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Forget FOMO | A pity party will fix it all. Image courtesy of Kyle Glenn
I’m too old for this — ‘Fear of missing out’ or what the kids call — FOMO and yet here I sit listening to one of my best friends express this very thing. Is this really about not being able to do something with us in lieu of adulting, or is there more at play here?
It’s defined on Wikipedia as: “Anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a social media website.”
With the holidays just in our rear view mirror it’s important for you to start the new year with some new energy.
Sadly, however, if you’re like a lot of people, in general, we can experience intense FOMO especially going through the endless scrolling on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media.
It’s important to remember that what we see from others is exactly what they want us to see. It’s crafted, it’s filtered, it’s for mass consumption but it’s made just to make it seem like everyone is having a great time — except you!
You’re probably familiar with the experience of getting or doing what you want to only feel indifferent or disappointed after…
Am I having fun yet?
In our minds we’re building up something that hasn’t happened yet. It isn’t real yet. Drop and dread, which is all too real. But you’re skipping over that in-between moment where your brain is actually having a lot of fun. It’s fun to imagine having the things we don’t. The same way when you lust after a gorgeous pair of shoes or fantasize about getting an especially adorable dog, you think, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be so happy when…” It can make you feel excited or even giddy until you remember that your landlord has a no-dogs policy, or your budget is too tight for a splurge this month. Reality comes crashing down, and so does your mood.
But you love the fantasy. At its root, your FOMO is an escape.
FOMO is usually rooted in the uncomfortable emotions of the usual suspects: loneliness, envy, and even a hint of despair. Facing them may not be your preference, but I think the best way to lessen them is actually to give in to them.
You’re invited to the Pity Party!
The goal of people’s lives has become doing as much as possible but you can’t do everything —once you accept that, you can begin to find real happiness. I want to avoid advising anyone against acknowledging and working through real feelings of FOMO. I think FOMO, at one point or another in our life, seems to be unavoidable, because everytime we choose or commit to something, we pay the price of opting out of something else.
The best thing to do is to recognize it, give in to it, and then move through it. It’s that simple.
This means: have a pity party. Really, it might sound counterintuitive and self-defeating. It sounds negative but I’ve found the act of feeling pity and moving through it to actually be the opposite.
When we actually let ourselves feel sorry for ourselves without holding back, all those awful feelings tend to dissipate. Sometimes, they start to feel silly. Other times, it’s just a huge relief to finally get it all off your chest.
I caution, throw this pity party consciously.
Pick a time and place. A beginning and an end and then stick to it. Whatever you’re feeling like you’re missing out on identify it. Then complain as much as you want! Nothing is out of line for your thoughts or expressions during this time.
Invite the perfect pity party guests, Envy, Despair, Fury and let them have at the emotional punch bowl —But only for a certain time. I give myself 30 minutes to yell, scream, cry, get upset, write nasty notes (that never get sent), and then I push all that stuff aside.
I take comfort in knowing that I have a specific time and focus on feeling — whatever it is that I want, and then I can go back to a less heightened version of those feelings.
Totally switch gears
Then, I leave FOMO in the dust and I start reminding myself what I have that I love in my life. I journal, I watch videos that make me laugh, I go back through old photos for good memories, or I just chill and listen to a good Spotify playlist.
Sometimes, I can’t even put my finger on the reason why I feel better. I just do!
The life that we live in our imaginations, in art and in our dreams — is often more important to us than the one in which we actually live. To a large extent, it is the things that we opt out of and omit that truly make us who we are.
So if you’re feeling FOMO this year, just take a step back, allow it to be, move through it, and understand you have just opted into something that might actually be a better play for you and your purpose later down the road. | https://nerdynatali.medium.com/forget-fomo-30ca7265c93f | [] | 2020-01-20 16:46:34.544000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Culture', 'Self-awareness', 'Friendship', 'Fomo'] |
How activists used social media to organize during the George Floyd protests | Demonstrators participating in the George Floyd protests in the United States used social media to share operational information throughout the protests, repurposing content from international mass-mobilization movements that have occurred over the past year.
Social media allows a movement in one place to take inspiration from another. For example, the 2019 Sudanese and Algerian uprisings used each other’s imagery interchangeably, in a similar fashion to the Arab Spring in 2011. The George Floyd protests are playing out across transnational online spaces, and, in turn, protesters in the United States are leveraging the experiences of a global user base to mobilize effectively against police brutality. And while significant attention and reporting energy is paid to disinformation and misinformation around protests, social media is also a significant organizational tool for protesters around the world.
In the first week of the protests, organizational information about the protests drove conversation across multiple social media platforms. Numerous high-engagement threads offered advice from citizens around the world who had participated in mass-mobilization and pro-democracy movements elsewhere, including the 2019 protests in Chile, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Sudan. An infographic breaking down how to dress like a Hong Kong protester, for example, was recycled and repurposed as a guide for demonstrators in the United States.
DIY Protest: information spread on U.S. social media
Like other large demonstration movements that have occurred over the past year, U.S. protesters used social media to share organizational and operational information about the protests in their respective cities. Demonstrators used Twitter hashtags — including #LosAngelesProtest, #DCProtest, #atlantaprotest, and #Minneapolisprotest — and posted real-time footage to facilitate locating each other and to direct crowd movements. They used multiple platforms to evade and call out police brutality. In New York, demonstrators have been using the live traffic app Waze and public safety app Citizen to flag the location of police and monitor the flow of other protesters. Demonstrators in Los Angeles started a nationwide trend, using #BLUEFALL to amplify and create a digital archive of instances of police brutality documented over the course of the protests. #BLUEFALL entered Twitter’s trending topics in the United States on the evening of June 4 and had accumulated over 1 million mentions by 494,000 unique users, according to a query using Meltwater Explore.
Flyer explaining the purpose of #BLUEFALL. (Source: @ElijahDaniel/archivearchive)
Demonstrators also used social media to direct the movements on the street and to share operational logistics to educate civilians about how to protest in a militarized situation. Protesters aligning themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement created “protester information cards” that contained links to instructions, legal aid, resources, and literature. Two protest cards, protestinfo.carrd.co and blacklivesmatter.carrd.co have rapidly spread, as protesters shared them on their social media accounts to help mobilize others. According to a CrowdTangle query, between May 28 and June 4, 2020, nearly 150 million Facebook posts linked to either of the cards. Over the same period these two links were interacted with an aggregate total of nearly 27 billion times on the platform, indicating an expansive and viral spread during the protests. | https://medium.com/dfrlab/how-activists-used-social-media-to-organize-during-the-george-floyd-protests-3bb3b527ff36 | [] | 2020-06-17 11:44:02.255000+00:00 | ['Activism', 'USA', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Protest', 'Social Media'] |
Heart Hotel | Heart Hotel
A lot of things can be said about forgiveness. If you’re not ready to, nothing I can say will change that. You might as well stop here.
I’m going to keep going. What is forgiveness? How do we learn it?
I’m probably not qualified to answer these questions. That’s okay though. I think maybe you’ll find the answers you need either way.
So what are we doing here?
I’ve been learning the importance of not doing everything from mind.
Turns out these things we have holding our heads up … well they’re also pretty smart.
If you’re like me, it may be necessary to learn to get into the body by learning it in the mind.
Hell if you’re like I was just a couple years ago, you might balk at the idea. My body works fine. I’m clearly living in it or else I’d be in someone else’s body or an AI, amirite?
But no. There’s more.
It’s not so simple.
In fact it’s probably the simplest thing ever, but the mind will try to understand it in ways that brush it off as being simply feeling good or feeling bad.
So trying to understand it is how books fill with pages and songs fill with lyrics. Simplest, most complex thing ever.
Confused yet?
There’re many ways to get there.
This one’s called the Heart Hotel. | https://medium.com/@jmrumble/heart-hotel-e3396a30319f | ['Jeremy Rumble'] | 2020-12-22 02:01:06.356000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Somatic Practice', 'Heart Centered', 'Forgiveness', 'Love Yourself'] |
To Look Like Me, To Sound Like Me | Navigating Education as a Chinese-Trinidadian
“I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours.”
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
The power of education means that the child of an immigrant mother, illiterate in English, can achieve a degree in English Literature and graduate the valedictorian of her faculty. My story is the story of many. West of the Atlantic 一 in the New World, the Americas 一 are thousands of children navigating the hegemony of English, a language that may not be spoken at home, a language they may not share with their parents. It is in this ‘outside’ language that school assignments may become lost 一 lessons half-understood by children, and home-work in script parents cannot decipher. I remember asking Joe, who used to cut our grass, to help me with vocabulary words from the Nelson’s West Indian Readers in kindergarten. It was the time of corporal punishment in schools and I feared the sting of the ruler burning into my palm for being unable to enunciate these precious syllables. I eventually ended up in a remedial English class in my first year of primary school.
One of my first experiences of being aware of my Otherness was when a boy held a white colour pencil against my arm and declared that it was the colour of my skin.
“Yuh skin like dis colour pencil!” he exclaimed, his own skin the colour of cocoa.
We were sat around the low, communal tables found in all kindergartens, on equally low chairs designed for bodies still growing every day. I was confused; my skin was not white. I picked up the beige colouring pencil and pleaded my case. This feeling of difference would only intensify over the years; I would shed my childhood innocence and absorb the concepts of race, colour, and ethnicity in its place. I was used to being the only yellow body in a room. At times, I thought that my undergraduate professors remembered my name easily, not because it was a simple name 一 two syllables, four letters, L-I-L-Y 一 but because it was always easy to remember the anomaly. How could you forget the name to the face that stuck out like baby hair around the nape of your neck?
I have navigated my life thus far with the acute awareness that I both look and sound different; that no matter what space I might exist in 一 whether it’s in the Caribbean, in China, or in the United States 一 I’m exotic. A DNA test would likely say that I’m 100% Han Chinese, my parents both immigrants from Guangdong province. Yet, when I open my mouth, you can only hear the rises and dips of a Trinidadian accent. You hear the voice of someone raised on a small speck of an island off the coast of Venezuela, born to the ocean, matured by the sun. It has shaped how I’ve interacted with the world, and how it has interacted with me.
This essay comes in two parts; my educational experiences in Trinidad and Tobago, and my educational experiences in the United States as a graduate student. | https://medium.com/@lilykwoktt/to-look-like-me-to-sound-like-me-fdec6f09ac76 | ['Lily Kwok'] | 2020-11-26 20:39:09.983000+00:00 | ['Academia', 'Trinidad And Tobago', 'Diaspora', 'Immigrants', 'Education'] |
Chapter 3 : Numpy, Scipy and Matplotlib | Hello Learners and Welcome Back!
There’s a new chapter in town! We’re glad to introduce you to our new friends: NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib.
Populating the environment
Together with Pandas (go back to Chapter 2 for a brief introduction) they constitute the very foundations of scientific programming in Python.
As we told you before, scientific programming is considered as an appetizer for Machine Learning, so take your time to complete these notebooks.
You can find them on our Github, remember to follow us there for updates.
Have fun!
Simone, MLJC
P.S. If you find any bug / error or you have some problems with the code feel free to contact us at [email protected] | https://medium.com/mljcunito/scientific-programming-chapter-3-numpy-scipy-and-matplotlib-8e215b4ffe99 | ['Simone Azeglio'] | 2019-08-11 20:29:13.358000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Data Visualization'] |
The Evolution of Home Space after Covid19 | The new impact of Covid-19 is the emergence of remote work and virtual meetings. The effect of the pandemic has forced people to spend more time at home than ever before. With millions of people forced to stay and work from home, new digital technologies have helped people stay connected and be productive at the same time.
Working from home will be the new normal for many of us now. Research has shown that nearly 2000 tasks in 800 odd occupations can be done remotely. This also means that 20% to 25% of the workforce in most advanced economies can work from home.
When home becomes a part of an office, people need to adapt to new surroundings. Existing residential and offices will need to be redesigned to accommodate new activities. For people buying new residential properties or renovating existing homes, there will be a need for a home office incorporated in the apartments. Not only residences but even offices will also change the layout structure.
A Singapore-based interior design firm will now relook at how they design the interiors of homes and offices and transform the living and workspace.
Office space in Home
If one does not have an extra room’s luxury, they can double the bedroom into a quiet corner to work during the daytime. A portable mounted table at the corner with required extensions and convenient electricals will ensure comfort and productivity from home without any high costs.
If there is an extra room available, then converting it into an office will be a challenge. Ensuring that the distractions from family members are cut out, selecting the right design with soundproofing needs to be implemented. Interior designs professional should ensure that apart from privacy, decor with ergonomic furniture will play a key role in enhancing creativity.
Health-conscious interior design
With the new virus having exposed many vulnerabilities, safety features will be the new norm in residential and commercial spaces. New interior design trends will emphasize air circulation and ventilation and the usage of materials, which will be easier to clean and sanitize.
Washrooms will be more automated with self-cleaning faucets. The recent trend for open office systems with shared cubicles will be redesigned into partial barriers to protect workers from airborne virus risks.
It is assumed that homes will now have a small pantry area where online shopping packages can be dropped off and sanitized before they enter the main residential space.
Takeaway
Working from home may take its toll on mental health. There is no doubt about that. For those who were used to traveling to and back from the office, the new social distancing will mean isolation, loneliness, and lack of office camaraderie. However, people are getting used to this new normal as people can spend time with kids and elders so there has been some positive side as well. In the coming years, interior designs will play a key role in designing any commercial space. For instance, the future office space will come with lots of natural lights, bright and cheerful colours and other add ons. Designers will be busy building an intelligent workstation to make the individuals more comfortable working alone from the confines of their homes. | https://medium.com/@design4space/the-evolution-of-home-space-after-covid19-32936a618574 | ['Design Space Pte Ltd'] | 2021-07-06 09:36:22.073000+00:00 | ['Interior Design Firms', 'Interior Designer Firms', 'Interior Designer', 'Interior Design', 'Singapore'] |
JavaScript Console Object | Photo by Boitumelo Phetla on Unsplash
JavaScript console is a command line interface that is used in your browser that executes snippets of code. It is highly useful in finding errors in your code in an attempt to debug them. I have used it plenty of times to test my code to see whether or not I was receiving the right data that I was calling within a fetch method to a specific API. It can also be used to view specific changes to variables, states, and messages to make sure your program is working as expected. Recently I have been using them in learning algorithms and data structures to make sure I am implementing the right code to get the desired end result. You can use them in numerous ways in the JavaScript console. Here are some ways you can use the console.
These are the directions to open the console depending on your browser.
Firefox: Menu Bar > Tools > Web Developer > Web Console
Chrome: Customize and Control Google Chrome > More Tools > Developer Tools
Safari: Safari Menu > Preferences > Advanced > Checkbox “Show Develop Menu” > Develop Menu > Show Error Console
It should look like so…
Now there are many different ways you can use the console. Mostly the ways that are extremely new to me because for the most part all I ever knew was “console.log()”.
Console.log()
Outputs a message to the console…
2. Console.warn()
Outputs a warning message to the console…
3. Console.error()
Outputs an error message to the console…
4. Console.clear()
Clears the console…before…
after….
5. Console.count()
Logs the number of times that this particular call to count() has been called…
6. Count.table()
Displays tabular data as a table…
7. Console.time() & Console.timeEnd()
Starts and stops a timer…
8. Console.group() & Console.groupEnd()
Creates a new inline group in the console…
There are more console methods you can use these are just a few I thought were pretty cool. Below are my resources. Thank you for reading!!!! | https://medium.com/@johnnie-agonz71/javascript-console-object-92823762b626 | ['Johnnie Gonzalez'] | 2021-03-08 02:46:02.851000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'Debugging', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Console'] |
How to record the screen on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? | In iOS 14 or later, go to Settings > Control Center > More Controls (Customize Controls in iOS 13 or earlier), then tap next to Screen Recording. Swipe up from the bottom edge of any screen. Press deeply on. Tap Start Recording, then wait for the three-second countdown. Open Control Center and tap or give a call @1-802–267–7989
how to screen record on iphone 7 @1-802–267–7989
Why does my iPhone 7 plus not have screen recording?
You will find the screen record icon in control centre. If it is not there go to settings > Control centre > Customise controls. from here you will be able to add screen recording to your control centre.
How do you get screen record in settings?
With Android 11 or higher, native screen record is included as an option and can be found in the quick settings area of your device.
Go to Quick Settings (or search for) “Screen recorder” Tap the app to open it. Choose your sound and video quality settings and click Done.
Where is the voice recorder on my iPhone 7?
Swipe down on the centre of the screen > in the Search box at the top of the screen, type “voice memos” > if the Voice Memos app icon is shown, it will also show (to the right of the app icon) the name of any folder that it has been moved to. You can also tap on the icon from within the search results to open the app.
How do I record a live conversation on my iPhone?
Tap the blue “Voice Memos” application icon from your iPhone’s menu. Tap the circular red “Record” button on the left side of the application. Your iPhone will now be recording all conversations it picks up with its microphone. | https://medium.com/@john001/how-to-record-the-screen-on-your-iphone-ipad-or-ipod-touch-4781fb9fd0ab | [] | 2020-12-14 09:11:32.426000+00:00 | ['iPhone', 'iOS'] |
Misophonia | Do certain sounds drive you crazy?
Photo by Aliaksei on Unsplash
If some sounds literally make you feel anxious, uncomfortable, or like you want to run away you may have mild misophonia. If the sounds cause you to feel rage, anger, hatred, panic or fear you may have severe misophonia. Or you may simply be grumpy and like your peace and silence.
Misophonia is not recognized as a disorder in the DSM-IV and it is not classified as either a hearing or psychiatric disorder. It does appear to have some parallels with anxiety disorders though. The sounds that are triggering differ from person to person but some of the most common offenders are loud chewing, any mouth sounds, pencil tapping. It is thought that the constant repetition of the sound is what causes the distress of the person with Misophonia. Speaking about the sound of people eating, for some people it is so bad that they can’t stand the sound of themselves eating. Considering that fact my misophonia seems insignificant.
The sound that drives me to distraction, actually it drives me right out of the house, is the vacuum cleaner. I must leave when the domestic helper vacuums the house, so my weekly shopping takes place when the vacuuming gets done. Sometimes, just the sight of the vacuum cleaner out of its cupboard is enough for me to get agitated. The thing is my hatred of the vacuum cleaner noise is so intense that I can’t do the vacuuming myself. This means I must sweep instead and with three cats in the house sweeping isn’t nearly as effective as I need it to be. I sweep (thank goodness we have tiles throughout) and then I use the cordless handheld vacuum to suck up the pile of dirt and the broom bristles. While the sound is still grating, I can stand it as long as I’m the one doing it. I know it doesn’t make sense and I know many people think that if I can use the handheld vacuum then I should be able to use the big vacuum cleaner. Hell, I think so myself and I have tried but it just results in tears and rage. It is a ridiculous situation, and I would love to know why this is, maybe the vacuum cleaners have a different pitch in their sounds, or maybe it’s merely control issues.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
That reminds me of one of the jobs I had where we used to have coffee at our desks, and it was an open-plan office. There was one lady who stirred her coffee for what felt like 10 minutes with the teaspoon clinking against the cup the entire time! That was infuriating and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t very well ask her not to stir her coffee so noisily, could I? That would be pretty weird and offensive. Every time the lady in question got coffee, I would wait until the stirring started then go for a walk around the office, or to the bathroom, really anything that would get me away from the clinking teaspoon before I lived out my fantasy and dug her heart out with the teaspoon.
I don’t know if animals can have misophonia but I’m sure we can agree that they do react differently to certain sounds. My one cat, Baron, absolutely detests the sound of a chair being dragged on the tile floor. He will rush from wherever he is and bite the person making the noise. It’s not an attack, it’s a very controlled bite, firm so you know he means business but not hard enough to break the skin or cause pain. And he knows who made the noise, no mistake about that! On occasion, we forget to lift the chair instead of dragging it, but Baron reminds us of it quickly. Once, I noticed that the bed had moved away from the wall a little, so I pushed it up, flush against the wall. Obviously, the wooden legs scraped on the tiles and Baron came out of the bathroom and bit me on the calf. It happened so fast I didn’t even notice him until I felt the bite.
Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash
Another interesting trick your hearing and mind can play on you is auditory pareidolia. However, auditory pareidolia and auditory hallucinations are not the same things. Many people experience auditory pareidolia and think that they are hearing things and go to the doctor thinking that they have schizophrenia because visual and/or auditory hallucinations are one of the symptoms. Auditory pareidolia is when a person hears a random noise (such as a fan) and perceives voices or words from or in the random noise (the fan noise).
The first time it happened to me I honestly thought I was going insane. I do have Bipolar and I thought that my cheese had permanently parted from my cracker. We had a fairly old window/wall air conditioner and every time I turned it on, I could swear it sounded like an old radio was playing very faintly inside the air con. The sound was indistinct, it was just, just too soft for me to make out the words. I fiddled with the air con, bashed the side a bit as one does with electronics that are being flaky. My husband walked in to see me with my ear pressed against the air conditioner turning it on and off. He thought I was nuts and you can’t blame him. I asked if he could hear the voices, he said no and asked if I had taken my medication that day. I eventually phoned my mother to tell her about this craziness and that’s when I found out that this is a real thing, and I wasn’t losing it after all. My husband did ask me not to stab him in his sleep that night.
Remarkable what your mind can get up to on occasion. | https://medium.com/an-idea/misophonia-f6bc123b6272 | ['Lm Botha'] | 2021-02-12 02:46:58.309000+00:00 | ['Sarcasm', 'Personal Essay', 'Auditory Hallucinations', 'Life Lessons', 'Humor'] |
What are some digital marketing challenges in small towns ? | What are some digital marketing challenges in small towns ?
As Digital marketing making inroads into our daily life, there are still roadblocks that may be hindering the digital acceptance.
digital marketing challenges in small towns
1. Psychology — People in general are resistant to change until it is not forced upon them. Being less exposed to an external fast moving environment also seems to strengthen their belief systems. Hence, even if they are exposed to the digital platforms and well adapted to it, but they prefer the traditional set up.
2. Smaller cities are geographically less challenging to move around and hence traditional marketing is still a force because of people’s exposure time to their activity is more. The increase in traffic will change this scenario sooner than expected.
3. No matter what, the penetration of smart phones are less compared to bigger cities and people still turn to the nearby stores for information about products and services.
4. Many seem does not interested in researching about offerings from companies going on-line. They want a quick exchange of value i.e. sell and purchase.
5. One of the reasons is also because of low penetration of Net-banking. As ultimately one will visit the nearby store for purchasing, then why go online even for information.
6. Education does play a role as inadequate knowledge does make people less bold to do new things.
With people spending an increasing time on the web, marketers are leaning more towards digital marketing platforms to showcase their offerings. The statistics for global ad spend also seconds this theory. However in countries like India the marketers are showing a less urgent intent to embrace the change, especially in smaller cities. They are to an extent correct. But it may change, may be faster than one expect or react. | https://medium.com/@cornerstone-digital/what-are-some-digital-marketing-challenges-in-small-towns-1d172b64b46d | [] | 2020-12-19 06:35:30.394000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
The Oil, It Just Keeps on Spilling | The Oil, It Just Keeps on Spilling
This aerial shot of Santa Barbara Harbor, taken on Feb. 14, 1969, shows it filled with crude oil from Union Oil’s huge offshore spill. (Credit: UCSB Map and Image Library)
Reprinted from Santa Barbara Independent (updated)
Americans learned just how dirty and dangerous offshore oil drilling is 50 years ago. On January 28, 1969, a massive oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel triggered the modern environmental movement.
More than 3 million gallons of oil gushed from an offshore well starting on that fateful day. This deluge of toxic crude coated 35 miles of beaches and thousands of birds and marine animals. It helped lead to the passage of the country’s most significant environmental laws.
But it didn’t end offshore drilling. After a temporary moratorium, oil companies quickly went back to drilling and spilling along U.S. coastlines.
We didn’t learn the right lessons from the ’69 Santa Barbara spill, so we suffered through the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the Refugio Oil Spill in 2015, and countless smaller spills, including more than 40,000 recorded by the Coast Guard in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Taylor Energy oil spill has steadily been spewing up to 30,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Ivan destroyed its platform in 2004. It has quietly become the biggest spill in U.S. history with no end in sight.
Now, the Trump administration wants to ignore all those lessons and drastically expand offshore oil drilling in every major U.S. ocean, while rolling back offshore drilling safety rules. The consequences of such wildly reckless moves are unthinkable. The drilling expansion would contaminate coastal communities, kill untold marine animals and doom us to climate chaos.
So we returned to where it all began, Santa Barbara’s beautiful and vulnerable coastline, to remember the ’69 spill and chart a new course into a smarter, more sustainable future — a future without dirty and dangerous offshore drilling.
About 100 activists gathered Jan. 28 outside the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management office in Camarillo to protest the Trump administration’s offshore expansion plan. Watch news coverage of the event here and here.
It’s time to end fossil fuel leasing in our public waters and phase out all offshore drilling in the U.S., starting immediately.
The best moments of my life have been spent surfing, sailing and diving in the Santa Barbara Channel. Its beauty and biodiversity still inspire and astonish me — even as I’m always vaguely unsettled by the offshore drilling platforms on the horizon. I know a lot of people feel the same way.
For 50 years, we’ve watched the costs of offshore drilling continue to mount. As the Independent reported last week, Santa Barbara is struggling to prepare for sea-level rise of more than five feet by the end of the century, potentially costing billions of dollars.
The legislation that resulted from the ’69 Santa Barbara oil spill — including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and the California Environmental Quality Act — isn’t enough to contain the inherent risks and damage from offshore drilling.
Nothing can ever make offshore drilling safe, and that’s especially true in the treacherous, remote Arctic waters where the Trump administration plans to offer the first new offshore drilling leases later this year. That’s a disaster waiting to happen. It’s only a matter of when and how widespread the damage will be.
Our oceans and atmosphere are now warming faster than climate change forecasts warned a decade ago. Hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather events are pummeling the country. Carbon dioxide emissions continue to climb even as we exceed the carbon budgets needed to prevent climate catastrophe.
Ending the most dangerous, most expensive and most damaging form of our oil addiction — offshore oil drilling — should be a no-brainer. So on the 50th anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill, let’s finally listen to that wake-up call and work to end offshore drilling in the United States.
Blake Kopcho is the oceans campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity based on Oakland.
Published in Santa Barbara Independent on Jan. 25, time references updated. | https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/the-oil-it-just-keeps-on-spilling-d5ae1fa60bfb | ['Blake Kopcho'] | 2019-02-12 19:43:01.115000+00:00 | ['Oceans', 'Trump', 'Oil', 'California', 'Opinion'] |
The day I went out for a walk and ended up having the best gelato of Sofia (and probably of the entire Bulgaria) | The day I went out for a walk and ended up having the best gelato of Sofia (and probably of the entire Bulgaria) Andrea Kayumi Aug 20, 2020·2 min read
Among the many places I have visited recently Gelato Fabbrica is by far the one that matched best my standards when I look for a product of quality, niche and origin.
I noticed from the start that all staff are in reality experts in handcrafted gelato hence their knowledge in the whole chain of this specific market. Moreover, they are patient enough to understand the customer’s expectations and deliver it the best way possible.
I had tasted two different flavours and although I am not able to write their names in Bulgarian here, the experience itself got stuck in my mind. I remember one being lemon and the other which had a grayish aspect was a secret recipe of the chef artisan. The last one was particularly delicious starting from its color playing a trick to the eyes.
All in all I got extremely satisfied with the whole experience. It felt pretty good to spend money in a place that only shops ingredients from local small producers, do not use any industrialized products and make their gelatos in small quantities on a daily basis to ensure its freshness.
If ever in Sofia I highly recommend you to visit Gelato Fabbrica, it is a little far from the main touristic areas but once you take a detour from those places you get access to the best things this city has to offer.
Gelato Fabbrica is located on bul. “Todor Alexandrov” 17, 1000 Sofia Center, Sofia, Bulgária
For more information please check out their website: https://www.gelatofabbrica.com/bg/ | https://medium.com/@andreakayumi/the-day-i-went-out-for-a-walk-and-ended-up-having-the-best-gelato-of-sofia-and-probably-of-the-8c234022f41c | ['Andrea Kayumi'] | 2020-09-10 23:20:49.192000+00:00 | ['Ice Cream', 'Gelato', 'Foodies', 'Bulgaria', 'Coffee Shop'] |
19th century Ti — Strawberry socials and picnics | This is the latest in an occasional series of posts about news reported in 19th century weekly issues of the Ticonderoga Sentinel.
“Strawberries and cream are now in order,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported on June 27, 1874. “Excursions and picnics are now on the program.”
Ladies of the Baptist Church raised about $80 — the equivalent of $1,820 in 2020 dollars — at a festival at Field’s Hall on June 24.
“The ladies served ice cream and deliscious strawberries in a pleasing way.”
Strawberries were on the menu at the Roman Catholic picnic at Black Point on June 20.
Charles Starks won the $2 prize for first place in the foot race.
John McDonald came in second, and William O’Neill third.
The picnic raised $85 — the equivalent of $1,940 in 2020 dollars.
Ticonderoga beer and soft drink sellers were doing a robust early summer business, and gardeners were boasting that peas were in blossom.
“The warm weather is sending the thirsty to Weed and Fleming’s soda fountain,” which was storing its riches in a new one-ton, fire proof safe.
In other June 27, 1874 Ticonderoga Sentinel news:
Owners of the Central House repainted the building’s exterior.
Railroad tracks were laid over the trestle at the mouth of Ti Creek, and the first locomotive passed through the new rail road tunnel.
Editors longed for an enlightened era in politics.
“The time is also coming when qualifications will be considered before party, qualifications before locality, qualifications first and always, by the majority,” an editorial mused.
Politics then sounds a lot like politics now.
“There are several things which are very disgusting about the present American system of politics. Party spirit is carried too far; local jealousy is carried too far,” the editorial chided. “Today we find two great American parties fighting over the same principles which divided them ten years ago and the principles have been settled forever. Why continue the combat? There are living issues, but the parties do not divide upon them.”
And an optimistic thought about opportunity: “It is not rank, nor birth, nor style, but the ‘get up and go’ that makes man great.”
The editors announced they would be taking a week off from publication to relax and celebrate Independence Day.
Click here to read the most recent previous post in this series. | https://medium.com/@writermaury/19th-century-ti-strawberry-socials-and-picnics-16b78ff0f68 | ['Maury Thompson'] | 2020-11-10 20:42:18.903000+00:00 | ['History', 'Politics', 'Weather', 'Gardening', 'Ticonderoga'] |
Should management be on your career path? | Whenever someone is promoted to a management position, their colleagues start thinking about their own career path and wondering if that should be their next move, too. I always encourage people to explore this interest in a thoughtful, intentional way. Managing teams can be a great career — but you have to walk down this path with eyes wide open.
In my time at Atlassian, four women and one man from my teams have gone on to experience their first management position. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things that have been important in my own career. I landed my first management job at 26, and there was so much I hadn’t even considered. In some cases, my instincts got me through just fine. In other cases… well, I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. (Y’know?)
1: Managing your career path is your responsibility
Your company leadership can help you, but they can’t do it for you. When it comes to management, take some time to think and decide if this is something you really want and not just a simplistic view of career growth.
Will you enjoy the operational focus, the coordination, the tradeoff management, and the investment in training your people? Or, do you prefer the thrill of creative or project-based work that you drive directly, that you shape and you create and you own hands? Do you understand the parts of management that aren’t visible?
2: Ask for what you want
Asking to be promoted to management doesn’t guarantee it’ll happen. The business, the person, and the opportunity all need to be ready. But asking is the critical first step.
I almost missed my first chance at leading a team because I assumed it was obvious that I was the right person to step up. I assumed it was obvious that I wanted that opportunity. I was waiting for the recognition of being asked. I thought that’s how it worked.
When I learned that my boss was close to hiring an outsider for the role, I asked why I wasn’t tapped. I had more product, market, and company experience than anyone from the outside. The only question mark I saw was whether I could manage a team of people 10–20 years my senior. The reason I wasn’t on the interview short-list according to my manager was, “I didn’t know you wanted to manage a team”. When I explained that I did, he said the job was mine.
He then used the opportunity to teach me a lesson about clarity of intention, communication, and the importance of being proactive about managing my own career.
3: Maximize your time as an individual contributor
Don’t rush into management. Use your time as an individual contributor as your training ground. This is your chance to build your functional skills, your technical skills, your brand, and your own ability to execute. It’s also the best time to learn different functions so you can apply that experience later as a leader.
Use this time to build a network of people who trust your skills, your decision making, and your work so that when the business has an opportunity for the next leader, everyone naturally looks to you.
4: Don’t wait for the title
If you are waiting for a management title before becoming a leader, management probably isn’t destined to be on your career path.
We all have opportunities every day to help the organization become better. Have you built an incredible launch plan template? Share it. Is someone is complaining to you because they’re frustrated? Don’t nod your head and pile on, figure out if you can help them overcome it.
“Leadership is personal, not positional.” — every true leader who ever lived
If we all knew what we all know we’d be pretty smart. Subtle contributions here and there — helping a teammate, improving a process, giving thoughtful feedback — add up to leadership capital.
5: There’s more than one way to build management skills
You don’t need to wait for a management role to open up. Start by leading projects. Start by training or mentoring a junior team member. Start by organizing a food drive in your office. Start by volunteering outside of work. All of these experiences will help you when the time comes to articulate why you have what it takes to lead a team.
For me, the epiphany came when I volunteered to lead a team of 60 lawyers spread across 14 countries in the development of a 250-page paper on international data protection and privacy, to be published by an international law think-tank. I was totally unqualified to author the paper, but managing the work was something I could do. By the end, I was the face of a massive project that delivered a fresh perspective a difficult and complex issue. The experience was vital to forging my own career path.
6: Practice sniffing out strengths and weaknesses
Develop your ability to understand where people do their best work and where they don’t. A former colleague of mine named Neils used to do the most incredible, insightful peer reviews. Even though they were anonymous, everyone could recognize his and everyone wanted his feedback.
It’s easy to sugar-coat critical feedback or avoid difficult conversations in our day-to-day. It’s equally easy to forget to praise colleagues for great work. But, if you want to build your management skills, start honing your ability to have these conversations.
If they make you uncomfortable, recognize that. Work on it. Over time people will start to respect your feedback. And, if you are really good at it, dozens of people will start asking you for feedback as they did Neils. At that point, you’ve arrived. People see you as a leader.
7: What got you here won’t get you there
If you become a manager, remember that your job just changed. Your priorities just changed. What the company needs from you just changed. This is often hard for a strong individual contributor to adjust to because what they were great at is no longer what is expected from them. Now you are in a new role, with new expectations, new peers, new challenges.
For new managers, the fastest way to get demoted is to keep doing your old job.
I’ve had managers teach me this in a few different ways. The day after I was promoted out of my role on the marketing team, my new manager overheard me on a call helping a sales team prep for a competitive deal. After the call, my manager told me that the best way to get demoted quickly was to keep doing my old job. “If people get upset at you for not doing your old job, send them to me. I’ll make sure they know where to go for support.”
This was really helpful as it freed me to throw myself into my new management role, and it was abundantly clear that his expectations for me shifted.
8: Choose a growing company
Find an organization with good values and good products that is operating in a growing market. There is much more opportunity in companies that are growing than in those who are static or declining. Since I joined Atlassian we’ve tripled in size, and that creates lots of opportunities for team members to consider whether they want to deepen their skills or branch out into a management role.
Managing your first team in a company that is dealing with layoffs or declining markets can be a valuable experience, but it doesn’t look as good on your resume as “driving double-digit growth”.
9: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
This is one of those things that nobody tells you in management training courses.
First, as a manager, you’re no longer the person writing the SQL queries, or building the graphics, or editing the HTML or developing the messaging. This can be scary because the field you excelled in continues to evolve without you, and eventually, you find you’re not great at that thing anymore. But it’s ok. That’s not your job now.
Also, a career in management entails having some touchy conversations. You’ll have to discuss budgets, compensation, promotions, non-promotions, performance issues, etc. These aren’t easy conversations. Get comfortable being uncomfortable and directly addressing hard topics in professional ways. It will serve you well in your personal life, and all along your career path whether you are a manager or otherwise.
10: Release your inner control freak
“The bigger your title, the less direct your control.” — Carine Clark, former Symantec CMO
As a young marketer, I viewed Carine as the person with all the power in our enormous marketing organization. When something wasn’t right, I expected her to be able to do something about it — stat.
The reality, however, is quite different. No C-level executive makes a significant decision without getting buy-in from sales, finance, the CEO etc. Not to mention getting buy-in from the front-line employees who will carry it out. In many ways, the front-line employees are the most empowered to be the change they seek.
For new managers, this can be terrifying. You want to make absolutely sure the right thing is done the right way. But you can take the edge off your discomfort with indirect control by hiring the right people, setting the right vision, establishing the right measures, and the driving change through influence. Find solace in having the right people, with the right critical thinking skills, and the right North Star to guide them.
Management isn’t the only way to grow your career
Don’t assume that becoming a manager is the only next step. Nearly every field out there is getting both broader and deeper. There are loads of opportunities to grow your career as a highly-skilled (and often times, highly-paid) specialist.
Work to develop an understanding of the management responsibilities that go beyond leading meetings, wrangling budgets, and making decisions. Take your time. Be intentional. And if you get that promotion only to discover it was the wrong path for you, you owe it to yourself to make a course correction. Because a career is a terrible thing to waste.
Now, quit slacking off and get back to work ;-) | https://medium.com/smells-like-team-spirit/should-management-be-on-your-career-path-a6aa6b7aad0a | ['Sean Regan'] | 2018-05-31 15:28:07.878000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Leadership', 'Teamwork', 'Career Paths', 'Career Advice'] |
Best Baby Sleep Online Training | Best baby sleep online training for all mothers who are struggling everyday sleep less night.
These Baby Sleep Strategies May Help You
Everything about baby sleep can seem frighteningly high-stakes at 3 A.M. in the morning.
Make one tiny mistake in his or her training and your child’s development will be seriously affected: he’ll either end up waking in the night well into his high school years, or worse, develop anxiety, depression, or mood swings.
And with every sleep expert offering slightly different advice on the ideal timing and method for sleep training you may be unsure about who to believe, how to proceed, or which sleep training method you should follow.
That’s where this article fits in — I’m going to help you separate sleep fact from sleep fiction by zeroing in on 6 science-backed strategies that have been proven to promote healthy sleep habits in babies and young children.
Like the rest of us, your child has a sleep window of opportunity, a period of time when he is tired, but not too tired.
If that window closes before you have a chance to tuck your child into bed, his body will start releasing chemicals to fight the fatigue and it will be much more difficult for you to get him to go to sleep. So how can you tell if your baby is getting sleepy? It’s not as if your one-month-old can tell you what he needs. Here are some sleep cues that your baby is ready to start winding down for a nap or for bedtime:
Your baby is calmer and less active — this is the most obvious cue that your baby is tired and you need to act accordingly.
Your baby may be less tuned-in to his surroundings — his eyes may be less focused and his eyelids may be drooping.
Your baby may be quieter — if your baby tends to babble up a storm during his more social times of the day, you may notice that the chatter dwindles off as he starts to get sleepy.
Your baby may nurse more slowly — instead of sucking away vigorously, your baby will tend to nurse more slowly as he gets sleepy. In fact, if he’s sleepy enough, he may even fall asleep mid-meal.
Your baby may start yawning — if your baby does this, well, that’s a not-so-subtle sign that he’s one sleepy baby.
When your baby is very young, you should start his wind-down routine within one to two hours of the time when he first woke up.
If you miss his initial sleep cues and start to notice signs of overtiredness — for instance, fussiness, irritability, and eye-rubbing, simply note how long your baby was up this time around and then plan to initiate the wind-down routine about 20 minutes earlier the next time he wakes up. (The great thing about parenting a newborn is that you get lots of opportunities to practice picking up on those sleep cues — like about six or seven times a day!)
Learning to read your baby’s own unique sleep cues is the first step to a more rested and more content baby.
Here’s something else you need to know about babies’ sleep cues, something that can toss you a major curve ball if you’re caught off guard:
Babies tend to go through an extra-fussy period when they reach the six-week mark. The amount of crying that babies do in a day tends to increase noticeably when babies are around six weeks of age.
You aren’t doing anything wrong and there isn’t anything wrong with your baby. It’s just a temporary stage that babies go through.
If your child becomes overtired, your child is likely to behave in one or more of the following ways (results may vary, depending on his age and personality):
-Your child will get a sudden burst of energy at the very time when you think she should be running on empty.
-You’ll start seeing “wired” and hyperactive behavior, even if such behavior is totally out of character for your child at other times of the day.
-Your toddler or preschooler will become uncooperative or argumentative.
-Your child will be whiny or clingy or she’ll just generally fall apart because she simply can’t cope with the lack of sleep any longer.
You will probably find that your child has his or her own unique response to being overtired. Some children start to look pale. Some young babies start rooting around for a breast and will latch on to anything within rooting distance, including your face or your arm! When nothing seems to be wrong (he’s fed and clean), but he’s just whining about everything and wants to be held all day, he’s overtired and needs help to get to sleep.
