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Planning for 2021 — Sage + Cinnamon | For journals, bright warm colors are a great way to add some accent to your life, especially crawling out of drab and dreary 2020. You can never go wrong with a Leuchtturm1917. There are a wide array of bright colors to choose from (or dark and minimal, if that’s what you’re about).
Dotted Grids are in.
Even squared grids get a pass. But ruled journals restrict the creativity in your personally curated journal.
Go crazy with colored pens
Be bright and bold with your pens, markers, and highlighters! This journal is yours and yours alone. There are no rules and you can tailor your planner to suit your needs.
Two is better than one.
Get a journal for daily planning/to-dos and get another to hold all your house-making secrets (cleaning schedules, recipes, guest lists, gift guides, etc.). You can keep a “Bellini” dotted Leuchtturm1917 for stress-free scheduling and note-jotting, and a Sage square grid Leuchtturm1917 for serious party planning, referencing, and resources. | https://medium.com/@sageandcinnamon/planning-for-2021-sage-cinnamon-83c053bc94b4 | ['Gitana Eleni'] | 2020-12-29 16:47:55.451000+00:00 | ['Bulletjournal', 'Planning', 'Journalism', 'New Year', 'Organizational Culture'] |
The Informal Carers Who Help People with MS Need Support More Than Ever | Receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) is a life-changing experience, not just for the person with MS but also for their carer and wider network of family, friends, or colleagues. This chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system is usually diagnosed before the age of 40 and presents with symptoms such as decreased coordination and mobility, chronic pain, changes in cognition and speech, and extreme fatigue. As the disease progresses, people with MS struggle with declining cognitive abilities and reduced mobility, which increases their need for informal care, a service generally provided by families.
Thus, MS is a shared experience between the person with MS and their carers but lived in different ways. A study by RAND Europe showed that taking on the role of a carer leads to a shift in the relationship with the person with MS and may impact the carer’s other social relationships. And though people with MS are likely to have access to medical support, there is a lack of support available to deal with the burden on caregivers.
The caregiving burden, such as increased stress and a negative impact on mental well-being, has been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Attempts to curb COVID-19 have led to countries being under lockdown, with strict emphasis on self-isolation and social distancing. Although there is no evidence that individuals with MS (with some exceptions) are at higher risk of contracting the virus or having worse outcomes, people with MS and their carers may have chosen to take extra precautions, limiting interactions to a minimum.
The caregiving burden, such as increased stress and a negative impact on mental well-being, has been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, COVID-19 infection prevention and control measures have seen a restriction in access to health care and physical exercise, which could potentially lead to the worsening of motor and non-motor symptoms for people with MS. In a study in Italy, disruptions in care were consistently associated with negative self-reported impacts on the expected progression of the disease, on out-of-pocket expenditure, and on carer stress.
Multiple initiatives were set up to support individuals with chronic conditions worldwide during the pandemic, and MS is no exception. For example, a programme of video exercises with diary functions and chat sections has been used to deliver routine MS physiotherapy. Similarly, organisations such as the MS Society provide online physiotherapy three days a week for individuals with MS. People experiencing a relapse of MS were also able to find ways to manage their condition through telephone or video consultations.
This increased focus on self-management, the need to self-isolate, and reduced in-person interactions has meant that carers have had to take on a role of primary care physician and physiotherapist, in addition to that of partner, child, or parent. Evidence from the UK suggests that up to one-in-five working carers of someone with a long-term condition, including MS, lost or left their job (PDF) as a result of their increased caring responsibilities during the pandemic. Interruptions to usual psychological support during the COVID-19 pandemic have been associated with psychological consequences to both individuals with MS and their carers who have been compensating for the lack of social interaction, resulting in care overburden.
Although the pandemic showed the world the importance of caregiving as people took on increased informal caregiving responsibilities, caregivers are still too often invisible. The value of informal carers may go unrecognised as they are often unseen and undertake a role that is not characterised by a salary or title, or defined by specific duties. However, health care systems such as in the United States are somewhat reliant on informal carers whose aid occasionally substitutes for long-term care and hospital stays.
The trend towards remote care and self-management within health care services for people with MS has not included adequate support to carers. Carers provided essential care and alleviated the strain on health and social care systems before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and perhaps in a post-pandemic world carers will be included in health care initiatives, recognised for their contribution, and made increasingly visible. Greater investment to support the needs of carers for people with MS could support the informal care they provide, as well as the carer as an individual.
Daniela Rodriguez-Rincon and Brandi Leach are both senior analysts in the area of health, research and innovation policy at RAND Europe. | https://medium.com/rand-corporation/the-informal-carers-who-help-people-with-ms-need-support-more-than-ever-35840a806482 | ['Rand Corporation'] | 2021-07-06 16:18:53.702000+00:00 | ['Multiple Sclerosis', 'United Kingdom', 'Caregivers', 'Long Term Care', 'Healthcare Workforce'] |
Kafka Client Library Comparison | The decision on which client library to use when interacting with Kafka will in the majority of cases simply come down to the programming language used by the organisation. However, if this is the case it is important to understand that not every client is equal, and this choice can have ramifications that may not otherwise be appreciated until late into a project.
If the system requires a resilient messaging backbone with no message loss, guaranteed message ordering, and managed duplicate messages, then the client library plays a huge role in this. Changing the library once the project is well underway is expensive.
This blog post looks at what the client library brings to the table, why it is such an important part of the technology stack, and compares two of the most commonly used libraries in today’s Kafka backed messaging systems.
The Role Of The Client Library
The Kafka client library is a thick client, meaning it has more responsibilities and so plays a larger role in the application than a typical thin client would. Being a smart client it pushes around some of the boundaries of responsibility. It helps with aspects of high availability, it has responsibilities related to exactly-once semantics, and it knows much more about the overall topology of the system. This is all necessary in order to deliver the resiliency that Kafka guarantees.
The client library is bundled with the application, allowing the developer to use its APIs in order to interact with Kafka, typically to consume or produce from/to a Kafka topic. The developer can often defer aspects such as the consumer offset management to the library. This is recommended as it is complex and error prone and it is always best to use a Production proven battle-hardened library. Instead they can concentrate on the business logic needs of the application.
Client Library Options
Overview
The main client library options are the official Java Apache client library if using a JVM language, or if using a language that can link to C (such as Python, Go, Ruby, Node.js) then a language binding library built on the Apache C/C++ librdkafka client library.
The responsibilities that the client library has means it is an extremely non-trivial task to write a new client from the ground up, as you are exposed to writing driver level aspects of the system. However this is what the development team at Klarna have done, writing the popular KafkaJS library in pure Javascript.
Apache Java Client
The Java client library is at version 3.0.0 at the time of writing, and will be the library most developers using Kafka will be familiar with.
https://kafka.apache.org
If writing a Spring framework based Java application then the Spring Kafka module can be used providing a higher level of abstraction for the developer to code against, and offering many rich features.
https://spring.io/projects/spring-kafka
Spring Kafka library
librdkafka
Selecting a binding library for the Apache C/C++ librdkafka library is a popular (and often only) option for non-JVM languages. At the time of writing the librdkafka library is at version 1.8.
https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka
There are then many language specific libraries that provide a binding to librdkafka:
https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka#language-bindings
Each binding library has its own characteristics, with a set of supported features, missing features, different levels of maturity, and size of user community, so must be carefully evaluated before selection.
For example, a popular selection if developing a Node.js application would be to use node-rdkafka, which provides Node.js bindings to librdkafka:
https://github.com/Blizzard/node-rdkafka
The current version for this library is 2.11.0. This uses librdkafka version 1.6.1.
node-rdkafka client library
This highlights that, as with any core library/framework, when new features and fixes are added to the librdkafka library, there is a lag while any binding library upgrades to that version, if indeed it does. If needing to troubleshoot issues when using a binding library then this will typically mean debugging librdkafka.
KafkaJS
For development with Node.js, the main binding library for librdkafka is node-rdkafka. However for this language there is an additional choice, KafkaJS. This is a complete reimplementation of librdkafka in native Javascript, rather than a binding library that wraps librdkafka itself.
https://kafka.js.org
At the time of writing this is at version 1.15.0.
KafkaJS has effectively superseded the node-rdkafka library as the primary choice of Kafka client library for NodeJS development.
KafkaJS client library
Apache Java Client & KafkaJS Comparison
Overview
Given the importance of the role the thick client plays, it is important to understand the ramifications of the library selected.
The Apache Java Client is the primary library used in many thousands of organisations, given so many distributed systems being Java based.
For many reasons Node.js has become a popular language for writing enterprise applications too. One such reason is the increase in popularity of serverless development, as Node.js is a natural fit for writing lambdas given their fast spin up time. It is an enabler for Javascript professionals to use their expertise in Back End development. KafkaJS is now the most popular client library selected for this language.
To that end a comparison of these two libraries highlights some of the considerations, trade-offs and possible pitfalls to be aware of when selecting the library.
Comparison Summary
Library Maturity
The KafkaJS feature support is not as comprehensive as the Java client library. Features are considered to be typically around two years behind the Java client. While some features are almost at parity, other features have not been looked at. One example of this would be Kafka Connect. If wanting to take advantage of this API, which is built on top of the Consumer/Producer APIs for streaming integration between two data stores, then the Java client is the only option here.
Most of the big new features in KafkaJS are no longer written by the maintainers, but rather by the community, with the original developers playing more of an oversight role. It is a community project, not supported by any company, so expectations must be set accordingly.
In comparison, the Java client is considered fully matured, with official backing by Confluent (founded by the original Apache Kafka developers), adding additional community and commercial features. It is proven to be battle-hardened in Production at thousands of organisations.
A further advantage of the Java library that cannot be overstated is the option to use Spring Kafka. This framework applies Spring’s core concepts to the development of Kafka-based messaging solutions. It provides a high level abstraction making developing with the client much easier, while still allowing the developer to interact at a low level when necessary.
Spring Kafka adds features such as fully configurable error handling and stateful retry, and all the usual benefits Spring brings such as dependency injection and the removal of boilerplate code.
Testing
Testing an application is an essential aspect of software development, so features that facilitate more thorough tests, and tests that are more straightforward to write, are a huge differentiator.
Treating the application as a black box with component testing ensures that applications based on either library would receive the same level of testing. However the advantage of using the Java library becomes apparent with local integration testing with Spring Kafka. Spring Kafka provides an embedded Kafka broker for in-memory testing, giving the same kind of benefit that the H2 in-memory database brings for testing database interactions. Tests can be run with Kafka consumers and producers interacting with the embedded broker from within the developer’s IDE as they write the code, meaning immediate feedback on any breakages or issues.
For local testing NodeJs libraries would typically use the Jest mocking library to mock the broker. But here the developer is writing the behaviour they require the mock to have, based on their expectation of how it should work, which might not be correct. Only once the code is deployed to run against a real Kafka broker will they discover whether their code is working as it should. This means a longer turnaround time in the iterative develop / test / fix cycle.
Documentation & Resources
Comprehensive documentation and a large active user group are important differentiators in any library selection.
The Java client library behaviour is fully documented, with extensive blog posts, tutorials, example videos and user forums. This is not least due to the backing of Confluent, which have many excellent tutorial videos on all aspects of Kafka development. A web search on a complex question usually brings back a wealth of information on any topic/issue/bug. This is likewise the case for Spring Kafka.
KafkaJS documentation is in comparison relatively brief and often does not go into the detail necessary to fully understand the behaviour. From experience it has proven necessary to debug the KafkaJS source code in order to determine actual behaviour. An example being understanding the retry, batching, polling and timeout behaviours, which are so comprehensively documented for the Java library. A web search on a complex question will not bring back the same wealth of useful, pertinent information as it would for the Java library.
Library Behaviour
Two different implementations for the thick client unsurprisingly result in different behaviours and feature support, and understanding whether limitations could impact an application is vital.
This section looks at a couple of identified differences that have proven significant in recent experience.
Idempotent Producer
In order to preserve message order and stop duplicates being written to the topic partition by the Producer when retrying due to a transient error, the producer should be configured to be idempotent.
While fully supported in the Apache Java library, in KafkaJS (version 1.1.50) the flag to enable an idempotent Producer is marked as ‘Experimental’. It would not be a sensible recommendation to rely on an experimental flag to give the behaviour required in Production as there is no guarantee as to its correctness or possibility of unexpected side-effects.
Consumer Retry
Consumer retry is an important area to get right in any Kafka-based messaging system as there are common pitfalls to avoid.
Stateless retry means that if the time to retry exceeds the consumer poll timeout the message will be re-delivered resulting in duplicate messages.
Stateful retry means that the consumer re-polls the message from the broker on each retry. To avoid message re-delivery then only the maximum retry backoff period should be less than the poll timeout.
KafkaJS and the Java library both offer stateless retry. However Java coupled with Spring Kafka offers stateful retry.
For More On Kafka…
Head over to Lydtech Consulting for this and many more articles on Kafka and other interesting areas of software development. | https://medium.com/lydtech-consulting/kafka-client-library-comparison-497f51afabaf | ['Rob Golder'] | 2021-12-18 14:08:58.974000+00:00 | ['Messaging', 'Resilience', 'Kafka'] |
What I Learned Working Remotely For Two Months | Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
I’ve been working remotely — mostly from home — for the past two months. Certain circumstances in my job gave me the opportunity and one of them is a project in Thailand which I was managing. I’ve always seen remote work as something positive and productive. It helps the company save on costs while mostly leveraging on the employee and how he or she can save on time commuting to and from work and perhaps expenses on food.
It’s been something I’ve continuously fought for in our organization which was met with resistance due mostly to convention and distrust.
One thing I quickly noticed while working remotely is how more productive I am compared to being in the office. I don’t have issues with the daily commute as I live five minutes away from the office — ten on bad days. But I just find there are too many distractions in the office especially with an open-office floor plan.
I work like a diesel engine. Working slowly, gathering enough momentum before really gaining any kind of traction in a task. And I find that when I get distracted — whether by a question, an invitation to get a quick bite, or a simple water-cooler chat — it derails me so much that it’s hard for me to get back to, more so focus on, what I was previously doing.
Remote, finally
Working remotely helped a lot but with it came some drawbacks. One is having to pay for parking whereas parking was free in the office granting you come in early. Two, coffee isn’t free and food is more expensive since I’m usually working at a coffee shop. Three, I have to actually pay to use the internet.
In a progressive organization, these would’ve been reimbursable but since remote work wasn’t really met with open arms in ours, these ended up as out-of-pocket expenses.
To save on costs, I decided to work from home instead. It was a great and obvious choice if you think about it. Parking was once again free. Coffee and food, served with love by my wife. Internet was fast and I was already paying for it monthly so it’s not really an additional cost.
Now if you know anything about me, you’d know that we have two kids: a 9-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy , both homeschooled , which means they’re pretty much at home most, if not the entirety, of the day. This proved to be more than a challenge as with the previous setup we had, when I worked at a local coffee shop, was that I spent the entire morning there until lunch and come home at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon — in which the two kids would be deep in the middle of their naps already.
We live in a small house with two floors and an attic. There isn’t really a private office space of sort I can use without getting distracted so all five of us had to adjust — including our 7-year-old Chihuahua. At mornings, I work upstairs in our bedroom. There’s a small table enough to fit my Mac, a cup of coffee, and my phone. Add anything else and it would be too crowded already. In the afternoon, we switch. The kids go upstairs and I work at the dining area.
This explains why my face has been missing in video conferences the past two months. I really didn’t feel like giving other people a tour of our sanctuary.
How I work
The great thing I learned about working remotely is that you tend to work more intentionally unlike in offices where everyone always have their guards up — on the lookout if their immediate supervisor is anywhere near — not wanting to be seen doing nothing. Working remotely on the other hand is only working when you need to. After all, who is there to check if I’ve had my face stuck in front of my computer for 9 hours straight?
Or maybe that’s just me, because I have kids. Maybe some poor software engineer would happily sit still in front of their computer at home waiting for someone to give them something to do — I’m not sure.
I get to inbox zero daily by using labels or folders so my daily routine looks something like:
Check email first thing and run through each of the new ones
Mark emails that needs my action (or reply) with the label “Take Action”
Mark emails that are interesting with the label “Read Later”
After that first pass, I go and check emails with the label “To Follow Up” and see whether anything needs following up
Work on items under the “Take Action” label; either removing the label once the task is done (or once I’ve replied to it) or marking it with a new label “To Follow Up” in case I need to hear back from that person
And that’s basically how I go through my work day, at least the tasks I need to do. Everything else is gravy.
I typically check emails twice or thrice (max) in a day. Once in the morning and another one or two times in the afternoon. And after my initial run (see above) I usually close my laptop and check for updates using my phone. This now gives me time to interact with my family.
Work-life balance is a myth
There is beauty and, sure enough, challenges that comes with working from home. The obvious ones, you get to spend more time with your family. Though I quickly found out that the same thing that makes working from home amazing is the same exact thing that would make me go insane.
My wife Nouelle told me, when we agreed on the setup, we will be fighting in no time. And true to her words, we did. Mostly because of me. I’ve been so used to working in the office from 9 to 5 that I never knew how to act accordingly at home within those hours.
I mostly ignored my kids and fiddled on my phone waiting for something work-related to do. It’s not that I was ignoring them by choice. I was just having a fish-out-of-water experience. Obviously, this didn’t sit well with Nouelle and I’m pretty sure our kids — as excited as they were when they found out I’ll be spending more time at home — now resent the idea.
There’s a lot of books, articles, and discussions about work-life balance yet here it was, right in front of me, the best experiment anyone could ever ask for to finding out how to balance the two.
I have to admit, it took some time (and a lot of fights) before I finally figured it out. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg once said, “There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is work, there is life, and there is no balance,” or simply put: work is just a part of life.
I chose to be there for my family first and foremost even between 9 o’clock in the morning and five in the afternoon. I figured, if I were to be flagged by the company for doing this, then it wasn’t the right organization to be a part of in the first place.
In the end, it all worked out. I managed to close out the remaining project while learning a whole new lot from my kids. I improved on my patience and mindfulness, now more aware of the things happening around me instead of just going through the ebbs and flows of life aimlessly.
I found out that our 9-year-old can do her schoolwork on her own and watched her with such amazement. Every time she gets a perfect score, I lift her up and try (to the best of my physical ability, which isn’t saying much) to throw her up in the air and catch her repeatedly which she enjoys very much. She draws and paints like a true artist and I look forward to seeing her collection in a gallery some day.
Our 4-year-old is what you’d get if you mix a TED talk and parkour. He talks a lot-and I mean a lot-and can easily wreak havoc if you try to take your eyes off him. He naps exactly after lunch and gets up for another 17-minute dialogue on things I might’ve missed. At night, he volunteers to lead the prayer, starts with thanking God then goes off to re-tell everything that happened that day. They fight from time to time but which siblings don’t, right?
My wife is an amazing specimen. I tried as much as I can to help with the chores while I was working but most of the time I just watched her do everything — cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner, clean up, homeschool the kids, fold and sort the laundry, write a blog entry, read a book, workout, etc. — with grace and dedication. I was the distraction to her nine-to-five but I never heard her complain and that’s why I am lucky to have her.
To remote or not to remote
I now have a chance (yet again) to build something from scratch. Will I still advocate for remote work? You bet. Only this time, there will be some adjustments — minor tweaks, if you will.
Remote work is frowned upon by management because it circumvents convention so they stick with what works (or what seems to work) which is to force employees to stay in the office for 40 hours a week carefully policed by biometrics and physical time sheets. But does it have to be either/or?
Jim Collins coined the term “tyranny of the OR” which dictates that one must choose from two seemingly contradictory strategies. One concept I’ve come across is what they call ‘core hours’ where employees are required to physically be in the office at these hours (typically from 10am to 2pm) but outside of that, they are free to work wherever and whenever they choose.
This encourages some face time which helps in making meetings more productive but at the same time it also allows for some freedom. I’ve been thinking of implementing this while also taking it a notch further by choosing just 3 or 4 days in a week that will have core hours. Other days, everyone’s free to work wherever and whenever they choose.
If results and productivity are what we’re really after and every person we hire is someone we’d love (not just like) to work with then we should support them whichever way we can. After all, everyone has one goal and that is to make the organization’s vision a reality. | https://medium.com/mike/what-i-learned-working-remotely-for-two-months-136047c94e33 | ['Mike Sanchez'] | 2020-06-18 01:49:44.731000+00:00 | ['Work Life Balance', 'Remote Working', 'Random', 'Family', 'Work From Home'] |
International Students in the EU: A Playbook for Finding Your Next Job in The Netherlands | Here is the final blog in our three-part series tailored to help Non-EU students in their job search in the EU. We started off by identifying the visa and work permit procedures and some insider notes from akiTalent on How to land a job in France and Germany. In this blog, we will look at the visa, work permit rules, and some handy job search tips for international students in the Netherlands.
Over the last decade, the number of international students studying in the Netherlands has been increasing steadily with a considerable number of Non-EU students in the mix. Although there is an advantage if one speaks Dutch, the Netherlands offers a wide range of English-speaking jobs.
PART 3: THE NETHERLANDS
Internships in The Netherlands
In the Netherlands just like in France, you need to be a current student in order to be eligible for an internship. Non-EU students are allowed to have a side job with their studies up to a maximum of 16 hours per week.
If you are a Non-EU citizen living in the Netherlands on a Study residence permit while studying at a Dutch university, it is important to know the rules for whether or not you are allowed to work while studying. Some of the following information is excerpted from the IND(Immigration and Naturalisation Service)website. On the back of your residence permit, it says in Dutch Tewerkstellingsvergunning (TWV) which means you may get a paid employment if your employer has obtained the TWV permit for you.
Source: Pexels
According to the Dutch Law, you would not be required to possess a work permit:
If you are a student from a Non-EU country with a valid Dutch Study Residence Permit, no work permit is required but a standard work agreement signed by you, your university, and the company offering the internship are mandatory. If the internship is shorter than 90 days and a part of the Erasmus+ program, a Short Stay Visa (Visum Kort Verblijf or VKV) is required If the internship is longer than 90 days and a part of the Erasmus+ program. However, you would also require a residence permit. If the internship is longer than 90 days and if you possess an arbeid vrij toegestaan or free to work residence permit.
You would require a work permit if the internship is shorter than 90 days and not a part of the Erasmus+ program.
Staying in the Netherlands after Graduation and Finding a Job
Source: Pexels
A large number of students who come to study in the Netherlands, stay back for work. With a post-study work visa, upon graduation, graduates can look for employment for up to one year. There are two main paths a recent graduate from a Dutch university can follow when it comes to finding a job in the region. Those are as follows:
For Non-EU graduates, the Dutch government has introduced the Orientation Year Residence Permit to retain international talents in the Dutch Labour market. Check your eligibility here. The orientation year permit for which you need to apply before the end of the studies is also known as Zoekjaar or search year. Zoekjaar also gives access to your partner or spouse to the Dutch labor market. Before the end of these 12 months, an application for work as a highly-skilled migrant should be submitted. After your search year ends, your employer then needs to apply for a work permit at IND on your behalf. The highly skilled migrant scheme is meant to permit the Dutch employers to bring talented foreign professionals to the Netherlands and retain them. This means that employers within the Netherlands can organize Dutch work permits quickly for highly skilled international employees, without having to prove that there are no suitable Dutch or EU candidates. Only recognized organizations are able to submit applications on behalf of a highly skilled migrant. That means the organization has to be recognized by the IND as a sponsor.
There are three other resident permits that are also relevant for graduates and researchers. Those are start-up scheme residence permit, scientific researcher residence permit, and the orientation residence permit as explained earlier. There is also a provision for Non-EU nationals to apply for an EU Blue Card through Dutch immigration just the same way as we discussed in the case of Germany’s policies for EU Blue Card.
Practical Job Search Tips and Advice for Non-EU Students in the Netherlands
Many international companies in the Netherlands are open to English speakers and some companies even ask for a French or German speaker instead. Good for you, we at akiTalent are determined to set you up for success in your job search in the EU, especially if you are targeting purely English-speaking jobs in the region. Having said that, learning Dutch would definitely open up more opportunities and make your daily lives better, just like learning French in the case of France and German in the case of Germany.
Source: Pexels
Dutch employers appreciate a concise and clear CV, usually not more than 2 pages. A picture can be used, however, it’s not necessary as in the case of CV made for French companies , Part 1 of our three-part blog series. You can also boast a little bit about your accomplishments as compared to some other countries where you’d rather remain modest. To get started with your Dutch CV , reach out to us for a one-on-one consultation at www.akitalent.com
appreciate a not more than 2 pages. A picture can be used, however, it’s not necessary as in the case of Part 1 of our three-part blog series. You can also about your accomplishments as compared to some other countries where you’d rather remain modest. To get started with your , reach out to us for a one-on-one consultation at www.akitalent.com A candidate’s motivation is one of the top reasons for a job offer in the Netherlands. Hence, while you keep the position, description, and figures on your Dutch CV , your Dutch Cover Letter must explain how you found out about the job, your motivation and goals, and what skill sets and experience you bring to the table that makes you the right person for the job requisition. Considering Dutch standards, it should still be precise.
is one of the top reasons for a job offer in the Netherlands. Hence, while you keep the position, description, and figures on your , must explain how you found out about the job, your motivation and goals, and what skill sets and experience you bring to the table that makes you the right person for the job requisition. Considering Dutch standards, it should still be precise. It’s important to find out about your target company’s primary language of communication and accordingly choose to make your application in Dutch or English . It’s usually apparent through the job description and website.
and accordingly choose to make your application in . It’s usually apparent through the job description and website. As a general rule of thumb, when applying for jobs in the Netherlands , research your interviewer and take copies of your resume, educational certificates, and references . Dutch respect honesty and fairness . So, if you don’t know the answer, they’d rather you say so instead of faking it.
research your interviewer and take . Dutch respect and . So, if you don’t know the answer, they’d rather you say so instead of faking it. It’s important to understand the Dutch communication style. Oftentimes when you think the interviewer has finished with their sentence it’s likely that they haven’t. So, it's always a good idea to take small pauses before you respond, while they speak, in order to avoid any unpleasant interruptions.
Hierarchies at the workplace are often flat in the Netherlands. Dutch people respect punctuality so a lack of time management can be considered an unreliable trait. It’s important to maintain eye-contact in both social and business settings alike. It’s a sign of trustworthiness. Unless you are very close, it’s better to avoid the Dutch kiss (right, left, right) for a business greeting. When preparing to enter the Dutch labor market, it’s important to know these subtle cultural differences and be prepared for a direct, no fluff culture to best prepare oneself.
Did you find this information helpful? Check out more of such useful information and advice from akiTalent for other countries in the EU: France and Germany. | https://medium.com/@akitalent/international-students-in-the-eu-a-playbook-for-finding-your-next-job-in-the-netherlands-9d3f731cc939 | ['Akitalent Paris'] | 2020-12-21 07:02:17.102000+00:00 | ['International Student', 'HR', 'Netherlands', 'European Union', 'Work'] |
Shaped by FFA, a little gold card, and Dad | By Tami Craig Schilling, North America Knowledge Transfer Lead, Crop Science, Bayer U.S.
As we celebrate National FFA Week, Feb. 22–29, today has a special designation: FFA Alumni Day. In honor of Alumni Day, I would like to share my story about what FFA has meant to me.
Going back to 1981, I did not exactly jump at the chance to sign up for agriculture class and FFA in high school. Yet, it is no exaggeration to say the organization set the direction for my life. Almost 40 years later, I am still involved. So, what is it about the FFA that compels me (and more than 450,000 alumni) to continue to support its students and programs?
First a little bit about FFA and my initiation into it…
The letters FFA originally stood for Future Farmers of America. The name has since been updated to National FFA Organization to reflect the growing diversity and opportunities in the ag industry. FFA offers hands-on experiences, primarily for high school youth, teaching leadership skills and helping students develop their talents and explore their interests in a broad range of agricultural career pathways.
Raised on a livestock farm in Clay City, Illinois, by the time I was in junior high I was dreaming of a future in cheerleading and student council, not agriculture. But my parents had other ideas. One afternoon, getting off the school bus, I was cornered by my parents, who made it clear I had to give ag a try.
“You’re going to be in ag class and join FFA your freshman year whether you like it or not,” my dad said. “And at the end of the year, I’ll let you decide. If you don’t want to be in ag, you don’t have to be in ag. But for a year you’re going to try it. And we are not going to discuss it any further.”
With that, he walked out, having forever changed the course of my life. I took ag, joined FFA and never looked back. I still got to be a cheerleader and student council member, but nothing prepared me for life and a career like the FFA.
Having a plan
FFA taught me how to develop a plan, then provided me opportunities to reach my goals. At the start of every year, each “FFAer” was given a blue or gold card to write down individual goals for both the coming year and the next five years.
The cards taught me how to set goals, stay focused and invest the time to do what really mattered to me. Those cards, along with the leadership conferences, skills contests, and exposure to new places and people made the difference for me. It was a slow and steady process that was life-changing. Today, I still have all four of my blue and gold cards.
Speaking of new opportunities …
FFA taught me about leadership. My senior year of high school, I served as FFA Section President, responsible for a region of about 15 schools where I worked with the ag programs and gained real life experience being a leader.
I campaigned and was elected Illinois State Vice President, delaying my first year of college to travel throughout the state of Illinois representing FFA; visiting schools; meeting with legislators, ag leaders, ag teachers; delivering workshops and speeches throughout the state; and working on a Governor’s task force for a proposed Ag Academy. An unbelievable experience!
My college choice was also influenced by FFA. At the Illinois FFA Convention, I met recruiters from the University of Illinois who introduced to me to Ag Communications as a possible major. Three years later, I found myself majoring in it. If it had not been for the FFA, I would not have known Ag Communications even existed, and I wouldn’t be working as a Knowledge Transfer Lead for Bayer’s Crop Science division today.
Tami receives her American Farmer degree, the highest honor awarded to FFA members, from National FFA President Kevin Eblen. Tami and Kevin went on to become colleagues, working together at Bayer.
A future in ag
FFA gave me life-long connections. In the ag industry, it’s not uncommon to meet another professional and discover you attended a convention together or were state officers the same year. In 1985, at state officer events, I met Matthew Kirkpatrick, FFA State President in Indiana; Anthony Osborne, State President from Kentucky; and Kevin Eblen, State President from Iowa, all of whom became colleagues at Bayer.
Kevin has since passed away, but Matthew, Anthony and I continue to work together. When I say work together, I mean closely — we literally are in meetings together on a regular basis. So, every day, I get to think about how the FFA put me on a path to a great college experience, a strong network of colleagues, and a successful career. The network and skills I’ve developed through FFA continually confirm my dad knew what he was doing when he “forced me to try it for a year.”
Tami and her son, Lane Schilling, who served as Section FFA President. At the 2019 Illinois FFA Convention, parents of Section Presidents were recognized.
A family tradition
I now am reliving my FFA experience, as my son recently served as Section FFA President. He is a third generation FFAer, following in my footsteps and my father’s. My dad was FFA Chapter President in his community and built his livestock career based on his years in ag class.
That’s another cool thing about FFA and its impact. Membership tends to run in families. Both of my uncles, my brother, husband, two nieces and four cousins have all been in FFA.
The FFA connection stays with you for a lifetime. My dad was so appreciative of FFA that when my parents started their livestock business, they immediately connected with the local FFA chapter, judging at contests, working at fundraisers and advancing ag education. Years before I joined FFA, my parents were awarded the Honorary FFA degree from the Clay City FFA. For many years during National FFA Week, my dad hosted a petting zoo for the local school, giving kids an opportunity to interact with FFAers and farm animals.
Even after my brother and I graduated, my parents were still hosting school kids at the farm to see the sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, donkeys, rabbits, ducks, etc. My mom would fix snacks for the kids — because that’s what you do — and because this organization has meant so much to our family.
I’ve followed in their footsteps, jumping in to support FFA opportunities when they appear. I have reviewed ag curriculums, judged contests, served as a speaker at more events than I can count, conducted workshops, testified in support of ag education, served on alumni state board, raised funds, hosted ag students at work, and more.
I feel it’s my responsibility to pick up the charge and invest in kids the way adults invested in me when I was young. Plus, being around FFA students energizes me — they are positive; they have goals; and they are making a difference.
The FFA blue jacket, part of the official uniform for FFA students, has special meaning for me. I keep mine in my office at work as a reminder of where I came from and of my commitment to continue to support FFA. I can never pay it forward enough for the start FFA gave me and the direction my life has taken because of FFA. That is why nearly four decades later I am proud to be an FFA alumna and am forever grateful to my parents for “forcing me” to be in FFA. | https://medium.com/bayer-scapes/shaped-by-ffa-a-little-gold-card-and-dad-facb5bf58463 | ['Bayer Us'] | 2020-02-27 14:01:02.485000+00:00 | ['Farmers', 'Agriculture', 'Farming', 'Farm', 'Ag'] |
AMA Recap with ProBit Exchange Community | This article was written in an attempt to consolidate the AMA into a short, digestible piece that can be reviewed by the participants of the AMA, as well as the wider community who were not able to attend. The AMA was conducted in Korean, and the questions and content have been translated into English for the benefit of the wider community. I hope it helps shed more light on our project and what we hope to achieve.
On the 16th of December, 2020, Leverj held its first ever Korean AMA alongside Probit, in an effort to continue to educate potential users about decentralized finance and derivatives trading.
There was a lot to cover, and a 30 minute time-slot turned into almost a two hour-long AMA. Fran from Techemy Ltd, took the reins and gave some history regarding Leverj’s beginnings, running up until recent announcements like the Coinshares partnership, as well as launching a trading competition to celebrate the introduction of USDT on the Perpetual contracts.
After the initial introduction, participants were encouraged to ask some questions about Leverj. Five of the top questions were chosen and posed to both Fran — who took care of the business side of things, and Shanky who was able to delve into more of the nitty gritty technical details of the protocol.
Below are both the questions and answers from the AMA. Take the time to read through and hit any of our team up for more information if necessary.
Questions:
Question one was simple and sought to understand the overarching goal of Leverj.
Q1: What is the end goal of Leverj Gluon?
Answer by Fran: Basically to be what BitMex should have been — decentralized derivatives, with more interesting trading instruments. Our platform can also power no-ethereum-gas-fee dapps like AMM’s, Lending, Options, etc. Gluon makes everything on ethereum faster and cheaper.
Question two was asked by a participant who was interested in some specifics about the Plasma sidechain as well as ‘Daoization’.
Q2: I am curious to know how the plasma side chain technology possessed by Leverj Gluon guarantees transactions between each chain can be ‘DAOized’ and swapped, and what technology enables this?
Answer by Fran: Great question!
Plasma — originally proposed by consensys, was not really good enough. Gluon.Network was *inspired* by Plasma.
Gluon is “Account Based”. TenderMint will be the composability you refer to, between dapps on the gluon chain.
The “DAOization” is a reference to decentralizing the governance. The nodes run on centralized servers just like ethereum. By March we will have multiple 3 parties running nodes which will allow different apps to share the same liquidity and functionality.
Question three was concerned with some specifics regarding Leverj’s governance token, L2 ($LTWO)
Q3: What exactly is the Gluon governance token?
Answer by Fran: It’s an Ethereum ERC20 token just like Maker or Uniswap tokens — holders of this token get all the rewards (leverj.io and soon other dapps trading fees) + you get to vote on key network and ecosystem decisions. The staking will be live soon to earn those fees and voting should be around Feb.
Question four was in regards to security and encryption surrounding the Leverj platform.
Q4: What level has the bridge security and compatibility reached in sidechain technology? And I am curious about encryption technology and hacking measures too in regards to Leverj.
Answer by Fran: Gluon Network has been extensively audited by Blockchain labs over the past 3 years as development occurred.
In terms of OpSec, there’s no ability for hackers to take users coins — users control their keys the whole time. The website has it’s own Pen Testing and OpSec to the quality any exchange expects.
Answer by Shashank: Layer 2 by design relies on the security constructs of Layer 1. Verification and fraud proofs disallow malicious behavior not only by participants but also by the operators
Question five was concerned with Leverj’s consensus algorithm.
Q5: What is the main consensus algorithm used to maintain nodes in Leverage Gluon?
Answer by Shashank: We are working on Tendermint based consensus.the same model that powers Cosmos.
Question six was a follow up from question five.
Q6: Does Tendermint have one block finality?
Answer by Shashank: Tendermint is fast and has the right rewards and slashing schemes. One block finality in earnestness doesn’t exist even on layer 1 as they are subject to possible realignments and reorg.
It also takes away the burden of fraud proof as a post facto — instead it does proactive verification proof. Whatever goes through the consensus is fast and final.
Closing remarks
As you can see from the above questions, some were broad and general questions concerning the big picture Leverj has, and what it aims to contribute to the ecosystem. Others were very technical and inquired into the inner workings and ‘under the hood’ technology. Thanks to the teamwork displayed between Fran from Techemy Ltd and Shashank, participants were not left disappointed.
We at Leverj would like to sincerely thank Probit for hosting the AMA, and a special thanks goes out to Jabin Moon, who orchestrated and carried out the AMA. Thanks also to the participants for being patient over the two-hour stretch, and for posing some very interesting questions. This gave the team the chance to deliver some insights into our project.
We look forward to working more with the Korean community on both the customer side as well as the developer side. Hopefully, both users and developers alike will realize the exciting potential that Leverj has and together we can continue to improve the Defi space as well as the Crypto community as a whole. | https://blog.leverj.io/ama-recap-with-probit-exchange-community-d2c3dcd9b119 | ['Ehm Sohn'] | 2020-12-22 04:19:30.977000+00:00 | ['Ama', 'Futures Trading', 'Trading Competition', 'Leverj', 'English'] |
A Sustainable City. But not for Everyone. | Examining Green Infrastructure and Service Inequalities and their Relationship to Eco-Gentrification in Vancouver.
What does it mean for a city to be sustainable?
This essay begins here because how urban sustainability is framed is essential to understanding how it impacts different groups of people. Much has been touted about Vancouver’s both political and cultural emphasis on environmental sustainability, with the city government promoting the “Greenest City” action plan and its ranking as “the second greenest city” in the US and Canada. However, without dismissing the value of positive environmental action it is important to recognize that a holistic approach is needed as previous study has shown “without policies that are attentive to the social justice aspects of sustainability, greening leads to greater inequality” (Gould & Lewis 4). Through reference to images, this essay will examine the extent to which existing green infrastructure and service provisions in Vancouver have made it unjustly harder for residents of lower-income neighbourhoods to live as environmentally friendly as their wealthier peers and the corresponding negative social effects they face. This is done with reference to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) area, the city’s poorest neighbourhood with over 50% of the residents living below the national poverty line (City of Van 46). The DTES also has the greatest percentage of indigenous population in the city (City of Van 29), thus necessitating a racial lens to this analysis. In addition, we will explore how the existence of and response to these inequalities risks exacerbating eco-gentrification, which only serves to relocate existing issues and further marginalize lower-income and indigenous populations.
Just as sustainability itself has many aspects, urban environmental sustainability is also multidimensional. Though more avant-garde proposals like footfall energy harvesting and solar power advances may steal the headlines, one of the most fundamental issues in the context of environmental protection is urban waste management. As a notoriously unappealing process, waste management is at significant risk of slipping between the gaps of the jurisdictional dimensions of urban government, and as such its failures are frequently disowned and passed between different municipal, regional and national authorities. Yet for those without access to adequate waste management the burden of sustainable living becomes much greater. In the context of the City of Vancouver, data from Recycle BC indicates that every area of the city is offered curbside garbage and recycling collection except for the DTES. Therefore, to sustainably dispose of their waste, residents of the DTES must travel to bottle recycling depots, like the one below.
Image 1: A bottle recycling depot off Main Street, Vancouver. Photo credit: Daniel Piché.
In theory, any resident of Vancouver is entitled to utilize the bottle depots and are incentivized with 10¢ refunds. In reality however, the amount of waste a single household can create and store before it becomes a nuisance makes a trip to the facility not financially worthwhile and thus their usage is broadly limited to the most motivated environmental advocates, large-scale fundraising appeals (through schools for example) and for a group known as “binners,” low-income, informal workers who use the depots to supplement inadequate government welfare payments. These workers are primarily based in the DTES but travel throughout the city facing significant health risks, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, and often social disapproval to collect enough containers to make an average of $45 a day. Whilst there are certainly some binners who find their job worthwhile, their existence represents the reality that for residents of the DTES, green waste management is either a vocation or simply highly impractical due to the unjust gaps in environmental service provision. It is therefore unsurprising that the DTES faces greater issues of unsanitary and unsightly waste than the rest of Vancouver however, this is rarely framed as the institutional inequality it is but rather reflected as an inherent environmental failing of the neighbourhood’s residents, primarily low-income and disproportionately indigenous people, so resulting in their increased social stigmatization from the rest of the city.
Another aspect of environmental sustainability is transportation and Vancouver prides itself on its focus on sustainable transportation solutions like mass transit and cycling. In regard to the latter, the public health and sustainability benefits of cycling are well understood (Lubitow et al. 1181), however, in their analysis of cycling infrastructure in Portland, a Portland State University study found that “historical legacies of racist planning and socially unjust investment and development continue to impact how [different groups] experience mobility in the city” (Lubitow et al. 1200). Examining this in Vancouver, it can be seen that whilst maps may show broad cycling infrastructure across the city, there are vast disparities between the usability and appeal of different routes. For example, image 2 shows the cycling corridors of the Arbutus Greenway, which travels alongside many of the most affluent Vancouver neighbourhoods such as Shaugnessy and Arbutus Ridge, and the Georgia Viaduct, which connects the DTES to downtown. It is clear that the former is safer and more pleasant to cycle along than the latter which is highly exposed to both traffic and inclement weather and so commonly found completely deserted, as can be seen in the photo. Thus, unjust infrastructure development in relation to neighbourhood wealth is certainly prevalent in Vancouver. Furthermore, data indicates that the lower-income DTES residents are the most likely in the city to rely on bikes as their primary mode of transportation (City of Van 61). Thus inequalities in suitable cycling infrastructure represent not only a lack of an environmental amenity but also have significantly detrimental consequences to the neighbourhood’s overall mobility, intensifying economic and social marginalization. | https://medium.com/@dphubc/a-sustainable-city-but-not-for-everyone-9f8e22fc4737 | ['Daniel Piché'] | 2020-12-09 00:57:13.490000+00:00 | ['Environmental Issues', 'Sustainability', 'Urban Planning'] |
The top music streaming services are offering generous free and discounted trials for the holidays | The top music streaming services are offering generous free and discounted trials for the holidays Greg Jan 15·4 min read
Several of the top music-streaming services are looking to lure folks who picked up new headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and other home audio gear over the holidays with generous trial offers. While 30-day trial offers are typical in this space, you can sign up for three-month trials of Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon Music HD, Apple Music, and Spotify Premium for free. Tidal, meanwhile, is offering four-month trial subscriptions to its Premium or HiFi service tiers for just $4.
As is typical, these offers are available to new subscribers only, and your credit card will be billed at the going rate when the trial ends if you don’t cancel before then.
[ Further reading: The best Bluetooth speakers ]The services vary in terms of cost, audio quality, playlist curation, and other features. These aren’t the only music-streaming services to choose from, and they’re not the only services offering free trials. It’s just that these offers are much more generous than the typical 30-day free trials available from Qobuz, Deezer, and the like (YouTube Music is currently running a 60-day free trial).
Amazon Music Unlimited Sonos Move Read TechHive's review$399.00MSRP $399.00See iton Sonos Amazon Music Unlimited is one of the least expensive services, with Prime members paying just $7.99 per month (everyone else pays $9.99 per month). That delivers on-demand access to a catalog of 60 million tracks streamed in lossy MP3 format at a bit rate of 256Kbps. You can sign up for the trial offer here.
Spotify Spotify is offering a generous three-month free trial to its Spotify Premium music-streaming service during the holidays.
Spotify PremiumA Spotify Premium subscription gives you on-demand access to about the same number of tracks, plus a growing library of podcasts (1.9 million as of this writing). Spotify also streams music in a lossy format (Ogg), but at a higher bit rate than Amazon (320Kbps). Spotify is widely supported on smart speakers as well as other home audio devices, including networked A/V receivers and even smart TVs via Spotify Connect. A Spotify Premium subscription will cost you $9.99 per month after the three-month free trial. You can sign up for the trial offer here.
Tidal A limited-time offer nets a subscription to the artist-owned Tidal streaming music service for just $4 per month.
Apple MusicApple Music is extremely popular with iPhone, iPad, and Mac users, although you can use the service with most any computer or mobile device. Apple’s AirPlay technology makes it easy to stream Apple Music to speakers all over your house. Apple says it has more than 70 million tracks in its library, and it has three live internet radio stations plus the ability to stream local broadcast radio stations. You can also watch music videos on Apple Music.
Music is encoded in AAC format and streamed at a bit rate of 256Kbps, but you shouldn’t necessarily equate the lower bit rate as lower quality. AAC, MP3, and Ogg are all lossy codecs, and you might need to listen to the same tracks on Amazon Music Unlimited, Spotify, and Apple Music to decide which you prefer. An Apple Music subscription will cost you $9.99 per month. You can sign up for the trial offer here.
Amazon Music HDIf you’re looking for higher-quality music and have the speakers to take advantage of it, Amazon Music HD streams are lossless CD quality (16-bit/44.1kHz, with an average bit rates of 850Kbps) at a minimum, and some tracks—identified as Ultra HD—are encoded in 24-bit resolution with sampling rates as high as 192kHz. You’ll need fast broadband service for this, since the streaming rates average 3,730Kbps, but many of these tracks feature the Dolby Atmos and/or Sony 360 Reality Audio codec for immersive listening. An Amazon Music HD subscription will cost you $14.99 per month ($12.99 per month if you’re an Amazon Prime member). You can sign up for the trial offer here.
Tidal Premium or Tidal HiFiTidal isn’t offering a free trial of its music-streaming service, but $4 for a four-month subscription is a very good deal. The service is available in two tiers, Premium and HiFi. What’s the difference? Both tiers deliver on-demand streaming of more than 70 million tracks, include curated playlists in various genres, along with music videos. Tidal’s Premium service is similar to Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, and Spotify Premium. It streams music in the lossy AAC format at a bit rate of 320Kbps. After the trial, you’ll be billed $9.99 per month Tidal HiFi tracks are encoded using the lossless FLAC codec and are classified as at least CD quality (16-bit resolution, 44.1kHz sampling rate with an average bit rate of 850Kbps). Sign up for the HiFi tier, and you’ll also gain access to tracks encoded at much higher resolutions, including MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), Dolby Atmos, and Sony 360 Reality Audio. Tidal HiFi subscriptions cost $19.99 per month when the trial period ends. You can sign up for the trial offer here.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@greg52683325/the-top-music-streaming-services-are-offering-generous-free-and-discounted-trials-for-the-holidays-2315b8da16d3 | [] | 2021-01-15 11:34:28.219000+00:00 | ['Internet', 'Cutting', 'Chargers', 'Home Tech'] |
America Taught Dave Chappelle That Millionaires Can Sharecrop Too | America Taught Dave Chappelle That Millionaires Can Sharecrop Too
Photo courtesy of Netflix
What separates Dave Chappelle apart from his peers travels further than him being today’s #1 comedian. Yes, he writes and performs stand up better than 98% of the human race. And yes his POV beams so brilliant that at times society gets introduced to undiscovered angles of itself. But the creator of the Chappelle’s Show no longer needs jokes to captivate an audience.
Today, Dave Chappelle stands as one of our generation’s greatest storytellers. Like a 1973 Bordeaux, his skill for crocheting hilarious details into luminously poignant tales has aged exquisitely whilst refining consumers. He has the command to make us hold our breath for eight minutes and forty six seconds as he reps for George Floyd. He can stalk a stage being as entertained by his own material as us or sit hunched on a stool for 60 minutes. Regardless of his posture, our attention remains erect.
Earlier this week, he uploaded to his website, Unforgiven, an 18-minute soliloquy that exposed the poor ethics behind his Chappelle’s Show contract. It concluded with the savant declaring war on Comedy Central and its parent company, Viacom. There were funny bits, but few jokes. He offered a couple of stories from different periods in his life. Each demanded its own space and identity yet remained loyal to the theme: violation. He took us full circle, beginning with his first year as a teen comic who was bullied out of a joke by an adult comic. He moved some years forward, when a three card monte con artist cautioned him to “never come between a man and his meal.” These two flashbacks were set up for his gripe with Comedy Central. The network, along with HBO Max, has been streaming Chappelle’s Show ever since Dave hosted SNL the night Biden was projected to secure election. According to Dave (and his agent), he has no voice in the matter. He also won’t receive a penny of the new streaming revenue.
Dave reflected on a corporate room full of Comedy Central suits encouraging a broke comedian whose wife was with-child to sign a “terrible deal.” He spoke on foreign contract vocabulary like “likeness of image” and “perpetuity” as dressed up slave holdings, and punctuated his point with the fact that although his deal with the network was predatory in nature and essentially a lifetime sentence, it was standard and legal. Then Dave held up that mirror and paralleled his multimedia enemy with that of the Me Too movement. Not to be taken literally, he was referencing a mentality that allows those with a certain power and privilege — not to exclude economic status — to disrupt, violate and possibly ruin the life of someone with less. Whether the gap is money, notoriety, physical strength or civil rights, in the United States especially, the lesser someone has the greater chance that they become prey. | https://medium.com/@bonsuthompson/america-taught-dave-chappelle-that-millionaires-can-sharecrop-too-23f28a47f110 | ['Bonsu Thompson'] | 2020-11-29 11:37:59.598000+00:00 | ['Dave Chappelle', 'White Privilege', 'Corporate Culture', 'Netflix Originals', 'Racism'] |
Medical Marijuana Smackdown: Grinspoon vs Berenson | Opening Rounds - Alex Berenson
Berenson was arguing in the positive, so he got to go first. In my preview, I said his two main strengths would be his utility with words and his ability to recall facts. Both were on display in his opening argument. His case was laid out clearly, he presented scientific data both verbally and with slides, his speech was relatively smooth and practiced. He even anticipated some of Grinspoon’s arguments and had counters ready. Overall, he looked and sounded like someone who’s been having this argument for quite a while.
