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Why Programmers Should Write Tutorials

Why Programmers Should Write Tutorials The best people teach Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash. Imagine this situation: You receive a task to implement a new feature in your company’s software. You think it will be easy because you did something similar a few months ago. Just copy, paste, and be happy. You even start doing something else not related to the problem because you have the time. A few hours before the deadline, you open your old code and panic. You don’t understand any of what you have written or why you chose those data structures. You start to check the test code if you are lucky enough to have coded one. After you run the tests, make some changes to see what happens, and search for alternatives on Stack Overflow, you are finally able to understand the code and implement the original task. In the end, you wasted a few hours (and encountered a lot of self-doubt) just to remember that you had to install a library that was not in the original documentation. One single command. It is inevitable not to feel frustrated. You have probably gone through this situation during your life as a programmer. The more years of experience you gain, the greater your chances of facing this again — just because you did not write it down.

https://medium.com/better-programming/why-programmers-should-write-tutorials-6ecbb83f43e3

['Fernando Souza']

2020-08-17 15:19:44.984000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Startup', 'Tutorial', 'Programming', 'Writing']

Learn React Native State Management and Horizontal Scroll by Making a Color Palette App

The most fun way to learn new technologies is to actually implement them. A little bit of a lecture here… Alright, if you don’t want to read it, feel free to skip to the next section. Yes, I will feel bad if you skip, but alright, I’ll hold no grudges :( If I could put forward all my tech experience in one sentence, it would probably be the above statement, “The most fun way to learn new technologies is to actually implement them”, and if you follow me, I guess you must have read this same statement thousands of times. The reason why I put so much stress on this one single statement always is because, I get this question almost daily, how do I learn this, how do I learn that? And most of the time my answer is, go through docs or see some youtube videos, and make side projects. By following the video tutorials or documentation, you can get the knowledge, but if you want that knowledge to stay in your mind for a long period, you must understand what is actually happening, and to understand that, the best way is to make side projects and actually see what is happening. So yeah, enough side talks, let’s get to the point. P.S. This blog is going to be a little long, I’ll try to make it “not so boring”, plus you will learn a lot, so LET’S START! Let’s see what are we going to make today From the title, you might have already noticed that we are going to make a color palette app today, and in the process, we will be learning many things, including — State Management Component Lifecycle RN Toast RN Clipboard Horizontal Scrolling FlatList and much more… (probably since I am tired to write everything, and I don’t want to exaggerate) In case you are interested in the code only, you can visit this GitHub repo — Alrighttt, excited about the app? Well, I am! So let’s start. (Do note that in this blog, I am assuming that you already have NodeJS installed on your system, if you don’t, just go on to this website: nodejs.org/ and download it) (Also, I will try to make this blog very concise, so we will directly jump on to the steps, if you get any doubts in between, feel completely free to contact me) 1. Setting up our project We will be setting up our project with expo, if you don’t know what expo is, I will tell you a little bit, but you can always read more about it on the official website: https://expo.io/ Just a random GIF :) So yeah, as you might have guessed, expo is a tool using which we can create our react native apps faster. Basically, if you use expo, you don’t have to set up the development environment, just one command, and you are good to go. It’s very simple to use, just go to play store or app store, download its mobile app, and on your desktop, we will do the things from expo-cli. When you run it, it will show you a QRCode which you will have to scan through the mobile app, and voila! So, open your project directory, and type this command — npx expo-cli init <project_name> You can give any name to your project, but I will give it the name colorPalette . So my command would look something like — npx expo-cli init colorPalette Wait for a couple of seconds as it starts the process, then you will be asked about which template you want to choose. Since this is (mostly) a single page application, I will go with the minimal app > blank a minimal app as clean as an empty canvas Then, you will be asked a name for your app, I’ll again go with the colorPalette { "expo": { "name": "colorPatette", "slug": "colorPalette" } } Then you will be prompted to install the dependencies, press ‘Y’ and done. That’s basically it! 2. Let’s run our expo app, and have a look at the existing code If you followed the above steps correctly, you should have got this message — To get started, you can type: cd colorPalette yarn start So go into the colorPalette directory and run the command npm start or yarn start By doing so, you will see, expo shows a QR Code on your browser, open the expo app on mobile and scan the QR Code, and the app will open. Celebrate small victories as well :3 As of now, it’s just a minimal app having some text in the center. Your project directory should look somewhat like this. (Ignore the gifs folder, those are the screen recordings) If you know a little React Native, you can easily figure out that our app entry point is App.js Now we will start making our components. I prefer to store the components in a separate directory named components , but again, it’s your personal choice if you want to do it or not. So I’ll just make a new components directory. Here’s how our app looks as of now — 3. Let’s get our data ready Alright, as you might have guessed, before starting anything, we actually need the color palettes. So I searched quite a lot of places on the internet but couldn’t find any API which could provide some cool color palettes, so I decided to gather some myself. Special thanks to Canva for writing this blog on 100 amazing color combinations: https://www.canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations/ I made an array of objects, each having 4 colors, each of the colors having a name and a hex code. Currently, I took the first 10 combinations from the Canva blog, but it would be a great help if any of you can add more into the JS file. So you can download the data.js from my GitHub repo — https://github.com/MadhavBahlMD/Color-Palette-App/blob/master/data.js 4. Let’s understand the structure of a component Before starting this, I would like to give you a code snippet that you can use as bootstrap for writing any component. Let’s divide this component to understand it. To be honest, if you understand this code, half of your job is done. Almost every component uses this type of structure. 1. Import statements At the top there are the various libraries and components which we want to import. In the simplest component we can import these — import React from 'react'; import { View, Text, StyleSheet } from 'react-native'; 2. Component Body After the import statements, there is the main definition of our component. If can be either a functional component or a class component. A functional component — export default function App() { return ( <View style={styles.container}> <Text>Hi There!</Text> </View> ); } Class component — export default class Bootstrap extends Component { render () { return ( <View style={styles.container}> <Text>This is a Bootstrap Component</Text> </View> ) } } This code is easily readable and understandable. At the end of the day, from every component file, we have to return a “single” component. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you literally have to return a single component only, whatever you want to return, you can wrap it around some container like <View></View> Please also notice how did we apply styling to our <View> 3. Style Sheet This part includes the styles we set to our components. A simple example is — const styles = StyleSheet.create({ container: { flex: 1, backgroundColor: '#fff', alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', }, }); Alright, so I guess now you must have a pretty good idea of how we can set up a React Native application and make components. Now, we can finally start with our main application. 5. Little bit about the components we will make Alright, so mostly we will have 2 components in this project, Home HorizontalCard <HorizontalCard /> (as the name suggests), will be the actual card which will contain the color palette element, and we will be able to swipe it horizontally. The <Home /> component will be a sort of wrapper from where we will call FlatList to show the different colors in a palette (or, to show the various horizontal cards, each card containing a color from that palette) FlatList helps us render a list of data, plus it has various features which make the development really simple, for example, horizontal scroll, paging enabled, etc. 6. Let’s start making our Home Component Here, we will import the color palette data, choose one of the palettes (let’s say the 7th one), and then render the hex codes of those colors using a FlatList. Here’s the code, read it once, you will mostly understand, I’ll also break it down afterwards, for better clarity. Don’t forget to import and add the <Home /> component in the App.js import Home from './components/Home'; And <App> will return — <View style={styles.container}> <Home /> </View> Whole code of App.js — As I explained the structure of the generic component above, it must be easy for you now to understand. In the case of <Home /> basically we are importing the palette data, which is an array of objects, then, inside the render method, we are extracting one of the palettes (7th one, I like the number 7), and then, creating a new array out of it. (This array basically extracts the 4 inner objects (colors) as array elements). Then we are returning the FlatList, which takes in the data as the newly created colors array, horizontal true (for horizontal scrolling), showsHorizontalScrollIndicator false, to hide the scroll bar, we will use the hex codes as the keys (since hex codes will be different), and inside the renderItem method, we each iterated color which we display on the screen. It looks like this — Alright, it’s the time for some styling 😍 P.S. In further steps we will modify the <Home /> component, you can find the corresponding codes in this directory — https://github.com/MadhavBahlMD/Color-Palette-App/tree/master/components 7. Let’s make a welcome and end screen (: Ok, now I am going to comment out the flat list and I’ll make a welcome and end screen first. Alright, you might be thinking that it will take some huge code to make horizontally sliding pages, but on the contrary, it’s very simple to do so, it’s possible in a very few lines of code! Here’s the code — So, as you can see, here, we made 2 Views, one for welcome and one for “The End”, and wrapped them inside ScrollView. Probably the most important things which we require are these properties of ScrollView — horizontal={true} pagingEnabled={true} showsHorizontalScrollIndicator={false} We already discussed the horizontal and showsHorizontalScrollIndicator You can easily understand the importance of pagingEnabled through what’s written about it in the official documentation, When true, the scroll view stops on multiples of the scroll view’s size when scrolling. This can be used for horizontal pagination. Remaining changes are just the styles, let’s have a look at what styles we added, outer: { flex: 1, alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', width: Dimensions.get ('window').width, height: Dimensions.get ('window').height, }, innerText: { color: '#fff', fontSize: 32, fontWeight: 'bold' } In the outer (container), we basically made it to cover the whole screen, so that we can see the whole card like pages, and in the innerText, we just set the color, font size, and weight. Let’s see how it looks — Alright, this was basically a huge thing we completed, our app is, (say), 30% complete! And the code compiled successfully! Alright, now’s the time to uncomment the FlatList 8. Let’s make the horizontal cards, Finally! Ok, now that you have already seen the styling for the cards, we can actually separate it as a complete component. Don’t uncomment the FlatList just yet, let’s first make a <HorizontalCard /> component first. If you are wondering how will we get the color palette data inside the separate horizontal cards component, the answer is “props”. We will call a FlatList to iterate over each color in the color palette and call one card for each color, and pass on the color data inside props. Also, just so that you are not confused, here is how our colors array looks like (the array over which we will Iterate our FlatList) — Array [ Object { "hex": "#375e97", "name": "Sky", }, Object { "hex": "#fb6542", "name": "Sunset", }, Object { "hex": "#ffbb00", "name": "Sunflower", }, Object { "hex": "#3f681c", "name": "Grass", }, ] It’s an array of objects, each object having the color name and hex code. Let’s see the code for HorizontalCard component — Hang on, we are not done yet (Don’t worry, will look at the Horizontal card component as well), we have to include the Horizontal Card component inside the Flat List in App.js So finally we can uncomment the FlatList component now :) So, in the render item, we can return a HorizontalCard component. renderItem={({ item }) => { return <HorizontalCard colorName={item} /> }} Also, don’t forget to import it. Let’s see how are app looks now — Pretty amazing right? No :) Our job is only half done, as you can see, I have to explain you this code. There’s some warning at the bottom which I have to remove. Add the “Copy to clipboard feature” when we click on the hex code. Add a toast to notify “Copy to clipboard: Successful”. Select a random palette from the data and show it. Add a “Refresh Palette” button in the “The End” page. But, as you can see, this blog has already become VERY HUGE, so I’ll be discussing the things which are remaining in the next blog 😁 P.S. Don’t worry about the warning too much, it’s coming because we have a FlatList inside a ScrollView, which we will remove in the part 2 of this blog :) “Hey, Madhav, but you didn’t explain the HorizontalCard Component!” Yes, I did that on purpose Yeah, this blog was getting pretty big, plus I want you to understand that code yourself. So take it as a homework, read the code and try to understand that component, if you have understood the previous sections, I am pretty sure that you will be able to understand the HorizontalCard component as well. But even if you don’t, no worries, part 2 of this blog is will be published very soon, in which I will discuss everything that is remaining in this one. So till now, we have done till here —

