s a great segue for me to talk about it for a second. Italian - such a beautiful language. In its own way, you don’t need to know the language to understand it. Only one half of the language is words, the rest of it is signalling and hand movements (jk). One of the first words I learnt by accident was ‘Capisco’, meaning ‘understand?’ and also ‘I understand’. It’s how I would signal my understanding even if I understood nothing but got the point. As fate would have it, the first few months I only bumped into people who didn’t speak any English whatsoever. By the time I understood the language and spoke a decent amount, it was almost like all of Italy had taken group English lessons, and people around me looked at me like I was some idiot holding up queues conversing in broken Italian, for no reason. Because of course, by now all of Milan spoke fluent English. Life, I tell you! Then there’s ‘Allora’, which is by far the most multifunctional word I have come across. It fits into every situation, is quite unnecessary but very pleasant to the ears. Not to mention Ciao, that has forever ruined Hello and Goodbye for me. Oh, what a beautiful language.
I was to leave to visit a friend in Austria the day after, so that was all of my initial days in Milan, and I liked what I saw. | https://medium.com/@shraddhashenoy/the-beginning-a-european-odyssey-7e0d607cbdfd | ['Shraddha Shenoy'] | 2019-06-21 18:45:12.088000+00:00 | ['Exchange', 'Italy', 'Milano', 'Travel', 'Europe'] |
My latest bugfix: or, how I went spelunking in someone else’s code | I love CodeSandbox. It has pretty much replaced CodePen for me unless I am fiddling around with CSS or freeCodeCamp front-end projects.
I like going through the sandboxes and picking out different ones to look at, take apart, and figure out how they work.
While going through React Tutorial for Beginners by Kent C. Dodds on Egghead.io, I decided I would look for sandboxes that correlated with the course, as I was using Codesandbox to build out the stopwatch we were building in that course.
I found a sandbox which I forked and found to be buggy.
Why didn’t the stopwatch work? Glancing at the code for a few seconds, I saw some obvious problems right away.
Here is an example of the stopwatch being broken:
Bugfix 1
The first thing I noticed was on line 7:
Date.now() needs parentheses. Date is an an object constructor with .now() being a method. When we click on the start button, React doesn’t know what to do here; we aren’t setting the state of lapse to be a number, which we expect. By adding the parentheses, we get the start button to work. No more NaNms .
But now we have another problem: the timer won’t stop.
I also removed the console.log(Math.random()); because I felt it was unnecessary.
Bugfix 2: Getting the Stopwatch to Stop and Clear
Each time the button is clicked, we set the state to either running or lapse . The timer runs when we click start but clicking stop or clear doesn’t seem to work. How can we fix this?
We can create a timer update function that accepts the current state. We can accomplish this by using native DOM APIs such as setInterval() and clearInterval() . We can run conditional logic to see if the timer is running:
and use Date.now() to get the timestamp in ms, and assign it a startTime variable to compare the current time to the amount of time that has passed. When we click the start button, it sets the startTime to the current timestamp. We also need to return a new state as state is not mutable.
Okay so this partially works. But as you can see below, if I click clear while the stopwatch timer is running, it doesn’t clear the timer, and it also doesn’t allow me to stop the timer, either.
How do we fix this particular bug?
If we look back at the previous code, we can see we are using clearInterval() to reset the stopwatch timer. In our current iteration, our handleOnClear method is just setting the state without clearing the previous state.
We can fix this by adding clearInterval() and passing in the timer function to the handleOnClear method to clear the state.
This will give us the results we want.
Potential Problem?
There is a memory leak in this particular iteration. The timer will run until it is explicitly stopped in the DOM. We can use a React lifecycle method to stop all processes in the DOM when this component is mounted or unmounted.
For this we can use componentWillUnmount to tell React to unmount the component once it is done rendering.
Thoughts and Conclusions
I find it much more enjoyable fixing other people’s bugs than my own. This was a fun exercise and I plan on doing it more regularly and blogging about it.
This stopwatch is a stupid simple component but if you are just scratching the surface of React like I am, I am sure digging into something like this stopwatch and figuring out how it works is an excellent exercise and use of one’s time. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/my-latest-bugfix-or-how-i-went-spelunking-in-someone-elses-code-2afb536504ed | ['Tiffany White'] | 2019-01-11 00:45:51.540000+00:00 | ['Debugging', 'JavaScript', 'Technology', 'Programming', 'React'] |
Skycoin Fiber Platform | “The infinitely-scalable and highly customizable parallel peer-chain architecture of the Skycoin platform.”
Skycoin’s Fiber architecture is a transformational, better-than-blockchain solution which solves existing problems using distributed ledger technology. Fiber is the foundation of blockchain 3.0 and can be best described as an infinitely scalable network of blockchains laid side by side, like strands. This is a technological feat that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum will never be able to achieve, as they were never engineered to scale infinitely.
Bitcoin’s single blockchain can handle 6 transactions per second (TPS) and Ethereum’s single blockchain can handle 30 TPS. With Fiber, each blockchain strand can currently handle 300 TPS with a target of 3000 TPS in future implementations. Fiber offers performance and reliability that are unmatched by the other blockchain solutions currently available.
Fiber achieves this high level of performance due to its elegance. Fiber is less than 5000 lines of code, compared to Bitcoin’s 100,000+ lines of code. Large and convoluted codebases introduce bugs, thus requiring band-aid patches of code, whereas Fiber is elegant and brilliant in its simplicity. This simplicity and elegant architecture is the driving force behind creating a performance blockchain platform for the next generation.
The Superiority of Parallel Peer-Chain Architecture
Parallel peer-chain architecture is unrivaled when it comes to reliability. With Ethereum, for example, the architecture is set up in a centralized manner. If the Ethereum blockchain goes down, all Plasma child-chains will go down with it. The same is true of network congestion — congesting the main Ethereum chain congests all child-chains. Parallel blockchain architecture solves this major problem. If one Fiber blockchain goes down, the rest of the strands are unaffected.
Skycoin is bringing transaction speeds and on-chain scalability to a new dimension with Fiber’s integrated parallel blockchain architecture. Fiber does not compete with first and second generation cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, instead, it replaces them by providing each customer with their own dedicated, customizable, free and simple-to-implement blockchain strand.
Fiber is the foundation of blockchain 3.0. Each strand added to Fiber strengthens the whole network and constructs the fabric of the entire ecosystem. Each company and project hosted on Fiber gets its own fully customizable, private blockchain capable of Visa-like speeds. This enables blockchain solutions for businesses running private or private-public blockchains in a manner that allows them autonomy and full control.
Let’s explore a quick example…
Skycoin Fiber In Action
Delaware, the corporate capital of the US responsible for 83% of all new IPO incorporation, has stated recently that companies are legally able to incorporate in Delaware and put their stock shares on a blockchain. From day one, any company incorporating in Delaware can be a publicly traded company on a blockchain.
To do this, they will need their own private blockchain. Each blockchain will have its own requirements for computing power, storage capability, bandwidth, throughput, transaction speeds, and other factors depending on the company’s business sector.
On top of their individual operational requirements, they will also need features such as wallets, an exchange for the trade of tokens, a dedicated hardware platform for running their applications, and also “plug-and-play” functionality in order to scale their blockchains accordingly.
Furthermore, these companies may need to have a law firm to replicate their data in case their nodes go down and the data needs to be retrievable for legal purposes. Currently, this is a very messy process that is either done by paper or by slow and centralized SQL databases prone to data errors.
All of this is offered by Fiber and the Skycoin ecosystem. All of the typical problems that are experienced while setting up a blockchain-traded company goes away when using Fiber due to its well-developed architecture and comprehensive platform.
Skycoin Fiber Platform: The One-Stop Solution For Blockchain Projects
Since Fiber architecture allows the individual blockchain strands to come together, data sharing agreements can be easily put in place and executed flawlessly between any private blockchains in the larger Fiber ecosystem. This is one of many ways in which Fiber strives to build a faster and brighter future for us all.
Skycoin Fiber architecture is particularly useful for enterprise and government entities wishing to use blockchain to improve their efficiency and operation of their organization. These entities usually have very strict compliance requirements which must be met in regards to privacy, security, and customer obligations. Blockchain 3.0, and specifically Skycoin Fiber, offers a solution for these organizations.
By implementing a private singular blockchain (a single strand in Fiber), all privacy and security requirements for each individual customer can be achieved. Fiber is meant to be a one-stop solution for most blockchain projects, which will work effortlessly when you set up the base blockchain.
Benefits Of Skycoin Fiber Platform
From fledgling blockchain projects to enterprises looking for solutions, Fiber is the answer.
The benefits of running a blockchain project on Fiber are tremendous. Creation of a blockchain strand in Fiber is quick and easy. Each project starts off with a base blockchain that can be customized to the needs and desires of the project. The Skycoin Coin Hours mechanism comes built-in as well, if desired, offering free and fast transactions.
Cryptocurrency exchanges have grown to the point of wielding monopolistic power in the market. Getting a listing on an exchange can take months and millions of dollars, depending on the exchange you choose. When a project launches using Fiber, it will get listed on one of Skycoin’s decentralized exchanges (coming soon!) immediately upon launch, and at no cost.
Projects will never have to compete for bandwidth or suffer from fee bloat from other projects that get overrun with stray cats. Nor will they have to be beholden to the developers of the entire platform to make changes to their own blockchain. The power will be entirely in their hands.
On top of the benefits listed above, Fiber is going to offer the projects or companies running on the Skycoin platform the other necessary components to operate safely and securely. Components such as mobile and desktop wallets, hardware wallets, dedicated hardware nodes, and standardized deployment for applications will all be available.
These Fiber peer-chains will be simple to scale out because the dedicated hardware platforms allow operators of their individual blockchain to easily buy more of the resource type (storage, computation, bandwidth) they need and connect it to their existing hardware infrastructure. This will offer a true “plug-and-play” functionality, making Fiber’s entire platform extremely user-friendly.
Skycoin Fiber is destined to be the premier blockchain platform for the new generation, incorporating technical superiority, full customization, and a feature-rich environment for all who join Skycoin in building out Fiber and the new internet. | https://medium.com/skycoin/skycoin-fiber-platform-bf64debfc60f | [] | 2018-04-03 13:35:01.161000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Skycoin', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
What It’s like To Be a Survivor | Sometimes it’s nothing
Blank, black emptiness
A numbness you read about in articles
And then it’s every nerve in my body sending explosions of panic
It’s the taste of warm red wine that doesn’t seem to leave
And it’s the ghost of your hands on me after I said no | https://medium.com/@jacquelinespoetry/what-its-like-to-be-a-survivor-e7e18f4fb05f | ['Jacqueline Franklin'] | 2020-11-17 21:27:01.143000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Survivor', 'Metoo', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry'] |
Afghanistan: A Possibly Unimaginable Community | Photo: Unsplash
Benedict Anderson provided us with the standard post-structuralist definition of a nation as an “imagined community.” While most nations are more substantive than this, it’s a useful concept when we consider the West’s “nation building” project in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.