However, he chose a strange place to start, referencing his Twitter spat with Grinspoon in the lead-up to the debate. According to Berenson, cannabis advocates prefer to attack a person’s character and motives rather than counter the evidence, and Grinspoon’s tweets were Exhibit A. “I rely on facts,” Berenson countered, backing up this claim by offering printouts of his book’s bibliography to the audience. I found the move somewhat effective, as it highlighted Grinspoon’s later attacks on his character. But it also had a bit of a “He’s picking on me” vibe that fell flat. To make matters worse, Berenson’s been accused of cherry-picking data and using it to draw sweeping conclusions. It’s not a good look to start off a debate by doing exactly that.
Berenson seemed to run into some issues with time. His argument rests on two points: 1) cannabis causes psychosis, and 2) psychosis causes violence. Therefore, cannabis should remain illegal. This conclusion only makes sense if both of those points are true. Unfortunately for him, he spent all of his time talking about the first point, and didn’t touch the second. This may have been a blunder of planning, but I actually think it was a tactical choice. Why make two half-arguments when you could make one whole one? Still, it’s a bit of a disappointment, especially because it was this second point that Grinspoon was prepared to argue against! | https://medium.com/the-no-bs-guide-to-medical-cannabis/berenson-grinspoon-marijuana-debate-ef5968bbfe5 | ['J. Brandon Lowry'] | 2019-10-24 15:31:01.707000+00:00 | ['Medical Marijuana', 'Cannabis', 'Marijuana', 'Health', 'Debate'] |
MAINTAIN YOUR PRIVACY ALONG WITH THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. | By Meleeza Rathnayake
Smart Microfinance is being fully transparent in the pricing, terms and conditions of all financial products. Smart Microfinance is working with clients so they do not borrow more money than they can repay or use products that they do not need. Smart Microfinance employs respectful collection practices and adopts high ethical standards in the treatment of clients. Smart Microfinance gives clients a way to address their complaints so they can be served more effectively. Smart Microfinance ensures client data remains private. Smart Microfinance protects clients, businesses, and the industry as a whole.
Smart Microfinance encompasses core Client Protection Principles to help microfinance institutions practice good ethics and smart business. The Client Protection Principles are the minimum standards that clients should expect to receive when doing business with a microfinance institution. These principles were distilled from the path-breaking work by providers, international networks, and national microfinance associations to develop pro-client codes of conduct and practices.
The block chain is an undeniably ingenious invention — the brainchild of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. But since then, it has evolved into something greater, and the main question every single person is asking is: What is Block chain?
By allowing digital information to be distributed but not copied, block chain technology created the backbone of a new type of internet. Originally devised for the digital currency, Bit coin, (Buy Bit coin) the tech community is now finding other potential uses for the technology.
Bit coin has been called “digital gold,” and for a good reason. To date, the total value of the currency is close to $9 billion US. And block chains can make other types of digital value. Like the internet (or your car), you don’t need to know how the block chain works to use it. However, having a basic knowledge of this new technology shows why it’s considered revolutionary. So, we hope you enjoy this, what is Block chain guide.
What I am trying to tell you all is that block chain helps us all in achieving the client protection principals, in other words helping us all impress our clients through technology.
Maintaining the privacy of a client is one of the most important things in the business world and it is one of the hardest to achieve, but through block chain we actually can do it.
This is how it happens,
Block chain is a technology that underpins the success of Bit coin and other digital currencies. Wall Street is particularly interested in block chain: The elimination of manual processes around reconciliation with customers, trading partners, and securities exchanges using block chain is projected to save banks nearly $20 billion annually by 2022.
Block chain has uses beyond financial transactions to improve the security and efficiencies of a range of business activities such as applications requiring transparency on data and documents with a permanent time and date stamp. In insurance, for example, block chain technology can be used for customer onboarding, smart contracts, and fraud detection. In manufacturing, block chain is being used in supply chain applications and 3D printing.
To better understand block chain, let’s first look at why block chain is so important and how it ensures the integrity and efficiency of the Bit coin network. Then, we will look at how Acronis provides a solution that uses block chain to record and protect the authenticity of your business assets of your business assets.
Block chain is being hailed as the second coming of the internet and a technology that re-invents the cloud. Regardless of the hype, block chain will be a core technology that will influence applications in the financial services, insurance, manufacturing, healthcare, government; indeed, every industry segment over the coming years. Acronis’s use of block chain technology in Acronis Storage is yet the latest demonstration of its commitment to develop best-in-class data protection solutions for its customers. When Acronis says that your data is protected, it truly means your data is protected!
INFORMATION EXTRACTED FROM :-
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/what-blockchain-and-what-does-it-mean-data-protection
https://www.smartcampaign.org/about/smart-microfinance-and-the-client-protection-principles
Written by:- Meleeza Ratnayake | https://medium.com/prosperous-capital/maintain-your-privacy-along-with-the-4th-industrial-revolution-3af3354bfd43 | ['Prosperousca Io'] | 2018-05-25 05:12:10.793000+00:00 | ['Financial Services', 'Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Bitcoin'] |
Flutter Secure your sensitive data | Let’s see how secured it goes
In this situation, I’m going to show you how to retrieve data from Android side, on a signed apk file. I want to know is signing an application with a keystore add extra security, especially to the text assets db.properties I have. As a reminder, this file is here to demonstrate that this is not secured (and we will see why).
There is two ways to retrieve the apk file: directly from the output of flutter build command, or from an installed apk (on your device).
Before investigating apk, I will show you both ways :D.
Retrieve installed APK (the hard way)
Even if this is my own application, I feel like an hacker…
Before starting, check that tools using adb are terminated (check that you closed all applications using adb such as intelliJ, Android Studio, Flutter debug plugin,…).
First, connect your device to your computer, and check that your android device is recognized, using adb devices command in a Terminal (cmd console on Windows computers).
I suggest you to have only one device found. Else each command will need you to specify the device.
Then, you will have to find the package name of your application. You can find it in the build.gradle file, located in ./android/app/ folder. In my case, this is ‘com.example.encrypted_db’.
Locate your apk path using the command adb shell pm path [your_package_name].
Then retrieve the apk using adb pull [device_path] [computer_path] command.
Retrieve compiled apk (the easy way)
You can retrieve the compiled apk too, that may be easier. At this stage, I consider that you have created your keystore, modified required files and compiled the apk using the command flutter build apk.
And… that’s it. The command show you where the apk file is!
Ok now let’s go into serious business
Retrieve embedded file from an apk
Serious things start here. First, an apk is nonetheless an archive file. So here is the trick: change its extension to “.zip”, then decompress it. It may only work in a Terminal/cmd console.
Next, go to the unzipped folder. You will be able to find the database in the assets/flutter_assets/ folder.
And (not) magically, when we try to open it using DB Browser for sqlite, a popup is asking you to write password.
That the level of security we wanted. But the password is plain, either in db.properties file and in the source code. We can easily find db.properties as plain text file inside the apk, so that’s definitively the worst it.
Finding password in the compiled code is a little bit harder.
To do that, we will have to use specific tools, that will dump data from compiled objects. As you may know, in release apk your code will be compiled a-head of time (AOT), in the form of “.so” files.
On my side, I used the arm linux toolchains for MAC OS (https://github.com/thinkski/osx-arm-linux-toolchains). You may have a windows equivalent, but I haven’t tested on that platform.
Then, we will dump objects from the main compiled file: libapp.so, located inside the unzipped apk in the lib/arm64-v8a folder.
Finally dump object using command aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu-objdump -s [compiled_file] (or equivalent on windows and linux).
You shall to store output into a file to process data later ;)
I wrote ouput into reverse.txt file, let’s see what’s in there. By searching plain password text, we can see that we are able to retrieve database name and password, if we know what we are searching!
In red, plain password. In green, database name. | https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-secure-your-sensitive-data-2869239e6f9a | ['David Gonzalez'] | 2021-01-31 03:12:24.138000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Encryption', 'Flutter', 'Android', 'Reverse Engineering'] |
Advanced Reactivity: combining and chaining observables | In my previous article, I explained our decision to move forward with Svelte.js for our production website. In this article, I am diving into a technical detail we had to build for the application: chained stores. Svelte’s developer experience is built around reactive stores: using the observable pattern for dynamic values in the UI. This means that once a value changes, the pieces of UI that depends on it update to reflect the new value in the DOM.
What I am calling a chained store is a store that needs the value of a first store in order to exist. For example, a first store that defines the user id, and the second one that needs to point to some attribute of the user. If the user id changes, we need to renew the second store.
I will first remind the patterns that exist in svelte.js: stores and derived stores, then dive into a real-life example of chained stores.
While I'm focusing on Svelte stores, a simple implementation of observables, the concepts could easily be transcribed to fit other implementations.
Svelte.js’s stores
A store in Svelte.js is basically an object implementing the observable interface: having a subscribe method, being lazy to evaluate, returning a unsubscribe method when subscribed to.
Store example code, from Svelte’s own documentation
The beauty of svelte’s developer experience comes out when using stores in your UI components, with subscription and unsubscription to stores handled by the compiler:
Using stores in components, with subscription and unsubscription handled automatically
Notice the ‘$’ character in front of the variable we imported: that’s the trick that lets the compiler know that we are using a store, and it will handle subscription/unsubscription when the component is mounted and unmounted. Just with that, you can use the store as if it were a variable ! (as long as you use it inside a “reactive declarations”, more on that in the tutorial). I find this to be a great developer experience — what Svelte.js is all about.
You can play with this code in this REPL https://svelte.dev/repl/1d1d4f0beb4240848fa04be97ffbdf6c?version=3.29.4
Derived stores
A common pattern is also to derive data. As in the example provided above, you will sometimes need the raw value, and sometimes the formatted value. Derived stores are a simple way to factorize transformation code. Derived stores also allow to merge multiple values into one. For example, see in this example how I created a “progressStore” from the values of the form being filled out:
Using a derived store to implement progress
The code of this progress store is very simple:
Code of the progress store for checkboxes
As a reminder, the derivation code runs if and only if:
There is at least one subscriber to the store.
One of the values from the original stores changes.
So much for performance concerns! Our code will only run when the progress bar is displayed on the user’s screen.
Here is the REPL: https://svelte.dev/repl/ea03956ee4374c8cbe078dcaed40d5bf?version=3.29.4
When it is not enough
The writable, readable and derived stores that are provided by Svelte.js give a lot of flexibility. When creating them, with their simple interfaces of initialization and unsubscription, and handling of asynchronicity, you’ll be able to plug a lot of different data sources seamlessly to your application. For example a web-socket, a polling mechanism, a custom or open-source library, … all will be exposed to your application as a store and very well integrated with the rest.
Yet, we still quickly came upon a use-case that wasn’t straightforward to handle, and the center of this article.
As mentioned in my previous article, https://strollyn.com is using Google Firebase for the backend, as well as the hosting. Cloud Firestore, the database, is a No-sql, document-oriented database. As such, we chose to de-normalize the data model, that ended up looking like the following, with a user able to own several homes:
{
"user": {
"user1-id": {
"uid": "user1-id",
"homes": [
{"homeid": “home1-id”},
{“homeid”: “home2-id”}
]
}
},
"home": {
"home1-id": {
"homeid": "home1-id",
"type": "apartment",
"pictures": [...]
}
},
"home2-id": {
"homeid": "home2-id",
"type": "villa",
"pictures": [...]
}
}
}
When the user first logs in, we get his uid. In order to get his home and expose it as a store, we’ll have to first look into the content of user document in order to get the homeid, then subscribe to the proper home document. In other words, we have to wait until the uid is known to even create the home store. This is where the derived method falls short: it can only be used with stores that exist at the time of declaration.
Enters the chaining of stores
There are several ways to approach the issue, but we chose an approach that would respect a functional way of chaining function calls. We named it chainReadableStore , and this is how it is used.
The uidStore, getting its value from the Firebase SDK
First of all, let’s create our uidStore, that gets filled when the user logs in.
The main thing worth noticing is the call to set(user.uid) , line 7, once the user object is available.
The homeidStore, chained from the uidStore
We then want to create a store that returns the homeid of the first home, but only once the uid is known!
The homeStore is chained from the previously chained homeidStore
Finally, we want to chain again that value, to get the home document as soon as the rest is available!
On the UI side, all the complexity is hidden. The stores can be used as in the beginning of the tutorial, for example to display the picture of a home, and we can seamlessly “wait” for the info to arrive from the server.
chainReadableStore
The code of the `chainReadableStore` function
Comment:
This function creates a readable store that subscribes to the initial store(s)
When the initial store(s) values are different than undefined , it will call the callback function to create the chained store, that is ephemeral.
, it will call the callback function to create the chained store, that is ephemeral. When the value from the initial store(s) changes, it will unsubscribe (and therefore destroy) the ephemeral chained store, then create a new one, using the new value.
When the store has no more subscribers, it will destroy its subscriptions as well as the ephemeral chained store.
With the previous example of users and homes, the chaining function is used to create 2 new stores. When the uid is first known, it allows to get the homeid (not right away though, but after some hidden server requests). Once the homeid is known, we know where to fetch the home document. Because svelte stores only notify subscribers when the value actually changes (see this REPL if in doubt), our function only runs as often as it needs: when either the uid or the homeid changes, and only if a subscription to the final store exist.
The result
Thanks to the chained stores, we have a very simple and flexible way of defining dependencies. It can help a lot when dealing with the loading of the application. On the UI side of the code, it integrates very nicely, thanks to the store API.
Progressive loading of the application, with chained stores
You can fiddle with it in the REPL.
A word of warning
Even though Svelte stores make things quite safe (lazy evaluation, only notify when values actually change), keep in mind that chained stores imply a cycle of unsubcription/subscription every-time the initial store has a new value. In case of several chaining in a row, it can create a lot of operations. I find it particularly adapted to an app initialization, but need to give a warning: do not use it in hot code paths, or for stores that regularly change values. When there is no dependency between stores, stick to derived stores. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/chaining-svelte-js-stores-df781a1fb1b | ['Mikaël Castellani'] | 2020-10-26 10:17:56.255000+00:00 | ['Firebase', 'Svelte', 'JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Frontend'] |
Rogernomics: New Zealand’s Economic Revolution | The First Labour Government, in power from 1935 to 1949, dominated New Zealand politics while the effects of the Great Depression inspired widespread economic and social reform. In 1931, the United and Reform parties formed a coalition government; Labour, meanwhile, had to settle for being the opposition bloc. But the 1935 general election saw a frustrated public back Labour with 53 of the 80 parliamentary seats (United and Reform merged the following year to become the National Party, which remains Labour’s traditional rival) and roughly 46 percent of the vote. Amidst ongoing economic devastation, New Zealanders were happy to support the party and its promise to strengthen the government’s response to poverty. Labour’s leader, Michael Joseph Savage, had a history of association with trade unionist and socialist causes. However, his image was less radical than those of his predecessors, aiding Labour’s successes at the polls.
Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand’s first Labour Prime Minister, pictured in 1935 (Credit: Wikipedia)
Nonetheless, Savage and Labour pursued some openly socialist policies in the years leading up to the Second World War. As public spending soared, the government nationalized the Bank of New Zealand and industries such as coal mining and domestic aviation. Public works projects not unlike those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were launched, while broadcasting and transportation services were placed under ministerial control. Savage’s history of involvement with unionism also influenced public policy, as trade unionism was made compulsory alongside a five-day, forty-hour working week. Other policies of the First Labour Government included the introduction of import, exchange, and price controls, the reversal of wage cuts, central planning initiatives, new tariffs and other protectionist measures, and significantly higher taxes on income and land. Keynesian economic thinking arrived in full force; the relationship between the New Zealand Government and the economy it managed had become inseparable.
New Zealanders were also guaranteed incredibly generous welfare benefits. The Social Security Act 1938 established the world’s first social security program, introduced universal government-funded healthcare, and expanded benefits for the ill and unemployed. Pensions were increased and extended to a much larger section of the population, and welfare payments increased for poor and working-class Kiwis. Savage and Finance Minister Walter Nash also launched New Zealand’s state housing program, ordering the construction of 5,000 publicly owned rental homes in 1936. That same year, an accompanying Fair Rents Act was passed, introducing a rigid set of rent controls that required magisterial approval to amend. Education also received significant support from the government. Free secondary education was made compulsory for those under fifteen, school meals and books became publicly funded, support for facilities and faculty increased, and universities were made increasingly cheap and affordable.
Construction of state houses in 1944. The development shown above is the suburb of Naenae, located just outside the city of Lower Hutt (Credit: Te Ara)
New Zealand’s large agricultural industry was also managed by the state. The Agricultural Workers Act 1936 set minimum wages for farmers and provided low-cost loans, housing assistance, and guaranteed prices for produce. Regarding race relations, Māori citizens were also given greater access to education traditionally available to their Pākehā counterparts; their pay on public works, welfare, and pensions was also gradually increased to equal that of whites. Māori living standards improved noticeably, as slums disappeared, unemployment fell, life expectancy rose, and educational enrollment grew.
Though Savage passed away from cancer in March 1940, Labour remained in power for another nine years under new Prime Minister Peter Fraser. Eventually, frustration over issues such as the state housing scheme and Fraser’s commitment to peacetime conscription powered the National Party to victory in the 1949 general election. Nonetheless, Savage remains among New Zealand’s most beloved prime ministers. Adored by much of the public, 50,000 mourners paid their respects at his Auckland funeral. For decades following his death, his portrait hung in the homes of Labour voters across Aotearoa.
New Zealand sheep. Even today, agriculture remains a prominent form of economic activity in New Zealand, with fruits, dairy products, lamb, and mutton ranking among the country’s largest exports (Credit: Stuff)
Though Labour’s grip on power came and went over the next few decades, the legacy of Savage and the First Labour Government remained largely intact. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture continued to dominate the economy as it had since the late 19th century, with the production and exportation of meat and dairy products key to New Zealand’s economic livelihood. Despite fully asserting its independence with the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1947, New Zealand remained heavily dependent on Britain. In 1961, more than half of New Zealand exports went to the United Kingdom, with another fifteen percent going to other European nations. Nonetheless, the 1950s and 1960s were a time of prosperity and growth for most New Zealanders, many of whom still saw themselves as inextricably tied to Britain and its culture.
Protests against the Springbok tour in 1981. A wave of unrest gripped cities across New Zealand, representing broader national frustrations that initially surfaced during the economic crisis of the early 1970s. Divisive events like these ultimately came to define Robert Muldoon’s tenure as Prime Minister (Credit: Stuff)
However, the early 1970s saw turmoil on a level unseen by New Zealanders since the Great Depression and the Second World War. 1973 was a particularly disastrous year, as protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific worsened, oil prices surged in the wake of the global energy crisis, and the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC). British membership in the EEC spelled disaster for New Zealand, as Britons could now purchase cheaper European products thanks to the EEC’s introduction of lower tariffs. New Zealand’s protectionist economy could not compete; stagflation plagued the country for much of the decade. National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who served from 1975 to 1984, fought tooth and nail to maintain the welfare state and the prosperous New Zealand of the previous two decades. However, his conservative and polarizing style of governance emboldened an already strong protest movement, most infamously embodied by a vitriolic reaction to the 1981 Springbok tour. Muldoon’s policies also failed to improve a struggling economy, worsening his reputation among many voters. In 1984, New Zealanders rejected a fourth term for Muldoon and National, instead opting for David Lange’s Labour — and a new agenda that would change their country forever. | https://medium.com/@samuelpmills/rogernomics-new-zealands-economic-revolution-82e4185131fd | ['Sam Mills'] | 2021-07-04 03:50:06.898000+00:00 | ['Society', 'New Zealand', 'History', 'Economics', 'Politics'] |
The 90-Day Ketogenic Diet & Intermittent Fasting Experiment: How Does It Work? | 45 days into the experiment.
For the next 3 months, I decided to eat +160g of fat a day. Why would I do something this stupid, you ask? Because I am trying to get into the best shape of my life while increasing longevity.
Most of my life I have tried to find ways to optimize my body’s potential. Because of this, I have had the opportunity of trying numerous diets and training styles claiming to be the best.
If you have spent any time looking for a diet program on the internet, you know exactly what I am talking about. Every few years there’s some new miracle health secret being discussed or marketed all over social media sites like Facebook and Reddit. These fads even infiltrate top-level health forums and have fitness “gurus” swearing they are the answer to your prayers.
The ketogenic diet, however, is different. It has changed my life, and it deserves your attention. Not only has it helped me reduce my body fat and improved my cholesterol levels, but it also helped me feel more energetic in my day-to-day life and reduced my joint pain.
The ketogenic diet is a low-carb/high-fat diet that has been gaining popularity in recent years because of its very specific approach to controlling one’s weight.
The ketogenic diet certainly isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution, no diet is. However, since it has done wonders on my body, I am compelled to share more about it.
Because I had a lot of friends asking me about how I got in such great shape and why I looked/felt so healthy, I decided to perform an experiment and show others how this diet/lifestyle works. Providing a guide of sorts so other may test it out for themselves.
I also received a lot of pushback from friends who thought what I am doing is unhealthy.
I decided to do this study to show them that the program works and to dispel whatever misconception they have about the Keto diet and Intermittent Fasting.
At the end of the day, I am hoping that this study will inspire those who want to try the program to take action so they can experience a healthier and better life.
What is the Keto Diet:
Put simply; the ketogenic diet is a diet that is high in fat and very low in carbs which forces your body to start a process called nutritional ketosis. This means your body starts to burn stored fats for energy due to the lack of glucose in the bloodstream.
Glucose, also known as the body’s primary fuel source, is converted from carbohydrates. This is found in dozens of everyday food items — from white bread to fruits and vegetables.
Limiting these carb-rich foods to 25g a day is paramount to the ketogenic diet, but it doesn’t stop there.
To supply your body’s nutritional needs while maintaining ketosis, you will actually shift to eating high-fat foods with a moderate amount of protein. For example Fish, certain nuts, eggs, and most meat sources.
I use this Macro Calculator to figure out where my calories need to come from https://ketogains.com/ketogains-calculator/
Note: These macros are more of a guideline and not the rule.
As far as benefits go, the keto diet is usually applied with weight loss in mind. However, it is also shown to result in a number of benefits including increased energy levels, healthier inflammatory response, and improved blood sugar balance (among other things).
What is Intermittent Fasting:
For those who do not know what Intermittent Fasting (IF) is, it is basically a “cycle” between periods of fasting and healthy eating (NOT OVEREATING.)
A popular form of IF is the 16/8 method which entails fasting for 16 hours every day with an 8-hour eating window. Traditionally, during the fast you only consume water. However, some have been known to drink black coffee as there is some debate as to its effects on autophagy and fat loss.
I will be doing a full 24hrs worth of fasting before consuming my food. During every fast I will drink 3L of water so that I can keep my body hydrated and running efficiently.
With IF, insulin levels drop significantly — thus, accelerating the fat-burning mechanism of the body. It is also shown to reduce free radicals and boost the cellular repair processes in the body.
While there is undoubtedly more to IF than what I have mentioned, the above notes cover what you need to know for this study.
Combining the Keto Diet with Intermittent Fasting
By understanding their individual uses, you may think that the Keto diet and IF will be too taxing on the body when used together.
However, Based on my research, I believe that I have found the perfect way to piece them together into a single system and with the right implementation, one can incorporate the effects of being in ketosis with that of fasting.
For example, while gaining muscle mass is much harder with a ketogenic diet, IF solves this by improving the body’s insulin sensitivity, blood glucose regulation, and growth hormone production.
Fasting can also help your body achieve ketosis much faster.
Once you are in ketosis, it will be much easier to stick to your IF schedule since you will experience fewer hunger pains.
Remember that IF keeps your metabolism high, which helps you adapt quickly to your reduced carb intake.
Finally, being in ketosis while fasting allows your body to start using your body fat as a fuel source which leads to lower BF% and a leaner body overall.
If all these are proven to be true, then the Keto and IF combination would be a breakthrough.
With this 90-day Keto & IF experiment, I aim to affirm these claims by using my own body.
My Motivation
People commit to many diets and fitness routines for various reasons. Some do it to overcome physical concerns while others simply want to preserve good health.
My motivation for this routine is simple: I just want my passion and experiences to impact other people’s lives positively.
By acting as a “first-mover,” I hope to encourage readers to join the experiment and experience a healthier and better life.
I also want to help my medical friends and vegan followers to obtain a deeper understanding of how these practices affect the body.
Additionally, there’s a bonus for me as a biohacker looking to fully explore my body’s potential — as far as my DNA allows.
Without further ado, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of the experiment.
Here’s the breakdown of the experiment:
Purpose:
To test my hypothesis that a high-fat diet, like the Keto diet, in conjunction with intermittent fasting can help fight high cholesterol, increase HDL, decrease body fat, decrease/eliminate joint pains, and accelerate muscle growth.
Objective Measurements:
Throughout this experiment, I will use the following key measurements to track my progress:
• Reductions in body fat percentage
• Increases in muscle mass
• Improvements in endurance and strength at the gym (See Google Sheets)
While I have calculated measurements of these pieces of information, I will be using DexaFit scans for confirmation purposes.
All of these will be recorded and tracked in Google Sheets and available once the experiment has concluded.
Start Date:
10/01/2017
Finish Date:
12/29/2017
Calorie Stats:
My BMR: 1697/cals
Calories Consumed (T/Th/Sat/Sun): 2196/cals
Calories Consumed (After 24hr Fast): 400cals
Resources:
I will be honest, coming across Ruled.me definitely made transitioning into this lifestyle a lot easier. They have been a huge resource around understanding certain aspects of the Ketogenic diet, and they provide a number of fun recipes that make food fun.
Another great resource has been Dominic D’Agostino (@DominicDAgosti2) and the work he is doing with the ketogenic diet. After hearing him speak on The Joe Rogan Podcast (Ep:994), I was excited to find more information from him.
I recommend both of these resources for anyone wanting to understand more about the ketogenic diet or trying to answer questions that they might have about the diet.
Process:
To summarize this experiment, I will be following the ketogenic diet for 90-days without taking a break. I will also be fasting for 24hrs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. By the end of each 24 hours, I will workout and cap it off with a keto meal that only has 25 grams of carbs and a load of fat. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I will be eating 3–4 meals.
The majority of my calories will be consumed on my non-workout days. On non-fasting days I will be consuming a normal amount of calories, as I am not looking to make up for the calories, I did not consume during my fast.
During the fast the only thing I will be consuming is water. No black coffee. No zero calorie foods or beverages. WATER ONLY.
Workout and Cardio:
On Mondays, I will be working out Back and Bi’s. On Wednesdays, I will be working out chest, Shoulders, and Triceps. On Fridays, I will be doing Legs.
My exercises follow a TUT (time under tension) style. Doing 4 sets of 12–8 reps starting with lighter weight and gradually increasing.
Speed is the name of the game with contracting/squeezing the muscle and slowing down when releasing the weight (similar to performing a negative rep.)
With a 60sec rest period. All workouts will consist of 6–9 exercises total based on the body part or parts that are being trained that day.
It is important to note that no variables are changing in regards to my workout, from before or during the experiment. This is the same training style I have used for the last couple years. The only things that change are the amount of weight at which I use. As my strength goes up, I go up in weight to keep the same type of rep range and difficulty.
At the end of every workout, I do 13 minutes of HIIT cardio.
To keep my energy levels up during strength training, I use a couple of pre-workout supplements: For energy and pump I take Naked Energy (It’s Keto Approved), and for strength and endurance I mix in a scoop of Julian Bakery exogenous ketones. I have found that this really takes my workouts to the next level. I always suggest getting these two supplements to anyone that wants to get into keto.
Why I Do Cardio After My Workout
I keep my cardio towards the end of a workout, always. I do this because I’ve learned that lifting before cardio is much better for fat loss and workout energy efficiency. It takes a lot of effort to move heavy weights, so I do not want to waste it all by running beforehand!
To achieve a ripped/lean look your body needs to use your stored fat as fuel. In order to do this, you must burn off your glycogen stores first. When you lift weights, you typically use glycogen as fuel. By lifting weights before cardio, you can burn the majority of your glycogen stores. Knocking out your cardio after you crush the weights will burn more fat!
If You Aren’t Tracking It, You Aren’t Measuring It
For the sake of this experiment, I decided to get some baseline data on the measurements I am tracking.
First of all, I got my blood tested to acquire the necessary information, such as my thyroid stimulating hormone, cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, and LDL.
The next thing I did was obtain my DexaFit scans, which gave me data about my body fat percentage, muscle mass profile, and other physiological data.
Here are the results:
• Total Body Fat Percentage: 17.6% (translates to 8–9% BF using calipers)
• Total Mass: 164.4 lbs.
• Fat Tissue: 28.9 lbs.
• Lean Tissue: 128.8 lbs.
• BMC: 6.7 lbs.
• Visceral Fat: 0.37 lbs.
My Starting Pictures | https://medium.com/the-ketogenic-diet-and-intermintent-fasting-bible/the-90-day-ketogenic-diet-intermittent-fasting-experiment-how-does-it-work-d40e9a78f2f1 | ['Rand Owens'] | 2018-07-14 17:33:13.098000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Intermittent Fasting', 'Fat Loss', 'Keto', 'Nutrition'] |
Looking Aside | Pull focus around them
Noting the details surrounding them
Their loves illuminated by weight of importance
Always look to their side
This is where little angels reside
Protecting that loitering wisdom awaiting attention
Give them a stage to profess their joy
And listen intently as their flow is employed
Catching those unspoken everyday details
They _are a stranger
They _may be a friend
Or they _is you, unaware and blinded by you | https://medium.com/the-junction/looking-aside-8493bff6deae | ['Dan Gellert'] | 2018-03-24 02:30:05.118000+00:00 | ['Stranger Things', 'Poem', 'Aura', 'Poetry', 'People'] |
Automatically Build and Deploy Your Python Application in Four Easy Steps | 3. Create a New Pipeline and Add Actions
We’re ready to build a new pipeline. Click the “Add a new pipeline” button and fill out the form as follows:
Creating a new pipeline.
We will run this pipeline every time something is pushed to the main branch. Alternatively, you can build your application recurrently or manually as well.
Click the big blue button to add the new pipeline. Buddy has already taken a look at our code and will come up with a few suggestions:
Buddy suggesting several actions.
Choose the Python action and fill out the next form. If you want to follow along, you can copy/paste this:
pip install pipenv
pipenv install
pipenv run python3 tests.py
These actions install pipenv, install all the requirements, and finally run the unit tests within our newly created environment.
Create a Python action.
You can choose the Python version here as well. Buddy runs each step in a Docker container, so you can even use your own custom Docker container if needed. For us, the default Python containers are fine. I picked version 3.8.6 because that’s what I know will work with this project.
You can try the build step right now if you want — just to make sure it all works before you continue. As you can see below, I needed four tries because I forgot to check in some files to the GitHub repo. That’s no problem. We can keep trying until it works:
Our build step works!
Now go back to your pipeline and click the little + below your first action. It allows you to add more actions. By default, the next action only runs if the previous one is finished without errors.
The next action to add is another one of the suggestions: the Dockerfile linter. It checks our Dockerfile for mistakes. That’s a nice-to-have extra. All the defaults are fine, so all we need to do is click “Add this action.”
Now it’s time to build the Docker image and push it to Docker Hub. Add another action and again pick from the suggested actions. This time, it’s the one called “Build Image” (the one with the Docker icon inside it).
The defaults on the “Setup” tab are fine. Head over to the “Options” tab and fill in your Docker Hub details. This is also the place where you can define your image tag.
We’ll do something straightforward: We always tag the image as latest . To keep the version history as well, we add an additional tag that uses a Buddy variable.
A what? Buddy automatically defines a list of environment variables you can use in your project. A full list and more details can be found in the documentation. One of them is the shortened Git revision number that is accessible under ${BUDDY_EXECUTION_REVISION_SHORT} . We can use it to give our image a unique ID:
Set up the Docker image build.
The last action you want to add is a notification so you’ll get notified of successful builds. I’ll demonstrate with a good old email, but there are many other options:
Slack
Telegram
MS Teams
Discord
SMS
The process is simple again. Click the little plus button under the last action, scroll through the available actions, and click email. You’ll get a screen like this:
Adding email notifications.
As you can see, you can use all the available environment variables to customize the message to your liking.
In a more advanced setup, you probably want to tag your Git repo with a version number and create a build trigger that triggers on new tags. This is a nice way of separating dev builds from release builds since this tag can be used as a variable to tag the Docker image as well. | https://medium.com/@sunrahe/automatically-build-and-deploy-your-python-application-in-four-easy-steps-7e86709821 | [] | 2020-12-15 17:32:46.264000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Continuous Integration', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Software Development', 'Programming'] |
We, The Moral Hypocrites | Cooperation and generosity are morals that I try my best to hold myself to. I believe that taking the time to lend a helping hand is simply the good thing to do. Morals are pretty much the foundation of our society when we think about how we treat and interact with each other, but why do we sometimes fall short on these values? A few months ago, I donated to multiple funds supporting people in need, and last week, I helped my sister with her homework when I could have been working on my own. But then, 2 days ago, I walked right past a homeless man without offering anything. And a few days earlier, I made excuses to not cook dinner when my mom was too busy to do so herself.
Hypocrisy is common, from politics down to our own relationships. We expect everyone to abide by a certain code of conduct, but do we always follow through with these standards for which we hold everyone else accountable? Think about it. What is a moral that you hold, and when was the last time you were faced with a situation in which you avoided upholding that moral value? Many will disagree, believing that they are complete moral beings having never faced hypocrisy, but just because someone believes that they are 100% impartially moral does not mean they are. The way one perceives themselves is not always reflective of what everyone else sees, and in the fashion of hypocrisy, is a perspective selective in your favor.
Moral hypocrisy is defined as, “The motivation to appear moral, while, if possible, avoiding the cost of being moral” (Psychology). I can admit that I have found myself in positions of being a moral hypocrite. I took shame in the fact that I was unable to hold myself to higher standards and reflect my moral beliefs in my actions, but the only way for self improvement is by being able to identify instances in which you failed to reflect the morals you claim to believe in, in your daily life, and take into account how your actions imply hypocrisy and how you might choose to react next time you are in a similar situation that reflects said moral.
There are various instances and degrees of moral hypocrisy- as small as telling someone to clean up after themselves while you leave a mess, or as big as claiming to care about the wellbeing of all people while actively permitting other people to be mistreated or harmed. So why do we give in to that pesky devil on our shoulder? Well, “We convince ourselves that the violation is not all bad, perhaps because others may benefit from it, or we remind ourselves of ethical actions we have recently performed to give ourselves license to indulge in a little bad behaviour” (Piazza). Research has even proven this to be true by how “even men convicted of domestic violence are able to retain a view of themselves as moral, by calling to mind more instances of good than bad” (Piazza). Our moral compasses are our baseline for judging how good or bad something is, unless you are morally corrupt (consistently failing to determine right from wrong, making your moral compass skewed). For the most part, we want to be good people, or at least give off the impression that we are. This becomes dangerous when we focus on how we can benefit ourselves while not considering the negative implications we might have on anyone else.
So are we all moral hypocrites? Yes. But, it’s inevitable. I’m only one person, so I can’t know all 7 billion+ individual human’s actions, but I do know that as human beings, no one is perfect. There will be moments where we fail to recognize how we are losing sight of these principles, but that doesn’t make you a bad person. It becomes an issue when we choose to ignore a decision that we made that did not align with our morals. These practices encourage self-serving actions. If we do not start taking into account the impact of our own moral hypocrisy, we will truly live in a society where it’s “every man for themself.” Instead, we must self reflect on our moments of ethical misjudgment in response to these errors in order to better ourselves and the world we live in. This is how we face our hypocrisies head first.
Work Cited:
Colligan, Kirsten. “Is Logic Absent of Morality?” The Glasgow Guardian, 24 Nov. 2018, glasgowguardian.co.uk/2018/11/24/is-logic-absent-of-morality/.
Effron, Daniel A, and Paul Conway. “When Virtue Leads to Villainy: Advances in Research on Moral Self-Licensing.” Current Opinion in Psychology, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 32–35., doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.03.017.
Piazza, Jared. “Why We Are All Moral Hypocrites — and What We Can Do about It.” The Conversation, 11 June 2020, www.theconversation.com/why-we-are-all-moral-hypocrites-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-66784.
“Moral Hypocrisy (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY) IResearchNet.” Psychology, 20 Jan. 2016, www.psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/antisocial-behavior/moral-hypocrisy/.
Rorty, Amelie. “The Use and Abuse of Morality.” The Journal of Ethics, vol. 16, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41486943. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020.
Shalvi, Shaul, et al. Self-Serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral. Association of Psychological Science, 2015, www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/self-serving+justifications_132c2494-d4a5-4292-94ee-26249cb46b6e.pdf
“The Good Place — Who Died and Left Aristotle in Charge of Ethics?” TVGAG, tvgag.com/gag/who-died-and-left-aristotle-in-charge-of-ethics/.
Valdesolo, Piercarlo, and David DeSteno. “Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue.” Psychological Science, vol. 18, no. 8, 2007, pp. 689–690. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40064760. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020. | https://medium.com/art-of-the-argument/we-the-moral-hypocrites-c6c137d2ada7 | ['Mareme Fall'] | 2020-11-06 03:12:20.213000+00:00 | ['Modern Life', 'Human Behavior', 'Hypocrisy', 'Morality'] |
Docker for Go application development and deployment | Let’s say you are starting a new project. You have selected the language to be Go and the database Mongodb. You already have both set up in your computer be it a Mac or a Windows or a Linux machine. However, you had installed the tools a long time ago and both are now backdated. You want the new project to use the latest versions; you also need the older versions for the old (still running) projects you need to work on now and then. What do you do?
Buy new computers for each new project?
No.
However, you can imitate a new computer for each project, using virtual machines. We spin up virtual machines for each project to give it its own environment according to the requirements. Docker is one way to achieve this. And currently a very popular one too.
If you don’t know what Docker is or how it works I suggest you to read their own overview of the software here.
Only independent container platform that enables organizations to seamlessly build, share and run any application, anywhere — from hybrid cloud to the edge. — https://www.docker.com/why-docker
In this article I will show a brief overview of a simple docker setup for Go application development.
To get started, you need Docker installed in your system. Get the community edition here.
Project setup
Creating something too complex for this exercise will take focus away from the Docker configuration to application architecture and business logic. So I’ll stick to a “Hello world” implementation; let’s say everything else other than mainly the Docker part of the application is abstracted away.
Project structure:
.
├── .env
├── .gitignore
├── main.go
├── go.mod
├── docker-compose.yml
├── dev.dockerfile
└── prod.dockerfile
Initialize a new go module:
Run this in the root directory and it will create the go.mod file.
go mod init github.com/war1oc/go-docker
Replace war1oc with your Github username.
This creates a go.mod file with the following contents:
module github.com/war1oc/go-docker go 1.13
main.go:
package main import “fmt” func main() {
fmt.Println(“Hello, world!”)
}
If I run the app now, I get “Hello, world!” printed on the console.
Development Docker Environment
This is my go to Dockerfile for development environment:
FROM golang:1.13-buster RUN go get github.com/cespare/reflex WORKDIR /app COPY . . ENTRYPOINT [“reflex”, “-c”, “reflex.conf”]
As of writing this, 1.13 was the latest Go version. I also use reflex for restarting the server when files change; this helps a lot during development as the code is automatically reloaded.
The reflex.conf file:
-r ‘(\.go$|go\.mod)’ -s go run .
This means whenever a .go or go.mod file changes do go run .
This is all I need to put in my development Dockerfile.
Build an image and run a container from this:
docker build -t go-docker -f dev.dockerfile . docker run -it --rm -v `pwd`:/app --name go-docker go-docker
This will start the application in a container named go-docker from the image named go-docker and mount current directory on the host to the /app directory on the container. Any changes in the host project directory will be reflected to the container /app directory due to the volume. And if there is a file change, reflex will automatically restart the application.
Docker Compose
I use docker-compose with my projects as there are almost always different components involved (i.e., databases, swagger-ui, etc).
The docker-compose.yml file:
version: “3” services:
server:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: dev.dockerfile
volumes:
— .:/app
Now run the application using `docker-compose up`. This is how you’ll usually start you app during development.
This docker-compose file is very tiny. Generally you are going to use docker-compose to compose several components together. An example of a more practical docker-compose file:
version: "3" services:
server:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: dev.dockerfile
ports:
- 8080:1323 # host:container
volumes:
- .:/app
environment:
- AWS_REGION
- AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
- AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
- APP_ENV swagger-ui:
image: swaggerapi/swagger-ui
ports:
- 8081:8080
environment:
- API_URL mongo:
image: mongo:4
volumes:
- mongodb_data:/data/db mongo-express:
image: mongo-express
ports:
- 8181:8081 volumes:
mongodb_data:
Here you can see we have four components to our system. The server which runs at port 1323 forwarded to port 8080 on the host. A swagger-ui container for api documentation. A Mongodb container and a Mongo Express container for database. The volume of the Mongodb data ensures our data is persisted even if the Mongo container is destroyed.
When running the system using docker-compose, we can access components from inside other components by just referring the service name. For example, to access the mongo container, we don’t need to use the container’s ip address, rather we can just use mongodb://mongo as the connection string.
If we set up auth in our Mongodb database, we could use the connection string as the following:
mongodb://username:passwd@mongo
We can also pass environment variables to our containers as you may have already noticed. We are passing AWS credentials to the server container. You can create a .env file in the root directory and place the environment variables there. Make sure you add the file to .gitignore; you don’t want these secrets to be in the version control.
A sample .env file:
Docker compose will by default look for a .env file in the root directory of your project and pass those to the mapped ones on the docker-compose.yml file.
Production Docker Environment
For production, I build the image in two stages. The first stage builds the app, the built app and required files (i.e., configuration files) are copied to the second stage which runs the app in an alpine linux based container. Alpine linux has a tiny size and reduces the size of the final image drastically.
# build stage
FROM golang:1.13-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN apk add --no-cache git
RUN go build -v -o go-docker . # final stage
FROM alpine:latest
WORKDIR /root
RUN apk --no-cache add ca-certificates
COPY --from=builder /app/go-docker .
ENTRYPOINT ./go-docker
The final image size is 6.97MB only. This is absolutely fantastic because it reduces cost for storing these images in the cloud.
As a comparison, our development environment image size was 832MB. This is because it was a Debian 10 base image.
We can use Alpine linux for development environment as well if we want to, but it isn’t really necessary. We would also need to add several build tools which will eventually increase the image size.
Deploying to production
You can take your production image and deploy it to a swarm cluster. You can build the image and push it to a remote repository such as AWS’s ECR, and pull it from your server to update the service.
If you want to manage the cluster yourself, I highly recommend you go through the documentation for Docker Swarm; and use it.
Most of the time, I prefer running the cluster in a managed service such as AWS’s ECS. This saves both time and effort in creating and managing the cluster. A managed service also provides a lot of tools off the shelf such as viewing logs and metric. We can create revisions of task definitions and update the services with zero downtime.
Conclusion
I have been using Docker for a while now with multiple stacks and can assure you that it will ease the life of everyone in your team if used well. Getting new team members on-boarded can become a breeze when using Docker.
Find the source code for the above example here:
Tweet me at @war1oc if you have anything to ask or add.
Check out other articles from our engineering team:
https://medium.com/monstar-lab-bangladesh-engineering
Visit our website to learn more about us:
www.monstar-lab.co.bd | https://medium.com/monstar-lab-bangladesh-engineering/go-docker-2843a9339913 | ['Tanveer Hassan'] | 2020-02-02 13:30:00.841000+00:00 | ['Golang', 'Software Development', 'Docker', 'Tutorial', 'Programming'] |
The Marriage of Social Media and Sports | Chargers players boarding the team plane on the way to Miami for their matchup this weekend.
I’ll get into what sports can do for the fans on social media as well and the effects of it but the reason why I picked this picture is that tweets like these help connect us to our favorite teams. Social media teams nowadays are a blessing. They are the bridge that fills the gap between us and our favorite players and teams.
Lakers celebrating their 17th championship
Social media allows us to get into all the locker rooms, all the celebrations, among other things. Also, social media and news outlets get into locker rooms directly after the games to continue the story of the season as well. Around sports, there is always an opportunity for a story.
Especially something like this, social media allows us to be a part of the change of culture. Sports are like Vegas: it never sleeps. Again, there is always something to talk about. Even if you couldn’t be at any team functions or events, social media can give you the chance to feel as if you are there.
Social media is now an outlet for news as well
Much like people my age, we don’t tend to head to the TV or newspapers for our news, it is our phones. Everything is at our fingertips now. I remember back in the day, game previews would come through the paper and I would read them with my Dad. No matter what sport it was: football, basketball, baseball, golf. Also, social media teams are getting really creative in their graphics and the ways they can project a message.
Social media can also get fans riled up and stir a pot. And where will everything be settled? Sometimes in real life like an organic debate. But most of the time (especially now), all activity is on the phone. Points are made on shows like “Uninterrupted” or “ESPN: First Take”, but most of the time, debates and points are made over the phone.
To end, in a study conducted by GlobalWebIndex, there is an increase in all categories involving watching/ following sports to some capacity. “Globally, 22% of internet users say that following sports events is one of their main reasons for using social networks.” Because of this, sports events recently are being broadcasted on Facebook now, especially having an agreement with the MLB. Teams are recognizing the power of social media as well. After doing some investigation on TikTok, at least one team from all major sports has a TikTok account. Also, all 4 major sports have an account as a whole for TikTok. The power and influence of the movement is unprecedented. | https://medium.com/@danielines999/the-marriage-of-social-media-and-sports-c5f20bfd7703 | ['Daniel Ines'] | 2020-11-15 20:42:09.198000+00:00 | ['Lakers', 'Chargers', 'Padres', 'Social Media', 'Sports'] |
Mindfulness Training for Personality Development — The Yellow Spot | Those of you who know me well, know I’m a huge Mindfulness Training fan. And one that is always in awe of what it can do! And that’s exactly what we got to see last week. Its live effects.
It happened during a virtual Mentoring and Coaching session we were conducting for a group of leaders last week. We started Day 3 of the session with a Mindfulness meditation. And the effect was beyond what we had thought off and even wanted in that moment!
What happened?
We had a bunch of lively and extremely interactive leaders during Day 1 and 2 of the session. But Day 3 was quite different. Post the meditation, they became very quiet and interaction levels really plummeted! And you know how long this calming and relaxed effect lasted? Definitely the 4 hours that we spent with them, may be even more! And we could ascertain that this was not just a coincidence by their regained activity levels on Day 4!
Now that was a true example of the power of Mindfulness!
So, what is Mindfulness?
For those of you who are not well acquainted with the concept, you must be wondering what mindfulness is and how it is so powerful. Well, let me tell you…
Mindfulness is a beautiful practice that helps us connect to the present moment. You see, most of us stay either in the past or the future. So, its majorly thoughts about past regrets or worries and anxiety about the future. And guess what, neither of them make us feel good! In fact, these keep us feeling negative most of the time. And also make it even tougher to manage the not-so-pleasant emotions that get triggered by these thoughts.
The result?
Perpetual stress, along with a clouded pessimistic mind which is incapable of making good decisions or of being creative. Not to mention a lack of confidence, a bad attitude and an overall poor personality. Phew! That’s a lot to digest. But its actually what most of us are dealing with every day. And if you truly want to create a shift; one that changes you from the inside, from your very core, then Mindfulness Training is the way to go.
The Pillars of Mindfulness Training and how they help
Mindfulness has some pillars. I call them pillars and not rules because the fact is that rules give you a sense of right and wrong. And mindfulness aims at removing just that, the right and wrong that we assign to everything in and around us. If you look carefully, you will notice that we judge not only things around us but even subtler things like our thoughts and emotions. And the worst part is, we don’t leave it there. We go ahead to punish ourselves and others for these wrongs too! And I’m sure I don’t need to explain what effect that has on our communication, behaviour, self-talk, attitude and eventually personality!
It’s like we get stuck in a negative spiral which gets tough to break free from. In fact, even during Mindfulness training, we tend to follow on with the same habit initially. When we are unable to stay in the present moment, we scold ourselves for not being able to do so. And then starts the pre-recorded ‘I’m not good enough’ message again that often keeps playing as background noise in many of our heads!
Which brings me to the second pillar — Compassion and Kindness; Non-Judgment being the first. Mindfulness teaches us to be gentle with ourselves. It allows room for failure and mistakes. It reminds us again and again that it is alright to fall. What is important, is how soon we get up. This helps us tackle our fear of failure and gives us the courage to take on challenging tasks. It also works on slowly erasing the ‘I’m not good enough’ message that runs in our minds, the root cause of all our personality issues!
And how does Mindfulness improve our Personality?
It actually works on our personality in a rather holistic manner. Some of the ways in which it does this are:
Apart from all of these; it makes us calm, relaxed and happy individuals. Now that’s a personality I’m sure all of us would love to have! | https://medium.com/@theyellowspot-tys/mindfulness-training-for-personality-development-the-yellow-spot-8bc9dbfd0d74 | ['The Yellow Spot'] | 2021-03-22 14:34:42.446000+00:00 | ['Personality Development', 'Stress Management', 'Soft Skills Training', 'Mindfulness'] |
Voting Reforms to Increase Confidence | It’s widely reported that confidence in America’s election process is diminishing. Many feel their vote doesn’t matter or believe the candidate they prefer has no chance, and therefore their vote would be wasted, so they may not vote at all. Nearly 45% did not cast a ballot in 2016. Even with 2020 having the highest turnout in a century, projections are still just 65% turnout, remaining behind other developed nations. Additionally, many who voted didn’t like either candidate, but just voted for who they feared least.
Despite warnings from early Presidents to avoid two-party politics, Americans have been conditioned to believe we only get two options. It’s created a bitter divide, along with apathy among those who don’t fit with either major party. More options are needed to fuel meaningful conversations, collaboration, and ensure all Americans can be represented. Why should 240 million Americans be expected to fit into one of two categories? How can we resolve this so that all Americans can be represented, know their voice matters, and their vote counts? Three changes that would help: ranked choice voting, blockchain technology, and splitting electoral votes.