https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/learn-react-native-state-management-and-horizontal-scroll-by-making-a-color-palette-app-3a66cf0d9825

['Madhav Bahl']

2020-01-22 09:55:33.245000+00:00

['Mobile App Development', 'JavaScript', 'React', 'React Native', 'Programming']

A Deliberate Pause May Be the Best Advice for Our Business Growth

1. The thinking part of your brain needs a break When you run your business every day, every week, every month, and every year, without taking a break, part of your brain responsible for logical thinking runs dry. Can you put more backpacks on a shoulder that’s already carrying a heavy backpack? You can’t. To carry another backpack, you need to put down what you’re already carrying. Your shoulders need to be free of any weight and take a rest. Otherwise, you’ll bend, whimper, and collapse on the floor. The same is true for the prefrontal cortex (PFC) — the thinking part of your brain. PFC has a lot of responsibility. When you run your business, it carries a load of logical thinking, executive functioning, and using willpower to override impulses. Any part of your business that needs your concentration, the PFC does the job. When you use the PFC without allowing it to rest, you make impulsive decisions that may cost you and your business thousands or millions of dollars. So you need to take a deliberate pause so the PFC can carry the weight of any logical thinking your business needs. 2. Taking a deliberate pause prevents decision fatigue Last month, I almost made a poor decision that would have cost my online business a tremendous loss. I’ve been teaching different online courses nonstop since the pandemic started. Because I am exhausted from running a demanding online business, I almost asked my students who already took one of my courses to pay and learn the same course. Decision fatigue is real. You understand what I’m talking about. Making frequent business decisions wear down your willpower and reasoning ability. You’re not the only one with this problem. A famous study shows that decision fatigue is more common than you think. In the study, Israeli judges were more likely to grant paroles to prisoners after their two daily breaks than after they had been working for a while. When the judges didn’t take breaks and decision fatigue set in, the rate of granting paroles gradually dropped to near 0%. Exhausted judges resorted to the easiest and safest option — just say no. Can you believe two daily breaks made a difference? A difference between a tough decision of giving parole or taking the easy way out and saying no. I can. Taking a two-week restorative rest is benefiting my business. I took a walk in the woods for days and recharged my batteries. And I came back to my online teaching feeling more inspired and with a mindset that could make an excellent decision than before. Taking a break benefits your business. It’s not an indulgence. Nor is it something you should do as an afterthought. It’s so important like an essayist Tim Kreider noted in the New York Times in 2012, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets…It is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.” If you don’t want fatigue to make poor decisions that may cost your business, dedicate time to recharge your batteries. You don’t need to take a vacation to a beach to stare at a glittering sea; the ocean breeze ruffling your hair. You can take a break right where you are. You just need to block a time on your calendar to take a deliberate pause from your business. You can pause for one day a week. Or you can even do it for a few hours every day if you’re intentional about when that time comes and how you use it. Decide what you’re going to do with that time. It should be something restorative. Not lying on your couch and watching reruns of whatever your favorite TV show is. That will not recharge your batteries. It’s probably going to suck any energy left from running your business. The point of taking a break is not to make yourself more exhausted than you already are and make poor decisions. 3. Your productivity and creativity benefits from taking a break When I take a break to brisk walk around my favorite park, I write more articles in a few hours. I teach with my full energy. My teammates can see my energy through the camera on our video calls. Taking a deliberate pause boosts your productivity. It also allows your brain to generate new ideas and concepts. After each break, a new idea always pops into my head. When you take a break, you might come up with an idea that changes your business model or something that creates more value for your customers. It’s not just me who says taking a break benefits your creativity. According to research, “Aha moments” came more often to those who took breaks. Isn’t that something you want? To take a pause and replenish your mental resources and become more creative? Just like an athlete allows his body to rest after a race or training session, you need to take a break and make it a habit to grow your business. 4. You can isolate the important things your business needs and get a better sense of the bigger picture Sometimes when you run your day-to-day tasks for your business, you forget important things. Like what’s best for your business right now and the tasks you need to be doing. What’s worse, you forget the bigger picture. Taking a deliberate pause reminded me I’ve forgotten my bigger picture. When I started an online business two years ago, my goal was to create an E-book my students could use after they took my courses. In my day-to-day online teaching, I’ve forgotten this big picture. I’ve forgotten an important task I needed to be doing for my business. These days, I walk a different way each day to think about the bigger picture. I adjust my clock a few weeks ahead to rise with the sun and work on a digital product for my students. You need to step back from your business and take a deliberate pause. To isolate important things your business needs. To reassess your business goals. To make sure you’re giving your attention to the right tasks and projects. 5. You can see something new — precisely what building any business requires Taking a deliberate pause helps you to reflect on the success of your business or failure. To think about what’s coming next. To reflect on the current status of your business, where you see it going, and how it’s competing against your competitors. This keeps your business fresh and relevant. This is the key to lasting impact, anywhere, in anything. Taking a break is a clearing, not a construction or a conclusion. It’s a tool that reveals the path of your business — where it is and where it might go. It helps you cross between two worlds (what is — and what might be.)