Learning to read your baby’s own unique sleep cues is the first step to a more rested and happier baby.
Because our circadian rhythm (our internal time clock) operates on a 24-hour and 10-minute to 24 hour and 20-minute cycle (everyone’s body clock ticks along at a slightly different rhythm) and all of our rhythms are slightly out of sync with the 24-hour clock on which the planet operates, we have to reset our internal clocks each and every day — otherwise, we’d slowly but surely stay up later and sleep in later each day until we had our cycles way out of whack.
Daylight is one of the mechanisms that regulate our biological cycles.
Being exposed to darkness at night and daylight first thing in the morning regulates the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that keeps our bodies’ internal clock in sync to that we feel sleepy and alert at the appropriate times.
By exposing your baby to daylight shortly after he wakes up in the morning and keeping his environment brightly lit during his waking hours, you will help his circadian rhythm to cue him to feel sleepy at the right times.
Moreover, he’ll start to associate darkness with sleep time and bright light with wake-up time — you’ll find that it works best to take advantage of sunlight (as opposed to artificial light) whenever possible.
Studies have shown that exposing your baby to daylight between noon and 4:00 P.M. will increase the odds of your baby getting a good night’s sleep.
Some sleep experts recommend that you put your baby to bed in a sleepy-but-awake state whenever possible from the newborn stage onwards so that he can practice some self-soothing behaviors.
Others say that you should give your baby at least one opportunity to try to fall asleep on his own each day.
Lastly, some others say that there’s no point even bothering to work on these skills until your baby reaches that three-to-four month mark (when your baby’s sleep-wake rhythm begins to mature so that some sleep learning can begin to take place).
Sleep experts claim that the sleep-association clock starts ticking at around six weeks. They claim that this is the point at which your baby begins to really tune into his environment as he’s falling asleep.
So if he gets used to falling asleep in your arms while your rock him and sing to him, he will want you to rock him and sing to him when he wakes up in the middle of the night — that’s the only way he knows on how to fall asleep.
This is because he has developed a sleep association that involves you — you have become a walking, talking sleep aid.
Some parents decide that it makes sense to take a middle-of-the-road approach to sleep associations during the early weeks and months of their baby’s life — they decide to make getting sleep the priority for themselves and their babies and to take advantage of any opportunities to start helping their babies to develop healthy sleep habits.
Regardless of when you start paying attention to the types of sleep associations your baby may be developing, at some point you will want to consider whether your baby could be starting to associate any of the following habits or behaviors with the process of falling asleep:
-Falling asleep during bottle-feeding
-Being rocked to sleep
-Having you rub or pat his back, sing a lullaby, or otherwise play an active role in helping your baby to fall asleep
-Having you in the room until your baby falls asleep
-Relying on a pacifier
Here’s something important to keep in mind, particularly since we tend to fall into an all-or-nothing trap when we’re dealing with the subject of sleep.
You can reduce the strength of any particular sleep association by making sure it is only present some of the time when your baby is falling asleep.
If, for example, you nurse your baby to sleep some of the time, rock your baby to sleep some of the time, and try to put your baby to bed just some of the time when he’s sleep but awake, he’ll have a hard time getting hooked on any sleep association.
Sleep experts stress that the feeding-sleep association tends to be particularly powerful, so if you can encourage your baby to fall asleep without always needing to be fed to sleep, your baby will have an easier time learning how to soothe himself to sleep when he gets a little older.
Most babies are ready to start practicing these skills around the three- to the four-month mark.
Scientific research has shown that babies who nap during the day sleep better and longer at nighttime. While you might think that skipping babies’ daytime naps might make it easier to get them off to bed at evening, babies typically end up being so overtired that they have a very difficult time settling down at bedtime and they don’t sleep particularly well at night.
And rather than sleeping in so that they can catch up on the sleep they didn’t get the day before, they tend to start the next day too early and they have a difficult time settling down for their naps, as well.
Simply put, it is important to make your child’s daytime sleep a priority, just as you make a point of ensuring that he receives nutritious meals and snacks on a regular basis — your child needs nutritious sleep snacks during the day in addition to his main nighttime sleep meal in order to be at his very best.
In addition, babies, toddlers, and preschoolers who nap are generally in a better mood and have an improved attention span as compared to their age-mates who don’t nap.
Your baby may continue to wake up in the night out of habit even when he’s outgrown the need for a middle-of-the-night feeding.
If your baby is going without that nighttime feeding some of the time or doesn’t seem particularly interested in nursing once he gets up in the night, it might be time to eliminate that nighttime feeding and use non-food methods to soothe him back to sleep.
Eventually, of course, you’ll want to encourage him to assume responsibility for soothing himself to sleep, but the first hurdle is to work on breaking that powerful food-sleep association.
With some children, it happens quickly. With other children, it’s a much slower process.
Once you break that association, he may stop waking as often in the night and may be ready to start working on acquiring some self-soothing skills.
If you are frustrated and angry when you deal with your child in the night, your child will inevitably pick up your vibes, even if you’re trying hard to hide your feelings.
Accepting the fact that some babies take a little longer to learn the sleep ropes and feeling confident that you can solve your child’s sleep problems will make it easier to cope with the middle-of-the-night sleep interruptions.
Scientific studies have shown that parents who have realistic expectations about parenthood and who feel confident in their own abilities to handle parenting difficulties find it easier to handle sleep challenges.
See Here to know more about Baby Sleep Miracle Training
Wish your baby a happy life ❤ | https://medium.com/@soumitrahalder/best-baby-sleep-online-training-f8f74f3aab45 | [] | 2020-05-09 12:07:56.066000+00:00 | ['Baby Sleep Training', 'Baby Sleep Consultant', 'Baby Sleep Routine', 'Baby Sleep Strategy', 'Baby Sleep'] |
The Triumph of 3D Printing | Are you short? Or tall? Or fat, or thin? Do you want to see your alma mater’s logo on everything? Now your chairs can be just right for you, because there is no reason they should not be tailored specifically to and for you. Today a wealthy man can have a bespoke suit. Tomorrow we can all have a bespoke furniture set, because it will cost nothing more to to customize it.
Eventually, there will be a machine that creates for you, cheaply and quickly, any beautiful object you may desire. Today, this can almost be done — in plastic. Tomorrow it will be done in bronze, or cut from marble, and whatever electronics you desire will be embedded within it at nominal cost.
Tomorrow when you read your child’s favorite book to them at bedtime, you will be able to hand them a sculpture of each of their favorite scenes. The princess and her dragon will be there, glittering in glory, perhaps even ready to take wing — because, why not? Printing a flying toy dragon with integrated motors will be commonplace.
When an earthquake or a fire destroys your home, how long do you think it will take for us to rebuild it? Thirty days? Thirty hours? Thirty minutes?
H.P. Lovecraft wrote in At The Mountains of Madness of a space-faring race that used sculpture and bas-relief in place of writing. We may eventually do the same. Trigonometry will now be explained with a manipulable object. You will see and feel the surface of the function. You will understand the four chambers of the heart better when we hand you one.
Our smartphones produce maps — why not models?
Another Thingiverse design you could print yourself: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:47622 — work of ibudmen.
3D Printing vs. Other Technologies
Tim O’Reilly once said that he thought computer controlled manufacturing is the real story, of which 3D printing is just a subset. He is right, of course. At TechShop Austin, the 2D laser cutters are more heavily used than the 3D printers. Laser cutters can be similarly humanizing and artful.
But of the CNC milling, laser cutting, and other related making technologies, none of them quite come as close to producing items of stand-alone value. None of them quite changed my way of thinking as much as my experience with 3D printing.
Getting Involved
If you have any interest in this sort of thing do yourself a favor and find a way to borrow or rent the use of a 3D printer and print out a few objects.
This is a great time to become interested in 3D printing. Maker spaces commonly allow professional 3D printers to be shared as part of membership and offer support and community. I have enjoyed TechShop Austin because of the excellent advice and support given by their staff. Alternatively, you can just buy one for your home if you are willing to do some assembly and learning on your own. Here is a small basic model:
A basic model cost less than $500.
If you buy your own, expect to spend a little time tweaking it before your are happy with your prints, and don’t expect to create museum-quality pieces without a lot of extra work.
Every child should be given a chance to hold in their hands things that they designed and made themselves. 3D printing does not replace, but rather augments sculpting, drawing or painting.
We need: artists to design new objects, craftspersons to tailor objects to the human form and to paint and finish objects, engineers to design parts that make machines better, stronger and cheaper.
But we also need a new sort of skill, called simply 3D Printing: we need people willing to just think of how to use this new capability and to invest the modest effort needed to get new things designed, printed, and enjoyed. | https://medium.com/@robertleeread/the-triumph-of-3d-printing-1d4517b5ce3 | ['Robert L. Read'] | 2015-10-21 05:54:11.923000+00:00 | ['3D Printing', 'Makers', 'Open Source'] |
”Snowplay” | Who needs to romp in the snow more- grownups or kids? | https://backgroundnoisecomic.medium.com/snowplay-9f9a23eefe2d | ['Background Noise Comics'] | 2019-03-05 02:38:24.503000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Cartoon', 'Weather', 'Snow', 'Relationships'] |
Single round-robin tournament problem | Obj = LinExpr()
for k in range(0,n):
for m in range(0,n-1):
Obj+=y[k,m]
M.setObjective(Obj*2,GRB.MINIMIZE)
在setObj乘2，因為這邊只會記錄到連續主場的break，但我們客場也要~
接著是限制式
這邊要注意addTerms的使用方式
當有兩個以上係數時，前面用矩陣去對應
#set constraint
for m in range(0,n-1):
for l in range(0,n):
cons[0] = LinExpr()
for k in range(0,n):
cons[0].addTerms([1,1],[x[k,l,m],x[l,k,m]])
M.addConstr(cons[0]==1)
for k in range(0,n):
for l in range(0,n):
if(k!=l):
cons[1] = LinExpr()
for m in range(0,n-1):
cons[1].addTerms([1,1],[x[k,l,m],x[l,k,m]]) #x[k,l,m]+x[l,k,m]
M.addConstr(cons[1]==1)
for m in range(0,n-2):
for k in range(0,n):
cons[2] = LinExpr()
for l in range(0,n):
cons[2].addTerms([1,1], [x[k,l,m],x[k,l,m+1]])
M.addConstr(cons[2]<=y[k,m]+1)
最後我準備個clock紀錄elapsed time
因為一定很驚人
starttime = time.time()
M.optimize()
endtime = time.time()
for v in M.getVars():
print(‘%s %g’%(v.varName,v.x))
print(‘Obj:%g’%M.objVal)
except GurobiError as e:
print(‘Error code ‘ + str(e.errno) + “: “ + str(e))
except AttributeError:
print(‘Encountered an attribute error’)
print(‘Total:’,endtime-starttime)
結果 / 過程
結果 / 時間、Obj
Total = total time, Obj = min break
Gurobi有一個很方便的方式可以call出所有值，方便確認模型有沒有錯誤
for v in M.getVars():
print('%s %g'%(v.varName,v.x))
print('Obj:%g'%M.objVal)
這邊整理了結果：
當 n = ? / Elapsed time (sec)
* 4 / 0.075
* 6 / 0.12
* 8 / 2.312
* 10 / 1080.774
* 12 / 60000+
* 14 … 直接放棄
以上是自己的實驗過程，若有錯誤的話請多指教，新手入門請多包涵~~~
Reference： https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262220459_Minimization_of_the_number_of_breaks_in_sports_scheduling_problems_using_constraint_programmin | https://medium.com/@davidhuang_17518/single-round-robin-tournament-problem-6734ef010ba3 | ['David Huang'] | 2019-04-18 15:26:34.224000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Optimization', 'Gurobi', 'Python', 'Scheduling'] |
Not a Poem to Be Read Out Loud | Cut and Paste by Terry Bain
There was a time, long before I was able to see
and before
there was earth
and before I had ever sold a single flower
when I wrote poetry.
A poem a day.
I clacked them out on a manual typewriter.
You know what I mean. I clacked them.
They were not good poems but there was one every day
like vitamins.
It was as important as your daily multi, your mother’s
milk.
I spent millions of dollars on my poems.
No.
I spent millions of hours…
Still no.
I spent and spent and spent and nobody knows
how much I spent or what I was spending
but I spent it all and
that is enough.
I lived in a brown basement apartment. Everything
was brown.
My mailman hated me.
One morning I left an envelope for him to pick up and
as he did so, he said,
“I can’t believe this fucking shit.”
It was right outside my door. My door was open.
I heard him. Loud and clear.
I don’t have anything more
to say about that.
It’s an unearthly business,
this kind of business.
And this is an ugly poem.
Unearthly and ungainly and not beautiful.
There’s nothing to be done for it.
Even speaking it out loud does nothing for it.
As you know.
As you all now know. | https://medium.com/bucket-beret/not-a-poem-to-be-read-out-loud-6f80c5642031 | ['Terry Bain'] | 2017-09-01 20:48:13.244000+00:00 | ['Mailman', 'Poetry', 'Poetry Reading', 'Memory', 'Poet'] |
My Interview with Famous Comedian and Movie Star Robin Williams | My Interview with Famous Comedian and Movie Star Robin Williams
I used my time machine to travel back in time to visit the renowned Robin Williams, who was kind enough to let me interview him.
Robin Williams at Aviano Air Base (Italy) on December 22, 2007,. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tabitha M. Mans — Wikimedia, Public Domain.
Photo y Eva Rinaldi, Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 2.0. Happy Feet Two Australian Premiere With Robin Williams at Entertainment Quarter, Sydney, Australia
Before we get started with the interview, here’s some background on Mr. Williams:
“Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 — August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and a wide variety of memorable voices, he is often regarded as one of the best comedians of all time. Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s and rose to fame for playing the alien Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982). After his first starring film role in Popeye (1980), Williams starred in several critically and commercially successful films including The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Patch Adams (1998), One Hour Photo (2002), and World’s Greatest Dad (2009). He also starred in box office hits such as Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014). He was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.” — Wikipedia
A photograph of Robin Williams taken by Michael Dressler in 1979, later used as a cover photo for Time magazine to highlight Williams. By Source (WP: NFCC#4), Fair use.
Robin, I want to thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule to answer a few questions. So let’s get started.
Q. What are your thoughts on the sanctity of human life?
A. “A human life is just a heartbeat in heaven.”
Q. Do you ever get really emotional? Have you ever been brought to tears over something?
A. “Crying never helped anybody do anything, okay? You have a problem you face it like a man.”
Q. You have a reputation for being very tolerant of people. Is that true?
A. “I’m a very tolerant man, except when it comes to holding a grudge.”
Q. I know that, like all of us, you’ve suffered painful losses. How do you deal with that?
A. “Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.”
Q. How would you explain the difference between right and wrong?
A. “What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.”
Q. You seem so upbeat and happy most of the time. How do you manage that?
A. “All you have to do is think one happy thought, and you’ll fly like me.”
Q. How do you handle anger?
A. “For a while you get mad, then you get over it.”
Q. You obviously have an amazing imagination. How much of a role in your life does imagination play?
A. “Imagining something is better than remembering something.”
Q. What are your thoughts on being successful in life?
A. “Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some get it as a graduation gift.”
Q. Does love play a prominent role in your life?
A. “If there’s love, those are the ties that bind, and you’ll have a family in your heart, forever. Haven’t we learned anything from the music of John Lennon? All we need is love.”
Q. What do you think is the best way to change the world for the better?
A. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
Q. I know you’re a huge fan of music. Why do you love music so much?
A. “You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars.”
Q. Do you think real freedom is possible in the world we live in?
A. “But only in their dreams can men be truly free. It was always thus and always thus will be.”
Q. You’ve had some major ups and downs in your life. How do go about forgiving yourself?
A. “Good people end up in Hell because they can’t forgive themselves.”
Q. How do you feel about life and death?
A. “Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death. Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting.”
Q. Relationships among people can get tricky and sometimes rocky. When faced with such a situation, what do you recommend to mend things?
A. “You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome.”
Q. On the stage, your comedy act usually brims with optimism. How do you achieve that time after time?
A. “Comedy is acting out optimism.”
Q. Do you ever worry about ending up all alone?
A. “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”
Q. If you were to choose three things you believe people most need, what would they be?
A. “There are three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, and a navy blazer.”
Q. Sometimes things get rough in life. When they do, how do you deal with bad times?
A. “You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”
Thank you very much, Robin, for answering my questions.
Note: All answers above are actual, verbatim quotes from Robin Williams. If you’d like to read my interview with famous actor and comedian W.C. Fields, you’ll find it here:
__________________
Thanks for reading.
Read my stories on Vocal Media.
Check out Amazon’s Most Wished For. Products most often added to Wishlists and Registries. Updated daily.
These are some of my most popular pieces, with many thousands of Reads: | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/my-interview-with-famous-comedian-and-movie-star-robin-williams-51590854c410 | ['Terry Mansfield'] | 2020-12-30 02:06:53.697000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Humor', 'Time Travel', 'Interview', 'Stand Up Comedy'] |
Securing Globally Important Marine Areas in the Western Indian Ocean | World Oceans Day 2019
A new partnership will build on political will and community support to ensure a more sustainable future for WIO seascapes.
A new partnership between the WCS and the Blue Action Fund will address threats to the marine environment of the Western Indian Ocean at a significant geographical scale. Credit: WCS
By Jason Patlis and Michelle Cordray
June 8, 2019
The Western Indian Ocean (WIO), along the coast of east and southern Africa, is a socially and biologically diverse region with a 9,000-kilometer coastline that contains some of the world’s most extensive and climate-resilient coral reefs and mangroves. This area is second in the world only to the Pacific’s Coral Triangle in terms of marine and coastal biodiversity.
The marine ecosystems within the WIO are critical sources of protein, coastal protection, and income to coastal populations, many of whom are poor and marginalized. With high rates of poverty, often above 70 percent, rural coastal populations are highly dependent on small-scale fisheries and coastal resources.
The WIO has a long history of marine conservation and contains some of the oldest and largest marine protected areas (MPAs) in the world. In recent years, the governments of Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar have taken greater interest in creating or expanding MPAs as well as locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) to address the needs of local communities, respond to a more engaged civil society, and meet international conservation goals enumerated under the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The use of the ocean and its resources is expanding faster than at any time in the past. The Western Indian Ocean in particular is undergoing a significant economic transformation driven by increased links to Asian markets and global demand for natural resources.
Madagascar counts currently more than 80 LMMAs and 20 official MPAs covering 730,677 hectares — most of which are under IUCN category V and VI managed jointly by NGO and local communities.
However, the use of the ocean and its resources is expanding faster than at any time in the past. The WIO in particular is undergoing a significant economic transformation driven by increased links to Asian markets and global demand for natural resources. Threats affecting critical marine resources in the WIO are outpacing efforts to protect them.
These threats include over-exploited fisheries, destructive fishing practices in both near and offshore waters, habitat degradation, coastal development, and pollution from both land-based sources and increasing marine activities and industrial development.
Exacerbating this, local coastal populations suffering from poverty, high population growth, and persistent marginalization — and who turn to marine resources for their very survival — are degrading coastal and marine ecosystems within WIO at an accelerating rate. Climate change impacts that include sea level rise, sea temperature change, coral bleaching, and storm events add additional pressure to the region’s ecosystems and the people who depend upon them.
WCS’s program in the WIO region seeks to safeguard its global reef species and richness, reverse the decline of sharks and rays, and steward the recovery of marine mammals. At the same time, the WCS marine program in Madagascar aims to promote marine conservation based on sound science, a community-based approach, local capacity building, field conservation action, fisheries management in priority marine landscapes, and adaptive management facing climate change.
WCS’s program in the WIO region seeks to safeguard its global reef species and richness, reverse the decline of sharks and rays, and steward the recovery of marine mammals. Credit: WCS
Our approach is based on four pillars: partnership and institutional support to develop and implement national and regional frameworks on marine resource management; capacity building for national and local stakeholders; applied researches; and site-based conservation activities through identification, creation and management of MPAs as well as support to LMMAs.
Now, a new partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Blue Action Fund will address these threats at a significant geographical scale, building on existing political will for marine conservation in the Western Indian Ocean region to achieve long-lasting conservation impacts.
This partnership will expand a network of resilient, sustainable, and effectively managed marine protected areas in two seascapes in Tanzania, Kenya, and Madagascar. The goal of the project is to create 6,040 km2 in new, expanded, and existing MPAs and sustainable-use zones, effectively and sustainably managed by NGOs and relevant actors including government, communities, and civil society. This in turn will provide sustainable and resilient livelihoods tied to fisheries and marine-related supply chains for coastal communities in these areas.
The goal of the project is to create 6,040 square kilometers in new, expanded, and existing MPAs and sustainable-use zones — effectively and sustainably managed by NGOs and relevant actors including government, communities, and civil society.
The two seascapes are the Kenya-Tanzania Transboundary Conservation Area (TBCA), which covers 2,200 square kilometers extending from southern Kenya to the Ulenge Island Marine Reserve in Tanzania; and the Northwest Madagascar Seascape, which covers approximately 5,700 square kilometers — including the Ankivonjy and Ankarea MPAs.
These seascapes are amongst the most biologically important in the region, with high degrees of resilience and connectivity, and represent a range of ecosystem types. Currently, these areas contain a mosaic of poorly managed and unmanaged areas and the project hopes to help ensure ecological and managerial connectivity within these seascapes.
WCS will prioritize community engagement and foster the autonomy of local community managers of marine resources. Community stakeholders will be active participants in co-management of MPAs and local marine reserves, in improved small-scale fisheries management, and in alternative livelihoods activities based on marine resource value chains.
WCS will actively engage women and marginalized groups to participate in project activities. We will ensure sustainability by supporting financial sustainability strategies for target MPAs and engaging private sector partners in livelihood activities.
As a result of this project, two globally significant seascapes will be transformed from a poorly managed patchwork of ‘paper park’ MPAs — disconnected and ineffective co-managed spaces, including large areas without any management structure — into a coherent and planned seascape incorporating effectively managed, sustainable, and resilient MPAs; robust community co-managed areas; and productive sustainable use zones.
Without this partnership, we would lose a unique and immediate window of opportunity to build on existing political momentum to conserve these marine areas before their natural resources suffer irreversible damage.
Jason Patlis is Executive Director of the Marine Conservation Program at WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society); Michelle Cordray is the Program Officer for the East and Southern Africa/Madagascar/Western Indian Ocean region at WCS. | https://medium.com/wcs-marine-conservation-program/securing-globally-important-marine-areas-in-the-western-indian-ocean-b721b25f76e | ['Wildlife Conservation Society'] | 2019-06-09 04:13:41.040000+00:00 | ['Madagascar', 'Marine', 'Conservation', 'Environment', 'World Oceans Day'] |
Introducing useDApp - framework for rapid DApp development | This is the first post of our series on new useDApp features:
1. Introducing useDApp
2. Deep dive into custom hooks and testing
3. Coming soon: sending transactions and notifications
🦁 useDApp - the new king of the jungle
If you are a DApp developer, you probably found out by now that DApps are quite a different animal than a typical web application. They come with their own set of constraints and good practices on both UX and engineering side.
A DApp designed with user experience in mind will:
🔄 refresh after a new block arrives
📺 work in a read-only mode before connecting a wallet
✅ show the status of the current transactions
… and much more.
A Dapp designed with developer experience in mind will:
🧪 work on both Mainnet and testnets
🍼 be easy to develop and extend
🛡️ be error proof and easy to test
… and much much more.
These requirements used to make writing quality DApps somewhat challenging. The tables are turning with useDApp. Time for the new king to establish a new order.
Pragmatic approach
Over the last four years we tried half a dozen of different approaches (including React, Redux, Rx, Bonds and DDD architecture) and we found no perfect solution. We consider using React hooks to be the most pragmatic approach.
useDApp standardises common routines, abstracts a lot of complexity and encourages using good practices that were developed by the community.
Good design is opinionated
useDApp builds on top of modern Dapp stack developed by the community, including libraries like ethers.js, web3-react, multicall pattern developed by Maker and Waffle — used by useDApp for integration testing.
🚦Network connection
Let’s start with a simple example application that shows total ether committed to Ethereum 2.0 staking contract as well as the user ether balance. See the code below:
An example application: show Eth2 staking contract and user’s balance
The example code will display the following interface, with Ethereum 2 staking contract balance.
Once you click “Connect” button and connect your wallet (e.g. MetaMask), your account address and balance will show up.
If you go back to the Metamask and switch to another wallet of yours or change the network to Görli (or any other testnet) the interface will update to show relevant information.
Fun fact: even though ETH2 staking contract is not deployed to Görli, someone did transfer ETH to the same address on Görli network.
The example is available here and the code here.
👩🏫 Below is a quick explanation of key code features:
Config — (In lines 1–6) is a single object containing configuration for the whole application. In our example we set up the connection to read-only chain by specifying readOnlyChain and readOnlyUrls fields.
DAppProvider —(line 9) is a single component that you need to wrap your application in to manage the connection with blockchain.
useEthers — is a handy hook, that will provide all connection-related miscellanies: current chainId, current account and access to ethers instance connected to blockchain. And also a function that allows to manipulate connection like activateBrowser.
activateBrowser() —is a function that requests the user to connect to his browser wallet like MetaMask.
useEtherBalance() —is a hook that fetches ether balance.
Let’s look at all the work around connection management that you no longer need to worry about.
📡 Connection management
Application will connect to a preconfigured node in read-only mode at the page load.
mode at the page load. activateBrowser method requests connection to MetaMask — no providers, no web3, no hustle.
method requests connection to MetaMask — no providers, no web3, no hustle. If a user changes the network (e.g. Mainnet to Görli Testnet) from his wallet, all interested components will automatically refresh and display the state for the current network.
🔮 Tokens, Multicall and Magic
Let’s take another example. It displays all the tokens from Uniswap default list along with the user’s balance for each of them. See the code below.
The code will display the following interface. Note that you can connect and disconnect like in the previous example, as well as switch networks. The list of tokens on different networks will vary.
The example is available here and the code here.
Now let’s look at what the framework has optimised for us under the hood.
📚 Multicall
Every single call to blockchain is handled by the framework, which provides a series of services:
Combines multiple calls into one — every single hook call is debounced and combined into one long list. Once all calls are collected, a single combined multicall is issued.
— every single hook call is debounced and combined into one long list. Once all calls are collected, a single combined multicall is issued. Refreshes on each new block — the framework checks for a new block every few seconds, when a new block arrives, a single new multicall is issued.
The values that changed since the last block will trigger the related components to refresh. Only components affected by the changed values will be updated.
— the framework checks for a new block every few seconds, when a new block arrives, a single new multicall is issued. The values that changed since the last block will trigger the related components to refresh. Only components affected by the changed values will be updated. Provides consistent view — multicall guarantees that all values displayed are taken from the same block.
— multicall guarantees that all values displayed are taken from the same block. Cache — all repetitive calls are cached.
— all repetitive calls are cached. Simple— The whole multicall is dynamic and fully abstracted away. You can use hooks and just not think about it.
🪝Hooks
The previous example uses useTokensBalance hook. Let’s examine how to create a hook like that. See the code below.
Here are a few notes about the code:
useContractCalls — provides access to multicall services described in the previous section. It takes an array of calls or null as an argument.
— provides access to multicall services described in the previous section. It takes an array of calls or null as an argument. Each call contains an abi (provided as ethers Interface TODO ) , smart contract address , method to be called along with its args .
(provided as ethers , smart contract , to be called along with its . If the application can’t do a call at a given moment (e.g. not yet connected), falsy value needs to be provided as an argument. This is needed to preserve the order of React hooks calls. Hence the following construction: tokenList && count ? ... : [] .
🧪 Tests
Testing is important even more in blockchain space. You will be happy to read we created a package just for testing web3-enabled hooks. We will write about it in the upcoming post.
🍩 The goodies
Additionally, the framework provides short but bound to grow list of helpers:
Block explorer links: getExplorerAddressLink() , getExplorerTransactionLink()
, Chain: getChainName() , isTestChain()
Links
🌐 Website
💻 GitHub
🗒️ Documentation
✨ Sponsor us on GitCoin
This is just a beginning. There are many new features that we would like to build and building a framework is a lot of work: coding, testing, solving issues on GitHub, writing documentation and tutorials.
Help us build a dedicated team, make DApp developers’ life better and bring better UX to DApp users.
From Ethworks — creators of Waffle
We are Ethworks — creators of Waffle, the most advanced smart contract testing library used by over 3000+ projects.
For updates — follow us on twitter. | https://medium.com/ethworks/introducing-usedapp-framework-for-rapid-dapp-development-4959361f242a | ['Marek Kirejczyk'] | 2021-04-06 13:44:40.015000+00:00 | ['Framwork', 'Solidity', 'Ethereum', 'React', 'Dapps'] |
Learn To Forgive Yourself | “Be courageous enough to forgive yourself; never forget to be compassionate to yourself.”
― Debasish Mridha
Is the subject of self-forgiveness strange to you?
A lot of times, people find it easy to forgive others who have hurt or wronged them but they ignore the emotions of hurt they feel towards themselves for something they didn’t do right.
This feeling of hurt oftentimes is the reason people remain on a particular level for a long time. They blame themselves and stall trying out new things.
We all mess up most times, hence we have to accept that we are not perfect and learn to forgive ourselves regardless.
Sometimes, you might find yourself cheating, stealing, gossiping, lying, being unfaithful, late, unhelpful, taking a wrong decision, taking a selfish action, nagging…the list of the human misdeed is long. We are not perfect!
This piece aims to help you understand what it means to forgive yourself and how it is so key to making progress and growth.
What Is Self-Forgiveness?
Self-forgiveness is the deliberate act of releasing yourself from anything you know that you have done wrong. It is the act of pardoning or not blaming yourself over what you know you did wrong which you could have done better.
Self-forgiveness is at the core of making consistent progress in life. One of the reasons we find it difficult to forgive ourselves or even others is seated in the place of our ego –where we feel like we are too good to make a mistake or we are too good for others to mess with us.
The Bright Side Of Forgiving Yourself
Unforgiveness creates anger, resentment, stress, sleep issues, and even physical problems. Self-Forgiveness gives us the power to move out of the past, into the present and gives us control over our lives.
Forgiving yourself breeds self-acceptance, progress and freedom in your mind. Imagine you offended someone you really love and they forgave you. It’s possible that even after the person has forgiven you, you might still have a hard time forgiving yourself.
If you dwell on the hurt long enough, you might begin to feel like you don’t deserve the person. Many other thoughts may also come up in your mind which will be detrimental to the relationship.
Self-Forgiveness Is Rooted In Self Love Which In Turn Births Forgiveness For Others
“If I hadn’t forgiven myself, I wouldn’t be strong enough to love someone this much.” ― Dawn Lanuza
Learning to forgive yourself does not just make you a better person, it also impacts the way you relate with others. If you have learnt to accept yourself as imperfect and still forgive yourself in your imperfect state, it will be easier for you to accept and forgive others.
If you understand your human imperfection, it will be possible to understand the imperfection of other people around you — your parents, friends, colleagues at work and even strangers. You will be doing yourself a great favour by accepting the human imperfection and living with it. Forgiveness is a gift of mercy and not of merit.
When you stay in the zone of “self-unforgiveness” you put your soul in a hurting state. Since your soul has a huge impact on the outcomes in your life it also impacts your outcomes adversely. You have to strive to keep your soul healthy always.
How To Start Forgiving Yourself:
Be clear on your misdeed Accept your imperfection Perceive your misdeed as a Tutor Have conversations with yourself Make amends And move on!
If you found this piece helpful, please drop a comment. Thank you! | https://medium.com/@precious-oguntunde/learn-to-forgive-yourself-566446a684c7 | ['Precious Oguntunde'] | 2020-11-16 09:59:32.956000+00:00 | ['Progress', 'Personal Growth', 'Personal Development', 'Self Forgiveness'] |
❤️❤️❤️ Melissa, heartfelt condolences for your loss. | ❤️❤️❤️ Melissa, heartfelt condolences for your loss. Thank you for sharing with us, your words are a reminder that we are all connected, no matter how far apart. | https://medium.com/@pockettdessert/%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-melissa-heartfelt-condolences-for-your-loss-2c3ffd00ed5c | ['Pockett Dessert'] | 2020-12-27 21:49:30.896000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life', 'Love', 'Soul', 'Writers On Medium'] |
FOX-TECH selected as Industry partner for GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID | FOX-TECH selected as Industry partner for GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID
In this unprecedented and challenging time, governments have sought help to tackle COVID-19 as it spreads across the world, and companies have innovated great solutions / products to help us fighting it as well. FOX-TECH CO. Follow May 5, 2020 · 3 min read
GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID (2020–04–29)
The Global Organization of Smart Cities (GO SMART) organized an online forum gathering the government representatives and solution providers to put our heads together — “A problem shared is a problem halved,” and a solution shared is a solution doubled. Government representatives of Taipei City, Darwin City, Economic Board Utretch, World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, Government of Canada (Quebec) in Seoul, New Taipei City, and the German Trade Office Taipei participated in the Online Forum.
FOX-TECH’s presentation on Medical Warehouse Use Case
The FOX-TECH team presented an introduction to its TEMPHAWK solution. They are enabling the perishable goods value chain to increase risk management and policy compliance through proactive monitoring. Their solution combine real-time data, easy-to-use applications with secure, low power, and high accuracy sensors.
Here is the link to the Online Forum presentations https://reurl.cc/rxvaj4
Interested in GO SMART? Join a GO SMART charter and apply for a membership here.
About Global Organization of Smart Cities
GO SMART, an international network of Smart Cities. Connecting and facilitating communication between government and industry. Promoting collaboration between Smart Cities through Inter-City PoCs (Proof-of-Concept).
Many cities around the world are currently facing the challenges caused by the ongoing urbanization process happening worldwide. In their quest to more sustainability and livability, these cities and their academic and industry partners have developed their Smart City strategy. GO SMART will accelerate Smart City developments by providing the platform for Smart Cities and their stakeholders to exchange knowledge and by facilitating collaborations. | https://medium.com/fox-tech-in-the-food-value-chain/fox-tech-selected-as-industry-partner-for-go-smart-online-forum-on-smart-tech-in-fighting-covid-ab419ad4060a | ['Fox-Tech Co.'] | 2020-05-05 06:48:48.747000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Go Smart', 'Smart Cities', 'Forum'] |
How to avoid frustration and stay happy in your data science job | In my experience, a good baseline usually already performs at about 90% of the best possible model (depending on the use case of course). In my opinion, getting to the 90% fast with an easy solution that is interpretable to me is more impressive than spending days or weeks fine-tuning a neural network that is hard to explain, slower to run and only performs 2% better.
Once you have a baseline established, you have something to present to your colleagues and clients. You will have a better understanding of the data, the underlying problem and it will take some pressure off you because you already have a first working solution! Great! Try to get some feedback from your colleagues and clients, to see how this compares to their experiences and expectations. These insights will prove themselves to be very valuable in the next iteration when you will try to improve your model. When your colleagues or clients do not have any valuable input, try to find literature and compare your first results to existing solutions. Before you start working on an improved version of the model, make sure you are working with the right amount of data (read below)!
Subset your data
Another pit I dug myself a couple of times in the past was, to perform my tests and modelling on the entire data set. No, I am not talking about the importance of training and test set here, but about the importance of downsizing! Having a lot of data (is usually) a great position to be in as a data scientist, but when you start working on your problem, don’t make the mistake to use all of it in the beginning.
It’s a trap — taken from giphy.com
Every record in your data set, makes each iteration of improvement and test run slower. Start off, by setting up your machine learning workflow and model architecture on as few data records as possible, just to have a running proof of concept, even if the model performance (in terms of accuracy) is poor!
Once your pipeline is working, increase your data set size continuously and see if the model performance is increasing. If this is not the case, then very likely your pipeline has some unforeseen errors. Not working with the whole data set, will let you iterate and debug much faster!
Subset your training set into a manageable small dataset. If you work with structured tabular data, 30 samples per class are enough to get you started. If you work with structured data such as images, maybe even 1 or 2 images can be enough to be able to set up a proof of concept.
Gradually add complexity
Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash
Once you have your baseline, it is time to gradually improve your model! The most important thing is, do this gradually! Do not change too many parameters at once! This one is really hard to follow, I know! To be honest, I hardly ever adhere to this principle myself, but here is why we should:
While we are moving to more and more complex models, it is important to understand why the increased complexity works!
More complexity means more moving parts. The more changes we make at once, the harder it is to keep track of what change actually caused the improvement! “Was it the new feature I added or the hyperparameter I adjusted?”
By changing too much too fast, we will likely end up with a sort of black box that seems to work just fine but simultaneous lose explainability which hinders future improvement. A strategy that many data scientist seem to follow, is to increase the model's complexity and parameters until the model starts overfitting. Then, they pull the handbrake by implementing some kind of regularization to prevent this. We should however always strive to understand how the complexity we added improved the model and if it is really needed.
I found a quote that sums this up on the MLCMU website:
“When designing a new model, we should be constantly aware that we are not building a complex model for the sake of its complexity but for its expressiveness. Our inability to address this issue on both the intuitive and theoretical level is an intellectual debt that we will eventually need to pay off.”
Prioritize what to work on
Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash
In literature, this is often referred to as “finding the bottleneck”. Machine learning models usually have a lot of screws that we can use to tune and improve performance. Due to a lack of understanding or wrong prioritization, however, many Data Scientists focus on the wrong parameters to tune and waste a lot of time improving the wrong thing.
The funniest thing however is, that often we know that the screw we are tuning is not the most important one, but we keep fiddling around with (unimportant) details, just to keep ourselves busy so we don’t have to engage with the bigger problems.
So how do we find this one magic screw? One way is, to avoid overly complex workflows (see the chapter above). When our model is simple we usually have a good understanding of why it is not working and what to do to improve its performance. However, when things get more complex, we lose this overview and start guessing, turning, pushing and pulling with the expectation that something will eventually happen that will solve our problems! Try to avoid this “technique” since it very often results in frustration and an even more complex model. Instead, try to spend some time on error analysis!
Error analysis
When you don’t know why your model is performing poorly, try to look into the data points that were misclassified by your model (for classification) or show the largest residuals (for regression). Sometimes these observations are outliers but very often (if you look at enough data points) you will observe a pattern that will give you a better understanding of what's happening: Maybe the misclassified data points all belong to the same class? If you have multiple data sources, maybe they all come from a certain sensor that returned flawed data points? Maybe they show more noise than the others?
Furthermore, it is important to know, how well a human would perform on these tasks or more generally what the maximum expected accuracy (e.g. based on literature) for this task is. If you have a reference on what's theoretically possible in terms of accuracy, it will help you prioritize correctly.
Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash
Take-home messages for a happier life as a Data Scientist
Start with a simple model as a baseline. This helps to understand the data better and gives you a first feeling of accomplishment.
Don’t be afraid to use simple methods to get you started. They are a great benchmark for future improvements.
Gradually progress towards more complexity. Only change one parameter at a time.
Do not add unnecessary complexity. Only add complexity if you can explain why it is needed.
Subset your data, this enables you to iterate over your model more quickly and fix bugs.
Prioritize what to work on!
Analyze your model's performance and assess priorities by thorough error analysis.
Further material: | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-avoid-frustration-and-stay-happy-in-your-data-science-job-d4c70c6a0ee9 | ['Martin Šiklar'] | 2021-06-28 18:30:51.795000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Efficiency', 'Happiness', 'Self Improvement', 'Data Science'] |
Movies on Novels | “Some people read War and Peace and think that its a simple novel, others uncover the secrets of the Universe by reading ingredients of a Chewing gum”
This sort-of-ish version of the quote from Superman by Lex Luthor really does sums it all up.
People have different perspectives. I mean there’s a reason that Professor John Keating made all his students stand up on the desk.(Dead Poets Society if you are wondering)
We all love it when studios announce their plans to make movies proclaimed books.
As a movie geek and a book nut I can confidently put this forward that movies have always been underwhelming, a low key version of the books they are built upon.
Now, bear with me.
Yes! the insane graphical clarity does puts the movie on a bigger podium than the book, but for those who have read these books, to them it just seems off.
This story is definitely not focused on Marvel or DC studios.
But instead lets talk about Warner Bros.,
I was honestly taken aback when Ronald Weasley was portrayed as a comic relief. For someone who has read the Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling knows that Ron was much more than that.
He was portrayed as a fierce and loyal.
In the movies however, he was shown as a scared, dumb, weak person and all the bold lines he quoted in the books were all given to Hermoine Granger.
For instance,
The Prisoner of Azkaban
Book:
“No, Harry!” Hermione gasped in a petrified whisper; Ron, however spoke to Black. “If you want to kill Harry, you’ll have to kill us, too!” he said fiercely, though the effort of standing up had drained him of still more color, and he swayed slightly as he spoke. Something flickered in Black’s shadowed eyes. “Lie down,” he said quietly to Ron. “You will damage that leg even more.” “Did you hear me?” Ron said weakly, though he was clinging painfully to Harry to stay upright. “You’ll have to kill all three of us!”