Ranked choice voting (aka instant runoff), allows voters to rank candidates in the order they’d choose them. If four candidates run, each voter ranks them 1–4. Then, first-choice votes are counted. If any candidate received over 50%, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated, and the second choice of each voter who had chosen the eliminated candidate is counted instead. If a candidate now has over 50%, it’s over. If not, another candidate is eliminated, and the next choice is counted for voters who had that candidate. The process continues until a candidate receives a majority. This system allows voters to vote their conscience, knowing that if their 1st choice doesn’t do well, their vote can still make a difference. It also eliminates the need for run-off elections like we’re seeing in Georgia.
Learn more here: https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used
Blockchain is a fast-growing technology that could be used to record, verify, and count votes securely. It could provide security controls, like matching voters against a registration database, confirming eligibility, and ensuring they only vote once, helping to alleviate fraud potential. It could also provide voters a way to track their vote, while still ensuring anonymity through encryption. Blockchain works by storing data in sequenced blocks, which are copied onto many decentralized ledgers, making manipulation of the data nearly impossible, since it would have to be manipulated in every single ledger.
Learn more here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
Finally, votes would be more meaningful if we didn’t have winner-take-all electoral systems. States should instead divide their electoral votes based on Congressional districts like Maine & Nebraska, with the final two electoral votes going to the statewide winner. This helps ensure that rural & urban areas alike are represented in the final electoral tally, giving voters more incentive to participate. Please join me in writing our Representatives and Secretary of State to consider these improvements.
Please follow my blog for more posts. https://lifelibertyandeternity.wordpress.com/blog/ | https://medium.com/@compassionatelibertarian/voting-reforms-to-increase-confidence-2b99acb3431c | ['Savannah Epperson'] | 2020-12-14 01:25:44.248000+00:00 | ['Ranked Choice Voting', 'Voting Reform', 'Politics', 'Blockchain', 'Voting'] |
Get Your Story Straight | (why it’s important to figure out, and talk about, how you got where you are)
One of my recent projects was to write a story about how I started Plan to Succeed, an online course that guides aspiring entrepreneurs through a business plan outline and gives advice about how to reach customers.
It took a few days, which is not normally my style for a blog post. I can usually get those done a lot faster. But the format of this story was guided by an expert who has written several of these, so I knew it was important to follow that guidance, and I’m so glad I did.
Now that I’m done, I know I’ll be able to use some of the phrases in my story to reach out to the customers I’m looking for. It’s important to make a personal connection with the people you want to serve. If this is what you want to do, here’s a quick outline of how to write your story.
Tell us what it was about where or how you grew up that gave you the drive to make a change in your life. You developed some internal and external desires because of those experiences. What were they? What was stopping you from reaching your goals to change? When did you realize that change could be made? What was the plan you came up with to get you to where you are? What roadblocks did you encounter along the way? What success have you realized because of the decisions you’ve made so far? How have those decisions changed you?
I hope you enjoy writing your story. Not only did this help me identify with the customers I want to reach, it helped me figure out other things I want to do in the future. Take your time (but not too much time) with it. Tell people where you’ve been and what drove you to make the decisions you did. When I wrote mine, I learned a lot about my journey and I hope you do the same. | https://medium.com/@sharon-bond/get-your-story-straight-a6aabc308dce | ['Sharon Bond'] | 2020-12-22 01:20:32.470000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Origin Stories', 'Business Development', 'Personal Development', 'How To Write'] |
Cushings Syndrome: two steps forward one step back | It’s Boxing Day 2020 and whilst many will talk of how Christmas was different this year and not in a good way, for me this Christmas was better than I could have hoped for. This Christmas was the first year since I had heard of Cushings that I could spend the whole day enjoying time with family and I haven’t thrown up my Christmas dinner. It appears that the fourth time really is the charm.
Christmas 2017, I was still recovering from my IPSS and had just started steroid suppressants. You could still see the outline of the bruising down my left forearm and I was a queasy confused mess from the drugs, I struggled keeping down most meals never mind Christmas dinner. Christmas 2018 was the first after my surgery, I was still battling to get the balance of drugs right and had a full relapse. I threw everything up and was tucked up in bed within an hour of lunch. Christmas 2019 I had been suffering with a bad cold from the start of December, I had been on sick day rules for a couple of weeks and was yet to go in for some antibiotics, again I threw everything up and had an early night. But this year, this year I was up early, I took extra steroid to sustain me through and I did not throw up once. Yes I stopped eating after main course and did not go for nibbles in the evening, yes I had ten minutes quietly sitting by myself to stabilise, but all of that is OK, it is healthy, it is normal.
Now, before I get too side tracked by the festivities back to my story and where we left off. For this bit it is important to note my issue was in my head, this next bit will be remarkably different from those whose cause is linked to their adrenals. So I am afraid this account is better suited to help those of you with a pituitary tumour I cannot advise on the after surgery experience of adrenal surgery.
It was July 2018, Manchester was enjoying a heat wave and the city was high in the hope that England was one match away from the World Cup final. I was packing up my bag to leave my flat for around six weeks whilst I went in for my surgery and got over the initial rehab at home with the support of my parents. I had read the pamphlet detailing surgery again (with hindsight that was definitely the PG version); I had bought multiple sets of new pyjamas that buttoned up as I was warned I couldn’t get a t-shirt over my head due to monitor wires and I packed some magazines because surely I would be sat in bed bored… LOL as it turned out I was never awake long enough to get bored.
The surgery involved drilling through the back of my right nostril and going through to the pituitary gland which is located behind your optic nerve. There was a complication with my tumour meaning that although it was no more than 5mm long, it had managed to embed itself into the gland rather than the more common position of sitting on the edge. I was therefore warned that in order to be sure I would not relapse or need to go back in for a second surgery it was highly likely the right half of my pituitary gland would be removed in surgery, this turned out to be the case. Unfortunately the pituitary gland is not quite like your appendix, it is not one of the more ‘optional’ organs. It is colloquially known as the “switch board” and is your archaic brain which existed before the brain as we know it evolved. Therefore I knew that despite being cured, I would be on daily drugs for the rest of my life, the question would be which ones and how much.
The surgery was a success, through micro surgery techniques the right half of the gland was cut out and cauterized; and as the ever charming Dr G stated “disappeared somewhere up the sucker”. To this day I do wonder just how much was shoved up my nose, I promise you it really isn’t that big! So the three to four weeks of nose bleeds leads me to believe more than is natural. The whole process took six hours which I am oblivious to. I have flashing memories of the recovery ward, the nurse holding my hand as I opened my eyes, his patience in talking utter gibberish with me, the first time I had to go to the toilet on a bed pan, the first eye test, but more than anything the wave of nausea and the start of the vomiting. I had an antiemetic tablet which I duly threw up resulting in more being introduced to my drip. Other than that I distinctly remember seeing Dr G’s dinner bag on the side and talking to Dr G about his tea. Considering I spent three hours on that ward I only remember around ten minutes the drugs were so strong.
As I mentioned, I do not remember seeing my parents when I reached the high dependency ward. My next memory comes in the dark, I was woken up for another eye test. I scratched at my face panicking at the mask and gasped struggling with the padding taped over my nose making it hard to breath. There was beeping, wires taped to my chest and back, a drip coming out of my arm and railings either side of my bed, but with the calming influence of a new nurse I was settled and accepted this state of being. It was only really that morning when the anaesthetist warned of the monitors that I had even considered I would not be able to survive post surgery without the machines. Another thing you don’t realise is that in the first 24 hours, every 20–30 minutes you have to be woken for an eye test for fear that there may have been damage to your sight or at worse that you have gone blind. Though rare, the risk is real. By the time of my mum’s first visit I had seen the text so many times my mum pointed out that even in my doped state I had a photographic memory so I had probably stopped reading before breakfast and was merely reciting without realising. From that point on the eye tests were a variety of texts so in good news I really could see.
On the first day I didn’t manage to sit upright. I had to use bed pans and the monitors bleeping various warnings was pretty constant. I drifted in and out with the blur of time punctuated by the violent vomiting the minute any antiemetics wore off. I was on drips and wore a snazzy pair of circulation socks which were to remain on for at least the week. In good news on my quiet ward I had the window bed and after getting used to the mask, the blood and the monitors, when I opened my eyes and stared into space, for the first time in a long time I felt calm. It could have been the success of my surgery and lack of steroid, more likely it was the morphine and codeine cocktail.
My mum came at the start of visiting hours and patiently sat with me while I struggled to piece together incoherent sentences. I repeated myself, I used the wrong words and I slurred. My poor parents spent the next three weeks questioning whether I was brain damaged, the truth was I was brain exhausted. One thing I did manage to communicate to my mum (other than the fact she had a nice drive over — it turns out I asked around six times) was that I had a very specific and very sharp pain in my head. It was an odd place for a headache and was behind my ear. I could actually point to the pain. To calm me my mum went to look at the spot. I remember the shock and the panic as she instantly called the nurse, the spot I referred to had a hole there and was covered in dried blood. Chris was there in an instant and explained if we looked we would find three more identical holes. Surprise!!! Turns out my head had been in a brace. In order to prevent any slight movements which could have been fatal your head is locked in a brace for surgery. Not something that was mentioned in my pamphlet! Made total sense when the nurse explained it and just like that my mum was calm again.
The other thing my parents took in their stride was the number of bed pans dotted around my bed. The constant nose bleed and regular vomiting meant I needed a constant supply. The nurses swiftly removed bowls of bloody tissues and supported my body when I was sick. My face was numb from the drugs so my parents would politely indicate when it was time to mop up my face again without showing any panic that the bleeding hadn’t stopped. They would note each machine as it was removed and calmly wait while I battled with the English language.
I guess that is the thing when you are a parent of someone with an invisible (or at that time pretty darn visible) illness. You learn to react, process and recalibrate in real time to protect the patient. You become so efficient at processing the information and emotions that any spectator would be forgiven for getting whiplash. So now that we had identified my holey head I simply took more painkillers and drifted off. I next stirred when my mum and dad came back later during visiting hours. That was their routine over the next couple of days, prepare my food in a morning (I really don’t like hospital food), come see me at the start of visiting hours, go away and kill some time before returning again later in the day. I was so exhausted I couldn’t handle prolonged interaction. I think my parents spent more time in the trafford centre that week than since it originally opened.
Due to the trauma in my nose I lost my sense of taste and smell. I even asked my parents to buy me some pickled onion monster munch! I went through three multi bags in the following couple of weeks and couldn’t smell or taste a thing… it probably took around six months before I had a more normal sense of smell.
On day two I managed to sit upright and use a commode. Gradually some of the monitors were removed and the eye tests became hourly. I had drinks provided upon request and one of the helpers even hunted me down a bottle of cordial. I was thirsty. I continued to nap though a truly deep sleep was impossible due to the pressure in my head and the constant ache as I went from pain killer to pain killer. another day I did not get around to reading those magazines.
That night I remember the room spinning whenever I opened my eyes: breathing was laboured and my body felt as though it was at sea. I had never felt like this but I knew something was wrong. In my state I was not thinking clearly enough to call a nurse and did not have the strength to show that I was awake. For that reason it was not until the nurse change first thing in the morning that anyone noticed something was going wrong. My blood pressure had plummeted and the new nurse swiftly appeared with a blood sugar test. My blood sugar was so low I had spent the night in hypoglycaemic shock. I was given a tube of glucose syrup which I had to finish before the nurse would leave. For those of you who have not tried eating a tube of flavourless toothpaste … it was grim. However; my blood sugar stabilised and I was back to my usual state of dopey.
On day three I was determined! Today I was going to walk. The reality, with Nick and Chris on either side of me(two of the most phenomenal nurses I have ever met) I shuffled a few steps and back again. Shattered I went back to sleep. I managed some dry toast for breakfast and it was nearly lunchtime before I threw up. In the early afternoon I shuffled to the bathroom near my bed where a chair had been set up in the shower. I had a wash!!! When you are still attached to a drip, you cant stand independently and every muscle feels like a dead weight that was an achievement. I put on my button up pyjamas and then the nurse who had spent the whole time waiting by the bathroom slowly helped me shuffle to bed and hooked me back up to the machines. I went back to sleep only to wake when my mum arrived. My mum kindly put a lose braid in my hair as there was no way I was putting a comb near those holes. My dad fetched me some fruit pastels and Ribena from the shop so I could keep my blood sugar higher. Turns out vomiting isn’t that good for you.
If that first wash showed me anything it was how tired my muscles were. If I was the type of person who ran a marathon I imagine it is how your legs feel at the end. But I am not that person, I am the person whose muscles had spent the last ten years wasting and so there was nothing left. Well that isn’t true, there was one thing left… another nap.
Day three was also the day that the senior nurse walked in. I don’t know her name I just remember she was tall, moved with that quiet grace only mastered by nurses and had a kind smile. I think because she helped me shuffle to the toilet or when I was too weak had the commode brought in that she realised just how often I needed to wee. Therefore she got me some pen and paper and told me to tally every time I had a drink she also discreetly had my wee measured. Not only did this start me using my brain and hands (magazines still nowhere in sight) but it also helped her to call up the consultant to confirm that I had diabetes insipidus. My body had stopped retaining any liquid and I was in a vicious cycle of dehydration. Whether this was temporary or permanent remained to be seen.
I always remembered in one of my many consultations with Dr G that he had said many Cushings patients could go home on day four. So in my head I was going home on day four, no matter how hard I had to work. During the morning rounds the consultants left it open that it would be a maybe. So I walked to the bathroom by myself (nurese on standby watching me go), I managed a second wash, I ate the dry toast and even had my drip and the final monitors removed. I was on an adrenaline fuelled roll. By lunch I was told I would have to stay. When my parents came for their first visit of the day I was sat in my chair deflated, but I was clean. After they left Dr G came for a visit by himself. He saw how deflated I was and knew from many consultations with me and my parents that I would be going back to their house for full care. For that reason he wrote prescriptions including desmopressin for the new found diabetes insipidus, set a high level of steroid for the first week to keep me stable, some antibiotics, some epic pain killers and a dose of antiemetic to get me home. To the shock of the nurses, provided I returned every Thursday for a check up Dr G let me go home.
My parents came back and packed my bag whilst we waited for the drugs. My magazines remained unread as they were packed up again. That shuffle to the car leaning on my dad was the first time I had left the bedroom. Unlike the football which had been lost the night before (sorry England I dozed through that match), I was going home. I was gingerly packed into the front seat of the car and my parents took me home. As we arrived back a neighbour started to walk over to say hi and see how I was doing, one look and she waved and backed away. My parents took my weight as we got inside the house and I was put straight to bed. I slept the rest of the day only to be woken at intervals by my mum at drug time, eighteen individual doses to be timed with military precision. But that did not matter, I was home.
Speaking of home I think that is enough of the story for Boxing Day. Writing this has made me realise that maybe it would be more realistic to expect a mini series rather than me being able to summarise my life in two quick posts. But trust me, now I have started I will be sure to finish! After those first few days in the hospital there is a rapid improvement and I was flying to Sri Lanka by November. Keep hanging in their cushies and do not doubt that the brief fight is worth the freedom yet to come. So with the hospital stay behind me and the initial stabilisation complete, I will leave the acclimatisation to my new life for another post. Yes those first few days were hard, yes my failing body scared me; however, the calming influence of the hospital staff rallied me and no matter how tired you are, your body can always fight back. After my brief stay in hospital I will say one thing, no matter how many times we clapped for the NHS this year it will never be enough.
Now where are those Christmas chocolates… | https://medium.com/@lauraewj/cushings-syndrome-two-steps-forward-one-step-back-c362078c6bcb | ['Laura Woodfine-Jones'] | 2020-12-26 18:00:06.177000+00:00 | ['Cushings Disease', 'Nhs', 'Recovery', 'Invisible Illness', 'Hospital'] |
Voices of Purpose #7: June | “Hello June!” I greet my latest guest. June gives me a small wave and smile. “I’m really glad to see you today! How are you and what are you up to?
“I’m pretty good,” June responds. “I’m settling into my new routine three months after moving across the country… and four months after ending a six and a half year relationship.” She pauses a second to reflect on her statement. “As to what I’m up to? Mostly just working. I did have the most relaxing Thanksgiving I can remember just sitting around the apartment alone! I’ve also been talking to this girl I met online.”
I say, “All of that sounds amazing. I am glad that it seems like you’re finding much more peace in life.” I offer a warm smile. “I’d love for you to talk about this aspect of peace. It sounds like you’ve dealt with so much…when we talked before as well it felt like you were just able to spread out and ‘be June’ for the first time.” I see her nod as I resume, “How has this move been for you? Any regrets that were left behind? What positives have you found following this huge change?
June laughs ruefully. “Getting into the deep end already?” she jokes. “It has been freeing, uplifting, but also tumultuous. I left everything and everyone I know behind to find the new beginning that I desperately needed.” She gives me a half-smile as she goes on, “I do finally have the space to just be me and that has changed my life immeasurably. I no longer have to worry about my neighbors or other people that knew me from before being judgmental.”
“I am still figuring myself out to be honest,” June reflects. “I had been with the same person for four years before I transitioned and their judgmental attitude severely hampered my journey of self-exploration and actualization. Any time I tried to deviate from what was known or expected it was met with resistance. I also left behind all the friends that stuck with me through the years who accepted and supported me when I came out.” She shakes her head sadly. “That’s the worst thing about moving, especially considering the current situation and how that has complicated making new friends.”
“This whole situation has been challenging,” I observe. “I can certainly see how moving and quarantine has hampered your ability to find socialization. In quarantine, have you found other areas to focus on?”
“Mostly I’ve been focusing on work and trying to move up in the company. When I’m not working I’m usually napping, talking to friends on Discord, or playing video games with my roommate.” June replies.
“I am really glad that I was able to make it up to visit a few weeks ago then! It was a happy break in your routine,” I remark. I take a couple seconds to think and say, “I’d love for you to talk about your friends in the South. I’m really happy to hear that you had some success in being out and social with others, I’d delight in people knowing that there is support in so many places.”
June thinks and responds, “As for my friends from back in Alabama. I never really fit in with the majority of people living in the South. The few people I’ve called friend over the years have been similarly outcast and open-minded. Once I came out I started to become active in the local LGBT+ community and found a whole host of warm and welcoming people from all walks of life. I still ‘see’ them occasionally thanks to Zoom meetings. I don’t think I would’ve made it this far without their support and acceptance.
June takes a deep breath and exhales. “The choice to leave them all behind was difficult. I still miss them. It was paradoxical that for the first few weeks I was here I felt homesick even though I had desperately wanted to leave the south for as long as I can remember.”
“Oh, June, that sounds really sad but really happy… the very definition of “bittersweet”,” I state. “Your friends, were they the same way… kinda wanting to leave but not really in a good position to do so?”
“Some of them probably would love to get out and some of them have. I still keep in touch with them through Facebook. Others are dedicated to staying there and making a difference for all minorites, LGBT and racial. I hope once the pandemic is “over” I can get involved with people here fighting for social justice and equality.” June’s eyes show with her determination.
I ask, “So what does involvement look like for you where you’re at?”
“Right now?” June muses. “Mostly talking to people online and trying to support them in their struggles. In the future, I’d love to go to marches and protests. I found a local group for trans people in the Madison area on Facebook and hope to be active with them in the future. I’m sure there are other ways I can help and I’ll look for people that can point me in the right direction,” she concludes.
“That sounds really positive June!” “So how is work going as far as moving up? Running into challenges or victories?”
“I’m really happy because I was able to receive my promotion!” June celebrates. “I’d just been trying to demonstrate that I’m dependable and capable. I interviewed for shift supervisor last week and that went well. The two supervisors I work with in the morning are rooting for me to do a great job. Previously I was just doing what I always was by showing up early, working hard, and trying to make it a positive atmosphere for everyone. It may sound silly but a smile and a cup of coffee has the potential to change someone’s day. Especially in the current situation. I may be the only person some of my customers interact with on a daily basis and I always strive to make a positive impact when I can.”
“Well, I’m definitely proud of you for making the service industry into a career. It deserves to be a career and you have a beautiful attitude and willingness to help others.” I tell her.
“I’d like it to be my career but who knows where life will take me,” June says. “They have very inclusive policies and amazing benefits, which makes me want to stay.” She considers for a second and observes, “Helping others is most fulfilling though some people make that difficult at times
I chuckle at her statement. “Yeah, it feels like their job. And there are times that I just don’t have the patience for it. I’m definitely in awe of your ability to keep that patience.”
She replies with a small chortle, “People try my patience daily to be honest!”
“Yet you not only keep coming back, but you want to turn this into a thriving and vibrant career. You are a devil and iconoclast and an angel all rolled into one, June.”
June gives me one of her patented huge smiles.
“And reaching back towards the beginning, you finally have the space to explore this devil-slash- iconoclast-slash-angel self of yours and develop it to the fullest. How has that been going? Are you enjoying this experimental phase?
June’s smile continues its brilliance. “It’s been nice but frustrating since I spend most of my time working or at home for obvious reasons. But most of my journey has been through introspection. I have been trying to explore my personal style more since I’m free of the anxiety of running into people that knew me from before I transitioned but don’t know or aren’t accepting.” June contemplates for a second. “That has been the most important aspect of moving. It’s absolutely amazing to be surrounded by people that only know June.”
“I recall that in older times it would be needful for transgender folks to literally move to where they weren’t known for their safety and their continued transition. Of all the people that I’ve had the ability to meet, it feels like you are the closest to this experience,” I describe. “I realize though that this comes with the challenge you named above of not being able to see your former friends… except in this day and age it’s possible. Even if you can’t quite hug them or shake their hands, you can at least see them. So, how has it been, being able to live without having to explain yourself to others so many times?
“Well, we all explain ourselves to others in some way though our interactions with them. It isn’t really a safety issue… more just peace of mind.” She folds her hands in her lap, straightens, and takes a deep breath before going on. “Being free of the preconceived notions of the people that knew me from before has made just being myself easier. Sometimes it’s hard to not give in to the pressure of those expectations when you’re surrounded by people that have known the role you assumed in an attempt to be what they perceived you to be before you realized who you actually are.” June smiles as she finishes, “I think this is true for everyone not just trans people”
Thank you for your deep and thought-provoking concepts!” I say to her. “I am amazed at your willingness to be patient and think through these things.”
“Honestly I wasn’t very patient before I transitioned… or not nearly as patient,” June mentions.
“‘Not patient’,” I chuckle. “I was the exact opposite. I was practically inert. I was in such a fog and stupor sometimes that it felt that the only thing I could give was time, because I couldn’t be bothered to care.”
“Don’t confuse apathy for patients,” June corrects me. “I made that mistake” She looks me in the eyes as she continues, “I was apathetic about everything before I figured out the truth. Life was just a chore that had to be done and I put as little effort in as possible. People told me I was patient but… like you… I just couldn’t be bothered to care.”
“And this is why we have transition,” I reply to her. “So that we come to a better place. Physically, mentally, socially, and motivationally.”
“Very true,” she agrees. “This is something that I have found to be very profound and I recommend to a lot of people, Hunter S. Thompson’s letter to Hume Logan.” She looks thoughtful and then says, “Change is difficult even when it’s for the better. We are very much creatures of habit.”
“Thank you!” I respond. “Sometimes it’s just a reflection that this stuff is hard, especially since the path itself isn’t easy.” I take a deep breath myself. “And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Finding what is needed to obtain a good steady-state. Not even just happiness, but the absence of negativity…”
June smiles. “Honestly I don’t think there can be an end-all be-all. It is all just part of the journey.”
“I am very grateful that you took the time to talk with me today June,” I say to her.
She laughs happily. “I am always willing to offer an ear.”
“And thank you as well for joining us to talk with June, another voice of purpose. Her story, as well as your story, is important. Please contact me at @SerenaNoelle_ via Twitter or on Discord at Serena#7329 if you’d like to talk about your journey too. I hope that you have found pieces of yourself in the images that others have expressed, and that you’re able to continue working to uncover your best self!”
Thompson’s Letter: https://fs.blog/2014/05/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
images public domain, published by keywest3, desertrose7 via pixabay.com | https://medium.com/@vopserena/voices-of-purpose-7-june-5353dfbd60c2 | ['Serena Jamison'] | 2020-12-09 17:09:53.845000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Voices Of Purpose', 'Journey'] |
Designing Tips To Make A Building Solar Friendly | We all are aware of the importance and benefits of solar energy in our lives and for the environment, and slowly the world is moving towards the maximum use of solar power. To take the maximum benefits of solar energy, it is always advisable to plan beforehand and design your new building be it for residential or commercial purpose. Here are a few building designing tips that you can consider while planning -
Shade
It is the most obvious but the most pertinent point to be considered while designing the building with an aim to install solar panels. There must not be any obstacles or obstruction on the way that can reduce the reach or intensity of solar energy.
Orientation
It is always advisable to design south-facing as much as possible, so that your solar panels can get solar energy for the maximum time of the day. The orientation must not be in the north direction.
Rooftop Strength
Installation of rooftop solar panels and its stand is a heavy task and it implies heavy weight on your roof. Therefore, the rooftop must be of at least 6 inches to withstand the heavy weight and keep your roof damage free.
Wiring Connection
It is important to have PVC pipe of at least two-inch diameter installed running from the roof to the ground. It can be used for both earthing and solar wiring.
These are a few important tips to be considered before hand while designing a solar prone building to get maximum benefits of the solar energy. While setting up rooftop solar panels, it is important to consider the best in the market. JA solar is a renowned name and a leading solar company that not only helps you in setting up panels but gives you a long time warranty.
The last one：Difference Between Commercial & Residential Solar System
For more please visit : https://www.jasolar.com.cn/html/en/2020/89.html | https://medium.com/@jasolarindia/designing-tips-to-make-a-building-solar-friendly-8fd9c9f7704 | ['Ja Solar India'] | 2020-12-14 12:31:10.819000+00:00 | ['Solar Energy'] |
What You Need to Know About Poverty, Pigs, and the Philippines | Brigham Young University Students Change the World
Literally.
A group of seven students — Alvin Dy, Alysha Gurr, Jadan Watson, Jordan Richards, Megan Russell, Sariah Villalon, and instructor Robert Tietjen — travelled 5,445 miles to the Philippines to change the worlds of 5 families facing one of this country’s greatest challenges: Poverty.
The Philippines is home to roughly 105 million people. 21.6% live below the national poverty line.
That means roughly 23,000,000 Filipinos live in poverty.
An Engaging Plan to Combat the Philippines’ Financial Epidemic
Jordan Richards — a student studying Business Management from New Zealand — served his mission in the Philippines Tacloban Mission where he found this horribly heartbreaking trend among this impoverished people. In his Social Entrepreneurship class he felt impressed to find a distinct, yet unexpected way, to buoy up the people he loves.
How?
Through pigs.
Pigs for Prosperity was created. With this newly formed team, they worked countless hours to raise money through a crowdfunding campaign. The group made $2500 in two weeks through supporters of the Indiegogo campaign!
Then came the tedious hours of creating a “13 Step Plan” to keep the program sustainable in order to bring a glimpse of wealth into these family’s lives and the lives of future recipients, too.
They requested help of the Catmon barangay captain–the highest elected official of a basic political division–to select five families who deemed highest need in Ormoc, Leyte.
After that, the families were gladly notified that they were chosen and the training process began. They were taught how to build pens for the pigs, how to care for them, and the future goals of the program.
One major future goal is to elevate the chosen families to a position where they are able to give back to their community. After the piglets have grown and given birth to a new litter, two piglets will be given to the next needy family in the barangay. The process will continue and hopefully lift one community at a time, out of the grasp of poverty.
Our students who started Pigs for Prosperity have a desire to bring “light and joy” into families who may, at times, feel helpless. They focus on the “needs of entrepreneurs in the developing world” with the hope that this project can not only benefit these families, but also the community.
Poor Living Conditions of Real, Struggling Families
While the team was in the Philippines they — of course — noticed the rough living conditions of the families.
Rags for walls.
Dirt for floors.
Mats for beds.
Worn out clothes.
Shoeless feet.
A Pleasant, Yet Happy Surprise
However, they also were surprised by what else they noticed.
“The Filipinos have high Christian standards and morals.” -Elder Tietjen, Idaho | https://medium.com/byu-hawaii-journal/what-you-need-to-know-about-poverty-pigs-and-the-philippines-8d2f7d36e9b1 | ['Celeste SamaseiʻA'] | 2019-02-06 21:56:46.060000+00:00 | ['Social Entrepreneurship', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Philippines'] |
There’s one other benefit of sleeping that nobody talks about. | More from rstevens Follow
I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans. | https://rstevens.medium.com/theres-one-other-benefit-of-sleeping-that-nobody-talks-about-9d65b0d5a1ce | [] | 2019-09-17 04:34:50.284000+00:00 | ['Star Wars', 'Dreams', 'Porg', 'Sleep', 'Comics'] |
Atomic Poetry(35) | Poet and sharing a few other things | https://medium.com/@uday-neutron/atomic-poetry-35-e3ca2557f438 | [] | 2020-12-22 13:33:17.923000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poetry Writing', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
3 Bad Habits To Leave Behind With 2020 | “Out with the old & in with the new”
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
As we approach the New Year, I am reflecting on how 2020 has been the worst year in my 32 years on this planet, and I’m sure you can relate 🙂. It’s been completely soul-destroying. And every time we see the light at the end of the tunnel, something else comes along (like Lockdown 2.0 or the new “Tier 4” here in the UK). But it’s also been a year of personal reflection. We’ve all had tons and tons of time on our hands, a feeling that we have probably not experienced so much since we were children or teenagers. When you have time spare, you think. Your brain works harder to study the thoughts and memories you have saved in your “Read Later” list, up in that huge hard drive we call the brain.
Now check this out, going into 2021, I want you to think positive. Here are 3 things you should leave behind with 2020 to help you live a happier life.
Toxic Relationships
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
I’m not just talking about romantic relationships. I’m talking about all relationships. Friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, associates. Literally any kind. If it’s toxic, you will live a healthier, happier life without it.
2020 helped me realise a few people in my life were toxic and so I cut them off. That’s power. You have it and you can do it too. The problem with toxic people is that sometimes they don’t even know they’re being toxic. Other times, it’s just who they are (read narcissist). But either way, you don’t owe anybody an apology for cutting them out of your life. Your mental health should come first before anything else (or anyone else).
Not sure if anybody around you is toxic? Here’s a couple of traits to watch out for:
Passive Aggressive Criticism Manipulative They make you feel bad Act like they’re better than you Use a covertly aggressive tone to put you down Overshadow your own successes with theirs Grandiose sense of self-importance — “God complex” Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others Exploits others without guilt or shame
Procrastination
Photo by Kev Costello on Unsplash
Don’t worry, you are not alone. Procrastination is the №1 killer of projects and dreams. It shares that coveted title right next to fear and self-doubt.
We’ve all done it. Those who say they haven’t are probably lying. Started a project with motivation and gusto, only to be stuck on one particular thing or a part of the project, because of procrastination.
“Do I, don’t I? Should I do this? Or this? Perhaps I’ll just change this part. Nope, wait. I liked it better the other way.”
Perhaps you’ve even put off something altogether. Sure, we’ll all go to the gym after New Year, Karen 😉 “wink, wink”. It’s a lot to do with psychology, and it’s sometimes a really difficult habit to break because we don’t always know that we are procrastinating. The key to breaking the cycle of procrastination is execution. Less pondering and more actually doing the task at hand.
So how? How can we execute on more of the tasks we need to in 2021. For me personally, I am taking up a process called “Bullet Journalling”. I am a naturally creative person, right-brain dominant. So the idea of writing, and creating something feels like it may inspire me to accomplish the tasks I’m writing down. It could feel good to cross stuff off an actual list. We’re all so obsessed with Note apps, and reminders on our phones. The psychology of actually crossing something out on a list with real ink is liberating in 2021.
Note to self: keep it simple, or perhaps you’ll get lost in perfecting your bullet journal 😂
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
This is a biggie. You may have heard the phrase, “Self-doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will”. And it’s right. Think about it. You’ve got a great idea for a project, “Here we go”, you think. “I can’t wait to start”. But then suddenly you’re hit with a wave of self-doubt. “But what if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if people judge me? Or laugh at me? WHAT IF…”
Well, “what if” never went to the arena.
Those who did go to the arena probably failed. But they turned up. They put the work in and failed anyway. And now they have lessons learned. They have experience under their belt and can go back into the battlefield with new insight and understand and try again. But you don’t, because you never tried. You didn’t fall at the first hurdle. You didn’t even approach the hurdle.
So how do we combat self-doubt? Here’s a couple of things to think about:
Believe in yourself. Surround yourself with winners. Be mentally strong. Train your mind. Control the voice of self-doubt. Be scared and do it anyway. Trust that nobody cares as much as you think they do about what you’re doing. Nobody is watching. Motivate yourself. Videos, podcasts, audiobooks. Find that inspiration daily. Setbacks will happen. But realise they are only temporary. Don’t wallow in it. Take a walk. Take a day off. Take a holiday. Approach it again the next day.
If these tips have helped you, I’d really appreciate your support. Comments, shares, or claps on my posts really help. Don’t forget to have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! | https://medium.com/@benravetta/3-bad-habits-to-leave-behind-with-2020-d6e68ae56ad2 | ['Ben Ravetta'] | 2020-12-19 16:35:26.247000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Procrastination', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Hacking', 'Self Help'] |
🎉 Cashback 10% to buyers and sellers — a limited opportunity! | 💝 From 25 October (12:00 GMT) till 27 November (12:00 GMT) all buyers and sellers get cashback 10% of the item price in UBC.
Cashback is paid to Ubcoin Market wallet within 7 working days after the deal is completed.
🌟 Max. cashback amount that one user can receive in total from all deals completed in this period is 20 000 UBC.
Buyer gets 10% and seller gets 10% of the item price in UBC. Cashback is paid if the deal is completed (money were transferred from buyer to seller) in the period from 25 October (12:00 GMT) till 27 November (12:00 GMT).
❗ Don’t miss the chance — sell or buy something on Ubcoin Market!
💥 Download Ubcoin Market iOS app: https://itunes.apple.com/ru/app/ubcoin-market-cryptocurrency/id1410295111?mt=8
🔥 Download Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubcoin | https://medium.com/ubcoin-blog/cashback-10-to-buyers-and-sellers-a-limited-opportunity-db7d23298fd8 | ['Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined'] | 2018-10-25 16:51:12.789000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Ethereum', 'Ubcoin Promos', 'Cashback', 'Marketplace'] |
The iOS View Drawing Cycle Demystified | The Update Cycle
Once control is returned to the main run loop, the system renders layout according to constraints on view instances.
When a view is marked as requiring a change in the next update cycle, the system executes all the changes.
The system works through the run loop, then constraints before the deferred layout pass.
Deferred layout pass
Constraints would usually be created during the creation of the view controller (perhaps in the viewDidLoad() function).
However, during runtime, dynamic changes to constraints are not immediately acted on by the system. Unfortunately, the change would be left in a stale state, waiting for the next deferred layout pass and — actually, that might never happen. The user is looking at an out-of-date view. Awful.
Equally, other changes to objects (like changing a control’s properties) can also change the constraints on other objects, potentially leading to the same problem.
The solution to this is to request a deferred layout pass by calling setNeedsLayout() on the relevant view (or setNeedsUpdateConstraints() ).
Technically, the deferred layout pass (according to the documentation) involves two passes:
The update pass updates the constraints, as necessary. This calls updateViewConstraints method on all view controllers and updateConstraints method on all views. The layout pass repositions the view’s frames, as necessary. This calls viewWillLayoutSubviews on all view controllers and layoutSubviews on each view.
The relevant methods? They are right below but explored in depth further on in the article. | https://medium.com/better-programming/demystifying-the-view-drawing-cycle-fb1f7ac519f1 | ['Steven Curtis'] | 2020-06-12 14:18:03.325000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Swift', 'iOS', 'Mobile', 'Xcode'] |
A step toward protection of Environment and optimized solution of power production | A step toward protection of Environment and optimized solution of power production
Problem: High cost of Electrical Energy(COE)/High demand of Energy And Hazards toward the environment.
There are many methods by which we can produce Electricity But we have to go for an Optimized one, which means low cost and efficiency.
Secondly, To decrease the effect of pollutants on the environment, All the ancient techniques used for power production(coal, diesel, etc.) have some negative effects on the environment so we have to go towards power production which has a less or no harmful effect on the environment(i.e. solar system).
As the demand for energy increases the production also increases, But not in the same trend as demand. So we have to go for a solution which meets the demands and is economical also. As in the above graph, you can see that if we increase the production from solar power plants the cost of energy decreases exponentially. we meet our demands without disturbing nature.
But rather if we follow the trends and went towards classical methods of production of Electricity then we may meet our demand but on the trade-off. In response, we have to pay in form of economy and Pollution.
So after researching and experience, I came to the conclusion that the solar system is the best option for us.
Benefits:
No greenhouse gases
Ongoing Free Energy
Decentralization of power
Going off the grid with solar
Solar jobs | https://medium.com/@awais.ahmad201/a-step-toward-protection-of-environment-and-optimized-solution-of-power-production-97aca0714e12 | ['Awais Ahmad'] | 2021-08-19 20:21:05.094000+00:00 | ['Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Totkay', 'Amal Academy'] |
Why Disney Should Do a Live-Action Remake of The Sword in the Stone. | Why Disney Should Do a Live-Action Remake of The Sword in the Stone. Brett Seegmiller Follow Jan 25 · 6 min read
Very rarely do the Disney live-action remakes improve upon their animated predecessors. Almost every creative decision that was added to remakes such as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Aladdin were unnecessary and made them easily worse than the originals.
I recently watched Aladdin for the first time on Disney Plus, and all I could think throughout the entire excruciating experience was that this new Aladdin was basically a glorified Disney Channel TV movie.
With many of the original cartoons — like the ones I’ve already mentioned — they were nearly perfect from a creative and storytelling perspective, so there wasn’t really any room for improvement.
But then there are Disney classics such as The Sword in the Stone.
After watching the travesty that was Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, I decided to watch the story about young King Arthur and the crotchety wizard, Merlin, in an effort to clear my head.
The Sword in the Stone, for the most part, is still just as enjoyable now as it was when I was a kid.
But now that I’m older and more discerning, I realized that out of any Disney cartoon classic, no story was more primed for a live-action update than The Sword in the Stone. (Interestingly enough, before working on this story, I didn’t actually know that The Sword in the Stone is already in some level of pre-production at Disney, though it’s been a while since there’s been any update on that front.)
Regardless of whether or not a live-action remake will actually get off the ground, there’s one big reason why the Sword in the Stone should be remade more than any other Disney cartoon.
Unlike many of the other classic movies which are — as I said, nearly perfect — the charming story of young King Arthur’s education is fundamentally flawed.
I’m a big Bill Peet fan who was the writer of The Sword in the Stone mostly due to his children’s books, so I always appreciated the story and the creative direction of the film.
Having said that, the story of King Arthur’s education at the hands of Merlin — while appreciated due to its focus on education and technology — doesn’t really go anywhere.
Throughout the story, Merlin is constantly telling young Arthur — or Wart, as he’s commonly called — to “use his head.”
Usually, this is accompanied by a battering on the young man’s head with the wizard’s crooked cane.
This version of Merlin is hilarious because he’s a paradoxical character. He’s a wizard who’s obsessed with technology and education, in spite of the fact that he’s a practitioner of magic who uses spells to get his way. In fact, he doesn’t teach Arthur anything about magic, which I much appreciated.
Instead, he teaches Arthur the laws of the natural world using magic.
His goal is to educate Arthur on how to “use his head” instead of relying on brawn like his older adopted brother, Kay.
Yet, in the end. Arthur never really has to use his head. He utilizes his obvious intelligence and natural physical skill as he traverses Merlin’s lessons that involve being transformed into forest creatures, but at the end of the story, it’s just by chance that Arthur suddenly finds himself king.
What this boils down to is that the film sets up foreshadowing for Arthur to have to “use his head” to progress as a character, but never does.
He just becomes king without even having to try.
Up to this time in the story, Arthur is continuously belittled and bullied by his adoptive adopted brother, Kay. While Kay attempts to thwart Arthur from being named king by trying to pull the sword from the stone after it had already been pulled, he finds himself unable to do so, just like every other man who attempts it.
It instantly becomes clear that Arthur is “ordained by God” to be the new king. But without any further conflict, everyone bows, and Arthur is officially the new king.
It’s pretty abrupt and anti-climatic when you think about it.
But this got me thinking. If the Sword in the Stone ever actually does get remade, here is what Disney should do to improve upon the animated version. (The keyword here is “improve.”)
Instead of Kay bowing down to young Arthur and acknowledging his kinghood, he should challenge Arthur to a duel. (It should also be shown that up to this point, Kay was the leading in the games and that he was clearly going to win the championship. This way, Kay feels that Wart stole the crown from him.)
The onlookers should be split because while it appears that Arthur is “ordained by heaven,” many others are appalled at the thought of a child becoming the new king, so everyone compromises and agree that a duel is acceptable.
During the course of the joust and sword duel, Arthur has to take the lessons he’s learned from Merlin during their adventures as woodland creatures to outsmart the brutish Kay.
This duel between Kay and Wart should parallel the battle between Merlin and Mad Madam Mim. During the wizard’s duel between Merlin and Mim, Merlin has to continually outsmart the sociopathic Mim by keeping a level head and using the environment to his advantage.
In much the same way, Wart should utilize Merlin’s lessons to defeat Kay using the same strategies that Merlin used to outsmart Mim in a David and Goliath-esque battle.
Of course, Arthur is victorious in the end, and only after Kay’s defeat does he truly earn his status as king. And due to his education at the hands of Merlin and his forgiving nature, Arthur forgives Kay for any wrongdoing, and Kay becomes the first knight of Arthur’s famed round table.
This simple change in the story wouldn’t be to simply drag out the runtime, but it would enhance the story because it would pay off the story’s foreshadowing in a logical way, because in the end, Arthur had to “use his head.”
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with the Sword in the Stone, except for the underutilized ending. So while I’m sick of remakes getting green-lit with no other purpose than to make money, with the Sword in the Stone, there’s a legitimate reason to remake such a story. If done correctly, it could be leaps and bounds better than the original.
Heaven forbid Disney actually proceeds forward with any more live-action remakes, but if they do, please focus on stories like the Sword in the Stone that can actually be improved upon, and not merely for the fact that they’ll make money.
And if Disney does indeed ever make this happen, please take it from me. Most of the story doesn’t need to change. It’s almost perfect.
Except for the ending.
Fix the ending.
And that’s it.
If you enjoy movies and liked this story, give me some claps and follow me for more stories like this!
Check out my YouTube channel here! | https://medium.com/oddbs/why-disney-should-do-a-live-action-remake-of-the-sword-in-the-stone-452065c2c9eb | ['Brett Seegmiller'] | 2020-01-25 21:20:29.069000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Disney', 'Storytelling', 'Film', 'Writing'] |
How Memory management and Garbage collector works in JavaScript? | JavaScript Engine allocates memory when we declare a variable or function or any data structure that can hold some value. If value inside that variable grows dynamically, JS engine increases its allocated memory size dynamically.
In JavaScript, memory is allocated and reclaimed automatically. It uses automatic memory management known as garbage collection (GC).
The garbage collector monitors memory allocation and determines when an allocated memory space is not needed and recollects it. This automatic process works on principle of approximation as it cannot determine whether or not a specific piece of memory is still needed.
Garbage collection
To deal with this problem GC implemented a restriction of a solution to the general problem. We will now discuss some important topics to better understand the GC fundamentals.
References
The main concept that garbage collection algorithms rely on is the concept of reference. Within the context of memory management, an object is said to reference another object if the former has access to the latter (either implicitly or explicitly). For instance, a JavaScript object has a reference to its prototype (implicit reference) and to its properties values (explicit reference).
In this context, the notion of an “object” is extended to something broader than regular JavaScript objects and also contain function scopes (or the global lexical scope).
Reference-counting
This is the most naive garbage collection algorithm. This algorithm reduces the problem from determining whether or not an object is still needed to determining if an object still has any other objects referencing it. An object is said to be “garbage”, or collectible if there are zero references pointing to it.
Example
var x = {
a: {
b: 2
}
};
// 2 objects are created. One is referenced by the other as one of its properties.
// The other is referenced by virtue of being assigned to the 'x' variable.
// Obviously, none can be garbage-collected.
var y = x; // The 'y' variable is the second thing that has a reference to the object. x = 1; // Now, the object that was originally in 'x' has a unique reference
// embodied by the 'y' variable. var z = y.a; // Reference to 'a' property of the object.
// This object now has 2 references: one as a property,
// the other as the 'z' variable. y = 'mozilla'; // The object that was originally in 'x' has now zero
// references to it. It can be garbage-collected.
// However its 'a' property is still referenced by
// the 'z' variable, so it cannot be freed. z = null; // The 'a' property of the object originally in x
// has zero references to it. It can be garbage collected.
Limitation: Circular references
There is a limitation when it comes to circular references. In the following example, two objects are created with properties that reference one another, thus creating a cycle. They will go out of scope after the function call has completed. At that point they become unneeded and their allocated memory should be reclaimed. However, the reference-counting algorithm will not consider them reclaimable since each of the two objects has at least one reference pointing to them, resulting in neither of them being marked for garbage collection. Circular references are a common cause of memory leaks.
Look at the example to make things clear.
function f() {
var x = {};
var y = {};
x.a = y; // x references y
y.a = x; // y references x return 'sate sate sate';
} f();
Mark-and-sweep algorithm
This algorithm reduces the definition of “an object is no longer needed” to “an object is unreachable”.
This algorithm assumes the knowledge of a set of objects called roots. In JavaScript, the root is the global object. Periodically, the garbage collector will start from these roots, find all objects that are referenced from these roots, then all objects referenced from these, etc. Starting from the roots, the garbage collector will thus find all reachable objects and collect all non-reachable objects.
This algorithm is an improvement over the previous one since an object having zero references is effectively unreachable. The opposite does not hold true as we have seen with circular references.
Cycles are no longer a problem
In the first example above, after the function call returns, the two objects are no longer referenced by any resource that is reachable from the global object. Consequently, they will be found unreachable by the garbage collector and have their allocated memory reclaimed.
Limitation: Releasing memory manually
Sometimes, manual control over release of memory is much easier.
As of 2019, it is not possible to explicitly or programmatically trigger garbage collection in JavaScript.
// The End
References:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Memory_Management | https://medium.com/web-god-mode/how-memory-management-and-garbage-collector-works-in-javascript-fa4fe103c28b | ['Upender Bhardwaj'] | 2019-10-13 11:51:31.204000+00:00 | ['Garbage Collection', 'JavaScript', 'Algorithms', 'Web Development', 'Browsers'] |
Creating a revolving moon around a rotating earth with Unity/Vuforia | Our objective here is to first create a rotating earth and then add a revolving moon around it. The end product will look like this:
Revolving moon around rotating earth in AR
Replacing the cube with the earth object
Our starting point is the completion of the DreamAR tutorial with Scale, Rotate, and Translate functionality completed. The existing setup must work with all the 3 axes (X, Y, Z) with positive (increase) and negative (decrease) functionality.
Our starting point
In Unity’s Asset Store, search for “globe” and select the “Free Assets” option. Select the “Stylized Earth” asset — download and import it.
It will not show “Purchased” if you’re downloading it for the first time.
In the Project window, a new folder “LowPolyEarth” would appear. Within it, drag and drop “lowpoly_earth” into the Hierarchy.
When you do this, the default size of the globe will be huge, so it needs to be resized.
Reduce the scale to 0.15 along all axes and move it a bit to the side so that you can see it more clearly.
Rename the object to “earth”.
Drag and drop it into the existing ImageTarget
Testing it out should show the earth on the side of the cube.
Open the “transform” script which is part of “ImageTarget”.
Replace all instances of “cube” with “earth” and add a line in the beginning of Start() function.
earth = GameObject.Find(“earth”);
Remember to save the transform.cs file and then go back to Unity.
Delete the “cube” object and move the “earth” object to y-axis = 0.15
Run the code. The “earth” object is now modifiable just as the cube was.
After rotating the earth and moving it along the x-axis
Rotating the earth object by default
Add the following above the Start() function:
public float speed = 20f;
And add the following function:
void Update() { earth.transform.Rotate(Vector3.forward, speed * Time.deltaTime, Space.World); }
Now running the code will allow you to manipulate the rotating earth.
Adding a revolving moon around the earth
Add a sphere to the Hierarchy
Set the position as (0, 0.15, 0.35) and scale as (0.1, 0.1, 0.1)
The sphere should be positioned similarly to as shown:
Rename it to “moon” and then place it within “ImageTarget”.
Create a new script within the Scripts folder called “orbit”
Drag and drop this script onto the moon object.
Double-click to open it.
Add the following public variables:
public GameObject orbitAround; // what we are orbiting around public float speed = 20f; // making the speed of the moon match the rotation of the earth
And create Start() and Update() as follows:
void Start() { orbitAround = GameObject.Find(“earth”); } // Update is called once per frame void Update() { transform.RotateAround(orbitAround.transform.position, Vector3.forward, speed * Time.deltaTime); }
Running the code should show you the “moon” revolving around the “earth”.
Note that modifying the earth’s scale/rotation/translation(location) will not modify the moon’s position! :) | https://medium.com/adventures-in-ar/creating-a-revolving-moon-around-a-rotating-earth-with-unity-vuforia-959914753f13 | ['Sid B'] | 2019-08-25 10:04:01.468000+00:00 | ['Augmented Reality', 'Unity', 'Vuforia'] |
Code Smell 43 — Concrete Classes Subclassified | Code Smell 43 — Concrete Classes Subclassified
Problems
Bad Models
Coupling
Liskov Substitution Violation
Method overriding
Mapper fault
Solutions
Subclasses should be specializations. Refactor Hierarchies. Favor Composition. Leaf classes should be concrete. Not leaf classes should be abstract.
Sample Code
Wrong
Right
Detection
Overriding a concrete method is a clear smell. We can enforce these policies on most linters.
Abstract classes should have just a few concrete methods. We can check against a predefined threshold for offenders.
Tags
Composition
Conclusion
Accidental sub-classification is the first obvious advantage for junior developers.
More mature ones find composition opportunities instead.
Composition is dynamic, multiple, pluggable, more testable, more maintainable and less coupled than inheritance.
Only sub-classify an entity if it follows the relationships behaves like.