https://medium.com/swlh/a-deliberate-pause-may-be-the-best-advice-for-our-business-growth-97c5838957

['Banchiwosen Woldeyesus', 'Blogger Ethiopia']

2020-11-18 11:03:15.142000+00:00

['Business Strategy', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business Development', 'Psychology']

If You Want a Better Life, Tell Yourself Better Metaphors.

If You Want a Better Life, Tell Yourself Better Metaphors. The Story You Tell Yourself Is the Story You Live By You probably do not notice it but we use metaphors all the time. Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash We use metaphors to sound more than just cool and philosophical. Metaphors enable us to bring structure to our daily lives, create new meaning, interpret our past experiences, and plan our future aspirations. In short, like the role of DNA, metaphors are the linguistic building blocks to our reality. They are so ingrained in what we do and how we do it that they have become invisible to us. We barely give it a second thought and that’s why metaphors are so powerful. They operate in the background of our existence, almost like the strings and we are the puppets. Metaphors control how we interpret the experiences in our lives. For instance, metaphors give a conceptual meaning to a highly abstract concept such as love. The most common metaphors we have for love is: Love Is A Journey. This is why we get common phrases such as: We’ve hit a roadblock in our relationship This relationship has come to a dead-end I feel like we are spinning our wheels in this relationship A few of these are actually starting to sound familiar to me… Metaphors are also the reason we associate the abstract concept of being ‘happy’ with the orientational metaphor of being ‘up’. You’ll often hear people say: I am on a high today I feel like we are coming up That boosted my spirits By the same token, we tend to associate ‘sadness’ with being ‘down’. I am feeling a bit low today My spirits sank I am depressed In essence, the distillation of everything that makes life meaningful (e.g love, happiness, sadness) can only be adequately captured through metaphors. We can’t escape the metaphor’s power to shape our experiential existence and bring meaning to our daily activities. We could not have designed a more perfect linguistic tool to program how we think, feel and act. I hope you are starting to see why metaphors are so important. What I am trying to say is that the metaphors we tell ourselves are the metaphors we live by. They ultimately constrain the range of possible actions and opportunities we think we have in a given context. We act to be coherent with the stories we tell ourselves. Humans are made to avoid cognitive dissonance, we don’t like being consciously inconsistent with ourselves. We want our actions to align with our identity and for better or for worse, metaphors are what define our identity. The implications of this are enormous. If you live by negative metaphors, you will only really have negative experiences. For instance, two people can have the same experience but live by different metaphors and thus elicit different actions. Where one person can experience learning and excitement, another person can experience failure and discouragement. The interpretation is solely determined by the metaphoric filter we use. Thus, the only difference between one person moving and one person stagnating in life are the metaphors they tell themselves. This is not exactly new either. There has been an enormous amount of research into this field in recent times. Carol Dweck’s fixed and growth mindset is essentially a theory that uses contrasting metaphors for human intelligence. The fixed mindset follows the metaphor that the mind is concrete . It is difficult to change once set and only gets more difficult as you age. . It is difficult to change once set and only gets more difficult as you age. The growth mindset is a metaphor that the mind is a sponge. It is the notion that the mind is malleable and can change with enough deliberate effort. Both of these metaphors rely on a broader metaphor of the mind as a substance. Whichever metaphor you identify with will shape how you view, interpret and act in your world. Choose wisely. What Can You Do? What should be clear by now is that most of the metaphors we live by come from our own context or culture. This means we are not innately born with metaphors but are instead indirectly or directly given metaphors from our parents, caregivers and society. This brings both good and bad news. The good news is that metaphors can be treated like a habit. This means that through proactive behavioral changes you can train yourself to break bad metaphors and establish good ones. Metaphors exist in your mind. If you can reimagine metaphors, you can reimagine your life. This might take some time and conscious effort but the payoffs can be enormous. The bad news is that we can live most or all of our lives unconsciously. If we never really know what our metaphors are, we will never know how to change them. What is then not made conscious to us will only be experienced as fate. We will always remain victims of our metaphors and the cycle continues on and on. For instance, if you live life by the metaphor that Life is Dangerous, you will only act and then experience life according to that metaphor. You’ve trapped yourself in your own linguistic prison. On the other hand, if you live life by the metaphor that Life is a Journey, the inevitable setbacks, stumbles and heartbreak that are associated with journeys can be interpreted as a necessary part of a long and beautiful adventure. It is really quite simple and we often get the simplest things wrong. Summary: We all have the ability to live better lives and that starts with having better metaphors. The process of improving your life involves consciously recognizing previously unconscious metaphors and how you lived by them. Self-help is really just a constant process of deconstructing old metaphors and constructing new ones. Choose better metaphors and you will have a better life. Continue to live by toxic metaphors and you will have a toxic life.

https://medium.com/curious/if-you-want-a-better-life-tell-yourself-better-metaphors-95387fbdb218

['Michael Lim']

2020-10-17 04:29:16.231000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Books', 'Language', 'Self Improvement', 'Reading']

How to Create a Minimalist Work Environment

How to Create a Minimalist Work Environment File it or bin it ?— A quick checklist for decluttering your desk Photo by Aleksi Tappura on Unsplash Marie Kondo is all the rage. But even before tidying was in vogue, we all knew that getting rid of clutter is one of the best things we can do to create a more efficient work environment. Yet for some of us (myself included!), this can be a daunting task. We often like to hang on to things. But a messy desk can be distracting and makes us less productive. So it’s time to check what’s in front of you and start sorting!

https://medium.com/the-sixth-sense/file-it-or-bin-it-8faaa88235c9

['Kahli Bree Adams']

2020-06-30 04:21:02.934000+00:00

['Business', 'Startup', 'Work', 'Productivity', 'Freelancing']