Most of the discussion on nation building focuses on assistance programs, which makes sense as they’re tangible, measurable, and channel untold billions to international organizations, development agencies, and the like. These programs fall into two broad buckets — concrete infrastructure and procurement (roads, military equipment, sanitation, schools) and capacity building (cultural exchanges, legislative assistance, training for security forces and government officials, etc.)
Ideally, a second kind of nation building is happening behind the scenes, a coalescence of diverse groups into a single national identity outweighing local or tribal loyalties. In other words, people see themselves (and others) as primarily members of the nation, and only secondarily as members of ethnic or religious subgroups.
National identity formation is not a linear process — sometimes it’s quick and other times fails entirely. And it is very subject to historical vagaries. A few quick examples:
The United States began as a loose confederation of states, with strong local and state loyalties. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery, but conflicting Northern and Southern views on nationalism were also a key driver — Yankees supporting a strong Union, Confederates giving individual states their first loyalty. Four years of war oriented the country firmly on a centralized national identity.
began as a loose confederation of states, with strong local and state loyalties. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery, but conflicting Northern and Southern views on nationalism were also a key driver — Yankees supporting a strong Union, Confederates giving individual states their first loyalty. Four years of war oriented the country firmly on a centralized national identity. Ukraine had distinct cultural and linguistic roots going back a millennium, but Russian (and other) colonialism delayed formation of a modern national identity into the 19th century. It grew quickly in the late 1800s as linguists and historians discovered their past, but waxed and waned under the Soviets. When independence came in 1991, Ukraine was a gradient, ranging from the strongly nationalist West to an East that either saw itself as Russian, or viewed Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Great Russian as ethnic subsets of a unified “Russian” nation.
had distinct cultural and linguistic roots going back a millennium, but Russian (and other) colonialism delayed formation of a modern national identity into the 19th century. It grew quickly in the late 1800s as linguists and historians discovered their past, but waxed and waned under the Soviets. When independence came in 1991, Ukraine was a gradient, ranging from the strongly nationalist West to an East that either saw itself as Russian, or viewed Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Great Russian as ethnic subsets of a unified “Russian” nation. This led to years of oscillation between pro-West and pro-Russia parties, but behind the scenes, Ukrainian national identity (and Western orientation) was strengthening, helping spark the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that overthrew a pro-Russian authoritarian president. Putin’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas finalized the divorce, moving public opinion decisively toward Ukraine as a distinct, multiethnic nation.
In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere transformed the country from loosely tribal to strongly national in just 24 years (1961–1985), an example of how an autocrat can fast-forward the process. (Juxtapose this with neighboring Kenya, which is still riven with tribalism in 2021.) Nyerere used a wide variety of tools: forced, disastrous socialized farming; Swahili as a unifying language; repression of tribalistic speech and expression; and nationalization of services and industry. The process “worked,” though at a terrible human cost.
Nationalism is a slippery, unpredictable beast. Wars can advance the process or hinder it. A leader may unify a people or shatter them. Imperial repression can alternately stoke or stamp out the nationalist flame.
The map below illustrates just how fragmented Afghanistan was in the early days of our nation-building endeavors. It was never going to be simple.
Photo: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005
The process becomes even more daunting when you consider that 74% of the population is rural, and deeply traditional. That’s a huge obstacle. Urbanization brings plenty of social pathologies, but you need a lot of cosmopolitan, atomized city-dwellers if you want to hyper-speed a country from premodern to postmodern in two decades.
Next, most of Afghanistan’s people groups have co-ethnics across the various borders: Pashtuns and Balochs in Pakistan; Turkmen, Tajiks, and Uzbeks in the various Central Asian “Stans”; and so on. Porous borders and transnational loyalties are powerful centrifugal forces.
Now add in chronic warfare, with its inevitable ethnic and religious enmities, and constant disruption of movement and communications.
Lastly, have Pakistan use its intelligence service and military to destabilize the fledgling nation and provide limitless support to the Taliban.
We could list a dozen more factors, but the upshot is that Afghanistan never cohered into a unified, durable nation-state, as evidenced by its Jenga-like collapse. And part of the reason was that too few people imagined themselves first as Afghans and secondarily by tribal or local affiliations.
Was nation building doomed from the start? I can’t say. But it was always going to be an uncertain and maddeningly difficult endeavor.
When we debate future commitments, our experience in Afghanistan could serve as a cautionary example. | https://medium.com/postmodern-clog/afghanistan-a-possibly-unimaginable-community-17f54716c6ca | ['J. Wesley Bush'] | 2021-09-02 21:32:27.731000+00:00 | ['Afghanistan War', 'Foreign Policy', 'Afghanistan', 'Nation Building', 'Culture'] |
INDEPENDENCE DAY | Photo by Zichuan Han on Pexels.com
“We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls. — Robert J. McCracken
My mom was leaving this world
Her final days were spent with music
It had gotten late and everyone was asleep
She had drifted off and this song was her favorite.
Reminded her of when she was young in Brooklyn.
I started singing it and she reached over and grabbed my hand
She started singing along and she had such grace.
It was like she was just going to get up the next day and be fine.
I was just a teenager and she was trying to get me to go back to sleep.
I don’t share her faith, but this moment was holy.
I am sad that I can’t send this song to her,
But maybe she hears it anyway. | https://medium.com/poetry-palace/independence-day-c1805f5b4770 | ['John Edward Marks', 'Jem'] | 2020-07-04 02:35:04.137000+00:00 | ['Look', 'Bridge', 'Tonight', 'New York', 'Wrinkle'] |
How to create a “Before & After” image slider with CSS and JS | Step by step guide
Step 1. Understand the concept
The concept of this “image slider” is very simple. You only need two components, the image container, and a slider.
The image container is just a regular div, with two images of the same size overlapping each other. One as the“background”, another as the “foreground”.
We will use absolute position to make the foreground image directly on top of the background one. The background image always has 100% width, while the width of the foreground image would change according to user input, making part of the background image appear.
The second component is the “slider”. To make thing simple, we could just make use of the html “range” input element. It allow user to select a value by dragging, between your defined min and max value. The input could be easily retrieved using an event listener in javascript.
<input type="range" min="1" max="100" value="50" class="slider" id="myRange">
for more detail, see https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_rangeslider.asp
One drawback of using the default slider input is, the styling of it is kind of limited. You cannot go very crazy on the design. If you are looking for a more customisable slider, you might have to build it yourself. However, it is not a focus of this tutorial.
We would make the slider with 100% width and height of the container, and position it on top of the image container. When the user drags the slider, we update the width of the foreground at the same time. Creating an illusion of the user is dragging the image instead.
When the slider value get updated, we will change the width of the foreground
I hope that’s enough explanation. We will jump into the coding now.
Step 2. Create the image container
Let start by creating our container. It is a simple structure with two div inside. Since we don’t want our image to scale based on the div width containing them, we will use apply the image with background-image instead of <img> tag. One important style we need to use is the background-size property, and make sure that the image always stays at the same size.
HTML:
SCSS:
To make thing a little bit easier for this tutorial, I used fixed size for everything.
*If you don’t want to use SCSS, just make the style flat instead of nested
I used two version of the same image (with and without color), so they are perfectly align
Now we have our container, let’s add the slider.
Step 3. Create the slider
Our slider needs to cover the whole image, with a thin white bar “dividing” the before and after part of the image. It could be done by styling the slider and the slider-thumb (the part where you drag). we need to make the default appearance of the slider and the thumb invisible, and then apply our own style on it.
HTML (below the images):
SCSS (with reference to https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_rangeslider.asp):
If you don’t want to use SCSS, replace @include center with the content in @mixin center , and use .slider::-webkit-slider-thumb to replace the & syntax
I applied a slightly visible grey color background to the slider, and on hover, making the color even more transparent. Creating a “focus” effect when user hover over the image. For the slider-thumb, it is just a white background div with full height of the container.
You might need ::-moz-range-thumb for browser support in firefox
We now have a working slider, let link that up with the width of the foreground image.
Step 4. Add event listener to the slider
The last step is to link up the value from the slider to the width of the foreground image. It is very easy to achieve (since we are using the native html range input as the slider). We could get a value from 1–100 in the event.target.value when we apply event listener.
Then, we just need to select the foreground element, and change the width of it whenever the slider got updated.
JS:
If it didn’t work as expected, try to see if you retrieve the value of the slider correctly, and double check the background-size property of your css
Yeah! The function is working. As a bonus of using the range input, we can even click within the container to make the slider go to the clicked position.
One more thing we could (and probably should) add to the UI is a “drag me” circle icon on the slider, as an indicator that this is a drag-able component.
Step 5 (Optional). Adding a circle thumb on the slider
The native range input has it advantage (easy to implement, easy to retrieve value, etc), but when come to styling, there are not much we could do. As we replace the default “circle” thumb with our white-separating line, we need to add the circle back somehow.
A quick (but dirty) way to do it is to add another element, completely not related to the slider, but is positioned to the center of it, and would “follow” its movement by javascript. And this is exactly what we would do.
HTML:
SCSS:
The after and before element add the two “arrow” inside the circle button
JS:
One more thing we need to do is to make the circle not selectable, so the mouse event always goes to the slider. With some careful positioning and JS, we make the circle thumb move together with the slider.
This is just the same image from above.
And with that, our “before and after” image slider is completed. You can now pick your favourite image and experiment with it. (And thank you Beth Harmon for accompany us through this journey) | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-to-create-a-before-after-image-slider-with-css-and-js-a609d9ba77bf | [] | 2020-12-18 12:32:57.537000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Image Slider', 'Before And After', 'CSS', 'Frontend'] |
Technology | When we talk about technology it doesn’t seem unusual. Everything is in the hands of technology and now the world seems to be non-existent without it. People earn through it, learn through it, and do lots of stuff through technology. Why we all say that ‘WORLD HAS BECOME A GLOBAL VILLAGE”?, It’s because like early ages people don’t have to communicate by means that weren’t in reach and that might have created a lot of problems. But now all the story has changed and people are connected and more like a village where people know about each other and now it’s even easier to earn through various websites and sources.