After sub-classing the parent class should be abstract.
Relations
More info | https://medium.com/dev-genius/code-smell-43-concrete-classes-subclassified-7cccf1545ab5 | ['Maximiliano Contieri'] | 2020-12-05 16:50:55.898000+00:00 | ['Software Design', 'Code Smells', 'Clean Code', 'Software Development', 'Programming'] |
A Little Girl and Her Cupcake | By Kirk Ray Smith, President & CEO of Hope Villages of America, formerly RCS Pinellas
As some of you may or may not know, our homeless shelter community, Grace House — which provides temporary emergency housing, programs and services for hundreds of children and their families each year — lost a significant amount of government funding. That funding underwrote nearly 85 percent of its annual operating budget.
As you can imagine, this presents a major challenge for us. Not only are nearly 50 percent of all family shelter units available in Pinellas County at risk; several full-time jobs are at risk, as well. There is never a good time to lose employment; however, there has been no worse time than now.
During a recent meeting with the Grace House team, I noticed a cute little girl eating a cupcake as she followed her mother down the sidewalk, headed to their Grace House apartment. As I was addressing the staff, I could not help but watch her and her family as they innocently headed in for the day. As I looked out the window, I thought to myself, “She has no idea what we are discussing right now. Her only focus is eating that sweet cupcake and walking home with her mommy. She did not ask to be homeless — to be displaced and away from her friends — but she is making the best of her situation.”
As a sweet little girl, she deserves to only have to focus on enjoying her cupcake and having fun.
She and her family deserve to have shelter, a safe a clean place to lay their heads at night.
There is no need for her to worry about funding for Grace House, or whether her mom’s key would work when she tries to open the door to their apartment.
It is my job to do whatever it takes to keep the proverbial lights on and the water running so she can wash her hands and face after eating her messy, delicious cupcake.
Kids deserve cupcakes, not homelessness.
While I am confident that this community will pull together with us here at Hope Villages to sustain, and ultimately grow Grace House to serve even more families, I believe it will take God’s divine hand and intervention to get us where we need to be.
Because the HVA team and this community are no cupcakes, I am convinced Grace House doors will remain open. That said, I look forward to the day when no child has to deal with being homeless and can just simply enjoy a cupcake.
And I know one more thing: When this all over, I am going to have me a cupcake!
Answer the call to the cause by helping us protect that little girl and allowing her to enjoy her cupcake in peace!
I appreciate you! | https://medium.com/@newsyoucanuse/a-little-girl-and-her-cupcake-5e4b4d36f9a3 | ['News You Can Use'] | 2020-12-18 13:40:55.904000+00:00 | ['Homelessness', 'Homeless Families', 'Nonprofit', 'Pinellas County'] |
How to Calculate Variability measures (variance SD etc) in Statistics and Python | Image by Author
In this blog, I am going to talk about Variability measures with hands on in python. If you miss my previous blog about Central Tendency and Asymmetry measures with Python, please go to the below link. https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-calculate-central-tendency-and-asymmetry-measures-in-statistics-and-python-28b2bc10407d
Now it is time for measuring variability of data. Most commonly use measures are variance , standard deviation and coefficient of variance.
Variance, Standard Deviation & Coefficient of variation (CV):
These two measure the distribution of a set of data points around its mean value.
Reason for different formulas of population and sample data: When we are calculating for population data, we are 100% sure about measures. When we are considering sample data, there may be 5 sample data sets and for those 5 different measures. Due to this reason there are different formulas.
Population variance formula:
Sample variance formula:
Here we are obtaining the result based on the difference of data point value from the mean of data set. So data point is close to mean, that means lower result and when it is far, that means higher result. Reason for squaring the difference, is not considering negative values as we taking the distance between one point to another.
Variance Example:
Variance by Example
Standard Deviation: As variance is a square number, so it is a large value. Due to this standard deviation is coming to picture using square root function.
Population standard deviation formula
Sample standard deviation formula
Coefficient of variation (CV): Coefficient of variation is (standard deviation /mean). When we are comparing standard deviation of two or more data sets, those are meaningless. But comparing coefficient of variation is meaning full.
Coefficient of variation Example:
Coefficient of variation Example
Python Coding for Variance, Standard Deviation and Coefficient of variation:
Python Coding for Variance, Standard Deviation and Coefficient of variation
We have covered all univariate measures, now it’s time to explore measures which are related between two variables.
Covariance & Correlation:
Covariance: Covariance is a measure of the joint variability of two variables.
A positive covariance means that the two variables move together. A covariance of 0 means that the two variables are independent. A negative covariance means that the two variables move in opposite directions. Covariance can take on values from -∞ to +∞. This is a problem as it is very hard to calculate such numbers.
Sample Covariance formula:
Population Covariance formula:
Covariance Example:
Covariance Example
Correlation: Correlation is a measure of the joint variability of two variables. Unlike covariance, it takes on values between -1 and 1, thus it is easy for us to interpret the result.
A correlation of 1 is known as perfect positive correlation which means that one variable is perfectly explained by the other. A correlation of 0 means that the variables are independent. A correlation of -1, is known as perfect negative correlation which means that one variable is explaining the other one perfectly, but they move in opposite directions.
Sample correlation formula
Population correlation formula
Correlation Example:
Correlation Example
Python Code for Covariance and Correlation:
Python Code for Covariance and Correlation
Conclusion: In this blog, we learn how to do python coding for variability measures of statistics. If you have any questions, please post them in the comment section. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-calculate-variability-measures-variance-sd-etc-in-statistics-and-python-8cb10202f131 | ['Arpita Ghosh'] | 2021-02-23 19:35:49.851000+00:00 | ['Statistics', 'Python', 'Machine Learning', 'Women In Tech', 'Data Science'] |
African Andromeda | Authors note: This poem is an exploration of the racial ambiguity surrounding the legend of Princess Andromeda in Greek mythology. You can read more here.
Disclaimer: ‘the tracery of stars’ is a quote from the book The Souls of Black folk by W. E. B. Dubois | https://dabboh76.medium.com/african-andromeda-afa64cde80b9 | ['D Abboh'] | 2019-05-05 15:06:33.891000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Black History', 'African Woman', 'Andromeda', 'Stars'] |
Gay Students are not Predatory | Trigger warning: in this, I will briefly mention the topics of rape and sexual violence and will also discuss my own experiences with homophobia, transphobia, and sexual harassment.
It will always be laughable to me when someone says “gay people aren’t discriminated against anymore.” Looking past the numerous legal and economic challenges LGBTQ+ people face in today’s world, the number of social barriers to entry that exist for living a normal life in our world are numerous for gender and sexual minorities, especially our students.
I’ve been out as gay and nonbinary for several years beginning in elementary school (often not by choice). Currently, I’m a junior in high school. I’ve also been fully closeted at times, mainly with regards to my gender identity. I’ve seen how straight and cisgender students treat and talk about gay and trans students, and it’s not pretty.
Growing up queer, you generally internalize society’s messaging about people like you. Gender variant people are at best a punchline on TV, the woman with a penis who makes men throw up, or at worst rapists and depraved and immoral sexual predators, the gay man who tricks straight men into sex. As kids, we’re not immune to this either, even if the words gay and trans aren’t in our vocabulary. You see that the feminine man in the cartoon is the villain, and you recognize that being a feminine man is perhaps not ideal. Furthermore, this is often combined with cisnormative and heteronormative parenting and pedagogy. Even if you grow up with parents who support gay and trans people at the polling station, they likely raise you the way they were raised themselves — they expect you to be a boy who likes sports or a girl who likes dresses, and you’re expected to like the opposite gender before you’ve even started puberty. At school, you only learn about kings who married queens, or of great men and their many wives. What of the indigenous people across the world who had more than two genders? What of the men who loved men, women who loved women? They’re absent from our history textbooks, often considered too taboo or sexually explicit for children to handle.
And don’t get me started on religious teaching as a kid.
I’m (not) happy to say that I’ve been subject to this messaging growing up as well. Cisheteronormativity is a painful thing, and for a lot of kids, it makes understanding themselves difficult. If boys could know that they could like other boys, or if they knew they didn’t have to be boys, and that those didn’t make them gross or evil I think we’d all be happier and healthier.
But that’s utopian for our world right now. Growing up a boy who likes dresses and fairies, the only people like you on TV are the fairies or the pirates trying to capture and sell them. In our culture, we generally perceive anyone assigned male who feminizes themself as predatory. Captain Hook, HIM, Frank-N-Furter, and whatever the fuck was going on in Silence of the Lambs, removed from their narrative context, all exist as part of a larger social ideal of gay and feminine men being predatory.
This is messaging that kids are not oblivious to, and it becomes stuck in place when kids acquire the words gay, queer, and trans (and their not so affectionate spinoffs). These are words we learn earlier than many parents seem to think. Your son is not immune to being called gay or a faggot in 4th grade — it happened to me.
It seems beyond ironic that despite being treated as predatory for my sexuality and gender identity, I wasn’t the one trying to be invasive of the people around me. Basic questioning, some of it in good faith, like “why are you gay” and “how are you sure” is hardly the tip of the iceberg.
It is not lost on me that despite gay and feminine men in media like me being portrayed as being invasive of straight men’s space and asking for and saying inappropriate things, it was always the reverse of me. In middle school, when boys often start discovering pornography, I was often asked sexually explicit questions (again, as a middle schooler, maybe 11 or 12) by straight boys around me.
“Would you ever suck a dick?”
“Do you wanna fuck me?”
“Do you like big dicks?”
All of these were questions I was never enthusiastic about, especially as someone who had been outed and wasn’t exactly loud and proud about being gay. Looking back with the knowledge I acquired from waves of men (most of them straight and cisgender, interestingly) being outed as inappropriate and invasive by their colleagues tells me one thing: this wasn’t okay. I don’t care if the people asking didn’t realize, it was inappropriate.
I don’t seem to be alone either.
These are questions that seem to have continued out of middle school, nonetheless. I’ve been asked these questions in high school, not just by straight boys either. Reaching high school was an interesting experience concerning sexually invasive comments from other students and with time the gender of the people making those comments changed. Younger women are generally more socially accepting of LGBTQ+ people in my experience, but that acceptance can come with limitations at times. Being feminine and gay in a circle of high school girls can at times be far more liberating and comforting, but as well there are still comments that make you feel mildly uncomfortable to deeply disgusted.
“You look like a bottom.” That’s fine, I don’t really care.
“You got dick sucking lips.” Offhand, but okay.
“You look like you take it in the ass.” Fuck you.
It’s worth noting as well that in none of these situations were we talking about anything sexual, much less my sexual position or preferences.
I’m not ashamed of my sexuality — I’ve come to terms with myself and I think loving men can be beautiful and transformative. My discomfort from comments like these is not rooted in any internalized homophobia or femmephobia. I find these comments and questions discomforting and inappropriate because they are targeted at me because of my gender expression and sexuality. Being called a “bottom” or being told I look like I “take it in the ass”, especially when intended as an insult, is inappropriate, full stop.
All of this is not to mention sexual violence, which LGBTQ+ people face at a much higher rate than the allocisheterosexual population (but that I luckily have not experienced.)
It’s because of sexually explicit and invasive comments like this that I find the idea of gay and feminine men being predatory ridiculous. Despite the sexually invasive things that have been said about and to me, often straight men asking me if I would ever do something with them in a hypothetical scenario, I’m the one assumed to be the inappropriate one.
In a class of mine, a boy once said to his friend that he didn’t want to work with me. Leaning in, he whispered “he’s gay, he’ll fuckin’ rape me” and laughed. Maybe he meant it as a joke, but it nonetheless speaks to a larger culture that views gay men as people who want to have sex with straight men regardless of their protests. What he didn’t know, I assume because he had no experience being openly gay, is that I’ve had straight men talk about having sex with me under less than enthusiastically consensual pretenses.
As a society, more people seem to be coming around to the idea that talking sexually to women when unprovoked is inappropriate and often misogynistic in nature. Men who are totally not sexist and totally respect women can disagree with this idea, but I believe we’re making progress in addressing and fighting against sexual harassment and misconduct against women in our culture. But I think a discussion about sexual harassment and misconduct in schools and workplaces is incomplete without a queer perspective because I too, and many other LGBTQ+ people, have experienced sexual comments and questions that were unprovoked and invasive.
I’ve not even touched on how cisgender people often ask trans people about their genitals or body unprovoked because I prefer to stay closeted in my gender. I haven’t had these comments as frequently, I mostly keep my gender identity to myself and close friends, but I’m not blind to the invasive questions trans and nonbinary people get from cisgender people as well.
For as much as society wants to paint us as the predators, LGBTQ+ people are more often the victims, not the perpetrators, of sexual harassment and misconduct. Cisgender and heterosexual students need to learn to be less invasive of their LGBTQ+ classmates and their sex lives.
LGBTQ+ identities need to be removed from contexts that are hypersexual. Sex is a fulfilling and natural part of many peoples’ lives, but it is not the alpha nor the omega of LGBTQ+ identities. We are multifaceted people. Many of us have sex, but we are more than that. Reducing our identities to who we have sex with and how erases our experiences within a society that is constantly pushing us toward a cisheterosexual norm. Whatsmore, it leaves the door open for narratives about us that paint us as sexually depraved and predatory when that simply is not true. LGBTQ+ students shouldn’t be growing up being asking graphically sexual questions and being treated as an oddity, but that is the experience that I and many other LGBTQ+ people have had in our schools.
So no, I am not a sexual predator, and I do not want to have sex with your son. I would appreciate it if he would stop asking, though. | https://medium.com/@edenyarrow/gay-students-are-not-predatory-f321e35798d0 | ['Eden Yarrow'] | 2020-12-19 06:40:03.145000+00:00 | ['Queer', 'Sexual Harassment', 'LGBTQ', 'Transgender', 'Gay'] |
Here’s a List of What Got Us Through 2018 | While 2018 can generally be considered to be a Bad Year, there were still some things that brought some happiness to us. We asked our writers to consider their year and pick something that helped them get through the bad news of 2018, and hopefully they can help you do the same.
“Michelle Obama is a remarkable woman. I had the opportunity to see her Wednesday night in Brooklyn, New York, as part of her book tour for Becoming. Within 15 minutes of her coming out on stage, tears had welled up in my eyes. Thinking back, I honestly can’t remember what she said that had made me so emotional but now I realize it wasn’t what she had said — it was simply who she was or rather, what she represents to every woman, young girl and person of color. To me, she represents what hard work and motivation can get you. Michelle wasn’t raised with a silver spoon but that never stopped her from accomplishing her goals and setting new ones during the course of her life. To me, she represents a voice — my voice — that deserves to be heard and whose story deserves to be told. To me, she represents a future where society doesn’t ignore women but instead cherishes them for all they have to offer. This year has been filled with many memorable moments and experiences but seeing Michelle speak has been one of the best moments of my life. And I’d like to think that it wasn’t solely because I got to see her (and those boots!) but also because I got to share it with a diverse room of people with a common appreciation for who she is and what she represents — the promise of what could be.” — Chloe Castleberry
“In Western Germany, less than an hours train ride from the bustling metropolitans of
Dusseldorf and Cologne, lies the biodynamic farm Hof zur Hellen. An idyllic and enchanting place, I volunteered there for several weeks where I was welcomed into a whole new world of weeding fields of cabbage, digging for potatoes, piling manure, herding cows, and feeding pigs. I was astonished by how much I enjoyed the experience: the satisfaction at the end of a hard day’s work, the gratification of holding the literal fruits of your labor in the palm of your hand, the encounters with fellow volunteers from around the world, the knowledge and dedication of the workers. Through a core group of hard-working, open-minded, and devoted individuals, Hof zur Hellen is dedicated to the raising of animals and the growing of crops in an ecologically-sound and environmentally-friendly manner. It stands as a staple within its community, providing a high quality organic food source within the region. During my time there, I was impressed and inspired not only by its sustainable farming practices and its impact on the local level, but also by the hospitality, warmth, and trust of the people who live and work there. As 2018 draws to a close, my singular experience at Hof zur Hellen stands out as a reminder of the painstaking labor carried out by those who care about making a difference in the community and I’m grateful to have been a part of those who are committed to working for positive change.” -Emily Cai
“2018 has been a dire year for the climate. Emissions have risen. Extreme weather hammered home the fact that climate change is a grim reality. As for halting it, there is a window of opportunity still just open. As it closes, the inaction of our most powerful governments inspires despair among scientists and citizens alike. But hope is not gone. Not yet. 2018 has seen an idea dawn in American government: a Green New Deal. The New Deal of our grandparents restored the Dust Bowl, the most severe environmental disaster the U.S. had ever encountered, during the worst financial collapse in history. The Green New Deal, backed by over 30 members of the House of Representatives, could see our nation boom with solar energy jobs as it takes the lead against climate change. Americans beat the last great crisis with tomato gardens, tin cans, and grit. Now, the nation clamors for action. Whether through civil disobedience or bicycle rebellion, citizens demand to live green. Nobody pretends that the change will be easy. Nothing meaningful ever is. In the words of a famous riveter, we can do it. With our leaders on our side, nothing is impossible. The Green New Deal is still just a proposal, the seed of the mighty change that must occur if we are to save our world. 2018 will be remembered as the year that seed began to sprout. A movement has begun to grow. Let’s make it strong this upcoming year.” — Anna Gooding-Call
“While 2018 was officially deemed by most as the the worst possible timeline, the pop culture arena was the reprieve we all needed: enter Ariana Grande. The light, indeed, is coming to bring back everything the darkness stole, and no other light shone brighter than Grande as she came to collect her things. From securing a number one album, three top 10 hits, her first number one single, and two Grammy nominations, Grande remerged on the scene with “No Tears Left to Cry” a soulful, yet upbeat single eulogizing her Manchester Arena concert where, just a year prior, a suicide bombing killed 23 concertgoers while wounding 139 others. From terrorist attacks to enduring the beginning and ending of her engagement with SNL comedian Pete Davidson and the untimely death of her ex-boyfriend, rapper Mac Miller, after the dissolution of their relationship six months prior, this past year has been increasingly challenging for the 25-year-old songstress. Despite the hardships however, through her music she was able to excel through the pain and revel in this moment as Billboard’s official Woman of The Year where she ends 2018 still atop the charts with her record-breaking smash hit, “Thank U, Next.” With over 130 million followers, I think it’s fair to say we all can’t wait to see what’s next for Grande.” -Brandon Sams
“In 2018, I put the brakes on my all-consuming career and focused on what we oddly refer to as “the little things”.
In short, I started spending time enjoying life.
This, in turn, has made me a more pleasant person to be around (or so I’m told). Following are some of the choices I made which have greatly improved my existence, in no particular order:
I studied the philosophers — from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir.
I began going on long walks — and really taking in the beauty our planet provides us.
I researched vegan nutrition, became a soup-making expert, and committed to (mostly) eating well.
I joined a weekly movie outing with friends.
I unwisely made a declaration to said friends that I would start remembering the names of actors and actresses’. (I failed miserably). I found a houseplant that is efficient at recycling indoor air, can survive on minimal sunlight, and is not toxic to cats or dogs (I’m looking at you, Boston Fern).
I nearly killed that plant and then brought it back to life, with a grow-light…and appropriate watering.
I attended parties, dinners, and concerts — alone(!).
I spent time with the elderly — specifically my 87-year-old Grandmother and my 14-year-old Labrador Retriever.
I started a weekly board-game night with my family.
And I became inspired by my two-year-old nephew to improve my Spanish.
In 2018, I chose to engage with the world around me. And that just may be the best decision I’ve ever made.” -Jessica Jentz
“This year, more than ever, it seemed that everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but bad news. The biggest respite from this never-ending tidal wave of misery and misfortune came in an unexpected form: Paddington 2. For one hour and forty-five minutes, the adventures of this adorable little Peruvian bear and his quintessentially British family whisked me away from all my troubles and firmly transplanted me in a world where, as Paddington says, “If we’re kind and polite, the world will be right.” This is no ordinary children’s movie. It’s thoroughly delightful without ever veering into saccharine territory, and Paddington’s wacky misadventures were compelling enough to keep me intrigued. (Spoiler alert: Paddington gets framed for a crime he didn’t commit, gets sentenced to prison, transforms the prison into a Wes Anderson-esque marmalade paradise, and then breaks out of said prison.) Plus, the sight of Paddington’s fuzzy little face was so ridiculously cute that it literally made my eyes well up with tears on multiple occasions. Although it may seem silly, I am completely and utterly enamored with the world of Paddington 2. It was an enduring bright spot in an otherwise chaotic and difficult year, and its inexhaustible optimism and determination is something that we can all hope to emulate in the years to come.” -Caroline Hsu
“Let’s start with Super Bowl 52 between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. Looking at this game on paper and based on historical performances between both teams involved many would say the Patriots would win this match up. After 4 quarters of exciting football, the Eagles walked away victorious 41–33. Next, to the ice where the Washington Capitals made their second Stanley Cup appearance in 20 years. They went to battle against the first-year expansion team; Las Vegas Knights. Furthermore, after five matches on the ice the Washington Capitals brought the Stanley Cup back to the nation’s capital. From the ice to the hardwood, in one of the most dominating performances the Golden State Warriors swept the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Golden State Warriors won their third title in four years, allowing them to make their case as a modern-day dynasty.
Fast forward to October where another sweep almost occurred between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. After a long-drawn game three of 18 innings and seven hours and twenty minutes of play. The Boston Red Sox, claimed the World Series in five games. To round out the year the MLS Cup, Atlanta United beat the Portland Timbers in strategic but dominating fashion 2 -0, after only being in the MLS for only two seasons I hope this 2018 major league sports breakdown gives your insight and an idea of what’s to come soon of the sports world.” -Corey James
Subscribe to our Newsletter | https://medium.com/in-kind/heres-a-list-of-what-got-us-through-2018-1b620e21a51b | ['In Kind'] | 2019-01-18 06:05:07.747000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Books', 'Sports', 'Climate Change', 'Year In Review'] |
Lose a Lot of Weight During the Pandemic (and Stop Making Excuses) | Lose a Lot of Weight During the Pandemic (and Stop Making Excuses)
A lesson in Sci-Fi thinking for these strange times
Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
Can you lose weight in a Pandemic?
My friend Nina has always been a little on the heavier side, but her health has been declining steadily since the start of the Pandemic, and so has her attitude towards it.
“When things get back to normal, I’ll lose the extra weight.”
Like many people, she has been working from home since March, and this has resulted in a much more sedentary lifestyle. Nina spends most of the day in her home office.
To make matters more difficult, Nina lives with her mom, who has cancer. She’s terrified about bringing home the virus, so she hasn’t been going to the gym.
For Nina, and for many others like her, weight gain has become another unfortunate side effect of this shared Pandemic experience.
Obesity is associated with the leading causes of death worldwide, but Nina feels weight gain is unavoidable under these crazy COVID-19 circumstances.
She’s wrong, by the way. | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/a-sci-fi-method-to-lose-pandemic-weight-bdbdff5b96de | ['Keith Dias'] | 2020-11-21 12:01:26.265000+00:00 | ['Fitness', 'Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Nutrition', 'Pop Culture'] |
How to Install Windows 11 without Secure Boot | Secure Boot is mandatory for installing Windows 11 on a PC according to the minimal hardware requirements provided by Microsoft.
If you try to install Windows 11 on a PC without Secure Boot, you’ll get a pop-up box that says This PC can’t run Windows 11 because Secure Boot is not supported.
Afraid not, we have listed a couple of ways to help you install Windows 11 on a PC without Secure Boot.
Registry Hack
This method requires you to tap into the power of Windows Registry. However, you need to be careful and follow all the instructions shared in this tutorial. Otherwise, you might end up having to reinstall Windows 11 all over again and losing all your data in the process.
1. Get the preview build ISO of Windows 11 and burn it to USB drive with UUByte ISO Editor. This will create a bootable Windows 11 install media.
2. Reboot your PC and install Windows 11. This would bring up the pop-up box we discussed above, but don’t worry, we are doing this on purpose
3. When that pop-up box comes up on your screen, press Shift and F10 on your keyboard. This would open a Command Prompt windows on this screen.
4. In the Command Prompt windows, type the below command to open the Windows 10 Registry Editor
regedit
5. Once inside the Registry Editor and press Enter, type the following in the address bar to go over to that key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup
6. Here, notice the Setup key on the left pane, right click on it and choose New, then select Key.
7. This will create a new Key (this should look like a folder on the left), you need to name it LabConfig. Remember the cases of the letters, and also remember that it’s a single word
8. In a similar way, right click on LabConfig and choose New, then choose DWORD (32-bit) Value.
9. This should create a new entry on the right, name it BypassTPMCheck and change its value to 1.
10. In same fashion, create another DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it BypassSecureBootCheck, then change its value to 1.
11. X out of the Registry Editor and Command Prompt window, this should take you back to the installation window.
12. On the installation window, press the Back button and proceed normally. This time you will not get the error message any more.
Modify Installation Media
To install Windows 11 on your PC, you need the ISO file for it. In this method, we will modify the ISO to ensure that it does not check for Secure Boot while installing Windows 11 on your PC.
Click on the Windows 11 ISO file with the right mouse button, and choose Mount.
2. This will ensure that you are able to view all the files inside that ISO file like regular files and folders. Go inside the main folder, then go inside the sources folder and look for the file named install.wim.
3. Once you find install.wim, copy it and paste it on your Desktop.
4. Next, insert the Windows 10 (yes, Windows 10 and not Windows 11) bootable USB drive in the same PC.
5. Go to the sources folder inside the Windows 10 bootable USB, and paste the install.wim file that you had copied from the Windows 11 ISO. This will ask you whether you want to replace a file present in that folder with the same name, ensure that you replace it and not rename it.
6. Now, close everything and boot your PC using this Windows 10 bootable USB. This should now give you the option to install Windows 11 without Secure Boot.
Replace appraiserres.dll
This is yet another way to bypass Secure Boot while installing Windows 11 on your PC. This is somewhat similar to the above method for install.wim, except, this involves another file. Read on.
1. Click on the Windows 11 ISO file with the right mouse button and press Mount.
2. Go inside the Windows 11 ISO file like a regular folder, select everything, and copy them.
3. Create a new folder on your PC, name it Windows 11. Paste all the items that you have copied from the Windows 11 ISO file.
4. Plug in the Windows 10 (again, this time it is Windows 10 and not Windows 11. You need to follow this carefully) bootable USB, go inside the sources folder and find the file named appraiserres.dll.
5. Once you found the file, copy it, go back to the Windows 11 folder you just created, and paste this file inside the sources folder in the Windows 11 folder. Remember, you are copying the appraiserres.dll file from Windows 10 to Windows 11.
6. This should ask you whether you want to replace the file with the same name, please choose to replace and not rename.
7. Now close everything, and find the setup.exe file inside the main folder of the Windows 11 folder.
8. Once you have found setup.exe, double click on it to start the setup process while bypassing Secure Boot.
These processes are tried and tested, so you should be able to install Windows 11 without Secure Boot on unsupported PC using one of the above tricks. However, you should be the best judge of the performance of Windows 11 on an unsupported PC. | https://medium.com/@williamhartz/how-to-install-windows-11-without-secure-boot-d4dd37924b30 | ['Kawhi Dumingz'] | 2021-08-17 07:37:48.080000+00:00 | ['Windows', 'Windows 11'] |
REVIEW Shnuggle Baby Bath With Bum Bump Support And Cosy Foam Back Rest TO BUY | REVIEW Shnuggle Baby Bath With Bum Bump Support And Cosy Foam Back Rest TO BUY Faizal Idris May 26, 2019·2 min read
Beautiful design with smooth curved and flowing roll top
Baby bath tub is suitable from birth up to 12 months
Integrated bum bump for support and hands-free bathing
Large, warm foam backrest & grippy non-slip feet
Use in the bath, shower, kitchen sink or on the floor
=====>>> CHECK PRICING & AVAILABILITY <<<=====
The shnuggle bath makes baby bath times easier and safer. the beautiful design with smooth curves and flowing roll top is perfectly shaped for your baby from birth (stage 1) right up to 12 months (stage 2) the bathtub features an integrated bum bump which helps to support your baby while
they recline in the early months, giving you both hands free to wash and play with baby when baby starts to sit forward (stage 2), the bum bump gives support and confidence making bath time more the large foam backrest is soft and warm to touch, making bath time more comfortable and when used with bath water at the ideal temperature of 37°c, your baby can enjoy a longer bath without getting cold. the small size makes it ideal to use in the bath, shower, kitchen sink or on the floor and as it is lightweight to easily carry when filled with water. there are rubber feet on the base for safety and the bath is fully compliant with all applicable safety regulations. designed in the uk and winner of the international red dot design award.
======>>> BUY NOW <<<=====
I never usually write reviews but felt a need to give this one. This bath is AMAZING! Found bath time so stressful, I’m a single mum with a now three month old boy. We don’t have a bath here and the baby bath I had was awful and so hard to do alone and usually ended with us both in tears! Not anymore! This bath holds your baby so snug I only had to gently hold one arm and I wasn’t even holding him up! I was able to give him a good wash all over and wasn’t worried about dropping him etc. Was able to lift him in and out with ease, bath time has now become and enjoyable experience for us both and I’m already looking forward to tomorrows one! | https://medium.com/@faizal.idris.7410/review-shnuggle-baby-bath-with-bum-bump-support-and-cosy-foam-back-rest-to-buy-c4f19d0ee694 | ['Faizal Idris'] | 2019-05-26 09:09:09.605000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Baby Products', 'Short Story', 'Baby Boomers'] |
อยากทำงานสาย Data Science เริ่มต้นอย่างไรดี? | 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/odds-team/%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2-data-science-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B4%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%95%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A2%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%B5-1c271f1da028 | ['Kan Ouivirach'] | 2020-12-27 12:13:54.225000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Practice', 'Beginners Guide'] |
Plate2Page: the skills, the people, the fun | Initially it felt like being a participant of some Big Brother show. We had to share a bedroom with other group members, help to prepare dinner, and work in teams on assignments. On my first night I felt slightly homesick.
Twelve female participants from all over the world congregated together in one dreamlike place — Il Salicone villa in Pistoia, Tuscany. The surrounding auburn scenery, the green cypress trees and the early morning dew set the scene for three fully loaded days of food writing and photography.
Under the tuition of four exceptional instructors we spent our weekend acquiring food writing skills and practicing our photographic abilities. Meeta K. Wolff and Ilva Berretta were our photography mentors. Jeanne Horak-Druiff and Jamie Schler guided our writing techniques.
Our first gathering was a quick lunch of fusilli all’arrabiata. Soon we started off our workshop by introducing ourselves within a five minute time frame. To remember all the names, the countries of origin, and the blog’s name was a hard step. But, by the end of the workshop it all started to be more familiar. Well, Facebook search always helps to put a face to the name or rather a name to the face!
We kicked off with the writing part: ‘looking at a blank page isn’t easy!’ yet that’s what all writers do before getting started. Writing is a process where you create your own voice; learn vocabulary, expressions, similes and metaphors. Read, read, read — reading makes your writing improve, it helps you get your ideas and your inspirations. Write, write, write — writing frequently and regularly gets you going and practising. With writing you have to capture your audience and bring them in a parallel world where you evoke their emotions and make it feel all real. So, our first exercise was to write about a recent dining experience. Then, we had to tackle the restaurant review from another perspective — I had to rewrite the review as if I hold a grudge towards the restaurant chef. Found that quite challenging!
It was then photography time. Our abilities were immediately tested — we had to create a setting with the various props and ingredients available and shoot as many photos as we like until we got to the notion of what makes a good and what makes a bad photo. First try was quite a hurdle; however practice was backed with theory and after dinner we gathered again in our training room and heard all about aperture, white balance, shutter speed and ISO. I understood the importance of natural light for food photography and the props and material we can use to bounce or absorb light. Finally I got to terms with the A and S sign on my camera.
We woke up the next day to a delicious breakfast prepared by the Tuscan lady in charge of Il Salicone and continued our morning focusing on the senses and the importance of these five feelings when the talk is about food. Our main assignment was due after our lunchtime visit to the winery where we enjoyed wine tasting and indulged into some Tuscan products including a selection of cured hams, pecorino cheese with honey and the traditional Ribollita soup. Also some jam tarts and almond cantuccini dipped into an aged red wine. The rest of our second afternoon was dedicated to the creation of a blog post with photos which had to relate about the lunch or winery visit. I focused on the simple yet irresistible Tuscan food and got positive feedback from the experts for my piece.
As our last day approached I was already getting nostalgic. Yet, our tutors soon caught our attention and huddled us together to help us understand the required mood and style for writing for a magazine. To warm up we were instructed to write paragraphs with limited word count. In 30 words I had to write a tasting note for a wine. Then it was time for the killer openings, we needed to formulate three sentences which get readers to read the rest of the article. Being constrained with length is not a piece of cake.
The photography part on our last day dealt with post processing and use of programs like Lightroom for editing. We also spoke about setting the mood — a dark or light mood, the focus, composition, colours and patterns. This intensive session was followed by lunch — we needed some carbohydrates to feed our minds and delicious pizza it was!
Our main assignment for the rest of the day followed. We had to write an article about ‘Eating and Drinking in Tuscany’ for a magazine. Luckily I was assigned Saveur magazine — one of those food magazines I read regularly and with which I can identify my writing style. We worked to impress. With the assistance of my Italian team mate we created the setting for a photo of fresh pasta and another one featuring the Castagnaccio, a Tuscan dessert made from chestnut flour. I concentrated on the writing and produced an informative Saveur style piece of writing about the traditional pici pasta and the chestnut dessert.
In these three days I feel I have travelled far, not only distance wise, but technically. I got a good grasp of the basic photography concepts and requirements and understood the importance of creating a relationship between the images and the writing. Setting the mood and the style for the particular magazine or blog you are writing for is also essential.
The Plate to Page workshop boosted my writing and photography skills, got in me the energies and enthusiasm needed to get creative and write. It identified my strengths and weaknesses and set me in the mood to work hard to improve. I met people from all over the world who share my same passion for food and who want to put this passion on paper and capture it in illustrative photos. I had the opportunity to enjoy the instructions of 4 dedicated and enthusiastic tutors which worked hard to make this workshop an experience to treasure.
Read more about the Plate to Page Workshop:
http://www.whatsforlunchhoney.net/2011/11/from-plate-to-page-under-tuscan-sun.html
http://lifesafeast.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-plate-to-page-tuscany.html?spref=fb
http://www.cooksister.com/2011/11/chicken-and-chorizo-potjiekos-.html
http://www.luculliandelights.com/2011/11/plate-to-page-tuscany-image-by-image.html | https://medium.com/eatmania/plate2page-the-skills-the-people-the-fun-36ea8a0b5cbf | ['Olivia Darmanin'] | 2017-06-23 14:32:23.689000+00:00 | ['Events', 'Photography', 'Travel', 'P2p', 'Il Salicone'] |
Scrapping Data Using R. case by data review Marina Bay Sands… | Scrapping Data Using R
Hi Data Enthusiast !!!
Materi kali ini kita akan menganalisis data review Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore. Jadi kita ingin mengetahui bagaimana sih secara garis besaranya review pengjung terhadap hotel tersebut.
Review hotel bisa kalian dapatkan di website TripAdvisor dan kalian juga perlu mengunduh SelectorGadget untuk melihat posisi review yang akan diambil.
Pada materi ini package yang kalian butuhkan sebagai berikut,
install.packages(xml2)
install.packages(rvest)
install.packages(tm)
install.packages(SnowballC)
install.packages(wordcloud)
install.packages(RColorBrewer)
install.packages(stringr)
library(xml2)
library(rvest)
library(tm)
library(SnowballC)
library(wordcloud)
library(RColorBrewer)
library(stringr)
Lalu copy-kan link halaman yang memuat review hotel yang akan kita scraping dan pindahkan link tersebut kedalam R
marina marina https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g294265-d1770798-Reviews-Marina_Bay_Sands-Singapore.html ")marina
nampak hasilnya seperti gambar dibawah,
Selanjutnya sorot salah satu komentar yang ada dengan menggunakan SelectorGadget,
Lalu masukkan script letak review ke dalam R,
review<-html_nodes(marina,".location-review-review-list-parts-ExpandableReview__reviewText--gOmRC")
reviewtext<-html_text(review)
reviewtext
nampak hasilnya seperti gambar di bawah,
Selanjutnya, kita akan membersihkan huruf yang tidak diperlukan misal “
” dan lainnya dan simpan data yang telah dibersihkan dalam csv
reviewtextbaru<-gsub(“
”,””,reviewtext)
reviewtextbaru
write.csv(reviewtextbaru,”D:\\BIML\\reviewtextmarina.csv”)
Selanjutnya, buka file csv yang telah tersimpan dan lihat jika ada baris yang tidak memuat data maka bisa kita hapuskan. Contohnya dibawah ini pada baris pertama tidak memuat data yang berarti jadi bisa kalian hapus
Selanjutnya, panggil kembali data csv yang telah dibersihkan kedalam R,
dokumen<-readLines("D:\\BIML\\reviewtextmarina.csv")
dokumen
nampak hasilnya,
Lalu buatlah Corpus dan str untuk dokumen di atas,
dokumen <- VCorpus(VectorSource(dokumen))
dokumen
str(dokumen)
Kemudian, cobalah dari kelima dokumen yang ada,
dokumen[[2]]$content
maka akan nampak seperti gambar di bawah,
Setelah itu, buatlah matriks kata- kata dalam dokumen dengan menggunakan script di bawah ini,
dokumenDTM<-DocumentTermMatrix(dokumen,control=list(tolower=TRUE,
removeNumbers=TRUE,
stopwords=TRUE,
removePunctuation=TRUE,
stemming=TRUE))
dokumenDTM
maka akan nampak,
Bisa dilihat jika dari 5 dokumen ada 262 kata yang berbeda, maka kita gunakan
inspect(dokumenDTM)
maka akan menghasilkan,
Pada gambar di atas bisa kita ketahui jika, pada dokumen ke-1 kata “citi” muncul 2 kali, “hotel” 8 kali, dst. Kemudian kita dapat menampilkan semua kata- kata yang ada,
dokumenDTM$dimnames$Terms
maka akan menghasilkan,
> dokumenDTM$dimnames$Terms [1] "« cé" "access" "adjac" "adult" "advic"
[6] "again" "airport" "alcohol" "all" "almost"
[11] "also" "although" "alway" "amaz" "amidst"
[16] "anoth" "appreci" "around" "arriv" "art"
[21] "ask" "ate" "attach" "attent" "attract"
[26] "balconi" "bar" "bath" "bathroom" "bay"
[31] "beauti" "bed" "begin" "best" "better"
[36] "beverag" "bill" "binocular" "bit" "breakfast"
[41] "bucket" "budget" "busi" "bustl" "came"
[46] "can" "card" "carri" "centr" "check"
[51] "checkout" "cheer" "children" "christma" "citi"
[56] "club »" "cold" "colder" "comfort" "coursemb"
[61] "crowd" "day" "decemb" "design" "disappoint"
[66] "dollar" "done" "drink" "drop" "els"
[71] "encount" "end" "enjoy" "enorm" "ensur"
[76] "entir" "especi" "european" "everyth" "exceed"
[81] "excel" "expect" "experi" "experienc" "express"
[86] "extra" "extrem" "face" "fantast" "feel"
[91] "felt" "final" "first" "flight" "floor"
[96] "food" "forev" "friend" "full" "funni"
[101] "garden" "get" "girl" "give" "glad"
[106] "good" "great" "harbor" "harbour" "help"
[111] "high" "hoard" "holiday" "holiday…" "hotel"
[116] "hour" "housekeep" "howev" "huge" "imposs"
[121] "in…" "includ" "incred" "infin" "inroom"
[126] "item" "itself" "jacket" "jacuzzi" "key"
[131] "keycard" "kind" "lack" "larg" "least"
[136] "let" "level" "lifetim" "light" "list"
[141] "live" "long" "look" "lustr" "luxuri"
[146] "made" "magnific" "main" "makeup" "mani"
[151] "mattress" "menu" "mini" "moment" "much"
[156] "museum" "need" "nice" "night" "noisi"
[161] "now" "okay" "once…" "onli" "outlet"
[166] "outsid" "overal" "overlook" "panoram" "pay"
[171] "peopl" "perfect" "person" "phone" "place"
[176] "plane" "pleasant" "polit" "pool" "poolsid"
[181] "posit" "price" "privaci" "probabl" "profess"
[186] "rather" "readi" "realli" "recommend" "relax"
[191] "remark" "resort" "restaur" "return" "room"
[196] "say" "scienc" "secur" "see" "self"
[201] "selfi" "servic" "ship" "shop" "singapor"
[206] "size" "skypark" "snack" "special" "splash"
[211] "spotter" "staff" "stand" "star" "stare"
[216] "stay" "stick" "stiletto" "still" "store"
[221] "stun" "sunni" "superb" "support" "swift"
[226] "swim" "televis" "there" "thermal" "thing"
[231] "think" "time" "top" "towel" "trendi"
[236] "tri" "unattract" "uncomfort" "understand" "upmarket"
[241] "use" "varieti" "vi »" "view" "visit"
[246] "wait" "want" "warm" "watch" "wave"
[251] "well" "went" "winter" "wise" "wish"
[256] "with" "without" "wonder" "worth" "wouldn’t"
[261] "wrong" "young"
[256] "with" "without" "wonder" "worth" "wouldn’t"
[261] "wrong" "young"
Selanjutnya run script dibawah ini,
dokumenfreq<-findFreqTerms(dokumenDTM,3)
dokumenfreq
dokumenfreq<-findFreqTerms(dokumenDTM,3)
dokumenfreq
maka akan menghasilkan,
dokumenfreq<-findFreqTerms(dokumenDTM,3)
dokumenfreq [1] "also" "bay" "check" "citi" "enjoy" "food"
[7] "friend" "garden" "get" "good" "high" "hotel"
[13]"incred" "infin" "made" "much" "night" "pay"
[19]"pool" "room" "singapor" "size" "staff" "stay"
[25]"view" "visit" dokumenfreq<-findFreqTerms(dokumenDTM,4)
dokumenfreq [1] "bay" "check" "citi" "get" "good" "hotel"
[7] "night" "pool" "room" "singapor" "staff" "stay"
[13]"view" "visit"
(dokumenDTM,3) artinya kata — kata yang mempunyai frekuensi 3 kali muncul atau lebih, sedangkan (dokumenDTM,4) rtinya kata — kata yang mempunyai frekuensi 4 kali muncul atau lebih.
dokkudtm <- TermDocumentMatrix(dokumen)
maka akan menghasilkan,
Selanjutkan, buatlah matriks nya,
em <- as.matrix(dokkudtm)
em
ve <- sort(rowSums(em),decreasing=TRUE)
ve
Setelah muncul matriksnya, kita akan melihat 6 data terbesar,
de <- data.frame(word = names(ve),freq=ve)
head(de, 15)
str(de)
de$word
maka akan menghasilkan,
[1] the and you was
[5] hotel pool for room
[9] view are but staff
[13] that this were with
[17] all from has our
[21] singapore would your bay
[25] city get good not
[29] stay there check food
[33] have high infinity made
[37] much night once out
[41] pool, than views when
[45] which while after also
[49] bar best bill busy
[53] can did don't enjoy
[57] especially everything friendly full
[61] gardens had incredible list
[65] nice only own paying
[69] people place pool. price
[73] really say selfie service
[77] shopping star stunning their
[81] top very visit warm
[85] well what without worth
[89] !""" "1,""i "2,""at "3,""check
[93] "4,""we "5,""okay, (snack (with
[97] « cé 11am. 12.5 57th
[101] about access added adjacent
[105] adult advice again. airport.
[109] alcoholic all, almost also,
[113] although always amazing amidst
[117] another appreciate around arrived
[121] art ask ate attached
[125] attentive. attraction balcony. bath
[129] bath. bathroom beautiful.""" beds
[133] been before begin better
[137] beverages binoculars) bit both
[141] breakfast bucket budget bustle
[145] came cannot card carry
[149] centre centre, check-out checking
[153] cheerful children christmas club »
[157] cold colder comfortable could
[161] course,mbs crowds day, december
[165] designer didn't disappointed doesn't
[169] dollar done drinks. dropped
[173] each else. encountered end
[177] enjoyed enormous ensured entire
[181] european exceedingly excellent. expected
[185] expected, experience, experience. experienced
[189] express extra extremely face
[193] fantastic feel felt final
[197] first flight floor, forever.
[201] friends funny gardens, girls
[205] give gives glad great
[209] harbor harbor. harbour harbour.
[213] having helpful helpful. hoards
[217] holiday holiday.…""" hotel, hotel.
[221] hours. housekeeping how however
[225] huge impossible in-room in.…"""
[229] including incredibly isn't it,
[233] item its itself, jacket
[237] jacuzzis key keycard kind,
[241] lack large least. let
[245] level level. lifetime lights.
[249] live long. look looking
[253] lustre luxuries luxury magnificent,
[257] main makeup many mattress
[261] me. menu mini moment
[265] most museum need nights
[269] noisy. now on. once.…"""
[273] only. other outlets outside
[277] overall overall, overlooked panoramic
[281] pay perfect person phones
[285] plane pleasant polite pool?
[289] poolside positives. privacy probably
[293] profession. rather ready. recommend
[297] relaxing remarkably resort restaurants.
[301] return. rooms science security
[305] see self ships singapore.
[309] size size, sized) skypark
[313] some special. splashed spotters
[317] standing stare stay, stay.
[321] sticks stilettos. still stores
[325] sunnies superb support swift
[329] swim swimming television them
[333] then there, thermals thing
[337] think those time time,
[341] too towels trendy trying
[345] unattractive uncomfortable. understand upmarket
[349] used. using variety vi »
[353] visit. visiting waiting want
[357] watch waved went winter
[361] wise wise. wish wondered
[365] wouldn't wouldn’t wrong, you've
[369] young
369 Levels: !""" "1,""i "2,""at "3,""check "4,""we "5,""okay, ... your
Setalh itu, kita akan membuat wordcloud dari kata- kata di atas menggunakan script di bawah ini,
wordcloud(words = de$word, freq = de$freq, min.freq = 1,
max.words=50, random.order=FALSE, rot.per=0.35,
colors=brewer.pal(8, "Dark2"))
maka akan menghasilkan,
Dari hasil wordcloud diatas, terlihat masih ada kata “the”, “was”, dll yang artinya kurang bagus. Jika kita ingin mengetahui asosiasi kata- kata yang sering muncul, misal kata “good”, “great”, “nice” maka gunakanlah perintah berikut,
vee<-as.list(findAssocs(dokkudtm, terms =c("good", "amaizing","nice","delicious"), corlimit = c(0.15,0.15,0.15,0.15,0.15,0.15)))
dan akan menghasilkan,
$good
food high once views which
0.87 0.87 0.87 0.87 0.87
the "3,""check (snack (with added
0.86 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
adjacent adult airport. alcoholic also,
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
although amidst appreciate art ate
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
balcony. bar better beverages bill
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
binoculars) bit budget bustle centre
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.800.80
harbour hotel. however in-room in.…"""
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
item its lack large level.
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
lights. look looking lustre magnificent,
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
mattress me. mini museum noisy.
0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80 0.80
only outlets overall, plane price $great
"5,""okay, 11am. 12.5 advice after
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
again. all, almost also always
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
another around attached bath. bathroom
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
beds begin both came cannot
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
centre, check-out cold colder comfortable
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
could day, didn't disappointed doesn't
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
dollar don't done else. encountered
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
end european everything expected expected,
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
experience, experience. experienced extra face
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
fantastic feel felt flight forever.
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
glad having hoards holiday holiday.…""" $nice "5,""okay, 11am. 12.5 advice after
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.0
again. all, almost also always
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
another around attached bath. bathroom
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
beds begin both came cannot
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
centre, check-out cold colder comfortable
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
could day, didn't disappointed doesn't
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
dollar don't done else. encountered
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
end european everything expected expected,
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
experience, experience. experienced extra face
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
fantastic feel felt flight forever.
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
glad having hoards holiday holiday.…"""
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
hotel, hours. huge impossible including
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
incredibly isn't it, itself, jacket
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
let live long. most much
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
nights now on. only. other
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
outside pay paying pleasant pool,
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
positives. probably resort restaurants. rooms
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Referensi | https://medium.com/@ryanrezafadillah/tripadvisor-data-review-bdc908c0f9a4 | ['Ryan Reza Fadillah'] | 2020-07-17 13:48:24.275000+00:00 | ['R', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'Tripadvisor', 'Data Science', 'Hotel Reviews'] |
I Won’t Be Telling My Daughter to Unlock Her Potential | I was always going to be a ballerina. Unlike every other 6-year-old girl in a pink tutu, I was actually going to make it. The fantasy would dance through my head while I listened to Swan Lake twirling around the lounge room.
Why not me? I was bursting with potential.
I was a unique snowflake, destined for the stage. I would embody grace and the extraordinary potential of the human body.
The reality came crashing down one way or another, in the same way I kept crashing into furniture. I can’t entirely recall the moment but I do remember thinking I didn’t have the body type for it.
The rakishly thin, delicately boned porcelain doll. I was destined to embody a generously sized booty.
Dylan Moran riffs on potential: “You should stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! It’s like your bank balance— you always have much less than you think. You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, that all you would get to would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.”
The glut of posts online compelling you to ‘unlock your potential’ is enough to drive anyone into a hole to curl up and be mediocre the rest of your life.
This mysterious box buried deep within you which holds the keys to your best life.
Who wouldn’t be desperately trying to crack the code?
Last night in yoga, a dim-lit room with thunderstorm soundtrack, the teacher with the soothing voice and shaved head was telling us about our in-built search engines.
That in our brains, we have these little Googles constantly searching, ruminating, debating, contemplating.
And the practice of yoga is to be still. Silent. At rest.
I’m sitting cross-legged which is sending shooting pains up my back and I’m trying not to wriggle.
I’m listening to her words but my internal Google is spiralling out of control: that’s interesting, be still, I really need to get better at being still. Maybe I should start mediating again, that would help. I probably need to work out some way to do it, I don’t want Matilda to learn that she always needs to be busy achieving things and..what is this music anyway? Why does yoga music always have to have weird chanting in it?