This is so brave of Ron Weasley, he is standing up for his friend even when he has a broken leg.
But in the movie however,
Its Hermoine, standing in front of Harry threatening Sirius while Ron sits somewhere in the background.
There are several instances in the whole Harry Potter series when Ron has been sidelined.
It may not seem like a big deal as Ron Weasley is not even a real person but for those who have developed an affinity towards Ron it was.
In Ready Player One(2018), Ernest Cline obviously wanted to make the novel filmmable so its totally understandable that he altered a great deal of the story to make it possible.
But in the Movie, Wade Watts is shown as the ultimate fanboy of Halliday who is aware of all pop culture facts and references. He is portrayed as the person everyone approaches to get information useful for the competition.
In the Book however, Its Art3mis who knows more about pop culture and Halliday and even helps Parzival win the competition.
I am not complaining, I enjoyed all the movies, I really did.
It was afterall,
It was just a thought.
AA. | https://medium.com/@anshulangira/movies-on-novels-1423f9dc4d64 | ['Anshul Angira'] | 2020-12-13 14:34:36.893000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Movies', 'Writing', 'Books', 'Novel'] |
Politics Turns People Into Enemies | Politics Turns People Into Enemies
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
The world needs more love
People are more alike than different as noted by many leaders. All people basically want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Everyone wants to have security and to be happy. We all want a family which loves us and friends who care. We want a home in which to live and the necessities to sustain life. Most people want to help others if at all possible. Although there are selfish narcissists who are concerned only with themselves, most people seem to care about the world and its people.
This is a time of political divide unlike any other. People of religious backgrounds and those who do not espouse any religious leanings are not abverse to expressing hate to others. There is a lot of anger expressed toward people of opposite political persuasions. The recent campaigns for political office showed extreme hate and vitriole. The attack ads were vicious.
The racism that was exhibited with the killing of George Floyd and the aftermath of his death resulted in many people becoming engaged in peaceful protests and demonstations. Some turned violent. Racism made people become enemies. Those who were opposed to the Black Lives Matter Movement were hateful to those who were involved with trying to stop the racism. The feelings went both ways.
Christians believe in the Holy Bible. These words can be good advice for all people. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:43–44).
Donald Trump has shown extreme hatred for all Democrats and particularly Nancy Pelosi. He has criticized her mercilessly. She has retaliated with some words of her own. Pelosi is a religious person who has said that she prays for Trump. Obviously, she prays for her enemies. [Nancy Pelosi happens to be a friend whom I respect and admire.]
Loving our enemies and those who express hatred toward us is not easy. It is hard to forgive and forget when people have been cruel and disrespectful. It takes a very good person to be able to accept such treatment and not retaliate at least with words.
We all have to live in this world together. Peace is much better than war. Love is better than hate. It would make the world a better place for all of us if we could all get along.
It used to be that members of Congress could agree to disagree without hating each other. That does not seem to be the case at the present time. So many former members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have said that it used to be much more civil. They could debate and come to compromise without being enemies.
The United States is a wonderful place to live even with all its flaws. Immigrants have wanted to come here for many years, and they still are trying to come to the USA to gain a better life. This is a great country.
We should all try to get along. Having friends is so much better than having enemies. It will require more people willing to express love instead of hate. | https://medium.com/political-sense/politics-turns-people-into-enemies-2bcfa8c50661 | ['Floyd Mori'] | 2020-12-12 23:45:00.112000+00:00 | ['Hate', 'Politics', 'Congress', 'USA', 'Love'] |
APIS Monthly Report #16, October 2019 | APISplatform
Official publication for APIS, the world-first masternode… | https://medium.com/apisplatform/apis-monthly-report-16-october-2019-7becda827cdb | ['Sophie Ha'] | 2019-11-07 07:00:18.002000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Notice', 'Jpn'] |
A Zig-Zag Line of a Hundred Tacks | See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Although I maintain my love of “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I am repurposing this publication for a new, long-term project.
For the past few months and continuing on for, oh, the next decade or so, my friend and long-time collaborator and I have been undertaking a modern translation of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
First, let me introduce you to Aaron Prim: I met him as a guitarist, but he is a true multi-instrumentalist Renaissance man. He is like a cross between Mark Twain and a Leatherman tool. Multi-lingual, adept at cooking, gardening, woodworking, masonry, and really more than I could list here without you calling BS on me. Above all, he is a standup man, father, husband and one of my closest friends.
Here is our modus operandi:
We take a week per paragraph. Individually digesting the text and taking notes. Aaron and I meet each Sunday to discuss the prior week’s passage. Once we reach consensus, our interpretation is documented.
You might be saying, “but wait, the versions of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in English already are translations.”
Quite right! Which is why our primary source material is the original ancient Greek text. From there, we are able to parse out the intended meaning of each and every word, while referencing the public domain translations by George Long and C.R. Haines.
We are learning that so much is lost in translation.
Scholarly translations may be word perfect, but often the interpretations lack the essence and voice of Marcus Aurelius.
First of all, the title as we know it is misleading. Modern readers see “Meditations” and visualize the act of sitting in silence, whereas these passages are more in line with “contemplations.”
In fact, we’ll take it a step further: let’s just think of this as “Notes to Self by Marcus Aurelius.”
This captures the spirit. Marcus is reflecting and, more often than not, giving himself a pep talk. I, for one, always imagine him as having it all figured out and passing his wisdom down to rubes like us. He is, after all, an emperor… he should know a thing or two. In reality, he likely had a bad day or screwed something up and is going over it to learn from it.
So, in this, we miss a lot of context. In fact, we can only imagine how much we are completely misinterpreting. Let’s remember that this was essentially his private diary, and not intended for anyone else to read (which is probably ethically questionable on our part; then again, good Stoic that he is, if asked his opinion on the matter would likely reply, “what do I care? I’m dead.)
Our aim is to regularly share our interpretations. I hope that those of you who have considered, studied and examined the text can shed light on perspectives we might have missed. We will be happy to make amendments in order to capture the richest possible interpretation.
Lastly, we chose to start on Book 2. If that bothers you, follow the guidance of the man himself, “Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away.”
We look forward to sharing our interpretations with you.
~J. Basques & Aaron Prim | https://medium.com/rogue-scholar/a-zig-zag-line-of-a-hundred-tacks-417078e9b694 | ['J. Basques'] | 2020-12-27 19:12:43.842000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Updates', 'Stoicism', 'Marcus Aurelius', 'Translation'] |
Introducing the new Desmos Validator Program | As you might guess from the title, this blog post will be about the new Desmos validators rewards program. But before exploring the program itself, let’s first take a step back to understand why we’ve decided to change things a little bit.
When we started our first incentive program, Desmos Primer, our aim was to attract both developers and validators. The first could complete the challenges regarding the Desmos commands, to get used to them and to how to create a dApp based on it. The second, on the other hand, could complete the node creation or update challenge.
While this system worked out very well initially, it later become more complex to deal with, especially for validators. Each time an update was performed, they would have to create a GitHub PR to submit their operator address in order to be eligible to get the rewards. In the long time, this discouraged a lot of validators that either forgot to do it or thought it was too complex.
For this reason, in the past months, we thought about how to improve the validator experience overall. After writing down all the options, we came to the conclusion that the best way to do this was to drop the validation-related challenges and create a new monthly-based rewards system.
So here we are, introducing the new Desmos Validators Program 🥳
How to be eligible 📜
Instead of using GitHub PRs, in order to be eligible in our new Validators Program, all you have to do is to run a validator node.
Every month we will get all the validators that had been running a node, compute the rewards they should get, and add such rewards to our scoreboard.
However, running multiple validators is not allowed. At the end of the program, before distributing the tokens, we will run our KYC procedure. This will allow us to discover if anyone tried running multiple validators and, if so, they will be rewarded only as running one single validators. For this reason, we highly discourage you from doing this.
Rewards 💰
During this program, rewards will be awarded on a monthly basis. This means that every month we will get the list of active validators and calculate the rewards they should get based on the activity of the past month.
Rewards will be granted based on the number of blocks that your validator node has pre-commited. Particularly, you will get:
6,000 DSM if you validate more than 80% of the blocks
if you validate of the blocks 5,000 DSM if you validate 70–80% of the blocks
if you validate of the blocks 4,000 DSM if you validate 60–70% of the blocks
if you validate of the blocks 3,000 DSM if you validate 50–60% of the blocks
if you validate of the blocks 2,000 DSM if you validate 40–50% of the blocks
if you validate of the blocks 1,000 DSM if you validate 30–40% of the blocks
Please note that in order to pre-commit blocks, your validator only needs to be online. By definition, each validator pre-commits each block as long as it is active. This means that no special action should be done in order to make sure your validator is doing its job, a part from making sure it’s online.
Running time ⏱️
Since our previous Validating Summer program has expired on September 18, this new program will be retroactive and we set its starting date on September 21.
We plan to keep this monthly reward program running until the Desmos mainnet is launched. Since we plan to do that in Q1 or Q2 of 2021, this means that starting from now all validators have from 3 to 6 months of time to earn some DSM through validation. | https://medium.com/desmosnetwork/introducing-the-new-desmos-validator-program-1782d3eaa98f | ['Riccardo Montagnin'] | 2020-09-21 08:58:01.395000+00:00 | ['Rewards', 'Token', 'Desmos', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Dsm'] |
51testing provided offshore testing services for smart life integration platform — YIJU APP | 51testing provided offshore testing services for smart life integration platform — YIJU APP 51Testing Apr 7·2 min read
51Testing | 17 Years As A Software Testing Service Provider
Recently, 51Testing and YIJU Technology, a company providing smart life integration services, signed the offshore testing contract and 51Testing provided testing services for its APP.
51testing provided offshore testing services for smart life integration platform — YIJU APP
About YIJU Technology
YIJU Technology is a state-owned holding internet company focusing on information technology services for the real estate industry. Oriented by governmental intelligent monitoring, the company devotes itself to the construction of an intelligent community.
Based on the development vision of “one platform, two terminals, three functions”, the company develops three core products of “YIJU intelligent property management platform”, “YIJU APP”, and “Official WeChat account of intelligent estate platform ”. At the same time, it conducts secondary development of related intelligent devices for an integrated community platform combining government affairs services, estate services, and proprietor services for creating an estate data center and an ecosphere that muti roles of the housing agency, communities, property enterprises, industry committee, and proprietor can interact and share information.
About Project
YIJU APP is an intelligent community service platform providing property services, door open with the mobile phone, visitors access, and more handy service for the public to make the community life more convenient and efficient. In 2019, the company developed an eCommerce system for the software that includes the frontstage and backstage. The frontstage system is user-oriented with the modules of products, users, shopping cart, promotions, orders, etc. The backstage system is used to manage and maintain the user and product information including admin information management, user information management, sales management, income statistics, permission setting, etc.
Testing demand
The company will launch YIJU APP soon, however, the lack of software testing personnel and testing tools make it difficult for the company to ensure the testing process and the result. Considering the short period of the project and the high personnel cost, the company decided to outsource the project to a professional agency. After the strict and comprehensive market research, technical communication, and internal discussion, YIJU Technology finally chose 51Testing as its software testing partner.
Solutions
According to the demand of YIJU Technology, 51Testing built a testing team in a short time and formulated a detailed testing plan at the same time. The testing service provided by 51Testing helped YIJU Technology to optimize the APP and to provide a better and smoother user experience, and at the same time, to reduce the software testing cost for the company.
Thanks to the features of low cost and effectiveness, more and more companies choose offshore testing services. Based on the 17 years in software testing and testing experience for all industries, 51Testing can not only provide a professional and comprehensive one-stop offshore testing service, but also help companies to reduce time to market, save testing costs, and optimize their products. | https://medium.com/@51testing/51testing-provided-offshore-testing-services-for-smart-life-integration-platform-yiju-app-47c6942aeb83 | [] | 2021-04-07 07:07:23.207000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Software Testing', 'App Testing', 'Quality Assurance', 'Iot Testing'] |
The 1 Easy Idea You Can Use Today…To Unlock His Undying Devotion | You know that girlfriend of yours who has the perfect boyfriend?
The guy with the gorgeous floppy hair, quirky smile, and big heart devoted entirely to one person and one person only:His girlfriend.
You’re so glad she found him, but honestly?
You are so insanely jealous. It’s hard to stop watching them. The way he’s so attentive to her needs. The way they seem to share thoughts without speaking. The way he wraps his arms around her so tightly it’s like they’re one body. Watching them makes you ache. Because the guy at your side doesn’t treat you like that.
It’s not that your guy isn’t wonderful. Of course he’s wonderful. It’s more…
How he treats you. He treats you like someone he’s gotten used to.
You know he doesn’t wake up in the morning pinching himself for being lucky enough to snag someone like you.
But you bet that’s what this other guy does. You can see it in his eyes.
The pleasure that radiates from his smile every time he looks at the woman he loves.
So you ask her-half-joking, half-hoping-if he has any brothers. She just laughs.
“Nah, that’s not what you need.” She leans towards you and glances around to make sure no one’s listening. “Want to hear a secret?”
You nod eagerly.
She whispers, “Our relationship was just like everyone else’s before. But then I found out about this crazy secret. It’s from this relationship coach named James Bauer. It’s, like, the key to unlocking men.”
You nod even more vigorously, but she’s stopped talking. You follow her gaze across the room. Her boyfriend is holding up a drink, asking her wordlessly if she wants one. She shakes her head, blows him a kiss, and turns back to you. “So, do you want to know what it is?”
“Yeah!” you say. “If it will help me and my guy read each other’s minds, like you two just did.”
“Okay, then listen closely…”
Women across the world make one universal mistake with men.
It’s not their fault. They’re just following common wisdom. Common wisdom says that men only fall for exceptional women. (Exceptional bodies, mainly.)
If you see a woman with a man trailing behind her like a puppy dog, common wisdom says you can be sure she has something you don’t.
It’s such an obvious explanation and yet…
It’s dead wrong.
That woman?
She’s no more exceptional than you. (Whatever THAT means.)
But what she does have is a very special understanding of men.
She understands that what matters most is NOT what he sees when he looks at her…
But how he sees himself reflected in her eyes.
The truth is this:
Men fall for women because of how those women make them feel.
When a man feels like a hero in a woman’s eyes, he swears his undying loyalty to her.
He can’t help it.
Most women don’t have that effect on him.
When he’s around most women, he feels like a dumb guy. Like he’s always doing something wrong. Like he needs a nanny to look after him.
He can count on one hand the number of women who look up to him. Who really, really respect him.
And he’s always going to have a place in his life for those women.
So, how do you make a man feel like a hero?
It sounds kind of silly.
Do you have to engineer some kind of scenario where he has to save kids from a burning house or a little old lady from getting hit by a car?
No. It’s a lot simpler than that.
To make your man feel like a hero, there’s one easy thing you can do starting right now:
You can thank him warmly for every single thing he does for you.
Did he offer to get you a drink?
Thank him.
Did he clear the dishes off the table?
Thank him.
Did he drive you to a meeting?
Thank him.
He’s a hero to you every day, even though you may not see it like that.
Has your man “rescued you”-metaphorically speaking-any time in the last week?
Maybe he dropped everything to help you. Maybe he was there when you needed a sounding board. Maybe his advice helped you make a difficult decision.
We tend to take those things for granted. We expect it. It numbs us to the actual miracle of having someone to rely on.
But the more you appreciate him… The more he appreciates YOU.
Now, that’s not how most people think.
Most women think they can earn a man’s appreciation by doing lots of things for him.
They’ve got it backwards.
The best way to earn a man’s appreciation is to appreciate everything he does for you, no matter how little.
It triggers his “Hero Instinct.”
(You can learn more about the Hero Instinct in James’ video here.)
For now, just know that the key to unlocking his undying devotion is NOT in everything you do for him…
But in how you respond to everything he does for you.
Did he just wrap his arms around you?
Give a little wiggle of contentment.
Did he agree to watch the program you wanted to see on TV?
Give him an appreciative kiss.
Reward the little things he does, and you’ll find your man striving more and more to please you.
He’s your hero.
And that’s what heroes do.
But that’s just the beginning.
There’s so much more you can do to trigger his hero instinct.
There are phrases you can say, texts you can send, and little requests you can use to trigger his hero instinct 100 times more powerfully than just saying thanks.
And because no man can resist a woman who makes him feel like a hero, it’s worth learning a few of these emotional trigger points.
Want to take your relationship skills to the next level with men? Then learn more about how you can master this powerful technique (from the man who invented it) in this short video. | https://medium.com/@infoiqsolutions247/the-1-easy-idea-you-can-use-today-to-unlock-his-undying-devotion-8a6313adb22d | ['Bright Idea'] | 2019-10-13 00:21:59.024000+00:00 | ['Love Letters', 'Love', 'Relationship Advice', 'Relationships', 'Relationship Building'] |
“Black women defy trend of declining life expectancies. What explains this miracle?” | “With black women being disproportionately overweight, overworked, overlooked and underpaid, you’d think they would be on the verge of extinction.
“What we are seeing is that the message about the importance of health is getting through to black women,” said Linda Goler Blount, president and chief executive of Black Women’s Health Imperative, a national health advocacy nonprofit based in the District. “The data show that the majority of us know that we need to improve and are working on it. We also understand the importance of having a positive attitude. When black women are asked to define what good health means, we say things such as ‘being calm’ or ‘being at peace.’ We don’t use diseases to define it. We don’t let a condition like obesity define who we are, even though we work on getting into shape.”
How the black woman managed to escape such a widespread decline in life expectancy borders on the miraculous. Not only did they hold on to an average life span of 78 years, other recent studies show that black women are also the most optimistic.” | https://medium.com/on-race-isms/black-women-defy-trend-of-declining-life-expectancies-what-explains-this-miracle-4dfcb423ab40 | ['Jess Brooks'] | 2019-08-08 10:51:01.524000+00:00 | ['Racism', 'Health', 'Black Women'] |
SMA(Short Moving Average) in Python Continued | In one of my previous posts, I talked about the SMA strategy and its application to the stock market. I showed the reader how to create the system in python, graph the results, and see the date and price of the buy or sell option.
Today, I’ll show you how I implemented the SMA strategy with web scraping to save new information to my pre-existing file and graph the latest data.
DISCLAIMER: Stocks can be risky, and it is possible to lose money. I have not used this strategy to make any financial gains, investments, or purchases. I do not recommend reading this article and using the plan for your investment purposes and/or financial gain. I am not responsible for your losses if you choose to use this. The strategy below is only an experiment.
I combined the graphing and SMA strategy into one cell to take in the CSV information and creates new SMA30 and SMA100 data. The function works with any stock regardless of price.
The strategy is a nested function inside the graphing function.
All information was stored into variables as presented in the original blog.
I graphed the adjusted closing price, SMA30, and SMA100. These code lines are all in one cell, so it is easier to run and saves time when in the notebook.
The web scraping process is tedious and repetitive, but necessary to not re-download new CSV files every day. The function will scrape five days of past information, so if you miss the sixth day, your table will be missing a day’s data and skew your graph. I realize this is very important to prevent, and a future goal is to run the web scraping code for the stocks every hour to avoid missing data.
The web scraping function is named new_data and takes in the argument stock_name. The stock name must be the abbreviation for the company, not the company name. Example: AAPL is Apple, WMT is Walmart Inc, and TSLA is Tesla. The cell requests the historical data from the requested stocks page and, after some filtering, finds the row of the desired prices. There are patterns in the formatting of the dates and prices, so identifying these and using them to our advantage made scraping much more manageable.
I scraped five dates but will show you two, as the only differences are the variable names and indexes.
The column index date always went up by 7, the open_price column index went up by 7, and adj_close_price index also went up by 7. The quoted numbers in red next to open_price and adj_close_price always went up by 15.
Extracting the price proved more challenging than expected because it did not have a title. I used string manipulation and regular expression manipulation to exclude undesirable characters. I excluded more characters than needed because a stock such as Tesla has more characters than the stock Pfizer. The third, fourth, and fifth date information followed the same pattern as the first and second date information.
Now that I had the five dates of information, I created a new data frame to concatenate my pre-existing data.
For easier access, I created an input function to access stocks I wanted to see.
After inputting the stock name, the web scraping function pulled the information.
I changed the datetime format because web scraping pulls the time. We do not want the time because the CSV file does not concatenate with the time.
I changed the ‘Date’ type to datetime so it would concatenate with the pre-existing CSV file.
Next, I read in the CSV file and checked its ‘Date’ type is in datetime.
I combined the newly web scraped data with my previous data to get a new table.
Now that I had new information, I needed to save it for when I graphed. I saved the file as the stock name I entered in the beginning as a CSV file.
Now that I saved my new file it’s time to graph.
So in one cell it looks like this:
When I ran this cell, python prompted a text box to enter the stock name. As long as I had the stock downloaded where I was running my notebook, it ran.
This post is a continuation of my previous post, and I have future goals for this project. I combined a lot of information at the beginning of this post from the previous one, so if something is confusing, you can find my original post- https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/sma-short-moving-average-in-python-c656956a08f8.
Again, the strategy used here is not 100% correct, and that is essential information going into any trade. This strategy is only an experiment and should read as so. | https://medium.com/swlh/sma-short-moving-average-in-python-continued-802b4902b76b | ['Joseph Hart'] | 2020-09-28 18:32:11.448000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Web Scraping', 'Data Analytics', 'Data Visualization', 'Algorithmic Trading'] |
Iconic Converse, Sneakers For NBA YoungBoy Fans | One cannot simply be ready to go anywhere without wearing a pair of shoes. Shoes embark on a different style statement for each outfit. We wear a different and unique set of shoes for each occasion be it a wedding function, a birthday party, or an event like the NBA Youngboy concert.
Your choice of pair of shoes says a lot about your personality and persona as a whole. You can rock any outfit and feel confident about your look by selecting the right pair of shoes.
These nba shoes are specially designed for his fans as he has a large number of fan following and people loves to wear everything related to their inspiration. You may choose from different categories of shoes designed to fit our exact needs. When going on a trip, one may opt to carry sneakers or mountain climbers that grips all the rough and tough surfaces, letting you enjoy your journey to the fullest. There comes a wide range of sneakers that are meant to be worn on journeys like these. Some line of apparels has also introduced water-resistant shoes which can be worn in areas of knee-length snow. | https://medium.com/@ianbower55/iconic-converse-sneakers-for-nba-youngboy-fans-36dcc53128b2 | ['Ian Bower'] | 2020-12-26 14:09:41.446000+00:00 | ['Fashion', 'Street Style Fashion', 'Shoes For Men', 'Shoes For Women', 'Nba Youngboy'] |
Git Tutorial for Noob Devs | You can use the command git clone <HTTPS URL> to get the project's file to your local computer. The URL can be found by pressing the blue “Clone” button.
Step 3: Make the first commit in your project
Commit is another term for version in Git. Commit (verb) means to include the modified chosen/staged files in the new version/commit. For example, we have files A, B, and C. Then, we changed the contents of those files. If we commit file A and B, then the new version of the application includes the modified file A and B, but still contains the old C.
It is recommended to make the first commit after the initialization of the application where the application hasn’t been implemented yet.
git add <file name>, this command stages file(s) to be committed. We can use “.” to select all files. Thus, the command becomes git add . . git commit -m “<message>”, this command commits the staged files. The message can be anything. It is a description of the commit. Now, we have the first commit.
Step 4 (Optional): Push the project files to your online repository
Push means to upload the commits from our local computer to an online repository like GitLab so that the online repository has the latest commit and in sync with the local computer.
Commit lists of my repository
Make a new repository on the online repository service. Make reference to the online repository in the Git of our local project by adding the HTTPS URL (inside the blue clone button) of the online repository to the Git configurations of our project using git remote add <remote name> <URL>. The remote name of the online repository reference is usually called “origin”. If you cloned an existing project, you do not need to do this. git push <remote name> <branch name>, this command is going to push commits that haven’t been pushed to the online repository. I am going to explain the branch system later, just use “master”: git push origin master
That is the main cycle of the Git. You commit and push to make commits/versions of the project. The system is usually visualized using a directed acyclic graph, a circle represents a single commit. Next, I will show you how to to go back to the previous commit if to undo your works.
Undoing changes
Every commit has an ID. From the image above, you can see the ID of my commits, 7dd983b9, and so on. We can use this ID to specify our desired location when undoing changes. There are special commands to go undo changes in Git: git revert <id> and git reset <id>.
There is also a term called HEAD, which is a pointer that points to the latest commit.
git reset <ID>
This command moves HEAD to the chosen commit and unlinks the commits after it.
A => B => C => D[HEAD] (Before)
A => B[HEAD] (After git reset <ID of B>)
The reset command does not undo the changes in the files. It only makes the changes unstaged. Then, we can choose to restore the changes back to the B version in the above example or still use the changes and recommit them.
git revert <ID>
This command is different compared to git reset. It takes the modification information of the chosen commit and then applies it invertedly to the HEAD commit. Then, the command makes a new commit of the invert-modified HEAD commit. Let see the example!
A => B => C => D[HEAD] (Before)
A => B => C => D => C Revert[HEAD] (After git revert <ID of D>)
Collaboration
Collaboration is key. Application nowadays is mostly developed by a team. Using an online repository (repo) such as GitHub or GitLab enables us to collaborate with other people. I have explained the git clone command earlier. This command can be used for other team members so that each member has a copy of the project on his/her local computer.
The workflow is going to be:
Each member has their latest commit copy on his/her local computer. Each member developed some features. Each of them git commit and then git push and now they have a problem.
If member A, for example, has pushed a commit to the online repo first (earlier than other members), it makes the other members developing the application behind the latest commit. The HEAD position of the local project and the online repo is different. Hence, if the other members try to push their work to the online repo, it is going to return an error.
The other member has to “pull” commits that have been pushed by member A to their local computer so that the HEAD positions of the local and the online repo matches.
We can use git pull <remote name> <branch name> to get the latest commits from the online repo. When we pull commits from the online repo, the development works (the local commits, uncommitted works) of the application in our local computer are not deleted. It is going to be “merged” with the commits from the online repo. Merge means combine files between the two versions. The new files are going to include contains both versions.
The merging process might have a conflict. Conflict arises when two separate versions have made edits to the same line in a file, or when a file has been deleted in one version but edited in the other. Though, you can fix the conflict by adjusting the conflict files (there are signs on the files) and commit the changes.
Branching (Collaboration contd.)
Branching is another feature from Git to help collaboration between team members. This feature helps us to work in parallel with other team members without interfering with other works and also keeps the parent branch from features that are still in development. There are several “workflows” or methods in using the branching feature. I will explain two common workflows that are used.
Git Workflow I: Three-way merging
The main branch that is automatically created is the master branch. This branch is usually used to contain commits of the applications that can already be used by the users. From there, create a new branch using git branch <branch name> from a certain commit There, develop your application freely without any intervention After the development has been done, merge the development branch to the master so that the master containing the new feature To merge, first, go to the master branch using git checkout master Next, use git merge <development branch name>
Git Workflow II: Rebase
From the main branch, create a new branch using git branch <branch name> from a certain commit There, develop your application freely without any intervention After the development has been done, rebase the development branch to the master so that the master containing the new feature using git rebase master! This command will move all split commits in the current branch to the head of the target of the branch. Hence, the result of this command is a one-line commit-graph, no branch in the graph although we have two branches according to the Git (It plays with the pointers). I know the statement is confusing. Consider learning more about git rebase on other resources! Then, go to the master branch using git checkout master Lastly, use git merge <development branch name>
My Experience
In my project and usually many projects, they use three main branches: master, staging, dev branches.
Master: This contains the ready-to-be-used commits of the application. Staging: This branch functions as a development branch for developers. It may contain under-development features or developed features that haven’t been reviewed. After the commits pass the review (checking its functionality, bug-free, etc.), My team merges the staging into the master branch. Dev Branches: These are branches that are made from the staging branch. It is used to develop a certain feature of the app.
Other Useful Command
There is also this useful called git stash. This command stashes your works that haven’t been committed so you do something else, for example going to the other branch using git checkout. Then, after finishing doing other stuff, you can simply go back to the stashed works using git stash pop.
Summary
Git is a very useful thing for developing applications because it can tackle many problems. It is commonly used by many software engineers around the world. Therefore, you have to master this tool.
There several commands that you can remember:
git add <file> git commit -m “<message>” git add <remote name> <URL> git push <remote name> <branch name> git revert <commit ID> git reset <commit ID> git pull <remote name> <branch name> git checkout <branch name> git merge <branch name> git rebase <branch name> git stash git stash pop
This is just a simplified tutorial of the Git. Please learn more in other sources to help you understand Git better. Feel free to contact me for any questions and feedbacks! | https://medium.com/group-a/git-tutorial-for-noob-devs-8e28dae6258c | ['Figo Muhammad'] | 2020-11-16 09:22:43.839000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Git', 'Gitflow', 'Version Control', 'Github'] |
I am afraid to ask for money | Money is the root of evil and happiness, but in my life, I am afraid of it. I have experienced both. I grew up around money but was poor but never without a need. It was Grandma to the rescue every time my mom wasted money on a guy or shopping. Grandma was always there to bail her out. That is how I was raised, no matter how much I spent there was always an endless supply…
When I was 7 yrs old, my step-grandfather hated me so much, he used to tell my Grandmother that I am using her to get clothes and I am a brat and don’t deserve anything. Well, I listened to that till the day he died at 18. Eventually, I did turn into a spoiled brat and felt entitled, but I lived in hell too.
When I was 18 I had the mentality of a spoiled brat that I was just waiting for my Grandmother to die to get her inheritance and ya know what… I had to break that attitude and sold everything I owned except my car, packed my life up and drove back out to LA…
Told no one, just left… 3 days drive, slept in the car, oh man, was Texas a hard state to drive through, full 24 hours….
The plan was to stay with my best friend in Compton and be a backup singer in an old-timer group. I can’t sing worth shit but that was the plan. Well, that didn’t last but a few days, the family she stayed with, was great and I knew them from when I lived in LA but the wife never liked me and told me I need to leave, some stupid shit about being white.
So what then? nowhere to go, I called a friend but she was away filming a movie, so I had no money for an apartment, hotel, no job, just drove 3000 miles because I had to get my attitude out of my head and change my life…
So the next best thing, I drove to Santa Monica Mall, the only place I knew was safe and parked my car in the parking lot and went to sleep. The next day I went to the gym, took a shower and went applied for jobs. I got a job in Beverly Centre and slept in my car off Sunset Blvd in a strip mall, bought an alarm clock set it, went to sleep each night, woke up each morning, went to the gym, worked out and showered then off to work for the next three months until my friend got back from filming in which I then rented a room from her.
Mind you I still haven’t spoken to my family, they knew where I was and was Ok because my step-grandmother at that time reached out to me and I told her I had to do this. I had to break the cycle.
Well, that experience changed my life from being a spoiled princess to a broke get back on my feet down to earth human being and I will never take it back, if I never did that I don’t know where I would be today. I proved to myself that I can do anything I want to, I will find a way and no matter the situation just deal with it and do it.
I got myself back on my feet, I was working extra gigs, production work and still working at the mall and life was great… then stupidity hits me in the form of a boyfriend and who do I become… my mother.
Moved to Oregon, I let him take my money, my car, we were so broke, lived on rice and pancakes for a year… why because he was a drug addict and an abusive piece of shit and I put up with it like a moron because he broke me down so far that I believed that there is nothing better out there but him, and it took me three years, many broken bones to finally get the fuck out of there and never look back. (Ya know those scenes where the wife takes out the frying pan… I can tell ya it’s true, but I couldn’t do it)
Another life lesson, a very painful one but again another wrong path but I knew that shit would never happen again!
Money to me has caused more pain than pleasure, unfortunately, you need money to do anything in this world, I always was like money is the root of all evil. My Grandmother disowned me because I borrowed $200 from her and wasn’t able to pay her back by the time I would have had the money. I did have the money but, yes an excuse. I used it to go to the Dr. I had no insurance and I was sick and had to get medicine and it cost me $150. I offered her the $50 and she said no! so she disowned me. I think it was also the fact that I married a black man too, so she just used that as an excuse. When I was younger she would always tell me, she would disown me if I married a black man, but the funny thing is she always taught me to never be prejudiced by others. Is that an oxymoron?
So when I had money people were my friends, when I was broke they were gone. When I was broke people accuse you of stealing. When you quietly save up money and live life then your still a thief… I would do a makeup job and then it’s time to get paid… that was a very anxious time for me because way too many times, they didn’t want to pay me for the work I did. They figured they could get one over on me. and still, to this day, I am afraid to ask for money 30 years later.
So can you imagine the ups and downs with money and life I have lived…
Well, today Nov 14th, 2019 broke again, why because I am giving my expertise away for free because I am too afraid to ask for money for my worth and expertise, I have also been funding my daughter’s every whim because I am too much of a wuss to say no.
So as I keep trying new ventures with my new found love for funnels I made a plan to make 30k by my Birthday which is the last week of November. Well in 3 weeks, I put on a challenge, teaching about three funnels that every business needs and how to get repeat business.
I didn’t put in all the prework that I was supposed to, got sidetracked (well stuck in my head to do everything else except what I needed to do which was to make connections, plus It is really hard to put myself out there on social media)… lol like what I am doing now is huge freaking like a breakthrough because I know getting out of my comfort zone of hiding behind a computer and being invisible is my 2nd biggest problem with myself so I am just fucking do it and don’t give a shit. This is for me to move forward in life!
I didn’t do what I hoped, one sale, but I also didn’t picture what I wanted either. I just hoped and prayed. When I was younger I could vision stuff in my head and it would come true, I have lost that ability, it kinda got stuffed out of me by negative people and I need to figure out how to get those visions back in my life.
It was still a huge accomplishment for me before I found Clickfunnels and my mentor, I was hopelessly lost wanting a way to make my five years plan a reality. I wasn’t on social media, I posted maybe every blue moon for family, hid behind the computer, felt invisible to the world, could barely speak a sentence because I was so quiet, when I did speak people brushed me off like I had no opinion or voice but then someone else will implement my suggestions as their own. So I just shut down into myself. So for me to get on Facebook Live and do a three-day challenge is fucking huge accomplishment.
Sorry about all the cussing, but I did grow up around 4 older brothers :)
As I was having a great day today, I got blindsided by someone today and I asked my mentor “what skills do I need to have a profitable business online?” I was told I am not resourceful enough and I don’t want it bad enough and that kinda pissed me off because I am making great strides but I am also making more slides backward too… like this stupid head game I have with myself, I felt guilty for sending a proposal out for work that I should be getting $10–20k for and only asking $1,500.
So in a no holds barred deep talk with my mentor she realized that I have a money block. I know when I am broke I have self-worth doubts and feel like a failure. When I have money I feel like I can conquer the world.
I have never spoken about my life in detail to anyone, especially about money. even when I had $$$$$$ in the bank. I heard another coach in Clickfunnels talk about his blocks and money was one of them, we had so many things in common and he is so amazing now, I would of never of known if he didn’t tell his story. He said, “publishing every day changed his life” which I tried and failed to be consistent.
So, one of my other biggest blocks is talking to people and getting the right words out. It’s all in my head but comes out of my mouth garbled and I sound like a freaking moron even though I know my shit. So I figure I need to tell my story, get it out there and overcome my self worth issues and stop giving away my value for free because I am too afraid to perceive myself as valuable.
I am freaking valuable. I can fix your tech problems, I can create a kickass funnel and offer. I can figure out problems that will arise in the future and teach you how to do things for yourself.
I am a money magnet from this point on… November 14th
I am going to make new connections with people every day and not have knots in my stomach
I am going to speak in front of people without sounding like an idiot
I am going to make 10k by my birthday in 10 days
I believe in myself
I am valuable | https://medium.com/@raichelwhite/i-am-afraid-to-ask-for-money-86205ce33942 | ['Raichel White'] | 2019-11-15 02:16:59.813000+00:00 | ['Fear Of Failure', 'Life Lessons', 'Money Mindset', 'Clickfunnels', 'Money'] |
Daada -Father of my Father | I was an orphan, then you showed me the sight of fatherhood. I never asked for my father as you are his father. I saw you and you were with me. You were with me before school time seeing me study like crazy. You were with me in those cold mornings when we have no gas and you put on electric heater, warm your water on it and give me almonds. You were there whenever chacha and daddi scolded us. You over protected us three with your wings. The day you left, I really felt I am orphan. I saw your soul going, ammi crying and chacha shouting. I saw everything and it was like my world has collapsed. I gathered myself and recited. In 9th class I used to study all night for your dream Dadda. “Meri hina doctor bunne gi” not knowing I have to go to doctors all my life. The day you were gone I started to freeze in my school. I had such severe depression that I forgot to live after you. You were the only hope at that time but Allah loved you more than us. You wanted best for us three. I remember that time; when we used to run between you and Daddi for three rupees. You always managed my new pencil. You were more than a father who walked with three heavy bags on your bicycle, with three grand children on foot - School. I never saw you complaining about it. With your health, knowing your son has gone in such a small age, You did it all for us. DAADA
You will be missed always and always.
9th DECEMBER, 2003 | https://medium.com/@hinavahidy/daada-father-of-my-father-d2684b48305a | ['Hina Vahidy'] | 2020-12-11 20:52:41.170000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Grandfather', 'Fatherhood', 'Love', 'Care'] |
How this CPA-Turned-SaaS Entrepreneur Found Success in an Economic Downturn | Sometimes taking a leap of faith is a leap in the right direction. Jerry Huskins, CEO and founder of Fonteva - an integrated event and membership software platform - had the entrepreneurial bug while working as a CPA. After an opportunity presented itself, he built up the courage to chase his dreams. Fast forward to present day, Fonteva has reached over $30 million in revenue with customers in nearly every continent around the world. How did Jerry’s transformative pivot take him from CPA to SaaS entrepreneur? This is his story.
Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey.
I started out as a CPA with Ernst & Young in their consulting business during the early ’80s and through the ’90s. And honestly, it wasn’t for me. But I was too afraid to leave. Deep down I knew that I wanted to become an entrepreneur, but it was really hard.
Luckily, something called “the internet” happened. Through the internet bubble, I started a business being an interim CFO for technology companies — which was great until the internet depression hit in 2001. At that point, I didn’t know where my next paycheck would come from and I was too proud to go back to work as a CPA.
How did you get introduced to Salesforce?
At the time I was thinking about leaving my job at E&Y, my partner said, “I just implemented Salesforce automation for this little bitty company in Atlanta and I wonder if you could just implement software that people rented on the internet.” That’s when we decided to talk to the Salesforce Alliances team and took the plunge.
We started our own consulting business on Salesforce, and before you know it, we opened offices in London and Singapore, with 200+ consultants spread across 18 time zones.
How did you transition to founding Fonteva?
Once we sold our consulting business, I asked myself, “Whoa, what am I going to do now?” I considered whether I should start another consulting business or build software on top of Salesforce. I figured that since I had never built or sold any software, I would go do exactly that. That’s when we started Fonteva, a membership and event software that is 100% native on Salesforce.
What did you learn from the dot-com crash that has helped Fonteva weather this pandemic?
There is an old adage that I saw first-hand during the dot-com bust. It said, “This too shall pass.” That quote has helped us stay strong during this turbulent time. It’s been instrumental in our approach during the pandemic: 1. Hunker down and don’t give up 2. Be there for your customers. Those are the two key learnings we’ve applied to make sure we stand the test of time so that we can serve our customers well into the future.
What makes Fonteva different from other solutions?
We are competing against folks that have to manage an entire stack of software. It’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible for our competitors to keep up with the pace of innovation of our combined solution. Because we are a Salesforce partner, we are able to outsource the majority of the infrastructure and application building tools to Salesforce. This enables our developers to focus on the features that matter most to our customers, like accounting, memberships, subscriptions, events, and communities.
Why do you think Fonteva has been so successful?
Fonteva has grown really well because we’ve been able to leverage the things that Salesforce does really well for hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. Early on, we noticed that nonprofits could benefit from the Salesforce Platform. I saw deals where membership management was a requirement, but the entire category of membership management software had grown up in client-server for 30+ years. Fonteva made it relevant for a very specific group of users in the world by moving it to the public cloud.
What’s your approach to growing your revenue?
It’s not only important to think about how fast you’re growing revenue, but also what you have to invest to get that revenue. With the Salesforce infrastructure, we’ve invested significantly less in this business than we would have if we built it on .net or built a standalone Java application on AWS. So I would say that capital efficiency is very important. We’ve been good stewards of our money, our investors’ money, and have made it go further on the Salesforce Platform.
Get the inside scoop on growing your business. Read the SaaS Leader’s Playbook to Driving Scale.
What is your advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Don’t do it unless you really feel like you love it and have a passion for it. Having an exit plan probably isn’t the best thing for you. You’ve got to love what you do and can’t be thinking about getting out every day.
What’s been your winning formula for success?