Your Product Needs a Product Design Workshop to Scale

Domain knowledge & technical expertise meeting for the first time A Product Design workshop is a perfect and probably the most time-efficient way to clash your vision with the reality of building digital products. You are an expert in the field, with the domain knowledge of your business. For the designers or developers participating in the workshop, although it might be their very first time they encounter the problem you’re trying to solve, they possess the knowledge about the technical, ecosystem or customer constraints involved in digital product development. Vision clash is the key element here: you confront your domain knowledge with their technical expertise to deliver the best product possible. Together, you can decide on the best technology to develop your project, access how big of a team you’ll need and how much time and money it will take to deliver the first version to the end-user. Split the product’s growth into stages Somehow, every new business founder’s secret wish is to give your users everything you have and, preferably, all at once. But this often results in a massive backlog, overbearing cost estimation, and an app that takes a lot of time, but more importantly, a lot of money, to get on the market. The main role of a well-conducted Product Design Workshop is to use research and research-based methods to help you divide your product development into relevant and manageable stages (from the money & tech perspective) that will also make your idea profitable business-wise as soon as possible. Dividing the project’s focus into short-term, mid-term and long-term goals gives you more space to manoeuvre and react to the market changes. You can react to your users’ direct feedback and scale your business accordingly. Establish a doable and profitable MVP scope Time-to-market may be your competitive advantage, if well thought-through. A quicker MVP, even if some advanced elements get pushed to the second stage, allows your users to be introduced to your brand new solution quicker. And to you, it’s a chance to monetize your solution quicker. At EL Passion, a two-day workshop allowed us to build a solid foundation and mutual understanding that resulted in an MVP prototype delivered in just 2 weeks. With the traditional process approach, this tempo would not be possible. Thinking now will save you time & money later Apart from accelerating the project quickly, a workshop is a high-intensity meeting, where the team can talk risks, and decide on the vital project points. From experience, we know there are some elements that not all stakeholders agree on. Treat a workshop as an opportunity to find solutions supported by everyone at the table (sometimes it’s not possible, and then you can go with the next-best thing: an old school compromise). But it is worth it. Reaching a consensus on the project’s core functionalities will speed up the actual development and can minimize changes you’ll want to make later in the project.

https://medium.com/elpassion/your-product-needs-a-product-design-workshop-to-scale-better-43da7d72e41d

['Patrycja Paterska']

2020-06-09 09:18:11.034000+00:00

['Business', 'Startup', 'Design', 'Agile', 'UX']

Your Default Brain Is Female

Your brain and the pancreas aren’t much different. Both are formed prenatally, both are bodily organs, and both interact with the rest of anatomy to give us complex physiological systems. But, unlike the pancreas, the brain also gives us sex. Sexual differentiation in the brain is the product of a long journey through prenatal development. This journey starts in the DNA, moves to our sex organs, then shapes the rest of the body from there. This shaping organizes our anatomy along male and female lines. There’s diversity, however, in the way we express these male and female traits. Some of us are male, yet not too masculine, and others of us female, yet not too feminine. Some of us don’t identify with any known gender. Curiously, many of these differences emerge from small modifications to a female default. Undifferentiated Early in gestation (i.e., the womb), there are few differences between the sexes. Our growing anatomy is undifferentiated and essentially ambiguous. The differentiation begins to unfold around week nine. Here, the gonads turn into testes or ovaries, a change that initiates the rest of sexual differentiation. Whether we get testes or ovaries is determined by our genes — more precisely, our sex chromosomes. Genetic females have an XX pair, which supplies the genetic material to become women, while males have an XY pair, supplying the material to become men. (While you can have an extra X or Y chromosome, which would make you a trisomy, I won’t discuss that here.) Specifically, it’s the Y chromosome that does the heavy lifting; it carries a gene that codes for testes. Conveniently, in an act of felicity uncommon to biology, geneticists call this gene the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome. Called the SRY gene for short, this small patch of DNA skews gonadal development in the male direction. Without an SRY gene, the gonads follow the female path — they turn into ovaries. We can replicate this experience in many mammals, inducing a mutation that renders the gene mute. The result of this mutation is always the same: ovaries. The SRY gene, then, is the first way in which development is biased female. A Move from Default We call this default pathway feminization. This is the trajectory we follow without an SRY gene. To get us anything other than this, we have to undergo two separate processes: defeminization, the suppression of this female default, and masculinization, the active construction of male traits. Defeminization and masculinization influence everything from our sexual orientation to the behavior we express in childhood. The first thing they do is differentiate the reproductive tract. The second thing they do is shape the brain. Here’s a little more on the specifics: Defeminization . This process prevents the development of a female reproductive tract and other naturally unfolding female parts. This includes the uterus, vagina, and fallopian tubes. . This process prevents the development of a female reproductive tract and other naturally unfolding female parts. This includes the uterus, vagina, and fallopian tubes. Masculinization. This creates male reproductive organs wherever the female default was suppressed. The result is a penis, scrotum, epididymis, and vas deferens — but also a male brain. Each of these processes is governed by the hormonal milieu secreted from the testes. Masculinization is due mostly to testosterone, while defeminization is due to a few other hormones. Both processes are necessary to get us anything other than female. Incompletely Masculinized Sometimes masculinization and defeminization don’t work as intended; they suffer a kink that causes them to unfold incompletely. The result of such kinks is a mixture of male and female traits — masculinization in some places, feminization in others. Androgen insensitivity is one way in which we get such mixtures. Androgen insensitivity is exactly what it sounds like — the person’s body is unresponsive to androgens. Typically, this is because the receptor for said androgens is defunct, possessing a mutation that renders it difficult to bind to. The disorder is only salient in genetic males, since they’re the ones that produce most of the testosterone. Androgen insensitivity exists along a spectrum. It can either be complete, in which case the androgens can’t bind to the receptor at all, or partial, in which case some binding can occur. The effects of the disorder are commensurate to the functionality of the receptor. Males with complete androgen insensitivity generally identify as women; their testes don’t drop, they develop a vagina, and from all external appearances look female. Sometimes they don’t realize they’re a genetic male until later in life when they face reproductive issues. Because they still have testes (which secrete other defeminizing hormones), certain parts of the reproductive tract don’t differentiate correctly. The result is infertility. Partial androgen insensitivity yields something a little more complex. Those affected often present with ambiguous genitalia, sometimes a “micropenis,” and are more likely to experience gender dysphoria, a feeling of psychological discomfort with the body they inhabit. This happens regardless of the gender in which they were raised. In aggregate, androgen insensitivity shows what happens when a genetic male doesn’t masculinize. Either the result is total, in which case most of the body develops female, or partial, in which case you get a mixture of male and female traits. Either way, this lack of testosterone causes the body to feminize. The Default Brain Without the hormones secreted from the testes, feminization will continue unabated. You’ll get a female reproductive tract, female reproductive organs, and all the other bells and whistles of a female reproductive anatomy. But you’ll also get a female brain. The process of feminization in the brain is generally one of automated self-destruction through a process called apoptosis (the second “p” is silent). Since at birth — with one minor exception — we’re born with all the neurons we’ll ever have, this destruction yields lifelong consequences for the size and shape of many parts of the brain. Some of the regions affected by this treatment make total sense. The spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus, for instance, which projects motor input from the brain to the penis, withers in genetic females. To survive, it needs more testosterone. Other regions affected by this treatment make a little less sense, yet still demonstrate how male and female brains come to differ. I’ll mention two of these: the hippocampus, which is involved in learning, memory, and spatial reasoning, and the locus coeruleus, which is involved in stress and fight or flight. Hippocampal volume shrinks without prenatal testosterone. This is why men, on average, have larger hippocampi than women — genetic females don’t produce enough to keep it as large. This difference is often used to help explain the disparity in male and female spatial reasoning. The locus coeruleus, in contrast, thrives in genetic females. This is why women, on average, have larger loci coerulei than men. It also helps explain why men suffer a higher percentage of stupidity-induced deaths from things like accidental injuries and violence: their stress responses are defunct, so they’re less intimidated by reckless and stupid things. Without testosterone, this differentiation veers in the female direction: you get a smaller hippocampus, a larger locus coeruleus, and very few neurons in the spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus. With testosterone, you get the opposite. More than Female Testosterone is the primary masculinizing hormone in the brain. While its presence is far greater in males than in females, there are certain disorders that can give females comparable amounts. One such disorder is congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is the most common autosomal disorder, affecting one in every 2,000 women. It results from a defect in the biological system that produces cortisol, a stress hormone derived from the adrenal glands. This defect causes the brain to secrete more precursors to cortisol in an attempt to establish normal physiological amounts. The problem is, these precursors also cause the adrenal glands to secrete more testosterone (something they produce naturally but not in great volume). As a result, affected genetic females get masculinized. Like androgen insensitivity, congenital adrenal hyperplasia exists on a spectrum. There’s both a classic version, in which case the defect causes a total dissolution of cortisol production, and a nonclassic version, wherein most of the production is preserved. Since nonclassic versions don’t manifest until later in life, they won’t affect prenatal sexual differentiation. Classic versions of congenital adrenal hyperplasia trigger significant masculinization: you get a penis, diminished desire for heterosexual relationships, more male-typical behavior, and experience less satisfaction with the female sex category. But you also get a male brain. Genetic females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia get a larger hippocampus, a smaller locus coeruleus, and increased spatial reasoning over that of their unaffected brothers and sisters. These changes are proportional to the amount of testosterone they experienced prenatally. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, then, illustrates what can happen when genetic females are masculinized by testosterone. If severe enough, most of the body will develop male. If less severe, the changes won’t really show. Either way, testosterone will push anatomy in the male direction. Know Your Body It’s imperative that we understand how sexual differentiation takes place in the prenatal environment. Why, you might ask? Because current surgical practices tend to favor some ugly outcomes. With both androgen insensitivity and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, for instance, many of those affected are born with ambiguous genitalia. In response, surgeons will often opt for feminization surgery, giving the affected person female sex organs. The problem is, these genitalia don’t necessarily match with the person’s felt identity. As we saw, both disorders tweak the brain along with the rest of the body. Partial androgen insensitivity yields something between a male and female brain. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia does the same. In neither case does feminization surgery seem likely to match the external sex with the internal. It’s not a coincidence that rates of gender dysphoria are greater in these two populations than in the general public. If your external genitalia are pressed to fit a shape that doesn’t match your internal identity, it makes sense that dysphoria would follow. (We also, however, live in a society where such people are stigmatized, which contributes to the dysphoria.) Our goal, then, should be to understand this differentiation as clearly as we can. This will allow us to appropriately align the sex organs — if they even need to be aligned — with whatever identity the person will ultimately develop. Then, we will be able to employ practices that minimize the amount of dysphoria in the world. But until then, at least we all now know that our brains are by default female.