Technology and its negative effects:
While technology has made a lot of positive changes in the world, it has also created some negativity across the globe.
We can see them in point:
· Psychologically and physically, it has been proven that social media has affected our lives to such a big extent.
· Overuse of technology may have a more powerful influence on the welfare of children and adolescents.
· The way handheld devices and machines are used by many people may often lead to incorrect poses. Over time, this can contribute to musculoskeletal problems.
· The use of technology that is too close to bedtime may trigger sleep problems. This phenomenon has to do with the fact that the brain is activated by blue light, including the light from mobile phones, e-readers, and computers.
And many more like these. And several solutions can opt for betterment.
Taking advantage of technology:
Technology has always given a lot to this world. But there isn’t any awareness about how can we use it wisely and make our lives much easier. I’m going to tell you through my points given below:
· You can go through several websites and showcase your talent. Even you can learn through various channels and websites
· As a business major, you should probably start with a Microsoft Office tutorial and/or the textbook that your college uses for their “Introduction to Computers” class (Or, “Intro to Technology”, etc..)
· There are several ways where we can find the solution to everything.
· You can even start a small business or anything that may help you earn, you just need some guidance which is provided on the internet
· Mobile phones and all the other technologies are also very helpful if used correctly
Another useful side of technologies:
Modes of transportation have improved the ease of access but also increased the volume of emissions. A wide variety of alternatives have been available to people thanks to technology. By supplying them with hearing aids, text scanners, special seats, etc., technology has also helped persons with special needs. Today, without having to worry about their disabilities, they will experience everyday life too.
To summarize, technology has several positive implications for our lives, but there are still several downsides. We can’t abandon technology yet, so we can make sure we’re not dominated by it. | https://medium.com/@atifashah999/technology-f1bf8ec3e55b | [] | 2020-12-23 19:22:06.730000+00:00 | ['Blogging', 'Blogspot', 'Tech', 'Technology', 'Blogger'] |
Human Touch @COVIDhug&Kiss | A pat on the back, a caress of the arm — these are every day, incidental gestures that we usually take for granted, thanks to our amazingly dexterous hands. But after years spent immersed in the science of touch, I can tell you that they are far more profound than we usually realize: They are our primary language of compassion and a primary means for spreading kindness. In recent years, a wave of studies has documented some incredible emotional and physical health benefits from touch. This research is suggesting that touch is truly fundamental to human communication, bonding, and health.
Ethnologists who live in different parts world quickly recognize this. Nonhuman primates spend about 10 to 20 percent of their waking day grooming each other. If you go to various other countries, people spend a lot of time in direct physical contact with one another — much more than we do. One of my favorite examples is a study from the 1960s by pioneering psychologist Sidney Jourard, who studied friends’ conversations in different parts of the world as they sat in a café together. He observed these conversations for the same amount of time in each of the other countries.
What did he find? In England, the two friends touched each other zero times. In the United States, in bursts of enthusiasm, we touched each other twice. But in France, the number shot up to 110 times per hour. And in Puerto Rico, those friends touched each other 180 times!. India is a crowd. And the most curious and conflicting feature that this crowd manifests is in its relationship with the sensation of touch. This country is perennially obsessed with a desire to touch you, pretty much everywhere on your body.
A review of research conducted by Tiffany Field, a leader in the field of touch, found that preterm newborns who received just three 15-minute sessions of touch therapy each day for 5–10 days gained 47 percent more weight than premature infants who’d received standard medical treatment. Similarly, research by Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney had found that rats whose mothers licked and groomed them a lot when they were infants grow up to be calmer and more resilient to stress, with a more robust immune system. This research sheds light on why, historically, an overwhelming percentage of human babies in orphanages where caretakers starved them of touch have failed to grow to their expected height or weight and have shown behavioral problems. “To touch can be to give life,” said Michelangelo, and he was right. From this frontier of touch research, we know that thanks to neuroscientist Edmund Rolls, touch activates the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, which is linked to feelings of reward and compassion. Studies are showing that touch signals safety and trust; it soothes. Essential warm touch calms cardiovascular stress. It activates the body’s vagus nerve, which is intimately involved with our compassionate response, and a simple touch can trigger the release of oxytocin, aka “the love hormone.”
When was the last time you hugged someone? Since the start of the pandemic, putting physical distance between yourself and others has become the norm. As a result, showing affection for friends and loved ones through hugs, hand-holding, high-fives, you name it — has been out of the question for many people. If this behavior change has weighed heavy on you, it’s because physical touch is vital to our health and well-being. “Physical touch can increase the release of oxytocin, the ‘feel-good’ hormone, which can then lead to optimistic thinking and feelings of compassion for others,” says Dr. Won-Fong Lau Johnson, a clinical psychologist at UW Medicine. “It can also help reduce social anxiety and stress.” So, if you’ve been deprived of something as simple as a hug for months on end, it’s normal to feel the effects of that absence. Going without human contact is referred to as “touch deprivation” or “skin hunger.” “Touch deprivation can lead to increased stress and symptoms of depression such as loneliness or aggression,” explains Lau Johnson. Add that on top of all the other anxiety symptoms provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and things can start to feel overwhelming.
But there’s some good news: There are ways to get in that hug you’ve been missing while limiting the risk of exposure to COVID-19. Suppose you don’t feel comfortable engaging in any form of physical touch or cannot see friends or family due to geographic constraints (farewell, family summer vacation plans). In that case, there are other ways to feel affection, even if you cannot physically be with people.
“Pets can elicit the same amount of that ‘feel good’ hormone called oxytocin, and studies have shown that pets can reduce stress as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety,” says Lau Johnson. “Pets can be very unconditional in their love and, at the core, humans want to feel loved and needed.”
If you don’t have a furry friend, Lau Johnson recommends activities that focus on self-care and prioritize your health and well-being.
“If you live alone, turn your attention to improving your mental health by ensuring you are obtaining adequate sleep, nutrition, social connectedness, exercise, and stress management,” says Lau Johnson. Video calls with friends or family can also have mental health benefits. “Especially in a time like this, with this collective trauma that we’re all going through, it’s important for us to find spaces where we feel safe and people we trust,” says Lau Johnson. “Schedule virtual check-ins with supportive friends or family members. Express what’s going on and get to the core of what you’re feeling.”
“Considering we do not have a vaccine yet, I believe it is best to take extra precautions and avoid deep kissing, unless it is your live-in partner,” I suggest. “And, if you simply can’t resist your new beau’s lips, then practice the harm-reduction approach.”
But to me, the science of touch convincingly suggests that we’re wired to — we need to — connect with other people on a basic physical level. To deny that is to deprive ourselves of some of life’s greatest joys and deepest comforts. Happy human touch | https://medium.com/@capt-vinod/human-touch-covidhug-kiss-97c6503b380c | ['Vinod Bhardwaj'] | 2020-12-18 04:22:20.507000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Compassion', 'Empathy', 'Human Touch', 'Kisses And Hugs'] |
Membuat Docker Container Pada Aplikasi REST API Golang — Belajar Golang | Hi Everyone, I’m Izzat and welcome to my acrticle. I am not an expert but I love to share | See my profile here : linkedin.com/in/izzat-arramsyah/ | https://medium.com/@arramsyah/membuat-docker-container-pada-aplikasi-rest-api-golang-belajar-golang-28714779c0e8 | ['Izzat Arramsyah'] | 2020-12-28 06:08:22.243000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Golang Tutorial', 'Golang', 'Tutorial', 'Indonesia'] |
The Z Garbage Collector algorithm (JDK 15 version) | Tuning options
Let me describe how to use ZGC and some interesting parameters to tune. From the JDK 11 until the JDK 15 release, you must unlock the experimental options if you want to use the ZGC algorithm:
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UseZGC
From JDK 15 in advance, you can use it just by specifying:
-XX:+UseZGC
The ZGC was designed to be easy to tune. Below there is a list of the specific ZGC options:
In order to appreciate the times used and to see some numbers about the behavior of the algorithm, it is good to print the garbage collector logs, just add the following command when you choose ZGC to see the simple log:
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -Xlog:gc
Or if you want to print the garbage collector logs with more details:
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -Xlog:gc*
Now, let’s start taking a look at the most interesting tuning options.
Setting Heap Size
One of the most important options to tune in ZGC is setting the max heap size (-Xmx<size>). We must find the correct value for our application because we don’t want to lose memory, and we want to allow our application to have enough space for live objects and allocations to happen, while GC is running. The following is an example of use:
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size>
Setting Concurrent GC Threads
Although ZGC has heuristics for setting this number automatically, sometimes, depending on our application it could be interesting to specify the number of concurrent GC threads. This option rules how much CPU will your GC take, so you must be careful about the capacity you want to give.
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -XX:ConcGCThreads=<number>
Returning Unused Memory to the Operating System
Unlike other GC algorithms, ZGC uncommits unused memory, giving it back to the operating system. This can be necessary for applications where memory footprint can be a problem. If you want to disable this option, you can use -XX:-ZUncommit.
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -XX:-ZUncommit
Enabling Large Pages On Linux
This is an option that comes with an improvement in performance and no disadvantages or side effects. The only issue is that it requires root privileges, that’s why is not a default option and might not be possible to enable it for your application. Take a look at the documentation to set up this option properly. It requires to prepare somethings, and the options would look like the following:
-XX:+UseZGC -Xms16G -Xmx16G -XX:+UseLargePages
Enabling Transparent Huge Pages On Linux
Huges pages are not recommended for latency-sensitive applications, although it serves as a good alternative to the previous tuning option.
-XX:+UseZGC -… -XX:+UseLargePages -XX:+UseTransparentHugePages
In this case, I highly recommend you to experiment with it in your application and pay attention to the spikes, if they happen maybe it’s not an option for your case.
Enabling NUMA Support
As I said previously, ZGC is NUMA-aware, which means this option is enabled by default. This will direct Java heap allocations to NUMA-local memory. It can automatically be disabled by the JVM, if you need to override explicitly the behavior you can use the options -XX:+UseNUMA or -XX:-UseNUMA.
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -XX:+UseNUMA
or
-XX:+UseZGC -Xmx<size> -XX:-UseNUMA
Many more on the wiki page of the algorithm. | https://medium.com/globant/the-z-garbage-collector-algorithm-jdk-15-version-ca6da00b5281 | ['Jesús Navarrete'] | 2020-12-09 12:35:57.981000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Zgc', 'Algorithms', 'Jdk 15', 'Garbage Collector'] |
The Art of Not Sleeping | The Art of Not Sleeping
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day and I read the following post by a desperate mummy, “I CANNOT do this anymore! Nearly 10 months and I have not slept for longer than an hour at a time… I actually daydream about being in a coma just for some rest”.