Many problems will succumb to massive amounts of effort and unlimited amounts of problem-solving, but we’ve grown because we’ve been willing to invest in our customers. I’ve found, working with Salesforce now for 19 years, that if there is a problem and you work hard together to solve it, to make customers happy and successful, there is no limit to what you can do in your life. | https://medium.com/inside-the-salesforce-ecosystem/this-entrepreneur-found-success-in-economic-downturn-23d016c278ff | ['Miriam Kahn'] | 2021-03-09 19:39:55.884000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Isvs', 'Entrepreneurship', 'SaaS', 'Salesforce'] |
iOS Modularization + Github Actions | This article covers github action workflow that can elevate the modularization development process.
TL;DR: Auto Tagging using Github Action.
Since our monolith project structure eats our building time like anything. It takes an avg of 15mins on the clean rebuild process. After spending a good time researching, we started adopting modularization architecture, that can chunk our project by modules/features.
InterfaceModule
AuthenticationModule (login/signUp)
SessionModule (me and my information)
ContainerModule (a base project)
Tab Modules (depends on the project)
MoreModule
ProfileModule
INTERFACE Module contains only interfaces (protocols in swift) that help to organize feature/tab modules on ContainerModule to create a new flavor(app). Since we kept InterfaceModule as a separate repository, and all teams will be pushing the updates very frequently, we were forced to create a new tag on every successful merge, so that other modules make use this the changes by pointing to a particular tag with swift package manager. Working as a team, manual tagging helps to create tags to a certain limit. The alternative and effective way would be auto-tagging.
Bitrise CI/CD ?
We are using Bitrise (CI/CD) for the main project that helps to
Unit Testing
Archiving new flavor
Deploying to AppStore
Tagging, Creating Release Notes
Collecting SonarQube CodeCoverage
Fastlane integration for other internal processes.
But the problem with using Bitrise for simple tagging on the InterfaceModule requires so much integration from scratch. Adopting Github Action yields good results.
Github Action
On the successful merge of the pull requests, the following github action will be triggered to create a new tag.
Setup can be done once adding PAT (Personal AccessToken) under module repository secrets.
#TAG
Any commit message that includes #major , #minor , #patch will trigger the respective version bump. If two or more are present, the highest-ranking one will take precedence. If no tag is contained in the commit messages, it will bump whichever DEFAULT_BUMP is set to (which is patch by default)
#Major : 1.0.0
: 1.0.0 #Minor : 0.1.0
: 0.1.0 #Patch: 0.0.1 (default bump)
#CUSTOM_TAG
Sometimes we might need a custom tagging mechanism, using CUSTOM_TAG that is even possible. Setting this tag will invalidate any other settings.
[SKIP CI]
If any commit message in your push or the HEAD commit of your PR contains the strings [skip ci] , [ci skip] , [no ci] , [skip actions] , or [actions skip] workflows triggered on the push or pull_request events will be skipped.
DRY RUN
Turning this ON helps in testing the workflow without creating a new tag. Using this with VERBOSE helps in understanding the workflow much deeper.
DEBUG = DRY RUN + VERBOSE
Xcode 13 + Source Control
Creating Pull Request is even much easier in Xcode 13. More on this in the upcoming article. | https://medium.com/@karthikmk/ios-modularization-github-actions-8fc85ff67624 | [] | 2021-09-09 18:42:00.270000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Github Actions'] |
3 Beautiful Songs by the National | All the Wine
“I’m put together beautifully,” Matt Berninger sings on the first line of “All the Wine,” continuing with “big wet bottle in my fist, big wet rose in my teeth.” These are bold, hubristic words by design, making the song feel like a bold anthem right from the beginning. And if you keep reading the lyric sheet, you’ll find more lines that follow the same pattern.
In fact, taking just the words by themselves, “All the Wine” seems like one of the most arrogant, brash songs ever written. The chorus, “All the wine is all for me” (repeated several times) seems to hammer that point home. But actually listening to the song a few times leaves one with a different conclusion. In reality, it’s sad, almost tragic.
Because no matter how proud, how confident the words of the song sound, there’s a sense of melancholy to the music beneath them. Berninger also repeats many of the lines — especially the titular “all the wine is all for me” — several times. And while it’s possible to read this repetition as a brag, I think it makes more sense as someone trying to convince himself of something. The words sound desperate by the end.
The reason I chose to write a few paragraphs about “All the Wine” is that it’s a truly beautiful song (a description I try to use sparingly). The sense of unease that permeates the verses, Berninger’s incredible delivery vocal delivery, and the subtle guitar notes create an ensemble that remains among the band’s best. Even several albums later, this song remains one of the best in The National’s catalog.
Rylan
This song makes the list because of a driving piano line in the chorus that I find mesmerizing. It’s actually much older than the album it appears on — 2019’s I am Easy to Find — and has been a fan favorite at shows for many years. In any case, it’s a really enjoyable song to listen to and has all of the hallmarks of The National’s style.
“It was fun to have a song we played live and didn’t put out,” Berninger said in an interview with /Pitchfork./ “We could tell it was getting better. I kinda wish we could do that with all of our songs.” As someone who rarely goes to concerts anymore, I’m really glad this one finally made it onto an album since I otherwise wouldn’t even know it exists.
Like many of The National’s songs, “Rylan” has several lyrical layers. At its core though, this one seems to be about offering advice to a younger person. “Rylan, you should try to get some sun,” Berninger sings several times, “you remind me of everyone.” There are plenty of other good lyrical moments, but I find that “Rylan” as a song works not because its words are profound on their own, but because their marriage with the music just works when one listens to it.
I’ll Still Destroy You
One of the things that I appreciate the most about The National is that their music can be either background music or occupy my total attention. The melodies are smooth enough to help me concentrate or write, but the lyrics themselves are incredibly deep and poignant. That’s not exactly news to anyone even remotely familiar with the band. But, it helps me set up why I want to write about “I’ll Still Destroy You”: it’s one of the bands very best songs.
The lyrics deal with anxiety, addiction, parenthood (and a few other themes). And like so many other songs by Berninger, there’s a quiet sense of desperation that lies just beneath the surface of the music. It’s a similar feeling to the wild lyrical gesticulating of “All the Wine,” but delivered much more reflectively. Where “All the Wine” is fast-paced, “I’ll Still Destroy You,” starts off slowly before building into a glorious crescendo at the end.
I’ve been making playlists to listen to while I work on various projects or exercise, and I find myself coming back to this song in particular when I make them. The National is one of the few bands whose music can fit many different settings or moods, but this song is one of the most versatile (at least for my tastes). Just like the other two on this list, its true appeal comes from how the words and instruments fit together. | https://medium.com/the-coastline-is-quiet/3-beautiful-songs-by-the-national-a3324d57ba8d | ['Thomas Jenkins'] | 2020-06-27 18:20:46.313000+00:00 | ['The National', 'Music', 'Songs', 'Culture', 'Writing'] |
LeetCode — 1525. Number of Good Ways to Split a String | 1. The Problem
You are given a string s , a split is called good if you can split s into 2 non-empty strings p and q where its concatenation is equal to s and the number of distinct letters in p and q are the same.
Return the number of good splits you can make in s .
Example 1:
Input: s = "aacaba"
Output: 2
Explanation: There are 5 ways to split "aacaba" and 2 of them are good.
("a", "acaba") Left string and right string contains 1 and 3 different letters respectively.
("aa", "caba") Left string and right string contains 1 and 3 different letters respectively.
("aac", "aba") Left string and right string contains 2 and 2 different letters respectively (good split).
("aaca", "ba") Left string and right string contains 2 and 2 different letters respectively (good split).
("aacab", "a") Left string and right string contains 3 and 1 different letters respectively.
Example 2:
Input: s = "abcd"
Output: 1
Explanation: Split the string as follows ("ab", "cd").
Example 3:
Input: s = "aaaaa"
Output: 4
Explanation: All possible splits are good.
Example 4:
Input: s = "acbadbaada"
Output: 2
Constraints:
s contains only lowercase English letters.
contains only lowercase English letters. 1 <= s.length <= 10^5
2. Description
Separate the string into p and q. If the number of distinct letters in p and q are the same, count +1. Return the result in the end. For example, input = “aacaba”:
p=”a”, q=”acaba”. You can consider it as p=”a”, q=”abc”(non repeat letters) => not the same p=”aac”, q=”aba”. As p=”ac”, q=”ab”=> both are 2 different letters. => count + 1
3. Needs Attention
String.count =1 is always return 0 The same letters in a string: “aaaaaaaaaaaa”
4. Values recommendation
“a”, “b”, “c”… “aaaaaaaaaa” “abcdefghi”
5. Reference Code (Beats 100.0%, 284ms) | https://medium.com/@yy929058/leetcode-1525-number-of-good-ways-to-split-a-string-20cf7cd5ee8a | ['Cheng-Che Hsieh'] | 2020-12-22 08:19:58.736000+00:00 | ['Leetcode', 'Ｍedium', 'Algorithms', 'Swift'] |
The Will of My Sobering Plight | Beauty unrivalled
and virtue of gold
I swear my honour to you
As I come closer…closer still
I know nothing
but you to be my most ardent desire
Even Kings are made of clay,
So, could I not touch you
and feel the body of the divine?
Can you feel my heartbeat from there?
For I feel the winds whispering tears,
What could this mean?
If the devils come gather and crown me their lord
still, I would seek your peace
In my pledge of heart to yours
So, like water to a dry soul
will you bathe me in divinity?
and call me your own?
Kevin Gurung
The British College
BBA (Level 6) | https://medium.com/@online-78988/the-will-of-my-sobering-plight-cbf31377e1d6 | ['The British College'] | 2020-12-17 05:52:39.921000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Writing', 'Beauty'] |
Helpers | Helpers
A fight broke out in a Facebook birding group the other day. Some people thought the cowbird egg should be removed so the the Carolina wren chicks would have a chance. Others pointed out that cowbirds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and removing their eggs from a nest is illegal. Someone said that if you remove their eggs from the nest cowbirds have been known to retaliate against the wrens. Someone else commented that cowbirds are lazy and evil by human standards. (They don’t build their own nests or raised their own chicks.) One person wanted to know since when do we judge wildlife by human standards?
Today there was a frenzy on Nextdoor when someone posted about an elderly lady who has no food for her cat, could probably use some clothes, size medium, and may need food for herself as well. So far there are 75 comments offering suggestions (meals on wheels, food banks, someone should call her daughter, etc.), there are offers to drop off cases of cat food (does she need wet or dry?), how about cat litter, offers of used clothing, offers of people food, offers to call DoorDash. Someone warned that the elderly have been known to eat cat food if they run out of people food. Did you know that the Kingdom Fellowship Center is giving away whole chickens on June 19?
Here’s one of the 75 comments:
Forget Meghan & Harry, this is ‘Compassion in Action,’ thank you Nextdoor. Whatever she needs help with I am happy to shop for food items, help with cleaning, organize contacts and perhaps make sure information is large, readable and attached to the door of her refrigerator.
Here’s another of the 75 comments (the post included the street address of the lady who purportedly needs help):
I just delivered a box of Meals on Wheels meals to her and she brought the box back out to me after she had opened it. She said she could not eat any of those meals. I asked her why and she said she just couldn’t. So she may have food restrictions and may not be able to eat the food that people want to offer her.
The helpers then started wondering if there were dental considerations. Maybe the lady also needs a microwave? | https://medium.com/@swmohan/helpers-52e8ef6cc9ac | ['Sarah Mohan'] | 2021-06-16 00:04:58.704000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Birds', 'Elderly', 'Helping Others', 'Compassion'] |
NaNoWriMo has Landed. | NaNoWriMo has Landed.
You don’t plan on submitting that draft next month, do you?
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
It’s that time of year again! Pumpkin spice lattes are out, and gingerbread lattes are in.
My stupid ‘Writer at Work’ stickers in my Redbubble shop that I made 7 years ago are selling like hotcakes.
Cafes are full of people pecking away on their computers and as I look out among them I can only wonder how many are working on their NaNoWriMo manuscripts, and I hope a lot of them are.
My social feeds are full of people encouraging one another to push harder and more sharing their word counts and story plots and ‘should my character do this or this’ questions.
I actually love this part of the year for all of the reasons above. I love seeing all the writers come out in force and push each other to put their creations on paper. To write that book they’ve had bouncing around in their heads all year, or longer. To accomplish something great, especially this year, of all years, because this year f*cking sucks monster monkey balls.
Every day this year has ended with me bitching about needing a drink so stiff I could blow it, and so far no drink has been stiff enough, but NaNo is definitely a good distraction to the current climate.
Now, back to the topic of NaNo specifically. Will I be participating? Not really. I won’t be posting word counts everyday and striving to create a 50k word manuscript by the end of the month, but I will be writing. I’ve spent years working on a novel that’s now done and I’ve been querying it since October of last year to publishers and agents. I’m currently sitting on about 69 rejections. I’ve stopped submitting for now because that’s a hell of a number to stop on.
Also because I know that next month will be a terrible time to submit a novel to anyone, agent or publisher. Instead I’ll be working on an anthology submission and re-working my novel until I feel like its safe to submit again.
Why?
NaNoWriMo.
I know I said I love this time of year, and I do, I love the passion NaNo brings out in people, but I hate the aftermath. Once November ends and the clock ticks over to December 1st, all hell breaks loose and I hate NaNo, because a massive number of participants start submitting their NaNo garbage scripts to agents and publishers.
Yes, I called them garbage scripts, because that is what they are. That 50k you end up with at the end of the month? That big pile of words you agonized over all month, that you bled over and cried over and pushed through the night to complete?
It’s garbage.
G A R B A G E
There is a tiny, minuscule number of writers who will walk out of NaNo with a publishing contract, and good for them, but the rest of you? Garbage.
No, you should not submit that script to anyone professional, and no, you should not throw it up on Amazon as a self published book next month either, because your writing is horrible. Your plot has holes. Your characters need more development. The story should probably be longer, depending on genre. Your grammar would make a 3rd grader blush. Your word vomit is not public ready.
The point of NaNoWriMo is to make you sit your procrastinating a$$ down in a chair and word-vomit out that novel idea onto paper, and what you have on paper at the end of November is not a novel, it is a very rough draft of what may become a proper novel one day.
At the end of November it is a hunk of coal that you must now spend the rest of the year, or multiple years, shredding into a billion pieces and putting back together until it turns into a diamond worthy of cover letters, submissions and rejections.
Yet so many people don’t understand this part of the process. Next month agents and publishers will be swamped with NaNo submissions which is why I am taking a submission break starting on December 1st. I don’t want my work to be immediately shoved into the garbage pile because it’s assumed to be a NaNoBullshit script.
I’ve been told by some that a lot of agents don’t even read through the submissions they get at this time of year, because so many of them are NaNoWordVomits.
I can’t wait for everyone to be fired up and finish their NaNo manuscripts, but those scripts are not submission or self-publishing ready. They’re far from it. When the clock ticks midnight and the deadline hits, its time to take a short break to give your fingers and your brain some rest, but then its time to re-read your mess and attack it with a red pen.
Shred it with that red pen and get read to re-write it half a dozen times. Then maybe it’ll be ready to let your loved ones and less loved ones read through it. Then it’s time to attack it again with a red pen to fix the grammar this time. Then maybe, just maybe it’ll be time to write up a synopsis and a query letter and start sending it out to agents.
But please, whatever you do, don’t submit that big steamy pile of word vomit next month. It’s not ready but it will be after some more months of hard work. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/nanowrimo-has-landed-79f384e48e1f | [] | 2020-11-05 16:22:59.051000+00:00 | ['NaNoWriMo', 'Writing', 'Writing Challenge', 'Productivity', 'Writing Tips'] |
Secrets to a Successful Video Interview | 5 Dos and 3 Don’ts
Photo by visuals on Unsplash
I personally underestimated how much I depended on reading body language when I am in meetings. It is a big part of communication that we are all currently missing. We all take the little things for granted.
Unfortunately, video can only give a little bit of the body language part to an interview. I find even though most of the interviews are done via video, many of us still do not know the etiquette of a good video meeting.
I have had candidates not take a job because they did not feel like the interviewer respected the interview simply because they were not looking into the camera. Do not let that happen to you.
Since 99% of all of the meetings are still completed remotely, we have looked into what helps make it a successful video interview.
Dos:
Figure out your technology.
Download the platform (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.) you are interviewing in and test the platform you’re interviewing in with a friend. Make sure you have a strong internet connection. Make sure your laptop or phone is fully charged.
2. Mimic an in person meeting.
Set the laptop or phone up so that the camera is eye level straight ahead of you. You do not want it so close that all your audience will see is your eyes and your forehead, and not too far away. You want the camera to see your shoulders and up.
3. Ensure you have good light.
Natural light is best but don’t have your back against it or you’ll just be a shadow!
4. Dress the part.
Interviewing for a start up, go business casual. Interviewing for a management consulting role — suit and tie.
5. Good posture
This is an interview so body language matters. Make sure you have good eye contact. If you are taking notes, let your audience know ahead of time.
Don’t:
1. Be late!!! Check in 5 minutes early
2. Only change your shirt.
If you have to get up to get anything, they will see what you’re wearing!
3. Have anyone else in the background (people or pets). You want to let the interviewers focus on you.
Hope this helps. If you have a phone interview coming up, read this first: | https://medium.com/@junecoffey/secrets-to-a-successful-video-interview-ae5f03a797dd | ['June Coffey'] | 2020-11-15 02:50:26.524000+00:00 | ['Interview Preparation', 'Interview Tips', 'Recruitment', 'Career Change', 'Interview'] |
類別練習 Class Inheritance | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/%E5%BD%BC%E5%BE%97%E6%BD%98%E7%9A%84-swift-ios-app-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E6%95%99%E5%AE%A4/%E9%A1%9E%E5%88%A5%E7%B7%B4%E7%BF%92-class-inheritance-d41ff14a465a | ['Boting Wang'] | 2020-12-27 13:21:49.845000+00:00 | ['Class', 'iOS', 'iOS App Development', 'Xcode', 'Swift'] |
How Do COVID-19 Vaccinations Differ Around the World? | There are at least 217 countries and territories offering COVID-19 vaccines. They’re all part of the largest vaccination effort in the history of the world. And although they all share a common goal to vaccinate their populations, they have different ways of doing so.
What vaccines are out there?
The U.S. has three FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines available: Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. These are three of the 18 vaccines currently in use worldwide. Another 265 vaccine candidates are currently in development, with 95 in clinical testing. While that sounds like a lot, it is absolutely crucial to have this variety in order to vaccinate the entire world.
Rigorous testing is done before vaccines are given to the public, and many vaccine candidates don’t make the cut. All vaccines recommended for use in the U.S. have successfully completed clinical trials and were confirmed as safe and effective.
You can read about which vaccines are available around the world here.
Are there globally authorized vaccines?
Each country has its own authorization and approval process. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees the use of vaccines, including COVID-19. Other countries have their own national or regional regulatory agencies that can authorize or approve use.
While the World Health Organization (WHO) does not approve vaccines, vaccine makers can request prequalification by the WHO — a process to determine quality assurance. The WHO similarly maintains an emergency use listing (EUL) for unlicensed vaccines and other medical products during a health crisis. This allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer COVID-19 vaccines.
Seven vaccines currently have a WHO EUL.
What are vaccination rates like in other countries?
Over 5 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, and that number is climbing by hundreds of thousands each day. While that’s great progress, we still have a long road ahead. Just 16% of the global population is fully vaccinated.
In the U.S., we’re fortunate to have such a good supply of vaccines. We’ve already fully vaccinated about 50% of the U.S. population. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for many people in other countries.
Only 1.4% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. In some places, front-line health workers haven’t even received their first shot yet.
Even though international efforts are trying to improve vaccine access around the globe, estimates show that some countries may not reach needed vaccination levels until 2023. Increasing the number of vaccines in development will help address some of the inequities around vaccine supply.
Am I still considered fully vaccinated if I got a vaccine that’s not available in a country I’m traveling to?
It’s ultimately up to the country where you’re traveling to decide. That said, if you are an American traveling internationally, your fully vaccinated status will probably be adequate.
The WHO urged all countries to recognize its EUL vaccines, including the three available in the U.S., but the countries and regions have the final say. For instance, the European Union approved four vaccines for travelers: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Vaxzevria (Oxford/Astra Zeneca).
If you’re considering international travel, your best bet is to first check with the U.S. Department of State and your destination’s Office of Foreign Affairs or Ministry of Health. When traveling, be sure to bring your vaccine card and consider taking a cell phone picture of it for easy access. If you’re already enrolled, you can visit MyIR if you lose or misplace your card.
And remember, you are required to show a negative COVID-19 test result, or documentation of recovery from COVID-19, before boarding a flight to the U.S.
What about my friends and family who are traveling to the U.S.? Will they be considered fully vaccinated?
It depends. There are still significant restrictions in place for people from other countries traveling to the U.S. We expect to learn more about this soon, once restrictions loosen. If people are traveling to the U.S. on a visa (college students, workers, etc.), we recommend checking with their school or employer for guidance.
Once in the U.S., fully vaccinated visitors SHOULD NOT get vaccinated again. The CDC does not recommend revaccinating patients who completed a COVID-19 vaccine series authorized by the WHO. Learn more about what the CDC recommends for people vaccinated for COVID-19 outside of the U.S.
However, the CDC does recommend FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines for those who:
only partially completed a WHO authorized COVID-19 vaccine series.
received any partial or full COVID-19 vaccine series not authorized by the WHO or the FDA.
Are there other precautions international travelers should take?
Absolutely. COVID cases are increasing worldwide, so it’s important to be extra cautious when traveling. It’s also important to look at local guidance to ensure you’re in compliance with their policies. And if you’re still worried, you can always take some additional steps to protect yourself.
Be diligent about your W’s — especially if you’re unvaccinated: wear a mask, wash your hands, watch your distance. And for people traveling to Washington, there’s a fourth W — enable WA Notify. It’s a free, anonymous COVID-19 exposure alert for your smartphone. | https://medium.com/wadepthealth/how-do-covid-19-vaccinations-differ-around-the-world-9bb84c333cd3 | ['Washington State Department Of Health'] | 2021-09-15 23:17:08.530000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Public Health', 'Covid 19', 'Covid 19 Vaccine', 'International'] |
How I switched careers to become a software engineer in 11 months (and how you can too) | Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
Before I decided to move into software engineering, I was a marketer in the tech world. I tried quite a few types of marketing - events, public relations, search engine optimization, content creation, digital advertising, email marketing - but never found a perfect fit.
My last company was a personal finance startup with solid brand recognition. Their motto was content is king. Unlike most tech companies, there were a ton of editors and journalists and only a handful of software engineers.
A year after I started, the company decided to shake up its strategy. Content was no longer enough. A plethora of new personal finance startups launched mobile apps that year, promising to help consumers track their finances, learn to budget, eliminate student loan debt, and consolidate credit card payments. Not wanting to be left behind, my company began thinning the editorial side of the business while rapidly hiring product folks, engineers, and designers.
An inner feeling made me realize then that it was time to switch gears. ⚙️
In this article, I’ll go through how I switched careers to become a software engineer from start to finish. So let’s get started.
Step 1: Research immersive programs
I began to research immersive classes in software engineering. I liked that App Academy and Hack Reactor both offered free in-person intro classes to help prospective students prepare for their entrance exams. I also heard positive things about Hackbright and have since met a number of talented women who attended their program.
Ultimately, Hack Reactor won me over because it offered a rigorous one-month Structured Study Program (SSP) course. The program was designed to transform participants from beginners to Hack Reactor Immersive ready.
The curriculum seemed practical. It helped that I knew three acquaintances who had successfully landed software engineering roles after completing the program.
Step 2: Coding immersion
Once I narrowed my focus to Hack Reactor, I needed to prepare for SSP and the entrance exam. To do so, I completed the Udacity Intro to JavaScript course along with a few other online courses in JavaScript.
Between SSP and Hack Reactor’s immersive program, I spent four months coding up to 6 days a week, 12+ hours a day. I sharpened my problem solving skills, improved my understanding of JavaScript, learned front-end and back-end frameworks, and practiced working alongside other engineers.
Step 3: Study for the job search with online courses
As intense as my experience was at Hack Reactor, it was only the beginning. I had a growing list of concepts that I struggled with during the program. At the top of that list was algorithms and data structures.
Software immersive programs are great for teaching you the skills you’ll need on the job as an engineer. Training for job interviews is a bit of a different beast, and mastery of algorithms and data structures is often the key to being offered an on-site. I tried applying to companies that forgo traditional white-boarding, but they’re few and far between.
Cracking the Coding Interview is seen as the penultimate resource for learning algorithms. However, it wasn’t the resource I found most useful, personally. Instead, these are the resources I used to prepare for technical interviews and onsites:
CodePath - an 8-week course covering all the most frequently asked interview questions from data structures to system design
InterviewCake - a guide that explains the most common patterns found in algorithmic thinking
LeetCode - endless practice problems
Grokking the System Design Interview - explanations of the tradeoffs involved in common system design questions, such as how to design Instagram
Never stop learning
Step 4: Take advice from experienced engineers
I asked a ton of senior engineers within my network for advice on the job search. Everyone was gracious with their time and excited to see new types of talent entering the industry. Here were some of the most helpful pieces of advice:
Get a foot in the door: Every engineer has to start somewhere. Many engineers landed at brand name companies after working at tiny no-names. Don’t worry if you don’t find a perfect fit right away.
Every engineer has to start somewhere. Many engineers landed at brand name companies after working at tiny no-names. Don’t worry if you don’t find a perfect fit right away. Rewrite your Résumé: If you’re a new engineer, your résumé is likely written in a way that makes you look really junior. Focus on the tradeoffs and technical decisions you made, not what you implemented.
If you’re a new engineer, your résumé is likely written in a way that makes you look really junior. Focus on the tradeoffs and technical decisions you made, not what you implemented. Look for mentorship opportunities: Aim for a team with 30+ engineers, because this will teach you best coding practices and provide mentorship opportunities. Otherwise, know who your manager will be and make sure they’re able to help you make technical decisions (young engineering managers are often thrown into the role with limited people or leadership experience).
Aim for a team with 30+ engineers, because this will teach you best coding practices and provide mentorship opportunities. Otherwise, know who your manager will be and make sure they’re able to help you make technical decisions (young engineering managers are often thrown into the role with limited people or leadership experience). Work on personal projects: This will demonstrate your enthusiasm for engineering during the job search and give you something unique to talk about in interviews.
Step 5: Ignore unhelpful advice from recruiters and others
My job search took place in summer 2018. I learned to tune out a lot of well-intentioned but unhelpful suggestions. These came from recruiters, fellow engineers, and concerned friends. Here are some of them:
The job market has slowed down for entry-level engineers over the past few years. Mid-sized companies are only hiring for senior positions and have put a hiring freeze on junior candidates.
for entry-level engineers over the past few years. Mid-sized companies are only hiring for senior positions and have put a hiring freeze on junior candidates. Not only is the market oversaturated, but the quality of bootcamp graduates has gone down in past years. It will be tough to find a job.
You’re a strong candidate but our company doesn’t have the resources to mentor you. Please stay in touch we’d love to interview you again when you have more experience.
Good luck getting hired during the summer.You’re competing with all computer science students who have summer internships. Try again in the fall when more positions open up.
Good luck getting hired during the fall. Hiring will slow down as companies approach Q4. If you don’t find a job this summer, you’re going to have to wait until next year.
Try becoming a product manager or finding an internship. Maybe you can pivot into software engineering when you’re ready.
I’m certain many aspiring engineers hear similar types of feedback. The key is learning to tune it out and stay focused, otherwise it’s easy to burn out.
Step 6: Create a study plan
After Hack Reactor, I spent a lot of time reviewing technical concepts in preparation for tech screens and interviews. Here’s my rough study plan:
Study algorithms & data structures.
Study system design.
Do a hackathon (it won’t teach you engineering best practices, but it’s a fun group experience).
Build a personal portfolio (or another project you can talk about).
Write down every interview question from every phone screen & onsite. Review the answers you don’t know.
Practice with others. Algorithms are more fun when you’re working on them in a small group. (Pramp and CodePath were two ways I found practice partners).
Step 7: Build an online presence
Make it easy for recruiters to find you. Build robust profiles with screenshots of projects and links to GitHub on the following sites. Feel free to click the links to check out my examples (or connect with me):
It’s important to show prospective employers the quality of your work. Photos, videos, links to live projects, well documented READMEs, and clean coding practices make it easier for recruiters to take a chance on you.
Step 8: Remember, it’s a numbers game
I heard the refrain, “It’s just a numbers game,” frequently from engineers, career coaches, and mentors. Ultimately, here were my numbers:
My applications were mostly front-door, with some referrals, some recruiters who contacted me, and some outreach from Hired or AngelList.
Knowing the numbers helps you take an analytical approach. For example:
26% of my total applications (cold, warm, referrals) converted to initial phone screens.
51% of my phone screens converted to a tech screen or assignment
28% of my tech screens and assignments converted to an onsite
From this, I learned that I was fairly consistent at getting my résumé to pique a recruiter’s interest, successful (with room for improvement) at initial phone conversations, and somewhat weak in demonstrating my technical skills.
Analyzing the numbers allowed me to step back from churning out more applications. Instead, I spent extra time brushing up on technical weaknesses, with a goal of improving my conversion rate from tech screen to onsite.
Step 9: Master the onsite
Once you’re lucky enough to land an onsite or two, there’s still a lot to master. Personally, I found most onsites extremely draining. They lasted anywhere from 2 - 6 hours and ranged widely in topics covered. Some companies forgot to give me any breaks.
Because I was being tested on technical knowledge, there was very little small-talk and I was often grilled with questions for hours at a time.
One company told me they weren’t moving forward with me because I had struggled on the very last question after hours of successful algorithms. I’m still not sure what they learned from that very last question that they couldn’t have gleaned from the tech screen or the previous few hours, but that feedback stung.
Topics covered during my onsites included:
Algorithms
System design
Build an app using the company’s API
Depth of knowledge questions about my coding language (JavaScript)
Depth of knowledge questions about HTML/CSS
Depth of knowledge questions about front-end frameworks
Depth of knowledge questions about various databases (SQL/noSQL)
Brainteasers (think SAT prep from high school)
Clone and explain X GitHub project that you created, what tradeoffs you made, and what you would do differently in the future
Give us a 1-hour presentation on any topic of your choice (consider this a red flag, unless your job specifically requires interfacing with customers or pitching your ideas)
The variety made it tricky to know what to study.
After each tech screen and onsite, I jotted down a robust list of all the questions I was asked in each interview. This became my study guide for future onsites.
When I missed questions, I tried to view it as a learning opportunity.
Step 10: Bring snacks
Maybe it’s just me, but answering technical questions amidst a revolving circle of new people makes me famished.
In my first onsites, I got progressively worse at answering questions as my blood sugar dropped. No surprise - these didn’t result in an offer.
In my third, they scheduled me from 10 - 2pm with no lunch break, so I specifically asked for one. This worked - sort of - until the hiring manager followed me to a lunch spot while grilling me rapid-fire on 50+ JavaScript questions. He ignored my (repeated) requests for a quick mental break. Another no-go.
Finally, I found a viable solution - bringing a large green smoothie to each interview. This was a lot better than trying to sneak peanut M&Ms into my mouth in the restroom (besides, I was usually escorted to-and-from the bathroom so that wasn’t really an option).
No, really. Tired but blood-sugared after onsite 5.
Step 11: Refine answers to behavioral questions and avoid burn out
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
One of the questions that stumped me in interviews was, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” To be honest, I still don’t know.
There’s a manager track and an individual contributor track.
There are plenty of engineering career paths that I still don’t fully understand - web, mobile, site reliability, and DevOps, to name a few.
Then there’s back-end, front-end, and full-stack. Sometimes the lines between these roles are clear, sometimes they’re blurred. What I learned during the course of my search is that while I don’t know which path I’ll take, there are certain tasks I like more and less than others.
I don’t love playing with pixels on a website, but it’s fun to design for mobile. Designing architecture and setting up a database is a bit tedious, but I enjoy taking large amounts of data and manipulating it or spinning it into an interesting visualization.
So who knows where I’ll end up. For now, I’m going to try to do what’s fun and exciting.
Some general thoughts
Coding challenges are a learning opportunity
There were plenty of coding challenges that I attempted and was ultimately too embarrassed to turn in. Then, there were some that I didn’t finish but turned in anyway, along with an explanation of what debugging steps I had taken along the way.
At first I saw incomplete coding challenges as a sign of my own inability - some days I wondered if I wasn’t cut out to be an engineer. But they became fun when I shifted my mindset and started to think about what I learned from each one.
For example, one of them gave me a deeper understanding of asynchronous API calls, while another helped me realize the importance of addressing edge cases and error messages. One taught me how to debug Ruby on Rails.
Take rejections in stride
The same was true of each tech screen and onsite. At first, the rejections stung and fueled my insecurities. Then, rejections became normal. I learned a lot more when I was able to brush aside my self-doubt and be curious about what I could learn from each engineer taking time to speak with me.
This was not how I felt most of the time, but I tried
Everyone has a different way of approaching problems, and I was fortunate to learn from a few dozen engineers in the industry through the interview process.
Find a mentor
I was lucky enough to have an all-star mentor throughout the interview process. For three months, my mentor called and emailed every week to ask how the job search was progressing and what blockers I was facing.
I’ve heard a lot of fellow engineers say a mentor sounds nice, but they weren’t sure what questions to ask. Sometimes we spoke about tactics, such as how many applications to send, how to write an effective Git commit, or how to go above and beyond in a coding challenge. Other times, she simply reminded me that despite the (many) rejections, I was becoming a stronger engineer and therefore closer to finding my dream company every day.
A mentor can keep you accountable to your goals, help you through feelings of burn out, and connect you to the right resources for deeper learning. I’m grateful to have had an advocate throughout the job search process, and I’m looking forward to being able to pay it forward as a new engineer!
Conclusion
Some days, switching careers felt much harder than I expected. My mentor can certainly attest that there plenty of days when I wasn’t sure I could do it.
Becoming an engineer took a lot of hustling. It meant reaching out and expanding my professional network, becoming comfortable with the fact that there’s a huge learning curve ahead of me, and ignoring all the naysayers. It meant finding the right online resources that worked with my learning style. It meant quieting the part of my brain that told me I wasn’t capable and instead focusing on gleaning new knowledge. Every day I worked on a new project, studied a new algorithm, or answered questions in an interview, I became a better engineer.
Was the struggle worth it? Absolutely.
I’m thrilled to say that I found a role that’s perfect for me, where I can continue learning and growing. My professional network is stronger than ever, and most of all, I gained confidence in knowing that I can put in the work to make my dreams a reality. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-i-switched-careers-to-become-a-software-engineer-in-11-months-and-how-you-can-too-9849afabc126 | ['Amanda Bullington'] | 2018-10-09 17:10:48.655000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Software Development', 'Career Advice', 'Technology', 'Career Change'] |
Launch First and Listen To Your Customer Often as You Scale | Launch First and Listen To Your Customer Often as You Scale
Danielle Bodinnar, a passionate entrepreneur with a desire to solve a problem realized that in order to do so, her company had to pivot. Here she shares how to do just that based on customer insight
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
The best strategy I learned as an entrepreneur after starting Karista — a unique healthcare business that assesses people’s needs and then matches them to disability providers — was that nothing really got rolling until you heard from your first customer. Put simply, what I learned was that customers simply don’t know what they want until you serve up the product to them, which means launch first, then learn from customer feedback along the way.
Launch and learn. We launched our Australian based disability business and then set out to meet with our target customers. They welcomed us into their homes to share their insights. We were planning to initiate some very costly new product changes but once we spent time with real customers, the plan and our priorities changed. We’ve yet to implement those cool but costly products but we were quick to produce the product that our customers wanted. We were able to build a product that really added value to our customers and allowed us to scale. And they were simple to execute, for example a young disabled customer told us “do not put me in the same category as an old person” and so we built separate landing pages, one for the elderly and one for our young people with disabilities and linked our campaigns to the relevant target audience — cost of landing pages, less than AUD$2k. Value to Karista and our customers, priceless. Nail One Area First, then Expand. We did the whole let’s be all things to all people thing. We launched with options for the elderly, adults, teenagers and even newborns, right across Australia. Then I got some sound advice from my Springboard friends that there was a lack of focus and we were not in a position to scale with such an unrefined strategy. So we focused on the part of the market for which we had an expertise — teenage boys with autism. We’ve become the trusted source for that cohort, including the Australian government that is required to provide those services, and there’s so much business opportunity in this space alone. When and if we decide to expand, we know our company will be welcomed by both our service providers and clients seeking services. The key here is to launch boldly but be mindful of what your customers are telling you. Always go back to the ‘’why?’’ If you are confused about what to do next, or how to prioritise, or are not getting traction, go back to your why. Our why is about building the capability of people with autism — We believe that everybody has the right to equal opportunity; we give them that opportunity. When investors, staff members, clients, providers, suppliers tell me I should do something (and it happens often) I assess the suggestions based on our why. If it doesn’t fit with our why it does not make the cut. This helps me communicate with whoever is making the suggestion and helps me stay on track. Here’s a little TED talk on the “Why” — I recommend keeping it in your favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw&feature=youtu.be
Danielle Bodinnar, a passionate entrepreneur, is the CEO of Karista. She has held senior management positions in sales, marketing, supply chain and project management in large corporations for over 20 years. She founded Karista after being inspired by the changes emerging in the healthcare industry.
Danielle has a deep knowledge of the Healthcare (specifically aged and disability sectors) from her experience at SCA HA (now Asaleo) where she spent 4 years as Healthcare General Manager. | https://medium.com/been-there-run-that/launch-first-and-listen-to-your-customer-often-as-you-scale-11c12e6ddb2c | ['Springboard Enterprises'] | 2020-12-04 15:36:42.030000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Customer Engagement', 'Scalability', 'Entrepreneur', 'Women'] |
Searching for the best server in Pakistan? What is a dedicated server in Pakistan? | The dedicated server comprises computer, web server, internet connection, and related software. This system rents in premises of web hosting provider. So if you need the dedicated server, you need to find the best hosting provider in Pakistan. Pakistani dedicated servers fulfill the needs when you need to host websites, databases, and multiple files.
Basically, server hosting in Pakistan helps you to virtualize the environment. It helps to get professional and pro email server with a high-speed end. The speed of these servers is up to 99.99%. What do you mean by 99.99%? Actually, it is the uptime a server is in its working. There is a 0.01% chance of server to get down when it needs maintenance. That time only occurs once in a year or two.
So, there are many companies providing cheap dedicated server hosting in Pakistan. One can get server easily for any type of digital setup.
Why one needs a dedicated server?
Anyone can host a server through own computer if it is connected to the internet. But the problem persists is that it will slow down the processing and eventually shut down. So, whenever you need a server without any interruption with processing speed, you need to make a dedicated server.
It is best and cheap dedicated hosting service one can make for own self. The benefits one will get is 24/7 uptime, less attack of virus, faster connection speed, and above these, there is no need to switch off the computer and disconnect from the internet. Moreover, these dedicated server hosting in Pakistan can be used for multi purposes. For examples, to host game servers, to host applications, to host websites, or when one is using the multiple computers for the purpose of storing files and databases. | https://medium.com/@sidra.malik.pk.edu/the-dedicated-server-comprises-computer-web-server-internet-connection-and-related-software-5c109adf725a | ['Sidra Malik'] | 2019-06-17 10:46:17.942000+00:00 | ['Services', 'Social Media', 'Dedicated Server', 'Servers', 'Startup'] |
Safety in Victoria: The Problem with Anecdotal Evidence | The current state of discourse about public safety in Victoria is preventing us from resolving complex problems. The prevailing perception that the City is to blame for what we see in our parks is a deeply flawed diagnosis that is preventing progress, but that serves certain political interests.
As well, the notion that all police are evil or that all unhoused people are dangerous is as provably false as the notion that all police are ethical or that all unhoused people never behave dangerously. Engaging in this kind of absolute thinking, upheld by anecdotes, is driving us apart.
There’s a difference between a private member of the public engaging in this type of rhetoric versus a publicly-funded institution, like the Victoria Police Department, leveraging a sizable communications budget to drive perception. Indeed, they issued over 500 press releases in 2020— up from 186 in 2019.
This comes across as engaging in a campaign to advance their desire for more tax dollars, ostensibly to address societal issues that should not be in their purview in the first place. Already, Victoria funds more officers per capita than any other municipality in Canada.
Accepting that police are the appropriate vehicle for addressing homelessness, addictions and mental health is a result of decades of centre-right narratives about austerity: the notion that we don’t have enough to take care of one another. (We do.) Ignoring the history of how we ended up here helps perpetuate this thinking.
We’ve been led to believe that recently elected Victoria councilors caused the problems now manifesting as impoverished people camping in parks. Yes, Council allowed them to shelter in parks during the pandemic, awaiting interventions from the province. They made a controversial decision that made visible the failings of our society just where we seek to escape with a “walk in the park.” We are much more comfortable when they are out of sight.
However, it is decades of short-sighted policies of provincial and federal governments that led us here, alongside deepening inequality even as the country on the whole has grown its GDP.