I’m so conditioned to achieving, improving, that even talk of letting go and being still sends me into action-planning mode, turning it into a large-scale self-improvement project. Maybe I can wake up at 7am every day and track in my bullet journal how still I’m being then I’ll be able to see my progress.
Since becoming a Mum I feel increasingly frustrated by the unicorn of potential, now seemingly even further out of my grasp.
It’s buried under piles of dirty nappies and time lost, shimmering on the horizon while I retrace my steps looking for another sock my baby kicked off 5 kilometres ago.
There’s this German word, fernweh meaning homesickness for a place you’ve never been to. I wonder if that captures how I feel about my potential. I miss it, I haven’t reached it and yet I long to go back to it, like the heady pink tutu days when it was as bounteous as my backside.
Perhaps that maddening unicorn is always out of reach. You climb to the next rung of your potential, and hey! There’s another one. And another, and another. You reach the top, you’re literally the king of the world and there before you is another ladder.
What I’m after is contentment.
The more the days roll into months with my daughter, the more I’ve realised this is life now, it’s happening. I look into her tiny little face while she’s feeding and every now and then feel a flush of deep contentment.
I forget about my plans to study, write a book or finally start that NGO for kids who can’t read good and think, ‘if this is it, this is good.’
I want those moments to punctuate my day, not be the exception.
I don’t want someone with a megaphone shouting down my ear: YOU MUST UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL BEFORE YOU DIE!!
I hope my daughter explores her potential. I dearly hope she chases the unicorn, for a time.
But I will be compelling her to be still, let go, enjoy what you’ve got now, because this is life, you’re living it. Don’t wait until you reach that next rung to be content.
But try to eat less cheesy snacks. | https://cherielee-37146.medium.com/i-wont-be-telling-my-daughter-to-unlock-her-potential-c1e71cbf47a0 | ['Cherie Gilmour'] | 2019-10-23 23:56:59.003000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Self', 'Parenting', 'Productivity', 'Life Lessons'] |
Moving from failure to failure. | At the start of 2020, I never imagined that life as I knew it would change so fundamentally. How revolutionary, right? A person whose life was affected by the pandemic. But from where I sit in April of 2021, starting a data science bootcamp, I want to reflect on the last year.
2020 started out pretty innocuously for me. The pandemic was still far away in my mind (read: I was in denial), so it was business as usual. I had a job I didn’t quite hate, working for a company I could tolerate mostly. I made decent money; I was decently comfortable. Then came March and my layoff. At first I panicked. What would I do? What about money? Insurance? It was devastating, but for some reason (spoiler: I hated the job more than I led on a few sentences ago) I wasn’t actually upset about losing that job. I was upset about having to find something else. It’s so much simpler to stay in a situation that is tolerable than to seek out something more.
The job search was, unsurprisingly, fruitless. I felt like I was burning through money despite (mostly) only buying the essentials. Why was living so damn expensive? Why had I wasted my time in college on a music degree instead of something sensible like business, or computer science, or pretty much anything else. I was almost 30, an age that at the time terrified me, and I had no job, no prospects, no skills.
I sat with my self-loathing for way longer than I wanted to. I had flitted from job to unfulfilling job since 2013. I had been desperately trying to spin the plates of a terrible job, various toxic relationships, and my crumbling mental health for way too long and I needed a break. I didn’t like the path I was on and I wanted to make a change, but I was scared. I never thought I was smart enough. I never tried to do hard things; failure was not an option for me growing up so I adjusted my goals accordingly. Don’t aim high and you won’t miss.
But I couldn’t do that anymore. I was only qualified for the most non-essential of positions, none of which hiring and I didn’t know when they would be again. I had been flirting with the idea of doing a software bootcamp for years at this point, but like I mentioned earlier, I was scared (of everything). I had gotten really good at not working very hard. But I decided to do it anyway. I was tired of being bored all the time, and an easy job no longer appealed to me.
I started by applying to a frontend engineering bootcamp, and I absolutely bombed the interview. With a capital B. I let myself stew in the feeling of being an absolute failure for exactly two days before I planned my next move. I decided to teach myself Python because I had a smidge of experience with it, and it was just a pleasant language to learn. It was super uncomfortable. Learning as an adult feels awful sometimes; when I was a kid it was like all I had in my head was space to fill with knowledge but for some reason as an adult I was ashamed of my lack of knowledge. With great effort and multiple self help books I pushed past it (and honestly I’m still pushing past it everyday). After a couple months I discovered that my particular learning style necessitated more structure. I started seeking out bootcamps that focused on Python, and that’s where I discovered data science. I had always scrolled past those job postings in my aforementioned fruitless job searches, but it never seemed like something I could do; data science was for people who were, I dunno, scientists. But I wanted to. And that was that.
So I enrolled in a prep course for a data science bootcamp in my state. It was okay, but it was pretty impersonal, and once again when it came to interviewing for enrollment I capital-B Bombed once again. Damn it. Why couldn’t I do this? I knew I was stupid. I knew there was no way I could do this. What was I thinking? And then I let another two days go by. Okay new plan: enroll in a structured Python course, and THEN try for the data science bootcamp. Okay let’s go.
Enter General Assembly (notanad). I enrolled in the part-time Python course taught by an instructor who reminded me of why I wanted to do this in the first place. It was fun and engaging, but also challenging. I was so excited; I felt like maybe I had found the place for me. So I called my enrollment guru person and he sent me the technical challenge and set up an interview for the data science immersive. The DSI. The most intimidating acronym I could think of. But imagine my surprise when I read through the technical challenge and I COULD DO EVERYTHING ON IT. I was flabbergasted. I actually knew things. Maybe I could do this? Maybe.
We met for the interview in Zoomland and although I was nervous, for once I felt confident in my abilities. I spoke easily, presenting my cute little graphs I made in a Jupyter Notebook. I was so proud of that little project. I actually felt optimistic, a stark contrast to the dread I was used to feeling after my previous interviews. The next morning I was so nervous. There weren’t so much butterflies in my stomach as there were bats. But I got the call and I was in! I was elated. I finally got one! I felt so happy, so full of potential. I could finally start working on a career that would challenge me and potentially provide some financial security. But most of all I could finally have something that made me finally feel like I was capable. Something I wanted to be good at. Even if it didn’t come easily.
I’m now in week two. It has been a test in my resolve. I’m going to be overwhelmed and glued to my computer for the next ten weeks. I’m stressed, exhausted, my brain hurts, and I haven’t driven my car in 9 days. But you know what? I’m not mad about it. I feel like I’m supposed to be here. Even when I feel like a failure. Because like Churchill said and I paraphrased, success is just moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. | https://medium.com/@kelr0seplace/moving-from-failure-to-failure-4129e578090f | ["Kelly O'Neill"] | 2021-04-28 00:08:33.882000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Career Change', 'General Assembly', 'Bootcamp'] |
14k Wedding Band is Designed While Using Top Quality Material! | There is a wide range of rituals that we use to do and follow in this life. But when it comes to wedding occasions, we tend to follow these rituals very seriously. One such ritual of the wedding is the wedding ring or wedding band and without this, a wedding is surely not going to look like a complete one. This is a big reason why the brides and grooms use to spend hours while trying to figure out the right and the best wedding band for each other. And once these rings are exchanged during the wedding a vital ritual completes. A wedding band is surely the symbol of your commitment towards a new life that is you are going to start with your special one. If you are looking for a 14k wedding band, then you have come to the right place.
G.W.Bands is an online store that supplies a wide range of wedding bands and at the best price. Some of these items are also made from precious metals like gold. Buying gold jewelry is not really into everyone’s budget. But when it comes to the selection of wedding jewelry, people never feel shy to buy the gold version. This online store is also the place to explore 14k wedding band set at the best price. When you get this in a set, you also ensure that you have wedding bands that perfectly complement each other.
So by getting a 14k wedding band set you also ensure that you have wedding bands for each other. These wedding bands can also be selected on the basis of the wedding apparel that you are going to try on that special day. When a wedding ring is on and that matches with your wedding dress properly, the whole setting can look complete. | https://medium.com/@goldweddingbands/14k-wedding-band-is-designed-while-using-top-quality-material-45b8f04a019c | ['Donnell Dean'] | 2021-12-10 06:12:24.900000+00:00 | ['Wedding Band Set', 'Jewelry', 'Engagement Rings', 'Wedding Band', 'Wedding Rings'] |
Where to go for accessibility help when you are stuck | Where to go for accessibility help when you are stuck
It happens all the time, even to people as experienced in the field of accessibility as I am.
You are brainstorming about how to solve an accessibility issue, and you get stuck. Usually, the thing you are stuck on falls into one of the three following categories:
You don’t understand the most likely path that a particular Assistive Tecchnology (AT) user will interact with what you are working on, or;
You can’t figure out any solution, or;
You have multiple solutions, and you can’t figure out which solution is best.
Here are some places you can go to for help.
IAAP — the International Association of Accessibility Professionals
IAAP has a chat board for members. For the price of a membership fee, you can ask questions, and other accessibility professionals may choose to volunteer to answer them. To not abuse this privilege:
Search the archives first — your question may have been previously asked and answered by someone else.
Do your own research first and exhaust your favorite search engine before you ask. No one likes people who ask questions that a basic internet search can answer.
Disclaimer: I am on the IAAP Global Leadership Council. But I’ve been a member of IAAP for 6 years, and it is by far the best money I’ve ever spent on accessibility-related services.
Online groups of people with disabilities
Many, many online chat groups are open to the general public without any admission fees.
The two that I belong to pertain largely to screen readers and have dozens if not hundreds of people who are blind who participate:
This is just to give you a taste of an idea of what is out there. There are many, many more available. No matter how many screen readers you are capable of using, you will never use them the way a person with vision loss does unless you are a person with vision loss, so it is important to go where you can find screen reader users to get the authentic answers (hint: it’s also a good idea to employ some people with disabilities locally).
Accessibility meetups/conferences
There are lots of accessibility meetups and conferences with varying price points from free to really pricey. It is not difficult to get people to answer questions answered at these events. Thanks to COVID, people are less fussy about requiring that local people attend meetups in person. I have personally participated in meetups in the California Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and London.
Follow one or more leaders on LinkedIn.
For example, if you want to follow a leader in best captioning practices, you could do no better than Meryl Evans. Inclusive Design? Matt May and Derek Featherstone. General diversity issues, including disability and much, much more? Lily Zheng. These people have literally dedicated their entire lives to the issues they specialize in. I probably chose them because they have the same “straight-up facts, no holds barred” approach to their particular specialty as I do. Listen to them, and ask thoughtful questions that are mindful of their time. All of the people I have listed will interact with readers.
Matt has office hours weekly for the general public, and I will be doing the same starting in March of 2021. My office hours' intended focus is providing people assistance with configuring and building custom data models for Crest, my recently released open-source, machine learning-based accessibility testing tool that is intended to sit on top of WAVE. If there aren’t any people asking Crest questions during my office hours, I will provide my $.02 on other accessibility questions. Stay tuned here or connect with me on LinkedIn for more information about time and place. Having been present for two unconscionable event hacks already, I need to make sure that this is as secure as is possible under the circumstances.
Ask vendors for help.
Microsoft has a Disability Answer Desk.
Most companies have an accessibility@ companyname.com email address.
Most companies have Twitter accounts.
Make sure you only reach out to them about *their* products. Apple probably isn’t excited about answering accessibility questions about Android, for example. Many of the ways I identified about reaching out to a specific company in this article will work here if this is the approach you want to take.
University IT
If you are stuck on a document accessibility question, university resources are a great go-to because:
Professors have to make their powerpoints and exams accessible — 21 % of college students in the US identify as having a disability.
Universities thrive on making their knowledge public.
I personally love San Jose State’s Accessible Education Center, but many universities have resources like this.
Classes
There are some great resources on LinkedIn Learning regarding accessible and inclusive design by Derek Featherstone. LinkedIn recently reached out to me about adding more bite-sized, actionable accessibility materials, probably based on some of my blogs. I will definitely let everyone know when those are available. Deque has some excellent training geared specifically towards taking the IAAP CPACC certification exam — $35 for CPACC and $150 for the material covering the WAS exam. Coursera also has accessibility courses.
Books / Videos
There are all kinds of books on accessibility and inclusive design available. Read this article if you are interested in my favorite titles. Likewise for videos — here is the list of the ones I recommend the most strongly. But all you really have to do is go to your favorite video repository and search for “screen reader” or “switch.” You will be overwhelmed with the number of videos available of people who have recorded their experiences for you to learn from. | https://medium.com/@sheribyrnehaber/where-to-go-for-accessibility-help-when-you-are-stuck-3ec36de30dd5 | ['Sheri Byrne-Haber'] | 2020-12-18 22:00:39.976000+00:00 | ['Disability', 'Accessibility', 'Customer Service', 'Equity', 'Help'] |
10 Questions For Flat Earth Believers | 1. how do compasses work on the flat earth? A compass works by magnetic fields… no magnet can have a north pole in the center and a south pole that is a ring around the outside, so how does a compass work on your flat earth? If the south pole is really a ring around the outer edge, then the south pole of the earth’s magnetic field would have to be a ring around the entire outer edge of the planet disk… and yet that is impossible, no such magnet can even exist. If the south magnetic pole is in one place, then a compass would not work at all, because it would be trying to point at the north and the south when they would only be aligned on one longitude… in any other place, the compass would be trying to point in two directions the same time!
2. how do you explain that the true north pole and the magnetic north pole are not in the same place on a flat earth?
3. how do you explain that the north magnetic pole is moving?
4. how do you explain the “precession of the equinoxes”?
5. how do you explain that the sky rotates counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere on a flat earth? There are only two possibilities… either the north and south hemispheres themselves rotate in opposite directions, something that you could easily see at the equator (because the land and sea would be rushing past each other) or the sky itself is divided in half and half rotates one way and the other half rotates the other way, again, which you would plainly see because stars would zip past each other on a 24 hour basis.
6. how do you explain that every single profession that requires a person to know the shape of the earth only hires those people who believe in the spherical earth, and would refuse to hire a flat earther? No flat earther will ever be hired as an airline pilot, a ship’s navigator, a surveyor, a cartographer, or any other job that requires knowing the shape of the planet, why is that?
7. why do surveyors always use the curve of the earth in every calculation, whether building a building, laying out the route for a rail line, or road, or calculating property lines and borders? If they used the curve and the earth was not really a sphere, all their calculations would be wrong… so why do they include the curve if the earth is really flat?
8. shadows of vertical objects are longer the closer you get to either pole… how do you explain this on a flat earth?
9. how do you explain a lunar eclipse if the earth is flat and the sun never goes “below” the flat disk? what’s casting the shadow on the moon?
10. why are you still living in prehistoric times? are you daft? | https://medium.com/@fraterchaos/10-questions-for-flat-earth-believers-b1fd8d06d238 | [] | 2020-12-10 05:25:52.717000+00:00 | ['Flat Earth', 'Globe', 'Stupid', 'Questions', 'Conspiracy Theories'] |
What Makes Me Unhappy as a Developer? | Part 2. How to Improve the Way We Interact With People
There are two very popular books that teach us very well about this area. I will be covering them in brief so that you don’t have to go and read the books, but you are always welcome to do so.
Book 1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, the author Robert B. Cialdini has laid out six weapons of influence. You can use these properties to your advantage, but use them with positive intent.
1. Reciprocity — If you do a small favour for someone which they didn’t even ask for, it sort of makes them accountable to reciprocate back with a favour in return, which can be a much bigger one.
2. Consistency — People have a tendency to remain consistent with their promises and actions, which you can now use to influence them.
3. Social proof — At the time of uncertainty, people always feel more comfortable in a group.
4. Authority — There are certain people who can easily influence us by their title or if they are seen as experts.
5. Liking — When there is liking, trust also comes in. So we tend to trust people easily whom we like. If we like somebody more, we will trust them more.
6. Scarcity — We value things more if there is a scarcity of them. That is why all ecommerce websites show “two left in stock.”
Book 2. How to Win Friends and Influence People
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is divided into these four different parts which cover certain behaviours that you should cultivate.
1. How to make people like you
Be genuinely interested in other people.
Remember a person’s name.
Be a good listener.
Talk in terms of other people's interests.
Make the other person feel important.
2. How to handle people
Don’t criticise, condemn, or complain.
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Arouse an eager want in other people.
3. How to win people to your way of thinking
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say “You’re wrong.”
When you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Be friendly.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Let the other person feel that the idea is theirs.
Try to be in their shoes. Have sympathy for their ideas and desires.
Throw a challenge at them.
4. How to be a leader
Begin with praise and appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Praise the slightest improvement.
A short summary would be: Act as if others are interesting and you will eventually find them so.
So from all the above learnings, we can understand —
It’s not about them, it’s about me.
So if I change the way I behave, others will change too.
So far, we have been making an assumption that it’s other people’s fault and we are right at our place. But this was the hard question that was thrown to me: How do you know you’re right?
Man, that shook me!
A lot of arguments and differences are not around the end goal but rather on how to achieve it.
Do the people I work with have the intention to destroy the application? No! Then why am I fighting with them to do things a certain way?
All right, since one thing is clear — they are our teammates, with the team’s best interest at heart — let’s make it about them and not us. Let’s try to motivate them to take up the initiative and lead things all by themselves so that we don’t have to worry about them. | https://medium.com/better-programming/what-makes-me-unhappy-as-a-developer-1933bcca6c14 | ['Dhananjay Trivedi'] | 2020-11-20 16:44:37.724000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Programming', 'Teamwork', 'Software Development', 'Startup'] |
How to Customize a Spinner in Android Studio | Create a new project using an Android studio then go to the resource folder I mean res folder in your android studio project after it expands the values folder and double click on the strings.xml file and make a string array in it with your own values which you want to display in your custom spinner. As I make a String array in the following image.
String array for the custom spinner
After doing this task you should expand the “layout” folder make a layout file named “custom_spinner.xml”. In this file, you can design a popup window UI (User Interface). I design the layout like the following image.
In the above image, I have taken CardView as a root view with 10 max elevations and layout width and layout height with match_parent value. A RelativeLayout is taken as child layout of CardView with match_parent value of layout width and height. The id of the RelativeLayout is taken as “rl_custom_layout”.
And finally, a ListView is used in the RelativeLayout for displaying the items as scrollable and selectable. In the ListView, I specified the entries attribute and the string array as a value of it. This String Array I created earlier in our project’s Strings.xml file. Using the entries attribute, we don’t need to make an Adapter object in our Java coding and setting it to the ListView. So this is a short and easier way to bind String Array to ListView. It is done for our popup window layout which will display as a custom spinner in our MainActivity.
Before moving towards MainActivity, we should go to the drawable folder and right-click on it then go to the new option then select vector asset and find down arrow icon like the following image. And click the ok button. It will add to your drawable folder.
Select the down arrow for the spinner
After it, go to the java folder of your project make a package named “SaudSpinner” and make a new java class with the name “SaudSpinner” extends this class with TextView like the following image.
Customize the text view for the custom spinner
In the above image, I have created three constructors with different parameters for handling the attributes of our custom spinner attributes. And also I have created the inti() method which takes the AtttributeSet object as a parameter. This method called through the constructors of SaudSpinner class.
Init Method
The init method takes the AttributeSet object as a parameter if the AttributeSet object null it will not do any things if attributes are provided to SaudSpinner then it will set padding 5 to all dimensions of the spinner. For setting the padding to the spinner I called the setPadding method which required four parameters like left, top, right, and bottom paddings.
After it, I need to display a down icon to the right side of the spinner. So for this purpose, I called setCompoundDrawablesWithIntrinsicBounds with requires four-parameter as well like left, top, right, bottom drawable resources. So I need a down icon on the right side of the spinner that’s why I pass drawable resources as third parameter R.drawable.ic_baseline_arrow_drop_down_24 and the other parameter’s value is given “0”.
So I want to display select text in the center of the spinner. So for this purpose, I called the setGravity method and pass this value Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL. So that’s it for this SaudSpinner class.
activity_main.xml
Now Go to the activity_main.xml file and write our custom spinner name class which is “SaudSpinner”. For applying the ripple effect on our custom spinner I have specified two attributes like below.
1. android:background=”?attr/selectableItemBackground”
2. android:clickable=”true”
Layout for custom spinner
MainActivity.java
MainActivity.java
MainActivity.java
In MainActivity class I have declared two objects of PopupWindow and SaudSpinner and initialized the SaudSpinner object by using findViewById method. I have set onclick listener on our custom spinner class which is SaudSpinner. In onClick listener, I called the layout inflater service using the getSystemService method. Using the LayoutInflater object I inflated our custom spinner layout. In the next line, I am getting the phone screen height and then divide it by 2. So that I am able to get half-height of the screen and put this height for Popup window so in this way we can specify the dynamic height of our custom spinner according to the screen height. In the next line, I have initialized the PopupWindow object, I need to pass four parameters from the constructor. It requires view, width, height, and a focusable boolean value. So I passed the custom spinner view which I inflated. The second parameter is the width of the Popup window so I specified width wrap_content and the third parameter is height, the height value is in pixels which is half the phone screen, and the fourth value I passed true to make it focusable.
so now I have declared and initialized the ListView object and set the on item click listener, in the onItemClick method I have got the item and converted it to string and store it in “s” string variable. Then I have given the delay for one second by making a new thread just displaying the ripple effect and animation on item click. After giving the one-second delay I have called the dismiss method of the popup window.
Now I have created two animation files in “anim” folder. One for entry animation and the second for the closing animation.
you can see it in the below screenshot
fade_out.xml
anim/fade_out.xml
popupwindow.xml
anim/popupwindow.xml
Then I have created a separate style in theme.xml file. Style is given below.
theme.xml or syle.xml
Then in the MainActivity.java file, I have set the animation style to the popupwindow object and called the showasdropdown method for displaying the popupwindow below the Custom spinner view. Check the screenshot. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-make-custom-spinner-using-popupwindow-in-android-studio-cc1c2971b814 | [] | 2021-01-01 18:50:59.865000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Customize Spinner', 'AndroidDev', 'Technology', 'Programming'] |
4 Tips to Feel Less Homesick from a Migrant Who Left Home At 16 | 1. Watch some old funny TVs from your home town.
These shows should be in your mother-tongue and they shouldn’t feature the pandemic. They should be funny too; avoid anything too intense and philosophical. The best way to cure sadness is through laughter and love. The Americans are very good at that, it’s why Friends and Home Alone are being replayed every day and every Christmas. Let’s just pretend we can still afford an apartment in Manhattan with a crappy acting job.
You’re right, watching TV is a temporary escape. But man, we deserve it. We are sad! Recently, I started rewatching my favourite childhood cartoon called Chibi Maruko Chan. It was dubbed in Cantonese and was popular among Chinese kids of my generation. It’s about the life of Maruko and her friends in Japan. No one grows up in this cartoon so she and her friends always stay in the best year of their lives. Wouldn’t that be nice? (here’s an English dubbed version)
2. Get your mum’s recipe and make it for yourself.
I was so naive when I first moved to England. I thought I would embrace the local cuisine fully and never turned back to Chinese food. After three weeks of bland fish and chips, we finally went to a Chinese restaurant.
The restaurant offered bottomless rice, so we all ate rice to our heart's content. I think had 7 bowls of rice that night. That’s an obscene amount for a skinny Chinese teenage girl. But we ate and ate, clearing every last drop of sauce and spring onion pieces.
I made a note to learn cooking from my mum and grandma the minute I returned to Hong Kong for holidays. Those were truly valuable lessons and I can recreate amazing family recipes now whenever I need something to comfort my stomach and my soul.
If you have no access to your family’s recipes for any reason, thank God for Youtube. During times when you can’t even eat out properly, your own hands are your best bet.
Cooking takes you away from your overly high screen time and keep you busy. It’s also therapeutic and relaxing, so why not challenge yourself to some harder recipes too?
3. Journal/write a letter.
It’s a lot easier now than when I was a student to connect to our family and friends abroad. When I was in the boarding house, there was only one phone in the common room. My mum and I had to fix the time of our weekly conversations. I hated it because everyone could eavesdrop and it was not convenient.
The fact that it’s so easy to facetime our family doesn’t mean it makes it easier to truly connect. We are so easily distracted by whatever our phone or TV was showing.
As we grow older, our pride and independence sometimes also prevent us from being completely honest. I can’t tell my parents how paranoid and homesick I am during this pandemic when they have enough on their plates.
A letter is a lot more controlled; we can plan, draft and decide what to go in it. We can tell what we want to tell them, but more importantly, we can release what’s within our heavy hearts.
I sometimes buy special letter sets for writing (try Etsy). It makes the experience that much more deliberate. This is a time to meditate, make a cup of tea and write to my family.
4. Let yourself grieve.
Not all of us have a home or family to return to. Homesickness highlights our regrets, our guilt and our grief for people we didn’t manage to spend time with before it was too late. You might have similar thoughts like mine: If I hadn’t moved to London, maybe I would’ve more time to spend with my grandpa before he died.
We need to learn to let ourselves grieve, whatever that means for you, whether that’s anger, sadness, remorse, or gratitude.
When we are homesick, we must be honest with our vulnerability. We don’t have to be upbeat all the time. We can be sick, annoyed, sad and restless, or any other emotions. Men and women alike, suppression of homesickness will lead to an explosion one day, it’s like a timed bomb. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/4-tips-to-feel-less-homesick-from-a-migrant-who-left-home-at-16-c7d9a7238861 | ['Midori The Sea'] | 2020-12-23 21:39:11.979000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Home', 'Depression', 'Family', 'Love'] |
How My Childhood Shaped My Financial Habits | How My Childhood Shaped My Financial Habits
Frugality at its finest
Photo by Elly Fairytale from Pexels
As immigrants starting out in minimum wage jobs, my parents knew how to stretch a paycheck. Their frugal habits frustrated me over the years but were also necessary and provided me a healthy relationship with money in the long-run.
When I started working part-time, while I knew the “right” way to manage my finances, I decided to deviate from these truths to have my own fun. For the first time in my life, I was making my own money and clamored at the opportunity to spend on whatever I could afford.
After I got the splurges and spending out of the way, I transitioned into a financial minimalist mindset.
How did my parents’ frugality shape my current financial perspective?
I learned from their mistakes
As immigrants, my parents were already at a disadvantage when learning about investments and the stock market in their second language. For decades, saving money was the priority, and investing remained on the backburner. They focused on the necessities, making enough to pay the bills, raising their kids, and providing.
My parents voiced repeatedly over the years how they regretted contributing to their 401(k) ten years too late. Even with their late start, they managed to contribute their catch-up contributions and retire in their 50s.
My parents viewed real estate and their retirement as the best financial investments. And in a sense, they are correct. But after decades from watching their money grow in a house they didn’t want to sell and their retirement they couldn’t touch, they knew more diversification would have helped grow their wealth.
Hindsight is 20/20. As they imparted their financial wisdom and mistakes to me, I moved forward with my finances with those hard lessons learned.
I imitated their food habits
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in their Consumer Expenditures Release that Americans spent an average of $3,526 per year on takeout. That’s equivalent to almost $10/day.
Dining out options during my childhood were slim to none. My parents and I ventured outside of our kitchen solely for the California favorite In-N-Out Burger.
Cooking at home provided the following benefits:
Healthier food
Cost less than dining out
Authentic dishes that weren’t easy to order at a restaurant
Less cost on gas driving back and forth
The reason I rebelled and dined out excessively in college — there was just so much I hadn’t tried!
But my parents had the secret formula all along. I imitated their grocery shopping habits, like scheduling the “necessities” bi-weekly at Costco. Limiting my trips meant I wasn’t stopping by the grocery store every week to refill on bananas and then proceed to buy 10 other miscellaneous items. With each trip to Costco easily totaling up to $100 for my household, halving my trips helped me save tremendously.
Eating at home is healthy, saves money, and you’re making fewer trips to the grocery store instead of a commute to and from to pick up food.
It’s not just all about money. When cooking authentic Vietnamese dishes, there’s not a surplus of restaurants that make the comfort dishes. Sure, you can grab a bowl of pho or egg rolls, but the more specialized and authentic recipes are difficult to find.
I mirrored their strong work ethic
In the early years of their career, they were living paycheck to paycheck. To increase their stability, their overtime hours supplemented their paychecks.
We celebrated holidays on different days as they chose to work those days to receive overtime or double-time pay. While sometimes sad my Christmas mornings were postponed for a day, it instilled in me a strong work ethic.
Mirroring their work habits, I picked up two part-time jobs in college while balancing a full class schedule. Driving back and forth from campus to work 35 hours a week seemed crazy to some students, but my effort paled in comparison to the tiring days and nights my parents worked.
As I started working a regular 40-hour workweek that transformed into longer hours, exhaustion set in. And without kids, too, I wondered how any parents balanced this lifestyle.
I took advantage of sales
Growing up in Vietnam bargaining each day, they didn’t have the shame to negotiate. While they assimilated into American culture and didn’t negotiate on common items, they taught me to take advantage of sales.
My parents adopted a tradition of celebrating holidays after the fact. When the post-holiday shopping sales commenced, we trekked to the mall to buy clothes for less. For years, my outfit consisted of solid colored shirts in every color as those were the cheapest options. Driving to outlets to score the best deals became a family favorite pastime.
While I don’t buy everything on sale, I always wait to buy clothing items. Instead of groceries, clothing is rarely considered a “need,” and if I’m not that interested in it, I forget about it anyway.
I learned that more stuff doesn’t make you happier
As I visit my friends’ homes and see the playrooms and boxes stuffed with toys, I gasp in astonishment. Do kids really need this much stuff?
I didn’t grow up with many toys, and fondly remember my favorite toy being a hula hoop! I’d play with it (before knowing that it could be a form of exercise) and did competitions with my brother to our heart’s content. I jumped with excitement in P.E. when the teacher brought out hula hoops that I could relate to and smile with my friends doing it.
Again, we all have our phases where we make money and choose to spend it, sometimes go above our means or more than we need. I indulged in thousands of dollars on makeup, dining out, and clothes that I regret as I’m throwing out and cleaning up my closet.
Reflecting back on my parents’ lessons, they had it right all along. Give your kids what they need, not what they want. | https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/how-my-childhood-shaped-my-financial-habits-6aab12845a2a | ['Jessica Vu'] | 2020-11-30 17:09:06.829000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Lifestyle', 'Finance', 'Money', 'Family'] |
Flutter: Display map, markers, and polyline using MapBox | Hi everyone, in this topic, I will explain how to display a map in your Flutter application, most of the applications are using Google Map Services, but in this example, we are going to use another service MapBox which I found personally very interesting.
In this example, we are going to achieve something like this:
First of all, let's explain what is MapBox?
MapBox is an open-source mapping platform for custom designed maps, but MapBox uses OpenStreetMap as a data source (streets, buildings, administrative areas, water, and land data…), read more HERE
OpenStreetMap contributors create and improve its map data.
So, let start:
First thing, we need to create an account in MapBox to customize our map and get the URL template.
1- Go to https://www.mapbox.com/ and create an account their.
2- Jump into your studio:
3. Create a new style
4. Choose your style that you want and Customize Basic
5- Jump back into your studio and click on Share you style
6- After that, you will see a popup window and follow the image bellow:
Here, you need to copy the Integration URL a keep it somewhere.
Let's go back to our application:
1- Install this package flutter_map:
Add this to your package’s pubspec.yaml file:
dependencies:
flutter_map: ^0.9.0
2- Create a Flutter page in your application or use your default file main.dart, and copy, paste the bellow code:
Replace urlTemplate with Integration URL that you saved before, and accessToken with the toke value, you will find in the URL itself access_token={value}
So basically:
we displayed the map using MapBox urlTemplate.
Added Marker, change the image of your marker in MarkerLayerOptions .
. Polyline, we need a list of LatLng, so that i fetch them from and JSON file and add them in Polyline attribute points: latlngList.
you can use my Json file HERE
That’s it easy-peasy, i hope you like my first article, if you have any kind of question, please leave a comment below and i will reply you as soon as possible. | https://medium.com/@ayoub-boumzebra/flutter-display-map-markers-and-polyline-using-mapbox-59cb9b1df2da | ['Ayoub Boumzebra'] | 2020-06-03 22:56:10.806000+00:00 | ['Flutter Ui', 'Flutter', 'Mapbox', 'Maps', 'Flutter App Development'] |
Studying Brexit in London at LSE | Studying Brexit in London at LSE
Garima Rastogi and Anoushka Agarwal write about their summer experiences in London. Both took the International Economics course at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Garima, Class of 2019
Major at Ashoka: Economics, with a minor in History
This summer, like many students at our university, I made my way to a different country to study something new. I thought it was the ideal course to study in this city and at this university; I had wanted to study something that was directly influenced by the location of the course. Along with broader lectures on trade in China, the United States and even India, we had an exhaustive lecture on Brexit. We also had the opportunity to discuss interesting nuances with a professor who was directly involved in the debate.
Garima at LSE
The course content was interesting and both the lecturers we had were engaging. What I loved about the course was that they didn’t compromise on the course content due to the time constraint; we learnt an immense amount about trade policies, exchange rate determination, currency crises, etc. This was also because unlike most other summer schools in the UK, the number of hours we spent in the classroom were more. The downside to this was that there was a shorter amount of time for us to see the city.
Someone wishing to do a summer abroad solely to see the city should definitely not choose to do a 300-level course at LSE.
Despite the short amounts of time I had, London proved to be a wonderful place to explore. And with LSE at the heart of it, I could get to most places without spending much time on the road. Almost all museums and galleries in London have no entry fee and have some of the greatest collections of art and historical artifacts. I would also recommend anyone interested in theater to catch a play at the West End Theaters.
Anoushka, Class of 2019
Major at Ashoka: Economics and Finance
There are certain experiences in life that you cherish forever and Summer School at the London School of Economics and Political Science was one such experience for me. To be honest, the only reason I chose the course I took was that I found it the most interesting among the other 300-level courses on offer. As I found out, the course had more to offer than I had thought. It drew from my existing knowledge in both microeconomics and macroeconomics, and built on that with many interesting theories on trade, and how trade policies affect countries around the world.
Given that it was only a 3-week course, and that it was a 300-level course, it became pretty difficult to manage coursework, especially for me because I found the London weather to be different, and took some time to settle. But I found the Teaching Assistants and the Professors to be extremely helpful. Since the United Kingdom is still figuring its way out of Brexit, a lot of focus was given on the workings of trade the economic impact it will have.
Anoushka at LSE
London as a city is extremely picturesque and its architecture gives it quite an old world charm. Just like any metropolitan city we have seen here in India, London is bustling with activity, people rushing to work every morning. But what makes London different from my hometown of Delhi is that even though everyone goes about their own business, they are extremely conscious about others’ comfort around them.
Walking down the street, it is common to be greeted with cheery smiles and morning greetings, and this really makes your day! Everyone is courteous and polite. The traffic laws are also followed.
Must Do’s:
- If you are a foodie, don’t miss the Camden Market and Borough Market
- Harry Potter fans, Warner Studios is a big, big must! It’s advisable to book tickets in advance as the tickets are always in high demand.
- For lovers of Shakespeare and theatre, the plays at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre are wonderful.
Then there is always the usual touristy stuff: museums, parks, the London Eye, etc. are good as well.
If you are planning to go to summer school at LSE next year, do take up the LSE housing instead of Airbnb or other accommodations, because I feel that the real fun is living the hostel life; that’s where most of the interaction takes place and actual friendships develop. Overall, my experience was wonderful and London truly lived up to the expectation of the city of dreams. | https://medium.com/the-edict/summer-abroad-studying-brexit-in-london-at-lse-687a4cece17c | ['The Edict Staff'] | 2018-07-22 15:32:31.686000+00:00 | ['Summer Abroad', 'Business And Economics', 'London'] |
Sunburst/Solorigate SolarWinds Supply Chain Backdoor Attack | SOCRadar® Cyber Intelligence Inc. | Nation-state threat actors breached the supply chain of SolarWinds in order to infiltrate its customers including U.S. government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.
On December 13, 2020, the security vendor FireEye provided details on a supply chain attack campaign involving a trojanized software update of the SolarWinds Orion platform, which is used by organizations to monitor and manage IT infrastructure. FireEye named the campaign as UNC2452 and has further named the backdoor as SUNBURST (Microsoft has labeled it SOLORIGATE). SolarWinds has also issued an advisory for this critical incident.
In this blog post, we’ll provide a simplified explanation of what happened.
What happened?
Threat actors — claimed to be linked to Russia’s Hacker Group APT 29 a.k.a “Cozy Bear” — breached the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, along with other government agencies, as part of a global espionage campaign that stretches back to March 2020. The actors behind this campaign gained access to numerous public and private organizations around the world via trojanized updates to SolarWinds Orion IT monitoring and management software. The U.S. National Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
How did it happen?
The organizations were breached through the update server of SolarWinds — which is one of the most ubiquitous network management systems (NMS). This is a supply chain attack trojanizing SolarWinds Orion software updates in order to distribute malware called SUNBURST (Microsoft labeled the attack as Solorigate). According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Emergency Directive, 21–01 [1], SolarWinds Orion products (affected versions are 2019.4 through 2020.2.1 HF1) are currently being exploited by malicious actors.
When did it happen?
SolarWinds CEO says the vulnerability is related to “updates released between March and June 2020” and it involved a “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation-state.” Of course, it’s early days however the initial signs suggested that the breach was long-running and significant. New IOCs could light up a world of new compromises in the following weeks or months.
Why is SolarWinds a good target?
Because they have access to most systems on the network including critical servers. Network Management Systems (NMS) use SNMP or an installed agent to learn the status of remote devices and in addition to this, they can manage and modify configurations, etc.
Is this serious?
Yes, it’s serious because Solarwinds’ products and services are used by more than 300,000 customers worldwide including the military, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and education institutions. The security vendor FireEye says in a blog post that they detected this malicious activity at multiple entities worldwide. The victims have included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It’s highly possible that there are additional victims in other countries and verticals.
Am I affected?
If you’re a customer of SolarWinds and run the Orion software, there’s a significant security risk in your organization due to this compromise at SolarWinds. Running a compromised version of SolarWinds Orion may give the attackers full access to the device and the information stored on it. It also gives a foothold to collect credentials of privileged users and may serve as a jump-point in your network to attack other devices. If the malicious software is able to get a hold of SAML signing certificates, it may be able to make SAML tokens for even the highest privileged accounts in Azure Active Directory.
Is this attack related to a specific CVE?
Based on the information we have, currently, the answer is NO. This is a supply-chain attack where the attackers were able to manually inject malware into the SolarWinds installer using a flaw and without anyone noticing.
Any notes for customers of MSSPs?
It’s known that MSSP (Managed Security Service Providers) rely on SolarWinds’ products for remote access to servers, workstations, and network equipment however Orion is not often included in the MSSP toolset of SolarWinds. Still, it’s recommended to make sure your MSSP closely monitors the situation and takes the recommended mitigation actions as soon as possible.
What should I do at this point?
If you are running SolarWinds Orion version 2019.4 through 2020.2.1HF1, CISA recommends disabling internet access for the Orion platform or having your Orion Platform installed behind firewalls, limiting the ports and connections to only what is necessary.
The upgrade is also available to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 to ensure the security of your environment. The latest version is available in the SolarWinds Customer Portal.
If you’ve sufficient resources and threat hunting/modeling knowledge, check log retention, and archive whatever you have. You can also consider monitoring and alerting on any attempted access.
Are there any available IOCs?
You can make a quick check for the following indicators:
SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll
%PROGRAMFILES%\SolarWinds\Orion\SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll
%WINDIR%\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\assembly\tmp\\SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll
Malicious hashes
Signer: “Solarwinds Worldwide LLC”
SignerHash: “47d92d49e6f7f296260da1af355f941eb25360c4”
The existence of the file C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64
etsetupsvc.dll may indicate a compromise
Review the DNS logs for avsvmcloud[.]com5.
For more IOCs visit FireEye’s Github Repository for SUNBURST countermeasures. [5]
How can SOCRadar help?
To reduce the impact, SOCRadar’s customers can utilize Vulnerability Tracking and Threat Feeds/IOCs screens which can help you quickly take action when this kind of critical security incident happens. You can easily enter the product names within your asset inventory or keywords you’d like to monitor for vulnerability incidents and critical flaws. Then the platform will generate an email alert and deliver right into your inbox whenever there are new updates, tweets or news found across the surface, deep and dark web. IOCs associated with threat actors or APT groups can be also provided through SOCRadar API.
For protection against supply chain attacks, SOCRadar also continuously monitors code repositories like GitHub to make sure your intellectual property or important credentials are not exposed or forgotten publicly.
Get more information [1]https://cyber.dhs.gov/ed/21-01
[2]https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2020/12/13/active-exploitation-solarwinds-software
[3]https://www.solarwinds.com/securityadvisory
[4]https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/26884
[5]https://github.com/fireeye/sunburst_countermeasures | https://medium.com/@socradar/sunburst-solorigate-solarwinds-supply-chain-backdoor-attack-socradar-cyber-intelligence-inc-e0bc3ad741d3 | ['Socradar', 'Cyber Threat Intelligence'] | 2021-01-05 07:20:52.891000+00:00 | ['Cozybear', 'Sunburst', 'Supply Chain', 'Apt29', 'Solarwinds'] |
Eaton Wi-Fi smart universal dimmer review: Great on paper, less thrilling in person | Eaton’s new Wi-Fi smart dimmer comes without one common component that is virtually ubiquitous across today’s smart home landscape: A mobile app. Aiming for a “frustration-free setup,” Eaton decided to rely on the Amazon Alexa app exclusively for setup and control.
In smart home reality, of course, there’s no such thing as “frustration free,” and while not needing to download, register, and configure yet another smart home app on my phone (I have more than 100 of them currently installed) was freeing, performance problems and a lack of flexibility ultimately hampered my enthusiasm for this device.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart switches and dimmers, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.Let’s start with the hardware. The in-wall dimmer requires a neutral wire in the electrical box where it’s being installed, and it works with both single-pole and three-way installations (using either Eaton’s WACD accessory dimmer or a regular three-way switch). Paddles in three colors come with the switch, but a cover plate is not included (Eaton’s spec sheet indicates the dimmer is available in your choice of eight colors, including metallic finishes).
Christopher Null / IDG Eaton places screw terminals on three of the four sides of the device, making wiring a bit complex.
Wiring attaches via covered screw terminals, which are located on three of the four sides of the device. This makes getting everything connected a bit of a challenge, but it’s not as daunting as many switches I’ve tested. I inadvertently mixed up the line and load wires the first time out—it’s tricky because the wiring labels are on the backside of the device, where they’re hard to see—but otherwise the hardware installation was straightforward.
[ Further reading: The best smart plugs ] Mentioned in this article Leviton Decora Smart Voice Dimmer with Amazon Alexa (model DWVAA) Read TechHive's reviewSee it Physical controls include a standard button-style push pad for on/off operations and a slim, separate paddle on the right-hand side for dimming. A column of seven white LEDs on the left-hand side indicates the brightness level of the dimmer, cascading up and down when the lights are activated or turned off. There’s no mechanism to disable these LEDs, and they also illuminate when the switch is having trouble connecting to the network.
Christopher Null / IDG With no official app to configure, all interaction is done via Alexa—either the app or voice commands.
Once the dimmer is wired, the next step is as promised to turn to Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only) and the Alexa app to continue setup. You can search for the devices within the Alexa app, or just say to a nearby Echo to “add new devices,” though note that you do not need Echo hardware to use the app with the dimmer.
Initial registration completed without complaint, but from there I experienced more than a few hiccups with the dimmer, driven primarily by frequent and erratic disconnections from my Wi-Fi network. I installed the switch only 25 feet from an access point and had a strong Wi-Fi signal nearby, but time and time again the dimmer would become unresponsive, both to Alexa voice commands and the Alexa app, after disconnecting from the network abruptly.
Eaton Eaton’s Wi-Fi smart product line consists of an in-wall dimmer, dimmer accessory, switch, and outlet.
Eventually the dimmer would return—often within a few minutes—and allow me to interact with it for a short while before dropping offline again. On many occasions the dimmer would appear to be online and working, but would then stutter when commands were sent to it, sometimes taking 10 to 15 seconds to respond to a verbal on/off command. These patterns were played out repeatedly over the course of a week of testing, and I never found any rhyme or reason to its behavior.
Eaton’s smart dimmer is definitely priced on the high end even against name-brand products in this category, particularly since you need to provide your own wall plate. And while Eaton’s Wi-Fi smart product line also includes a switch and an outlet, other large manufacturers have broader plays in this space. Leviton, for example, offers a smart ceiling fan controller, a smart dimmer with an integrated Alexa-compatible smart speaker, and various plug-in products, too.
It’s possible Eaton’s product work better for other users than it did for me, it’s also worth noting that being tied to the Alexa app really doesn’t offer much flexibility to the end user. Firmware updates? Ability to customize LED behavior? These kind of features, which would normally be part of an official app, are nowhere to be found because Alexa just doesn’t support them. Perhaps it’s good news then that Eaton is indeed working on its own app—though it will be completely optional, of course.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@joe36583273/eaton-wi-fi-smart-universal-dimmer-review-great-on-paper-less-thrilling-in-person-c24b7a162ef | [] | 2020-12-24 22:00:58.715000+00:00 | ['Chargers', 'Services', 'Surveillance', 'Electronics'] |
Incentives vs Willpower: Thoughts on a podcast | Recently I listened to an episode of Forward Tilt by Praxis, a podcast where Praxis founder Isaac Morehouse shares insights and lessons on life, leadership, and creating value. Episode 28, “Don’t trust willpower, shape incentives” evaluated the cost of willpower and the benefits of aligned incentives. Basically, humans thrive in environments where the temptation to jeopardize core values is limited. Rather than get rewarded for compromising your values, create an incentive structure where your values are rewarded. This allows you to streamline your life without spending energy qestioning your morals. For a super basic example, right now, I’m creating the incentive structure of being gluten-free. To achieve this, I’m getting rid of all the gluten products in my house so there is no temptation (incentive) to give in to. I’m making it easy to be successful. As Isaac states, the concept can be applied everywhere in life. Moral of the story: create an environment where the incentives to maintain your values far outweigh the consequences of compromising them. | https://medium.com/@lillian-mell/incentives-vs-willpower-thoughts-on-a-podcast-b0c5f510ae4a | ['Lillian Mell'] | 2019-09-24 23:01:49.268000+00:00 | ['Value Creation', 'Willpower', 'Incentives', 'Values', 'Podcast'] |
At the Threshold of Transition | Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash
I am at an inflection point in my life and I find it difficult to capture my thoughts and emotions in cohesive prose, so inspired by Richard Feynman’s book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, I’m going to try to create a collage of sorts, a compilation of rambling anecdotes and reflections that when read together will hopefully provide a portrait of this liminal moment in my life and the insights I’m drawing from it.
If I’m honest, I don’t expect anyone to read these words. Writing them serves their own purpose. But taking a queue from my lovely wife, Jen, maybe one day an unborn child of ours will see this series of posts and use them as a way to connect with a past version of their father. If anyone else finds some small benefit or insight from these ramblings, that’s gravy.
An ending and a beginning
What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. T. S. Eliot
My dad passed away in June of this year, three days after my grandmother. The experience was like jumping into a cold body of water in that it was a shock to the system. When I came up for air, a lot seemed clear that wasn’t before.
For the first time in a long time, I decided to take a few weeks off from working. The combination of grief and cold-turkey withdrawal from work was eye opening. I started working with a therapist. My motto became, “don’t let this crisis go to waste.”
On the other side of the trauma, I had a different relationship to Landed, the company I helped co-found five years ago. I came to realize that I am most energized when I am creating something from nothing and that my greatest days of building at Landed were behind me. With this realization, I knew I could no longer be a full-time operator within Landed. I needed to hand over the reins.
Since August, I doubled-down on hiring. With the hiring and onboarding phase coming to a close, I will once again be facing a blank canvas in the new year.
Uncertainty in transition
After a number of sleepless nights, Jen recommended an interview by First Round Capital with Sasha Orloff. This article was hugely valuable to me. Not only did it normalize what I was going through but it also gave me some things I could take action on.
In particular, Orloff recommended making space for the transition itself. He also suggested William Bridges’ book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. I’m a slow reader but I tore through it.
One of my main takeaways from Bridges’ book was that most of us default to either dragging out an ending or jumping into a new beginning. Few of us spend enough time in the space between.
The Gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us — the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them. Oscar Wild
Listening to the voice of a thin silence
If you have ever surfed, you will understand when I say I feel like I’m paddling out to sea in a large swell — crossing wave after wave, filled with anticipation and uncertainty. All one can do is make a commitment to continue pulling themselves into deeper water.
I’ve never been very good at embracing transitions. My tendency is to jump into what is next; to grasp at my own self-importance. After all, to lean into the liminal moment is inherently unmooring. Yet, a subtle reframe of this uncanny moment is that it is a privilege.
Inspired by Orloff’s “100 days to have 100 coffee chats,” I have decided that I would spend 100 days of reflection, relationship building, and learning. Understandably, a number of people have asked me, “but really, what are you going to be doing?!” The answer is, “really, I don’t know yet.”
Maybe a few lines from Rumi can explain better than me:
Listen, and feel the beauty of your separation, the unsayable absence. There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it. Give more of your life to this listening.
Or, maybe the story of Elijah meeting God in a cave after walking 40 days and 40 nights (I Kings 19:9–13):
There he [Elijah] went into a cave, and there he spent the night…There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of Adonai; but God was not in the wind. After the wind — an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake — fire; but God was not in the fire. And after the fire — a voice of a thin silence [0]. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice addressed him: “Why are you here, Elijah?”
I believe that inspiration comes when we listen to the “voice of a thin silence” that arises from within us in these moments of transition. I will be listening.
[0] this phrase in hebrew is usually translated as a “soft murmuring sound” but I prefer this literal translation. | https://medium.com/@jessecvaughan/transition-series-part-1-4d4af956c2be | ['Jesse C Vaughan'] | 2021-01-03 17:37:53.576000+00:00 | ['Cofounders', 'Life Lessons', 'Startup', 'Career Change', 'Transitions'] |
How A Movie Went From Production To Netflix In 4 Months — Shaun Paul Piccinino | How A Movie Went From Production To Netflix In 4 Months — Shaun Paul Piccinino FilmCourage.com Follow Dec 17, 2020 · 2 min read
Film Courage: When was the production for A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS?