I could have written this myself — well, the first part anyway. My 9-month-old, Oliver*, is an awful sleeper. We’ve tried it all. White noise. Pink noise. Lullabies. Cuddles. A solid nighttime routine… nothing works. Every night is a battle. Oliver can only sleep when he is absolutely exhausted and, even then, he doesn’t stay asleep for long.
The nightly ordeal begins after bath time. Our darling nugget mutates into a kicky boy. He will kick-kick-kick his chunky chicky drumstick legs like crazy as I desperately try to smooth lavender lotion on his tummy (it’s supposedly calming) and pull his pyjamas on. When he is all kicked-out, Oliver rubs his eyes and then I know he is ready to sleep. That doesn’t mean he won’t resist — kicking, squirming, and moaning at the breast until he cannot fight the fatigue anymore. Next, come the false starts. Oliver seems to be asleep — his eyes are closed. But as I ever so gently carry him to bed, his little mouth quivers then wails the moment he touches the mattress. Or, he gets a second wind and is back to kicking! After a few repeated attempts, Oliver eventually drifts off to the land of dreams only to keep on waking up again and again and again. Every hour. All through the night. Sometimes Oliver manages a two-hour stretch of sleep. Once he even slept for five hours straight. That happy fluke happened after one of his vaccinations. But, on average, Oliver is an hourly waker which means I have become an hourly waker.
This is not how I imagined motherhood would be. Yes, I had a vague expectation of a few sleepless nights. But I never thought putting a baby to sleep would be so difficult. My mother loves to lament that the situation is so unfair. I was a “perfect baby” who slept soundly through the night. So, how did I end up with such a night monster? Just let him cry it out, she says.
I used to worry about waking up, not a lack of sleep
My so-called sleep journey started in the third trimester of my pregnancy. I attended a series of antenatal classes run by the National University Hospital in Singapore, where I live. When we got to the lesson on breastfeeding, the midwife cautioned that newborns must feed every 2–3 hours. As a chronic sleeper-inner, this was a shocking thing to hear (clearly I don’t have many friends with babies). I was quick to interject, “Does being a mother mean you have extra energy?” hoping there were some special hormones that made the daunting task of feeding around the clock possible. The midwife responded curtly, If your baby sleeps longer than three hours, you must wake her up and feed her.
That first night I brought Oliver home, I fretted about oversleeping. I diligently set my alarm, and my husband’s phone, to go off at 2-hour intervals with a 10-minute snooze. I even contemplated asking my mum to call me early the next morning just to ensure I was up and Oliver was still alive. I needn’t have been so worried. My little boy was perfectly capable of waking up on his own — and waking me up too. Maybe my question to the midwife wasn’t so stupid. Being a mum doesn’t necessarily give you extra energy. But, it does give you special waking up powers. No matter how exhausted I am, Oliver’s cries can always jolt me into action.
We have some bubble trouble a brewing
The first few months of life were the toughest. We had bubble trouble. Now, unless you’ve lived through a gassy baby, you couldn’t possibly comprehend the horrendous stress and sleep deprivation involved. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Oliver woke so frequently — every thirty to forty minutes at night, grunting and writhing with gas. I desperately wanted to ease his pain. I desperately wanted some sleep.
Everyone around me offered well-meaning yet useless advice and always with the caveat that it was my fault; if Oliver was so gassy, I mustn’t be burping him properly. Poor Oliver. I nearly beat him trying to get more burps out. It just wasn’t happening for us.
The main culprit, when it comes to excessive night wakings and gassiness in newborns, is an out-of-whack circadian clock. Think of it this way — your baby is not waking because of the gas. Baby is waking because their sleep pattern isn’t well-aligned with day and night. When bub wakes up , their sympathetic nervous system is stimulated which, in turn, activates the gut. This causes gas. But, I didn’t learn that until much later.
In those early days, the only topic I had the energy to talk about was Oliver and his gas. One bored friend joked, maybe Oliver is scoffing beans behind your back? I was delirious enough to consider it. My Google search history was just as bored. All day, every day, I was Googling, “how to help a gassy baby”. I discovered a wealth of YouTube videos demonstrating how to expel gas from an infant. There is a special technique involving bicycle kicks to help them fart. I tried my best but the damned bicycle manoeuvre didn’t work.
The only thing that kept me going was the mini-milestones I set. I had faith that things would improve when Oliver turned three month’s, which is the end of the fourth trimester. The Internet promised me that, by then, Oliver’s digestive system would have matured and he should be sleeping through the night. But, three months came and went with no change. So, I rationed that Oliver was slow and needed until four months. Then I fixated on five months. Then six months. The bubble trouble eventually stopped. However, the fragmented sleep remained.
My baby must be broken. He can’t follow any of the sleep rules
The only thing worse than sleep deprivation is feeling like an incompetent mother. Everything the Internet said about babies and sleep didn’t work for us. For instance:
Never nurse or rock your child to sleep because that is a sleep prop
(Oliver was always falling asleep at the breast)
(Oliver was always falling asleep at the breast) Implement a sleep schedule as babies find comfort in routine
(Neither Oliver nor myself can follow a schedule to save our lives. He must have inherited the disorganised gene from me)
(Neither Oliver nor myself can follow a schedule to save our lives. He must have inherited the disorganised gene from me) Put your child to bed when they are dozy but not asleep so they can learn to “fall asleep” on their own
(MISSION IMPOSSIBLE)
(MISSION IMPOSSIBLE) Your baby is cranky because they’re overtired
(Oliver gets cranky about everything. He must be permanently overtired)
(Oliver gets cranky about everything. He must be permanently overtired) Sleep breeds sleep
(I don’t get it. Oliver doesn’t get it. More sleep doesn’t equal better sleep in our family)
These so-called rules are derived from sleep training practices popular in Western culture. But sleep training doesn’t work for every baby. And, unless you know where to look, it’s hard to find alternative perspectives.
I understand why our society promotes sleep training. We’ve all heard the saying, it takes a village to raise a child but we don’t live in communities anymore. Scroll any online mummies group and you will see that the lack of support and the need for sleep are common themes. I have never fantasized about being in a coma. But, I have had the thought, Ughhh you’re still here, after being woken up for the zillionith time. That’s where sleep training comes in.
Sleep training is pitched as this wonderful solution for babies to sleep through the night. You train your baby to become “independent” and “self-soothe” by leaving them to fall asleep on their own or cry it out if they wake up in the middle of the night. Sleep training advises against nursing, rocking, swaying, or patting a baby to sleep. Babies must learn how to achieve shut-eye without parental intervention.
I don’t sleep train Oliver. Not by design, initially, because we could never conform to the rules. But as I read more on the subject, I decided that I am okay to “spoil him” (as my mother would put it). Babies are born with millions of brain cells but there are very few connections between them. How we nurture our young shapes how their brains get wired. Sleep training is a convenient fix for sleep-deprived parents. But it doesn’t take a genius to recognise that sleep training goes against what nature intended. Babies should depend on their parents. They need their comfort and warmth. And, babies should be nursed to sleep. Breastfeeding releases the hormone, cholecystokinin, in both mother and baby which results in a sleepy feeling. In any case, I figured Oliver won’t be a baby for long. What’s a few years of broken sleep in the scheme of things?
The family who sleep together, stay together
Surviving frequent wakings isn’t easy. But, for me, ditching the cot for a co-sleeping arrangement was a game-changer and it happened by accident. Oliver was around four months old and we were moving house. Have you tried unpacking with a baby in tow? That first night in our new place we were surrounded by unopened boxes. We went to bed, exhausted, on a mattress on the floor. O — M — G. Best slumber of my life. Sublime. Each time Oliver woke up, I simply flung out a boob, and then went back to sleep. Compare that to climbing out of bed, picking baby up, going to the armchair, nursing, placing baby ever so carefully back in the cot, experiencing one or two false starts, and then doing that eight or more times a night. It’s a no brainer. Oliver never went back to his crib.
As this BBC article will tell you, Is the Western way of raising kids weird? co-sleeping is not at all common in the West. I used to associate it with SIDS. Yet, around the world, many families sleep together. We only have these weird ideas about independence and spoiling your child in the West. When it comes to safety, the odds of rolling over your baby in your sleep are slim. We still have a sense of self-awareness while asleep otherwise we would be falling off the bed each night. Loose blankets, pillows, and crevices are a greater hazard.
Once I decided that we would be co-sleeping moving forward, I had to convince my husband. The Safe Sleep Seven are guidelines for how to safely sleep in the same bed with your baby. But my hubby was worried at the thought of Oliver somersaulting onto the floor and hitting his wee head. Solution: a giant make-shift floor bed.
Floor beds aren’t easy to find in Singapore (although they are insanely popular in Japan). We eventually found a minimalist low-rise bed frame design at Namu. We bought two beds — a king-size and a super single, removed the legs, and squashed them together to create a huge sleeping space. We also treated ourselves to a set of luxurious Tencel sheets. And hey, presto! We could all sleep comfortably together as a family. Co-sleeping doesn’t necessarily reduce nighttime wakings (although it can). But, it does help breastfeeding mum’s get more sleep as they can nurse while lying down. When Oliver is ready, he will eventually move into his own room with the single-sized bed. But, I hope that won’t be anytime soon.
I love co-sleeping with Oliver and it’s not just about better quality sleep. Now I get to spend so much more time with him. And that is very precious when you are a full-time working mum.
It no longer feels overwhelming
Another lifesaver in my sleep journey was learning about the Possums approach to sleep. Possums was developed by an Australian doctor and academic named Dr Pamela Douglas and is the antithesis of sleeping training. The program is ground in the notion that sensory stimulation and the circadian rhythm are key drivers of sleep. Here are some of the precepts:
Treat each day like an adventure
(Go outside! Play games! Read books! Babies need sensory stimulation)
(Go outside! Play games! Read books! Babies need sensory stimulation) Put your baby down for a nap when they are tired
(Watch for sleepy cues)
(Watch for sleepy cues) Reset the circadian rhythm by waking up at the same time each morning
(Earlier is better)
(Earlier is better) Go to bed at night when your baby is tired
(It’s a myth that babies must go to bed early)
(It’s a myth that babies must go to bed early) Offer breastmilk or formula flexibly
(As they say, you got boobs — use them)
(As they say, you got boobs — use them) Avoid too much napping and late naps
(Duh! If baby sleeps too much during the day, they won’t be tired at night)
Now, this all might seem so basic, it’s obvious. However, by the time I came across Possums I had been completely taken in by the sleep training concepts that have permeated modern society. I believed in the sleep schedule. I was convinced that if Oliver remained awake beyond the recommended wake window (2–3 hours for infants under nine months) he would self-destruct in an overtired meltdown. We wasted so many hours in a darkened room, white noise blaring, while I shushed, hushed and downright willed Oliver to sleep even though he wasn’t tired. All because the “sleep schedule” dictated it was nap time.