In 1994, Canada became one of few developed nations without a national housing strategy when the federal Liberal government of the time cancelled investments, effectively killing the program.
In 2001, shortly after being elected, B.C.’s Liberal government cut taxes for the richest people resulting in a $4B gap in the budget. They proceeded to drastically gut social programs, including housing, youth and mental health supports, under the guise of this fabricated need for “austerity.” They also allowed foreign investors to gamble with B.C.’s housing sector, driving prices up. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen homelessness triple since then.
If solutions are what we are after, you would think those feeling fearful and angry would passionately lobby those levels of government with the responsibility and resources to solve these issues systemically. Instead, public ire about this situation has been nearly exclusively directed at the City, encouraged by which local stories are being told or obscured.
It is true some people currently unhoused have severe addiction and mental health struggles that are untreated. It is true they can be a danger to themselves and to each other especially, and to the public occasionally. It is not true that we are now less safe on the whole, even if it is the case that many feel less safe.
The Victoria Police Department’s own crime data tells a different story than they are endeavouring to convey anecdotally, and Statistics Canada shows a marked decrease in crime rates in the past decade. However, studies show that while we have been objectively safer in recent times, people may feel less safe thanks to a 24 hour news cycle making incidents of crime more visible, driving a perception of increased danger.
In Victoria, add to this a well-resourced campaign by a police department looking to encourage that perception, and we inevitably see the effect of increased fear and anger. That fear is real, and individual experiences of danger are real. Just as individual experiences of feeling safe and having positive interactions with those camping in the park are real. So, how can we make sense of the situation we find ourselves in? The same way we expect all public agencies to ground their decisions: through the pursuit of sound data.
How people are feeling is valuable to consider when making policy decisions, but feelings alone, biased in one direction without data, is a dangerous foundation to make decisions on.
As a political organizer, I would never poll only the supporters of my issue or candidate to guide my decisions. It would provide useless data. So, too, will asking only those who feel unsafe in Victoria to speak up, as the Victoria Police Union* recently did in a Times Colonist article. This is a wrong-headed approach to objectively learning about the state of affairs in order to drive decisions, but it is a brilliant strategy if your aim is to develop propaganda in service of your predetermined direction.
Several years ago, my home — just blocks from Beacon Hill Park — was broken into. I have not been broken into since people have been sheltering in the park. Therefore, I was less safe before people were camping in the park. Of course, that is a ridiculous conclusion, just as any conclusion that the Victoria Police Department draws from biased anecdotal research will be.
_______
*Corrected. Original post stated "Victoria Police Department." | https://medium.com/@soniatheroux/safety-in-victoria-the-problem-with-anecdotal-evidence-dc65248e42c1 | ['Sonia Theroux'] | 2021-03-22 03:14:31.130000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Public Safety', 'Policing', 'Homelessness', 'Victoria'] |
Visualizing Keras Models | Visualizing Keras Models
Keras Model Visualization(Source: By Author)
Have you ever wondered how your neural network is actually connecting different neurons? Wouldn’t it be nice if you can visualize the model architecture that you have designed? Wouldn't it be nice if you can download your model architecture as an image that you can use while presenting? If you have a YES for all of this then you are at the right place.
In this article, I will show you an exciting python package/module/library which can be used to visualize your Keras models. Whether it is a convolutional neural network or an artificial neural network this library will help you visualize the structure of the model that you have created.
Keras Visualizer is an open-source python library that is really helpful in visualizing how your model is connected layer by layer. So let’s get started.
Installing Keras Visualization
We will install Keras Visualization like any other python library using pip install. We will be using Google Collab for this article, so you need to copy the command given and run it in google collab to install the library.
!pip3 install keras-visualizer
Creating a Neural Network Model
For understanding this article you should have a basic understanding of how to create a Neural Network, for a basic understanding of how neural networks work go through the article below.
Now let’s create a basic Artificial Neural Network using Keras and its functions. In this neural network, I will take input shape as (784,) and design it accordingly, you can make your own network because here we are not learning how to make NN we are just visualizing the final model we have created.
from keras import models
from keras.layers import Dense, Conv2D, MaxPooling2D, Flatten, Activation
from keras_visualizer import visualizer
from keras import layers
model1 = models.Sequential()
model1.add(Dense(16, input_shape=(784,)))
model1.add(Dense(8))
model1.add(Dense(4))
Artificial Neural Network(Source: By Author)
Here in the graph, you can clearly visualize how our model is structured and how different layers are connected to each other with a number of neurons and the activation function of each layer.
Let us visualize a convolutional neural network that will get us a better idea of how this library helps us in visualizing CNN’s.
# Building model architecture
model = models.Sequential()
model.add(Conv2D(8, (3, 3), padding="same",input_shape=(224,224,3), activation="relu"))
model.add(MaxPooling2D(pool_size=(3, 3)))
model.add(Conv2D(16, (3, 3), padding="same", activation="relu"))
model.add(MaxPooling2D(pool_size=(2, 2)))
model.add(Conv2D(32, (3, 3), padding="same", activation="relu"))
model.add(MaxPooling2D(pool_size=(2, 2)))
model.add(Flatten())
model.add(Dense(32, activation="relu"))
model.add(Dense(10))
model.summary()
visualizer(model, format='png', view=True)
Convolutional Neural Network(Source: By Author)
Here you can clearly see what all operations are performed at different layers with the number of filters, filter size, no. of neurons, etc.
This is how you can use Keras Visualizer for visualizing your deep learning models. Go ahead try this and let me know your experiences in the response section.
This article is in collaboration with Piyush Ingale.
Before You Go
Thanks for reading! If you want to get in touch with me, feel free to reach me on [email protected] or my LinkedIn Profile. You can view my Github profile for different data science projects and packages tutorials. Also, feel free to explore my profile and read different articles I have written related to Data Science. | https://towardsdatascience.com/visualizing-keras-models-4d0063c8805e | ['Himanshu Sharma'] | 2021-02-03 16:29:45.761000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Data Visualization', 'Keras', 'Python', 'Deep Learning'] |
Robin Williams’ First Suicide Note, circa 1987 | Weather report: partly cloudy with a slight chance of dying.
You see, nobody’s been in the business of writing me love letters for quite some time, now. And the clowns? Don’t you worry about that; they’re already here, of course. It’s all a real jiffy, a cantankerous moan consumed with attention-getting, this taking of time, these paltry gesticulations of a showboating ham, this haircut (or lack of one) that passes for a man. Sorry. I have trouble with beginnings — a born malingerer.
Last things last. Or some that won’t. Accident prone as ever. My nerve’s shot. Relapse on the horizon. The gritty scuffle of making do with less. In a daytime-TV trance, I bark orders at crossing guards and run for cover, confused and bookish beneath the junipers. A rufous-sided towhee takes a dump close to my shoes. I feel blessed for the first time in years. Nothing nearby left to depend on except this bowdlerized excuse for being me.
Capsized in guttural mumbling, songs that won’t sing. Grow beard grow, wherever you may chance to go. Arrested in my overcoat. Take me away. Take me away from reruns and alarm clocks. Splink about it all. Make up words and sense. Put your suit on backwards. Yes, Na-Nu fucking Na-Nu and all of it. Nothing’s timely here. Flying beyond all Orks for a career change, perhaps a priest at long last, or a dog walker, or a watercolor specialist with a penchant for heliotrope. I am not a man built of fulfilled desire. Just something spawned of rainbow-suspendered unrest and less-than-holy gestures. Good motherfucking morning to it all. All of it. And all the rest too.
Listen. A morbidly obese lady wearing a tan curtain-like dress smiles at me. I am withdrawn. Her right deciduous maxillary lateral incisor is off-yellow and slightly bent inward. Look. I am smiling back. There is a fortune between us. Riches of loosely held awe. A pity that isn’t taken without a restive quality. A knack for being alone. The worry less than golden over lost sleep. We exchange pleasantries. Nothing short of a curtsy and a whiff of looted hay. We light out and roam through lost territories. There are needy moods in our most insignificant asides and glances. And our names are all that might live on without us to guide them. Desperation is a thinness to all weight that slithers by without thought. Yesterday I screamed, “Alaska!” at a meter maid. I am not handling anything well.
“Look at me!” I would plead with a lump aching my throat. Disperse the troops, or some replacement hurt to belie all tenderness. But nobody looks, and I am seen too much yet never noticed. Laughs seem gratuitous in this trackless cut of shadows so far from the spot’s mark. Pockets jangling with airplane bottles of booze, I scramble from blackout to blackout between bouts of sanitized sanity. It gets later here all the time: this is what happens to me when I’m alive. The shakes. The trembling moments between clatter-happy despair and showy decals of this hirsute botcher of all ideas. Everyone understands me better than I do.
The faulty spigot of my wherewithal gushes until it only drips. Entire weekdays lost. A more even upheaval I don’t get — unfashionably odd at all times. And who calls the shots? Whose action is it to call? But mine’s a ruffled sort of indispensability: that tawdry little shine on the seat of my conscience. So late in the game to ponder new strategies. The fight’s what the weak and competent never put up. At least I can relish the fact that I am neither. Believing in yourself is for the mutually funded backers of bad taste, the shirkers of boredom, the assuredly lenient mimes, the passive do-gooders of a mindset hardwired with humdrum tendencies and meager troubles: those who would rather be of the crowd that they are lost in than be ruined with selflessness and doubt. But my two cents is just a borderline drunk’s flapping of the lips, so don’t invest too much in it. I don’t.
After wandering around downtown all day, trying to keep from going insane on the outside, I found myself sitting on a curb attempting to find a button that had first fallen off my suit jacket and then — after I’d recovered it and placed it in my breast pocket — slipped through a hole in that pocket; and a guy in a white flannel suit came up to me and gave me some change.
So little ever returned on these slight and empty investments I keep making with imitations of my personality. A rawer deal I’ve never seen the likes of. All I get are reasons to quit, to take one final dive and go under into what’ll probably only be the mediocre beyond. I say let the Swedish Fish eat gummy worms.
During the span of its usage the French guillotine was known by many names: La Monte-à-regret (The Regretful Climb) Le Rasoir National (The National Razor) Le Vasistas or La Lucarne (The Fanlight) La Veuve (The Widow) Le Moulin à Silence (The Silence Mill) Louisette or Louison (from the name of prototype designer Antoine Louis) Madame La Guillotine Mirabelle (from the name of Mirabeau) La Bécane (The Machine) Le Massicot (The Cutter) La Cravate à Capet (The Necktie of Capet, Capet being Louis XVI) La Raccourcisseuse Patriotique (The Patriotic Shortener) La demi-lune (The Half-Moon) Les Bois de Justice (Woods of Justice) La Bascule à Charlot (Charlot’s Rocking-chair) Le Prix Goncourt des Assassins (The Goncourt Prize for Murderers)
I make lists of odd things. I am not sure why.
I’ve found myself spending preposterous amounts of time pondering the old joke about Grock again. The one where a desperately ill man goes to an analyst and tells him that he is seriously considering suicide. The analyst listens to his tale of melancholia and then tells the patient that what he needs is a good belly-laugh. He advises the unhappy man to go the circus that night and spend an evening laughing at Grock, the world’s funniest clown. The analyst sums it up, “After you have seen Grock, I am sure you will be much happier.” The patient rises to his feet, looks sadly at the doctor, turns and ambles towards the door. As he starts to leave the analyst says, “By the way, what is your name?” The man turns and regards the analyst with sorrowful eyes, “I am Grock.”
To wait and wait. Godot ain’t showing up, Little Shavers. I’m only here to wait, holding out (or maybe, on) to be some strangled and madcap version of me that I can never quite become. An 80-proof disaster on hydrangea-dashed currents. Lashing out on the inside. Rationed away, holed-up out in the open, in view of all.
Asphyxiation. It just moodily rolls off the tongue. Such a beautiful sound when bereft of its meaning. The absence of a pulse. A curious infelicity of etymology. A wonderful lack of all throbbing. An inept attempt at breath, a stifled choke, and then all vain motion stops. A noose’s sure grasp — something to be counted on, at last. Snapped, firm and real, gone, finally, so brittle, like all who breathe to live. Steady now. In the certainty of the drop, paced slower towards the finish’s indefatigable celerity.
I’ve got suspicions that there is much more to gain in what one gives than what one gets from all this. Something quite worthwhile, perhaps, to be done, to be known. Maybe a twig of joy artfully caught like a butterfly’s wing between pinkie and thumb. A stillness that doesn’t need to last because it just is. But it is not for me. I cannot know it, and there is only me here to do the knowing. Just a quick tad of boasting (anhedonic at best), a purposeful slip, perhaps a slight nod, a subtle expression worn to outlast me, a curse cured, a laugh dismissed; and the dull and ordinary people will still sleep well, and these meager explorations we all make in the narrowly wide swaths of consciousness will still go unnoticed. Nobody here to make the bed or grow chard in an empty lot’s makeshift garden between the buildings. Tell the super I’ve gone to hell — just like he always wanted me to.
And all that will be left: only this curious love letter to the world, for the world — to whom it never concerns — to ignore. Damn it. There is bird shit in my hair. I’m through. | https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/robin-williams-first-suicide-note-circa-1987-29bedafb2fa9 | ['Davy Carren'] | 2015-10-01 15:02:40.709000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'World', 'Life'] |
The 12 Best Contemporary Works By Artists In Italy — Decided By American Art Awards | The 2019 Best Galleries & Museums asked to vote on art were:
BEST IN ARIZONA — EXPOSURES INTERNATIONAL GALLERY OF FINE ART: Rising like a gigantic mystical temple in Sedona, this 20,000 sf showplace displays the finest of every style from classical to contemporary. Serving private or commercial needs, offering small maquettes to monumental bronze and stone sculptures, original oil and acrylic otherworldly paintings, fine art jewelry, enchanting glass art… https://www.exposuresfineart.com/
BEST IN ARKANSAS — FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM: Originated in 1948 but fully re-branded in 2013. AWARDS: Preservation through Rehabilitation Award (2013), American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gulf State Region Merit Award (2014), and American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Gold Award… http://fsram.org/
BEST IN CALIFORNIA — EXCLUSIVE COLLECTIONS: History of six galleries between California and Nevada honed expertise to assist significant collections of fine art and enduring legacy. Their red-carpet events showcase today’s most celebrated artists — from young emerging masters to established international masters… http://ecgallery.com/our-galleries/solana-beach/
BEST IN COLORADO — MIRADA FINE ART: Both the booming Denver gallery and owner/curator Steve Sonnen continue to be prominently featured in national and international art publications as well as appearing on numerous ‘Best Of’ lists. Lively spirited art, insightful exhibits, a Colorado vortex. http://www.miradafineart.com/
BEST IN HAWAII — SUNSHINE ARTS: 4,000 square foot structure on the Windward side of Oahu, offering over 2,000 original art images by 75 best-selling artists. For 23 years, this heralded Kaneohe landmark has been a favorite of local artists and nearby residents as well as international designers and collectors. http://www.sunshinearts.net/
BEST IN ILLINOIS — TRICKSTER ART GALLERY: The only Native American owned and operated arts institution in Illinois. 10,000 sf facility exhibits contemporary Native art (post 1960s) and first-voice multi-cultural arts with themes of veterans and social justice. https://www.trickstergallery.com/
BEST IN INDIANA — HAAN MANSION MUSEUM OF INDIANA ART: Holds the most extensive Indiana art collection in the US, including paintings from the Hoosier Group and Brown County Art Colony. Specializing in major oils, over 100 artists are represented. Haan is a true find; a rare hospitable time-capsule cradling a precious past. http://haanmuseum.org/
BEST IN IOWA — MOBERG GALLERY: Exceptional eye for contemporary masterpieces and represents 50 phenomenal Iowan artisans, procured work for museums, corporate collections, private collections and public art projects across the nation. Sets the standard for modern art in the Midwest. https://www.moberggallery.com/
BEST IN KANSAS — EVA REYNOLDS FINE ARTS: 30 years specializing in European and American contemporary original paintings and sculpture. A world-renowned fine arts service record among collectors and represented artists. Recognized by Ingram’s as a “Top Gallery in Kansas City.” https://evareynoldsfinearts.com/
BEST IN KENTUCKY — E&S GALLERY: For 30 years an iconic African-American gallery. 11,000 sf. Three stories of stunning space and empowering art. Unmatched selection of artists, mediums, subject matters and genres. Premiere selection of original graphics and sculpture by renowned old master artists. https://www.eandsgallery.com/
BEST IN LOUISIANA — NEWCOMB ART MUSEUM: Since 1886 acknowledging the contributions of women to the fields of art and design. Continually presenting innovative exhibitions and programs that engage communities, spark idea-exchange and instigate cross-disciplinary collaborations. https://newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/
BEST IN MARYLAND — ANNAPOLIS MARINE ART GALLERY: For 40 years providing the best of marine art to the Mid-Atlantic collector community. Located at City Dock in Annapolis, they have an extensive collection of originals and limited edition prints of renowned artists John Stobart, John Barber, Willard Bond, Patrick O’Brien, Paul Landry, John Ruseau, and more. https://www.annapolismarineart.com/
BEST IN MINNESOTA — MODERN ARTIFACT: Buys and sells some of the world’s most collected and demanded fine art, antiques and memorabilia. Innovative. Headquartered in Minneapolis with clients all over the world. Daily relationships with many art dealers, collectors and top artists. https://modernartifact.com/
BEST IN MISSOURI — HILLIARD GALLERY: 45 years… one of the oldest and largest fine art galleries in Kansas City… voted by Kansas City Visitor Center as Best Gallery In Kansas City in 2012… voted by Kansas City Magazine as the Best Gallery In Kansas City 2014… https://www.hilliardgallery.com/
BEST IN NEW JERSEY — EVALYN DUNN GALLERY: For 60 years, a family legacy serving the community with expert, innovative and personable staff. Features the finest 20th Century American and European art. http://www.evalyndunngallery.com/
BEST IN NEW MEXICO — PIPPIN CONTEMPORARY: On historic Canyon Road, an uplifting world of vibrant color as expressed in contemporary art. The richly sensuous visual experience is complemented by a warm, engaging and insightful staff. Passionate artists; energetic and tactile, elements of surprise and beauty. A special oasis to access pure emotions. https://pippincontemporary.com/
BEST IN NEVADA — THE METROPOLITAN GALLERY OF LAS VEGAS ART MUSEUM: 20,000 sf facility dedicated to raising awareness, understanding and accessibility for a wide range of fine art by local, regional and international artists. Also offers insightful educational programs and cultural events. https://www.mglv.org/
BEST IN OHIO — LEE HAYDEN GALLERY: Mastered the Mid-western art business. Very prominent Cleveland gallery; a collector’s favorite for decades, offering paintings, sculptures and rare prints from both emerging and world-renown artists. https://www.leehayden.com/
BEST IN OREGON — BRONZE COAST GALLERY: In its 24th year. Oregon Coast’s premiere fine art gallery specializing in limited edition bronze sculpture and original paintings by more than thirty award-winning regional, national and international artists. Also provides education in sculpture and the in depth process of bronze casting. http://www.bronzecoastgallery.com/
BEST IN SOUTH CAROLINA — MARY MARTIN GALLERY: Located in the heart of downtown Charleston, Mary Martin Gallery is a gem of the city. Representing artists internationally in her two locations, Mary exhibits an eclectic mix of paintings and sculptures that appeal to collectors from all parts of the world. No matter if you own a large collection of art or only one painting Mary believes everyone should experience the joy of having their very own art collection. http://www.marymartinart.com/
BEST IN SOUTH DAKOTA — SOUTH DAKOTA ART MUSEUM: Since 1970, for almost fifty years, this museum beautifully houses the artistic legacy of South Dakota in all its diversity. 7,000 objects in its collection include Harvey Dunn paintings, Native American art, Marghab Linens, and much more. https://www.sdstate.edu/south-dakota-art-museum
BEST IN TEXAS — AO5 GALLERY: Austin’s largest contemporary art gallery, featuring hundreds of emerging and established artists from around the world. With over 7,000 sf to explore, there’s something new to see on every visit. https://ao5gallery.com/
BEST IN UTAH — SOUTHAM GALLERY: Premier Utah gallery for almost 40 years. Sells the work of some of the most highly regarded artists in the western United States. Stunning realism and impressionism. Experience and insight to guide serious art portfolios. Endless satisfied collectors. http://www.southamgallery.com/
BEST IN WASHINGTON DC — LIK FINE ART WASHINGTON DC: With 17 locations across the country, LIK Fine Art showcases some of Peter Lik’s most notable and award-winning photographic masterpieces. Peter has spent over 30 years pushing the boundaries of fine art. A self-taught pioneer in the field of landscape photography, Lik’s works make up four of the top 20 most expensive photographs ever sold, the highest selling for an astounding $6.5 million in 2014. https://lik.com/pages/lik-fine-art-washington-dc
BEST IN WEST VIRGINIA — WEST VIRGINIA STATE MUSEUM: Established 125 years ago with the intent to collect, preserve, present, promote and document West Virginia’s every aspect of history, culture, art, paleontology, archaeology, and geology representing all its people and industries. http://www.wvculture.org/museum/State-Museum-Index.html | https://medium.com/@thombierd/the-12-best-contemporary-works-by-artists-in-italy-decided-by-american-art-awards-72642b14ce3 | ['Thom Bierdz'] | 2020-07-08 17:17:30.321000+00:00 | ['Artist', 'Art', 'Drawing', 'Italy', 'Painting'] |
Will You Ever Feel Normal After an Abusive Relationship? | It’s been a long day. Work was hell, and the day dragged on forever. You cleaned up the disaster in your house, and you finally are getting the opportunity to unwind with your favorite book and a generous glass of wine.
You wait for the calm and relaxation to wash over you, but it never comes. In its place, you’re agitated, unsettled, and anxious. You feel your pulse in your ears, the silence is deafening, and you physically tense up, unconsciously forming a fist.
You’re on the verge of a full-blown panic attack — for no reason what so ever.
Welcome to what life feels like after leaving an abusive relationship.
For weeks, months, or years, you have been walking on eggshells, hoping to not send your abuser off on another rampage. You do all that you can to not provoke them. You do your best to stay even-keeled, not too happy, and not too sad. Because any influx in your mood rouses suspicion in your partner.
Now that you have escaped that volatile relationship, what reason do you have to feel agitated, unsettled, and anxious? Our minds and bodies have a strange way of protecting us from catastrophic events in our lives.
Make no mistake, being in an abusive or toxic relationship counts as catastrophic.
We often talk about how one can safely escape a relationship like this, but today we will explore what the aftermath of surviving this trauma can feel like. | https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/will-you-ever-feel-normal-after-an-abusive-relationship-ae6a814cd50 | ['Estrella Ramirez'] | 2020-10-02 17:01:02.286000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Relationships', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Trauma'] |
19 tips for becoming a successful freelance designer | Many people in today’s society are self-employed freelancers. This can be an exciting career because it allows you to work when you want and where you want, but it can also come with the frustrations of finding work.
How do you make sure that your freelance design career is successful? Here are some tips for designers who struggle to find clients.
Tip №1:
Be visible on websites like Upwork, Freelancer.com, etc.
Tip №2:
Create cool projects that would be good for small business owners or even bigger companies looking to hire freelancers (like logos).
Tip №3:
Keep your rates reasonable and offer discounts if needed (especially for smaller jobs).
Tip №4:
Don’t make clients wait too long.
Tip №5:
Be patient, and don’t get upset if you can’t find work for a while (it’s not easy to find clients).
Tip №6:
When sending work to clients, be professional and friendly. Depending on the client, emails may be frowned upon. Send them a message on Skype or Google Hangouts instead of an email if you're not sure.
Tip №7:
Make sure that your portfolio and work sample pages are professional and look nice on screens/phones as well as full-size monitors. Keep your portfolio updated frequently so people can see your previous projects as well as what you’re working on now.
Tip №8:
Make sure that your portfolio is up to date and that you’re able to add new projects quickly. If you’re not able to add new work quickly, it’s best to remove older projects.
Tip №9:
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get jobs every day. If you’re working, it will go easier for you and your clients.
Tip №10:
Try not to get upset when people contact you and don’t reply (you should always respond, though). It’s normal if clients don’t read your email for a few days or even weeks after sending it.
Tip №11:
Don’t ignore clients who contact you via the internet (email, Skype, etc.) because they may get frustrated and never contact you again. If you have several clients using these platforms, it’s best to answer your emails, so you don’t forget.
Tip №12:
Be patient. You’ll probably have to wait a couple of weeks or months to receive payments from clients, but remember that you’re working for yourself and not for a company.
Tip №13:
Just because you haven’t gotten a job in a while doesn’t mean that there aren’t companies or people out there looking for your kind of work. Keep an eye out on sites like Behance, Dribble, and Inprnt, as well as other sites where designers can advertise their work (such as Upwork).
Tip №14:
Make sure that you have the following information so you can provide it to clients:
Professional References
Education History
Work Experience
What kind of job were you doing? Were you a freelancer or working for a company? When did this experience happen? Are there any awards or achievements that are relevant to your work history? If so, list them. You can list them on your resume or include a summary on your portfolio page. This is optional, but some people include personal hobbies on their portfolios. Don’t make it too long. Nobody wants to read about your personal life on professional pages! It’s best to include information like this on your About page. What are some of your skills? List the ones that are most relevant to your work, but don’t leave important skills out! Don’t forget to include any training or certifications that you have.
Tip №15:
If you’re looking for a new design job after your freelance career ends, don’t give up! Look for more projects on Behance or Dribble, etc. It’s important to keep promoting yourself (especially if you haven’t had any jobs in a while).
Tip №16:
After your freelance career ends, keep contact information updated with the client that hired you (even if it wasn’t your last client). You never know who may need help with something similar in future years.
Tip №17:
If you’re starting any freelance project, I cannot recommend enough securing a deposit. Just have something upfront, whether it’s 20%, 30%, 50%. Because what that does is it shows the client that you’re not only serious about business, which is the language that they will most likely be speaking, but it also is some security for you and a freelancer. More often than not, you can get someone who will approach you with some work. You’ll spend a whole bunch of time. You might even start on the project because that’s a huge no-no. Having a deposit lets you know that you’ve got something that you could commit to the project, commit the time in your schedule, and yeah, you’re not just wasting your time.
Tip №18:
This is something else that is really useful, but I shouldn’t be talking about it because I’m still practising myself; it is about structuring your time and managing it more effectively. If you’re a freelancer, you don’t necessarily have that, “Oh, I’ve got to be at work on this time.” So there’s no one there to kick your ass when you’re late. Have a calendar and stick to it. Just set reminders. So when you hit 12 o’clock, and it pops up and says, “take your lunch,” then just take your lunch. You have to force yourself and discipline yourself to stick to it.
Tip №19:
Definitely, definitely value the work you do. I know that’s really hard when you look at something like design. You’re not actually making a physical product. It’s quite challenging to actually value what you do and have the confidence to say no as well. So if you have a client or project that comes your way, it’s very tempting sometimes to think I need this work or I’m just going to take it. Have the confidence to say no, because if you’re saying yes to that project, instead of saying no, that could be a project that is far better paying more that you’re going to enjoy more right around the corner.
For me personally, this is definitely something that I had to practice. I mean, there are various channels on YouTube where people talk about confidence like it didn’t happen overnight for me. It took me over two years to really appreciate what I did and the value that I brought to the table, and you have to sometimes go through that, you know, and listen to people like me now telling you to value yourself, because what you do is most likely awesome. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/19-tips-for-becoming-a-successful-freelance-designer-c289e68cc1d2 | [] | 2021-09-08 04:50:45.979000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Design', 'Freelancing', 'Freelancers', 'Designer'] |
Writing Prompt: ? — Travis Scott feat. You Your character has found their way onto the set of a Travis Scott music video. It could be this one. Or this one. But, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s… | Writing Prompt: ? — Travis Scott feat. You
Your character has found their way onto the set of a Travis Scott music video. It could be this one. Or this one. But, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s probably this one.
Photo by Kyle Loftus from Pexels
What connections did your character have to make to find themselves standing next to Mr. La Flame? What strange characters did they meet during the shoot?
Is your character fulfilling a favor to someone else? If they don’t want to be on set, where would they rather be?
_______________
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Nia Simone McLeod is a writer, content creator, and pop culture enthusiast from Richmond, Virginia. | https://medium.com/illumination/writing-prompt-travis-scott-feat-you-bacfa43b6a18 | ['Nia Simone Mcleod'] | 2020-12-11 15:32:54.193000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Culture', 'Music', 'Hip Hop', 'Black Women'] |
How to Determine the Value of an Old Coin | How to Determine the Value of an Old Coin, photo courtesy of Metals.com
Collecting old coins can be fun because they are so unique. Their designs are beautiful, and despite being hundreds or thousands of years old, they’re often surprisingly similar to the designs of coins today. When you hold an old coin in your hand, you feel like you’re connected to the past — and you are. But aside from their historical value, are they actually worth anything?
As with any collection, the value depends entirely on what you have. Old coins can actually be very profitable if you acquire rare ones, but, to the untrained eye, it may be challenging to distinguish rare from ordinary. Here are three simple steps to determine the potential value of your old coins.
Determine Its Authenticity
First and foremost, your old coin will only be worth anything if it is, in fact, a coin. There is always the possibility of finding a counterfeit coin, so you’ll want to ensure it is a real coin. The most important step you can take in ensuring you acquire only authentic coins is purchasing from reliable dealers such as Metals.com.
One of the easiest ways to determine the authenticity of the coin in question is to use a magnet — authentic gold and silver are not magnetic and, therefore, will not react to a magnet. Though, the magnet test is only one way to identify a counterfeit coin.
Quality of the Coin
The most significant impact on the quality of a coin was the degree to which it was circulated. It goes without saying that the less the coin was handled, the better the quality. “Mint condition” is clearly the highest value. Meanwhile, if you have a coin that looks old and worn, that same coin will be worth significantly less. That said, even an old coin in poor condition can be worth a considerable amount if the coin is rare.
Range of Value
Once you determine the authenticity and quality of the coin in question, you can look at a range of values chart for your specific old coins. Knowing the range will give you a better idea of whether you should bother insuring the coin, as well as what kind of price range you should negotiate in the event you choose to sell it.
It’s important to remember that the face value of a coin is not its actual value.
Where to Find Old Coins
As with any coin you’re looking to add to your collection, you must be diligent about purchasing from reputable dealers. Coins purchased from Metals.com, such as the 10 Guilder Gold Coin or the Gold World English Sovereign Queen Victoria Jubilee Coin from our World Coins collection, make great collector pieces and, as with all of our products, are protected by our 100% satisfaction guarantee.
The Metals.com Staff | https://medium.com/@metalscom/how-to-determine-the-value-of-an-old-coin-ad5b3a46c465 | [] | 2020-02-20 18:10:58.814000+00:00 | ['Precious Metals', 'Coin', 'Gold', 'Silver', 'Collection'] |
Classify Thousands of News Articles at the Click of a Button | Most in the media monitoring sector are familiar with the idea that extracting insights from unstructured texts can be an incredibly tedious job. Luckily, text classification software can simplify the job for human analysts, saving them valuable time, and leading to more accurate results overall.
Our core Machine Learning team recently used TensorFlow to create a text classification model for one of our media monitoring customers. The software we created auto-tags and organizes news articles based on their descriptions, and saves human media analysts countless hours.
We created our Machine Learning model in Python and used Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. Our model was trained to predict the category of any new news article using pre-labeled article samples as training data.
WHAT IS TEXT CLASSIFICATION?
Text classification is the process of assigning a set of predefined categories to free-text. Text classifiers help in organizing, structuring, and classifying text of any kind, be it a set of new articles that needs to be organized by categories, customer support tickets that need to be sorted by urgency, or chat conversations to be grouped by language.
Training data
Training data is a set of sample data fed to a machine-learning algorithm to teach it what to look for.
Training data is often formatted as data with inputs and their expected outputs. For example, in an algorithm to categorize the sentiment expressed by a tweet, each input tweet in the training data would be labelled with the output sentiment it expresses. When the algorithm is training, it uses these inputs and their corresponding labelled outputs to recognize patterns. When we later input real data without an associated output, the algorithm uses the patterns it detected from the training data to calculate the output of the real data.
To create training data sets for our model, we used ProNotate, our in-house, web-based collaborative data labeling platform. ProNotate allowed us to quickly label text to create the most accurate training data possible.
Data Preprocessing
Before inputting any data to our model, we processed it to remove extraneous information. Our team carefully removed information such as HTML tags, special characters, and stop words (words which appear in text but do not hold much value) from the articles to be analyzed. Another component of this preprocessing was lemmatization, a procedure which groups together inflected forms of a word so they can be analyzed as a single item.
Feature extraction
The first step towards training a text classifier for Natural Language Processing (NLP) is feature extraction or vectorization. This method transforms text into a numerical representation in the form of a vector. We used the Bag of Words simplification model to represent the words in a given text.
Bag of Words
There are several ways to implement the Bag of Words model, but in essence it is a model which represents a text by the words in it, disregarding grammar or word order. One way to create this representation is to use a list of all words from an entire given language, and mark each word with a 0 if that word is not present in a given text, and a 1 if it is present. Another method is to count the number of times each word appears in a given document. The most popular approach is the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) technique.
The technique uses the following equation, where the term frequency for the occurrence of term t in document d would be calculated as
The inverse document frequency for the same document is
Where N is the total number of documents and D is the number of documents which contain the term t.
We calculate the TF-IDF by multiplying the results of the above two equations.
The resulting statistic represents the importance of a word to the document.
Deep Learning
Deep Learning is used to describe machine learning algorithms which represent artificial neural networks with many layers, similar to the human brain’s neural network. Deep Learning architectures are perfect for text classification problems since they are able to learn categorization incrementally through their vast hidden layer network. Our model used a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to classify texts.
Why use a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)?
Although Convolutional Neural Networks have been traditionally been used for image classification, they are also useful for other data analysis tasks. The convolutional layers in a CNN are adept at detecting patterns, and the network provides strong validation accuracy with high consistency throughout numerous datasets. Even without large training data sets, CNNs provide higher validation accuracy and lower training time than both Recurrent Neural Networks and Hierarchical Attention Networks.
TensorFlow
TensorFlow is a Python deep learning framework, similar to Keras, PyTorch, Theano and MXNet. We built our model using TensorFlow because of its API integrations that allowed us to quickly build at scale deep learning architecture. TensorFlow is versatile, can be run on numerous platforms, and supports a wide range of languages. The TensorFlow TensorBoard also provided an extremely useful visual and graphical monitor for the model, which aided the team with debugging.
# Train the model
def main_train_DCNN(vocab_size, num_labels, batch_size, x_train, y_train):
model = Sequential()
model.add(Dense(512, input_shape=(vocab_size,)))
model.add(Activation(‘relu’))
model.add(Dropout(0.1))
model.add(Dense(512))
model.add(Activation(‘relu’))
model.add(Dropout(0.1))
model.add(Dense(num_labels))
model.add(Activation(‘softmax’))
model.summary()
model.compile(loss=’categorical_crossentropy’, optimizer=’adam’, metrics=[‘accuracy’])
history = model.fit(x_train, y_train, batch_size=batch_size, epochs=30, verbose=1, validation_split=0.1)
# Creates an HDF5 file ‘my_model.h5’
model.save(mdl_name)
return model
Adam optimizer
To optimize our model, the team used the Adam optimization algorithm. Adaptive Moment Estimation is an algorithm which has been known to work well for a wide range of applications. It allows for quick and effective optimization using oscillation damping methods of both RMSProp and Momentum optimization.
Inference
In machine learning, inference refers to the process of making predictions by inputting unlabeled data into a previously trained model. Inference tests the trained model, and is the final step in developing an accurate text classification algorithm. After training our algorithm and fine-tuning it using the Adam optimizer, our model reached an inference accuracy of 93%.
What’s most exciting about our model?
With the launch of our robust text classification model, our team was able to automate the entire process of picking relevant client-based articles and tagging them under their respective categories, saving 80% of our analysts’ time.
Scalability
This NLP solution is easily scalable to millions of articles, as it allows quick computations for massive datasets. Data which would have once taken weeks to analyze and find insights, can now be processed in a few days.
Real-time analysis
Our model makes it easy for analysts to get insights of real time statistics for a customer. Our smart dashboard provides graphical representations of product’s share of voice.
Consistent criteria
Manual text classification often results in human error from distraction, fatigue, or inconsistent criteria. Our machine learning model eliminates potential for this error, and creates a centralized and accurate way to categorize texts.
Article published by CapeStart, Inc. | https://medium.com/capestart-ai/classify-thousands-of-news-articles-at-the-click-of-a-button-6e36312d4f20 | ['Gaugarin Oliver'] | 2020-09-18 05:21:06.651000+00:00 | ['Text Classification', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Image Classification', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
A Brief History of a Trans Dyke | I came out as transgender in the Spring of 2016 after a decade and a half of struggling with my identity. The first time I remember questioning my gender was when I was in kindergarten or early grade school. I put on a skirt belonging to my older sister, thinking it was a pair of shorts, and was promptly ridiculed by my father. I thought the rule that boys weren’t allowed to wear skirts was stupid, and I started to wonder if I was even a boy. The 1990s and early 2000s were a wildly transmisogynistic era in American media. Sitcoms and daytime talk shows were rife with trans women being the butt of cruel jokes. I watched plenty of both due to being a latchkey kid. This also gave me plenty of opportunity to experiment with my sister’s clothing, a secret I guarded closely for years. As a teenager I leaned heavily into performative masculinity. I grew a beard, piled on muscle, and was generally an obnoxious bastard. I again started to question my identity as a teenager, this time latching on to the label of genderqueer, which in the mid-late 2000s was the dominant term for nonbinary people. I kept this identity entirely repressed until I decided to come out.
I finally started to learn about how people work in college. Sociology, psychology, and anthropology opened my eyes to things not being as black and white as mainstream culture had made them out to be. I loved learning about people, especially about sex, sexuality, and gender. I screwed around and dabbled at a community college for a few years before transferring to a rather esteemed public school. My final awakening came that fall. I was living on campus in a suite, and rooming together with five dudes was incredibly unpleasant. One night I was kept up sobbing as I finally accepted my identity, not as a man but as . . . something else. I tried to repress it again. I developed an extremely unhealthy relationship with alcohol, dropped out, and moved back home. The next five or six months were a hellish mash up of day drinking depression mixed with copious amounts of caffeine to keep me from passing out. I even tried to join the damn navy in a last ditch effort to, I don’t know, “fix” myself.
I didn’t think I could be trans. I mean, I didn’t even like men. The only times I had seen trans women were in grimy and exploitative settings. Through television, as I mentioned before, or through pornography. I had spent years sublimating my own feelings about gender into lust. I had only seen trans women be the butt of a joke or used as sex objects by men, and that made a serious and lasting impact on me. I spent so long in the closet thanks in large part to the fact that I don’t like men. I tried to like men. For years I thought it was the only way to be trans. I had heard so much about Harry Benjamin’s typology this and Blanchards typology that and I internalized it. I had been indoctrinated into the belief that the only real transfemininity is predicated on making itself sexually accessible to men. The first year and a half after I came out I fluctuated between identifying as a lesbian or bisexual. Then I downloaded Grindr.
I had been on other dating apps with men of course but had never really been interested. I was only on Grindr for a day, and might I say, men are disgusting creatures. I had of course been hit on in real life but the sheer brazenness that men operate with over the internet when they can send pictures was the shock I finally needed to cement my identity as a lesbian. The last lingering shreds of the very unique kind of compulsory heterosexuality that affects transfeminine people were held together mostly by the quite frankly fetishistic obsession with twinks and “femboys” in “mainstream” transfeminine culture. I thought that I could be into a man if only he looked like a woman. Bitch please. When I realized that people into men are actually enthusiastically into them it was like a lightbulb went on in my head. People that are sexually attracted to men are actually enthusiastically into them. There’s no grudging acceptance. It’s not something that you just tolerate, and no, you can’t be both bi and a lesbian.
I am so much happier after accepting myself. Lesbianism is a beautiful sexuality with a unique and vibrant culture. I love my lesbian siblings for opening my eyes and for being such good friends (and lovers). I was finally able to express my sexuality in the way that I wanted. Compulsory heterosexuality sees us as passive and submissive objects intended for the use of men. I’m anything but those things, and take great pride in being a sexual being removed from the pervasive gaze of men. I found a home with the uniqueness of lesbian gender identities. I now consider my gender and sexuality to be one and the same. I am a lesbian, pure and simple. | https://medium.com/@ghearict/a-brief-history-of-a-trans-dyke-474e0bea355f | ['Kay Timmons'] | 2021-09-09 14:35:29.989000+00:00 | ['Lesbian', 'Transgender'] |
How To Make Your Fitness A Priority In 2021 | Write About Your Fitness
Invest in a journal and make notes on the following things:
Diet
Mood
Workouts
Progress
You don’t need to become obsessive. But it helps to keep track of your journey. So you can understand what your doing right or wrong. There doesn’t have to be too much detail. You can point out what went well and what could have been better.