Shaun Paul Piccinino, Filmmaker: We started filming (I’m trying to remember the exact date) but it was it was in July.
Film Courage: Of 2020?
Shaun: July of 2020. It was a very quick turnaround from filming to release. We were working 24/7 to get it finished through post and delivered…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here). | https://medium.com/film-courage/how-a-movie-went-from-production-to-netflix-in-4-months-shaun-paul-piccinino-b341a58203ba | [] | 2020-12-17 01:26:18.727000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Filmmaking', 'Film', 'Netflix', 'Cinema'] |
3 Signs You Are Chasing Success the Wrong Way | 1 — You obsess with “to be” and neglect “to do”
“I want to be a leader, a successful entrepreneur, a famous writer. I want to be happier, smarter, sexier.”
The problem with these aspirations is that they are self-centred.
A mentality centred around your desires and dreams is an alarming sign you are heading the wrong path to success. Because people don’t care about what you want to be; they only care about what you have to offer.
Solution:
Shift your obsession from the self to whom you should serve. Sometimes all it takes to propel your career is a serious commitment to providing value to others.
Legendary success, the Barak Obama or Jeff Bezos kind of success, is only possible by working for a cause bigger than yourself. As US Aire Force legend, John Boyd, once said:
“To be somebody or to do something. In life, there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision.”
“Who do I wish to be?” is the wrong question to ask. Instead, ask yourself: “What can I improve in my community, my country, and the world?”
To be or to do? Which way will you go? | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-alarming-signs-you-are-chasing-success-the-wrong-way-f5b77d04be06 | ['Younes Henni'] | 2020-12-03 12:08:58.001000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Personal Development', 'Life', 'Motivation'] |
The most effective method to play Game. | The most effective method to play:
1: Access the site https://app.efun.tech/through the DApp program of Trust or MetaMask or on a work area program like Chrome Firefox, and so forth Players are coordinated to the default page where they can choose the an association they follow and see the rundown of games in that association.
Later the wallet is as of now associated. Players can choose a match to see the subtleties which contains the Group Predict as the default choice. There are 3 choices for players to choose as the anticipated aftereffect of the match. Subsequent to choosing the normal outcome, players need to fill in how much tokens they might want to foresee. In view of how much every one of the players previously entered, EFUN quickly shows the assessed won sum. Thusly, everybody knows about the number of tokens they could acquire if their anticipate is right.
2: After the match closes, everybody knows the outcome on the grounds that EFUN shows the 100% right information of the match. Players will know whether their anticipate is right as the genuine outcome or not. Assuming they win, every one of the badge of the players who anticipated wrongly will be moved to them dependent on the proportion of anticipated sum among the absolute accurately anticipated sum. Players need to guarantee their won sum in the match detail or in their anticipate history.
P2P predicts
The most essential sort of distributed wagering. One individual places the bet and sets the chances, and another player matches it. Players are not compelled by ominous, brought together chances.
Stage 1: Access the site EFUN by means of the DApp program of Trust or MetaMask or on a work area program like Chrome, Firefox, and so on Players are coordinated to the default page where they can choose the an association they follow and see the rundown of games in that association.
Stage 2: Players need to interface their wallet before they can join the games. Trust and MetaMask are suggested.
Stage 3: After the wallet is now associated. Players can choose a match to see the subtleties and the second tab is P2P Predicts. Players can see all the P2P predicts made by different ones.
The proprietor of a P2P anticipate should choose the group they think will be the victor of the coordinate with their favored chances. Different players can just the other group to join.While making a P2P foresee, players need to characterize the base and greatest anticipate sum. They need to quickly put how much tokens equivalent to the greatest anticipate sum to ensure that when different players get together with the most extreme sum, they have sufficient sum to send them on the off chance that different ones win.
Various players can join a similar P2P foresee, obviously, they can just choose a similar group which isn’t the group the P2P anticipate proprietor chose.
Stage 5: Players can join the made P2P predicts of different ones, which implies they will choose the other group than the chose group of the seller.
Stage 6: After the match closes, everybody knows the outcome in light of the fact that Efun shows the 100% right information of the match. Players will know whether their anticipate is right as the real outcome or not. Assuming they win, every one of the badge of the players who anticipated wrongly will be moved to them dependent on the proportion of anticipated sum among the complete accurately anticipated sum.
Players need to guarantee their won sum in the match detail or in their foresee history.On the off chance that the coordinate with the predefined chances has the eventual outcome as Draw for the two sides, the anticipated sum will be open for them to guarantee back. How much symbolic shipped off the stage will be deducted from the claimable sum.
Website: https://efun.tech/
Telegram — https://t.me/efun_community
Telegram Chanel — https://t.me/efun_channel
Twitter — https://twitter.com/efun_tech
Medium — https://efun.medium.com
Discord — https://discord.com/invite/EbcxpqN63P
Reddit — https://www.reddit.com/r/efuntoken
Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFYuLVvoTGFxvLZW8aUckAw
Author details
- Coinsbit registration Email: [email protected]
- Telegram Username: @Rudyanto
- Campaigns applied for: medium article | https://medium.com/@rudyantokwan68/the-most-effective-method-to-play-game-412b4497b7ad | [] | 2021-12-29 08:24:22.800000+00:00 | ['Bsc', 'ICO', 'Blockchain'] |
Make profits with Affiliate marketing Programs | There are plenty of ways an industrious individual can make money online. Countless people have turned to the World-Wide-Web looking for a good money-making opportunity they can accomplish from the comfort of their own home. It may seem daunting at first but you can make money online if you learn, duplicate, and most importantly have the determination to just start.
One of the most ingenious ways to supplement or even replace your income is through online affiliate programs. Online affiliate programs first sprang up in 1996 when Amazon.com started paying websites for referring customers to their site. Now in 2006 online affiliate programs are a mainstay in the e-commerce world. Even Fortune 500 companies such as Dell, Walmart, and Apple have adopted the online affiliate program marketing module.
Online affiliate programs provide home business professionals and online entrepreneurs a risk-free form of advertising to produce revenue from their websites. Affiliate marketing has become an increasingly popular home-based business opportunity because:
It requires no production costs very low start-up costs no employees No inventory No order processing No shipping No customer serviceVery limited risk
So you don’t have a website?
In many cases, you do not even need to operate a website or know any HTML to make money with online affiliate programs. With the maturation of contextual advertising through Yahoo! Publisher and Google Adwords many pay-per-click (PPC) savvy online affiliate marketers have moved away from deploying websites and focus entirely on search engine marketing (SEM). This may be a good way for some to test the waters with marketing online affiliate programs but if you’re not familiar with setting up PPC campaigns tread lightly. The cost per click can quickly add up with little return on your investment if done improperly. As for myself I still believe content is king and always will be. Having real estate on the web is much like owning a piece of property, it only matures and appreciates in value with age.
An article published by Click Z News identified that according to eBay their largest affiliate earned over $1.3 million dollars in January 2005 commissions, the largest amount yet in their online affiliate program’s history. Their top 25 affiliates averaged over $100,000 per month each and the top 100 affiliates earn almost $25,000 each per month.
With these sort of numbers buzzing around the Internet, it’s no wonder affiliate marketing is quickly becoming the numero uno money-making opportunity online. There are literally thousands of people just like you making a very handsome living from selling other people’s products online.
Don’t be fooled though. As we all know there are NO get-rich-quick programs online or offline. Like any business making money with affiliate programs takes work, dedication, and education.
For more blogs check out:
http://www.blogs4u.club/ | https://medium.com/@blogs4u/make-profits-with-affiliate-marketing-programs-76eadc36d356 | [] | 2020-12-26 08:51:52.403000+00:00 | ['Money Making Online', 'Marketing Program', 'Online Marketing', 'Online Business', 'Affiliate Marketing'] |
New CDC Breast Pump Cleaning Guidelines | If you are a breastfeeding mum who has ever breast pumped before or is still pumping. Congrats for the commitment. It is not a walk in the park to withstand the task. Day in day out, there are new guidelines gazetted to make breast pumping safe ;with less or no health hazard posed to the baby and the mum.
Uncommon and Dangerous Infection
With that said, we can’t turn a blind eye to incident where breast pumps have created health hazards to babies. For instance, a premature infant that was born in 2016. Contracted a serious infection called Cronobacter sakazakii. After she fed the baby, on breast milk extracted using a contaminated pump.
And since the baby was premature she was more exposed to the infection. Soaking the breast pump in soapy water made the water to be a breeding ground for germs. The bacteria was later transmitted to the milk the baby drunk. It’s tragic that the baby’s brain was affected due to the infection. She was infected with meningitis and had delayed global development.
The Cronobacter is a rare infection. In that the CDC has a record of 4 to 6 cases reported on per year. We can assume we have more cases that are never reported. According to Dr. Bowen, Cronobacter is capable of causing infections to babies younger than two to three years. And babies born at full term are at a greater risk of contracting Cronobacter meningitis.
Dr. Bowen further claims that this was the first incident reported of Cronobacter infection that was caused by an infection from a contaminated breast pump. Although other babies get sick after taking milk gotten from the use of contaminated pump.
The infection was so severe that it made the Center for Disease Control, the hospital officials and the county health department to do an investigation. The mother’s breast pump and collection kits were picked for the laboratory tests.
It was found that the mother was using two different kits. One of the kits was owned by the hospital. Whereas the other was her pump. The mistake the mother was doing is she was soaking her pump in soapy water for five hours. Then rinsed and air dry it.
What was she doing wrong? The mom was right to air dry the equipment. According to CDC, towel-drying the equipment can lead to transmission of germs from the towel to the equipment. The sad news is that she forgot to scrub and sanitize the pumps. This led to the growth of bacteria in some parts of the breast pump.
To reduce the chances of your baby being exposed to risk of infection. Mums should at first wash their hands before touching the breast pumps. Also, mums should consider sanitizing the pump in the dishwasher. Also the CDC recommends that mothers to wash the pumps between sessions. This practice can be tedious for working mums since they cannot access a dishwasher or wash basin to wash the pump while at work in an office.
It is true to say a lot of breastfeeding moms have heard that placing the pumps part in the fridge. In between pumping can help avoid infections. To be honest with you, the process is not safe. You can decide to refrigerate between use if the kit is not contaminated. Cleaning the kit after every use is the only safer and recommended way to avoid infection to the younger babies. Since young babies are born with weak immune system.
Best care for pump parts according to CDC’s new guidelines
Make sure your hands are clean before you star using the pump. Also use disinfectant wipes to clean outside of the pump.
2. After every session of use, dismantle the pump parts and rinse them in running water. Avoid putting them to the sink.
3. Clean the pump parts immediately after use with soapy and hot water in a basin and use a brush to scrub and clean the pump parts.
4. Rinse them with fresh water and avoid placing them on the basin.
5. Air dry with a clean dish towel, but avoid rubbing the parts with the towel. It can spread germs.
6. Rinse the basin and brush. Then leave them to air dry.
7. In case you are using a dishwasher, put it on hot water and heated drying cycle or even sanitize cycle. Do not forget to wash your hands before taking out the parts to allow them to air dry.
8. Store the pump parts in a clean area right after they dry completely.
Final Thoughts
Although the risk that accompany absconding the cleaning are great. We can’t afford to ignore the hazard that infected breast milk can cause. We should note that not all milk pump carry C. sakazakii.
Other illness can occur if the breast pump is not sanitized in the right way and according to the new guidelines issued by CDC. Thus it is advisable for breastfeeding mums to be vigilant when it comes to the hygiene of the breast pumps and the storage equipment. | https://medium.com/@brianford_30436/new-cdc-breast-pump-cleaning-guidelines-1b7506cee0fd | ['Brian Ford'] | 2019-01-06 12:52:06.232000+00:00 | ['Fatherhood', 'Motherhood', 'Parenting', 'Breastfeeding', 'Baby Products'] |
How To Remotely View Security Cameras Using The Internet | Many people want to buy security camera for monitoring their business via mobile but they dong know how to remotely view security cameras using the internet. There are many reasons why you’ll want to urge remote over your security camera system. Here is an example , it gives you the power to stay an eye fixed on your business directly from your laptop or smartphone once you are away. Also, if you would like to understand what’s happening to the one that you love once you aren’t around, you merely found out web access to security cameras and see what’s happening in your house while miles away.
You physically connect your camera to an area computer (we’ll call it the server) and install the app on both the server machine and therefore the PC (the client) from which you’re getting to access the camera remotely. Some of wireless security camera system with remote viewing options included.
Launch USB over Internet app on the server computer and open the Local USB Devices tab. Find the camera within the device list and click on “Share next” thereto .
On the client computer, you begin the software and attend the tab named Remote USB devices. Locate the safety camera there and click on “Connect” next to the device name.
From now forward, the camera are going to be displayed within the Device Manager of your remote computer love it was plugged directly into that PC. So, now you’ll use any specialized software to remotely control the safety camera as if it had been your local device.
A differently
Setting up for remote access
Here we’ll re-evaluate the way to found out your IP security cameras for remote access.
Using a Cat-5 network cable, connect your security camera’s DVR (digital video recorder) to the network router.
Open your browser and sort the local IP address of your router within the browser’s address bar to log in. you’ll ask your provider for the precise IP address of your router, but an example will appear as if this — http://192.168.1.1.
After you’ve got logged into your router’s configuration panel, you’ll then create a fanatical or static IP address for your camera within the local area network (LAN) settings of your router. Having a fanatical IP for the camera will allow you to access it directly without causing any conflicts with other devices within the network. you ought to also note of the subnet mask number, which is 255.255.255.0 in most cases. you’ll need this information afterward
What next?
Next, you would like to line up port forwarding on your router for the camera’s IP address. this may allow you to access your camera from a special device. Type the IP address of your camera and set it to forward port 80. If you would like to forward quite one port, just repeat the method for all the specified ports of your camera.
After port forwarding is complete, power on the camera to access its network menu. attend the setup settings for networking to settle on a static IP address. Enter the IP address and subnet mask number assigned to your camera. Double-check that the ports on the camera match those you forwarded through the router, then save the settings.
From outside your local area network, enter the external IP address you’re using into an internet browser. to see your external IP address, you’ll attend whatismyip.com and replica your listed IP address there. you’ll then be prompted to put in ActiveX control for your camera’s web server. After this, you ought to be ready to access your camera online.
Another way : how to remotely view security cameras using the internet
Step 1: Register for a FlexiHub account. then , choose the subscription plan that’s best for you and begin a free trial.
Step 2: Start by physically connecting your security camera to your computer(server). Then install the FlexiHub software on both the server and therefore the remote computer (client) which will be accessing the camera remotely.
Step 3: To share the safety camera over the web , simply start the software on both machines using an equivalent login credentials.
Step 4: Click ‘Connect’ on the remote computer to access a security camera.
What to try to to If you can’t Remotely View Security Cameras Using the web via Port Forwarding
Make sure your cameras are connected to the network.
Ensure all the ports of the network configuration are mapped to the web .
Open the firewall within the router to permit Internet access to the camera.
If your computer features a firewall, proxy, ad-blocking software, anti-virus software or the likes of , attempt to temporarily disable them and connect the Server again.
Check your Web Server Settings and make sure that your user account has permission to access the IP cameras.
Make sure the cameras are compatible with the online browser you’re using for remote viewing.
If you’ve got more problems about fixing your IP camera for remote viewing or watching CCTV cameras from anywhere using Internet, be happy to go away your comment below and that we would like to help. So hope you got a complete idea about how to remotely view security cameras using the internet via this post. | https://medium.com/@getlockers1/how-to-remotely-view-security-cameras-using-the-internet-264d58d97768 | ['Smart Locks'] | 2020-07-20 17:58:30.573000+00:00 | ['Safety', 'Remote Working', 'Security', 'Security Camera', 'Technology'] |
Async Nature of JavaScript | If you are new to JavaScript then you must have heard that JavaScript is an asynchronous language but what if I say you are wrong JavaScript is not asynchronous it is a synchronous language, then why is everyone saying it is Async. Let’s read the below article to understand.
What is Synchronous JavaScript?
When you write a piece of code and each code of line executes one after another, then it is a synchronous. Each step of operation waits for the previous step to execute completely. Let’s see an example below to understand this.
Fig 1. A synchronous function to calculate the sum of two number
In the Fig 1, let’s see how the code works. The code is executed as below:
The first line of code which will execute is getSum=add(2,3). This will call the function add in the first line. Then the sum of a and b is stored in constant variable sum. Then this sum is returned and it stores the value in const variable getSum Then the getSum is printed at last.
In the above we can observe that console.log is waiting for the sum to be returned. This is because JavaScript is a single threaded, only one thing can happen at single point of time in the single thread, hence it is waiting for the previous step to execute until then everything is blocked.
What is Asynchronous JavaScript?
When you write a piece of code and a particular step doesn’t wait for the previous step to execute completely, then it is asynchronous. This happens when a API is called which uses external device to get the data, then it doesn’t make sense to block the entire execution until the data comes and then to execute the next steps. Let’s see an example below to understand.
Fig 2. An asynchronous function setTimeout which prints the sum after 3s.
In the Fig 2, what do you think will be the output of the above code? Will the ‘The sum of 2 and 3 is 5’ print first followed by value of sum or will it print later. Let’s see how the code works, the code is executed as below:
The first line of code which will execute is getSum=add(2,3). This will call the function add in the first line. Then the sum of a and b is stored in constant variable sum. Now the setTimeout doesn’t run immediately, it is sent to the browser to execute that, once it is executed the callback function is sent to event queue(will discuss about this later). Then this sum is returned and it stores the value in const variable getSum Then the getSum is printed at last. Now when the call stack gets empty then the callback function comes to the main thread and will print ‘The sum of 2 and 3 is 5’ after 3s
So what happened above, why ‘The sum of 2 and 3 is 5’ printed after ‘5’ even when it was called before. It is because we have a concept of event queue and event loop which executes the async calls only after the call stack is empty.
What is Event Queue and Event Loop?
Async calls are put into event queue or callback queue, which runs after the call stack becomes empty i.e after the main thread has finished processing all the operations, so that these async calls do not block the next javascript codes from running.
Fig 3. How Event loop and Callback Queue works in JS Engine
In the Fig 3, these callback queues are sent back to the main thread once all the codes are executed inside it and then these queued codes are executed. The event queues are sent back to the main thread with the help of event loop. The event loop continuously runs and check if the main thread has become empty or not, as soon as the main thread becomes empty the queues are pushed to the call stack.
Conclusion
As we read above, it proves JS is a synchronous, blocking and single threaded language. It is the external API’s which make the language behave asynchronous and to overcome these there is a concept of event queue and event loop. These things are controlled by JavaScript engine and not the Javascript itself. The browsers have the engine, V8 is one of the most used engine. | https://medium.com/@ankitsinghania1993/async-nature-of-javascript-d3afb71b1c72 | ['Ankit Singhania'] | 2021-02-25 15:35:09.696000+00:00 | ['Asynchronous', 'JavaScript', 'Event Loop'] |
Leveraging Remote Work with Laurel Farrer | Leveraging Remote Work with Laurel Farrer
Episode 42
How do we leverage remote work in our businesses and on our teams? In this episode of Programming Leadership, Marcus talks with Laurel Farrer, CEO and founder of Distributing Consulting, about the challenges facing remote workers and their managers. Despite being around for decades, there are still many managers pushing back against remote work. According to Farrer, this is due to myths surrounding it as well as managers not utilizing it effectively. She wants people to know that remote work, when properly understood and executed, can create more productive teams, departments, and companies.
Show Notes
Understanding why isolation is such a challenge for remote workers (2:31)
How managers can spot when isolation is affecting one of their remote workers (6:13)
The disconnect between on-site managers and remote workers (10:00)
Advice for managers wanting to add remote workers to a colocated team (14:34)
Helpful mindset shifts for managers averse to remote workers (18:03)
The challenges facing remote teams that do knowledge work (22:00)
Turnover and termination on remote teams (25:09)
Links
Distribute Consulting: distributeconsulting.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurel_farrer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurel-farrer/
Remote Work Association: https://www.remoteworkassociation.com/
This podcast: www.programmingleadership.com
O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference: http://oreilly.com/sacon/blankenship
Transcript
Announcer: Welcome to The Programming Leadership podcast, where we help great coders become skilled leaders, and build happy, high performing software teams.
Marcus: Welcome to this episode, I am so happy to have Laurel Farrer with me today. And Laurel is an expert on distributed and remote work, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. But there’s gonna be a twist. Laurel, welcome to the show.
Laurel: Thank you so much, Marcus. I’m so happy to be here.
Marcus: Now Laurel, you own Distribute Consulting, right? Give us a quick overview of what Distribute Consulting does and how it helps companies.
Laurel: Wonderful. So, we are a traditional management consulting firm, just like Gallup and McKinsey and Bain and Accenture. In fact, we work with those brands a lot. So, we are helping businesses do business better, but with the niche and specialty of remote work and virtual distribution, virtual infrastructures, etc. So, yeah, we help enable mobile workforces, and we do that all the way from entrepreneurs all the way up to enterprises, and it’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of air quote, “remote work consultants” out there. Traditionally, those are more leadership trainers or team coaches, but we are consultants in the traditional sense of the word.
Marcus: So, I want to start off with asking kind of an unintuitive question, and that is, everybody’s so excited about remote work these days. I mean, at least —
Laurel: It’s very buzzy. [laughing].
Laurel: Right, it’s very buzzy, but is there a dark side to all this remote work? Are there problems that occur or is there kind of a negative aspect to it that you see?
Laurel: Absolutely. Remote work is young. It’s in its infancy. It’s not quite as in its infancy as some people think, so, with all this buzz and media attention, a lot of people think that this is a new and emerging trend. That’s certainly not true. Telecommuting, teleworking, it’s been around since the 80s. So, we do have a good history of 30, 40 years under our belt of knowing how this works, but, 30, 40 years in the world of business and economy and industry that is very, very young. So, of course, there’s a lot of things that are very new, and we are still troubleshooting a lot within the industry. So, one that you hear a lot about is isolation. We’re still working through that and really understanding what the source of that isolation is and looking at all of the different socio-economic factors of that. So, yeah, isolation is very, very common, that complaint that we hear from people when they first go remote.
Marcus: And I was going to ask for the context, you sort of hinted at it there. So this is where a person feels isolated from other people, from the rest of the team or from corporate. So the individual or maybe it’s everybody if it’s a fully distributed company, this feeling of being alone is a problem?
Laurel: Yes. So, there’s a lot to unpack here. But what’s happening is exactly like you said, that we’re going from a highly social, engaged environment, which is an office space with a lot of people around all the time, and then we’re going to a home office or a co-working space, or even just a coffee shop or a cafe, and we’re just independent. We don’t have that physical proximity and accessibility to our colleagues like we used to. So, there’s a lot to unpack here, like I said that, yes, people are feeling isolated. However, the multiple facets of this are that, number one, obviously we have a problem in which as a society, our friendships and connections are exclusively coming from work. That’s a sociological problem, that is not a professional problem. So, when you take work away, it really shouldn’t have that much of an impact, you should say, “Oh, I don’t get to see my work friends as much as I used to, but I still have my family, my community friends, my volunteering position, whatever. I have my social hobbies. It is that one branch of my social life that has changed the dynamic of.” However, people when that’s taken away because we’ve been spending so much time at work, when that’s taken away, all of a sudden, you have no social life, and people are really feeling serious mental health symptoms because of this isolation. So, that’s a conversation that we like to fuel on the worker and individual professional sides is we need to diversify our social streams and we need to learn and remember how to make friends outside of work.
Marcus: This got really deep —
Laurel: Yeah, [laughing].
Marcus: — because I certainly can relate to having most of the people I hung out with on the weekends, or in the evenings or went to their kid’s birthday parties, or, I don’t play golf, but you might get the idea. Those were my work colleagues. And that’s kind of the way I thought it was supposed to be. But you’ve described this as a problem now.
Laurel: [laughing]. Well, yeah, I mean, just as a society, I mean, Industry and Commerce in general, we’ve really fueled these traditions of having a very fun and engaging place to work, like, this is culture, right? These are perks and benefits like you want to work here because we’ve got the showers on site, and we provide a free breakfast and we provide happy hours after work. And so, we’ve learned how to have a work-life balance within work. And all of a sudden, what we’re not realizing is that instead of spending 6 to 8 hours a day at work, we’re spending 8 to 10 to 12 hours a day at work, and it is our entire social life and then our entire personal ecosystem is living all within work. So yeah, that’s why remote work is such a big proponent of work-life balance is that we’re trying to keep work, work, and life, life and not integrate them, but balance them.
Marcus: So, if somebody is listening and they have remote workers, how can they become aware of when isolation is becoming a problem?
Laurel: Yes. Okay. So, there’s so many different channels to this conversation. Another channel to discuss, that will answer your question is that isolation is not just social, it’s also informational. So, as a worker, we don’t necessarily miss sitting next to somebody, we miss celebrating with somebody, or we miss being able to ask somebody a question at a moment’s notice. We missed that accessibility and that dependability that our network provides. So, to more specifically answer your question, to identify isolation, people are either going to be silent. This is a whole new level of communication. [laughing]. We’re getting really deep here, Marcus. So, this is another topic that we can talk about in a minute is the difference of communication in a virtual environment versus in a physical environment. But we don’t have the opportunity to see somebody sitting at their cubicle looking sad and confused. So, we have to watch for other factors, so that can be them ghosting or just being really silent all day long on our slack channels, they’re just — they’re lost and so they’re lost visibly in our virtual world as well. It can be that they’re asking too many questions like they’re obviously missing some things, they are not capturing the vision of the project that you’re working on. So, if you’re getting frustrated with how many questions they’re asking, take a step back and say, “Alright, let’s talk about this. You are obviously isolated from something: the vision or the workflow or something.” They can also just be looking in the wrong places. And so, as managers, it’s our responsibility to over-communicate to keep communication channels very, very open, because it’s by asking them questions or them asking us questions that we really identify and keep track of somebody’s status, whether they are informationally isolated or not. So, communication is key, and we watch those new social factors and new nonverbal cues in a virtual environment to see how they’re doing.
Marcus: Yeah, it seems like the challenge is, the nonverbal. Like, on one hand, saying nothing might mean I’m really productive and so deep in thought, or saying nothing might mean I am so unhappy in my job and feeling really alone, and frustrated, and lost. And it just dawns on me that in those moments when we are feeling that way, that’s probably the least time when we’re going to put a sad emoji in slack.
Laurel: Exactly. And it’s our responsibility as managers to create the channels and to create the culture in which people are comfortable asking questions and comfortable being transparent and vulnerable about how they’re feeling. So, if they are lost and confused and frustrated and isolated, and they feel like they’re going to get reamed from their manager by being unproductive or being behind schedule, then it’s only going to fuel the problem. However, if we can create a culture of transparency and vulnerability, and so that they say, “Hey, look, I’m really struggling, I need some help. I’m missing something,” and then they can explain the entire problem in a safe place, then that’s when you as a manager can say, “Oh, it just sounds like you are missing a link to this. Here it is.” Five minutes later the problem Is done.
Marcus: Okay, I have a question.
Laurel: [laughing].
Marcus: I have the impression a lot of managers and a lot of workers think that remote work sounds pretty great and pretty easy. Do you think we acknowledge how hard it is to be a remote worker?
Laurel: So, it’s kind of a complicated answer, because remote work is very complex and very different. But it’s also very simple and very much the same. So, if we come into remote work, understanding what those differences are, those differences are very small, but they’re very impactful. So, that’s why and how it can be both at the same time. So, if we understand what those differences are, how we need to update our, like we were just talking, about our nonverbal communication, our awareness, how to prevent isolation, and how to prevent burnout. If we can understand what those red flags are, and how to prevent them and a long term vision, then it’s a very, very easy change. However, when you don’t understand what those changes are, and you just wing it, and you just kind of go home with their laptop and keep your fingers crossed, and think that everything’s going to be the same as it was in an office, that’s when you’re going to have problems with sustainability, and that’s why we see the classic cases of large companies having to retract their policies, is because they’re trying to manage virtual operations in the same way that they were managing physical operations, and those are two different things.
Marcus: Do you think we should be giving people remote worker training on how to become a productive, happy remote worker?
Laurel: Absolutely. In fact, I consult universities on this topic. How can we be incorporating virtual collaboration dynamics directly into classroom experiences? Because this is the future of work. This is where people are collaborating. And honestly, it doesn’t matter if we’re a 100 percent distributed company or if we are a hybrid company, this is just how work is being done now. Our clients are halfway across the world. We’re operating in a global economy, so, it doesn’t matter if your coworker is six cubicles away or six countries away, you’re still emailing them, you’re still pinging them in the project management software. You’re still collaborating as a virtual team, regardless of proximity. So, yes, it is absolutely essential that our incoming workforce get trained on virtual collaboration, on digital communication, on virtual professionalism. These are all new topics for the future of work and yes, they absolutely need to be trained. We need to be more bold and comfortable with the fact that this future work conversation that we’re having so much, it’s not forthcoming; it’s not the future of work; it is the present of work, and we need to be much much more aggressive in preparing our workforce accordingly.
Marcus: Hmm. Now we typically talk about software teams, or people, or companies on this show. But I’m curious, from your perspective, what industries are really starting to push forward in remote work in a really active way?
Laurel: Yeah, so tech, obviously, like you said. This is where remote work was very incubated. Because of the workflows and processes, it was just very compatible, and so people were already recognizing that they were working independently, and so it was a natural segue. And we were able to incubate it, test all of the processes and really watch in pilot if it was possible to operate as a fully distributed team. Now we know that that is possible, and so we’re able to extend it to other industries. So, healthcare is really coming up fast, accounting is really big, the entire financial world. And we also see arts and entertainment. So, think of graphic designers and video editors. I mean, all of our tools and products and services are becoming more and more dependent on computers anyway, and that’s essentially the only criteria of if a job is remote compatible or not is, does it use a computer as its primary tool? If yes, then it’s remote compatible. So, the more that computers are used in all industries, even manufacturing and engineering, I mean, the more that we see computer use and artificial intelligence and automation, the more roles and systems become remote compatible.
Announcer: Tap into the insights and lessons of leading experts from companies like Target, the New York Times, and Comcast, connect with like-minded peers, and go in-depth with hands-on training courses in hot topics like cloud computing, microservices, and leadership.
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If you want to successfully update your legacy systems, hear more about industry-specific strategies, or just dive into the most important emerging trends in the software architecture space, this is the event for you. Reserve your spot today and enjoy risk-free cancellation before May 15 by visiting oreilly.com/sacon/blankenship
Marcus: Hmm. Okay, let’s turn to the manager’s perspective. I know some managers who have on-site teams and because of hiring, they’ve told me, “I would love to hire globally, because it’s so hard to hire in my town,” they’ve said. But they’re concerned, they’re resistant to this idea, what will it be like to have a remote employee, and what if that person is just watching Netflix all day, I would have no idea what they were doing. What advice do you have for a manager who’s contemplating adding remote people to an already co-located team?
Laurel: Yes. So, this is actually the level of our entire society in which the adoption of remote work is being blocked. So, the workers are —
Marcus: Uh-oh.
Laurel: Yeah, I know. [laughing]. It just got real, real quick.
Marcus: I know. What’s gonna happen here? You heard it first on this show.
Laurel: So, the workers are hungry for it. They obviously recognize how much this would impact their personal lives, their commute times, their personal savings account, it would really benefit workers immensely. So, the workers are really putting forth a lot of pressure for scaled adoption. Now we’re entering the phase where executives are much more open to the idea as well. They’re saying, “Well, I’ve been traveling all of this time. I guess I’m a remote worker too.” And so, they are more familiar with the processes, and they are used to being the innovative thought leaders, and so they’re anxious to do something that will make them look good. So, the executives are really coming around as well. It’s the mid-level managers that are really digging their heels in, and understandably so. I mean, you and I have both been in this position before, that the brunt and the weight of responsibility when it comes to change management really falls on this level. So, when a company adopts a standardized remote work policy, and there’s a lot of change management associated with the tools and processes and methods, that falls on the shoulders of these mid-level managers, and so they’re saying, “No, that’s one more thing that I’m responsible for.” So, what is important to note about the change to remote work is that it’s still work. And like I said before, not much changes. The dynamics of just how we operate businesses right now, in this day and age is very, very virtually compatible. And so, you’re still going to be communicating with your team a lot. It’s that our dependency as managers on physical and sensory criteria that we’ve just grown used to, it’s ingrained into our entire souls as managers, right? Like, that’s how we got to be managers, is we arrived to the office early, and we left late, we were burning the midnight oil. That’s how we became managers. And so it’s hard for us to change that mindset of “No, I have to show that I’m doing a good job. I have to make phone calls look busy, giving the powerful handshake, wearing the power tie.” All of these traditions that we were taught in college were all based on physical sensory experiences. So, there’s a lot of mindset shift that has to happen. [laughing].
Marcus: There are. Yeah, I’m smiling here, because yeah, I’m envisioning a variety of things. But continue. Yeah, what mindset shifts would be helpful for these managers who are finding it really overwhelming?
Laurel: Yeah. So, the big shift, and this is a very oversimplified explanation. So, it’s important to know as I go into this explanation that remote work is a tool to be leveraged. It’s completely customizable. That’s a big mistake most managers make and assume, is that there’s no gray area. It’s black or white, you’re fully distributed and you’re the next Automattic or InVision, or you can only grant one or two employees flexibility based on maternity leave or illness or something like that. There’s not really anywhere in between. That’s completely incorrect. It can and should be leveraged in order to capitalize and fuel the objectives of the business, and of the department, and of the team. So, managers are much, much, much more empowered in this process than they think they are. So they can say, “My team, the dynamics of my team are, we get some great collaborative think tank sessions done on Mondays, and then we work on them for the rest of the week, and then we cycle back again on Monday. We regroup, do more think tank, and then we all separate and work on them independently.” In that circumstance, by all means, have everybody on site and get that great in-person dynamic on Mondays, and then send everybody to work from a location that empowers them and fuels their creativity for the rest of the week. That also might be in the office, it might be at home, it might be a co-working space. Remote work is just about fueling the conversation that the location is irrelevant to the work. And so, we want people to leverage the location, and work from a place that fuels their personality or their workflows and styles. So, it doesn’t mean that you’re sending away from the office, it just means that they don’t have to be in the office. So, that being said, to circle back to your original question, how do they feel more comfortable in making this transition? It’s about busting those myths and changing the mindset around that physical sensory experience. We don’t need to hear phones ringing, see people working in the office to know that they’re productive. We as managers, we also came from the generation of solitaire, and Minecraft, and Candy Crush. We all know that being in an office does not mean that you were being productive in an office. So, we need to shift our tracking and reporting methods to be based more on accomplishment instead of activity. And as soon as we do that, and we update our workflows, update our reporting structures to be more results based, all of a sudden that gives the manager much, much, much more opportunity to take their hands off of the production cycle, and just focus more on the results of the production cycle. The very simplified and classic example that I give is that I asked somebody to wash my car. I don’t need to know where you washed the car, I don’t need to know when you washed the car, I don’t need to know if it was done in the parking lot, or what kind of soap you used. I don’t care. I just want to know that my car is clean by five o’clock when you tell me to pick it up. And at that time, I will very much be able to see if you washed my car, and if you did a good job, and if I can depend on you to do it again. So, it’s really shifting our support as managers. It’s providing support during production, and then really being involved and being focused on the delivery phase.
Marcus: Yeah, it’s interesting with — I love the car analogy. With the car, it’s pretty easy to tell when you pick it up. Is it clean or is it dirty? Is the inside as clean as I expected it to be? So you can observe the results of that. But I feel like, with some kinds of knowledge work, especially knowledge work that has handoffs, that has a longer process than just one day, it can be a challenge to observe work in process and to understand what’s getting done. And I’m thinking of everything from software, to accounting, to all kinds of — I’m sure HR has projects that take many months. And so on any given period of time, how can we — like, it seems like we have to have new conversations about what’s expected, and how we check in with one another, and how we maybe create metrics for the transparency of work.
Laurel: Exactly. It’s all about that, and that’s why communication came up earlier in our conversation, and why communication will always come up around remote work. It really boils down to trust, culture, and communication. All of my conversations — ever — always boil down to trust, culture, and communication. And this is exactly why that we need to trust during the process, but also be communicating during the process. When we’re results focused, it does not mean that we take our hands off and never talk to our team until they deliver. It means that we need to be accessible and available and supporting them in different ways. As opposed to us directly managing and controlling the results during the production phase, we are supporting them as they manage the results, because that’s self management, that’s remote work, is you don’t have a manager sitting next to you, watching you, supervising you. So, on the worker side there’s so much more responsibility and so much more autonomy, both good and bad, that is required when you work off-site. Somebody has to manage the work, and if you don’t have a manager sitting next to you managing the work, then that means you have to. So, that’s another big misconception of remote workers is they think, “Woohoo, I’m free.” And it’s like, No, no, no, no, no, there’s so much more responsibility when you’re working off-site. You have to be responsible for maintaining your energy through the day, prioritizing your tasks, understanding what’s next, preventing burnout. All of that is now up to you, you don’t have the infrastructure of an office to manage that for you. So, yes, the new dynamic of managers, and this is why people operations is really coming into the limelight — or into the spotlight — in the HR world is because our new role as managers is that the people are managing the results instead of the managers managing the results. But now the managers are indirectly fueling results by supporting the people. So, people and operations are much, much more unified and cohesive than they have been traditionally.
Marcus: Hmm. Okay, well, I want to ask — I’ve got a burning question here. I want to talk about the T-word: turnover. Is turnover on remote teams higher? After all, it seems like once you get all your stuff in an office, a picture of your wife, or your kids, or your husband, or your family and you get your potted plant, you think about leaving, you’re like, “I gotta haul all that stuff back out.” But if you’re working from home, do people turn over faster when they’re remote workers?
Laurel: Oh, good question. This is a really great statistic, is that retention actually increases by 70 percent.
Marcus: What?
Laurel: Yeah. In remote teams, remote work is often seen as an operations strategy. Absolutely not. It’s a talent acquisition strategy. So, your recruiting costs are drastically lowered and your retention is, I mean, through the roof. So, yeah, people enjoy the flexibility. All of the reasons that they usually have to leave a job; my spouse got a new job in a new city, or the commute time is too long, or I’m just feeling burned out, or I need to be able to pick up my kids when they come home from school. Those daily life decisions that often fuel a reason to leave a job, those are resolved with flexibility. And so yeah, they are able to stay in their job, regardless of where they live, or what their personal schedule looks like. And in so doing, they are also so grateful for that flexibility, they feel so much more valued as an employee, the employee experience just soars, and as a result, they feel much much more loyal to the brand, and so they stay with the company much longer.
Marcus: Okay, I’m curious if you have statistics on the other T-word: termination. And that is, do people get fired at a different rate when they’re a remote employee, then if they’re not a co-located person?
Laurel: I don’t have a solid number on it, but the last number that I heard is that that also decreases by 30 to 40 percent, because — it’s the same reason, right? We are not… we’re putting more empowerment and more responsibility into the hands of the employee, and so they — how do I say this in a politically correct way — managers often are terminating employees because they are not fulfilling expectations. However, a really good sound compliant remote work policy articulates expectations much, much more than previous employment, right? We have to say that, we have to articulate expectations of you, you will be online during this time and this time, and you will be accessible in these channels. We have to give that checklist just for compliance reasons. And so, when workers have that very clear checklist of exactly what is expected of them, then there are very few opportunities for them to fall through on that. And they also are empowered more to control their outcomes because of this results-based tracking. So, if they don’t like something about the process, they feel very micromanaged, there’s much less opportunity for that to happen now. There’s also less opportunity for discriminatory termination as well because everybody’s results are equal. And everybody is equally measured. There are very few opportunities for discrimination to be happening at all.
Marcus: This has been an amazing interview. Thank you so much. Where can people find you online and engage with your work?
Laurel: Yeah, DistributeConsulting.com is my management consulting firm. I’ve got a team of the world’s best thought leaders and experts that were all collected there, and anxious to help managers as well as businesses leverage and capitalize on remote work. But I’m always happy to talk about remote work in any capacity, so you can also find me on social media @LaurelFarrer. I’m usually the only one so it’s easy to find me. LinkedIn and Twitter are our strongest channels. And then you can also find me at the Remote Work Association which is a nonprofit organization that I’m the founder of.
Marcus: Wonderful Laurel. Thank you so much for talking with us today.
Laurel: Thank you so much, Marcus, it has been so fun.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to Programming Leadership. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at www.programmingleadership.com and on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
The post Leveraging Remote Work with Laurel Farrer appeared first on Marcus Blankenship. | https://medium.com/programming-leadership/leveraging-remote-work-with-laurel-farrer-2ffb774b9305 | ['Marcus Blankenship'] | 2020-04-16 07:14:48.327000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Management', 'Software Development', 'Startup', 'Technology'] |
Google Cloud Platform — Serverless Slack Bot | Background
Finding sample code for implementing a serverless Slack bot should be easy - serverless computing is almost a perfect match for the requirements for a Slack bot:
However being unable to find a complete easy-to-follow guide to create a Slack bot that could run serverless via a Google Cloud Function hello_bot was created to fill the gap. The bot is minimalistic and serves as a starting point for further development. It is sufficient to demonstrate what is needed to align all the moving parts to get a functional result.
Version 1 of the bot is python where the heart of the bot is a threaded Cloud Function which aims to deliver a response within the 3 second window required by Slack and subsequently allows more complicated request handling to be completed in the main thread. Additionally the function expects and verifies the presence of the Verification Token created as part of the application setup.
Version 2 is a more complicated implementation which more consistently handles the three second Slack acknowledgement time requirement and has two components, one implemented in go and one in python .
Code overview
hello_bot v1 is a minimal Slack app that will respond to a single command ( hello ) with a random greeting from a list of 50 languages. Any other commands will give a generic error message.
The repository related to this article can be found at https://github.com/servian/gcp-serverless-slackbot
The main code section of the bot is simple:
Perform basic checks - confirm it was a POST request and the appropriate Slack token was present
request and the appropriate Slack token was present Create a thread to handle the request
Return a 200 response
def hello_bot(request):
if request.method != 'POST':
return 'Only POST requests are accepted', 405 verify_web_hook(request.form)
response_url = request.form.get('response_url') # Create a thread to handle the request and respond immediately
# A response time of longer than 3 seconds causes a timeout
# error message in Slack
thr_response = Thread(target=handle_request,
args=[request.form['text'], response_url])
thr_response.start() # return empty string to reduce spam
return ''
Using a thread to handle the main processing of the bot should allow a quicker response to get back to Slack to acknowledge receipt of the request while handling the request over a longer execution time.
Deploying hello_bot
To deploy the steps are:
Create the Slack App
Enable Incoming Webhooks
Deploy the Cloud Function
Create the Slash command
This deployment order allows the interdependent components to be set up as simply as possible. The slack app creates a webhook and secret token which are then used as part of the configuration information of the cloud function. The endpoint URL of the cloud function is then made available to be called as the handler for the slash command in Slack.
Create the Slack App
Go to https://api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App
2. Fill in the app name and pick a workspace
Enable Incoming Webhooks
From Config Options, select Incoming Webhooks
2. Turn on Activate Incoming Webhooks and click Add New Webhook to workspace
3. Select the channel to which the bot is to be added and click Allow
4. Copy the provided Webhook URL and update the value in config.json
5. Copy the Verification Token from the Basic Information page and update the value in config.json
Deploy the Cloud Function
1. Initialise gcloud as required for the target project and then deploy the Cloud Function:
gcloud functions deploy hello_bot --runtime python37 —-trigger-http
2. Once deployed, copy the URL from the output or the web console:
3. Update the function permissions to grant allUsers the Cloud Functions Invoker role. This makes the function publicly available to be invoked from Slack:
Create the Slash Command
Click Slash Commands and then Create New Command
2. Populate the information and paste the URL created when deploying the Cloud Function
3. As the permissions have changed click reinstall the app to re-add it to the workspace
4. Try it out with /hello_bot hello or /hello_bot randomstring
So here we have a working serverless slack bot: | https://medium.com/weareservian/google-cloud-platform-serverless-slack-bot-c3b3d1c43330 | ['Wade Francis'] | 2020-06-01 04:27:28.341000+00:00 | ['Slack', 'Gcp', 'Cloud Functions', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Slackbot'] |
TIPS FOR A GOOD NIGHT SLEEP, HEALTH, AND WELLNESS | In this article, you will get some information about good HEALTH, Good night’s sleep and you will get benefits.
You know that the biggest problem of health is good night sleep, which means that if you do not sleep well at night,
You may have different types of disease. And if you want to stay healthy, then it is very important to complete sleep at night.
Tell me one thing. Is this happen to you, like you have made many plans in the afternoon but you haven’t succeeded because your mind is not stable. because you haven’t slept at night.
It’s a very big issue, isn’t it? It happens to me several times Especially after being a mother of two,
Good health, good night sleep
That is a prevalent problem. And if you are a mother, you will be completely related. So today, it’s sleeping time. It’s night. And suddenly I thought, I should discuss the techniques to sleep better at night.
The main threat to better sleep is caffeine, which means coffee. A large amount of coffee is present in the tea also. So, I love coffee very much. I used to have it 3–4 times a day.
Read more | https://medium.com/@mmansur004/tips-for-a-good-night-sleep-health-and-wellness-69a4da69cc56 | ['Mansur Hussain'] | 2020-12-25 17:33:52.272000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Goodnight', 'Health', 'Sleeping', 'Sleep Disorders'] |
The Sharing Economy + AI Assistants in China — my short trip in May, 2017 | Trips to China
I take quarterly weekend trips to China to stay in the loop of the tech scene there. It’s substantially different every time I visit.
My last trip was in Q4, 2016. Thanks to Kai-Fu’s invitation, I had the pleasure to visit the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, and it was one of the best trips I’ve had. Needless to say, everything was confidential on that trip so I can’t really talk about it.
One takeaway is that Foxconn is one of the top robotics companies in the world, I was very impressed by the operational efficiency and scale. I’ve also decided to spend more time looking into factory AI and robotics going forward (more on that later).
Recently, I took another trip to Shanghai and Beijing; here are some observations.
The sharing economy
The biggest change this time compared to the last was that almost everyone on the streets of Beijing was using a “bike-share.” Ofo and Mobike were the most popular, followed by Bluegogo on the streets of Beijing. Even my mom uses them. In fact, she already has 3 apps. She calls them the yellow, orange and blue bikes.
The American news media has just started to pick up on this phenomenon (a little bit late). At the same time, at least 5–6 bike sharing companies have entered the U.S. market to my personal knowledge. It’s easy to think this might be the biggest thing in the U.S. as well, following the success of the Chinese biking unicorns, but the two markets are substantially different.
Here are some of the big ones for American investors to think about:
Do people’s behaviors need to change? Bikes as transportation has a long and illustrious history in China. There are bike-only lanes in most cities. In places where the bike lanes aren’t so obvious, people ride them on side walks all the time. Bikes as transportation and last mile delivery is natural and organic for Chinese citizens. How many people in the United States use bikes as transportation? Where do they ride the bikes, in lanes shared with cars?
Bikes as transportation has a long and illustrious history in China. There are bike-only lanes in most cities. In places where the bike lanes aren’t so obvious, people ride them on side walks all the time. Bikes as transportation and last mile delivery is natural and organic for Chinese citizens. How many people in the United States use bikes as transportation? Where do they ride the bikes, in lanes shared with cars? Sharing helmets? No one wears helmets in China (masks and umbrellas are in fact more common for bikers than helmets). How many cities in the United States do not require helmets? How would you feel about using a helmet dozens of others have sweated into?
No one wears helmets in China (masks and umbrellas are in fact more common for bikers than helmets). How many cities in the United States do not require helmets? How would you feel about using a helmet dozens of others have sweated into? Parking? You can practically park bikes anywhere on the street (technically, it’s not allowed, but I’ve seen bikes literally everywhere in my short trip to Beijing including in the middle of a highway). Biking companies are expected to put major work into negotiating with cities to solve the parking problems. Will US cities live with these problems — even in the short-term?
You can practically park bikes anywhere on the street (technically, it’s not allowed, but I’ve seen bikes literally everywhere in my short trip to Beijing including in the middle of a highway). Biking companies are expected to put major work into negotiating with cities to solve the parking problems. Will US cities live with these problems — even in the short-term? Chinese investors invest in biking companies for the payment entry . One of the main reasons Chinese tech giants backed the bike share companies in China is that it’s a relatively low-friction entry point for new wallet customers. Users only pay a negligible amount of money to use a bike, but the account creation and linking of bank accounts is what these payments giants sought. This makes a lot of sense, because it’s getting harder and harder to convince investors that they’ll break even based on the fees charged by the bike alone — the competition is so intense that the bike share companies are almost paying users to use the bikes. I paid zero to ride hours of bikes switching across multiple companies. Does this logic make any sense in the U.S. context?
. One of the main reasons Chinese tech giants backed the bike share companies in China is that it’s a relatively low-friction entry point for new wallet customers. Users only pay a negligible amount of money to use a bike, but the account creation and linking of bank accounts is what these payments giants sought. This makes a lot of sense, because it’s getting harder and harder to convince investors that they’ll break even based on the fees charged by the bike alone — the competition is so intense that the bike share companies are almost paying users to use the bikes. I paid zero to ride hours of bikes switching across multiple companies. Does this logic make any sense in the U.S. context? Exit strategy. Tech innovators in China expect to get acquired by one of the tech giants (all the giants want to enter the same hot market); if a company does well, the chances of them getting to a handsome exit is pretty high. This might be a positive sign for Chinese and U.S. investors looking to invest in bike share companies. Does anyone think this way here in the U.S.?
As the bike share market starts to peak in China, other kinds of sharing economy concepts have been introduced; for example — sharing phone chargers, umbrellas, gym passes, you name it.
It seems like everything is becoming cheaper and more accessible to anyone anywhere. This is a picture of a single-person KTV booth for people who need a fix on-the-go.
The powerful personal assistants
I’m a fan of human-powered AI and AI assistants. If you live in the Silicon Valley, you’ve probably heard of or have used one of the personal AI assistants (Amy, Clara, Magic or Fin).