The thirty dollars I paid for the Possums Baby and Toddler Sleep Program was money well-spent. It didn’t help Oliver sleep better at night. But it reassured me that my baby wasn’t broken and I wasn’t completely incompetent. I started to go with the flow instead of watching the clock and logging naps, and I forgot about the wake windows. Yes, it took Possums for me to realise the obvious — the very worst thing that can happen if my baby is overtired is that he will go to sleep. As a result, our days became a lot less stressful and a lot more enjoyable.
Some simple truths
Babies wake frequently. That’s a biological norm. Just like us adults, some babies sleep well and others don’t. I know sleep training is an alluring solution for exhausted parents (I’ve considered it many times). But, we all know, in our heart of hearts, that sleep training is solely for the benefit of parents. Children will learn to sleep through the night when they are physically, developmentally and emotionally ready.
I have learned that adopting the right attitude, and having realistic expectations around sleep, make all the difference. I went through a period of feeling frustrated by Oliver’s allergic reaction to beddy-byes. I’d spend a good hour (or more) trying to get him to bed, only for him to wake up 30 minutes later — and again and again and again. My evenings weren’t mine. I couldn’t find time to wash the dishes, write an email, watch a movie, or do anything else because he kept interrupting me. I resented the twenty or so minutes it would take for me to resettle him each time.
Eventually, I let go of those feelings. My attitude was causing me to feel burnt out, not Oliver, although it was a journey to realise that. I’ve spent my entire adulthood running a million miles an hour — wanting to be productive, hoping to be successful, and trying to keep my shit together. But it has been so hard trying to maintain these personal standards. I think Julianne Moore said it best, “It’s not difficult to take care of a child; it’s difficult to do anything else while taking care of a child.”
So, my advice is to slow down. Don’t beat yourself up for having a sticky floor or taking an inordinately long time to respond to messages. Redefine what it means to be productive and successful. Work and household chores will never run away. They will always be there, eagerly waiting. But a child’s babyhood is fleeting.
The old days of Oliver’s bubble trouble already feel like a lifetime ago. My choice to be a responsive parent, and not implement sleep training, means that Oliver and I will have an incredible bond for the rest of our lives. And that is worth all the sleepless nights.
*Names have been changed for this article.
Further reading:
If you are struggling with your decision not to sleep train, you are not alone. Here are some resources that have helped me during my sleep journey: | https://medium.com/@sarapatriciakelly/the-art-of-not-sleeping-451e98694515 | ['Sara Patricia Kelly'] | 2021-09-06 02:55:40.772000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Sleep Training', 'Baby Sleep Training', 'Responsive Parenting', 'Baby Sleep'] |
Do Only Losers Quit? | I was told in conversation that ‘Only losers quit’. This struck me as hostile and had I wished to unpack the statement, I’m certain there’d be a story.
I decided to smile and change the subject.
I respected their beliefs but wasn’t on board. With respect, sometimes there is silence. Keeping our personal thoughts to ourselves is the kind thing to do when no positive outcomes are on deck.
I don’t believe the statement: Only losers quit.
Quitting (or, Letting Go) a romance, job, hobby, personal or professional goal, after a valiant effort illustrates immense confidence, humility, and courage in being honest with ourselves.
We are not meant to excel at everything. Trying is the key. Insight is built on lessons we learn, and we learn the most important ones when allowing ourselves defeat. Don’t let feelings of failure derail you; failure is the birthplace of success.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Attitude is everything. And since we cannot change most of the millions of human beings’ opinions in the world— focusing on, sticking to, and living in a place in which we see through our own lens is key.
When we learn, we don’t truly fail. We gain lessons — which…don’t tell anyone — is really another way of winning. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/do-only-losers-quit-30c9b1c9ddb2 | ['Christine Macdonald'] | 2020-12-18 17:16:08.318000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Adulting', 'Loss', 'Failure', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Summer Fever | Summer Fever
A writer’s prompt: Let’s keep it going!
(photo by my BFF on her current trip to Portugal)
Ahh, summer. The season of fireflies and smores, midnight dips and country drives.
Summer is road trips with girlfriends across the country. It’s too many drinks around the fire with lifelong friends and catching up until the buzz wears off and the sun comes up.
It’s mornings drinking coffee on the veranda, watching the world come to life under the rising sun. Evenings laying in bed with the windows open, letting the crickets serenade you to sleep.
Summer is dripping ice cream cones over sticky fingers, picnics in the park and riding bikes on the boulevard. It’s cranking your favourite tunes with the windows down, your hand riding the waves of the wind.
Living in Canada, winters can be long and harsh, and bitter cold. (When they say that we have two seasons: Winter and construction, they’re not kidding!) So although summer brings mosquitoes and intense bouts of stifling heat and humidity, I always look forward to the day when the last little patch of snow melts and the days finally get warmer — and longer. Getting to wake up before the sun and watch it coming up over the trees, colouring the sky in shades of pink. Losing track of time in the evenings because it’s still light out even though it’s nearly ten.
It’s bittersweet when the leaves begin to change — autumn is my favourite season, but it means that winter is just around the corner again, and I’m never quite ready to let go of those laidback, lazy summer vibes. | https://medium.com/imperfect-words/summer-fever-d989c779e02 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2019-08-24 12:46:37.765000+00:00 | ['Lighthearted', 'Real Life', 'Prompt', 'Seasons', 'Summer'] |
BLM Has Sent Brands Into a Reviewing Frenzy | Logos Mars/ConAgra Foods/Pepsico
BLM Has Sent Brands Into a Reviewing Frenzy
But are they at risk of whitewashing history?
Many major brands are undertaking reviews of logos, packaging design, and marketing messages in the light of the Black Lives Matter protests and the broader debate over racial equality.
Big brands, such as Amazon, H&M, and McDonald's have all come out in support of Black Lives Matter.
And other businesses are renewing their brands to better reflect changing consumer demand. What they want, is to get rid of product names and packaging designs that seem racist and stereotypical.
Aunt Jemima has been under fire and Quaker Foods has promised to drop the name and logo as its “origins are based on a racial stereotype”.
Uncle Ben’s is also set for a rebrand after backlash over their packaging. Exactly what they’re going to do isn’t clear yet.
The use of the terms “aunt” and “uncle” hark back to how white southerners referred to older black people or African-American slaves rather than using courtesy titles like “Miss” or Mr”.
Mrs. Butterworth’s has also announced a complete brand and packaging review. “The Mrs. Butterworth’s brand, including its syrup packaging, is intended to evoke the images of a loving grandmother,” Conagra Brands said in a statement.
They admitted that their product design may be interpreted in a way that’s inconsistent with their values, as some have associated the shape of the brand’s syrup bottles with a stereotype for Black women.
And this shift is affecting place branding too. Rhode Island, a seaside state in New England, U.S, is now seeking to change its official name — The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations — because of slavery ties.
When we challenge branding, we’re challenging the narratives they represent. And they should represent where we are today, not where we were 130 years ago.
But these changes can only be symbolic
Because symbols and statues don’t create racism, they’re artifacts of it.
We need to steer clear of attacking the symptoms at the expense of curing the disease.
Precisely because the problem is structural, we need to make sure that the conversation stays focused on where real change is required: on a symbolic, emotional, as well as an organizational level.
That’s what makes this so challenging.
These brand and design choices are a result of creative industries that aren’t representative of society.
A 2018 Design Council report showed that only 12% of all design managers and business owners were from minority ethnic groups.
Companies need to overhaul how they work because you don’t get “diversity of thought” in a classic hierarchical structure.
Developing diverse networks within the industry also helps. Just because something isn’t a problem for you doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, and having access to these different viewpoints can make all the difference.
Do more than just correct the error
Issues around branding ultimately come down to business. If businesses aren’t updating their branding, they’re limiting their audience.
If they’re not speaking in a way that people want to hear, their business will die down.
Some brands are slower to respond while others try to anticipate how consumer sentiment is going change in the future.
The ones who try to think about what will be required of them in the future to stay relevant usually fare better than those who simply respond to public pressure.
The kind of expression and language that is acceptable is constantly changing. Just looking back 20, 30, 40 years, public perception of what’s acceptable has changed tremendously.
Parodies of ethnic or sexual minorities that were acceptable several decades ago have no place in public conversation today. It’s no longer acceptable for the general population to have a laugh at the expense of minorities or to appropriate cultural aspects for the sake of marketing.
How can brands proceed in an anti-racist manner?
The brands that come out of a crisis the strongest are the ones who act with agility and find a purpose.
And there is an opportunity for brands that are under fire now to come out of this stronger.
But we have to ask, why does Uncle Ben’s think removing a black man’s face from the brand is a big step in helping to put an end to racial injustices?
According to owner Mars, Uncle Ben was an African-American rice grower known for the quality of his rice. Gordon L. Harwell, an entrepreneur who had supplied rice to the armed forces in World War II, chose the name Uncle Ben’s as a means to expand his marketing efforts to the general public.
The accompanying image of an elderly African-American man is said to have been based on a Chicago maître d’ named Frank Brown and has been on Uncle Ben’s packaging since 1946.
And Aunt Jemima is based on a freed slave and activist, Nancy Green, who worked as a chef for a Kentucky family. She became the face of Aunt Jemima (who is a ‘Mammy’, a slave who acts as a housekeeper for white families) in a branding story that blurs the line between truth and marketing.
By completely reworking these brands, will they be rewriting history and erasing the historic significance of the people the brand designs are based on?
If anything, they now have a unique opportunity to retain these black symbols and ensure that they stand for something positive — these brands have enough money and power to enact meaningful change.
To do that, these brands need to have difficult conversations about what it means to be who they are. And it needs to become a part of their modus operandi to constantly do so.
The University of Yale is one example of a brand that has long grappled with its legacy
Named after Elihu Yale, who got rich plundering India and traded slaves before giving books to a cash-strapped university in Connecticut, Yale’s students and administrators have spent a lot of energy considering his legacy.
As a result, they have sequestered two or his portraits in a closet of shame and opted to display a third with curatorial stress on the enslaved Black child next to him.