Keeping track of your diet can help you get results. Any goal you want to achieve will depend on what you consume. If you have never tracked your food before, this can be eye-opening. You may become more self-aware of what you’re putting into your body.
Your mood is crucial for sustainability. There is no point in making fitness a priority if you feel miserable and unmotivated. Note down how you feel on a day to day basis. Yet, improving your health will likely have the opposite effect. So writing about positive emotions may emphasize the importance of fitness.
Review every workout you complete. Write how difficult or easy each session was. Plus, the level of enjoyment you received. Exercise needs to challenge you, or your body won’t adapt. At the same time, if it’s always tedious, this can make it less sustainable. Identifying what sessions work well will make your training more effective.
Let’s not forget about Progress. Whatever improvements you see, note them down. Positive changes can boost your motivation and inspire you to achieve more. Likewise, be aware of negative changes. If you’re getting further away from your goal, you may have to alter something in your lifestyle. | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/how-to-make-your-fitness-a-priority-in-2021-fcd39fe1b2e5 | ["Daniele D'Alessio"] | 2020-12-27 22:45:37.289000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Exercise', 'Fitness', 'Self Improvement', '2021'] |
Data Management-3 | The remaining of the knowledge areas of Data Management.
Knowledge Area —
6. Data Integration and Interoperability — Managing the movement and consolidation of data within applications and organisations.
Goals -
Data distribution in the format and time frame needed by consumers Data consolidation. Identification of events and automatic trigger alerts and actions Support business intelligence, analytics, master data management, and operational efficiency efforts.
Activities -
Data Interoperability — Acquire -> Move -> Transform -> Integrate Data Integration
2.1.Planning — Plan and analyse, design data integration solutions
2.2.Development — Develop data integration solutions
2.3.Operational — Integrate and inter-operate data
2.4.Control — Monitor data movement operation Operational Intelligence Support
3.1. Perform Predictive Analytics and complex Event Processing
7. Documents and Content — Planning, implementation, and control activities for life cycle management of data and information.
Goals -
To comply with legal obligations and customer expectations for management of record. To ensure effective and efficient storage, retrieval, and use of documents and content. To ensure integration capabilities between structured and unstructured documents and content.
Activities -
Planning — Develop records and content management strategies Planning — Understand records and content requirements. Planning — Determine information architecture. Development — Define and develop content organisation, and E-Discovery Operational — Capture, Manage, dispose, archive, publish and deliver records and Content.
8. Reference and Master Data -
Management of shared data to reduce redundancy and ensuring data quality through use of standard data definition.
Goals -
Enable sharing of information assets across business applications within an enterprise. Reduce complexity through use of standards, common data models, and integration patterns.
Activities -
Planning — Identify Reference and Master Data Needs and requirements Control — Validate Data Definitions, evaluate data sources Development — Establish and acquire data sources for data sharing — integration architecture Operational — Publish Reference and Master Data.
9. Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence -
Planning, implementation, and provide decision support data for reporting, query and analysis.
Goals -
To support in effective data analysis and decision-making process. To build and maintain the environment and infrastructure to support business intelligence activity.
Activities -
Planning — Understand Requirements, define and maintain the DW / BI Architecture. Development — Implement and populate data warehouse, data mart, data lake. Development — Implement Business Intelligence Portfolio. Operational — Maintain data products Eco-system.
10. Metadata — Planning, Implementation, and control activities to enable access to high quality, integrated metadata.
Goals -
Provide organisational understanding of business terms and usage Collect and integrate metadata and ensure metadata quality and security. Provide standard way to access the metadata
Activities -
Planning — Define the Metadata strategy, metadata architecture and understand requirements. Development — Create Metadata model. Control — Apply Metadata Standards, manage metadata stores. Operational — Maintain, integrate, distribute and deliver metadata. Operational — Query, report and analyse metadata
11. Data Quality — The planning, implementation, and control activities for data quality management to ensure it is fit for consumption and business purpose.
Goals -
Develop approaches to measure and improve the quality of data as per defined business rules. Define requirements and specifications for integrating data quality control. Define and implement processes for measuring, monitoring, and reporting acceptable levels of data quality.
Activities -
Planning — Create a data quality culture, define requirements. Development — Develop and deploy data quality operations. Control — Perform initial data quality assessment Operational — Assess Data Quality, Measure and Monitor Data Quality.
Environmental elements aspect of data management will be covered in the next blog titled Data Management-4. 😊 😊 😊 | https://medium.com/datacrat/data-management-3-372aad120d38 | [] | 2019-01-10 07:37:33.040000+00:00 | ['Data Driven Decisions', 'Oracle Cloud', 'Data Management', 'Data', 'Data Science'] |
If You Give a Professor a Stimulus Check . . . | Photo by Chris Blonk on Unsplash
If you give a professor a 600 dollar stimulus check,
He’s going to question use of the word “stimulus” and take issue with its psycho-sexual Freudian connotations that in the twenty-first century are considered misogynistic and stupidly binary.
When you give him the platform to question the terminology, he’ll probably ask you for a committee and a course release in order to conduct his study.
When he’s finished his study, he’ll ask for 15 minutes in front of Faculty Senate to present his findings.
If you give him the floor, he’ll probably use his time to completely hijack the meeting and whip everyone up into circular arguments about whether language reflects or constructs reality.
When he’s finished, no one will remember what the meeting was supposed to accomplish and several faculty members will cry because they feel oppressed in some vague and micro-aggressive way.
If you clap at the end of his speech, he’s probably going to ask for institutional support to write a conference paper on the paradox and socio-linguistic implications of tying attempts at economic progress to an archaic term that simplifies the complexity of human sexuality by framing it in a linear cause-and-effect construct.
When he gets into the conference, he’s going to ask you for departmental funding to register for it, which will probably be around 600 dollars. | https://medium.com/the-monocle-of-higher-ed/if-you-give-a-professor-a-stimulus-check-b77cec178843 | ['Gary Jenson'] | 2020-12-23 13:32:39.302000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Satire', 'Finance', 'Higher Education', 'Humor'] |
Excerpt from a new book on multimodal interface design | Chapter 7: The Spectrum of Multimodality
You’ve now explored the full spectrum of options (currently) available to you when breaking beyond the old-fashioned paradigm of a screen, mouse, and keyboard. But pulling those things together requires a broader perspective. A galactic perspective, perhaps?
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the officers of the Starship Enterprise use technology to navigate through space, scan and catalog planets, communicate in short range and across solar systems, and even to entertain themselves. The crew may have ready access to a variety of touch panels and physical throttles, but they can also ask nearly any question in spoken language. The system can reply with language in kind, but when the answer isn’t well-suited for a spoken reply, they may move seamlessly back to a screen (or even the Holodeck). They might ask for a damage report and hear a spoken summary, while seeing a map of the damage. By tapping on a part of the ship, they can ask the computer to seal off that specific section; or they can ask the computer verbally to take action.
Starfleet Dreams
Yes, like many technologists I’m obsessed with Star Trek. I’ve immersed myself in that world for years as a member of an improvised parody of the original series called “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” The more I explore the world of Star Trek, the deeper my admiration becomes for its optimistic, (usually) inclusive futurism.
The bridge of the Starship Enterprise (Figure 7.1) is a shining example of what today’s designers often refer to as a multimodal interface. The Enterprise supports multiple input modalities, like touch and voice, and it supports multiple output modalities, like screens, VR, and speech. What’s most remarkable is how effortless it is for the crew to change the way they interact with the ship’s computer and its various modes of input at a moment’s notice.
Figure 7.1 The bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation is the ultimate multimodal interface. Officers interact meaningfully with the system in different ways, depending upon their proximity to physical affordances. Star Trek and the Starship Enterprise are © ViacomCBS
Now that next-generation technologies like conversational user interfaces and computer vision have arrived, the most immediate challenge that today’s multimodal experiences face is the tension between visual interface elements and audio interface elements. No matter how much hype surrounds voice-user interfaces, voice is not necessarily best suited to all interactions.
Early voice-enabled interfaces like the Xbox Kinect relied on a “see it, say it” model where customers could speak the written name of an interface element to interact with it, as depicted in Figure 7.2. In contrast, early automotive systems treated voice and touch as separate ways of performing the same task with no synchronization or support for transitions. Mercifully, those experiences are fading away in favor of more integrated approaches to multimodality.
Figure 7.2 Some early voice-enabled multimodal interfaces like Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect relied heavily on direct reference of UI elements. Photo credit: Howcast.com
Years later, the experience of designing for Amazon’s voice-enabled countertop tablet device, the Echo Show, put us in uncharted territory. As we worked on one of the first devices to attempt a tight pairing between interactive visuals and natural language speech, we faced a number of new interaction design questions. Could we use the same responses as the Echo itself? What level of display was appropriate? How did an interaction with the Echo Show differ from the Fire TV? How would we help customers switch between physical interactions and spoken interactions?
As we waded more deeply into the product design process for the Echo Show, it became evident that the introduction of the screen to what had previously been a voice-only interaction was far from cosmetic. This particular combination of screen and natural language interface was yet another new paradigm. It seemed silly to read a full forecast when the screen could display it so much more efficiently. Some requests, like “show me stock prices,” might not even warrant a spoken response due to the context.
Coping with this added complexity required us to make intentional choices about the relationship between our primary input and output modalities. Over time, those choices became patterns, and my first multimodal interaction model was born. But much of my thinking has evolved since those early days when I, like the industry, was still quite device-focused.
Before you begin designing specific interactions for your experience, you must first make a conscious choice about what multimodal interaction models your product will support.
Dimensions of Multimodal Experiences
Early attempts to chart these new voice-enabled experiences placed a heavy focus on the voice aspect of the interaction. At Google I/O 2018, a “Multimodality Spectrum” with a single axis was presented: the support for voice interactions, from voice only to no voice.
A single-axis “multimodality spectrum” depicted in “Design Actions for the Google Assistant beyond smart speakers” from Google I/O 2018.
While voice is undeniably a critical element of many multimodal interactions, simple support of voice features isn’t necessarily the defining feature of multimodal interactions. Furthermore, the terms voice forward and screen forward are inherently device-centric.
In order to create a more robust interaction model that will stand the test of time, take a step back and consider the human impacts of multimodal systems. While you’ve explored many input and output modalities thus far, there are two dimensions that have the greatest impact upon your customer experience:
Proximity: The typical or average distance between your customer and the device(s) involved in the interaction.
The typical or average distance between your customer and the device(s) involved in the interaction. Information density: The amount of information presented to your customer in a typical interaction. In this case, information includes length and complexity of spoken prompts; any visual information like images, lights, or written text; and any tertiary information provided over channels like haptic feedback.
To understand what multimodal interaction model applies to your experience, begin by asking yourself these two questions about those critical dimensions of the experience:
Where will your customer be in relation to the device? (See Table 7.1.)
How much information is presented to your customer during a typical interaction? (See Table 7.2.)
Table 7.1
As discussed in Chapter 6, “Expressing Intent,” the nature of the input sensors you’ve selected will directly impact the assumptions you can make about the distance between your customer and the device they’re interacting with. Note that close proximity is determined by the location of the input sensor, which is not always on the primary device, as seen in streaming devices with microphone-enabled remote controls.
Table 7.2
High-density information is often provided on high-resolution screens. Multimodal rich output also typically includes robust voice and sound interactions. Low-information density interactions usually include very constrained visuals: either a small screen, an LCD readout, or an LED display of some sort. Figures 7.4 and 7.5 illustrate two ends of the information density spectrum.
Figure 7.4 Low information density: a Fitbit wristband.
Figure 7.5 High information density: Netflix on Amazon’s Fire TV
Dynamic Devices
Observant readers may have already noted that these dimensions aren’t necessarily fixed, even for a single device. A person can be near or far from their Amazon Echo. Some devices are more constrained — customers are unlikely to use streaming video devices out of eyeshot. But, in other cases, a single device might support multiple “stops” on both of these spectrums, depending upon customer context. While the examples here tend to be device-based, in reality you could say that an adaptive device is technically switching between intangible and anchored experiences. A single device could support multiple interaction types. The difference is that an adaptive experience has affordances that allow customers to choose how to interact in the moment.
Mapping the Multimodal Quadrants
Once we’ve answered these two questions, we can begin to understand where our product fits in what was once a dizzying spectrum of experiences. What have our customers learned to expect from experiences like this one, and where have those experiences fallen short?
By placing relative customer proximity on the X axis and information density on the Y axis, you can place most multimodal scenarios firmly into one of four quadrants, as shown in Figure 7.6. Note that there is no superior quadrant: each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
To apply this multimodal interaction model to your designs:
For your experience, answer the two questions specified earlier.
Where will your customer be in relation to the sensors you’re using during the scenario?
How much information is presented to your customer during a typical interaction?
Use the answers to these questions to place your experience in one of the four multimodal interaction quadrants. | https://medium.com/rosenfeld-media/excerpt-from-a-new-book-on-multimodal-interface-design-25151801ae43 | ['Rosenfeld Media'] | 2020-11-30 16:55:42.509000+00:00 | ['Interface Design', 'Multimodal', 'Interfaces', 'Inclusive Design', 'UX'] |
Dr. Ly Van Bao: Blockchain application entered the sprint race | In his recent return to Vietnam for a blockchain conference, Dr. Ly Van Bao has a talk about the trend of European and international banks in this application to the banking and financial services and about his dream of starting a business using this technology.
Dr. Ly Van Bao (photo: NVCC)
Having completed his doctorate in Information Technology at the age of 28 in France in 2005, Dr. Ly Van Bao decided to stay there as an independent technology consultant in the finance and banking industry. Over the next twelve years, he undertook many key roles in major projects in building and restructuring the information technology systems at well-known multinational banks in France such as BNP Paribas, HSBC, AXA … Currently, Dr. Bao is a design architect, coordinator and developer of e-Commerce applications used in the purchase of derivative products from BNP Paribas, one of 10 largest banks in the world. This is part of BNP’s overall program named “Investment Bank of the Future” and “ Digital Era” with a total investment of over $3billion.
How do European and world banks approach blockchain, one of the most popular technologies today?
According to the global report on Fintech by PWC, 82% of financial institutions around the globe are increasingly engaged in developing their Fintech counterparts to make more technological applications., 30% of large financial institutions are investing in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and 77% of them are setting the goal of blockchain application in their product system and operating procedures by 2020. This means that there is less than two years to put these technologies into practice. Banks and financial systems are starting to sprint into the blockchain application, since its successful application is synonymous with cost cutting, security improvement as well as transparency enhancing in the current banking system.
Specifically, what can blockchain contribute to the banking and financial services?
It can be said that this field is one of those where blockchain can be applied most successfully. For example, estimating the amount invested by global banks in the anti-money laundering (AML) and illicit activities alone, according to Deloitte’s calculations, it already exceeds $10 billion. This figure is constantly increasing every year due to the increasingly complex nature of the problem. This is one of the major burdens of the banks and it certainly increases the transaction costs. Besides, the application of Know Your Customer (KYC) policy requires the financial institutions to know and understand their customers as well as their financial transactions for risk management, which is another burden to all banks, even major banks like BNP Paribas or HSBC where I have worked with. The KYC compliance requirements often slow down the transactions, especially the complex ones which may last several business days..
Although the sharing of customers’ information has been implemented, for example, SWIFT (Association of inter-bank telecommunications and international finance) has shared information about KYC with only 1,125 members. This figure is too small as compared to more than 7,000 banks in the SWIFT system. Thus, blockchain application into customer information management will bring more efficiency.
For the regulation of cash flow, if we get the right approaches, blockchain will be the most optimal technology in solving its problem because once information is stored, it will last forever and no modification can be made. Therefore, malicious individuals should avoid blockchain applications because whatever way of creating fraud, the investigators can find a lot of clues. Thus, it’s better than any current technologies by allowing the examination into the past data.
Furthermore, blockchain can be used to build a payment system, a money transfer system or a digital identity recognition in banking transactions and financial services.
Dr. Ly Van Bao (top left) and Mr. Kai Yee Goh, former Director of Western Union International Business Development
So what are your comments on Vietnamese approach to blockchain technology and digital money?
As a technology expert in the financial sector, I think the current perspective to digital money in Vietnam is disallowance for use in transactions and considering it as an asset, which is regarded as the prudent and necessary steps before specific legal corridors on this issue are promulgated. However, blockchain technology including the digital money application, similar to any other technologies in the digital era, has a rocketing speed of development. If we do not respond in time, we will go behind other countries. One lively example I’ve seen when attending the blockchain conference held by Huobi, a Singaporean company, in Ho Chi Minh City, is that Singapore government has successful policies in both controlling and creating the legal corridors so that this island has gradually become a center for blockchain technology and digital money in Asia. Singaporean current position challenges any country in the region to catch up with.
Moreover, the effectiveness of blockchain application in the banking and finance sector is the transaction cost cutting. This means increasing trade advantage, especially the international trade, considering that the bank charges are always a burden to all businesses. Obviously, the strength of national competitiveness in the international trade will be influenced by applications related to blockchain and digital money in the near future.
So you want to start a business with a blockchain application?
Working with leading banks in Europe in many IT projects involving different operations, I have an overview of blockchain application trend in this area and I think it will be an inevitable one. Now it’s time when I can bring my experience and knowledge of technology to create a product that benefits the community, especially those with low incomes.
My colleagues in the financial services with me together will build an application called ZeroBank, a smart application developed for transactions of noncommercial money transfer, from peer to peer, directly and rapidly cross-country. Utilizing the latest technologies such as blockchain, smart contract combined with the sharing economy models, ZeroBank completely eliminates the common barriers of conventional cross-country money transactions and promises to be a major threshold in international money transfer.
Through ZeroBank, the senders and receivers can perform direct, peer-to-peer transactions at any time, anywhere, with the lowest cost by eliminating the dependence on the financial intermediaries with high cost as in banks or international money transferring organizations.
ZeroBank aims to serve 258 million people, including international students, migrants, foreign workers across the globe and more than 1.3 billion travellers per year. In addition, ZeroBank also creates a platform combining the sharing economy to provide work opportunities for the community such as taxi drivers, tour guides, hotel receptionists, salespeople, students … Blockchain technology combined with the sharing economy is one of the key points to make the project feasible.
This will be a global project developed in Vietnam. It is possible that ZeroBank is one of the most ambitious projects I have ever participated in, but with my experience and trust in my experienced partners in the field of money transfer and exchange, I believe we will go far.
“The legal basis always lags behind technology because its fast-changing nature. Sometimes big change will have to be made in a short period of six months to a year only. I think that the law is made to help create the legal corridors for technological development rather than prevention. Thus, the time will come when the legal basis in Vietnam gradually creates the corridor as an environment for development of applications beneficial for the society, the community and most importantly, to the economy. However, we cannot wait for a legal framework then implement technology since if so, no legal framework for technology will exist. “ Dr. Ly Van Bao says.
HT-TH
Stay updated on our channels: | https://medium.com/zerobank-cash/dr-ly-van-bao-blockchain-application-entered-the-sprint-race-e66f58105e1b | ['Zerobank - Your Local Currency'] | 2018-07-17 03:20:17.555000+00:00 | ['Blockchain'] |
Cosmic Perspectives | “I hate weekends. I am tired of socializing. All I want to do is snuggle up on my couch on a Friday night and watch something on the screen. I don’t care.”
I once lamented to a close friend who is dreary, reserved, focused, and tough.
Listening to my peeve patiently for an hour, she said in despair;
“You are highly dormant. You do not have any problems in life. Do you want to hear practical problems? I am worried about paying salary to my staff on the first of next month, do you have any idea how many families are dependent on me? Now stop complaining like a baby and count on your privileges.”
Admittedly, I put an end to my whining though I held on to the couch snuggling.
This person is highly opinionated, always on her feet and rigid. She follows her heart and does what is true to her belief thus cleansing herself on a regular basis. One cannot expect an emotional embrace from her even when needed. Her frankness often prevents me from confiding especially when I prefer to stay away from the reality. She is right most of the times.
People are quite apprehensive to be in her company. Her close bunch would just be a handful who would inarguably remain with her forever. | https://medium.com/@growingindreams/cosmic-perspectives-b8238f9bd710 | [] | 2021-09-15 02:42:52.154000+00:00 | ['Personality', 'Perspective', 'Self'] |
No Fear. No Limits. No Regrets in 2020 | No Fear. No Limits. No Regrets in 2020
If you want to view paradise simply look around you and view it.
Wall mural at Adelaide Central Market, Australia ©Lucy King
At Mindset Matters, we believe you can change your life depending on the type of stories you tell yourself.
It’s been a whirlwind building up this publication. Thank you to everyone for your support over the past six months.
To close out 2019, here’s a collection of our top performing, curated stories. Each story explores a dimension of mind, spirit and creativity with over 100 likes or 500 reads. All of the listed stories have been distributed in topics by Medium. Several of them are double and triple curated even!
Looking forward to write and share many more stories to uplift you in 2020. You can find inspiration everywhere — even in the most unlikely places such as an airport!
A positive sign spied recently at Adelaide Airport ©Lucy King
No prizes for guessing where the editor of Mindset Matters is spending her New Years holiday. For those of you embarking on New Year’s Resolutions, one last reminder: Mindset matters more than you may think!
Enjoy!
Mind — A deep dive into the psychology of our everyday behavior.
Spirit — Stories to inspire and motivate you to reach your full potential.
Creativity — On art, design, writing and innovation.
Thank you for reading! | https://medium.com/mindset-matters/have-no-fear-no-limits-no-regrets-in-2020-affd73e49fd | ['Lucy King'] | 2020-01-11 13:44:14.424000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Writing', 'Self Improvement', 'Lifestyle', 'Storytelling'] |
Smart Contract Audit | Smart Contract Audit
To ensure the quality and security of the $SCIFI and $SPICE smart contracts by an independent third party, a contract audit was executed. Here are the details. SCIFI Finance Dec 9, 2020·2 min read
The audit was conducted by Chainsulting, a Germany-based smart contract audit team that has worked for renowned projects including MakerDAO, 1inch, DIA and many more. The scope of the audit included a range of tests around potential vulnerabilities and verifying claims about the smart contract usage and interactions. Both the $SCIFI and $SPICE contracts passed the audit in all categories.
“The overall code quality of the project is very good, not overloaded with unnecessary functions. They also used widely audited contracts which greatly benefits the security of the overall project. The main goal of the audit was to verify the claims regarding the security and usage of the smart contracts and deployment scripts. All claims have been verified by us and passed all tests.”
The full audit results can be viewed here. | https://medium.com/@scifinance/smart-contract-audit-db97b8981b8b | ['Scifi Finance'] | 2021-03-09 22:56:50.093000+00:00 | ['Index', 'SciFi', 'Spice', 'Audit', 'Smart Contract'] |
Community Reactions 2020 Wrap-Up: shesaid.so members share their personal wins and learnings from 2020 | “I am proud of myself because after three very successful years of booking in my country, when pandemic hit I I had to reshape my goals. I had to ask myself what my mission and vision are and start building again from there.” — Pamela
“A massive win for me was having the opportunity to become a SSS mentor for Claire-Anaïs Decarli. I’ve learnt so much and made a wonderful new friend. Not to mention all the other amazing SSS members I’ve met along the way. Community really is everything! I’ve also just started a platform called Face The Music, a place to showcase, amplify and celebrate the intersectional stories from voices across the music industry. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s interested in getting involved.” — Nicky
“A massive win for me at Dmusicmarketing, we maintained really busy all year, especially since Covid, and we have expanded the team hiring two more people in the last 6 months. We are now a team of 12, which 9 are women. This is a massive win in a year filled with uncertainty. It was also amazing to see how easily our team adapted to working remotely without losing the team work ethics.” — Adel
“The pandemic woke me up from what I was doing with my life. I needed to be thrown off the cliff to let go of whatever fears [I had] and commit to my music goals. I started studying music composition on my own when the first lockdown hit. And then, with the help and support of my family, I was able to start an online certificate for music composition from Berklee. — Karen
“I am super proud of finding my first job in music in 2020! It has been a dream of mine for the longest time and I think I am not even realizing to the fullest how this could just be the beginning of something much greater! Most importantly, I am proud of myself for never compromising on my own values despite all of the hurt, sadness and disbelief felt.” — Elena
And what you’ve learnt about yourselves:
“My sense of community has expanded and technology has really supported this. Keeping my community choir engaged has been an example of keeping a very local community activity going, moving online, but also a collaborative project launched on World Voice Day has led to new interactions in Malaysia, India, Norway, Ireland, Australia, France and the US, which has been a beautiful and unexpected positive during this time.” — Juliet
“I don’t know that I’ve learned that much about myself in quarantine, other than that I resent the pressure to do so. It seems like everyone in a creative field has taken this as an opportunity to finish their ground-breaking debut LP, write a seminal work of fiction or become the baking, painting, cross-stitching, cross-country running, Italian speaking film critic they always knew they could be. I am happy if I get up, get my heart rate above 80 beats per minute, brush my teeth and moisturise. If I reply to an email, put on trousers or put my pants in the washing machine, the day is a resounding success. Here’s to more of those.” — Molly
“How incredibly connected we all really are in times of need. People who might normally be competitors are banding together (agents, promoters, venues, managers, etc ). This is really such a powerful thing to witness.” — Laurel
“What I’ve learnt and loved during this time is to deepen my thoughts and get better clarity on my work and personal values and my own personal value. It’s been hard at times but mostly great and I can’t wait to step back into the world with this new found strength this has helped me uncover.” — Claire
“In terms of managing staff, I have learned the importance of swiftness and clarity of decision making. Staff need to know where they stand & they need to know that everyone is being treated fairly and equitably whatever their position within the company.” — Catherine
“I’m experiencing more and more that being present in the here & now (which is a constant practice) is almost the solution to everything, including; not spiralling into anxiety about my future, being more compassionate, enjoying life more — regardless of what happens on the outside.” — Ariane
“I don’t catastrophise as much as I thought I did, and I love tidying.” — Harriet
“I’ve learnt that I can actually cook! I’ve really enjoyed this time making new recipes and creating fun meals. My favourite is the Smashed Avocado BBQ Bacon Burger with home-made chips and I swear it’s the best burger I’ve ever had! Might need to start a new business…!” — Chantal
“Practicing daily fluidity and where possible present in the moment. Have found it easier to accept a day at each time even hour by hour.” — Amanda
“I think many of us artists and musicians actually feel kind of good? Of course it sucks to not be able to work, and for many the economic loss is a heavy thing to deal with. But for many of us we suddenly have time to… rest? Contemplate? Play our music just because we want it? Suddenly it becomes clear that musicians and artists are kind of stuck in the idea of a constant delivery and now we actually have time to think about what we really want to do. And sleep. Eat well. Take care of our families, homes, friends, studios.” — Sara
“The pandemic has completely turned things around 360 but one thing that remains is my conviction to win. Throughout this quarantine, I have been spending a lot of time on my Buddhist practice, which doesn’t have to do with religion but the philosophy of bringing out your own highest potential. It has really helped me gather the courage and wisdom to create hope in my life because that is all we have. I focused a lot on how I could encourage even one person in front of me and kept busy with reading, talking to a lot of people all over the world who work in the same industry and taking one step at a time to figure how I can reinvent my business. Still on that process but I am certain to see a light at the end of the tunnel.” — Aneesha
Take that, 2020. | https://medium.com/@shesaid.so/community-reactions-2020-wrap-up-shesaid-so-a118dfc62e1f | [] | 2020-12-18 10:37:04.593000+00:00 | ['Music Industry', 'Resilience', 'Shesaidso', 'Reflections', 'Community'] |
6 Sage Lessons I Learned From Falling in Love | Lesson #1: Relationships Won’t Solve Your Problems
I grew up poor, with a very abusive alcoholic father who constantly beat down my self-esteem. I had a lot of anger at the world and a very negative attitude.
I thought that being a drug dealer would be my biggest accomplishment in this world. My low self-worth and bad attitude caused a shit storm of problems in my life.
Jennifer grew up with an abusive step-father who raped her for years. During one incident, her mom walked into her room and saw her step-dad in bed with her. She callously closed the door and pretended she didn’t see what obviously happened.
Jennifer and I were trapped in those mental prisons of anger, negativity, low self-esteem and shame for most of our lives.
The entire world let us down, but we thought we could save each other.
Relationships never solve our most debilitating problems. Those warm and fuzzy feelings we get from relationships will only distract us from our internal demons.
Relationships numb the pain but actually make our problems worse because they stop us from confronting them.
When two damaged people enter into these seductive unions, a downward spiral of codependency oftentimes begins. Here are some signs of a codependent relationship:
Tolerating the other person’s bad behaviors
Not setting healthy boundaries
Jealousy
Controlling behavior
Excessive fear of abandonment
A high need for approval and validation
We get stuck in a web of dysfunction as the relationship deceptively makes us think our lives are finally getting better. We tell each other we’re fine, but we’re preventing ourselves and our partners from learning, growing and overcoming the demons that have ruined our lives.
To avoid this dilemma, first realize that you can’t depend on your significant other to solve your problems.
You have to overcome your own demons.
Identify and resolve all those things that are stopping you from being the amazing person you are. Get rid of the excessive jealousy, insecurity and neediness.
Stop looking for approval and validation in the outside world — instead, look in a mirror.
Lesson #2: Think Before Acting on Strong Feelings
Anytime you experience a powerful, earth-shattering feeling, first question the validity of that feeling. These types of feelings are oftentimes followed by overreactions and terrible decisions.
Think of those times you were extremely pissed off at someone and then said something you regret to this day. Think about the time you were filled with so much rage, you hit or threw something.
I used to break so many home phones in fits of rage that someone later bought me a phone made out of the same material flip flops are made of. It refused to break, no matter how hard I threw it.
Just because you feel something strongly, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Those emotions-on-steroids can shut down the rational part of our brains.
My strong love for Jennifer caused me to make many bad decisions, one of which was marrying her five days before I turned myself into prison to begin serving a 2-year sentence. I did this despite evidence that she had a drug problem and a shit ton of unresolved emotional problems.
The end result? She spent the money I gave her on drugs, left me for someone else while I was in prison and stole my identity to get more drug money.
Not all powerful feelings lead to bad relationships or decisions. But the risk is there. Be careful.
When you feel the overpowering euphoria of love, and you’re about to make a significant decision, ask yourself:
Does it make sense to do what I’m about to do right now?
Are there warning signs I’m not seeing?
What advice would I give to a friend who was in my situation?
Then talk to a few trusted friends or family members about your situation and get some outside, objective opinions.
Lesson #3: Set Strong Boundaries
Have you ever lost yourself in a relationship?
It’s easy to do.
You don’t disagree with your partner because you don’t want to create friction.
You find that some of your partner’s opinions and values are totally unacceptable, but you stay silent. You avoid conversations that will shine a light on the differences between the two of you.
Jennifer and I were so needy and insecure that we were oftentimes afraid to disagree with each other because neither of us wanted to risk losing the other.
One of the worst ways to lose yourself is to change your beliefs and values when your mate doesn’t agree with them. Looking back, it’s easy to see that you gave up who you were for someone else.
The solution to this dilemma is simple. Set strong boundaries from the beginning. Do the following:
Make a list of what you’re willing to accept and your deal-breakers. Define your core values and the non-negotiable beliefs that matter most to you. Be authentic. Don’t shy away from the things that define who you are. If you do, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your partner, who may never know what you believe or how you feel because you didn’t have the courage to talk about it. Communicate your deal-breakers, values, beliefs and opinions with your partner. There will be conflicts, but healthy conflicts make the relationship grow. Great communication is the catalyst for compromise and understanding. Staying quiet and avoiding conflict only causes underlying differences and problems to simmer and then one day explode like a powder keg.
Setting strong boundaries requires courage. The courage to be authentic. The courage to stand by your values and beliefs, even if it means your partner may walk away. If your partner walks away, the two of you were never really compatible.
You saved yourself a lot of future headaches.
Farah Ayaad makes this clear:
I choose losing you over losing myself and I would rather be abandoned by you than be abandoned by me.
Lesson #4: Love Yourself First
“I think the problem is that we depend on our lovers to love us the way we should love ourselves.” — Humble the Poet
Loving ourselves can be difficult.
All of us have those moments when we feel less than.
When these feelings of inadequacy are really strong, it affects our relationships. We doubt our partners. We doubt ourselves. We doubt our inherent value as human beings. We unconsciously don’t believe we’re lovable.
We can start to believe that the relationship we’re in now is as good as it gets, so we’d better do what it takes to hold onto it.
This can be really dangerous when we’re in an abusive or toxic relationship. We’re more likely to endure it because we don’t think we’re good enough to find a better one.
If I truly loved myself, I would’ve ended the relationship when I saw the first danger signals.
Love yourself first.
Self-love is powerful and it’s the best love that you will ever have. When you love who YOU are, your relationships will be healthier and your life will be happier. Self-love sets the standard in how we allow others to treat us and how we treat ourselves.— Stephanie Lahart
Lesson #5: Let Go of Negative Emotions
When a relationship we really cherished ends, we feel a lot of negative emotions: anger, sadness, confusion, guilt, shame, regret, hatred and many more.
Although negative emotions do serve a useful purpose, if we hold onto them too long, they’ll poison other areas of our lives. A woman who hates her ex-husband because he cheated on her refuses to trust other men. She hasn’t had another relationship in 14 years.
A man who hasn’t forgiven himself for allowing his anger to ruin his marriage now believes he doesn’t deserve to be happy. He continually attracts women who mistreat him or are totally incompatible with him.
When I got out of prison and found out Jennifer cheated on me, used the money I gave her for drugs, and stole my identity, I hated her.
The more we loved someone, the more we’ll hate them or be angry at them when the relationship ends.
To let go of negative emotions after a break-up:
Don’t repress or avoid feeling negative emotions. This will only make things worse. Allow yourself to feel all of the bad emotions. Accept that this is how you’re feeling at this point in time. Don’t judge the emotions or judge yourself harshly for feeling them. Realize that you’re human. You loved that person and now you’re hurt. It’s ok to feel this surge of painful emotions. Give yourself time to grieve. Slowly start letting these negative emotions go. If you did something wrong, have compassion for yourself. If the other person did something wrong, have compassion for them. Forgive yourself or the other person. Use empathy to understand why they did what they did or why you acted a certain way. This will help you realize that all of us have made mistakes and deserve forgiveness.
The hatred I felt for Jennifer slowly turned into anger. The anger slowly changed to empathy and understanding.
I was finally able to forgive her — not for her, but for me. It allowed me to move forward with clarity, happiness, peace of mind and gratitude.
Lesson #6: Don’t Regret Falling in Love
It’s easy to regret the bad relationship decisions we made.
Don’t do it.
Regret can make us feel like we failed in a big way. It can erode our self-esteem, which will most likely be low after a breakup.
Don’t look at that past relationship as a vacuum that’s sucked the happiness out of your life.
Look at the void as a space for new and better possibilities.
The lessons you learned from past relationships will prepare you for better future relationships that will bring new meaning and happiness to your life — but only if you’re willing to look beyond the pain.
Remember the good things about the person. Remember those great times the two of you had.
Love takes courage. The courage to be vulnerable and risk being hurt. The courage to put your heart, soul and faith in something that has an unknown ending.
Don’t beat yourself up. Love yourself for having the courage to give love a try.
Epilogue
Jennifer — January, 1997
I last saw Jennifer while I was in prison in June of 1997, shortly after my mom died. Soon after that, she stopped replying to my letters. Then her phone was disconnected.
I never heard from her again.
In early 2018, a mutual friend of ours told me that Jennifer had moved to Oklahoma, quit doing drugs and started a new family.
She also told me that just before Christmas of 2017, Jennifer tripped and fell into a bathtub in her bathroom. She hit her head and fell unconscious.
Days later, her family decided to disconnect her from life support because she was brain dead.
I sometimes wondered how things would’ve turned out if she had never been raped and grew up in a good family. What would’ve happened if life had dealt us entirely different cards? What if we met under different circumstances? What if I never went to prison?
Then I stopped thinking about “what if?” and just thought about her beauty, witty personality, and the incredible, but brief times we had together.
RIP Jennifer. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/6-sage-lessons-i-learned-from-falling-in-love-fe46b01ce3d5 | ['Charles Amemiya'] | 2020-12-26 01:36:24.303000+00:00 | ['Growth', 'Relationships', 'Loss', 'Love', 'Self Love'] |
What love really means, to a hopeless romantic. | Here goes nothing,
— i don’t know what’s eventually going to happen with this, I haven’t written in a while and this is feeling more like a mess than a well-thought outpour of emotions —
I’m currently going through a heartbreak and probably at the worst I’ve ever been at any point in my life. this isn’t my first heartbreak and even though right now I’m striving towards ensuring it’ll be my last. I’ve got quite a sense of how little truth there is to that.
Sometime in 2014, i decided to dedicate my whole entity to someone, and sacrifice my existence to ensure her happiness — in summary, i gave my all, but it turns out it was either not enough or too much, either ways she had enough and broke up with me not too long ago.
First off, here's a little note about me….
— I’m a lover, a hopeless romantic who despite all signs that will broadly say “You’ll Get Fucked Up”, i try nonetheless and i give all I’ve got into it —
so i kinda saw this coming. well, here i am now, feeling worthless, dejected, rejected, broken, and sunken in my despair. i guess it’s the price all hopeless lovers have to pay. | https://medium.com/@abimboladavid/what-love-really-means-to-a-hopeless-romantic-5d2d4513b0f | ['Abimbola David'] | 2020-12-27 19:02:59.637000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Heartbreak', 'Love And Sex'] |
Applications of Smart Led Lights | Smart lighting is the process of emerging mobile app and sensor access technologies to simplify indoor spaces and save energy. Smart lighting is a collection of data analytics and lighting control. Previously it’s used for lighting control only and now it is used for advanced features. Led lights smart revolution gives the control to the owners that consume energy and improves the security process with the simple command through the Smartphone, voice commands. This lighting system provides an energy-saving strategy for homes and work buildings.
They can easily connect to IoT devices provides the best security system, energy-efficient system. Smart technology creates a creative business environment. The smart led lights are highly durable and remotely controlled through voice or IoT devices.
Smart lights are controlled in two ways,
Connected with WIFI
Connected with another Bluetooth device
The network connection in the lights allows us to connect via Smartphone apps or voice control. There is no need to switch to on the lights using the app or control devices we can switch on every light in the building in few seconds. Smart lighting can be used for residential, industrial, and outdoor applications.
In some cases using the sensor, the human presence is sensed and it automatically switches off the lights in the absence of the humans. Even government organizations in many countries used to program the smart led light technology for the street lights which provides energy consumption, real-time monitoring, security, and safety process of traffic.
· Voice command reach the smart assistant then the WIFI connection connects to led light and switch them to illuminate.
· Otherwise, using the Smartphone apps allows commanding the lights via Bluetooth or WIFI
smart led hanging lights
Benefits of smart lights
Smart lights may cost more than normal fluorescent or led lights, but they have more benefits,
Less energy consumption and life span
Smart lights use led lights to reduce energy consumption, as they use 80% of the electric power into energy than the traditional lights. The Led lights have high durability, the smart led lights can work more than 50,000 hours.
Security and easy to use
Smart lights have sensor detection features that can sense the presence of someone in the room. If there is motion detection, it sends notifications to the mobile phones on the indoor and outdoor sides, ensuring secure protection. You can control the lights easily and set the timing to switch on the lights.
Settings
For the functional mode smart colour style can be changed and we can range the brightness. Smart lights can set the timing, it turns off the lights in the nights at the preferred timing. They can be tuned for brightness and dim the light according to the functionality.
Conclusion
Looking for a smart lighting system to install the designing process in your building, choose the smart led lights from the best lighting technologies. There may be some complexity in developing smart functional lights in the building, so more exploration and communication are needed for the smart lighting solution. | https://medium.com/@yalininikki/applications-of-smart-led-lights-951c043e466c | ['Yalini Niki'] | 2021-09-04 09:50:26.472000+00:00 | ['Lighting', 'Led Downlights', 'Downlight', 'Led Pendant Lights', 'Led Lighting'] |
Battle of E-commerce, Spree vs Woo ! | Features and Advantages of Spree-Commerce
Spree comes with a default responsive store front which is customizable to any extent.
Spree store front is de-coupled, We may use any custom framework to build our own store front & brand it to the business needs and deploy, or if you’re focusing on mobile commerce Spree provides necessary API’s for building the same.
Blazing fast search capabilities — Spree when coupled with elastic search will give a seamless experience to your customers even with a millions of S.K.U’s.
Product personalizations and recommendation as per the customer behavior, integration with advanced machine learning libraries.
Spree supports almost all the debit & credit cards, also it enables country specific payment methods as E.M.I or installments.
Integration with all the latest digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Amazon Pay.
Spree has omni channel capabilities, whether its retail, wholesale or online Spree is efficient in managing your inventory, sync product catalogs and stock management.
Spree has internationalization enabled, i.e it presents an opportunity for your business to go global without worrying about the language, tax compliance, currencies and shipment methods. Spree has seamless integration with major shipment enablers like Shipwire, Shipedge and payment integrations such as Stripe, PayPal, Brain-tree.