https://medium.com/s/story/your-default-brain-is-female-7481f8ae7827

['Taylor Mitchell Brown']

2018-07-10 03:09:25.721000+00:00

['Neuroscience', 'Gender', 'LGBTQ', 'Science', 'Transgender']

10 Small Design Mistakes We Still Make

The saying that “good design is obvious” is pretty damn old, and I am sure it took different shapes in the previous centuries. It referred to good food, music, architecture, clothes, philosophy and everything else. We forget that the human mind changes slowly, and the knowledge you have about human behaviour will not go old for at least 50 years or so. To make it easy for you, we need to keep consistent with a couple of principles that will remind us of how to design great products. We should be told at least once a month about these small principles until we live and breathe good design. The human brain’s capacity doesn’t change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behaviour have a very long shelf life. What was difficult for user twenty years ago continues to be difficult today — J. Nielsen Revisiting: Don’t Make Me Think Steve Krug laid out some useful principles back in 2000, after the dot-com boom which are still valuable and relevant nowadays. Even after his revised version, nothing changed. Yes, you will tell me that the looks are more modern and the websites are more organised and advanced (no more flash!). But what I mean about that is — nothing has changed in human behaviour. We will always want the principle “don’t make me think” applied to any type of product we interact (whether it is a microwave, tv, smartphone or car).

https://uxplanet.org/10-small-design-mistakes-we-still-make-1cd5f60bc708

['Eugen Eşanu']

2020-07-31 06:49:32.876000+00:00

['Design', 'UX', 'Design Thinking', 'Product Management', 'Creativity']