Yale has no plans of changing its name to reckon with their benefactor’s crimes because they have long been divorced from the life of Elihu Yale.
“No one was venerating him; no one was trying to live up to his ideals. The name Yale does not belong to Elihu, but to the university, with its faults and virtues, not his.”
- Graeme Wood, Yale Doesn’t Need to Change Its Name
In chaos, there is always opportunity, and this is a chance for brands and big companies to put their values front and center by fully embracing their heritage and updating their marketing messages for the discerning audiences of the 2020s.
And it doesn’t mean hiding the ugly truth
Gen Z is more interested in truth and transparency than highly polished brand images and sleek corporate messages that hide exploitation and a blind pursuit for profit.
Raised to question fake news and to be suspicious of secrecy, sincerity is sacred to them.
This study found that a majority of Gen Zers are more skeptical about brands and want proof that brands align with their values.
The research from The Consumer Goods Forum and Futerra shows that 79 percent of Gen Z believe brands are never honest, or not honest enough, about environmental issues. | https://medium.com/swlh/blm-has-sent-brands-into-a-reviewing-frenzy-120083c777cd | ['Aliyar Hussain'] | 2020-09-14 14:17:49.851000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Business Strategy', 'Blm', 'Marketing', 'Racism'] |
Beyond Blocks: “To Think Outside the Block” | Could you tell us about how Beyond Blocks came into the cryptocurrency and blockchain scene?
“The purpose is to connect the East and West, the East being Asia and the West being the western world, while establishing the company as the “gatekeepers” of Asia”.
Beyond Blocks Founder Saber Aria started as a crypto investor since the early days of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. When cryptocurrency and blockchain industries started blooming and becoming mainstream, he realized the high potential for high quality content for conferences. They saw that everybody was trying to do conferences and meetups, but very few of them have been able to do it right or well. That is where the idea for the conferences came from. The founding team also has previous expertise in running the largest tech conferences in Asia, so the foundation of the company is built to deliver and execute.
Having strong connections in Thailand, we decided to organize the first major conference in Bangkok. That is basically how the blockchain summit series all started. We received a very positive response from the attendees, the media, and from the speakers. The response was so positive that it helped reinforce our vision to become the largest blockchain community builders in Asia.
Why did you decide to call the company Beyond Blocks?
The idea is that we are the platform for the discussion of blockchain in today’s current market AND for the future. We are trying to go above and beyond the technology and the blockchain by bringing world-class speakers and experts in blockchain, and bringing them face-to-face with enthusiasts coming from all around the world.. For our conference in Bangkok, we brought NEO’s founder, Da Hongfei, a highly recognized pioneer in the space who everybody was excited to see speak and give insights. So essentially it is really about the speakers you bring. And in order to get the notable speakers, you need really deep connections in the space, and more importantly, the ability to deliver on big promises.
What is the problem Beyond Blocks wants to solve and what is your contribution for the community?
We feel that other companies that are organizing similar events are not going in-depth enough in regards to the development of blockchain and the importance it has on current-day issues as well as the future.
“We created a platform to connect our network to a larger audience, bringing together first degree connections with third degree connections; and allowing these new synergies to progress”.
Only in this way can the blockchain phenomenon be pushed to greater heights. The idea is to essentially provide a unique experience to the whole community at every single level. This is what we are trying to achieve. A very large-scale dream indeed, but we are definitely moving in the right direction.
“Ultimately, we aim to be the one-stop solution in Asia for all your blockchain needs when it comes to networking and bringing the blockchain community together on one interactive platform”.
In each host city that we organize an event, we make it the priority to bring the largest local enterprises in that country and give them a stage to make their presence felt, and to connect them with the right people in the industry.
What are Beyond Blocks criteria for selecting the conference speakers?
The criteria is based on a lot of research and strong referrals from our community. We look for experience, global reach, community engagement, solid projects and smart investors. We only invite people that have been thoroughly vetted, meaning someone we know has personally vouched for the speaker.
Does your company has any special strengths in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in comparison with other similar companies?
The major strengths of our company comes down to our connections in the space and our elite experience in organizing tech-related conferences in Asia.
“Strong connections can only be built through respect, reliability and of course the ability to deliver on promises”.
We have established a solid footprint in Asia by building a community of blockchain enthusiasts in the form of world-class speakers, giant blockchain enterprises, large media partners and hundreds of startups. This is where we thrive — and the end of the day it all comes down to delivering. Our conference lead and COO has been organizing major tech conferences in Asia for more than a decade, so not only do we bring expertise in the blockchain space, but we also have the executionary know-how.
In addition, we would like to know your opinion about the cryptocurrency and blockchain scene in Thailand?
The main reason why Thailand has become so strong on the crypto scene is because they are one of the only countries in Asia that regulates ICO’s. Quoting from an article from bitcoin.com:
“Thai regulators have reportedly agreed to enact two separate laws on cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings. They will regulate crypto businesses, the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies, as well as their taxation.”
Speaking from a blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiast perspective, the community is absolutely huge, especially in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The interest in cryptocurrency is very strong here, and a large part of it is because Thailand is a very open [country] compared with others in regards to regulations about cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects.
During our interview with Beyond Blocks in Bangkok, Thailand
Finally, do you have any plan to organize a conference in Korea during the coming months?
Glad you asked because we recently announced our next major blockchain conference that will be happening in Seoul, South Korea. “Beyond Blocks Summit Seoul” will be a two-day conference, running from July 17–18, which will be the flagship event during Korea Blockchain Week.
We chose to host our next event in South Korea because it has become one of the most critical hubs of blockchain and crypto, and because of this, our community has made it known that they are very interested in connecting with the Korean blockchain community — and that’s where Beyond Blocks comes in. The number one priority is our community, and connecting them to the most exciting markets in Asia will always be our focus.
More information about Beyond Blocks can be found on www.beyondblocks.com/summit/seoul and their social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and linkedin. Finally, several related articles can be found on their blog https://beyondblocks.com/blog, as well as videos at Beyond Blocks’s Youtube Channel. | https://medium.com/bitcoin-center-korea/beyond-blocks-to-think-outside-the-block-e9942f073136 | ['Carolina Rios'] | 2018-06-04 14:11:06.948000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Analysis and Visualization of Unstructured Text | What will you do when I ask you to explain textual data? What steps will you take to build the textual visualization story? Here, I am not going to explain how you create a visualization story.
But this article will help you to get the required information to build the visualization story and explain the textual data.
Insights from textual data will help us to discover the connection between the articles. It will detect trends and patterns. Analysis of textual data will set aside the noise and uncovers previously unknown information.
This analysis process is also known as Exploratory Text Analysis (ETA). With the help of K-means, Tf-IDF, word frequency, etc. method, we will analyze these textual data. Also, ETA is useful in the data cleaning process.
We also visualize the results in graphs, word clouds, and plots using Matplotlib, seaborn, and Plotly libraries.
Before analyzing the Textual Data, complete these pre-processing tasks.
Retrieve data from Data Source
There is a lot of unstructured text data available for analysis. You can get data from the below sources.
1. Twitter text dataset from Kaggle.
2. Reddit and twitter dataset using API.
3. Scrape articles from a website using Beautifulsoup and Requests python library.
I am going to use Reuters’ article available in SGML format. For analysis purposes, I will fetch the date, title, and article body from data files using the Beautifulsoup library.
Use the below code to fetch the data from all data files and store the output in a single CSV file.
1. You can also use the Regex and OS library to combine or loop all the data files.
2. Each article’s body starts with <Reuters>, so use find_all(‘reuters’).
3. You can also use the pickle module to save data, instead of CSV.
Data Cleaning Process
In this section, we remove noise such as null values, punctuation, numbers, etc. from the textual data. First, we remove the rows which contain null values in the text column. Then we deal with other column’s null values.
import pandas as pd import re articles_data = pd.read_csv(‘articles_data.csv’) print(articles_data.apply(lambda x: sum(x.isnull()))) articles_nonNull = articles_data.dropna(subset=[‘text’]) articles_nonNull.reset_index(inplace=True) def clean_text(text): ‘’’Make text lowercase, remove text in square brackets,remove
,remove punctuation and remove words containing numbers.’’’ text = str(text).lower()
text = re.sub(‘<.*?>+’, ‘’, text)
text = re.sub(‘[%s]’ % re.escape(string.punctuation), ‘’, text)
text = re.sub(‘
’, ‘’, text)
text = re.sub(‘\w*\d\w*’, ‘’, text)
return text articles_nonNull[‘text_clean’]=articles_nonNull[‘text’]\
.apply(lambda x:clean_text(x))
· When we remove null values present in the text column, then the null values in other columns also vanishes.
· We have used re method to remove noise in textual data.
Steps taken in the data cleaning process may increase or decrease as per the textual data. So, study your text data carefully and frame your clean_text() method accordingly.
As the pre-processing task is complete, we are going to move on to analyzing textual data.
Let’s start with our analysis.
1. Length of Reuters Articles
We know that the length of all the articles is not the same. So, we will consider those articles whose length equal to or more than one paragraph. As per the study, the average length of a sentence is 15–20 words. And there should be four sentences in a paragraph.
articles_nonNull[‘word_length’] = articles_nonNull[‘text’].apply(lambda x: len(str(x).split())) print(articles_nonNull.describe()) articles_word_limit = articles_nonNull[articles_nonNull[‘word_length’] > 60] plt.figure(figsize=(12,6)) p1=sns.kdeplot(articles_word_limit[‘word_length’], shade=True, color=”r”).set_title(‘Kernel Distribution of Number Of words’)
Source : Image by Author
· I have removed those articles whose length is less than 60 words.
· Word_length distribution is right-skewed.
· Most of the articles have around 150 words.
· Reuters articles that contain fact or stock information have fewer words.
2. Frequent words in Reuters Articles
In this section, we count the words present in the articles and analyze the result. We analyze the word count based on the N-gram method. N-gram is the occurrence of words based on its N value.
We will remove the stopwords from the textual data. Because stopwords are noise and not have much use in the analysis.
1. Most Frequent Unigram Words (N=1)
Let’s plot unigram words in a bar graph and word cloud for Unigram words. | https://towardsdatascience.com/analysis-and-visualization-of-unstructured-text-data-2de07d9adc84 | ['Manmohan Singh'] | 2020-10-24 13:41:59.062000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Matplotlib', 'Python Programming', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Data Analysis'] |
8 best practices of high-converting websites | Your website is the center of your online presence, and the center for all your marketing efforts. Attracting potential customers is great, but once a visitor lands on your website, you need to have a strategy to convert them into a paying customer. To increase the chance of conversion, you must:
understand your ideal customer
understand their intent
understand their challenges
understand what they expect from a website like yours
Every customer’s journey starts by researching online, and your brand’s website must guide potential customers through that journey. Design it to tell an engaging story, highlight a problem, provide the solution, call them to action, and promise a happy ending.