Spree helps you to leverage the power of data by enabling easier integrations with analytics, growth marketing tools.
Spree has analytics feature so that owner can have a view of the sales happening, also have easier integrations with. Analytics tool such as Kiss-metrics /Mix panel.
80% of the time spent by the e-commerce owners are on product management, order processing, payment processing and issuing refunds, shipment updates for their customers etc. Spree admin dashboard features/enables these functions by default as well as allows various integrations to enable these and makes the life of an E-commerce business owner/manager easier.
Spree is a secure system, it was built by following the best & standard security practices in the industry and is in compliant with the laws (GDPR).
Why should you choose Spree Commerce for your next E-commerce business?
If the answer to the below “if’s” is positive to you, then you may consider setting up your online store-front using Spree.
If you’re in the business with a vision to provide a world class virtual shopping experience to your customers,
If you want to scale up, having high availability to millions of users by preserving the rich UI experience.
If you want to leverage the data, track user sentiments, do sentiment and predictive analytics to serve your customers better.
If you’re looking to rollout an efficient and seamless multi vendor market place with less turn around time.
If you’re bothered about the product count capacity.
If you’re bothered about custom features.
If you’re bothered about User Experience
Listing out few platforms that uses Spree and has significant traffic and traction
Urban Ladder :- Urban ladder is a pioneer in selling furniture's online and it has a Country Rank in India of 4853 and in the last six months it has a visit of about 568.62K users.
Source- https://similarweb.com
MilanStyle.com :- Milan Style probably be one among the biggest online player for fashion designer and luxury branded clothes. They migrated to Spree because of the bottle necks they faced by running WordPress And once after migrating to Spree, they could increase their product portfolio & studies suggests that their conversion rates improved by 35% and above and they were able to scale 10x times. Milan Style has about 74.33K visits from Aug-2019 to Jan -2020.
GoDaddy:- GoDaddy is using spree commerce as a multi-tenant solution E-commerce for small business. When GoDaddy started offering E-commerce solutions to small business their main criteria for choosing the tech was based on which platform is more Extensible, Modular, Mature, and have a good community support. Thus finally they narrowed down to spree after considering the all the factors and Spree was a perfect fit for Godaddy to start their E-commerce vertical. For them Spree stood out fast, reliable and supported by world class developers.
And they scaled it to achieve
1.Thousands of unique storefronts.
2. Up to 1.5M page views per day.
3. And an average response time of ~2.5s.
4. 99% uptime.
Spree Usage Statistics
On the basis of traffic volume — 0.02% of the website which has over 1m traffic is being run on Spree , above 0.06% which has 100K+ traffic also runs on Spree. And Spree is one among the popular website which is in the list of Open Source Usage Distribution in Top10K Sites.
To conclude :- Spree is being adopted by many existing e-commerce giants and if you feel, the scaling of your business relies on introduction of online store fronts, then Spree can be the tech you can vouch on to build a highly customizable, extensive and scalable platform.
We at InternetMango specialize in E-commerce development with Spree, feel free to reach out for consultation. | https://medium.com/internetmango/battle-of-e-commerce-spree-vs-woo-3064b8d5d547 | ['Vijay N'] | 2020-02-20 11:52:24.569000+00:00 | ['Ruby On Rails Development', 'Startup', 'Ecommerce Web Development', 'Gdpr'] |
My Word for 2020: Abandon | I’ve been letting go
Opening my hands
a little here, more there,
letting cares slip through
and expectations
fall to the ground.
Giving up the need for certainty
and approval —
the grip that’s held on far too long.
And now to abandon,
to be lost in Spirit,
found in Spirit,
open and exposed,
all pretense lost
and only freedom gained.
Abandoned to love and
free to be His.
Openly adored. | https://marypr356.medium.com/my-word-for-2020-abandon-5b1c58679b4b | ['Mary Gallagher'] | 2019-12-30 17:27:59.355000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Word Of The Year', 'Words', 'Intentions', 'New Year'] |
Your Brain on Move To Intermediate Programming Level : Any Kid Can Code | Your Brain on Move To Intermediate Programming Level : Any Kid Can Code Laxman Singh Follow Nov 1 · 4 min read
I hope my last topic (link is below) would have helped a bit and you would have tried to make 5–10 different figures. And, you will be feeling confident and I am also looking forward to challenging you with new things to add to your programming experience. I will be covering the following items and their usage: variables, conditions, loop.
I hope and assume you have created a different figure and would be facing some problems. Solving problems must be having good time and output in the end making different figures is always achieving something. Let's go ahead with Variable:
What is Variable?
As a name change, anything that can change or has the capability of changing is called variable. In programming terms, program needs to store value and variable helps to achieve that. If you remember maths problem, where we used to write “Let us assume ABC’s age is x years”. This “x” is variable. Similarly, in programming we say x =10 and now if we will print x or use x anywhere it will be treated as 10 or replaced by 10.
I hope I am not sounding difficult. Examples will help you :
x = 10
y = 20
print(x+y)
Here we go, we magically got the value printed as sum of 10+20. And, similarly, it gives multiplication too.
Manipulation with variables
Conditions
Conditions are easy to understand as it is almost similar to english language connector “IF”. Just we have to learn syntax a bit as our friend python language is very much particular about spaces. In other words, condition is something like which test some condition and on the success of that test takes actions. e.g, If it will not rain today, we can go to playground else study. Her test of rain happening is condition and going to playground is action to be taken if it will not rain. If it rains, actions is ?
Below is the syntax:
if (<<condition>>): (colon)
<<whatever you type here will run if condition is successful>>
Example of IF condition syntax with else
Initially you might face issue as after colon, once you press enter you have to give space (4 spaces is best practice to indent). So, anything with 4 spaces inside if will execute if the condition is true. Don’t think too much just follow and try to use it with various options.
Loop
Loop is very important in programming as condition and variable. Loop helps to make your program short and less repetitive (redundant code can be written once and run in loop).
What is Loop? Loop can be termed as a set of commands running together till the condition given in the loop is true. Let us have an real life example: if your mother has said that you are allowed to play till 7pm, then you can play all the games any number of times till the clock says 7 pm. Nice and disheartening example. Let us move to the Syntax: (I am constraining myself to one loop only i.e, while loop. If you understood, i will introduce “for” loop at the time of implementing some task)
Syntax:
while <<condition>>:
<<commands to execute>>
<<counter so that condition will be successful after n number of runs>>
Example of Loop which runs for 5 times
Now, its your turn to play with all these terms. Play with condition, variable and loop. And, try to go to the extent where you might ask question to yourself for multiple if condition and multiple loops.
For practice, try to convert your square and figures developed earlier inside loop and see if you are able to reduce it to minimum. e.g,
x = 0
while x < 4:
jumper.forward(100)
jumper.left(90)
x = x + 1
Few more commands to add which will help to play with turtle:
reset — It will clean the screen
speed — You have to pass 0–10 any number where 0 is the fastest.
Our aim is to reach to develop at least 2–3 games in the coming 2 months. Let us be on target. And, in the mean time, I will work on next items for you: functions and write a program in file to execute. I remember pain to you for typing, once you have flexibility to save programs in file and run, you will save time and will be able to learn much more faster. Relax, practice and I will be back soon! | https://medium.com/swlh/moving-to-intermediate-any-kid-can-code-d75609a79a1b | ['Laxman Singh'] | 2020-12-03 09:55:23.508000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Python Programming', 'Kids And Tech', 'Kids Programming'] |
Flower Bouquets for Loved ones | Flower Bouquets for Loved ones
Bouquet is the bunch of various flowers and online flower bouquet delivery is an easy and efficient way to buy and gift flowers. Flowers can be considered as the best gift when we send it with our warm and heartfelt wishes to our special ones on any special occasions. Each flower stands for a different meaning and hence it suit all occasion. So, if we choose gifting flower bouquets for someone then we need to consider for bouquet because flowers convey emotions.
Today life is very busy and we have no time for shopping due to our busy schedules. Many people live away from their home and relocate to some other city due to work and hence it is not possible to come in for every occasion. In such cases online gift shops are the best option for gifting someone in any corner of the world. With the help of online flower bouquet delivery, we can send flowers to our family, friends, relatives and beloved ones. We have to select the online florist, choose the flower bouquet we want to sent, give the recipients correct address and the flower bouquet delivery reaches them on time.
Sometimes we are not able to attend the birthday party of our friend’s wedding celebration but we can still send them flowers through online services to make them feel happy. Placing an online flower bouquet delivery is very pocket friendly as well as time and task efficient process. Such online flower services are time saving and we don’t need to worry about quality of the flower bouquet and their delivery.
Flower bouquet can be made up of roses, chrysanthemums; lilies, orchids, daffodils; carnations etc and they can be customized to incorporate our favourite flowers as per the requirement. We always convey our best wishes and feelings to our dear ones for any special occasions. Online transactions for flower bouquet delivery are very safe, secure, confidential and can help to deliver flowers anywhere in India. Such online services provide best quality service for its customers and we need to order our choice and guarantee a quality delivery for our loved ones.
There are many websites available for flower bouquet delivery in India. A person can deliver his favourite bouquet to any city at any point of time. The professional flower bouquet makers design their websites in a user-friendly manner to attract customers with varieties in designs and with discounted rates. Also, online flower bouquet delivery shops helps to deliver customised bouquets based on the customer requirements. These days presenting bouquet is very easy with the help of E-commerce and the online Bouquet Delivery shops in India. It is safe to order bouquets online using our debit or credit cards as per security point of view but we have to select the best and trustable online stores for the online payment process. Thus, at the end it is highly reliable to use the online bouquet delivery service providers to gift fresh flowers. | https://medium.com/@seo.giftjaipur/flower-bouquets-for-loved-ones-beca915c77e2 | [] | 2017-11-10 10:28:03.630000+00:00 | ['Flowers'] |
Never be a free-rider | Never be a free-rider
I spent my Thanksgiving week in Florida. It is definitely the most unforgettable trip in my life because I fell for a well-designed prank on the very first day.
After I arrived Orlando airport, my friends Marcus and Josh picked me up as they started the trip 3 days earlier. Marcus then drove 3 hours to St Augustine. It is a nice town with a surprisingly long history behind. The town was founded centuries before the independence of the United States. It was served as the capital of the Spanish Florida. After we stayed there for couple hours, my friend took another 3 hours to drive back to Orlando. I didn’t sleep enough on the day before so I fell asleep quickly in the car. When I woke up, we almost arrived our hotel. Honestly, I didn’t know which hotel I was going to stay as I wasn’t involved too much during the trip planning process. I trusted my friends would do a great job on that. The following was the hotel with a sketchy name, Super 8. Not the right one! Actually, I was perfectly fine to stay in the hotel on the left as long as the room was hygienic enough.
Everything still looked pretty good until we got off from the car. Marcus and Josh told me they forgot the room number. I followed them to walk around the entire hotel until they recalled the correct location of the room. Then, they couldn’t open the door by using the key card. They gave the card to me for another attempt but in vain. We walked back to our car as Marcus needed to drive the car to a designated spot before 10 pm to return it back to the owner. The place was quite far away so we called Uber to take us back to Super 8.
Strangely, the Uber driver dropped us off outside another hotel Crowne Plaza. Marcus said he couldn’t select Super 8 as the destination so he just chose the nearest spot. Josh found out that it would take more than half an hour to walk back to Super 8 if we walked along the pedestrian walkway. Instead, he suggested we should take a shortcut to go through the forest to save 15 minutes. I doubted whether it was a wise choice to walk into the forest at night. Josh then proposed to stay in Crowne Plaza as we couldn’t enter the room in Super 8 and he didn’t want to walk anymore. I thought it was ridiculous to pay for another hotel because of getting too tired to walk for 30 minutes. I asked Marcus to call Super 8 to fix the key card issue before we headed back but they replied the repairing guy had already left the office. They asked us to rent another hotel for that night and would offer us a refund as well.
The whole thing was so weird but I couldn’t tell what was the problem. Josh said we should look around the hotel before paying it. We then went up to 12th floor to take a look at the view outside the hotel. Suddenly, Josh opened the door of a room with all their belongings put inside.
What happened? Marcus and Josh knew I had no clue about where I would stay so they planed this prank while I was sleeping in the car heading back from St Augustine to Orland. Now you know how to penalize a free-rider who knows nothing about the entire process! | https://medium.com/@cloudycalvin/never-be-a-free-rider-510a5c987532 | ['Calvin Cheng'] | 2017-11-27 05:10:42.577000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Hotel', 'Orlando', 'Florida', 'Pranks'] |
The Truth About Bread | I love bread. I’m French after all, so I was raised with bread at every meal, including breakfast.
But bread is getting a bad rep these days and it is true that not every loaf is created equal.
So let’s separate the good guys from the bad guys and cut bread some slack.
Is there such a thing as bad bread?
Wheat flour is cleared of the bran and the germ layers during the process of grinding and milling. Stripped to the core, the grain is then used to make white bread, which is soft in texture and mild in taste.
This kind of bread has less fiber (only 1 gram per slice) and it’s packed with carbohydrates. While this doesn’t spell disaster on its own, the biggest problem with white bread is the use of additives.
Additives added to the dough encourage its growth but they also raise the glycemic index, so the feeling of satiety doesn’t last for very long.
White bread also lacks vitamins and minerals that are lost once the layers of the grain are removed. This means white bread is deprived of thiamin, niacin, folate, and iron.
If you live in the US, you should know that the FDA prescribes that vitamins and minerals get added back and “declared when they are added directly to the packaged food (e.g., enriched bread).”
But if you still want to be on the safe side, try and consume whole grain bread. Here is how you will benefit from it.
Whole grain bread and its benefits
Whole grain bread contains cereal grains that are added to the wholemeal flour, thereby achieving greater nutritional value. Whole-grain breads, including those made from rye or sourdough, contain about four times as much fiber as white bread.
They have a low glycemic index because the seeds and cereals need more time to get digested. This makes whole-grain the healthiest choice when it comes to bread.
After conducting extensive research on the effectiveness of the role of whole grain in therapy against type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, researchers discovered that “daily whole-grain intakes of 2 or 3 servings (30–45 g/day) can significantly reduce the incidence of developing type 2 diabetes”, as well as “significantly reduce the incidence of developing cardiovascular disease and stroke”.
Summed up, the benefits of whole-grain bread are:
Improved digestion
Sense of fullness
Blood sugar regulation
Lower blood pressure
Great source of vitamin B and essential minerals
Rye bread and its benefits
Rye bread is significantly coarser and heavier in texture than other types of bread. The reason is that it has a lower percentage of gluten, which makes it ideal for people with a gluten intolerance. Traditionally, rye bread is “made of whole-grain rye flour; thus, the dietary fiber (DF) content in the final bread is high […] approximately 10g/100g […] delivering approximately 2.5g per serving (25g).” (Katina et al. 2014)
Various types of rye bread are sold around the world, but you can also bake your own bread. It’s best to add seeds to it, especially sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and linseeds. You can also add a few caraway seeds to spice it up.
The health benefits of rye bread are numerous. To begin with, high levels of fiber in the rye “result in several beneficial physiological changes, among them the reduction of bile acids, lowering of pH of the feces, and normalization of colonic microflora”. As a result, we significantly decrease the chances of developing colon cancer.
On a similar note, a study published in Trends in Food Science & Technology concluded that eating rye leads to better blood-sugar control. “Results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) suggest that rye breads, in comparison with wheat-based products, reduce the demand for insulin, even when both provide equal amounts of available carbohydrates.”
The study went on to explain that high insulin levels cause a quick decrease in blood glucose levels and a high insulin response which, in return, triggers “the risk of chronic disease development”.
Health benefits of rye bread:
Improved digestion
Balanced hormones
Breast cancer prevention
Curbed appetite
Sourdough bread and its benefits
Unlike all other types of bread, sourdough is made with naturally occurring yeast and lactic acid bacteria during the process of fermentation. Lactic acid bacteria have an ability to release antioxidants during sourdough fermentation.
Other types of bread are made with baker’s yeast and they don’t keep the vitamins and minerals as much as sourdough does. The vitamins, minerals and various fibers t mostly depend on the flour in this case.
According to nutritionists, whole grain sourdough bread is definitely the healthiest. But you should pay attention when buying it. Specifically, some types of “sourdough bread” are not made from real sourdough, they just have the taste added artificially. So be sure to check the declaration and only buy the real deal.
Health benefits of sourdough bread:
Great source of vitamins, iron and selenium
Regulation of blood sugar and insulin levels
Beating bloat
Lastly, keep in mind that no matter how healthy any of these breads are, you still need to mind the portions. Eat them in moderation in order to reap the full-scale benefits. And if you’re not making the bread yourself, always read the label and the ingredients.
I hope this article was helpful. Keep in mind I’m not a nutritionist, I just love bread and did all this research to educate myself and make sure I make the right choice for my health. | https://medium.com/wholistique/the-truth-about-bread-f6dd6d935a70 | ['Alex Li San'] | 2020-03-31 08:04:57.023000+00:00 | ['Nutrition', 'Wheat', 'Rye Bread', 'Bread', 'Food'] |
Secure Chromecast With These Essential Steps | When it comes to casting modern entertainment from your mobile devices to your TV screens, Chromecast helps out do the task very easily. But there can be a risk in doing that because other people might use your device to cast to your screen. There have been reports from a few people about this issue. So, to deal with this problem, we have mentioned below some steps that you can follow to secure Chromecast because securing your device is not as difficult as you think.
· Turn Off “Guest Mode”
You will have to open the Google Home application, and after opening it, you need to click on the “Devices” on the top right corner of the screen. After doing so, tap the card menu in the top right corner of the Chromecast and click on “Guest Mode” and turn it off. This function can be performed with ease.
· Use Secure Connections Only
Restrict using Chromecast on Public Networks, and you should only use your Chromecast on your home networks. It is because the Public Networks can be risky as there are more chances of getting your device monitored. And also, do make sure you turn off your Wi-Fi when you are not at home.
· Make Use of A VPN
With the use of a VPN, you can secure your Chromecast more perfectly. With the help of a Virtual Private Network, your Wi-Fi traffic will get encrypted, and there will be no one, who will be able to leak any information regarding your location as well as whatever you are watching. This way, your Chromecast will remain protected by the VPN whenever you connect it with the Wi-Fi. There are various VPN services available in the market, and you may choose any of them. Please make sure that you will have to set up VPN on your router as Chromecast is not having any direct support for VPN.
· Keep Your Router Updated
And while you are on your home network, make sure your device’s firmware is up-to-date. You should check for the updates and update your router firmware accordingly whenever new updates are available. It will keep your devices up-to-date with the latest security patches which come with the updates from time to time.
· Reset Login Credentials at Times
Change your password from time to time. It will help in keeping you secure. Make sure you are using strong passwords that are hard to decode. But we recommend that you should consider using the PIN if possible, instead of a password.
Edward Lewis is a creative person who has been writing blogs and articles about cybersecurity. He writes about the latest updates regarding mcafee.com/activate and how it can improve the work experience of users. His articles have been published in many popular e-magazines, blogs, and websites.
Source : Secure Chromecast With These Essential Steps | https://medium.com/@edwardlewis549/secure-chromecast-with-these-essential-steps-d074792f2bf6 | ['Edward Lewis'] | 2020-06-19 10:03:19.910000+00:00 | ['Chromecast'] |
Defer, Panic and Recover in Go | In our previous tutorial, we discussed error handling in Go. In that tutorial, we learned that Go treats an error as a value. Such errors do not have the potential to break the programs, but they are designed to denote the anomaly in the business logic. For example, if a function expects values from 0-5 but if we supplied 10 then naturally the function should return a non nil error.
If you are used to another programming language like Java or JavaScript, then we know how to handle exception which is using try/catch block. A try block looks for an exception and if it finds any, it evaluates the catch block without disrupting the program.
Let’s say that based on some conditions, we want to exit from a program. Such conditions may occur when we know the caller of the program might not be able to properly consume the output or when the program may not run further properly based on the given conditions.
A panic is similar to an exception which can occur at runtime. A panic can be thrown by the runtime or can be deliberately thrown by the programmer to handle the worst case scenario. For example, accessing the out of bounds element from a slice (or an array) will throw a panic, as explained below.
Go provides built-in panic function to throw a panic. In the above example, the panic was thrown by the runtime at line no. 7. We can mimic the same behavior by checking the out of bounds (range) conditions and throwing the panic using panic function.
As you can see from the above example, we checked if the index is less than the length of a slice and thrown the panic manually when the condition is out of the bounds.
The panic function can receive any type of argument as its signature looks like below, and we know an empty interface type represents all the values.
panic(interface{})
When the panic occurs, the program is terminated by the runtime and an error message is shown (which is the input to panic function) as well as the stack trace printed till the point where the panic occurred.
But in reality, program execution is not terminated immediately. There is still some life left in the program and Go will finish some of the pending work before it terminates the program for good. Let’s see that in details.
In the above example, we have created a foo function which throws a panic. In a normal sequence of operations, main function gets executed and the first Println statement gets printed. Then foo function starts its execution and its first Println statement gets executed. Since the next statement is panic , Go stops the execution of foo function and second Println statement never gets called. Then control is returned to the caller which is foo() inside main function and program exits, printing panic error information to the console.
So, in nutshell, when a panic occurs, no further statements are executed and Go starts unwinding the stack by calling each pending statement in the stack until the last statement which was called from the main function.
So, is that all? The answer is no. We have learned about deferred functions in functions lesson. A deferred function is a function that will be executed just after the surrounding function hits returned statement or panics. A function can be deferred by adding defer keyword before the function call.
So why are we discussing the deferred functions? Because, when a panic occurs in the program, pending deferred functions are executed in LIFO order. Let’s see an example of this.
From the above example, we can guess what the execution sequence is. Inside the main function, defMain function is added to the deferred call stack of main function, then inside foo function, defFooStart function call is added to the deferred call stack of foo function. Since the next statement is panic , Go starts unwinding the call stack.
Since foo function panicked, Go executes defFooStart function as it is only deferred function from the foo call stack. Then control returns to the main function and since the program is still in panic mode, Go executes defMain deferred function. After that, the program is terminated as no statements after the panicked call (line no. 34) get executed.
You can have other deferred calls inside a deferred function which will follow the same mechanism of execution. We will see this later.
Recovering from the panic
But like try/catch way in other programming languages, do we have any way to recover from this panic? The answer is YES. You can use built-in recover function for that? But where? The answer is pretty obvious. Since the only functions which will get executed when the panic occurs are deferred function, we need to use recover function inside one of them.
recover() interface{}
The recover function returns the value passed to panic function and has no side effects. That means if our goroutine is not panicking, recover function will return nil . So checking the return value of recover() to nil is a good way to know if your program is packing, unless some idiot passes nil to the panic function which is a very rare case. So let’s see an example.
In the above example, we have called normMain function inside main which defers defFoo function call. Then program panics at line no. 21 and no statements after that will be executed. Since we have defFoo call pending as it was deferred, it gets executed next as it is the only function in the deferred call stack of normMain function.
Inside defFoo function, we have recover function call which will recover program from the panic. Then the control is returned to the function which called the panicking normMain function which main function and normal execution flow begin. Let’s see a little complex example to understand.
From the above example, we learned that when the Go program panics, Go doesn’t just start unwinding the deferred function stack all at once, that’s not how deferred functions work. If a panic occurs in a function, its deferred function will be called and if program recovers inside those deferred functions, normal execution flow begins after that function exits.
If a function call is deferred from another deferred function, you won’t be able to recover your program there. Because in order to recover a panicking program successfully, a deferred function with recover call must be executed right after the panic.
Below is an example of a program, where the recover function was called in deferred function which was called from another deferred function call whose caller panicked.
This obviously won’t work. Because the recover function does not know if the program panicked because from where it was called, everything was OK.
Below is another example of a panicking program where an attempt is made to recover the program from a deferred function which was called from a non-panicking function.
Here we will be able to recover the program but no statements after the function call statement, which panicked, will be executed.
Handling function return values
What happens to the return value when the function which supposed to return the value panics? Well, if the function doesn’t hit the return statement, it will return the default value of the return type. Let’s see an example.
We have reused the earlier example to demonstrate how we can recover from the panicking program. Inside accessElement function, we have deferred an immediately invoked function express (IIFE) to recover the program (because we know the program can panic there).
But at the moment, our deferred function is doing nothing except recovering the program. As we can see from the results, when the accessElement function panics, it returns 0 . So what can we do so that accessElement return a fallback value, let’s say the last element in the slice?
This is where we need to use named return values. Inside recover condition, we can override return value and function return that value. | https://medium.com/rungo/defer-panic-and-recover-in-go-689dfa7f8802 | ['Uday Hiwarale'] | 2020-09-01 06:53:45.242000+00:00 | ['Golang Tutorial', 'Go Programming Language', 'Programming', 'Golang', 'Go Programming'] |
4 Proven Tips to Lose 7 Pounds in 10 Days — The Fastest Way To Melt Fat | 4 Proven Tips to Lose 7 Pounds in 10 Days — The Fastest Way To Melt Fat M Mansur Dec 31, 2021·3 min read
What would it mean to you if you lost 7 pounds of pure fat in 10 days? Maybe a huge boost in self-esteem? Better-fitting clothes? More interest from the other sex? Taking care of your family’s health?
Whatever your motivation, this article will assist you in achieving your objective without the use of drugs, supplements, or severe workouts. This is a proven strategy to stimulate your system into burning fat fast, no matter how many times you’ve tried and failed. Those who followed this routine for two weeks reported extraordinarily excellent results. As you re-calibrate your body and eliminate cravings, you will burn fat and feel better than ever.
As a result, here are the four principles you must follow to achieve certain fat loss:
Rule #1: Remove all white items from your diet, which includes bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and manufactured coffee creamers.
Rule #2: Remove all sugar from your diet — You might think that eliminating all white foods will take care of this, but sugar is sly. Sugar comes in a variety of forms, but it’s still sugar. To avoid hidden sugar, you’ll need to check ingredient labels. High fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, confectioner’s sugar, corn syrup, dextrin, honey, invert sugar, maple syrup, raw sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, corn sweeteners, evaporated cane juice, high fructose corn syrup, malt, molasses, and turbinado sugar are all examples of this.
Rule #3: Anything containing wheat must be avoided. This includes breads, pasta, and a variety of snacks. It’s important to read labels again to be sure you’re not eating anything with wheat in it.
Rule #4: Only drink water! This may appear extreme, but consider how many empty calories you get from liquids. The sole exception is if you are a coffee drinker, in which case you may have one cup of black coffee each day to avoid the splitting headache that comes with weaning off coffee…remember, black…no sweeteners, or milk.
Want some assistance in losing weight click here now and check out what’s working for 100’s of women around the world.
So, what exactly is the goal of this regimen?
The idea is not to keep track of calories. The idea is to keep your blood sugar under control. Blood sugar is essential for fat burning, energy regulation, and hunger control.
Following these four procedures will likely eliminate 95% of the simple carbs and sugar you consume, which are both fattening and promoting artery inflammation, putting you at risk for a variety of heart diseases.
Simple carbohydrates and sugar raise blood sugar levels, causing insulin to flood your system. Insulin floods your system, bringing your blood sugar back down, however insulin in our blood does not cause us to burn fat.
To burn fat, blood sugar levels must be in the fat-burning zone, which may easily be achieved by following the four procedures outlined above.
So, how desperately do you want to lose weight? By no means is this a long-term strategy! It’s designed to re-calibrate your system and regulate blood sugar levels so you can burn fat, and it works in just two weeks.
It is a proven truth that 95% of all diets fail.
Want some assistance in losing weight click here now and check out what’s working for 100’s of women around the world. | https://medium.com/@m.mansur8499/4-proven-tips-to-lose-7-pounds-in-10-days-the-fastest-way-to-melt-fat-878c887d0dc | ['M Mansur'] | 2021-12-31 02:10:44.340000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Lose Weight Fast', 'Fat Burning Foods', 'Food And Nutrition', 'Lose Weight'] |
How Java solved my personal problem | Have you ever faced my problem? Like me, have you thought of sending personalized party invitations (with a huge guest list)?
While sending out the party invitations to a large number of people, it is not really feasible to send a personalized message to everyone. I don’t really want to send different messages to everyone but at least “Dear <Name>” at the beginning of the message would work like charm.
So, this exactly is the idea of my app! Let’s call it “Messaging Service”.
So, this messaging service would accept an invitation message, a list of guests, their e-mail ids and mob numbers. Then the guest names would be appended to the invitation message by another service and the final edited message would be sent out to the guests.
To start with, I will stick with email. Here’s the high level flow:
Here’s the PoC code for MES: click here
Well, this PoC has already solved my problem!! I can actually send personalized emails to my friends using this code. Hurrayy!!
Why do we have two services for this use case:
Because we can scale up!! Well, nooo, the reason is that we can learn microservice to microservice communication. Also, we can learn about some security concepts.
The next step would be to create MS and then call MES from MS. Well, this won’t be a simple rest call. The reason is that we will have multiple instances for MES.
Something like this:
I’ll come up with another article that would explain the code and concepts used. | https://medium.com/cohad/how-java-solved-my-personal-problem-54307824513c | ['Sushree Soumya Mishra'] | 2020-12-25 09:42:15.317000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Microservices', 'Spring Boot'] |
Cazoo: blood, sweat & gears | How the UK’s fastest unicorn was built.
dmg ventures is the largest investor in Cazoo, a company which has quickly become a giant in the auto sector and in broader consumer consciousness. Here, I give a short summary of our interest in the auto sector since the early 2000s, our relationship with Cazoo and how the business has achieved its remarkable growth.
🕐 Biding our time in a huge market ripe for disruption
Back in the early 2000s, through trends in classified businesses, we identified the auto industry as one which was nearing a major shift to online, alongside a handful of other sectors. This impending shift, combined with the sheer enormity of the industry (>60m global car sales in 2005) and a lack of trust in legacy propositions, made the space compelling.
However, following a sweep of the market for attractive investment opportunities, we decided to double down on the property sector instead, acquiring several assets which eventually rolled into the Zoopla Property Group.
💡 Honing the thesis
We continued to monitor developments in the auto sector and, fast forwarding a decade, we made a small investment into Carspring, a second-hand car marketplace, in 2015. Online business models were just starting to enter the mainstream, with the likes of Carwow in the UK and Carvana, which IPO’ed in 2017, in the US.
Carspring had a solid model but went into administration a couple of years later. Although disappointing, it augmented our belief in the size of the opportunity and refined our view on what a ‘winner’ would look like. Firstly, it showed us the importance of having a large inventory, and control of that inventory (Carspring was largely a conduit for buyers and dealers), which in turn makes deep pockets a necessity. Secondly, we realised just how complex the business model is, and the importance of finding a highly experienced management team.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. In 2018, in steps Alex Chesterman, a serial entrepreneur whom we had worked with closely at Zoopla. His pitch was simple but powerful. Create a vertically integrated model, with a seamless buyer experience. His proposition also ticked the boxes around finding an experienced founder and, linked to his experience, he was able to raise the capital which the model required to successfully scale (initially £30m of seed funding, to be precise).
We quickly decided to invest, leading Cazoo’s seed round, alongside Stride VC. High profile investors, such as Octopus, joined the round.
📈 A masterclass in blitzscaling
Cazoo has gone from idea stage at the seed round in December 2018, to launch in December 2019, to unicorn status in June 2020, to a $7bn listing in August 2021.
For me, it has been remarkable to witness this transformation first-hand.
It’s achieved this by pulling various levers:
i) Hiring of world class team — the core tenet of any start-up success story, Cazoo rapidly built out the team, with many of the Zoopla management team joining, as well as top talent from the likes of Made.com, Farmdrop and MoneySuperMarket
ii) Heavy investment in inventory — 1,660 cars in inventory at launch, giving consumers a breadth of choice
iii) Rapid growth of brand awareness — 50% of UK population aware of Cazoo within a year of launch, driven by various high profile above the line marketing campaigns (TV, events, outdoor, radio, in addition to our own media channels) and below the line campaigns
iv) Optimisation of back-end operations — quickly built out an end-to-end process for acquiring, servicing, refurbishing, selling and delivering cars, supported by a gradual expansion of in-house capabilities
v) Strategic acquisitions — decisively acquired companies to scale up both the demand side (incl. Drover — UK car subscription platform, Imperial Car Supermarket — UK used car retailer, Cluno — German car subscription platform) and supply side (incl. Smart Fleet Solutions — UK reconditioning specialist)
🔥 dmg ventures adds fuel to the fire
dmg ventures’ partnership with Cazoo has encapsulated all elements of how we can provide value to our portfolio companies.
Firstly, we have backed Cazoo with significant funding from seed round through to public listing, with over £100m invested. This funding has fuelled Cazoo’s growth, through enabling it to ramp up the team, acquire inventory at scale and advertise aggressively.
We have also worked closely with Cazoo to fully leverage our media assets, helping turn Cazoo into the highly recognisable brand it is today. Cazoo runs regular high display campaigns across our titles (Daily Mail, MailOnline, Metro, etc.) to maintain and build their brand awareness levels.
Alongside this, we set out to find a solution that delivers exceptional editorial integration across the full portfolio. We created an editorially-led content partnership, enabling Cazoo to position themselves as a credible, honest and trusted motoring expert.
💵 Preparing to go Public
Cazoo’s rapid ascent saw it agree to list via a $7bn SPAC in March 2021, just 16 months after launch. The benefits of listing via a SPAC are two-fold; greater price certainty and quicker time to market.
At the time of writing (Q3 2021), Cazoo continues to experience rapid growth in the UK, and is expanding into the continent, supported by acquisitions like Cluno. The business has still only scratched the surface of the auto sector, which is worth >£50bn per annum in the UK alone. Cazoo is very much at the beginning of its journey and I can’t wait to see what the next few years hold.
Before you go!
👏 Clap if you found this post helpful, so we can refine our content in future!
🧐 Check out the dmg ventures Medium page for more content.
🥳 Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/dmg-ventures/cazoo-blood-sweat-gears-d54799902864 | ['Manuel Lopo De Carvalho'] | 2021-08-27 13:38:03.665000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Venture Capital', 'Unicorns', 'Investing', 'Portfolio'] |
Love Your Neighbor: Wear Your Mask | Life in Every Limb | Once upon a time, a man was given the opportunity to pay a visit to both Heaven and Hell, accompanied by a guide.
Upon arriving in Hell, he was amazed to see a long table laden with a banquet of every delicious food imaginable. But rather than enjoying the food, the residents of Hell were arguing, complaining, crying. It was then that he realized the only utensils available to the would-be diners were spoons so long that it was impossible for anyone to eat with them. The condemned were doomed to suffer an eternity of longing for food they were unable to eat.
Next his guide led the man to Heaven, where he was surprised to see a nearly identical scene-the delectable banquet, the extra-long spoons. But instead of the wailing and gnashing of teeth he had witnessed in Hell, he saw that the inhabitants of Heaven were smiling, talking with one another, even laughing-and EATING. The difference? In Heaven, everyone was using their long spoons to feed their neighbors on the opposite side of the table.
I read this story over 40 years ago in one of my grandmother’s old Readers Digests, but I’ve never forgotten it and have often repeated it. And it rose into my mind abruptly this week when I read a local reporter’s account of the failure of most people to wear the masks that have been recommended while in public as long as pandemic conditions continue.
Every day I read online diatribes from those who refuse to wear masks because this is America or because they are so uncomfortable or because they don’t like being forced to do anything or even because no one should tell them what to do with their own bodies. Do I even need to tell you how ridiculous it sounds when professed pro-life Christians go around saying such things?
Here’s the real reason people aren’t wearing masks: mask-wearing has a negligible protective effect upon the wearer. What masks do well, though, is prevent a potentially ill wearer from spreading germs to others. I wear a mask to protect you, and you wear one to protect me. Some especially vulnerable folks- like my friend’s medically fragile son -have difficulty wearing masks and are especially counting on the goodwill and compliance of the rest of us.
The freedom and individualism prized by Americans diametrically oppose the idea of being required to do something that only benefits others, not themselves. However, some 75% of Americans claim to be Christians and should therefore be ready to love their vulnerable neighbor by wearing masks even if it were not required.
Instead, it would appear that we Americans are a selfish bunch doomed to a Hell of our own making. | https://medium.com/@lesliehunleysholly/love-your-neighbor-wear-your-mask-life-in-every-limb-1decdb18ba3a | ['Leslie Hunley Sholly'] | 2021-05-01 22:56:44.356000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Christianity', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19'] |
Unybrands Closes $25M Seed To Acquire, Scale Online Brands | Buoyed by a $25 million seed investment, unybrands launched an e-commerce platform aimed at acquiring successful fulfillment by Amazon and direct-to-consumer sellers looking to scale.
Miami-based unybrands was co-founded in 2020 by CEO Ulrich Kratz, Eugen Miropolski, and Christian Harnischfeger to buy, build and boost online brands where business owners have reached the limits of their scale due to a lack of operational infrastructure and growth capital.
“It is a great time to be in this business,” Kratz told Crunchbase News. “Growth in e-commerce is going to accelerate more. We are bringing scale to small brands. Customer habits are changing, and they now want small brands and to go by reviews. We can marry that.”
Here’s how it works: Specializing in categories, such as personal care, pet care, household products, and juvenile and baby, unybrands provides exit opportunities for entrepreneurs, including cash-upfront deals or long-term partnerships for sellers who wish to stay involved.
After buying the business, unybrands handles everything from consolidating logistics and supply chains to marketing and economics, ultimately expanding the business to new domestic and international markets, product lines, and platforms.
“We operate at the sweet spot of consumers’ exploding demands for small and emerging brands,” Kratz said. “We pride ourselves on customer demand, but also help successful entrepreneurs who have realized they reached the limit of scale, either by a lack of financial resources, time, or ability. We come in and come up with a plan on how to build their legacy further.”
The seed round is backed by a group of investors, including Nordstar, DIA Management, Nathan Blecharczyk, 166 2nd Financial Services, Day One Ventures, Brian McGrath of Jefferies, and Benvolio Group.
In addition to Miami, unybrands has a presence in Berlin, London, and Seattle.
Kratz intends to put the money to work into the companies themselves, but also to build its internal infrastructure and team. Though the company intends on moving fast, the startup wants to make the right bets on people and technology, he added.
The company is too new to report any meaningful growth, but Kratz said it has already closed its first deal this month and there are several other deals in the works. Ultimately, he expects to make up to 20 deals in 2021.
“We are working to acquire the right businesses and integrate them onto our platform, as well as continuing to build on the team and technology to be successful,” he added. “We plan to grow the brands on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Similar companies are also attracting investors: Thrasio and Branded Group, two startups that also acquire successful Amazon resellers, separately raised large rounds of new venture funding on Feb. 9 as the e-commerce sector continues to draw intense investor interest.
Thrasio said it brought in another $750 million of financing from a group of existing investors, including Oaktree and Advent International, while Branded, which also consolidates smaller retailers selling on Amazon’s platform, reportedly raised $150 million in a fresh funding round led by Target Global.
Also last week, Win Brands Group, which also acquires brands from marketplaces, said it raised $50 million from Assembled Brands and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management to grow its platform of consumer brands.
Source: Techcrunch | https://medium.com/@digitaltimes-2020/unybrands-closes-25m-seed-to-acquire-scale-online-brands-ec883f987cab | ['Digital Times Africa'] | 2021-02-22 11:37:45.509000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Technology News', 'Technology', 'Investment'] |
Bangalore Based Startup FeedMyPockets Is ‘Taskmo’ Now! | Taskmo (FeedMyPockets Formerly)
In simple terms, if one has to define Taskmo, it’s a one-stop solution for businesses to get the tasks (field or sitting) done.
Taskmo is a Task Fulfillment Platform. We are a managed marketplace that offers a digital-first approach in fulfillment and supply chain solutions for businesses.
In today’s growing economy, we at Taskmo leverage upon the gig economy. We employ a suitable workforce based on your tasks, provide them with the required AI-based online training applicable for your task, and ensure that your task is completed with set standards and within the timeframe.
The gig workers that we employ are thoroughly scrutinized through our 3 levels of the filtration process. These 3 levels include digital KYC, AI-driven training and selection. Once they qualify all 3 levels only then they are employed for the task.
Taskmo has built for Next Billion Users to bring digital revolutions in New Bharath. In such a case, the future holds more opportunities for many business sectors here. But all businesses cannot have the required workforce to meet their growing needs. Hence we at Taskmo are here to help you with your workforce solutions.
Why should you choose Taskmo?
1. If you want to build your brand and create brand awareness, we take up this task for you.
2. If you want to market your products, services or new features across various platforms, we take up this task for you.
3. If you want to increase your clientele and attract new customers, we get it done for you.
4. If you want to conduct audits, we are here to help.
5. If you want to have the option of last-mile delivery services, we do that too for you.
6. If you want to reach out to more merchants and scale up your operations we are here to help you.
7. If you are in need of tele callers and data entry services we offer them to you.
8. If you are in need of promoters, supervisors, storekeepers, drivers and any other workforce services we at Taskmo are there to help you.