How a History Teacher Taught Me the Most Important Thing About Writing

How a History Teacher Taught Me the Most Important Thing About Writing Jodi Compton Follow Dec 4 · 7 min read Aka, ‘How I Wrote My First Novel, Part 1’ Photo by Pixabay via Pexels.com “How I Wrote My First Novel” is a short series about, as you’d expect, the process of writing my first crime novel and getting it published. This series is meant to help aspiring novelists, especially those who work in genre, and who have publication as a goal. This is why the subtitles take the form of questions published writers are often asked. (Note: I’ve flipped the title/subtitle protocol for this piece, because the title deserved it) The series will progress in chronological order — but you can find the “prologue,” or my story in brief, here. In my third year of high school, I had my first class with the history teacher whom I’ll just call ‘Mr. J’ (because I haven’t been able to reach him about this piece). The high school I attended was a small Christian school with an equally small faculty, so it bemuses me now that I completed half my education there without taking a course from Mr. J. But because of this, I had to wait two years to learn the thing that would change my writing life forever. That thing was structure. For my first two years, when faced with an essay assignment, I simply wrote down everything I knew, or thought, about the question at hand. When I was done, I stopped. My fellow students, I’m pretty sure, were all doing the same thing. Oh, we had a vague sense that your opening sentence needed to make a broad introductory statement, and at the end, you had to wrap up semi-gracefully. But there was no sense of putting together the essay as an architect might a building. In our first week with Mr. J, though, he told us that before he could teach us history, he had to teach us how to write a five-paragraph essay. The format went like this: Introductory/thesis paragraph. Introduce the topic/problem and end on a thesis statement (what you’ll prove). Antithesis paragraph: Raise the common objections/counterarguments to your thesis and, in brief, neutralize them. Or, if that takes longer than a paragraph should reasonably be, explain that you’ll refute them in the paragraphs/text to come. (Sidebar: Though we were encouraged to use the ‘antithesis’ form, Mr. J did note that if there’s no powerful idea you need to neutralize, you could scrap it — simply state your thesis, then add an extra support paragraph). Support paragraph 1: Unpack one reason your thesis is valid, with concrete evidence. Support paragraph 2: Unpack a second reason, again with examples or quotes. Synthesis/conclusion paragraph: Summarize what you’ve said and sign off. The angels sing … or not You can immediately see that this is a lot to ask of just five paragraphs. But this was high school; we needed something we could write in a single class period, as an exam. It was understood that our first essays would skim the surface of our topics. The important thing was, we were learning to write in a measured, well-thought-out way. It was a form that would serve, in particular, students who might want a career in law or politics. To me, a novelist to be, that wasn’t the beautiful part. The beautiful part was, the five-paragraph essays didn’t have to be five paragraphs. They could be six, or seven, or eight. You could write as many paragraphs as you had facets to examine. When I learned this, it didn’t seem earth-shaking. I didn’t jump up and yell, Oh my god, I get it now! It wasn’t until college, and its greater demands in length and complexity of writing, that I began to appreciate it. Okay, the angels do sing The five-paragraphs essay’s initial simplicity was like the “Do Re Mi” scene in The Sound of Music: once you understood the scales, you were on your way on to whole songs, even an opera. Likewise, you could build out a simple essay into something bigger. In a term paper, maybe you’d need a page of introduction, and then your antithesis and support material would be in segments of roughly equal length, probably with a line break and a bold subheading each. Then you’d wrap up with a page of conclusion. Point was, balance was an essential part of the form: you counter-weighted length with length. Your paper was like a ship. You couldn’t have 200 pounds in the bow and 40 tons in the stern. It wouldn’t float. It was magic. Because once you understood that basic do-re-mi formula, you could build on it in ever-more elaborate ways. You could write anything — a senior thesis, an honors thesis, and maybe someday, a nonfiction book. Wait … aren’t you a novelist? Yes, I did. The frameworks in novels are admittedly harder to see. That’s by design. Story is meant to be subtler, to direct your attention delicately. Fortunately, thanks to Mr. J, I went to college primed to see structure, even in the English department and its readings. I’d clearly seen the difference between the “spill it all onto the page” model and the beauty of a framework that held up and showed off your work. It was patently clear that there had to be similar structures holding up fiction. And there are. One of the classic, and easiest to spot, structures is the “frame tale.” An example of this is when someone meets a stranger on an airplane, and this seatmate tells a great story, which is the main story. Suddenly, we’re immersed in you-are-there action and dialogue which a person couldn’t possibly remember in such detail, or relate in the course of a four- to five-hour flight. It’s understood that this is a dramatic effect. Films use frame tales, too, making most of the movie a flashback (hopefully, in 2020, without a swimmy ‘dissolve’ effect). Equally recognizable is the epistolary novel — a story told in diary entries and letters. That is, letters of the intensely detailed, very eloquent type that few people can write. The epistolary novel was popular in the 19th Century, but fell out of fashion in the 20th, until new forms of communication made it fresh again: email, texts, DMs, and so on. Many novels, however, don’t use such explicit types of structure. Even so, nearly every writer makes some sort of choice about form. Should there be a prologue and epilogue to bracket the story, like a milder version of a frame tale? Or should the prologue that plunges the reader into the action, near the climax, with Chapter One jumping back in time to start the reader on the path that got us there? Or, if two characters are equally important, should they trade off as first-person narrators? This can be a great tool for telling the story of a marriage (or, for that matter, a divorce). But it comes into play in diverse genres: Sydney van Scyoc’s sci-fi classic Sunwaifs had alternating first-person narrators, to show two vastly differing views of the same situation: human colonists’ attempts to survive on a planet which seems determine to shake them off like parasites. The Holy Grail (sort of) Finally, and least explicit, we have the classic “three-act structure.” Let me write that differently: the Three-Act Structure. I capitalize and italicize here because some writers swear by this, saying that any good novel will naturally fall into this format as you write. If it doesn’t, this implication is, something’s wrong with your work. I’m not quite sold, but I have to admit, many things I’ve written do naturally fall into the three-act form. Maybe it’s because of humans’ natural affinity for the number three. Certainly, after I’d written my first novel, I could see that the story divided into a Minnesota-Utah-Minnesota structure. Sarah, my protagonist, realizes that her husband is missing and begins the search for him in Minneapolis, where they live. She realizes that she has to go to Utah, where Shiloh grew up, to talk to his family, whom she’s never met. She learns some important things there about Shiloh’s past, but doesn’t actually find him. So she goes back to Minnesota, where Sarah learns the truth and the story comes to its climax. I didn’t plan this three-act arc, but I did outline the story before I started writing. In doing so, I could see that the story divided into large chunks, with geography being important to where the divisions fell. The Utah material wasn’t just a change of scene: It’s more reflective and slower-paced. The reader feels certain that Sarah isn’t going to drop in on Shiloh’s brother or sister and find Shiloh in the living room. Instead, the Utah material is about Sarah realizing she doesn’t know everything about her almost-newlywed husband, and some of what she doesn’t know really isn’t good. It’s a part of the novel where theme and tone is key, like a pianissimo interlude in a musical piece. Then, it’s back to Minnesota, where the action picks up again. One caveat: I know some writers don’t outline or synopsize; they just sit down and write. Some of them are very successful, too; somehow, it works for them. I understand this phenomenon nearly as poorly as I understand quantum entanglement. It seems impossible, but it undeniably happens. I don’t think these writers’ work is necessarily unstructured. I just think they have a kind of talent in which the structure forms on the page as they invent the story day-by-day. Lucky them. The concept of a rare natural talent — a writer who doesn’t think about structure in advance at all — is an idea that Mr. J would have told me to raise and discredit at the top of this essay, in classic antithesis-paragraph style. With due respect, I chose not to do that. “Rare” does not equal “impossible.” I’d simply warn you not to assume you’re one of the rare few. I’ve found it invaluable — as you plan, as you write, and as you revise — to think about giving your story the good bones that’ll make it stand tall and catch the world’s eye.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-a-history-teacher-taught-me-the-most-important-thing-about-writing-54c45273bae

['Jodi Compton']

2020-12-05 00:24:04.525000+00:00

['Writing Tips', 'Creativity', 'Writing Life', 'Writing']

Tips on Passing Your AWS Certification

1. Actually Build Something Using AWS Just like any good student of computer science, I decided to purchase a handful of online courses to help me prepare for the exam. While the courses provided a structured learning experience and were effective at outlining the theory at a high level, I found myself struggling to learn effectively by following along with the simple “hello world” examples. I found the hands-on exercises presented by the instructors to be far too simple and not representative of what you would be doing in the real world. Who runs Nginx/Apache on EC2 without SSL/TLS or a JavaScript function on Lambda without a handful of libraries in node_modules ? This is not to say that instructors/courses are ineffective at preparing you for the exam — they are perfectly adequate for you to pass — but if you are like me and learn best with a hands-on, in-depth approach, then you might need to do a bit more than just pull httpd from ECR to your Fargate cluster and call it a day. So right after learning the high-level theory for a particular service, I skipped the instructor-provided labs and decided to get some real-life hands-on experience by either migrating a particular app of mine from Heroku to AWS or simply deploying one already on AWS in a different way. In the interest of having everything under one roof, I also migrated from Godaddy DNS to AWS Route 53. By the end of my practice/study period, I had migrated all my apps out of Heroku (four to be exact). So in addition to slashing my hosting costs by over 60%, I also gained valuable hands-on learning. A win-win situation in my book. Here is my AWS bill compared to Heroku: Heroku (left) vs. AWS (right). I went from spending $126 USD/month to $42 USD/month. For each app migration, I made a conscious effort to use a particular service set from AWS that would cater to the needs of the app. For example, for a large enterprise-grade Rails app, I made sure to use RDS for the PostgreSQL database, ECS on EC2 for application servers, and Codepipline for CI/CD. For a small agency website, I figured a T2.micro EC2 instance with certbot would suffice. I embraced serverless when I migrated a React app hosted on Heroku to AWS using nothing more than an S3 bucket, a Cloudfront distribution, and an SSL/TLS certificate sponsored free of charge by ACM.

https://medium.com/better-programming/tips-on-passing-your-aws-certification-26fd95f3ee01

['Don Restarone']

2020-12-17 17:58:58.850000+00:00

['Programming', 'DevOps', 'AWS', 'Career Development', 'Startup']