In order to design a marketing-activated website that converts visitors into customers, keep these 8 best practices of high-converting websites in mind.
Design for customers, not designers
Left to their own devices, web designers will craft a website for design’s sake, not necessarily for the customer. For instance, remember Flash? Now almost extinct, Flash initially turned the heads of designers and programmers as it provided immense visual capabilities. However, in the new era of SEO and mobile-friendly sites, Flash can’t deliver what’s required in the market. A user-friendly website has an impressive yet simple design. It’s easy to navigate, quick to load, and efficient in guiding the customer towards conversion.
Place visible calls-to-action
Even the most perfect piece of content balanced with flawless SEO tactics will fail to convert visitors into customers if it’s missing a strategically placed call-to-action (CTA). Visitors will read your amazing content, but without a push in the right direction, they may go to another website where your competitor will be happy to assist them. A well-placed CTA will drive visitors to take the next step. It’s wise to use only one CTA per page to avoid confusion. Don’t forget: the CTA should create a sense of urgency that compels readers to act.
Aim for user-friendly navigation
Simple navigation can make a huge difference in your customer’s journey, and conversion often depends on whether your visitors can find what they are looking for. When designing your website’s navigation, place each section where it feels natural and will be most easy to find. Try to limit the number of menu items to seven or fewer. If your brand logo is in the header (which it should be), link it to your homepage so visitors can revisit it easily.
Provide relevant, fresh content
Creating a solid content strategy is key to ensuring your website stays relevant and valuable to your audience. In order to create useful content, you must first understand the needs of your target audience. Consider creating content that answers questions already asked by your visitors. Use emotion, sincerity and authenticity to empathize and connect with your audience. Crucially, if you want your content to get discovered, make sure your posts and pages are SEO-optimized with smart keyword usage, metadata, and other on-page elements.
Don’t compromise on speed
People are not patient, and slow-loading webpages will almost certainly lead to a higher bounce rate. If your page takes longer than five seconds to load, it’ll frustrate your visitors and give them a reason to search elsewhere. To increase the loading speed of your webpages, consider removing any nonessentials, such as videos or large images that take extra time to load. Compressing images will also reduce loading time. Finally, utilize browser caching for storing cached versions of static resources to speed up your pages significantly.
Showcase your offerings
If you don’t do anything else, at the very least, showcase your products and services on your homepage. You have only a few seconds to make a first impression, so make it count. Professional photos and spotless copy will help you put your brand’s best foot forward. Product pictures and descriptions should be detailed, useful and appropriate. You may have a great website design, but if your photos look fuzzy, potential customers will think twice about buying your products. However, take care not to overload your website with graphics. Select a few good images and feature them on the homepage.
Establish trust & credibility
Potential customers are less likely to enter their contact information or make a purchase if they suspect that your website is not secure or trustworthy. Communicate your trustworthiness by featuring customer testimonials, case studies, reviews, security badges and your privacy policy. Make sure your contact information is easy to find so visitors know they can reach you. All of these signals will help you establish trust and credibility as a reputable brand.
Communicate your value proposition
Use compelling language to convince and show readers how your brand will add value to their lives or resolve their problems. What benefits can customers expect to enjoy by making a purchase or signing up for your service? What features make your products better than what your competitors offer? If you can excite your visitors with your value proposition, you will see your conversion rates improve.
Even after you’ve followed all of these practices, review your website regularly to create a list of changes and optimizations. Be innovative about delivering the best experience possible, and never stop iterating. Optimization is an ongoing process, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
About Olivia Carter
Olivia Carter is a freelance writer and short story author. She is a performer, singer and a fitness freak. She loves to write about technical stuff, the internet and other trending topics. She lives in Portland and has a degree in English literature. | https://medium.com/lucidpress/8-best-practices-of-high-converting-websites-6c03d2ef7fbb | [] | 2017-10-03 17:05:13.245000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Ecommerce', 'Lead Generation', 'Conversion Optimization', 'Web Design'] |
Nykaa beauty app redesign case study | When I first started searching for some app to redesign for my design portfolio, I started looking up all kinds of startups in India and their apps. After enough searching, I figured it was best to redesign something that I’ve already used and have experienced. That’s when I decided I would design Nykaa app. It is a D2C e-commerce platform that sells everything from makeup, skincare, health to wellness products.
Featuring Nykaa app redesign
Right off the bat, I made some observations. After some more exploring, I noted down the problems that needed fixing and some additional features that can be added to improve the user experience.
Problems :
The UI looked dated. It wasn’t very beginner(in makeup) or user friendly. Nykaa has several stores and e-stores which were not easy to find on the app. The coupons, discount style needed to be changed. The dropdown at the top left needs to be taken out because it is usually the place for a menu option and having a dropdown there confuses people. The deals placed should be more organized. The jewellery and clothing apps sold under Nykaa are nowhere to be seen on the app. Customer complaints are hard to lodge. Email has to be written specifically and the play store is full of negative reviews about the customer return/refund/complaint. The price isn’t highlighted well enough on the products. Product images are too tiny and way higher on the page than ideal. This makes it harder to both, view and swipe images.
Ideas :
Baskets for different needs like essentials, bodycare, or influencer baskets can be added. Guide for first time app/ makeup users, men, mature women etc. Every product should have usage and tips for beginner friendliness. Finding the correct shade in foundations etc.. should be given importance. Brushes and other product recommendations based on products added to cart. Nykaa subscription, recommended products, other options should be provided for out of stock products at checkout. Product complaints need to be made in the app and easier with a helpline number etc.
Future business moves :
The Nykaa IPO listing took place. Nykaa man , nykaa fashion have separate apps. Nykaa superstore for retailers to buy wholesale and at a decent price. More offline stores in multiple cities are going to be added. Expansion to middle-east and the UK. House of brands and lifestyles. Getting brands exclusively on Nykaa.
After conducting user interviews as part of my qualitative research, I figured :
Most people shop having something in mind rather than just browsing and finding what’s good. It’s hard enough for women with duskier skin tones to find their perfect shade of foundations ,etc. and it’s even tougher to find your perfect shade of base products online. Most of the time spent is on the home screen. Other tabs are mostly ignored. To access offers, it is difficult and confusing. No suggestions near checkout screen as that might confuse the user. When a product goes out of stock, the wait is long for it to restock.
Here’s how it turned out :
HOME
Home screen before and after
The icons are bigger and rounder. The search bar is made bigger too. There’s way too much stuff to scroll through before. It’s been simplified and broken down into sections of horizontal scroll. The menu bar is fixed. Finding your shade of base products is made easy. The navigation now includes offers which was absent is the app.
PRODUCT DISPLAY
Product display before and after
The component for each product has been altered. It’s easier to view the price and add to cart.
ALL CATEGORIES
All categories before and after
The distracting and unnecessary carousel at the top is removed and the focus is on categorizing and sub-categorizing the entire list of products.
MENU
Menu before and after
Instead of the confusing dropdown, a menu overlay was added with links to different apps and stores.
BASKET
Basket before and after
To increase the quantity, delete the product and to view the price is made easier. The FAB checkout is almost made the width of the screen. Products from wishlist, and other recommendations are added for a last minute add-on.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Product details before and after
The entire layout has been changed. There’s no crowding of content. It has a simpler and more highlighted add to wishlist and add to cart button as well as very distinct star rating.
HELP
Help before and after
The help section was earlier divided into two main regions. The FAQ section and the chat section. Both lack a humane way of contacting a person or customer care official. Chatting with the bot only offers very few details regarding orders, complaints and products. Meanwhile the categorized FAQs are only a bunch of questions answered without offering any actual help. the redesign includes two ways of making direct contact including a phone line that operates during certain limited hours of the day and a message to raise a ticket that could list in detail the situation/problem the user maybe facing.
EVOLUTION
Throughout the design process, certain screens underwent a significant amount of changes as we all know that design is an iterative process. I was struggling with getting the product details screen. Several iterations of it are mentioned below:
Iterations of the product details screen
What I knew was wise was putting the add to basket CTA to the rightmost part of the screen. The first iteration lacked balance and visual symmetry. In one iteration, the CTA wasn’t big enough and was closer to the add to wishlist action which would mean, the thumb could easily slide and click on the wrong option. Finally, I landed on the last iteration with clear distinction and space between the actions and clearly defined space for price.
Iterations of basket screen
The layout of the basket items was altered several times to get the final iteration. Here too, the delete button is big and bold enough. The colors have changed and turned into the primary colour, fuschsia pink. Everything is aligned well in order to make sense to the eye. Product name, variant name, quantity along with add and subtract features, price and delete buttons are parts of the component. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/nykaa-beauty-app-redesign-case-study-1cca64d8d1a2 | ['Aaboli Kode'] | 2021-12-22 12:00:26.302000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Redesign', 'Makeup', 'User Interface', 'Case Study'] |
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes | In her tome A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie suggests that what poets keep out of their work is as crucial as what they let into it. In other words, “all good poetry fends something off.” In the case of Birthday Letters by Hughes, the poetry seems brilliantly crafted to fend off its own readers. Hughes was haunted by death; he was blamed for the suicide of his poet-wife Sylvia Plath, and he was almost certainly the occasion of the suicide of Assia Wevill, his mistress. People wanted answers from Hughes. How dare he cause so much ruin? Could he not see how his compulsive philandering crushed the lives of these gifted women? Published months shy of Hughes’ own passing, Birthday Letters is nearly an anguished, weary concession to the demands of others: if you get this collection, will you leave me alone? Will you finally stop clawing for more details?
Birthday Letters is certainly keeping a lot out of its own poetry. The poems are crafted around a lot of information already available to the public. Hughes does not use new personal information to inform his audience. He picks details from Plath’s poetry and her life and reworks them into stories that inspire the reader with feeling, but he takes care not to unearth new things for the public eye. For example, in his poem The Tender Place, he recounts Plath’s electroconvulsive therapy:
Your temples, where the hair crowded in,
Were the tender place…
Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed
The thunderbolt into your skull.
Plath’s ECT was not news to anyone. The novelty of the poem lies in the way Hughes sets off his wife’s softness and vulnerability against the fiery horror of the therapy. The overall effect of the poem is devastation — we know that from Hughes’ perspective, the ECT drove scars deep into Plath’s psyche. Something happened in the doctor’s room that could not be undone.