Taskmo is a platform that connects your tasks to their respective taskers and ensures your unfulfilled task is fulfilled.
Then why waiting?
Start Tasking With Taskmo!! | https://medium.com/@arpitha-fmp/bangalore-based-startup-feedmypockets-is-taskmo-now-64d8d79bff2a | ['Arpitha V'] | 2020-12-14 07:41:48.521000+00:00 | ['Future Of Work', 'Supply Chain', 'Rebranding', 'Gig Economy'] |
The hunt for coronavirus | Since the discovery of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, scientists have been scrambling to understand the different features of the virus. While a lot more is now known about SARS-CoV-2, several key questions have proved more difficult to answer. For example, it remained unclear where the virus travels to in the body and causes the most harm.
To help answer this question, Deinhardt-Emmer, Wittschieber et al. performed postmortem examinations on 11 patients who had recently died of COVID-19. After sampling 61 different organs and tissues from each patient, several tests were used to detect traces of SARS-CoV-2. The experiments showed that the largest pool of SARS-CoV-2 was present in the lungs, where it had caused severe damage to the alveolae, the delicate air sacs at the end of the lungs’ main air tubes.
Small amounts of the virus were also detected in other organs and tissues, but no severe tissue damage was seen. In addition, Deinhardt-Emmer, Wittschieber et al. found that each patient had increased levels of some of the proteins involved in inflammation and blood clotting circulating their bloodstream. This suggests that the inflammation caused by SARS-CoV-2 leads to an excessive immune reaction throughout the entire body.
This research provides important new insights into which areas of the body are most impacted by SARS-CoV-2. These findings may help to design more effective drug treatments that target the places SARS-CoV-2 is most likely to accumulate and help patients fight off the infection at these regions. | https://medium.com/health-and-disease/the-hunt-for-coronavirus-a66bd90ccdb3 | [] | 2021-04-13 16:02:43.491000+00:00 | ['Sarscov2', 'Covid 19', 'Science', 'Virus', 'Immunology'] |
An Ode to the Baobab | No tree symbolises Africa quite like the mighty Baobab. An icon of the African continent it features in folktales and cultural practices, it provides shelter and food for many living creatures and is widely recognised as the ‘Tree of Life.’ Get to know a bit more about this remarkable tree.
The Boabab is one of the oldest living tree species on earth, believed to be 200 million years old.
There are nine species of Baobab spread throughout Madagascar, Africa, as well as parts of Arabia and Australia. Of the nine species, six are found in Madagascar.
Baobab on Kubu Island. © Ben McRae — stock.adobe.com
Baobabs can live for up to 5000 years and grow to 30 meters high.
Baobabs are some of the most significant trees in the world, with circumferences of up to 50 meters.
Old Baobabs create their own ecosystem supporting the life of countless creatures including birds, mammals, insects, and reptiles, not to mention humans. Some trees are so large they have been used as storage huts, shops, post offices and even prisons!
An African elephant and Baobab in Ruaha National Park. Tanzania © Roger de la Harpe — stock.adobe.com
With bare leaves in winter and branches spreading out like roots, the tree often looks like it is upside and is sometimes called as the ‘Upside-Down Tree.’
Baobabs are some of the hardiest trees in the world withstanding severe drought as well as having their bark severely stripped by elephant. They can store up to 120 000 litres of water in their trunk.
Baobab Avenue, Madagascar. © Christian leynaud — stock.adobe.com
Bats pollinate baobab flowers at night!
The Baobab fruit is considered extremely nutritious with high vitamin C and antioxidants as well as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron. It is said to provide energy, boost immunity, improve digestive health with its probiotic properties as well as improve skin texture.
Monkey Bread (Adansonia digitata) / Baobab Fruit © Diversity Studio — stock.adobe.com
Fruit can be sucked or soaked to make a refreshing drink. It can be roasted to make coffee.
Its bark is used in making rope and clothing and seeds are ground into oil for beauty products.
Sources:
https://aduna.com/pages/the-baobab-tree
http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_baobab.html | https://medium.com/wildark-journal/an-ode-to-the-baobab-8051e4a3d671 | ['Wild Ark'] | 2018-03-09 00:04:54.386000+00:00 | ['Madagascar', 'Flora', 'Tree', 'Africa', 'Baobab'] |
GOLD ALWAYS HAVE YOUR BACK! | No risk, no reward they say, but an uncalculated risk without precision can be detrimental especially in the world of finance which can result to a total loss of acquired wealth and can sometimes even go as far as taking down the initial investment along the way. There have been several economic crashes in history taking down the value of different financial investment but gold had always seem unaffected or even sometimes soaring.
The viability of gold investment has been debated for a long time. Investors argue that gold is a wrong choice for wealth creation. Well, this might be considered true to a extent depending on the angle being viewed from. This statement is also mostly brought about as a result of the stability and it’s minimal volatility of Gold. But investors tend to forget that the stability of gold is it’s greatest feature or should I say it’s greatest wepon.
The right way to build wealth is to invest long term via which gold investment has made possible and providing safety for your assets at the same time without this same stable feature.
Most people want to make money overnight, so they jump into investments like stocks and bonds with maximal volatility with a quick expected return.
What if I told you the right way to invest long term and safely is to put your money in Gold
GOLD AND STOCK
There is no doubt that the market cap of stock is way higher than that of gold which is about $85 trillion compared to that of Gold which is only $9 trillion. This shows that there are more people investing in stocks than in gold. Gold isn’t even the best form of investment to start with, since gold investment is almost risk free and said to only yields little return. This so called little return tends to do pretty well overtime, like $35 in 1971, $242.65 in 2000,
$869.75 in 2008, and then $1,846 today, sounds like an investment I would love to put my money in. There are different reasons to why there are more stock investor. Stock bring fast return unlike gold which increase in price over time but the one thing that can not be ignored is the place of gold in asset security. Gold is known to have a negative correlation with stock. This means that when stock market collapse, the gold market strives. Over the course of history major financial crisis, gold investors have always been on the winning team. The fact that gold investment also bring about nice returns overtime too can not be ignored.
Therefore, gold is that assets that beings you return and asset security at thesame
MAJOR STOCK MARKET CRASHES IN HISTORY AND THE PLACE OF GOLD
Most people go into stock investment because of its high volatility with expected high and quick return. This same high volatility can also be it's downfall.
The stock market started around 1600 and stock market crashes began almost immediately.
Here are some major stock market catastrophy:
THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1929
This is also known as the Black Tuesday. This would always be a reminder of how stock treaders cab easily be wrecked. During this time, the stock market fell as far as 90%, this absolute market decline took about 25 years to recover from. But still in the midst of the crash, the price of Gold went all the way from $20.67 per ounce in that same year all the way to $35 per ounce in 1934.
The crash was caused due to over optimistic investors. Few years before the crash, marginal trading was invented which lead investors to borrow money to buy stocks . This marginal trading combined with the bull market lead alot of investors to invest without caution. This caused the market to rise 20% annually from 1922 - 1929. When sign of a bare market began to surface, investors had to get out of they loose all their money, this led to the economic crash.
STOCK MARKET FALL OF 2000
This is also a significant reference point to the risks of stock market where over $8 trillion worth wealth was lost.
Druing this time, gold prices jumped from little over $700 per ounce to touch the level of $1900 an ounce by October 2011
This financial crash was majorly caused by the Dot-com bubble burst. This was a period of rapid technology advancement; commercialization of the internet. This caused the value of internet based company to sky rocket. investors got attracted to this potential and throwing their money into any company that has Dot-com after it without thinking of the business of the risks involved. With time, it turned out that majority of these companies were doomed to fail. Even the little that succeeded for overpaid by investors at that time compared to the price the are worth today.
For example; investors were buying Yahoo at a 20,000 PE ratio. This means that Yahoo would have to take over the entire GDP of the United States to worth that price today. In March 2000, large companies started placing sell orders on their tech stocks which started a panic that led to a 10% drop in the company in few weeks. By 2001 majority of tech companies at are no longer being paid by investors closed up leading to loss of hundreds of billions of investor's money.
Some companies that were affected by the Dot-com bubble burst include;
Boo.com, in attempt to create an online fashion store spent $188 million and later went bankrupt in May 2000.
Startups.Com which closed down in 2002
GeoCities, which was bought by Yahoo! for $3.57 billion in January 1999. Which later closed up by October 26, 2009.
Hotmail – founder Sabeer Bhatia sold the company to Microsoft for $400 million; at that time Hotmail had 9 million members.
Open.com
STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 2008
(Housing Market of 2008)
This took about 18 months where major financial markets lost 30% of their value and was ranked the 10th biggest one day loss by the Dow Jones industrial average history.
The cause is complex but we know that a lot of financial institutions were buying alot of bad loans, this drove the market and made people feel wealthy and as a result made the stock market recover from the 2000 depression to new levels. Once real estate price started to drop, people started feeling nervous about their assets ,pulling money out of the market crash wasn't until 2012 that the market went back to normal.
Now it's clear that the stock market usually succeptable to financial crisis and the gold is almost immune, don't you think it's a wise choice to invest in Gold? An investment brings you good return as well as financial security and insurance.
Therefore, providing you the easiest and most trust worthy way to buy Gold is the DIGITAL GOLD PLATFORM
THE DIGITAL GOLD PLATFORM
The designated purpose of the Digital Gold project is to is to digitalize and tokenize physical gold asset exploring the amazing features of the blockchain technology. Therefore, allowing users to easily and conviniently purchase physical gold with the digital Gold token.
The Digital Gold platform give clients the opportunity to diversify their portfolios in a safe state since cryptocurrency price is volatile in the market.
THE DIGITAL GOLD TOKEN is based on Ethereum network and is compatible with the most popular cryptocurrency wallets that support Ethereum ERC20 standard tokens
The Digital Gold coin offers an even more comprehensive solution. Apart from providing all the advantages of stablecoins, but also earns you an additional profit, since it constantly grows in value relative to all fiat-pegged stablecoins. This happens since the GOLD token is pegged to gold, and the price of gold relative to fiat currencies continuously increases.
Follow this link to the Digital Gold marketplace: https://gold.storage/market
CONCLUSION
Investment in gold is primarily for its unique characteristic i.e a store of value. Nations may rise and fall, currencies come and go, equity stocks prices climb in good times only to plunge later. But gold endures
Why not save your assets not but buying your gold via the digital gold platform.
Exchange: https://cryptex.net/trade/GOLDUSD
Website: https://gold.storage/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/golderc20
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gold_erc20/
Telegram: https://t.me/digitalgoldcoin
Medium: https://medium.com/@digitalgoldcoin
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/golderc20/
Whitepapper: https://gold.storage/wp.pdf
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MY PROFILE
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Eth Address:0x601D68c1800384C799E8Ac55f4F57Acf93C3fAAF | https://medium.com/@eakinnifesi/gold-always-have-your-back-2b306d4765aa | [] | 2020-12-16 11:44:49.927000+00:00 | ['Eth', 'Btc', 'Gold', 'Stock'] |
Creating Interactive Maps for Instagram with Python and Folium | Now we get to some more customisation. First, we’ll load in an image to use as a custom icon for the markers on the map. Then we’ll load in another geographic boundary — this time the Oxford City boundary. As you can imagine, there is a higher density of pubs in Oxford city centre, compared to the rest of Oxfordshire. In order to avoid lots of markers being plotted on top of each other and a messy-looking map, we’ll make use of Folium’s MarkerCluster plugin (this was imported in the first step). At low zoom levels, the marker cluster groups together all the markers that fall within the Oxford City boundary. Only when zoomed in closer, will the individual markers separate. To do this, we’ll make use of Python’s json and Shapely libraries (also imported above), which are great for any kind of spatial operations. In the code below we use the json library to read the file, and then define a shape: oxford_boundary using the geometry attribute of the json file. Finally, we create the MarkerCluster , which also has a number of options to customise its behaviour.
Let’s add some markers
In a separate Python dictionary, I’ve stored all the data associated with each pub I want to add to the map. For each pub, there’s a pair of coordinates, a link to an Instagram post, the pub’s website, and Google Maps directions. We’re going to use these details to incorporate the Instagram post and website links into the pop-up for each marker. The dictionary looks like this:
Now for the main legwork. Here we use a simple for -loop to run through all the pubs we want to create markers for.
One thing to note is that each marker, needs its own instance of CustomIcon , hence why we create one on each iteration of the loop. The marker pop-up is styled using HTML. HTML is often used to design websites, but in this case, it allows us to embed the Instagram post in the pop-up using <iframe src={insta_post} . Likewise, we can add text to the pop-up and style it the way we want. Each marker is created one-by-one with its own instance of CustomIcon , Popup , coordinates and tooltip (hover-over) text. The final part of the for -loop uses the oxford_boundary shape to test whether the markers lie within the Oxford City boundary. If so, they are added to the oxford_cluster , and if not, they are added to map separately. Finally, a geolocation button is added using the imported LocateControl plugin, and the browser tab-title is set within the HTML.
The finished, interactive map
Below is a preview of what it looks like: | https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-interactive-maps-for-instagram-with-python-and-folium-68bc4691d075 | ['Esbern Jakobsen'] | 2020-10-23 00:03:21.526000+00:00 | ['Maps', 'Instagram', 'Folium', 'Python', 'Interactive Maps'] |
An analogy to explain OS detection by NMAP | When you use NMAP to scan machines, there is an option to try and detect the OS of the target machine. How does it work? Here’s a helpful analogy.
Imagine you are playing with two mammals, a chimpanzee, and an orangutan. You are conducting this experiment in a double-blind format. You throw a ball towards each. The balls are of the same make. They both throw the balls back. If we examine these balls, they have fingerprints on them. These fingerprints can help identify which animal thew the ball back.
You see, it doesn’t depend on the information you send. It depends on what information the target machine sends back. NMAP sends a ping to the target machine with the intention of identification. The target machine responds by sending a ping back to NMAP. Now, every OS crafts ICMP ping packets very differently. The construction of these packets can help identify the target OS. NMAP has a database of a lot of operating system responses. NMAP uses this database to support the identification process.
Some operating systems have a similar make. Take, for example, Debian and Ubuntu. At their core, both these operating systems are Linux. Therefore NMAP can confuse them for each other.
Another interesting point to note here is that an OS evolves and changes. While Windows 10 1903 and 10 2004 are very similar in how they handle networks, they return different fingerprints.
In the end, NMAP proves to be very useful in helping identify operating systems. | https://medium.com/@anonymousmailroot/an-analogy-to-explain-os-detection-by-nmap-583b0f459a8e | ['Divyansh Bhatia'] | 2020-10-25 06:32:32.004000+00:00 | ['Namp', 'Fingerprinting', 'Scanner', 'Operating Systems', 'Network'] |
A BRIEF OF THE MEETING BETWEEN LINA NETWORK AND THAI FORMER PRIME MINISTER — MR. ABHISIT | A BRIEF OF THE MEETING BETWEEN LINA NETWORK AND THAI FORMER PRIME MINISTER — MR. ABHISIT Lina Network Jul 22, 2019·3 min read
The Meeting between LINA Network and Former Prime Minister, Mr. Abhisit
Mr.Abhisit: “Thailand supports & accompanies LINA Network in creating a 4.0 technology foundation to grow economy”.
Recently, LINA Network Group had a meeting with major manufacturing enterprises in Thailand, such as AIM Thai; Nichirei (Japan); Hi Chef (Thailand) on handing Supply Chain applications and deploying applications for new units in the factories.
After several working days, all the units mentioned above received the application of Blockchain Supply Chain technology as an effective tool in standardizing the production process, improving products quality before these are reached to consumers.
Accordingly, the Chairman of LINA Network — Mr. Vu Truong Ca also had a private meeting with the former Thai prime minister at the Democratic Party’s main office. After discussion the general situation during more than one year of working with Thai enterprises, Mr. Vu Truong Ca highly appreciated the operational capacity of the production units in Thailand. In addition, LINA Network chairman also added: “Thai manufacturing enterprises are very open in cooperating, updating new technologies to promote products and improve commercial competitiveness to ensure the quality of goods when these products are sold in domestic market and export”.
LINA Network Chairman and Former Prime Minister, Mr. Abhisit
Former Thai Prime Minister — Mr. Abhisit is very happy when the bilateral enterprises have good cooperation and long-term strategy to complement each other in approaching and applying 4.0 technology to reality.
Mr. Abhisit looks forward to accompanying and supporting LINA Network group in the future, especially the important fields to develop 4.0 technology in Thailand such as:
Technology 4.0 will be applied widely in Thailand, typically the application of Blockchain Supply Chain to the Agriculture — Forestry — Fishery units to increase competitiveness in the international market, improve the value of products.
Education investment, promotion of human resources in the field of Blockchain 4.0 through the Top Global Universities in September 2019.
Deploying 4.0 technology applications developed by LINA NETWORK to many countries, especially e-Government 4.0 application through the e-Government Alliance event in October 2019 in Israel.
Accompanying LINA Network in attracting international market and foreign investment to a technology platform to promote rapidly economy and social development at the 300th anniversary of the Rothschild Family on November 2019 in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, LINA Network chairman also introduced a new plan to promote ASB GUARANTEE Platform with Mr. Abhisit. Optimize the “Insurance” model in protecting financial investors worldwide, especially investors of LINA Network project, increasing the benefit for Tradesyser…
With all these efforts and achievements, this is not hard to aware that LINA token is raising strongly those days. Specially, we can see the “up line” of the LINA token price chart as below.
Let’s follow LINA Network and get more great news from this potential Blockchain project.
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Twitter | https://medium.com/@lina.network/the-brief-of-the-meeting-between-lina-network-and-thai-former-prime-minister-mr-abhisit-5d425a4cbfe4 | ['Lina Network'] | 2019-07-23 03:22:42.210000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Thailand', 'Lina', 'Linanetwork'] |
Welcome, 2021 & Cheerio, 2020! | The New Year is around the corner, and it excites me more than Diwali ever did. I know, this year was too bad for everyone. Too bad that, people will use it as a swear word someday, like “It’s totally 2020!” or “What the 2020!”
But if you are anything like me (read optimistic), then you would have viewed pandemic and the lockdown as an opportunity to nurture your relationships, to read books, try your hand on cooking or something which you always wanted to do for a long time and to understand yourself better.
This pandemic also taught us that one should be grateful even for the smallest of things because you never know, one moment you have them and the other, you don’t. I am grateful for the air I breathe, the warmth of the sun, the food I eat, a loving family and the list is long. What are you grateful for?
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(If you lost someone close to your heart to this virus, then dearie, I am sorry for your loss. You might be feeling that there is this void in your life. Anything comforting I say might not make a difference right now. But I want you to trust time and give yourself time. Time heals everything. Much love and power to you!)
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So tell me, when you talk about New Year plans with your family and friends, what’s the first thing that pops up in your mind? 31st Night party plans? Or new beginnings? Or is it resolutions?
It’s resolutions for me. I have never been someone who plans for lavish dinners or goes out to a Nightclub and dance like there is no tomorrow, on 31st night.
I like it quiet. Simple. No fancy stuff.
You may call me boring, but I love the idea of bidding goodbye to the current year in peace, reflecting upon the lessons I learnt, the friends I made and the personal progress I achieved, and then call it a year by calling my family & friends at midnight.
What’s your idea of 31st night?
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So, resolutions! My favourite thing about the new year! If it were some other year, my list would have been different from what it is now (also, I would have forgotten about them by the end of February 2021).
It possibly would have included becoming vegetarian, going on a no-added-sugar diet to lose weight, learn to code and cook, do well academically, read n number of novels, begin writing again and so on.
My main resolution for 2021 is to be kind. “Be kind to everyone and kinder to yourself.”
Be kind to others because we know nothing about their lives, the struggles they are in. And being kinder to myself, thanks to 2020 for this one.
If anything 2020 has taught me, then it is the importance of self-love and being healthy (physically, emotionally, mentally), which I have been neglecting for a long time now.
On the sides, I have the following resolutions-
· Respect & be grateful to nature and in general
· Gain health (and not just lose weight)
· Acquire skills (both soft & professional) which will be useful in the long run
· Read books, absorb its essence and implement
· Read financial newspapers regularly
You might feel that the old and new lists of resolutions are no different. It might have escaped your notice, but there is a shift in outlook, making all the difference. A bona fide difference.
I have a broader outlook now. Going beyond your horizons is always a personal upswing. Do you agree with me, here?
Some people think that keeping their resolutions a secret is a better idea because they won’t get fulfilled if anyone knows them.
So, are you of that kind because I am tempted to ask you, “What are your plans for the new year? What things you want to be different for this upcoming 2021?”
I want 2021 to be a progressive and transformative year for everyone and myself, so that, at the end of it, we come out as a better version of ourselves.
2021, I am all ready to welcome you with open arms and cheerio, 2020! | https://medium.com/@bhavyagarg353/welcome-2021-cheerio-2020-f423d4e6a6a3 | [] | 2020-12-27 17:49:56.851000+00:00 | ['New Years Resolutions', 'Life Lessons', 'Kindness', 'Growth', 'Gratitude'] |
The Romanticization of Start-Ups | The Romanticization of Start-Ups
I’ve recently checked off another show from my K-drama watch list with Netflix’s newest K-drama, Start-Up. I thought I’d share my thoughts and analysis of the show. As someone who loves K-culture, works at a start-up and is fascinated by the start-up ecosystem this show was a no-brainer for me to indulge in. I decided to write this while the show is still fresh in my mind and give my own take on how the show portrayed innovation and start-up life.
I’d like to point out that this analysis is purely based on my opinion and I am fully aware that this show is called a “drama” for a reason. While it has it’s over-the-top scenes it also has elements of what a real-life start-up looks like. However it’s worth noting the romanticization of it and the inevitable K-drama love triangle (hence the pun in my title). If you are looking for an in-depth analysis on the quality of acting and storyboard, this is not for you. Lastly, there will be spoilers in this piece so if all of this sounds good to you, let’s get into it.
Before diving into analysis, I’d like to give a little preface on what the show’s about. As described by Vice,
“The show centers around Seo Dal Mi, played by K-pop idol-turned-actress Bae Suzy, who is an optimistic twenty-something who dreams of becoming a successful CEO. She eventually joins Sandbox, a utopian tech start-up incubator in Seoul, where she tries to successfully pitch a business and confront her estranged sister, all while slowly realizing that she’s in one very confusing love triangle.”
Left to right: Han Ji Pyeong, Seo Dal Mi, Nam Do San, Won In Jae. Source: Kpopmap
Notable characters that will be mentioned in this article:
Seo Dal Mi is the CEO of Samsan Tech and lead character stuck in a love triangle.
Samsan Tech is an AI start-up founded by 3 developers which later on was led by Seo Dal Mi.
Nam Do San is the lead developer of Samsan Tech and Dal Mi’s main love interest.
Han Ji Pyeong is a venture capitalist and other love interest of the love triangle.
Noongill is a mobile app for the visually impaired, developed by Samsan Tech.
Despite romance being a central piece of Start-Up’s plot, the show included many educational crumbs scattered throughout the show. Each episode began with a start-up term along with a one-liner for easy digestibility. Throughout the show, new terms were introduced and a few that were mentioned are: Round financing, MVP, burn rate, unicorn and the list goes on.
Source: Netflix
With most of the storyline focusing on Dal Mi and Samsan Tech’s story to success, it was safe to assume how heavily the show would romanticize the start-up journey. However, with scenes displaying Dal Mi’s scrappiness and constant self-doubt, the show did a fair amount of justice to the reality of being a founder too. Another example of this was Dal Mi’s father, a first-time founder who quit his corporate job to pursue his “crazy” idea. The show made sure to give him enough screen time to allow viewers to empathize with his struggles right up to his successful fundraising pitch.
A hugely important factor to a start-up’s success, especially at an early-stage venture is the quality of the founding team. Dal Mi was recruited as the CEO of Samsan Tech despite the founding team comprising of 3 award-winning developers. It was her vision, passion and knack for strategic planning that brought the company to scalability.
A mistake when searching for investors for any venture, is taking money from anyone who is willing to write a check. At first, the team at Samsan Tech also fell victim to the herd of investors that were lining up outside their door (literally). The team soon learnt that none of these investors were actually right for them and their most valuable investor and mentor was Ji Pyeong all along. Despite his romantic relations with their CEO, Dal Mi, (totally not something I would recommend doing from both legal and emotional standpoints), he has been with them through the entire ride. Which is what a good mentor and advisor does. Although, I question his intentions which were mainly stemming from romantic interest but that is besides the point. Bottom line is: You’d want mentors and advisors who will stick with you not only at your highs but also through your lows.
Samsan Tech team. Source: Netflix via Dramabeans
The first product that Samsan Tech developed using their AI and image recognition technology was Noongill. It was created with Dal Mi’s grandmother in mind. She confessed to Do San about her fading vision and that catalyzed the mobile app’s creation. In the later episodes of the series, the team developed a self-driving car which was an ode to Dal Mi’s father who died in a car crash. Often times start-ups are born out of a founder’s personal problem or passion to solve one for someone close to them. It’s this inexplicable passion that makes successful founders resilient even during hard times.
The drama did a lot to spotlight the founder life but there were some areas which were a little questionable and probably would have many actual founders to raise an eyebrow.
If you are a regular K-drama connoisseur, you may know by now that it’s common to have a love triangle (sometimes rectangle or pentagon) throughout the story arc. That being said, in a real-life start-up I don’t recommend having a relationship with your direct mentor and investor — for reasons that are pretty obvious and don’t need an explanation. Secondly, most early-stage start-ups that are raising venture capital have many investors on their cap table (investing in them). And by many, we’re talkin’ double and triple digits worth of investors depending on how much your start-up is raising or what round your start-up is at.
And my last bone to pick is the misconception that there is a “right” or “wrong” reason to start a company. I, for one, am a firm believer that you can do good AND make money. But it’s obvious that there’s many businesses out there which prioritize that cha-ching more than saving-the-environment-and-not-blowing-up-the-planet. But I digress. I am aware that the show created that good v.s. bad narrative to show how altruistic Dal Mi and Samsan Tech are in order to get viewers empathizing with their cause and mission. Even then, it’s totally okay to start a business in order to create an income for yourself and be jumping at a money-making opportunity — unfortunately, we all need money to live.
In the end, I have to give credit to a show that manages to pull off puzzling in educational components while sticking true to the plot. I also could go on and on about how I wish Ji Pyeong ended up with Dal Mi but that’s for another day. I totally recommend this show to anyone who wants to learn more about the start-up space but in a lighthearted and fictional setting. If you are a VC yourself and dabbling into the K-drama world then this show might also do it for you!
Seo Dal Mi (Bae Suzy) Source: Kpopmap
Want to hear me discuss more about K-dramas? You can check out a podcast episode I did with my friend, Sangi, on our winter K-drama recommendations for this holiday season! See you in 2021.
What are your thoughts on Start-Up? | https://medium.com/@khorsuwern/the-romanticization-of-start-ups-e8caf383ea0d | ['Su Wern Khor'] | 2020-12-21 01:57:34.031000+00:00 | ['Netflix', 'Kdrama', 'Startup Life', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons'] |
How Rabindranath Tagore’s Worldview is expressed in “Punishment” | One of the recurring dichotomies of modern times is the nationalist and antinationalist trope. Humankind and society can be viewed through the lens of nationalism or universalism. Nationalist philosophy is sectarian and tribal by its very nature. It proposes that people should focus on a certain group’s wellbeing in exclusion of others. While the universalist thought lies in a humanist approach. All people regardless of station, race, or location can be lifted. It approaches social interactions from a universal viewpoint. In his short story, “Punishment,” Tagore flushes out universal tendencies that transcend national boundaries.
What is needed is eagerness of heart for a fruitful communication between different cultures. Anything that prevents this is barbarism. (Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabli 3)
To say that Tagore is a complicated figure is an understatement. Debashi Banerji in “Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century” explains Tagore is “celebrated in his native Bengal and in India as a larger than life icon whose songs presently make up the national anthems of two nations.” Tagore’s body of works is immense, which lends itself to a tremendous range of interpretation. Banerji continues, “Poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, writer of dance dramas, songwriter and composer, artist, nationalist, internationalist, educator, and social thinker, Tagore enjoyed a legendary reputation in his time and in the twentieth century. ” However, “Punishment” is emotive and personal from a universalist’s perspective. Tagore uses debt, poverty, and violence to ground his novel in universal human experiences.
The opening paragraph offers ponderous introspection on the status of interpersonal relations. “Just as nobody questions the rising of the sun in the east, nobody in the neighbourhood was curious about why the two sisters — in — law started quarreling [sic] in the morning each day.” (Tagore 204). Tagore stages conflict at the most basic of levels. The sister-in-laws are at each other’s throats constantly, but it is presented as a very natural state of things. The universality of family and personal struggle is laid bare from the very beginning. “Tagore… from [his] respective margin… created solidarities on the basis of wider and more universal principles” (Jelnikar 7). There is personal struggle, family feud, and class suffering from the first paragraph of the story to the end. The focus on universal elements opens “Punishment” to the world at large.
The two brothers considered domestic life as a long journey on a bullock cart, and the ceaseless creaking noises and jerking movements of springless wheels, only a natural, necessary part of this journey (204).
Tagore also focuses on a universal plague, debt. No matter what form it takes, debt is often times a universal ailment. In richer nations, it comes in the form of credit cards, mortgages, leases, payday loans, etc. In less developed countries it comes in the form of personal loans, co-op loans, landlords, and traditional credits measures. However, it is a universal construct. Credit and debt can be abused by the lender and the borrower. However, it normally places the borrower in a power imbalance. Normally, the lender has more protections under the law. They can come after you. “Punishment” is no different. We see how “Ramlochon… suddenly remembered that Dukhi, his tenant, owed him a lot of back rent” (205). Tagore purposefully uses universal constructs to connect to a wider audience. It pulls readers from all walks of life to a narrative that ponders questions large than itself.
In her book, Universalist Hopes in India and Europe: The Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel, Ana Jelnikar further writes, “Tagore gave his anti-colonialism a broader base, envisioning it as a larger search for liberation, leading on to universalism” (2). “Punishment,” fits this argument. The story emanates from a single household and expands into the justice system. And, yet, at its center is not the systems of justice and laws of the land. At its center, “Punishment” is about the treatment of woman; it is about the struggle between guilt and loyalty; it is about the fear of death and how we react to it. The story is not about one particular set of laws under a colonial system. It is broader than colonialism and its injustices.
The household’s abject poverty is another thrust into the universalist sphere. Remember, Radha shouts, “There is no rice! Where is the rice that I will cook for you? Did you bring any rice? Do I have to go out and earn money myself?” (205). After working all day the men have nothing to show for it. They have no money. The wifes have no food. The children are naked. They owe back rent. The house is devoid of furniture. Clearly, these two family’s live in abject poverty.
There is another story layered into the story’s poverty. Their condition wasn’t unusual. This family was and is not an outlier. Across the world, billions live in abject proverty. Michael Collins in his essay “Rabindranath Tagore and Nationalism: An Interpretation” states, “Tagore saw World History as the steady unfolding of an idea… he placed India at the centre of that process. In this regard, Tagore developed an alternative conception of modernity which saw the ideas, politics and technology of the West as only one aspect of a developing historical process, rather than its core movement.” By focusing in on a poor South Asian family, Tagore is shifting the audience away from the rich centers of the world and pointing it on the majority of people across the world. However, just like poor nations have rich individual, rich nations of poor individuals and thus the universitality of poverty flushes out a line of communication between differing peoples.
Then, there is violence. To build and to destroy is at the center of human experience. We build cities to destroy them. Take a look at Aleppo. We often build cultures, intitutions, and societies to tear them down. We often build lives on the back of others. “Punishment” is an ode to the human capacity for destruction and violence. The further humanity gets from its origin, the more destructive it has become. We now have bombs that can wipe all live from the face of this planet, but this capacity for violence, destruction starts from the individual and works its way through society.
Tagore himself argues, “when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of selfishness as a moral duty… it not only commits depredations but attacks the very vitals of humanity” (Tagore, “Creative Unity” 550–551). Tagore saw the nation-state as a vehicle driven the by same universal passions across the world. If one was to control those passions it must start at the individual level regardless of origin. When Dukhiram kills his wife, violence becomes the universal agent. Heat, hunger, poverty, anger, exhaustion, etc become the vehicle for universal comprehension and—at that instance—rejection of Dukhiram’s act. The conundrum is obvious though. Unfortunately, Violence is also universal.
Tagore’s “Punishment” drips of universalism. It explores the passions, pettinness, and cruelness of humanity. It is a vision of a distant world, but, really, not that far away. Who hasn’t heard of an abusive husband in their local social interactions? Who hasn’t seen the local news and been devastated by the cruelness of the world? The themes in “Punishment” hash out and permeate throughout the world at large. In his attempt to bridge nationalist and universalist thought, Tagore explores the similarites between cultures, ethnic groups, and across borders. “Punishment” pulls the curtain back on Tagore’s universalist thoughts. | https://medium.com/literary-analyses/how-rabindranath-tagores-worldview-is-expressed-in-punishment-44c3c99d147e | ['J. Garcia'] | 2017-11-01 12:34:18.814000+00:00 | ['India', 'Literature', 'Universalism', 'Analysis', 'Literary Criticism'] |
How to choose disposable baby nappies | 1
The nappies should be breathable. Although with the development of science and technology, the emergence of “nappies” has brought great convenience to people, there are still many parents who would rather choose traditional nappies than “nappies”. Not only is the price of nappies more expensive, but the most important thing is that they are not as breathable as nappies. Children will feel uncomfortable wearing nappies. Therefore, old-fashioned nappies are always the first choice for families with newborn babies.
It is recommended to choose disposable eco-friendly nappies,biodegradable nappies made from Palmbaby is the best disposable nappies which people from Australia choose.
2
The material of the nappies should be soft, absorbent, washable, and easy to dry. In terms of materials, gauze, white cloth and soft cotton cloth are all suitable. You can also choose old white sheets, adult’s old cotton sweaters, cotton wool pants, old quilts, old bed sheets, etc. nappies made for newborn babies.
3
If it is a new reusable nappies, it must be boiled and washed first, and then used after removing the hard pulp. If it is cut from old clothes, it can be washed clean, boiled in water, and dried in the sun before use.
4
Choose a suitable nappies, usually the shape of the nappies is square and rectangular. The square is 70–80 square centimeters, stacked into a triangle for use. Rectangular nappies usually use two at a time, but only one at birth. The number of nappies is about 30 pieces, but it is not easy to dry after washing in winter, so it is best to prepare more. | https://medium.com/@8383zhiyou/how-to-choose-disposable-baby-nappies-54aa2027a506 | ['Jiyo Ring'] | 2021-03-25 00:52:20.038000+00:00 | ['Baby Care', 'Baby', 'Baby Products', 'Baby Clothes'] |
To Please or To Live? | Photo by Prateek Katyal from Pexels
here I am;
posing for likes
all to feel fine
here I am;
acting for likes
though it stings much
here I am;
faking perfection
all for affection
’til one night
I ask myself
about my life;
was I born
to please
or to live? | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/to-please-or-to-live-5f60e97fb5b4 | ['Muthia Huda'] | 2020-11-06 11:22:05.906000+00:00 | ['Social Media Depression', 'Social Media', 'Self Love', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry'] |
Women and Retirement: A 21st Century Reality | At a time when COVID-19 is generating massive financial uncertainty for individuals, companies, and societies, an important new report from Bank of America, Gender Lens in Defined Contribution (DC) Plans, examines the unique saving and investing challenges facing women. It marks the launch of a new research series that applies a gender lens to financial behaviors — a critical topic in a world where lives, and financial needs, routinely stretch to 100.
As Lorna Sabbia, Managing Director and Head of Retirement & Personal Wealth Solutions at Bank of America, so powerfully communicated at the Global Coalition on Aging’s first Silver Economy Forum last July in Helsinki, Finland, “the number one concern by far, regardless of age, is the topic of health,” in large part due to uncertainties about having “enough money to cover those costs, especially in retirement,” and now presciently and perceptively applies this thinking specifically through the gender lens.
The new report reveals a significant gender gap in Americans’ 401(k) savings. Based on an analysis of 4.6 million plan participants, it finds that the median 401(k) balance for women is just two-thirds that for men, and this gap persists across generations and wealth levels.
This challenge is especially urgent given that women need resources for lives that last longer, on average, than men. Yet women continue to earn less than men, and many drop out of the workforce to serve as caregivers, both at the childcare and eldercare ends — sacrificing income, savings, and other benefits. They also face greater risk for certain health conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease — clearly a disease profoundly associated with aging, which therefore increases burdens on society as populations age — that can generate immense care costs.
Bank of America underscores that solving this challenge will require innovations to help women begin saving earlier, maximize their contributions, and make the right investment decisions at the right time. However, this is just the beginning of what’s possible, as individuals, employers, and policymakers can also fundamentally reimagine the assumptions of working, saving, investing, and spending for today’s longer lives.
Twenty-first century solutions are required for 21st century challenges!
The report highlights a number of opportunities for progress:
Maximizing savings and investments. Bank of America’s report provides suggestions that can help individual women to promote and protect their financial wellness. For example, the research finds that women participate in 401(k) plans at lower rates than men, so beginning to save early and maximizing contributions is critical as these early and consistent savings have remarkably positive multiplier effects. Women can also continually consider specific investment decisions, like whether to increase their equity allocation, and avoid withdrawing funds from their 401(k) plans. These personal finance behaviors provide the all-important baseline for lifelong wealth, and they are more important than ever as aging and longevity continue to accelerate.
Bank of America’s report provides suggestions that can help individual women to promote and protect their financial wellness. For example, the research finds that women participate in 401(k) plans at lower rates than men, so beginning to save early and maximizing contributions is critical as these early and consistent savings have remarkably positive multiplier effects. Women can also continually consider specific investment decisions, like whether to increase their equity allocation, and avoid withdrawing funds from their 401(k) plans. These personal finance behaviors provide the all-important baseline for lifelong wealth, and they are more important than ever as aging and longevity continue to accelerate. Extending careers. While investment decisions within 401(k) plans are important, there are also a number of broader decisions that can dramatically improve financial wellness, such as continuing to work and save past traditional 20th century “retirement age.” To enhance their income and 401(k) savings, women can consider how flexible work arrangements, lifelong learning, and skills development can enable them to extend their careers or launch second careers. The idea of stopping all work at age 60 or 65 is badly outdated — and moving beyond it opens new opportunities for generating wealth later in life, in addition to the value it brings to a healthier aging itself.
While investment decisions within 401(k) plans are important, there are also a number of broader decisions that can dramatically improve financial wellness, such as continuing to work and save past traditional 20th century “retirement age.” To enhance their income and 401(k) savings, women can consider how flexible work arrangements, lifelong learning, and skills development can enable them to extend their careers or launch second careers. The idea of stopping all work at age 60 or 65 is badly outdated — and moving beyond it opens new opportunities for generating wealth later in life, in addition to the value it brings to a healthier aging itself. Supporting working caregivers. As described in the report, two-thirds of caregivers are women, who must often scale back their hours, leave their jobs, or deplete their savings due to their care responsibilities. And these impacts are only more apparent in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this need, employers can play a critical role by providing the policies and resources to help their caregiver employees stay in the workforce. This will not only help women save — it will also drive recruitment and retention, maintain a valuable pool of talent, and facilitate innovation for the vast market of older consumers.
As described in the report, two-thirds of caregivers are women, who must often scale back their hours, leave their jobs, or deplete their savings due to their care responsibilities. And these impacts are only more apparent in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this need, employers can play a critical role by providing the policies and resources to help their caregiver employees stay in the workforce. This will not only help women save — it will also drive recruitment and retention, maintain a valuable pool of talent, and facilitate innovation for the vast market of older consumers. Embracing healthy aging. Women face a disproportionate risk for certain age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis, which can bring significant out-of-pocket costs for them personally and exponentially grow system-wide health spending. Therefore, just as women are well-advised to begin saving early, they should also embrace healthy, active aging beginning early and continuing throughout their lives. This can mitigate the risks and impacts of chronic conditions that carry potentially disastrous costs, enabling women to protect their savings.
The financial challenges of longevity require a broad set of solutions, from increasing savings and working longer to championing employee-caregivers and reducing healthcare costs. Bank of America’s new research series is a key step forward in this area, providing insights that can help women, men, employers, and other stakeholders to find a path for lasting financial wellness. But then what would you expect from the leading global financial services company which has brought health and gerontology expertise in-house?Innovative and creative solutions linked to the 21st century mega-trend of aging has become a hallmark for Bank of America. In this report, setting their sights specifically on financial solutions for women in the context of a 100-year-life goes well beyond the financial to apply their strategic value in the longevity space, from which we all benefit. | https://medium.com/global-coalition-on-aging/women-and-retirement-a-21st-century-reality-6e8f320440ea | ['Global Coalition On Aging'] | 2020-08-07 18:52:06.671000+00:00 | ['Workforce', 'Business', 'Finance', 'Retirement', 'Aging'] |
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