Manage Vue i18n with Typescript

VUE with TYPESCRIPT Manage Vue i18n with Typescript Internationalize your Vue project thanks to vue-i18n along with Typescript Your Vue project is running well for now. Greeeeat! 💥💥💥 All text is in English and it’s a good bet since you target all English speakers (a large part of the population). But it could be interesting to manage several languages to make your app world wide 🌐 and closer to your users 👩‍💻. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash In this article, you will learn how to manipulate Vue i18n with Typescript. It’s a very handy and easy-to-use library to manage a multi-language app. ⚙ ️Setting things up Installing vue-i18n starts with an npm command of course: npm install vue-i18n yarn add vue-i18n #OR with yarn vue add i18n #OR with Vue CLI 3.x Then in your main.ts file, you just need to add the following lines: import Vue from 'vue' import VueI18n from 'vue-i18n' Vue.use(VueI18n) For further details 🔍 about installation, I recommend you to read the doc: Adding Typescript support First, let’s create a file defining some typings in a dedicated folder named i18n : Then JSON files have to be created to map the translations in an object: Don’t forget to add the configuration key resolveJsonModule: true in your tsconfig.json so that the json files can be imported. In order to link the translation files with the Locales model we created earlier, we add a setup file index.ts: Finally, all this configuration has to be included to our Vue project. In the main.ts file, add: Now, we are good to go! ☄️ Let’s use the translations in our project. 🈯 Using translations In template 📐 It’s super easy to get the translations we defined in the locale files. vue-i18n provides a $t method to which you give a dot-separated path to the locale key you are seeking for. In the script’s component 📦 Get Directly a TranslateResult We can get a translation from the script using the same $t method accessible from the Vue instance. It returns a TranslateResult object. Here in L4, I use the v-html attribute because the locale key headline contains HTML content. In a nominal case, it would have been : <p>{{ $t('headline') }}</p> Map set of TranslateResult into a Typescript object You can create a Typescript model which will be used to map a set of translations. In L28, by using a simple cast — as unknown as Link[] — we map a set of translations to a single object. Handy! 💪 In model file ( .ts ) 🖼️ Using vue-i18n in a Typescript model file requires a single line of setup in main.ts. At the end of the file, you just need to add an export statement: export { i18n }; Or you can add the export keyword in front of the i18n variable declaration: export const i18n = new VueI18n({ … }) Thus, we can use it everywhere we want… and that’s cool since we want to use it in our model.ts: Using a function is mandatory so that i18n to be defined. 🤝 Putting it all together Now we can add a select to update the current language. This renders: Switching current language You may have noticed the headline and the link captions are not updated. This is due to the fact that the translations are not reactive and won’t update themselves on the variables they are used. ⛔ To solve this problem, we can use the Vuex store to detect language changes and react to them: Problem solved ✅: Everything works great now! 🛤️ Going further… Vue i18n offers a lot of cool features such as pluralization, parametrized keys, currency management, datetime management, and more… That’s why I recommend you to go further into their complete guide. Finally, you can find the source code here:

https://medium.com/js-dojo/manage-vue-i18n-with-typescript-958b2f69846f

['Adrien Miquel']

2020-10-25 22:35:03.377000+00:00

['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Typescript', 'Vuejs', 'Programming']

The Story Behind Pearl Jam’s 1992 Censored Music Video

The Story Behind Pearl Jam’s 1992 Censored Music Video 28 years later, the unedited version of the band’s video clip for the song “Jeremy” has resurfaced on their YouTube page for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Photo by Wendy Wei from Pexels In January 1991, Jeremy Delle, a 15-year-old sophomore from Richardson High School, Texas, shot himself with a Smith & Wesson Model 19-4 .357 Magnum revolver in front of his English class. The event inspired Pearl Jam frontman, Eddie Vedder, and bassist, Jeff Ament, to write the track which would end up becoming the band’s debut album third single. In that same year, Pearl Jam became one of the bands launched into stardom in the wake of the explosion of the Grunge movement. The group had emerged from the ashes of another of Seattle’s promising bands, Mother Love Bone, whose tenure was ended abruptly after the death of singer Andrew Wood shortly before the release of their acclaimed first album. Vedder, who at the time was a blue-collar worker and drifting California’s surfer with a taste for both Classic and Punk Rock, joined the band after composing melodies and lyrics for an instrumental demo tape created by the remaining members of the group. What ensued was a small and emotional Rock Opera that chronicled the tales of a young man who, like Vedder, found he had been lied to about his paternity, while his real biological father was dying from a terminal illness. Most of these tracks eventually made into the band’s first record and resonated with the wave of northwestern Alternative Rock that emerged throughout the early ’90s. Although, as a musical genre, the term “Grunge” remains ambiguous, it is often used to describe the music of said bands, which contradicted the aesthetic of the Hair Metal and often formulaic commercial Rock popularized in the previous decade. In mainstream culture, this had also been the first artistically impactful scene created by the Generation X, the youngsters who had grown in the often dysfunctional families fathered by the Baby Boomers and lived under an economy that had just recently seen the rise of neoliberalism, with the subsequent lack of meaningful and stable career opportunities as well as the marginalization of the youth from the grown-up professional world. In a lot of ways, this generation of young musicians lacked the unrestrained utopian idealism which had characterized their parents’ youth. As a result, their music was often dark and anguished, focused on themes like psychological trauma, social alienation, abuse, broken relationships, a pursuit of authentic freedom and, in Pearl Jam’s case, sympathy for troubled individuals. Somewhere among it all, there was Jeremy, whose lyrical thematic inspiration came to Vedder after reading a newspaper article on Delle’s suicide. The Song With the instrumental composition envisioned by bassist Jeff Ament, Jeremy starts off with an intro played on a 12 stringed bass and an uncommon creative use of bass harmonics, a technique initially popularized in the late 70’s by legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius. The powerful bass lines built on this initial motif are what carries the song forward, a testament to Ament’s musical prowess. The guitars played with a tremolo effect pedal create melodic phrases that alternate between the outline of two different chords, Stone Gossard’s guitar to bring out the tense harmony in the higher notes combined with Mike McCready’s assertive use of power chords. The chorus makes use of an often unnoticed acoustic section with the added dramatic ambiguity of the lyrics sang by Vedder. There is also a genius key modulation from A minor to A Major built on top of the dissonant note choices of the two electric guitars. Although, with its Punk roots, the Grunge movement rejected the pompous idea of the musical virtuoso, a closer look proves that those musicians had their own layer of subtle sophistication. On this track, the melody sang by Eddie Vedder on both verses makes use of plenty of intervallic jumps between notes, which makes it uncommon in comparison to most modern popular songs. It’s also worth noting that the final half of the second verse introduces the creative use of a cello played by Walter Gray of the Seattle Symphony, something unconventional in Rock music. The bridge that builds up to the final chorus starts off with plenty of intensity, with all instruments playing the same riff along with Vedder’s angst-filled vocals. The final section that leads the song to its coda is defined by tense prolonged guitar notes and phantasmagorical vocals which together transmit to the listener the idea that something tragic has happened. There are elements of Jeremy that give it the feel of a protest song, but, obviously, in a more abstract and less explicit manner. The lyrics chronicle the journey of Jeremy as a boy that struggled with his loneliness and lack of care by his community until he arrived at his final destination —, not as a tale to be glorified, but that, either way, is a story deserving of being told and emphasized. We are left with the idea that, perhaps, there were many things that could’ve been done to prevent Delle’s death that were neglected by his family and school. This compassion is possibly the ultimate lesson of the song. The Music Video After an initial attempt at shooting an unreleased video for the song by photographer Chris Cuffaro, the record label Epic had become receptive of the idea of the track being released as a single and was now willing to fund a new high-budget video with director Mark Pellington and editor Bruce Ashley behind the project, which now revolved around the idea of a juxtaposition of various visual and audio elements as a mean to tell a story. Visually, the video was now a combination of close-ups of Vedder as a narrator, classroom scenes shot at Bayonne High School in New Jersey and the dramatic acting of 12-year-old Trevor Wilson, whose magnificent performance gave a face to Jeremy in the eyes and collective imagination of the millions who have watched the video since its release. The clip starts off with a collage of various newspaper articles concerning other cases throughout the country that could perhaps share some degree of similarity to the main story. We are then shown the shirtless Jeremy alone in the woods, drawing and painting with obsessive vigor. There are glimpses of passages from the Bible such as “the serpent was subtil”, and ”the unclean spirit entered”, from Mark 5:13, and Genesis 3:6 respectively, as well as shots of words used by acquaintances to describe Delle. We see Jeremy running alone throughout the woods, which possibly symbolizes his tumultuous walk through the painful coming of age experiences of adolescence. His depiction as a feral child is meant to represent the emotional abandonment he was subjected to, alone to fend off for himself. There is also a shot where a large portrait of a wolf seems to be about to eat him, which could possibly be a metaphorical foreshadow of the impending doom. The school images show Jeremy as being alienated from the rest of his peers, either scrambling on his notebook, exhibiting frustration and disgust from the surrounding environment or being subjected to bullying and humiliation by his classmates and teacher, who collectively point their fingers at him, their faces deformed by laughter. The main character is also shown enveloped in the American flag, symbolizing he was a child of the country and his tragic story is a byproduct of it. In one of the most haunting scenes, we see the children standing with their right hands on their chest, pledging their patriotic allegiance to the flag, but their gesture quickly turns into a different one that resembles a fascist salute. Photo by Samuel Schneider on Unsplash Most of the shots with Jeremy are stationary, with him being the only character to move. We also witness a reference to his home life, with his static parents arguing and ignoring their child’s angry pleas and desperate outburst. Jeremy’s tormented and anguished emotional state is then alluded to by a shot of him standing with his arms raised in front of a wall of fire. His actions become more erratic has the ending grows closer, the woods of his adolescence becoming dark as he leaves them behind with all of the paintings that perhaps represented the multiple possibilities of what he could’ve been. In a final scene, we see the shirtless Jeremy walking the door to his class and tossing an apple to his teacher before proudly standing before his classmates. The child grabs a concealed gun and puts it inside his mouth as the real-life Jeremy Delle did. In the next shot, we see the remaining children frozen in shock as their classmate’s blood is now splattered all over their clothes and hands. The Censorship Although this is how the initial version of the video went, MTV was displeased with the ending. For it to be accepted, an edited version had to be made in which there was a close-up of the main character's face that omitted the gun, as well as a shortening of the fascist salute scene. Oddly, this in turn ended up making the video more ambiguous and many people believed Jeremy to be a school shooter who had fired upon his classmates, a misconception that was far from the truth and was further reinforced in a short misleading coverage by Rolling Stone magazine. This was one of the greatest frustrations of director Pellington, who claims that the final shot is meant to present the idea that Jeremy’s blood is on his classmates, not that they were physically harmed. Nonetheless, the clip became quite popular among MTV viewers and won multiple awards after it’s release in August 1992. However, in 1996, the legal defense team for a school shooting case in the city of Moses Lake, Washington, affirmed that the shooter had been influenced by the edited version of the video. After the Columbine High School massacre three years later, it became rarely exhibited and mentioned on TV, with its memory preserved mostly exclusively on the internet. It remains to be asked whether the censorship did more harm than good because the truth is this — neither the song nor the video ever had anything to do with a school shooter. The story was, instead, about the tale of a lonely and tormented teenage boy whose death could have been prevented had his community demonstrated greater care for him. Earlier this month, the uncensored version of the video was finally released on YouTube in coordination with National Gun Violence Awareness Day. On Mental Illness Among The Youth Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash According to the World Health Organization, depression is one of the principal causes of illness and disability among teenagers and suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15–19-year-olds. The repercussions of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, harming both mental and physical health and inhibiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults. Young people that struggle with mental illness are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion, discrimination and stigma, which diminishes the readiness to seek help. In the late 19th century, French sociologist Durkheim concluded that suicide has causes and reasons that are not purely on the individual but on society itself. This should serve as a powerful reflection point on how to address the subject not necessarily by avoiding bigger discussions on the issue but by recognizing the problem and reflecting on what can be done to prevent it. Perhaps there is a real danger that a depiction of a suicide can further encourage someone else to commit a similar act but art should not be used as a scapegoat to avoid confronting deeper issues concerning our communities, domestic households and perhaps even ourselves and our hidden stigmas concerning the topic of mental illness and depression. Sadly, Trevor Wilson, the young actor who played the main role in Pearl Jam’s video, has also passed away in 2016 at age 36 in a drowning accident in Puerto Rico. We can honor Jeremy’s life and Wilson’s artistic contribution to his portrayal by reflecting and raising awareness to the topic of suicide prevention and do what we can to fight the stigma. The best way to deal with the issue of mental illness and suicide among the youth is not to find scapegoats or to repress deeper conversations on the subject but to openly recognize the problem and consider what can be done to make the world a better place for those who are struggling with it. This story serves not only as a cautionary tale on the topic of mental illness among young people but also as a testament to the power of Rock music as a vehicle to found catharsis, comprehension and purpose in the wake of a tragedy.