In 1956, Plath met Hughes at a party. What happened next would be recorded in Plath’s journals: “That big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me … kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off, my lovely red hair band scarf.” In return, Plath bit Hughes so hard that she made blood run down his face. This ferocious encounter also finds its way into Birthday Letters:
… I remember
Little from the rest of that evening.
I slid away with my girlfriend. Nothing
Except her hissing rage in a doorway
And my stupefied interrogation
Of your blue headscarf from my pocket
And the swelling ring-moat of tooth-marks
That was to brand my face for the next month.
The me beneath it for good.
One cannot avoid the sense that Hughes constructed the work around a recognizable timeline for his audience, leading them down a checklist of iconic moments. This would not only satisfy the public’s common understanding of his life, but also allow him complete control over the way he represents Plath, her mental illness, their marriage, and her suicide. I write this not to suggest that we are owed intimate details from Hughes’ life, but to say that the craftsmanship exhibited in this collection carefully shows Plath in a certain light. It also keeps the readers a couple miles far-off from the deleterious ways Hughes affected the marriage. The poems themselves are remarkable accomplishments that deserve respect. The stories they tell, however, should not be uncritically embraced.
Plath is often portrayed here as a galloping force of nature swept unceasingly towards her doom. Hughes is a casualty of her intensity. One would never guess from Birthday Letters that he sought her out or even had a choice in his romantic encounters with her:
Little did I know
The shock attack of a big predator
According to survivors numbs the target
Into drunken euphoria.
When Plath takes a turn for the worse, she becomes a mad-woman under the watchful gaze of her husband:
You cried for certain
You were going to die.
I bustled about.
I was nursemaid. I fancied myself at that.
I liked the crisis of the vital role.
I felt things had become real. Suddenly mother,
As a familiar voice, woke in me.
She arrived with the certain knowledge. I made a huge soup.
We learn soon that it is all for naught, as Plath receives a vision of the price she must pay for her enduring legacy:
Fame will come. Fame especially for you.
Fame cannot be avoided. And when it comes
You will have paid for it with your happiness,
Your husband and your life.
I found that part to be one of the few failings of this stunning collection. It was very on-the-nose and almost lazy, though it capped off a rather virtuosic long poem predictably titled Ouija. When Hughes sings of his encounter with the siren Assia Wevill, we can barely blame him for his straying after years with Plath the cyclone:
We didn’t find her — she found us.
She sniffed us out. The Fate she carried
Sniffed us out…
She sat there, in her soot-wet mascara,
In flame orange silks, in gold bracelets,
Slightly filthy with erotic mystery-
A German
Russian Israeli with the gaze of a demon
Between curtains of black Mongolian hair.
In other words, Hughes did not stray — he was found by an erotic demon enchantress. He did not find Plath, she pounced on him and deluged him with her ravings. He is carried about by circumstance, eventually trapped by his wife’s awful death:
You were the jailer of your murderer-
Which imprisoned you.
And since I was your nurse and your protector
Your sentence was mine too.
Hughes’ helplessness in the face of these feral feminine beings makes for wonderful poetry. Indeed, these poems are luxuriously beautiful and sad. The language has the cultivated sheen of pure silk, but it somehow also feels effortless. A reader of this collection could naively assume that Hughes’ skill allowed the poems to quickly slip out onto paper within a few days. Birthday Letters was actually formed over a period of 25 years. Yet despite Hughes’ extreme efforts, I struggle to take Michiko Kakutani’s belief that these beautiful poems were written “out of the deepest core of [Hughes’] being.”
The facts are hard to verify, but Plath recorded being constantly unsafe around Hughes. She told her mother that he was “dangerously destructive” and that she needed to get her children someplace safe. She recorded instances of violent physical abuse: “Arrived in Paris early Saturday evening exhausted from sleepless holocaust night with Ted in London . . . I took myself in leash and washed my battered face, smeared with a purple bruise from Ted and my neck raw and wounded, too.” Hughes apparently subjected Plath to vicious mockery, even going so far to belittle her suicidal impulses: “Ted and his woman… have already wistfully started wondering why I didn’t commit suicide, since I did before… Ted has said how convenient it would be if I were dead, then he could sell the house & take the children whom He likes. It is me he does not like.” By the time Plath mentally collapsed and took her own life, Hughes was bedding three other women. All of this domestic cruelty does not feature in Birthday Letters. In the book, Plath is the one careening out of control, constantly getting away from the benevolent mastery of the bewildered Ted Hughes. The reality is likely to have been much different.
It makes sense, then, that Hughes would spend so much time working these poems into a tight narrative. We are given memories and references that build up to and seemingly explain Plath’s death, but this well-selected catalog is probably not coming out of the deepest core of Hughes’ being. The actual core of the author remains neatly concealed in other unseen materials and unpublished letters. The result of Hughes’ prudent craftsmanship is a remarkable body of 88 poems that exhibit technical finesse and thoughtfulness, but no vitality. A consistent sense of falsehood haunts Birthday Letters even during the book’s finest moments; I am not persuaded by the collection’s renderings of the always-baffled Hughes, the deranged, weepy Plath, or even the sorceress Wevill. I know that this book is not offering me something heartfelt. Because of this, I can only attribute the book’s extreme popularity to the mystery surrounding Plath’s last hours. The poems themselves are truly excellent, but they neither earn the sensation they caused upon publication nor provide Hughes with complete absolution. | https://medium.com/@coffeeandstroops/birthday-letters-by-ted-hughes-e2d5d811ffe6 | [] | 2020-12-19 02:17:51.845000+00:00 | ['Ted Hughes', 'Domestic Violence', 'Assia Wevill', 'Sylvia Plath', 'Poetry'] |
Corporate instant gratification | Corporate instant gratification
Focus on the problems that really matter
Reactiveness as a strategy is not a great way to operate. It is time to stop acting like we know what we are doing and start thinking about what needs to be properly done. The problem with this, is that it might require for us to stop and analyse the circumstances, the environment, the possibilities and our weaknesses, which means that we will not be able to do the things that we are supposed to be doing on regular basis, or what in reality happens, we are not seen by others like doing what we are meant to be doing.
We can’t afford to stop, stopping is not productive, let’s continue marching and eventually we will get to where we want to be… Somehow…
There’s no point for teams and companies to perform activities that cannot be fully delivered, what for in the first place?
One of the main problems many organisations face is this idea that doing anything is always good and better than not doing anything at all, while on the hand they are also preaching their aim towards efficiency and productivity.
Why would you invest time and money in doing something that it is not clear how to move it forward or if it can be materialised at all? It doesn’t make sense.
How to change this? Focus on what really matters, focus on improving the things that truly need to be improved, the ones that required to be fixed and that will an impact when achieved. Are these more complex and difficult? Most likely yes, but that’s also why
They require the attention They are usually deflected
Start with them, and step by step the rest will usually follow, rather than go back and forth with small solutions that provide temporary relief but not in depth long-lasting impact.
Quick fixes and small victories are ok, but they are just that, quick and small, and that’s what they are meant to be, nothing more, nothing less, a band-aid, on top a small wound so we can keep moving forward. Do you know someone that applied a band-aid for years? No, right?
As companies move into what, for them, are new terrains, agile, MVPs, quick-wins, and many more that seduce them into feeling dynamic and responsive, a new type of threat might be appearing, the possibility of an endless number of “quick-wins” emerging all over the company, with little thought given into what to do next or how to progress them, while putting on the side the focus or time into solving the actual problem.
These quick solutions might be indeed helpful right now, making the job better, easier or even faster for many, but as a business, it is important to not forget that if something is created to be temporary it has to be treated like that, otherwise is going to become your new default solution and stay there forever.
If they are meant to be quick and small solutions, treat the like so, otherwise, these are nothing more than corporate instant gratification. | https://medium.com/the-bridge/corporate-instant-gratification-70d2512f6234 | ['Joseph Emmi'] | 2018-11-15 23:37:06.916000+00:00 | ['Business Strategy', 'Digital Transformation', 'Corporate Culture', 'Technology', 'Business'] |
Grizzly | When I was younger I used to find the soft snores rumbling from deep within his chest endearing. He was like a giant Grizzly bear in hibernation, big belly and all. Now those snores serve as a reminder of broken promises.
“I promise I’ll stop drinking,” he said after his first DUI.
“I promise this is the last time,” he said after slipping on a patch of ice and getting a concussion while 2x over the legal drinking limit, according to the ER doctor.
“I promise I’ll do better,” he said after my mother’s birthday. After having spent the entire night binge drinking, when he finally showed up, we had to put a blanket under him to drag him into our living room floor so that our tenants wouldn’t see him passed out drunk in the hallway during their dinner party.
I don’t remember what was heavier, the shame or the weight of his unconscious body as my mother and I struggled to drag him in. The blanket was my mother’s idea. She had seen it on one of the medical shows she watches to escape the disappointing truth she refuses to face. You see, my mother is one of those people who likes to pretend there’s nothing wrong. She could be standing in a room, flames all around her, yet she won't admit there’s a fire.
There have been so many broken promises, so many tears, so much shame over the years. Witnessing his drunken antics in public as onlookers cast their judging stares upon him. He never sees those stares nor does he hear the whispers as they pass. He just lays there, in inebriated bliss. I feel his shame. I feel the anger and despair bubbling in the pit of my stomach.
There’s a rattling in his chest now. Every time he snores, I hear a rattling, like a loose nail in a steam radiator, dancing in the pipes as the steam rises to the surface. I even hear it when he’s not around. It haunts me. I wonder if it has been there all along.
The realization that he’s never going to change and I’ll always forgive him because he is my father jolts me awake some nights. My mother has never left him, I suspect she never will. They just carry on in this endless cycle of disappointment and worry. When the clock strikes twelve and he’s not home, Sometimes I wonder if he’s passed out somewhere, whiskey in hand. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to say, I wish he won't come back, at least not like that.
He could’ve been somebody you know. He had a successful business, money to invest, and people who believed in him. Yet, it all went down the drain along with countless empty bottles of whiskey. It’s not too late for me though. I’m plotting my escape. One day I’ll be free. I’ll be free from this Grizzly’s vicious grasp. | https://medium.com/@nerdyladytalk/grizzly-f5df3b095acd | [] | 2021-06-02 05:38:53.265000+00:00 | ['Alcoholism', 'Fathers', 'Alcohol Addiction', 'Hurt', 'Parents'] |
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