My friend recommended a China-version called Lai Ye before this trip, backed by Sequoia China which made my life much easier (I have no relationship with Lai Ye).
Lai Ye is different from the U.S. AI assistants. It does pretty much everything I can think of: on-demand coffee, scheduling via WeChat, booking cars, finding maids, sending packages, procuring on-demand massages, booking plane and train tickets etc. etc.
I used Lai Ye 3 times and was impressed each time. Lai Ye integrates with popular services so when I asked for coffee, it showed me a menu of different coffee options from Starbucks and asked me to pick one. Lai Ye assigned the task to a worker who delivered the coffee to me in person. The whole experience end-to-end took 19 mins; the transaction on my side took less than a minute.
As a consumer, it made a big difference for me because…
It removed the friction of setting up the app and the payment method for every app I need use. I now have one interface and one payment channel and I can enjoy every service. This is particularly useful given the ever-evolving landscape of apps.
It was super-efficient and reduced the time I needed to spend on things like calling a provider, finding a delivery window that worked for me, putting it on my calendar, etc. With the app, products and services come to me.
The question, of course, is whether they’ll be able to provide consistently impressive level of services when they’re trying to run a profitable business. I only used it 3 times.
I suspect they have significant operational challenges especially on the delivery side during rush hour. Doing one task well (e.g. scheduling) is already hard, let along doing 5–10 of them well. One thing they do very well is that they integrated with many products/services and standardized a big portion of each task (the picture below shows their partners).
Much like Slack, the more integrations they have, the more useful they become. | https://medium.com/startup-grind/the-sharing-economy-ai-assistants-in-china-my-short-trip-in-may-2017-1dc8815fdc90 | ['Lan Xuezhao'] | 2017-06-13 09:03:12.617000+00:00 | ['China', 'Tech', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Transportation', 'Sharing Economy'] |
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW WHEN YOU START LOSING YOUR HAIR | Hair loss
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW WHEN YOU START LOSING YOUR HAIR
Hair loss is also known as alopecia or baldness, which means the loss of hair from part of the head or the body. It can be temporary or permanent. The severity can vary from a small area to the entire body. Causes can be as a result of heredity, hormonal changes, medical conditions or normal part of aging. Anyone can loss hair on the head but it is most common with men.
Baldness refers to the excessive loss of hair from your scalp. Hair loss with age is the most common cause of baldness. Some people run their hair untreated and unhidden while others cover it up with hairstyles, makeup, hats or scarves. And some choose one of the treatments available to prevent further hair loss or restore growth.
Common types of hair loss include:
· Male pattern hair loss : caused by loss of combination of genetic and male hormones
· Female pattern hair loss: cause is unclear
· Alopecia areata: caused by autoimmune
· Telogen effluvium (the thinning of hair): caused by physical or psychological stressful event, it’s also common after pregnancy.
Signs and symptoms of hair loss may be:
· Gradual thinning on top of head: this is the most common type and it affects people as they age. Women often have a broadening of the part of their hair while men hairs recede at the hairline on the forehead.
· Circular or patchy bald sports: hair loss can be on the scalp, beard or eyebrows.
· Sudden loosening of hair: combing or washing of hair my cause the hair to come out in handful.
· Full body hair loss: medical treatment such as chemotherapy for cancer, can result in the loss of hair over your body.
· Patches of scaling that spread over the scalp: this is as a result of some diseases such as ringworm, which may cause broken hair, redness, swelling and oozing.
Causes of temporary or permanent hair loss
· Family history (heredity): People often loss about 50 to 100 hairs a day , but the most common cause is hereditary which happen with aging. It is called androgenic alopecia,
· Hormonal changes and medical conditions: this is due to pregnancy, childbirth, menopause and thyroid problems.
· Medication and supplements: hair loss can be as a result of certain drugs such as those for treatment of cancer, arthritis, heart problems, depression, gout and high blood pressure.
· A very stressful event: after physical or emotional shock, people generally experience thinning of hair. This is usually temporary.
· Hairstyles and treatments: pigtails and cornrows hair style can cause alopecia. Also, a hot-oil hair treatment causes hair to fall out.
Early baldness
Prevention of hair loss
· Handle your hair with care: when you hair is wet, use a detangler, and avoid tugging when brushing and combing. Limit the tension on the hair, avoid style that use rubber bands braids and barrettes.
· Protect your hair from sunlight and other source of ultraviolet light.
· Smoke less: some studies show an association between smoking and baldness in men.
· If you are being treated with chemotherapy, ask your doctor about a cooling cap. This cap reduces your risk of losing hair during the procedure.
· Medications and supplements: this is the last but very important, use supplements that have been well researched and recommended by others. This is recommended for men and this for the women.
Note: Try to use the correct supplements recommended for your sex.
Treatments can be:
· Accepting the condition i.e. shaving of head
· Through medications which can be through supplements or hair transplant surgery.
· Alopecia areata may be treated by steroid injections in the affected areas.
Some research ingredients used for hair loss treatment
AnaGain Nu
AnaGaintm Nu: research confirms its effectiveness in preventing hair loss and the stimulation of new growth. It is a natural ingredient obtain from pea sprouts, due to its unique properties, the compound stimulates skin cells to produce new hair. It contains; · FGF7 — stimulate the intensive growth of keratinocytes at the initial stage of anagen (growth phase) · Noggin — protein shortening telogen (resting phase).
Horse tail
Horsetail: contain a wealth of natural silica that effectively supports hair growth, the appearance of the skin and nails.
copper
Copper: it naturally supports the immune system, protects DNA and proteins against oxidative stress and helps maintain normal pigmentation of the skin and hair.
Alfalfa leaf
Alfalfa leaf: it affect the structure of hair and there external appearance, and also helps to maintain the natural color.
Bamboo stem
Bamboo stem: this is a source of perfectly absorbable silica, without which hair and nails become brittle, fragile and susceptible to destruction.
Selenium
Selenium SeLECT, Biotin, Zinc: these are complex of vitamins and minerals that effectively nourishes the hair and helps maintain its health.
BioPerine
BioPerine: a patented form of piperine extract, effectively supports the absorption of selenium, vitamin B6, iron and beta-carotene.
Nettle leaf
Nettle Leaf: this is a natural source of easily absorbable vitamins and minerals, effectively, strengthens hair, skin and nails.
Saw Palmetto
Saw Palmetto: extract containing 25% of fatty acids. Saw Palmetto promote hair growth in men and help maintain normal reproductive function as well as prostate health.
Phosphamax | https://medium.com/@loisayoola/what-you-need-to-know-when-you-start-losing-your-hair-7da1a82844c7 | ['Oluwasayo Ayoola'] | 2020-12-22 00:26:59.836000+00:00 | ['Hair Loss', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Hair'] |
Scaling a marketplace: Samaipata & Idinvest Paris event | Together with Idinvest, we hosted an event last week in Paris on how to successfully scale a marketplace.
Although we were born and are headquartered in Madrid, we are a multi-local European fund, with offices in Paris and London. And Paris is one of our fastest growing geographies, and a key focus for the fund moving forward.
Beyond location, as a founders’ fund specialised in marketplaces & platform models, the topic of the event was obvious! We strive to help entrepreneurs scale their marketplaces from 0 to 1, only investing in what we know best.
Thus, Matthieu, Idinvest’s managing partner, and José, Samaipata’s founding partner, reflected on 13 key success factors proper to marketplace models. Obviously, the list they went through is not exhaustive but we chose not to bore the audience to death.
They were joined by 3 great entrepreneurs: Vincent, CEO & Co-founder of Malt, Thomas, CEO & Co-founder of Meero and Alex, General Manager France for Glovo — who provided real-life illustrations of the theoretical concepts developed by the two VCs.
A lot of people asked for the slides, so we decided with Jonathan Userovici to make them available below! Hope you enjoy it and that they can prove useful for entrepreneurs building a marketplace.
And if you’re an early stage marketplace founder, do not hesitate to contact us ! We focus on pre-seed & seed rounds. | https://medium.com/samaipata-ventures/scaling-a-marketplace-paris-event-with-idinvest-be1077966679 | ['Aurore Falque-Pierrotin'] | 2018-09-20 07:49:44.614000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Marketplaces'] |
It’s Nice To Be Naughty — Create a Wild Retirement | It’s Nice To Be Naughty — Create a Wild Retirement
Eric Asbeck
I took a self-development course once that defined play as, “give and take without intent.”
Sometimes it’s great to have purpose, intention, a reason, or a plan when you’re doing something. You can make some amazing things happen that way.
And then there are times when you want to do something just for the joy of it without practical purpose.
Some of the most fun I’ve had has included a bit of mischief.
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Remember That Time When…?
I remember a class once where we did an exercise to loosen everyone up.
We stood in a circle and began walking clockwise. The leader gave instructions like, “hop” or, “stay 3 feet from the person in front of you,” and so forth.
Well… When the leader said stay 3 feet away, I got bored walking behind the woman in front of me. I realized I didn’t need to just stay in line so I moved up and walked beside her. And the person behind me had to follow along.
Then I walked ahead of her, still staying 3 feet away. The person behind me blurted out, “Wait! You can’t do that!” But of course I could and the person behind me had to scramble to keep up.
A few other people started laughing when they saw what was happening. Then others began trying odd and mischievous combinations.
Soon we were all howling and scrambling to keep up with all the disruptive things people were doing while still, “following the rules.”
By the time we finished the exercise, I’d been smiling and laughing so much and so long that my cheeks hurt. Others said the same.
See, a bit of naughtiness made all the difference!
Remove The Shackles!!
Want to make the most of the rest of your life?
Imagine doing all those things you’ve always wanted to do (naughty and nice)!
Here’s a tip: Create your “Bucket List” of the top experiences and achievements you hope to have. Then you can get into action and start making them happen.
Want To Do It Together?
NEW: Join my Retirement Bucket List 5-day challenge! It’s free, gives you a treat during those lazy days between Christmas and New Year’s, and only takes a few minutes each day… and you’ll end up with a great list of fun retirement ideas!
Here’s the link to join: https://www.ExploringRetirement.club/RetirementBucketListChallenge
Eric Asbeck — Join the Retirement Bucket List challenge
What’s Next?
Stay tuned for more about making the most of the rest of your life.
Thanks for reading!
Eric
P.S., to join the fun, go to https://www.ExploringRetirement.club/RetirementBucketListChallenge and register now.
P.P.S. Acknowledging some others who’ve helped and joined me along the way:
JeffHerring.com, Tim Maudlin, Linda Halladay, Larry Nowicki, Helen Boss, MaryJo Wagner, PhD, Vickie Trancho, Bob Walter, Dan Langerock, Terry Mansfield, Cynthia Charleen Alexander, Casi Mclean, John Kremer, Andrew Poletto, Dinah Spitalnik, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Julie Anne Eason, Anne Young, Lihua Wang, Jacquelyn Lynn, Donna L Roberts, PhD, ILLUMINATION, Maximilian Perkmann, Thewriteyard
©2020 ExploringRetirement.club. All Rights Reserved. | https://medium.com/@elizabeth-40055/its-nice-to-be-naughty-create-a-wild-retirement-fcf3232cc884 | [] | 2020-12-16 23:09:58.285000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Bucket List Ideas', 'Retirement Goals', 'Retirement Planning', 'Retirement'] |
Rules of Thumb for Getting Started with Data Visualization | Intro:
Whether you’re trying to break into the world of data analytics or data science, if you’re a product manager, sales leader, or anybody seeking to understand their business being able to utilize data in a meaningful way is key. Whether you’re using data visualization software like Tableau, Domo, PowerBI, etc. or you’re using a language like R, Python, etc. there are a variety of principles and concepts that will help you get started.
Purpose of your analysis:
Before anything else, keep in mind that any analysis should have some purpose. It’s easy to look at a chart and ask yourself, “why am I looking at this?” or “what am I supposed to get here?”. To boil it down to a very simple principle, we want to understand the nature of a given variable & how that variable might relate to others.
Key things to keep in mind:
Dimensionality, Data types
Dimensionality:
here we’re talking about the number of Ds in 3D. So when you played super mario in 2 dimensions, you had an x and a Y axis. Most of us have seen a lot of two dimensional charts and graphs. The way to think about this is, “how many variables do i want to include in a given visualization”. As a general rule here; less is often more.
Data types:
Whether a field is numeric; something like age, weight, etc. categorical; gender, hair color, etc. or time; the date, month, or day something occurred. Once you understand this and have some hypothesis about how certain variables may relate to one another, you can begin to formulate what types of visualizations you might use.
Language and datasets:
All of the visualizations will be made using the ggplot2 package in R using a variety of sample datasets including iris, mtcars, mpg, and economics. I won’t be including much r code here as I want this to be broadly applicable, but if you’d like the code for any of these please comment below or reach out.
Jumping in:
There are other things we’d do to understand the data before we might actually make any visualizations, but we’ll jump right into the visualizations for the sake of getting to rules around visualization specifically.
We’ll go through a variety of options & rules by datatype & dimensionality, starting with a single dimension.
Number of dimensions:1
Datatype: Numeric
Dataset: mtcars; sample dataset included in base R that gives a variety of datapoints on cars
Purpose: Understanding distribution & summary statistics
Charts: histogram & boxplot
When trying to understand a numeric variable in isolation, you’ll first seek to understand it’s distribution. For this you’ll use a simple histogram that tells you how many occurrences there are at each value. The first variable that we want to understand is horsepower.
What we’re seeing here is that Horsepower is right-skewed or that the tail on the right side of the peak is stretching further than that of the left. If you think about the typical horsepower for a car, most will be less than 250, but there are certainly still cars that are being made to push that envelope, albeit far fewer.
This is a box plot, box and whiskers plot for the same variable, hp. Boxplots are great for visualizing a number of summary statistics on a given variable. The horizontal lines on the end of the plot represent the max and min. The dark horizontal line is the median. The box the median sits within, represents the IQR or interquartile range (breaking your data into four even quartiles, the IQR represents the range between the 1st and 3rd quartiles).
Here we see a histogram of Miles per gallon, and we see a slightly right skewed distribution. It also nearly appears bimodal. Bimodality is when there are effectively two peaks. One explanation would be that we’re overlapping distributions of gas and electric cars, so lets say the average mpg for a gas powered car is between 15–20, but for an electric it’s 30–35, then given enough volume of either we could see two peaks in our dsitribution.
We’re now looking at qsec; a car performance metric. It’s the time it takes the car to travel ¼ of a mile. What we see here is a very standard normal distribution.
Number of dimensions:1
Datatype: Categorical
Dataset: mpg; sample dataset included in base R that gives a variety of datapoints on cars
Purpose: Understanding proportions
Charts: bar chart & pie chart
When trying to understand a single categorical variable in isolation, the main thing you want to consider is how many occurrences of a given term is popping up.
Now lets take a look at the transmission & class variables from the mpg dataset. We’ll do so by creating a bar chart with the categorical variable on the X-axis & the count of occurrences on the Y-axis.
Here you can get an idea of which transmissions occur frequently versus those that appear slightly more rare. Typically you don’t need to include color, but just to make things a tad more clear.
Similarly we see the count of occurrences charted by class. We can see that 2seaters and minivans are far less frequently occurring than SUVs or compacts. This bar chart could just as easily be shown as a pie chart. Pie charts can sometimes be a tad more difficult to delineate the volume of a given slice than it is in a bar chart as any given slice will have a different angle, could be on different sides of the pie, etc.
As mentioned, here is a pie chart of the class variable.
Additionally, we can use bar charts to plot other aggregations by categorical variables. For instance taking the average mpg per a given car class, but we’ll get into that later.
Ok so now we’ve looked at numeric & categorical variables in isolation; lets increase the number of dimensions we’re charting to two and look at some different combinations.
Number of dimensions: 2
Datatype: numeric
Dataset: Iris & mpg; sample datasets included in base R that gives a variety of datapoints on three species of Iris and some of their measurements
Purpose: Understanding the relationship between two variables
Charts: Scatter plot
Whenever trying to understand the relationship between two numeric variables, scatter plot is best practice.
Here we are trying to observe the relationship between the length (Y Axis) and width (X axis) of a sepal (for the plant anatomy, just run a quick google search.. :) )
I also looked at the correlation (measure to understand how two variables relate or move together, 1 would be the move perfectly in sync, -1 would mean that they were perfectly inverse, .5 or -.5 is a good relationship, .3 or -.3 could be a weak relationship, and anything too far below that would be weak or random relationship) for these two variables and found that it was -.11, suggesting that there is no real relationship. While it appears like these two variables are unrelated; It is important to consider the many potential layers of a relationship among variables.
I’ll talk more about this later, but I’ll give a sneak peak now. While in the previous plot we saw that width and length appeared not to relate, it is important to include as many potential perspectives as possible. Looking at the same plot as before, we are going to add one more dimension to it; Species. We will visualize species by using color.
Once we added in the third dimension, we can see that by species there is a clear linear relationship between length & width.
Below I’ve included the correlation when grouping by species and we can see on the high end a correlation of .74 and on the low end .46, which is still considerable.
Now lets get back to assessing two numeric variables. Here we’re looking at City MPG and Highway MPG. Here the scatter is moving up and to the right in a linear fashion, indicating a positively correlated relationship between the two. These two variables correlate at .96.
Something to keep in mind if you’re new to statistics. Even though these things move together; it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is causing the other. It just indicates they’re related.
To continue evaluating other combinations of two dimensional data, lets consider how we might analyze the relationship between two categorical variables.
Number of dimensions: 2
Datatype: categorical
Dataset: mpg; sample dataset included in base R
Purpose: Understanding the relationship between two variables
Charts: table, heatmap, bar chart
Before jumping into visualizations, I’m going to show two categorical variables in a table as visualizations of two categorical dimensions are representative of what we’ll find in a table.
The table below is from the mpg dataset; we’re looking at the class of car and whether the car is four wheel drive, front wheel drive, or real wheel drive.
Here we can see the frequency of records that pertain to any given combination of the categorical variables
At a quick glance we can see that SUV, 4 wheel drives are the most common. Another layer you can add to this is looking at each cell as a percent of the whole.
There is more to do with prop tables, but we’ll save that for another time.
From here we’re looking to visualize what we’re seeing in the prop table.
An excellent way to turn this table to a visualization is with a heatmap. Take a look at the chart below. On either axis you see the categorical variables, and the color of the heat map is represented by the count of occurrences.
As we saw in the original table, SUV, 4 wheel drive is the most common, with midsize front-wheel drive coming in second and compact front wheel drive taking third.
A heatmap presents some difficulty in terms of being able to gauge exactly what the count is. We have a legend, and depending on the software you’re using you may be able to serve that up easily as a tooltip.
Another option is to go back to the bar chart, with one of the categorical variable on the x-axis, the numeric variable (count) on the y-axis, and the second categorical variable is represented on the dimension of color.
Here again we can see which of the combinations is the most frequently occurring, thus bringing us to a similar end.
This next plotting option is very similar, but rather than just representing the third dimension on color, we can also use faceting. Faceting is a technique that allows you give each level of a categorical variable its own plot. Take a look below.
As mentioned here we can see a very similar plot to the previous ones but each level of class is broken out in it’s own plot.
At this point, we’ve seen a very similar result with various charts. The consideration you have to make is how well does a given plot convey your message or produce the necessary insight, is it overly complex, is it taking up too much space, what screen sizes will potential stakeholders be seeing your charts on, etc.
Now we’re on to plots with multiple dimensions.
Number of dimensions: 3–5
Datatype: numeric & categorical
Dataset: mpg; sample dataset included in base R
Purpose: Understanding the relationship between multiple variables
Charts: Scatter
Here we see the same plot as before with a single modification. To include the third dimension of ‘engine displacement’, we are now changing the size of the points to correspond to engine displacement. As we can see it seems to relate inversely to higher city and highway gas mileage.
Now an alternative option for adding a dimension is color.
Rather than using size, I’ve now included color to indicate engine displacement.
Below I’ve included an additional plot where we do both, which makes it even easier to see.
One thing to keep in mind is that instead of putting engine displacement in color and size, we could actually introduce a fourth numeric dimension.
Here I’ve swapped out cyl to fill the size dimension; which also appears to relate inversely to highway and city mpg.
A couple of other options we could introduce here could be to use color to introduce a categorical variable or to facet according to a categorical variable.
Here you can see the sample plot now faceted by class, which allows us to see how these numeric variables relate to one another across different levels of a categorical variable.
Before we wrap up, a final consideration is if we have two dimensional data with a variable representing time. A great rule of thumb for time is to use a line chart.
Number of dimensions: 2
Datatype: numeric & time
Dataset:economics; sample dataset included in base R
Purpose: Understanding the relationship between time and a numeric variable
Chart: line
The data we’ll be looking at comes from the economics sample dataset and represents unemployment over the last 50 years or so.
When charting a dataset with a time dimension, we are attempting to identify a trend in a given numeric variable to understand trend and whether given activity might coincide with that movement. Put your time dimension across the X-axis and whatever numeric variable you are measuring on the Y-axis.
There is a lot more that could potentially be done even here, but I’ll save that for another time.
Takeaway:
1 dimension
numeric: histogram, box plot
categorical: table, bar chart, pie chart
2 dimensions
numeric/numeric: scatter
numeric/ categorical: bar chart
categorical/ categorical: bar chart, table
3 dimensions
numeric/ numeric/ numeric: scatter with size/color
numeric/ numeric/ categorical: scatter with color/facets
numeric/ categorical/ categorical: bar chart with color/facets
4+ dimensions
Use varying combinations of datatypes and variables with your x & y axis, as well as color, fill, size, facets, etc.
There is so much you can do with data visualization & this is just the start of it. Here’s to hoping this helps you get started!
Add yourself to my email list if this was helpful; also be sure to let me know if you’d prefer code examples, additional information, etc.
Come check out some of my other posts at datasciencelessons.com & happy data science-ing! | https://towardsdatascience.com/rules-of-thumb-for-getting-started-with-data-visualization-8301d47f4367 | ['Robert Wood'] | 2019-10-27 15:02:40.131000+00:00 | ['Product Managers', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Visualization', 'Aspiring Product Managers'] |
How To Integrate A Static Google Map API In Your Rails Project | In this tutorial, I’ll be teaching you how to strictly integrate a static google map into your rails project. I will also show you how to change the color of the marker and how to add more if need be. This tutorial will assume you have some previous background information on rails. Don’t worry, this is still a very basic beginner level tutorial and not complicated at all.
Examples used in this tutorial will be from my mod 2 project at Flatiron School that uses Ruby 2.6.1 and Rails 6.0 (a basic setup that wasn't generated with scaffold). | https://brodrick-george.medium.com/how-to-integrate-a-google-static-map-api-in-your-rails-project-80be28b99e0c | ['Brodrick George'] | 2020-12-07 21:37:52.695000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'Google', 'Maps', 'Static', 'Rails'] |
My Christmas Message [audio] | This year has been tough for so many. No one seems to have been spared at least a little pain. The hardest part is finding the way forward when all you can see is fear and pain. | https://medium.com/jasonmcknight/my-christmas-message-audio-49bd4182f32e | ['Jason Mcknight'] | 2020-12-25 07:48:42.358000+00:00 | ['Pain', 'Sadness', 'Hope', 'Christmas'] |
The State of Diversity & Inclusion — Insights From Rosa Nuñez | This article is part of Hallo’s new State of Diversity and Inclusion Series which will feature interviews with a wide range of professionals and thought leaders to learn more about the state of D&I, the progress made in 2020, and predictions on the trends that will shape 2021.
The following is an interview we recently had with Rosa Nuñez, Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Foley Hoag
How would you describe the current state of diversity and inclusion in most organizations today?
I believe it’s a pivotal time for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace. 2020 provided the catalyst for change. The profound reaction to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have led businesses of all sectors to take a necessary look in the mirror to identify the changes needed to put an end to systemic racism and racial injustices. At my current workplace, for example, we are having more frequent than ever open conversations about race, racism, and discrimination with more people — white people to be exact — willing to listen.
As we have seen lately, multiple organizations have made public statements and financial pledges to help combat discrimination and inequalities inside and outside their walls; however, the question is, what happens next? My hope is that these leaders and organizations stay true to their commitments and take the necessary steps to end systemic racism and inequalities for women and people of color once and for all.
How has COVID-19 impacted diversity and inclusion initiatives?
In my opinion, Covid-19 has impacted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on multiple fronts, forcing organizations and DE&I leaders to quickly shift their DE&I strategy to support a new and virtual post-COVID-19 workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended how we experience work and how we live our lives, in which inclusion and equity take center stage. Now more than ever, organizations are focusing on people as humans — understanding what’s important to them and how these are impacting their ability to get their work done. Personally, this crisis has provided me with an opportunity for learning, improvement, and innovation.
What are the most common challenges and roadblocks organizations face when it comes to implementing their diversity and inclusion initiatives?
I’d say the lack of leadership support and adequate resources needed to make a real and long-lasting impact. Many organizations rave about their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but it’s all smoke and mirrors when one looks underneath the hood. For example, when financial issues arise, DE&I budgets are one of the first once to go. There is also the issue of resistance amongst the organization’s leadership ranks when changes are needed to improve the equity of existing policies and practices. Another challenge is assuming that fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion is the sole responsibility of the diversity officer/department. To move the needle forward, everyone in the organization must do their part in driving change — it’s everyone’s responsibility.
What are 3–5 pieces of advice you have for organizations looking to improve the impact of their D&I strategies?
I’d say being authentic, committed to real change, and investing in the necessary resources needed to make a real impact. Leaders need to lead by example and be vocal advocates for DE&I efforts across the organization. Leaders must show up, speak up, and put their money where their mouth is.
What trends will shape D&I in 2021? How can organizations prepare for these changes?
There will be a greater focus on inclusive leadership, flexibility, and the ability to have more courageous conversations in the workplace. More than ever before, leaders are expected to focus on their people’s human side and develop greater emotional intelligence — be kind, humble, and understand how this “new normal” has impacted and will continue to impact motivation and productivity as well as the engagement of their people. More frequent check-ins, greater flexibility, and open and transparent communication will be key drivers this year. | https://medium.com/halloapp/the-state-of-diversity-inclusion-insights-from-rosa-nu%C3%B1ez-f4e271a392f7 | ['Emilia Picco'] | 2021-04-26 21:17:47.989000+00:00 | ['Diversity Training', 'Workplace Diversity', 'Workplace Culture', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Diversity'] |
Book Review: Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee | Eggshell Skull is as much a memoir about the resilience and bravery of a young woman’s confrontation of her own sexual assault as it is about the grim reality of the Australian criminal justice system, which repeatedly lets down victims of sexual abuse. Bri’s award-winning memoir has earned praise for being “scorching, brutal, brave and utterly compelling”, her writing is fierce, eloquent but simultaneously haunting and heartbreaking. Her experiences highlight both the triumph and futility of standing up to a system that deems sexual abuse an almost invisible crime. This is essential reading for everyone to learn about the “map of human misery” that is the criminal justice system and how one woman found the strength to speak out and fight back.
Bri’s journey begins with her first legal job as a Judge’s associate on the Queensland District Court circuit, this experience is a harrowing and timely exposé into a never-ending and cyclical procession of sexual offence cases in which the complainants, frequently women, rarely saw justice. For Bri, her own experience with sexual abuse as a child became “one tiny drop in a putrid ocean”, where the roadmap to “justice” was merely a constellation of crimes. The futility and systematic failure of our criminal legal system to adequately persecute sexual abuse cases are encapsulated in Bri’s realization that the perpetrators didn’t “exist in unfortunate isolation, they weren’t special, just results of our system and our society.”
Interesting, it is the combination of her courtroom experience, the perpetuation of disenfranchisement for complainants of sexual assault, and a strong support network that ultimately drove Bri to report her own case and initiate the torturous, brutal yet crucial road to justice. Bri is not a perfect heroine and this is not a fairytale with a perfect ending — she suffers from an eating disorder, extreme bouts of anxiety and her determination to bring her abuser to justice is interrupted frequently by her own uncertainty and guilt. However, her voice is remarkable as it is punctuated by honesty and resilience despite the many setbacks — highlighting the reasons why so many women in Australia withdraw their complaints or never speak out about their experiences, to begin with.
Bri’s ability to write so clearly and with such brutal honesty is what draws the reader’s attention, I was shaken to the core by the number of times she had to recount her sexual assault to the Police. She writes, “the single worst moment of my life, the darkest point in my past that I’d nearly died reckoning with, was officially insignificant enough to slip through the cracks”, illuminating the painful subjectivity associated with reporting sexual abuse cases. The best-case scenario is a police officer who actually cares about the case, the worst-case scenario is for the complainant to be publicly vilified and condemned as a liar. The psychological complexity of the case is highlighted by the fact that although her abuser (Samuel) admitted to the assault; however the bully was also the victim (he had been abused himself), muddying the waters for whether we should feel sympathetic or disgusted towards ‘Samuel’.
The emotional turmoil Bri undergoes in the memoir is simultaneously excruciating and gripping. Her lack of faith in the criminal justice system is justified, as she comments rightfully that “every act of sexual abuse is either deliberately or negligently cruel, each involves a terrified victim whose life experiences an abuser completely devalues”. However, the Crown’s prosecution of the criminal offense of sexual assault is an entire exercise in disempowerment. The limitations of the justice system are laid bare for us as Bri’s life compartmentalized into four-week arcs of hope, disappointment, and denial. Her anger, sadness, and frustration are embodied in a singular, crushing revelation: “the whole ugly mess was a month shy of its second birthday… Samuel still hadn’t even had to enter a plea.”
This book opened the lid on an ugly can of worms — the Australian criminal justice system is daunting, inefficient, and ill-equipped to process sexual assault cases effectively, with few resulting in prosecutions or convictions. It is refreshing to see Bri’s acceptance of her privilege — as a white, educated and articulate complainant, the police pressed charges as she fit the profile of a reliable witness. Even then, the ‘re-victimization’ process required important people to disbelieve and discredit Bri, she writes: “I knew I was honest and did my best; if he gets acquitted it won't be me who failed, it will be the system failing me.” This reflects the bleak reality of sexual assault cases in our criminal justice system, only 15 percent of women (fewer than one in five) reported their sexual assault to police and this is before taking into consideration the numerous hurdles of awaiting court mentions, committal hearings and trial dates — the stress and humiliation resulting in many victims withdrawing their case completely.
Ultimately, what makes Bri’s memoir so compelling is her unbelievable determination and conviction to seek justice despite the huge personal and psychological costs. She takes the legal principle of “eggshell skull” (to take the victim as one finds them) and flips it on its head — what if it’s about taking the complainant as they come: extremely well educated, with a supportive network and an angry feminist who was not willing to back down. Bri took the risk and rode out the waves, resulting in Samuel’s conviction of 9 months imprisonment although the sentence was wholly suspended (no jail time). Bri reinvigorated the conversation to send a strong message to the justice system to put more resources into prosecuting sexual abuse offences so that perpetrators won’t have the expectation that they can get away with it.
This book is powerful and heartbreaking but an essential read, Bri’s experience is remarkable and shines a light on the fractured criminal legal system whilst remaining poignant and optimistic, in her own words; “when winning the battle has only opened your eyes to the breadth of the war… you cry and cry, when you’re done crying, you get angry and you get to work.” | https://medium.com/@lisa-wan/book-review-eggshell-skull-by-bri-lee-324e62e3ee0f | ['Lisa Wan'] | 2020-06-14 00:48:50.894000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Sexual Assault', 'Criminal Justice Reform', 'Feminism', 'Book Review'] |
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville | What an embarrassment that Tommy Tuberville is the newly elected senator from what was my home state of Alabama. Why do the people of Alabama never learn? Tuberville correctly values the “three branches of government” as important to democracy, but he mistakenly thinks the Senate and the House of Representatives represent two separate branches while leaving out the judiciary. Worse, he thinks Americans fought World War II to liberate Europe from socialism, not the Nazis, who were fascists, not socialists. It’s arguable whether Stalinist Russia was socialist, but no matter, the Russians were our allies in fighting Nazi Germany.
Now Tuberville is threatening to disregard Mitch McConnell’s edict and support Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results when the House and Senate meet for a joint session on January 6th to count the electoral votes and officially declare the next president. If a House member wants to challenge the results of the Electoral College, they need the support of at least one senator, thus enter ol’ Tuberville. At that point the House and Senate convene separately and decide if they will accept or reject the challenge. Given the House is still controlled by the Democrats, there is virtually no chance that a challenge of this sort can succeed, but it would still be an opportunity for Trump’s supporters to regurgitate the president’s claims the election was “rigged,” that there was rampant voter fraud, that voting machines switched votes, etc. If Tuberville ignores McConnell’s wishes and serves as Trump’s patsy (one more in a long line!), the result will be a ridiculous sideshow with no purpose but casting aspersions on the incoming president’s right to govern, and governing is something this country needs desperately at this point.
Isn’t it Obvious that Trump is Beholden to the Russians. . . for something?
While President Trump continues to be AWOL, tweeting ad nauseum about his election grievances despite losing over 50 legal challenges, COVID deaths continue to increase almost every day, hospital ICUs are reaching capacity all over the country, people are still losing their jobs and facing hunger and homelessness, and in the middle of everything, we’re facing the repercussions of the worst cyberattack in our history, very likely instigated by the Russians. President Trump has expressed no concern regarding the thousands of deaths, played no productive role in passing another COVID relief package, and Lord knows he’ll never stand up to his good buddy Putin. He’s even contradicting his own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, by suggesting that it might be China that is behind the attack.
Trump and his Republican enablers continue to refer to the Mueller investigation as the “Russia hoax,” but don’t seem to realize that every time the president refuses to call out the Russians, it only serves to raise suspicions. I would hate to see our country spend more time rehashing the Russia allegations, when we have so many challenges before us and it’s best to just send Trump packing, but I certainly understand the concern. As congressman Jason Crow said, this cyber attack is the equivalent of a cyber-version of Pearl Harbor, a blatant attack on our country. If Trump is so happy to blame China for the Coronavirus pandemic, why not call out the Russians when that’s where all the evidence points? I’ll tell you why!
As for Tuberville, he probably thinks Russia is just one more western European democracy.
Learn more about me at thegallantpelham.net | https://medium.com/@thegallantpelham/alabama-senator-tommy-tuberville-64bedd283e5e | ['Col. John Pelham'] | 2020-12-23 16:54:51.160000+00:00 | ['Tommy Tuberville', 'Election 2020', 'Donald Trump', 'Us Senate', 'Russia'] |
The DeVault Blockchain will be launching on Tuesday June 4th at 8am PST. | The DeVault Blockchain will be launching on Tuesday June 4th at 8am PST. DeVault Jun 2, 2019·3 min read
Introducing DeVault; a digital economy built by users, for users. A true community based proof-of-work project.
DeVault is an experimental peer-to-peer digital cash project built with the goal of harnessing the collective knowledge and intrinsic value of the p2p economy. Creating an ever growing Multi-DAO system geared towards educating, on-boarding and supporting the cryptocurrency adopters of today and tomorrow.
In DeVault, the focus is placed on the end user in terms of the incentive structure, the voting systems, and in the overall planning process. Unlike Bitcoin where miners are the only governance mechanism or Dash where you need a Masternode to have a vote, we have lowered the barrier to entry to a single coin per vote. We hope this concept will provide a robust system for users to not only have a voice in community governance and funding, but also to provide an additional utility for the digital coins beyond selling for products or services.
Cold Rewards for ANYONE. No node, no problem.
We have added a custom reward system we’ve named ‘Cold Rewards’ where users that hold coins for extended periods of time without having outgoing transactions will be automatically rewarded coins from coinbase transactions after a period of 21,915 blocks in a decentralized and trustless fashion. Users holding more than 1000 DVT in a single UTXO will be rewarded periodically, more technical details can be found here: https://github.com/devaultcrypto/devault/blob/develop/COLDREWARDS.md
The Cold Reward system was added with the intention of rewarding our day to day users with rewards akin to mining rewards for their continued support, and participation in the DeVault Economy.
DeVault.Online launch to follow.
To further help facilitate peer-to-peer interaction online and offline we have started a web application catered towards helping not only users interact but will also expand to include larger communities, businesses and some other secret concepts we would like to keep under wraps until they go live. But rest assured DeVault.Online will focus on helping support the users, businesses and content creators of the larger DeVault Economy.
DeVault is a social experiment, NOT an investment opportunity, please do not acquire DVT with the goal of trading it for a higher price or generating profit as the inflation rate for the first 2 years is fairly high. PLEASE BE RESPONSIBLE WITH YOUR DECISIONS. There are ways to earn DVT and we do not encourage gambling on the prices of cryptocurrencies.
The official genesis block launch time will be June 4th at 8:00am PST. Please Visit www.DeVault.cc to learn more about the project or join us in Discord & Telegram.
We also tweet from time to time: https://twitter.com/DeVaultCrypto | https://medium.com/@devaultcrypto/the-devault-blockchain-will-be-launching-on-tuesday-june-4th-at-8am-pst-1ca2c502cf4f | [] | 2019-06-02 02:35:41.567000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Governance', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Bitcoin', 'Crypto'] |
How to Double Your Forex Investment With Compounding | As a forex Trader, your first and foremost goal is to build a sustainable structure for a desired return on investment (ROI). Now, to do this, essentially you would require a proper money management. You would require a habit or system that helps you not only optimize your profit but to also celebrate your loss, to make them go to your advantage. Sure, you can just prepare your investment in advance by predicting how much profit you aim and how you anticipate to lose, but there is also another technique people use to exponentially grow their assets under management over time. We call this compounding.
The whole idea about compounding is to hold certain sum of money in your account to use them in your future investment. Over time the numbers will grow due to your projected profit, and then you can withdraw the money when it reaches the desired amount. You can just hold the entirety of your money in your account, or just withdraw a certain percentage of it. The choice is yours, you have the freedom to set it however you want but I’ll have you know that it is very great for long-term investment. Let’s picture this scenario for a moment:
Say that you have $100 for your very first investment. Now your projected profit is 10%. Here’s how much you get when you compound your money.
Month 1: $1000 + ($1000 x 10%) = $1100 Month 2: $1100 + ($1100 x 10%) = $1210 Month 3: $1210 + ($1210 x 10%) = $1331 Year 1: $2853.116706 + ($2853.116706 x 10%) = $3138.428377 Year 2: $8954.302433 + ($8954.302433 x 10%) = $9849.732676 Year 10: $84280971.65 + ($84280971.65 x 10%) = $92709068.82
With the scenario above, we may conclude that your initial investment of $1000 could grow to over more than $90 thousands. It doesn’t even have to be $1000, you can start with $100 and double the amount with proper compounding. Here are a few tips to help you grow your forex account with compounding!
Constantly review your trading strategies
No matter what platform you’re using, which signal you trust, by the end of the day, it all comes back to you. Don’t worry, compounding is applicable to every kind of trading techniques, so it is better to find which suits you most and decide your investment goals early on. Discipline and adjust yourself to the habits of trading. Remember that there is no shortcut to this and nobody becomes an expert Trader overnight. Constantly review your trading strategies, surround yourself with like-minded people in the industry, and you should be good to go.
Keep your profit for next investment
Even the most successful traders and investors compound their money to double the amount for their next investment. One thing to remind yourself here is to not overdo your trading and set unrealistic profit goals. We find that 10% is pretty much logical to set as a goal for both newcomers and expert Traders, but feel free to lower the goal if it intimidates you. Never put more than 20%-30% for your profit goal. You might profit that much sometimes, but not all the time.
Let it grow
After you mentally prepare your trading strategies with certain amount of money ready to compound in your next investments, all you have to do is just wait and let it grow. It is the hardest and most challenging part of your investment. To prevent you from withdrawing your money from your investment, make sure to spare a certain amount of money for your investment purpose only. Remind yourself that you can only withdraw your money after a certain period of time — like our ten years scenario above.
Lastly, you need to be prepared of risks. Know that there is no right or wrong decision for this and that all it takes is discipline. Restrain yourself from withdrawing and most of all, enjoy your trading. The journey is always more exciting than the goal — even though the goal leads you to over more than $90 thousands.
—
See also: How to Tell If a Trading Platform Is Sketchy
Lubna.io is Indonesia’s First Social Trading Platform. Learn more about us here! | https://medium.com/lubna-io/how-to-double-your-forex-investment-with-compounding-216054c180b5 | [] | 2019-11-26 04:45:05.582000+00:00 | ['Compounding', 'Trading', 'Investment', 'Forex', 'Finance'] |
BOScoin: Introduction Video | BOScoin: Introduction Video
Q1. What is BOScoin?
A1. Han Kyul Park (COO)
BOScoin is the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency created to: self-evolve, have an embedded funding system, and an internal voting solution. With so many new advances in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computers; It’s impossible for us to predict the next 10 years. What we need is a cryptocurrency that can adapt to future changes. We need a “Self-Evolving Cryptocurrency Platform” that is fit for every environment. BOScoin is designed to evolve. | https://medium.com/boscoin/boscoin-introduction-video-75717e1dc6c | [] | 2017-04-24 03:32:01.077000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Tech', 'Fintech'] |
DAICO Crowdfunding — Lowering Blockchain Startup Financing Risk | DAICO Crowdfunding — Lowering Blockchain Startup Financing Risk
DAICO Crowdfunding — Lowering Blockchain Startup Financing Risk
Most agree that the future of business is on the blockchain. Globally, enterprises are turning to the shared digital ledger to improve efficiencies and remove transaction friction and costs. For blockchain solutions to rapidly scale, the blockchain startups building the architecture require capital to create and innovate.
Unfortunately, investors have assumed high risk and losses investing in blockchain startups through initial coin offerings (ICO). Among the top 25 initial coin offerings (ICO) nine have lost more than 80 percent of their value, representing a loss to investors of more than $1 billion. The high financing risk is slowing the adoption of blockchain technology.
A new fundraising model DAICO crowdfunding is ushering in a new safer era of blockchain investing. A DAICO (decentralized autonomous organization initial coin offering) links funding to deliverables by replacing a centralized fundraising team with a decentralized smart contract with built-in performance milestones. If the project fails to deliver, investors receive a refund, in the same way, you can charge back Amazon products on your credit card if they do not meet your standards or tastes.
For investors, the accountability mechanism provides a hedge against the risk of a blockchain startup failing to deliver on its promises.
What is a DAICO?
The idea of getting a refund for the purchase of investment securities was unheard of, until two years ago when Vitalik Buterin introduced the concept of the DAICO — a combination of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and initial coin offering (ICO).
The DAICO is an ICO smart contract with built-in mechanisms to link funding to performance benchmarks. Typically when funds are raised a portion is reserved for the team, technology development, promotion like marketing and rewards, and administration. Under a DAICO, all or part (e.g., the team share) of the funds are placed in a community-governed treasury.
The governance structure, based on the DAO, has three main features:
Governance decisions are made based on the wisdom of crowds, that is, token holders with voting rights. The funding protocol is trustless, relying on no centralized authority. The funding is distributed over time and contingent on meeting performance benchmarks.
This low-risk financing model is re-opening the floodgates to blockchain investing. Since the DAICO of Aavegotchi ($GHST) in September, the trading volume of the DeFi-enabled crypto-collectibles game is up seven-fold. The funds raised by the Aavegotchi DAICO are stored in the “vault” and released in drips from a tap mechanism as milestones are achieved. If the AavegotchiDAO governance team is unhappy with progress, they can shut off the tap.
Automating Startup Accountability
Security token offerings (STOs) were introduced in 2018 as a lower risk alternative to ICOs. The automated token offering combines the ICO with the legal protections of standard securities offerings in a smart contract recorded on the blockchain. The STO has helped to eliminate scams, which in 2018 were estimated to represent 80 percent of ICOs. Post-STO, however, investors have little influence over the operations of startups.
Though on blockchain platforms, investors have gained more control over governance. Token holders as platform owners typically have voting rights over protocol improvements, replacing centralized control. Blockchain platforms use a direct voting mechanism to reach consensus called on-chain governance. The community governance committee proposes, votes on, and implements protocol improvements through on-chain voting.
DAICOs extend on-chain governance of the blockchain startup to accountability for performance after the token offering. DAICOs use the same on-chain voting mechanism to ensure performance milestones are met. Investors invest in blockchain companies in exchange for future value creation. DAICOs encode those actions (milestones) that will create value into the smart contract. As value is created, funds are released. If no value is created, investors can vote to have their funds returned.
DAICO Platforms Lowering Startup Financing Risk
DAICOs can be used as an investment vehicle for blockchain startups or any tokenized asset. Investors are lowering risk by pooling investments in tokenized assets, from blockchain platforms to art work and real estate. STO platform Polymath Network tokenized $2.2 billion in U.S. commercial real estate through ST-20 tokens in February.
Polymath spearheaded the development of the ERC1400 standard to standardize STOs. Through transparency and streamlined due diligence and user experience process, exchanges, custodians, and wallets can easily onboard tokenized assets. Seeing an opportunity to further reduce operational risk through DAICOs, the STO platform is currently developing a DAICO module.
Investors have been deterred by the complexity of online token offerings. Most investors leave a token sale while trying to figure out the pricing, and only 2–3 percent return, finds OnGrid Systems, developer of DAICO crowdfunding platform the Token Offering Platform (TOP). TOP streamlines the custom token offering minting and selling process for DAICOs, STOs, and ICOs.
The PAID Network has gone one step further. Like other DAICO smart contracts, funding is released as milestone deliverables are fulfilled. The PAID DAICO also includes the arbitration process, providing an end-to-end governance solution. PAID Network is the developer of the SMART agreement, an attorney-free business smart contract that includes the negotiation, escrow, legal, and arbitration processes.
Arbitration in a Smart Box
PAID has integrated its arbitration solution into the PAID DAICO crowdfunding contract. If a startup misses milestones, say the Main-net launch experiences unreasonable delays, the governance committee can vote to request an audit and arbitration. Once the PAID token activates an audit, the project funds are frozen.
In scenario one, the developers provide evidence that the Main-net is ready to launch within a month. The auditors unlock the funds and the next tranche is released to the team when the Main-net launches on time.
In scenario two, the auditors review the documents and find the Test-net was a disaster. The technology failed and the developers cannot produce evidence that they can rectify the problem.
In the latter scenario, a second vote is called by community members who can decide to place the project on probation or cancel the project. If the project is canceled, a prorated amount of the investment funds is returned to investors.
In the composable enterprise, the DAICO will be one of the core smart contract blocks in a fully automated governance system. Polymath Network envisions startups creating their governance structure by choosing among token offering (e.g., STO or ICO), DAICO, and other modules. Governance decisions across these dynamic contracts are made in a matter of days or weeks. For example, the PAID Network audit process — from requesting an audit to arbitration resolution — takes one to two weeks. This speedy governance process allows investors to quickly withdrawal capital from underperforming blockchain startups and redeploy it elsewhere.
Also, Read | https://medium.com/coinmonks/daico-crowdfunding-lowering-blockchain-startup-financing-risk-6907c9ee3764 | [] | 2020-12-28 13:06:12.601000+00:00 | ['Defi', 'Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Investment'] |
Broken Hearts and Battered Textbooks | RIP Trey: the phrase is written on the sleeves of a white sweatshirt with photos of a young black man printed on the front. Its wearer speaks to a circle of friends in the halls during transition, a few of them wearing similar articles of clothing, before they head off to their next classes. It’s the only time these students are noticed, the only time the violence that plagues many at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Dunbar) is noticed.
In Las Vegas, mourning friends and family members sign their names on a poster that reads “Rest in Heaven,” a remembrance of the many lives of students lost in the north side’s gun violence. Grim candlelight vigils raise fears about the lack of safety in communities of color, leaving every teen asking a single, unanswered question: Will I live past my eighteenth birthday?
In the past few years, Dunbar and its city, Lexington, Kentucky, have become acutely aware of the horrors of gun violence. Senseless shootings, such as that of Trinity Gay, have devastated the local community. Gay was a student-athlete at Lafayette High School who maintained friendships throughout the district, but her life was cut tragically short when she was caught in the middle of a shootout. Lexington cried out in anguish and frustration in the wake of her death, prompting a series of movements against gun violence.
Gay before her prom.
For the next two months, impromptu memorials sprang up around her school as students struggled to cope with their grief. The fence of the track field was covered with ribbons, tied shoes, and balloons. Within the school, photos of Trinity with notes written on them were taped to the walls. Dunbar’s students coped by holding a “We Are The Change” rally to discuss gun violence, where they invited local nonprofit workers and those directly affected by other city shootings. Trinity’s father created the Trinity Gay Foundation to provide mentorship programs to struggling teens and to carry on Trinity’s legacy of leadership. Meanwhile, three of her friends co-authored a paper with their teacher discussing the dismissal of gun violence in Lexington and presented at national conferences.
A stencil identical to the one painted onto Dunbar’s parking lot as part of the “We Are the Change” movement.
Other events such as multiple smuggled firearms on school campuses and a series of shooting threats, including at Dunbar itself, have fostered a looming fear that the next school shooting will spill Lexingtonian blood. Dunbar has reacted in kind, introducing metal detectors and new safety procedures, seemingly without acknowledging that the school does not exist in a vacuum. Even as Lexington’s violence rate grows, its impact on Dunbar’s students has been largely ignored, with a greater emphasis placed on physical security measures than bolstering mental health resources.
“It happened all in front of me. I didn’t know how to react. The car just drove up to my neighbor and shot him to the ground.”
The crisis parallels that occurring in Las Vegas, Nevada, where community violence continues to traumatize students, even as the overall state of education improves. The Nevada Department of Education reports that nearly 2% of students of color experience violence every year, and frequent gun violence in majority-minority neighborhoods is completely disregarded. In fact, a 2016 shooting in Northeast Las Vegas witnessed by an immigrant student from the Coral Academy of Science was entirely ignored by the public. As police blocked the house for further investigation, a visibly-shaken, young observer remarked, “it happened all in front of me. I didn’t know how to react. The car just drove up to my neighbor and shot him to the ground.”
Just a few days ago, a black teenager named LaMadre Harris was shot dead in a parking lot in North Las Vegas over an argument about a girl. His eighteen-year-old sister, a witness to the murder, gave little comment beyond stating that she was “traumatized for life” and at a loss for words, but the grief in her eyes was enough. His mother, Sydney Harris, lamented, “you can’t describe my pain. Someone took my child away from me. It wasn’t a fight or a gun war; it was over a girl.”
A selfie taken by Harris.
Ongoing searches for LaMadre’s murderer leave many Vegas residents feeling helpless at the perceived randomness of recent deaths. “I don’t know what will happen in the future. I’m scared that someone will just run up and shoot my babies,” mentioned a concerned resident of the north side. The issue is compounded by the recent spike in firearms in Vegas’ communities of color, heavily impacting the students who call those communities home. The growing violence is reflected in Vegas’ Clark County School District, which filed 17 incidents of smuggled firearms and shooting threats this academic year.
The trauma and fear caused by this pervasive violence are not forgotten when a student steps onto school grounds. In schools like Legacy High School, where LaMadre studied, students voiced that the emotional baggage carried after his passing lead to academic struggles, a fact mirrored by a study done by the University of Southern California. The drop in grades stems from a combination of factors, including less sleep, mental health problems, and a tendency to behave disruptively after a traumatic event that makes focusing on academics a challenge.
The emotional changes students undergo are more noticeable. Levels of depression and anxiety increase and the Alliance for Excellent Education reports that students witnessing trauma may show ‘fight or flight’ or detachment behaviors. Lafayette student Shermane Cowans explains that “all this death is constantly happening…there’s deaths every month. Every month someone’s dying,” and the violence everyone experiences is normalized. Her peer puts it bluntly: “when you say someone got shot, they’re not really surprised.”
Although speaking with an adult has been shown to minimize several of the painful effects associated with community violence, many students voice concerns about sharing their trauma with school counselors. A Lexington student who regularly experiences gun violence explained that she rarely speaks to her family and friends about it, let alone a counselor, someone completely unfamiliar to her. Budget cuts in both cities have led to fewer mental health professionals, and those remaining are stretched too thin, rendering them unable to build personal relationships with every student in the school.
At Dunbar, for example, there is one mental health professional for every 460 students, and although counselor Kelly Krusich explains that the school has tried to make counselor access easier, it is difficult to convince students to speak up about the pain they face.
Krusich laments, “we can’t force kids to talk to us about their issues, whether it’s personal or community, and even if there is a student who wants to see me who lives in a violent section of town and [worries] about it, they may not feel comfortable sharing.”
Instead of waiting for students to come to counselors, Dunbar relies on teachers and students to report those who they see struggling, a process which has been fairly successful. Just two months ago, a sophomore reported a student threatening to open fire on the school or commit suicide through an online tipline, called STOP. On top of that, the school provides information about suicide, depression, and harassment during fall presentations, but community violence is never directly addressed.
In the event of the passing of a Dunbar student, the school calls in a district crisis intervention team and provides grief counseling for both students and teachers. But as a counselor at Lafayette High School explained, “there’s all this hurt going on in these families, and they don’t want to talk about it,” leading to minimal use of the crisis response system. A grieving student said that she avoided the grief counselors after the passing of her friend because she “knew they were just going to say, ‘it’ll all be okay.’”
In the event that a student from a different school passes away, Krusich explains that it’s rarely addressed. Of course, this is understandable, but Dr. McLaughlin-Jones of Lafayette High School points out that schools are not isolated communities. “The students in [Lexington] change feeder systems regularly, districting boundaries run through neighborhoods, and magnet programming provides a larger vantage than just our own schools,” she says, before alluding to Lafayette High School’s lack of response to the death of a popular Dunbar student, explaining that “many students…were thrown into grief by this well-liked student’s passing, but [their] grief was overlooked because it happened at Dunbar.”
Fellow counselor Melissa Long explained that Dunbar doesn’t have “a preventative policy because as soon as something happens, [they] contact the crisis response person at the central office” for assistance.
Coral Academy of Science has introduced similar counseling procedures, but it has also provided more resources and opened the school to conversations about violence. Teachers who are willing to discuss these issues paste a lighthouse picture on their door which indicates a safe space, where students can confidentially talk about any violence or mental health problems, allowing students to reach out to an adult ally.
The movement comes with a youth-led discussion of mental health and community violence. Alex Carlone, a teacher at Coral Academy of Science encouraged a group of student activists to create a discussion group, saying that “a youth-led discussion can help students, as they can discuss mental health with students their age by hearing different stories and helping each other out.”
Ultimately, the difficulty in addressing this issue comes from its roots: the community. Dunbar’s Long stated it plainly: “it’s hard to help with something that is a community issue.” Regardless of what supports faculty creates in schools, it’s impossible to solve greater sources of the issue, like access to weapons and gang activity, from within the school system. A counselor from Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas explained that even with frequent student meetings, she cannot monitor behavior at home, and some students cannot afford a mental health therapist that counselors recommend.
“We don’t know what our kids are going through in the neighborhoods, unless we see something on the news, or unless they tell us. It’s hard to help with something that is a community issue,” says Long.
However, schools can mitigate the negative impacts this violence causes by creating an open and welcoming environment for all students, as well as more resources to cope with gun violence.
Introducing a faculty that reflects the racial composition of the student body would create a greater sense of familiarity for minority students, who are statistically more likely to face community violence. Kentucky, a state which has nearly ¼ non-white students, the teacher body is 94.5% white. Las Vegas is even more unequal, with only a 26.2% of the students being white, but 72.9% of the teachers. Hiring a diverse teacher body ensures that students feel more comfortable discussing the struggles they face in their day-to-day lives, as well as fostering better teacher-student relationships, according to the University of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Increasing the number of counselors available to students allows for better personal relationships with counselors, making students feel more comfortable and more likely to discuss the community violence they face. Currently, students from the Las Vegas area report that counselors student simply “brush students away” when students approach them with a concern that happened, as they struggle to help all students that come to them.
With more counselors comes a need to expand youth-led discussion. Coral Academy’s approach has shown great progress. By allowing students to connect over shared difficulties, students are better able to heal and funnel their energy into thinking of and advocating for localized solutions to community violence.
Most importantly, schools must become proactive about addressing violence, teaching students how to address it and its effects from a young age. Currently, Nevada Youth Legislator Colyn Abron is presenting a bill to mandate the teaching of symptoms of poor mental health, which would share information about coping techniques and resources students can access, such as counselors. “We don’t recognize the full spectrum of health by excluding mental health education. It has left many students undocumented, undiagnosed, and unaddressed. I know if I would have understood the general basics of mental health warning signs and symptoms, I would have reached out for help before attempting to end my life.”
The two cities are working to resolve their similar battles with gun violence in communities of color, but the problem is a national one that can only be resolved through increased mental health education, resources, and professionals. This proactivity, rather than current reactivity, is the only way to ensure that deaths of LaMadre, Trey, and other students of color are the last ones left unnoticed, the only way to ensure their friends are given the resources to grieve healthily. | https://medium.com/student-voice/broken-hearts-and-battered-textbooks-b00e5be9289b | ['Gabriella Staykova'] | 2018-12-28 22:34:18.067000+00:00 | ['Students Of Color', 'Student Voice', 'High School', 'Community Violence', 'Gun Violence'] |
Trump order: New federal buildings must be ‘beautiful’ | US President Donald Trump has issued an order that future federal buildings across the country must be “beautiful”, and preferably built in a classical Greek, Roman, or similar style.
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The executive order says too many federal buildings reflect “brutalist” designs of the last century.
It says new government buildings should look more like America’s “beloved” landmarks such as the White House.
Although traditionalists will welcome the move, many others are unhappy.
The American Institute of Architects said it “unequivocally opposes” the initiative, while critics have called it “undemocratic” for the government to impose an official style on architects.
The order — titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” — creates a new council to advise the president on future federal buildings.
“New federal building designs should, like America’s beloved landmark buildings, uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, command respect from the general public, and, as appropriate, respect the architectural heritage of a region,” the order reads.
image copyrightGetty Images
image captionClassical buildings such as the White House are “cherished landmarks”, the order says
President Trump, a property developer, has only a few weeks left in office after losing November’s election to Joe Biden.
His executive order says that federal buildings built in Washington DC in recent times have created “a discordant mixture of classical and modernist designs”.
It said that with some exceptions, the government had “largely stopped building beautiful buildings”.
The use of classical and other traditional architecture “should be encouraged instead of discouraged”, it adds.
Paul Goldberger, a Pulitzer-prize winning architect said the government “mandating of an official style is not fully compatible with 21st-century liberal democracy”.
A draft of the order was first made public in February, raising objections from the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
On Monday, the institute said that communities should have “the right and responsibility to decide for themselves what architectural design best fits their needs”.
The head of the institute, Robert Ivy, said in a statement: “Though we are appalled with the administration’s decision to move forward with the design mandate, we are happy the order isn’t as far reaching as previously thought.”
Some architecture experts argued that, by pushing for classical architecture and excluding modern styles, the government was suggesting that white history and culture was superior.
In February, Phineas Harper, former deputy director of the Architecture Association, said: “Regardless of history, classical aesthetics have become a dog whistle for a certain pocket of nationalists — a code for whiteness.”
However a White House official told Bloomberg that polls on the issue had found that a vast majority of Americans preferred traditional designs.
The National Civic Art Society also welcomed the move, saying: “Americans have long understood that classical architecture is not only beautiful, it embodies the key values of our representative government.”
It added that a majority of people it had polled preferred classical architecture, and that “the design of federal buildings should reflect the aesthetic and symbolic preferences of the people they are built to serve.” | https://medium.com/@bovep30822/trump-order-new-federal-buildings-must-be-beautiful-4f22aa44dc09 | [] | 2020-12-22 14:08:28.977000+00:00 | ['New York', 'News', 'Networking', 'Newsletter'] |
Do you a flavour? donuts as a dessert, only Americans speak donut | We really do have no idea what we will get each week !!!!
25th Dec 2019: The first Posting of American Pastry Chef Cerise Pye, who can be rude, witty and offensive,
Well hello ya’ll (it’s a word, look it up) in Australia, I had to google it, I thought it was a suburb in Austria, not on the other side of the world. My name is Cerise Pye, a USA based pastry chef who answered an Ad on Craigslist to write about my “culinary journey!” which I found strange as I never been outside New York. But for $20 a post or the price of a pint of Buffalo Trace White Dog Mash moonshine, and i was sold.
I was born and raised above my parent’s bakery in New Jersey, where I used to work as a teenager. Until there was an incident with the head baker and royal icing and we will leave at that, it’s to traumatic and my Valium aint kicked in yet. I always wanted to be a pastry chef, so funnily enough I came into some money after my mother’s, apartment got burgled (that what she thinks) and I headed off to the world famous, Institute of Culinary Education in New York city, but only for a year. (those rings were worth as she much told tell people, it’s not wonder she can’t keep a husband!)
I spent all my working years in NYC attempting to be an adult/pastry chef and for some ungodly reason you people think, I’m an authority on all things Pastry. I have worked in and been fired from some of the best restaurants and places that look like they should fail every health inspection. Once I had do some pans in the kitchen, the porter was sick, I suspected TB from the mould in restaurant, So I stuck my hand into the water to look for the dishrag, felt something soft & squishy and pulled it out…it was a drowned mouse.
So, this week I want to tell you people about something called flavour, something we Americans know a lot about, we spray cheese in a can and Fruit Loops (and I dont mean the cereal). I see the pastry chef at the twins catering place (I am sure they are just one person with a split personality) but hey they/him are paying me to impart my culinary wisdom on you folks
So what’s his face party chef posted this “cute video” (here it is If you haven’t seen it) all about how donuts are the next big thing, maybe in your part of the world, but here they have feeding this lad arsed over weight nation for since the dawn of bakery time. And I am only assuming he is asking you good people to “Do Him A Flavour” because.
A, he don’t know anything about flavour and is to lazy to google it,
B he has all the skills of Jamie Oliver, meaning none! or
C he spends too much time face down in the powdered sugar!!
So I will do you a favour and flavour for free!. The only flavour you need to know is the, taste of unrefined sugar glaze and so much of it you get instant tooth decay. And If want to go all fancy ass, add a little bit of Smuckers Grape Jelly in the Middle…and hey presto your first genuine American donut recipe and $1000 for the dentist bill
Until next week or when I am sober enough to write again
Yours
Cerise | https://medium.com/@britainlovesbaking/25th-dec-2019-the-first-posting-of-american-pastry-chef-cerise-pye-who-can-be-rude-witty-and-45215a7619bf | [] | 2020-01-19 18:40:14.009000+00:00 | ['Blogger', 'Chefs', 'Fiction', 'Foodies', 'Culinary'] |
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❏ About Movies ❏
Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[1] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it.
The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects.
❏ Google Play Movies & TV ❏
Google Play Movies & TV is an online video on demand service operated by Google, part of its Google Play product line. The service offers movies and television shows for purchase or rental, depending on availability.
Google claims that most content is available in high definition, and a 4K Ultra HD video option was offered for select titles starting in December 2016.
Content can be watched on the Google Play website, through an extension for the Google Chrome web browser, or through the available for Android and iOS devices. Offline download is supported through the mobile app and on devices. A variety of options exist for watching content on a television.
❏ Platforms ❏
On computers, content can be watched on a dedicated Movies & TV section of the Google Play website, or through the Google Play Movies & TV Google Chrome web browser extension.[12][13]
On smartphones and tablets running the Android or iOS mobile operating systems, content can be watched on the Google Play Movies & TV mobile app.
Offline download and viewing is supported on Chromebooks through the Chrome extension, and on Android and iOS through the mobile app. Computers running Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS operating systems cannot download content.
In order to view content on a television, users can either connect their computer to a TV with an HDMI cable, use the Google Play Movies & TV app available for select smart TVs from LG and Samsung as well as Roku devices, stream content through the Chromecast dongle, through the YouTube app on Amazon Fire TV devices, or through Android TV.
❏ Formats and Genres ❏
A film genre is a motion-picture category based (for example) on similarities either in the narrative elements or in the emotional response to the film (namely: serious, comic, etc.).[citation needed] Most theories of film genre borrow from literary-genre criticism. Each film genre is associated[by whom?] with “conventions, iconography, settings, narratives, characters and actors”. [2] Standard genre characters vary according to the film genre; for film noir, for example, standard characters include the femme fatale[3] and the “hardboiled” detective; a Western film may portray the schoolmarm and the gunfighter. Some actors acquire a reputation linked to a single genre, such as John Wayne (the Western) or Fred Astaire (the musical).[4] A film’s genre will influence the use of filmmaking styles and techniques, such as the use of flashbacks and low-key lighting in film noir, tight framing in horror films, fonts that look like rough-hewn logs for the titles of Western films, or the “scrawled” title-font and credits of Se7en (1995), a film about a serial killer.[5] As well, genres have associated film-scoring conventions, such as lush string orchestras for romantic melodramas or electronic music for science-fiction films.…Netflix is a streaming service that offers award-winning TV shows, films, anime, documentaries and more on thousands of devices connected to the Internet Marketing Online One Way Streaming. | https://medium.com/@jales32610/watch-it-chapter-two-2019-full-m-o-v-i-e-online-streaming-google-drive-mp4-sub-esp-443360dac213 | ['Warung Jumadi Atau Jm'] | 2020-12-18 17:15:35.431000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'TV Series', 'Movies', 'Life', 'TV Shows'] |
Role of Mentorship | Role of Mentorship
What really comes in to your mind when the word mentor ship came? What do you think this word comprise of? let me broaden your concept. Its a continuous process of guiding and providing the sufficient knowledge to a person which need your expert intelligence at certain domain. Regardless of the age and command on a upgrading innovations and technology, the mentor can be older or younger than the one which needs to be guided. The relationship between the mentor and one being mentored need to be like friendly and comfortable. There should be no master or slave relationship.
Referring towards my experience regarding mentorship is not like as much as I expect to be. Unfortunately most of the mentor thinks that they don’t have the leisure time to get in to the mentorship. They assume that they can only help others or guide them when they are free from all there routine tasks but let me clear, this is not the matter of fact. I personally thinks that if you have domain in some discipline and confident enough to convey it to other rightly than you definitely need no leisure time for this. For instance if the person which need to be mentor come to you and seeks your help and you are busy somewhere else in your own work than what ideally you should do?
Leave your work aside and take out five minute or less to that person and guide him/her the best you can. Being a Muslim its our faith that helping others especially in knowledge is the best SADAQA you ever give because its last forever and ever.
People at different age group, ethnicity and norms can be sometime mentor or at the same time being mentored. This is a continuous process which is inter convertible.
Always try to spread what ever you have. If you are excel in some specific field go ahead and be a mentor and try the best possible ways to help others. Honestly this is the best feelings you will get after helping someone. | https://medium.com/@sumaiyaqamar/role-of-mentorship-188c63c637b5 | ['Sumaiya Qamar'] | 2020-12-05 07:58:02.749000+00:00 | ['Guidance', 'Mentorship'] |
Cleaning House | I take the time to write about this on New Year’s Day specifically as a counterculture protest.
On New Year’s our culture encourages us to ‘get our shit together’ in a more organized and tidy manner for the coming year. But what if we’ve been doing that and we are sick as fuck of that damn organized treadmill?
There is more to Life than ‘cleaning it up’. We can all sit in our homes and realize the rug is going to need to be vacuumed in another three days (much less than that if you have kids or a dog). We can lament over the fact there will ALWAYS be laundry. ALWAYS. We can fight dust bunnies with our swifters until we are blue in the face. But it will change nothing.
The tasks of Life will remain. What would I give to have back all the hours I spent doing those things? It’s water under the bridge now and all I can do is move forward knowing my mind was a slave to the OCD. And forgive myself those lost moments. Moments I could have spent with my children, my friends, my own soul in peace instead of drudgery.
I can be thankful for this insight. This place where I have finally landed. This moment where I understand I can do small tasks, one at a time, as needed and give myself the Gift of Free Time.
Free Time to spend in Growth and Love and Peace.
Organizing and Busyness is a game our brains are trained masters in. They deflect us from our Real Purpose in this Life.
Our Real Purpose is simply to Love.
And we start by Loving ourselves enough to let go of the damn lists, schedules, and organizational charts which society tells us makes us better Humans. If you are doing Love well — you are sure to have a bright and beautiful New Year.
Namaste.
Addendum: In the two years since I wrote this piece, I took yet another step towards healing my OCD. I hired a cleaning service. And I am pleased to report — they clean All. The. Things. just as good or even better than I could myself. This is great progress! I have let go of holding myself to unrealistic expectations. I have gained Time. The cleaning service is worth every penny I spend on it. | https://medium.com/recycled/cleaning-house-ad77fe4d3f62 | ['Ann Litts'] | 2020-12-08 10:07:39.083000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Healing', 'Self-awareness', 'Letting Go', 'Transformation'] |
Polynomial Regression with a Machine Learning Pipeline | Polynomial Regression with a Machine Learning Pipeline
Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
Welcome back! It’s very exciting to apply the knowledge that we already have to build machine learning models with some real data. Polynomial Regression, the topic that we discuss today, is such a model which may require some complicated workflow depending on the problem statement and the dataset.
Today, we discuss how to build a Polynomial Regression Model, and how to preprocess the data before making the model. Actually, we apply a series of steps in a particular order to build the complete model. All the necessary tools are available in Python Scikit-learn Machine Learning library.
Prerequisites
If you’re not familiar with Python, numpy, pandas, machine learning and Scikit-learn, please read my previous articles that are prerequisites for this article.
Without further delay, let’s go into the problem definition.
Problem Definition
We have a dataset which contains information about Age, Height, and Weight of 71 people. We want to build a regression model which captures the Weight of a person depending on Age and Height and evaluate its performance. Then we use that model to make predictions for new cases.
Actually, we don’t know the nature or complexity of our data until we plot them. Sometimes, we can easily fit a straight line and describe the model. But most of the time, this is not the case for real-world data. The data may be complicated and you need to consider a different approach to tackle the problem.
The Dataset
We have a dataset called person_data.csv (download here) which contains information about Age, Height, and Weight of 71 people. Let’s load it using the pandas read_csv() function and store it in the df variable.
Let’s check whether the data has missing values.
Great! All the values of the 3 columns have 71 non-null values meaning that there are no missing values.
Let’s define our feature matrix and the target vector. According to the problem definition, the feature matrix — X contains the values of Age and Height. The target vector — y contains the values Weight. Building a Regression Model is a supervised learning task so that we map the input X to the output y=f(X).
The dimension of our data is 2 because X is 2-dimensional. So, how can we plot 2-dimensional data of X with y? Obviously, we need to create a 3D plot. But there is another way. We can combine Age and Height into one variable called Z and then plot Z with y in a 2D plot. Combining Age and Height into one variable by reducing the number of features in the X is called the Dimensionality Reduction and the technique that we use to perform dimensionality reduction is the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) which uses the correlation of these two variables.
We have two advantages of performing Dimensionality Reduction before making the model:
It is extremely useful for visualizing our data in a 2D plot which makes easier to see important patterns It is extremely useful to remove correlated variables in the feature matrix, X.— doing so will avoid misleading predictions
Let’s check whether Age and Height are correlated or not.
It seems that the two features are highly correlated. The condition when there is a significant dependency or association between the independent variables (the variables in the feature matrix X) is called multicollinearity. Having multicollinearity will lead to misleading predictions.
Before making the model, our next task is to remove these correlated variables. As I said earlier, we use Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to do this. But before running PCA, it is essential to perform feature scaling if there is a significant difference in the scale between the features of the dataset. This is because PCA is very sensitive to the relative ranges of the original features. So, We apply z-score standardization to get all features into the same scale by using Scikit-learn StandardScaler() class which is in the preprocessing submodule in Scikit-learn.
Note: We apply feature scaling only for the feature matrix X. We don’t need to apply it for our target vector y.
So, the workflow for building our model is as follows. It contains a series of steps that should be applied in the given order. Building a machine learning model is not a one time task and you may come back to an earlier step and make some modifications and then you go again through the next steps.
The general workflow is:
Apply feature scaling for the feature matrix X [Use Scikit-learn StandardScaler() class]. Run PCA algorithm [Use Scikit-learn PCA() class]. Create a scatterplot and identify the nature of the relationship [Use Seaborn scatterplot() function]. Can we fit a straight line to our data or do we need to add polynomial features to fit the model accurately? If we can fit a straight line to our data, then run Linear Regression algorithm [Use Scikit-learn LinearRegression() class] If we cannot fit a straight line to our data, then we need to add polynomial features [Use Scikit-learn PolynomialFeatures() class] After adding the polynomial features, run Linear Regression algorithm [Use Scikit-learn LinearRegression() class]
Image by Author
Apply feature scaling
We apply z-score standardization to get all features into the same scale by using Scikit-learn StandardScaler(). All the features are scaled according to the following formula.
The scaled values of X is stored in the X_scaled variable which is a 2-dimensional numpy array.
Let’s check the mean and standard deviation of the scaled X values.
Now, you can see that mean is zero and the standard deviation is 1 for each variable in the X_scaled matrix.
Now, our data is ready to run PCA.
Run PCA algorithm
Now, we are ready to apply PCA for our dataset. We need to reduce two-dimensional data in the X_scaled matrix into one-dimensional data.
In Scikit-learn, PCA is applied using the PCA() class. The most important hyperparameter in that class is n_components. Since we are interested in getting one-dimensional data, the value of n_components is 1.
We have applied PCA for X_scaled values and the output values are stored in X_pca variable which is now a one-dimensional array.
We have reduced the dimensionality of our data, and also with some information loss compared to our original dataset. In PCA, the algorithm finds a low-dimensional representation of the data while retaining as much of the variation as possible.
Let’s check how much of variation retained by the algorithm while running it.
Wow! Awesome value! You can see that the first principal component keep about 97.36% of the variability in the dataset while reducing 1 (2–1) feature in the dataset. So the values of X_pca more accurately represent the values of the feature matrix X.
Let’s plot our data in a scatterplot.
Plot the data
Now we have one-dimensional data (X_pca) which represent X. Now we can plot X_pca with our y (Weight) values in a 2D plot.
Clearly, a straight line will never fit this data properly. Let’s see what will happen if we would try to fit a straight line to our data.
Where θ1 and 𝛼 are model parameters which learn during the training process.
The fit is so bad that the straight-line approach will never give us the best model for our data.
Only about 61% of the variability observed in the Weight is explained or captured by our model. RMSE value is 10.99. It means that on average, the predictions of the model are 10.99 units away from the actual values.
Let’s try out a different approach called Polynomial Regression to get the best fit for our data.
Polynomial Regression
You can use a linear model to fit nonlinear data. A simple way to do this is to add powers of each feature as new features, then train a linear model on this extended set of features. This technique is called Polynomial Regression.
So, polynomial regression that uses polynomials is still linear in the parameters. This is because you build the equation by only adding the terms together. So, the performance metrics like R-squared (R²-coefficient of determination) are still valid for polynomial regression. Do not get confused polynomial regression with non-linear regression where R² is not valid!
Adding powers for each variable
In our model, the only variable is X_pca. After adding powers for that variable, the model becomes:
Where θ1, θ2, θ3 and 𝛼 are model parameters which learn during the training process.
Let’s add polynomial features to our data using Scikit-learn PolynomialFeatures() class.
The most important hyperparameter in the PolynomialFeatures() class is degree. We set degree=4 so that it creates 3 additional features called X_pca², X_pca³, X_pca⁴ when the input (X_pca) is one-dimensional. The X_poly variable holds all the values of the features.
Running the algorithm
Now, we have transformed our data into polynomial features. So, we can use the LinearRegression() class again to build the model.
Wow! It seems that the polynomial approach gives us a better model.
About 90% of the variability observed in the Weight is explained or captured by our model. RMSE value is 5.526. It means that on average, the predictions of the model are 5.526 units away from the actual values.
So, we have significantly increased the performance of the model with Polynomial Regression.
Let’s check the distribution of the residuals (errors).
By looking at the histogram, we can verify that the residuals are approximately normally distributed with mean 0.
Hyperparameter Tuning
Model parameters vs hyperparameters
Model parameters are the parameters which learn during the training process. We do not manually set values for the parameters and they learn from the data we provide. For example, θ1, θ2, θ3 and 𝛼 are parameters in our polynomial regression model.
In contrast, the model hyperparameters are the parameters that do not learn from data. So, we have to set values for them manually. We always set values for the model hyperparameters at the creation of a particular model and before we start the training process. For example, we have set n_components=1 manually at the creation of the pca object from the PCA() class. We have also set degree=4 manually at the creation of poly_features object from the PolynomialFeatures() class.
In most cases, setting up the correct values for the model hyperparameters is one of the most challenging tasks. There is no magic formula behind this. You may try different values and get visual representations to verify your choice. Sometimes, you may try different values and evaluate the model performance and choose the best one. Sometimes, the domain knowledge of the problem will help you to deduce the correct values for the hyperparameters.
Let’s try out some different values (2–9) for the hyperparameter degree (Initially, I have set this as degree=4) and get some visual representations and model evaluation metrics.
Image by Author
High degrees can cause overfitting. The problem of overfitting is a condition where a statistical model begins to describe the random error in the data rather than the relationships between variables. In overfitting, the model fits training data very well but fails to generalize for new input data which are not in our dataset.
Lower degrees can cause underfitting. In underfitting, the model does not fit training data very well and also the new data.
When we set the value for the degree hyperparameter, we should always try to avoid both overfitting and underfitting conditions
By looking at the visual representations and the values of the performance metrics, we can decide that degree=4 or degree=5 is the ideal value for the degree hyperparameter.
Making predictions on new data
Imagine that we have 5 new observations and we want to predict Weights using our model. The new input data is stored on X_new array which is two dimensional. The first column is the Age and the second column is the Height.
New input data
When we build our model, we have scaled and transformed our original data 3 times. So, when we use our model to make predictions on new data, it is necessary to scale and transform new data using the same methods. So, we have to call fit_transform() method 3 times and then call the predict() method 1 time. So, this is annoying for us. To overcome this problem, we can build a machine learning pipeline for our polynomial regression model.
Building a machine learning pipeline
Scikit-learn refers to machine learning algorithms as estimators. There are three different types of estimators: classifiers, regressors, and transformers. The classifiers and regressors are called predictors.
As our analysis and workflow become more complicated, you may need to apply multiple transformations to your data before it is ready for a supervised machine learning model. Pipelines sequentially apply a list of transformers and a final predictor (classifier or regressor). Intermediate steps of the pipeline must be ‘transformers’, that is, they must implement fit() and transform() methods. The final predictor only needs to implement the fit() method.
In our workflow:
StandardScaler() is a transformer. PCA() is a transformer. PolynomialFeatures() is a transformer. LinearRegression() is a predictor.
So, we can build a pipeline for our model using Scikit-learn Pipeline() class. It sequentially applies the above list of transformers and the final predictor. Here is the code.
By using pipelines, we can easily build complex models with less code!
Let’s call the fit() method of our pipeline.
When calling poly_reg_model.fit(X, y), the following process occurs:
X_scaled = sc.fit_transform(X)
X_pca = pca.fit_transform(X_scaled)
X_poly = poly_features.fit_transform(X_pca)
lin_reg.fit(X_poly, y)
Let’s call the predict() method of our pipeline.
When calling poly_reg_model.predict(X_new), the following process occurs:
X_new_scaled = sc.transform(X)
X_new_pca = pca.transform(X_scaled)
X_new_poly = poly_features.transform(X_pca)
lin_reg.predict(X_new_poly)
So, poly_reg_model.predict(X_new) returns predictions for our new data.
Saving our model
Let’s save our model with the Python dill package.
After running this code, the poly_reg_model.dill (download here) file will appear in your current working directory.
Let’s load our model.
That’s it. You can share the poly_reg_model.dill file with others and they can use the model without building it again. It is just 743 bytes in memory!
This tutorial was designed and created by Rukshan Pramoditha, the Author of Data Science 365 Blog.
Technologies used in this tutorial
Python (High-level programming language)
(High-level programming language) numPy (Numerical Python library)
(Numerical Python library) pandas (Python data analysis and manipulation library)
(Python data analysis and manipulation library) matplotlib (Python data visualization library)
(Python data visualization library) seaborn (Python advanced data visualization library)
(Python advanced data visualization library) Scikit-learn (Python machine learning library)
(Python machine learning library) Jupyter Notebook (Integrated Development Environment)
Machine learning used in this tutorial
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Polynomial Regression
2020–10–12 | https://towardsdatascience.com/polynomial-regression-with-a-machine-learning-pipeline-7e27d2dedc87 | ['Rukshan Pramoditha'] | 2020-10-20 07:00:37.635000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Dimensionality Reduction', 'Polynomial Regression', 'Scikit Learn'] |
Emotions and Indian sculpture | Much Sanskrit literature is characterised by a high degree of attention to fine details such as literary qualities like alliteration and assonance, sophisticated verse metres and so on. Indeed, not only poetry but in fact most philosophical and other theoretical works of Sanskrit literature are also written in verse form and characterised by such qualities. Interestingly, this same attention to fine detail is also found in other domains of creative endeavour such as Indian art and architecture.
Thus in Indian miniature painting, what characterises the form is not so much the total size of the painting, but rather the scale at which the brushstrokes are executed. Patrons of these art forms were also expected to have an eye for such details. Thus the Mughal Emperor Jahangir writes -
“I derive such enjoyment from painting and have such expertise in judging it that, even without the artist’s name being mentioned, no work of past or present masters can be shown to me that I do not instantly recognize who did it. Even if it is a scene of several figures and each face is by a different master, I can tell who did which face. If in a single painting different persons have done the eyes and eyebrows, I can determine who drew the face and who made the eyes and eyebrows.” [Jahangirnama, 267–268, quoted in ‘Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting’]
Innovation in Indian painting frequently took the form of small variations on stock themes and standardised conventions of depiction of various gods etc. Thus, in contrast to the above quote, another story tells about painter who presented an artwork on the theme of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa to his unappreciative patron, who was only able to see in it the standard iconography of this imagery and failed to recognize the finer details that made it a bespoke image tailored to the particular context it was painted in. We may compare this with the well-known story of the king who didn’t know his Sanskrit grammar.
In architecture, too, we find attention to detail in the profusion of sculptural figures ornamenting every surface of Hindu temples and some other examples of classical Indian buildings. Indeed, this form of architecture provides gives the eye defined places to rest when surveying the surface of the building, providing a sort of logic of vision. Indeed, studies in modern psychology also show that the human brain is primed from birth to recognize and respond to the human face and body. Thus it could be said that this type of ornamentation brings the built environment into harmony with the social environment and human psychology.
In this way, it can be seen that the Indian figurative arts are anchored in the human dimension, including the variety of emotional and psychological states that are fundamental to our lived experience. These states are conventionally depicted through bodily postures, facial expressions and mudras, or stylized hand gestures, which are common to depictions in sculpture, dance and other forms of artistic expression. The 9th century AD Sanskrit work Abhinayadarpaṇam of Nandikeśvara catalogues and describes the various bodily postures, glances, ways of moving and hand gestures that are to be used in Indian classical dance. For example -
If you stretch the head from side to side like a chauri (whisk), [that’s called] ‘pulled about’. ‘Pulled about’ head should be used for [depicting] infatuation, for the pain of separation, for devotional praise, for contentment, for rejoicing, and for deliberation. [Abhinayadarpaṇam 64–65ab; my own translation]
In this way, architecture and other arts and sciences are able to explicitly represent or otherwise engage with the variety of human emotions and thus connect more directly with the emotional character of our lives.
Through Ananda Coomaraswamy and other such mediators of cultural interpretation, aspects of the classical Indian tradition also seems to have had some fragmentary and inconclusive influence on the emergence of British modernism, as seen in the image above.
The American-British sculptor Jacob Epstein was a good friend of Ananda Coomaraswamy, who had some significant influence on him. The sculptures depicted above on the façade of (what is now) Zimbabwe House in London were designed by Epstein to represent a form of modernism which took influence from Indian classical sculptural traditions. However, according to Wikipedia -
“the Strand sculptures were controversial for quite a different reason: they represented Epstein’s first thoroughgoing attempt to break away from traditional European iconography in favour of elements derived from an alternative sculptural milieu — that of classical India. The female figures in particular may be seen deliberately to incorporate the posture and hand gestures of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art from the subcontinent in no uncertain terms.” [From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Epstein]
Unfortunately it seems that this controversy over the sculptures led to some degree of defacement, resulting in them reaching the condition depicted above. It doesn’t seem possible to find any picture of these sculptures in their original form. Doubtless, however the postures and hand gestures referred to are the mudras of the classical Indian tradition, as described for example in the Abhinayadarpaṇam, which was in fact translated into English by Ananda Coomaraswamy. We may end with another well-known idea from this work - | https://medium.com/desiretothink/emotions-and-indian-sculpture-2c81bdc666c4 | ['Peter Sahota'] | 2020-08-29 23:01:28.405000+00:00 | ['Ananda Coomaraswamy', 'Modernist Design', 'Sculpture', 'Sanskrit', 'Architecture'] |
Fear of labor pain — what helped me | As much as it was my dream to be a mother, I was terrified of labor pain. Terrified. And the impression of labor that the movies paint for us didn’t make things any better!
I wanted a baby, and now I was pregnant. Between being pregnant and having the baby, there’s labor! May be I’ll have a C section. But guess what, I was terrified of that too. Basically I believe I have low tolerance for pain, and giving birth is known to be a lot of things, including extremely painful!
Weeks were passing by and there came a time when I became obsessed with the inevitable hospital visit for labor and delivery. I was overcome with anxiety.
After several days of being anxious and restless, I shifted my focus to preparation. And finally, on the day that I went to the hospital, I had no anxiety around labor pain!
Here’s sharing with you what helped me-
(Note: the following tips can be helpful for any kind of birth including C-section)
Only positive stories
There’s enough and more horror stories about labor and delivery experiences. While they’re real stories of real people who did go through that, it really didn’t help knowing them when preparing for my own labor. Especially since this was going to be my first time. No matter what kind of experience I was actually going to have, all the moments leading up to labor was nothing but speculation. There is no way I could have any guarantee about how my labor was actually going to be. Only point in concern- my anxiety about it! And for that, positive stories were huge help. More and more of it helped me feel more and more relaxed about the experience. I did what my friend called “saturate with positive stories”. (Here is one video of a woman talking about her positive birth experience)
Animals do it
Birth of a first baby is a major life event. It is special, unique, and there is nothing like it. As exciting as that sounds, it did also help to remind myself often that I’m not the first, and will not be the last to deliver a baby. My mother, grandmother, sisters, friends, neighbors, neighbor’s friends, friends’ pets, animals in the jungle, people from another city, another country, another time period… have done it. My mother had said “millions of women are delivering a baby somewhere every day.* A friend reminded me that every single living being on this planet since the beginning of time, has been born through this process. I know that this is common knowledge, yet, it was strangely satisfying to remind myself of that fact. I was going to do what has been done over and over by millions of people. A sense of certainty in the midst of uncertainty.
Learning about the process
The labor management class I took at the hospital called labor pain “positive pain". They said that this is the only kind of pain that’s telling you that things are going the way they should (as opposed to other pains like those from injury, that are signals that something is wrong and need healing). This sensation is present in the nature of the body, with a purpose.
This video explains what happens when the uterus is working to get the baby out, and how we can help it do the job it is designed to do, and not get in it’s way.
This flipped things around for me and gave me a strong reason to learn to relax! (Other videos from this playlist were also useful)
Breathing
This is the big one. This was the most effective in-the-moment method for getting through my labor contractions. We’re breathing all the time, that’s not what I’m referring to. I followed the breathing technique demonstrated in this video. I also counted my breaths. Every time a contraction started, I immediately shifted all my focus to breathing and counting. One thing about labor contractions that I could take advantage of, is that it comes in intervals. It is not continuous (yes, I did not know that!). So by the time I got to about 8 breaths, the contraction would have, subsided. At the end of every contraction, I had a break where I could relax as much as possible, before the next one began. As the contractions got more intense, I began counting out loud so I could keep my focus on my breaths better.
I have to mention, I had practiced these techniques while imagining I’m in labor (although I had no idea what that would actually feel like) nearly every day during the last couple of months of my pregnancy. In retrospect, I’m really glad I practiced. Even though the sensations of labor were new, the breathing technique was now second nature. There is more chance that you’ll manage to drive through a rocky road safely as a practiced driver, rather than if you’ve never driven on any road before. Practice made it possible for me.
Note: I still use this technique when I feel overwhelmed as a new mother. This could help even if you’re having C-section (or any other procedure) and feel anxious about it.
Visualization
This was the most effective method to calm my mind during labor. Breathing was for the body (it did also help the mind), and visualization was for the mind (which helped the body too.. they’re too connected to make a clear distinction). This is basically closing my eyes and “watching" my baby descending through the birth canal and being born- watching it all happen in a smooth and easy way. No matter what is actually going on, visualizing that it’s going smooth and easy tricks the mind and body into believing it, helping stay calm. Staying as calm as possible was the goal (reason discussed earlier in “learning about the process").
Just like I did with breathing, I also practiced visualizing regularly. I used some of these videos to practice it. I often practiced breathing and visualizing together.
Exercising
Disclaimer- what I’m sharing here is just what I followed. It is best to follow doctor’s advise.
My doctor said I could do any exercise as long as I “listen to my body". She said that pregnancy is as normal and natural as other other bodily processes, and that unless there were complications, I could go about my life as normally as possible. In fact, she insisted on exercise, at least 20–30 minutes of walking per day, and increase duration to as far as comfortable.
I did 30–60 minute walks every day and also exercises from this YouTube channel 4-5 days a week. Note- I used to exercise even before I got pregnant, so it was not new to my body. The point my doctor made was to maintain whatever my body is used to, but not pushing too hard to the point of discomfort and exhaustion. That brings us back to “listening to the body”.
How did exercise/yoga help me with my fear of labor pain? One, it made me feel strong and capable that I could be active and flexible (safely) even with a growing tummy. Was a boost to self confidence. Two, the trainer in the YouTube channel (Jessica) has exercise videos specifically for labor preparation. Doing those
regularly and listening to her cheering on moms-to-be was a booster. (This video and this video were my favorite routines.) Three, although I don’t have a way to verify this, I believe that the months of exercise and walking (started consistently from second trimester) helped me build up the much required stamina during labor. It’s like a friend of my told me — I got the feeling we get when we’ve prepared really well for an exam.
Encouragement
I made sure I most often spoke to people who were encouraging. Lucky for me, my mother, cousins, close friends were all very encouraging. I also had fellow mom-to-be friends and recent-mom friends who were going through similar experiences. Cheering for each other reminded me that I was not alone in my fears. If anybody tended to tell me that it’s going to be bad (horrible, terrible and words like that), I tried my best to avoid discussing labor with them. And every time I had any doubts about my ability to deal with labor, my beautiful friends and family always cheered for me and told me I could do it. Hearing that over the course of time was very reassuring.
Support person
I wish my mother was there with me during labor, she is most soothing presence for me. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic and us being in two different countries, that did not happen.
My husband was with me through my pregnancy as well as labor. He was an excellent support person. Firstly, he kept my mother updated in real time, every moment, all the way during our stay at the hospital. That was very important to me. Apart from that, he was present with me every moment, fully alert to my needs. He had snacks and electrolyte water available and offered me a bite, a sip every few minutes. He was right next to me if I needed a hand. Towards the end when I wasn’t talking, and conserving every little bit of energy I had left, he took care of all communication with the medical team. Having him, a person I could trust fully, by my side, was instrumental in staying calm through labor. All I had to do was focus on myself- the breathing, visualizing and relaxing, and he took care of everything else, while also being fully available for me. Having highly efficient and empathetic nurses was a plus!
All of the above helped me have an experience that was not scary at all. It was intense no doubt, but far from scary, enabling me to look back and feel good about it rather than dread the memory.
I must mention that although I did deliver normally, I was open to all kinds of possibilities- short or long labor, normal or C-section, induced or natural, aided or not aided, epidural or no epidural. If I had learnt one thing from the tens of stories I’d heard from my friends and family, it is that every birth story is different, and it is best to expect surprises, and go with the flow. The last thing I wanted was disappointment around my birth experience. No matter how it went, it was going to be beautiful since it was going to result in the arrival of my little one.
I sincerely hope this helps. Wishing you (or someone you might share this with) a smooth pregnancy and a positive labor/delivery experience! | https://medium.com/@shruthirajalakshmi/fear-of-labor-pain-what-helped-me-d9bfd83c9dce | ['Shruthi Rajalakshmi'] | 2021-06-04 02:59:29.208000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Natural Birth', 'Labor Pains', 'Anxiety', 'Cesarian Section'] |
15 Baby Items That You Really Don’t Need | When you have a baby, especially the first time around, we seem to build up a vast collection of ‘must have’ items that we thought we needed but that turn out to be a complete waste of money. Babies don’t actually need that much, especially in the first six months.
Here are 15 baby items you will be convinced you need when, actually, you don’t.
A FANCY NURSERY
When you’re pregnant, you can spend ages drooling over adorable nurseries on Pinterest. Bespoke furniture, high-end fixtures and a walk-in wardrobe full of colour coordinated designer clothes.
Your baby does not care if you’ve spent a few grand on their nursery or a few hundred. They hardly spend any time in there in the first six months, most babies sleep in their parent’s room in a crib. If you have the money and desire to do it go ahead, but it’s a better idea to save your hard-earned pennies and treat yourself or open a savings account for your little one.
It’s easy to create an Instagram worthy mountain collage with just a few paint colours and some masking tape. I did one on my son’s wall with paint we already had in the shed. It took me half a day and it looked amazing. Think it was one of my most liked photos on Instagram, ha!
BABY SHOES
Babies do not need shoes. Until a child starts to walk, they don’t need to wear anything on their little tootsies. Sure, they look cute, and it might be fun to put them in a pair for an occasion, but babies don’t need them.
BABY DRESSING GOWNS
They look adorable in them at first, but they are entirely useless. They drown their top half and leave their little legs completely exposed, so they are not helpful when it comes to regulating your babies temperature.
NECKERCHIEF BIBS
I have never really understood these. They are those small triangle shaped bibs that look like little neckerchiefs and barely cover their chest. They come in some cool designs and don’t look like bibs, which I think is the appeal, but when babies start eating solids, they make a mess. Bibs need to be big; they need to cover their chest and down to their little tummies so they can catch any drips or mouthfuls of food they decide to spit back at you.
BABY HAIRBRUSH
Most babies have very little hair, so why you need a hairbrush is beyond me.
BABY POWDER
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I’m not sure why you would use this, it was very popular in the fifties and sixties, but current research has linked baby powder to breathing problems in babies and even cancer. It’s nasty, steer clear.
COT BEDDING SETS
You know those gazillion piece matching sets that include a quilt and a bumper? They look lovely, but they cost a fortune and can be dangerous. Quilts are not safe for babies under one year old, and the NHS says that you should avoid using cot bumpers in your baby’s cot — they are a hazard for choking, suffocation and strangulation. Enough said.
NAPPY BINS
You are guaranteed to find second hand, barely used nappy bins at car boot sales and on facebook market places across the country. They seem like a fantastic idea when your pregnant with your first, but you quickly find out that they are just a waste of space and your better off just putting nappies in your kitchen bin and emptying it regularly.
BABY BREATHING/HEART MONITOR
When my oldest was born, the hospital gave us one of these monitors as a precaution due to their having been a cot death in his father’s family. They are great when your baby is sleeping on them, the ticking sound they make is a real comfort, but if they roll off the monitor, which is a regular occurrence, the alarm goes off, and you absolutely shit yourself every time. I found it more of a hindrance than a help; it turned me into even more of a sleep-deprived nervous wreck than I already was! If your baby has a genuine medical reason for needing one use it. If not, I would recommend saving your money as they are very expensive.
PARENTING BOOKS
There are a gazillion parenting books out there, many with completely contradictory advice. If you read too many, you will just end up confusing yourself.
WASHING POWDER FOR BABIES
There is no need to change your washing powder to non-bio just because there is a baby in the house. The difference between bio/non-bio is that one contains enzymes that can supposedly irritate the skin, and one doesn’t. The bio/non-bio split is a weird British quirk, in no other country in the world is the detergent market divided in half. Current research has shown there is no evidence to support the old notion that biological washing powder can irritate babies skin.
BABY PHOTO ALBUMS
We have just moved house and had a massive clearout. I found five baby photo albums. Do you know how many photographs were in them? None.
DESIGNER ANYTHING
A family friend bought my youngest an Armani baby grow that looked like a tuxedo. When I googled it, it had cost £70! He wore it once on our way to a wedding. Before we even got there, he did a massive exploding poo that went right up his back and front. We had to stop at a supermarket onroute and bought him 3 baby grows for £10 instead. He looked just as cute!
CHANGING TABLE
Just get a changing mat and put it on the floor. They cost a fraction of the price, take up far less room, and you don’t need to worry about your baby rolling off when you realise you’ve left the wipes across the other side of the room.
BABY BATH
They are enormous, a pain to store and aren’t generally that great for bathing babies. In my opinion, you can’t beat the kitchen sink! It’s the perfect height and size for a baby. I still bathe my two-year-old in there sometimes ha!
EXPENSIVE TOYS
To a baby, a cardboard box or a wooden spoon is just as exciting as an all singing all dancing toy that cost £50.
read more articles on the first time mama blog | https://medium.com/first-time-mama/15-baby-items-that-you-really-dont-need-2571be929422 | ['First Time Mama'] | 2020-01-01 07:51:01.219000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Childhood', 'Collection', 'Need', 'Money'] |
Never Trumpers move the goal posts | Let’s go back to the 2016 campaign and recall what the Never Trumpers said were their main reasons for their refusing to support Donald Trump for president.
He is not a conservative, they insisted. He is a New York Liberal so he will never:
Actually nominate an Antonin Scalia type justice to the Supreme Court Cut taxes Reduce regulations Shrink the size of government Listen to his generals in the military Do anything about ObamaCare Put the UN in its place Defeat ISIS Or keep any promise he made because he’s a New York liberal and not a conservative
I can of course go on and on. However, now that 2017 has come to a close and we can look back on President Donald Trump’s first year in office, it is as clear as day that he has done all of those things they said he wouldn’t and more. In fact, President Trump has been more successful in implementing a conservative agenda than even Ronald Reagan was.
But when we point out these very conservative accomplishments to Never Trumpers, this is what they say. At least this is what Bret Stephens said:
Conservatives used to believe in their truth. Want to “solve” poverty? All the welfare dollars in the world won’t help if two-parent families aren’t intact. Want to foster democracy abroad? It’s going to be rough going if too many voters reject the foundational concept of minority rights. And want to preserve your own republican institutions? Then pay attention to the character of your leaders, the culture of governance and the political health of the public. It matters a lot more than lowering the top marginal income tax rate by a couple of percentage points. This is the fatal mistake of conservatives who’ve decided the best way to deal with Trump’s personality — the lying, narcissism, bullying, bigotry, crassness, name calling, ignorance, paranoia, incompetence and pettiness — is to pretend it doesn’t matter. “Character Doesn’t Count” has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. “Virtue Doesn’t Matter” might be another. But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump’s shortcomings prove it daily.
He moved the goal posts and switched to “but character and virtue!”
In spite of Trump’s victorious year implementing the most conservative agenda in decades that has unleashed the economy and increased America’s power and standing in the world Stephens says none of that means anything so he still wishes Hillary Clinton had won.
Yes, he still wishes Hillary had won because character and virtue matter.
Wrap your brain around that one. | https://medium.com/@kimpriestap/never-trumpers-move-the-goal-posts-12c700ccf310 | ['Kim Priestap'] | 2017-12-31 20:44:09.999000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Conservatism', 'Donald Trump', 'Politics', 'Hypocrisy'] |
Blockchain Futurist Conference Exclusive: D-Tube | About D-Tube
DTube is a decentralized streaming video platform linked to Steemit (the decentralized social media) which allows users to upload videos easily and make money (or cryptocurrency) via the upvotes or likes on their post.
We sat with DTube’s Community Manager, Scott Cunningham, to discuss the future of decentralized media platforms and the influx of users due to censorship of certain voices on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.
See D-Tube’s functioning video platform here: https://d.tube/ | https://medium.com/ico-alert/blockchain-futurist-conference-exclusive-d-tube-9176b1562fc5 | ['Evan Schindler'] | 2018-08-21 19:10:46.074000+00:00 | ['News', 'Blockchain', 'Toronto', 'Censorship', 'YouTube'] |
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