https://rafaelpinheirolopes.medium.com/the-story-behind-pearl-jams-1992-censured-music-video-1aa38849556a

['Rafael Pinheiro']

2020-11-19 21:40:18.964000+00:00

['Arts And Entertainment', 'Gun Control', 'Mental Health', 'Culture', 'Music']

Wish is Hiring Growth Market Managers!

The Wish app, although started in the United States, is global by design and is now utilized in 70+ countries! We know that different markets around the world have unique needs and aim to make our customer experience as customized as possible. That’s where our growth market managers come in. What is a Growth Market Manager? I’m the current Brazil growth market manager at Wish. My job is to take the growth team’s programs — App Store Optimization (ASO), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), messaging, and others and localize those for Brazilian consumers (more information on Wish’s growth team efforts can be found here). Day-to-day, I examine key metrics, such as conversion, retention, revenue, and customer satisfaction, in order to prioritize the actions to be taken in my region. From there I collaborate with other members of the growth team to decide on actions or experiments that could be implemented to better serve my market and how to test them. Making adjustments to serve a particular region really takes Wish’s service to the next level. Even the smallest of changes can compound into very significant gains in the future. My favorite projects Some of my favorite projects have to be the ones related to top-funnel experimentation on the app stores. These are the places where we have the unique opportunity to tell new users what Wish is all about. And there are multiple elements to play around with. We want our users to know that Wish is available to them, and that certain conveniences have been added for their market (e.g. in Brazil’s case, local payment options) so that they can shop as easily as possible. Given how large our user base is, even a 1% increase in conversion is a huge improvement. Implementing our order confirmation and shipment flows on WhatsApp It is also important to understand which companies are necessary to partner with in our strategic markets. A recent project that I enjoyed was bringing some of our post-sales transactional messages into the WhatsApp Business solution. As a messaging app that nearly every Brazilian uses daily, it’s super meaningful in the country, and is now an important messaging system for Wish globally. Now the user doesn’t have to detract from their interactions with their friends and family to check the progress of their Wish orders — it integrates seamlessly into their life. Other projects I enjoy are related to logistics, because they’re incredibly challenging! Moving products tens of thousands of miles entails maneuvering customs, door-to-door time, last mile delivery, mainstream visibility, and several other demands. If you can succeed in solving a logistics problem, it is hugely rewarding in that it creates a stronger trust with our customers. What I like about Wish is that we have an incredibly intelligent multidisciplinary team that bands together to improve every single step ranging from ideation to execution. Our growth team is a diverse blend of data scientists, engineers, designers and marketers. I can start with a simple idea to address a pain point in my market and it will evolve pretty quickly given the great contribution from other team members. What does it take to be successful as a Growth Market Manager? I think through the flow as a consumer every time I approach a problem. I ask myself, what would make things more convenient for me in going through the discovery/onboarding/shopping /purchasing processes? Additionally, I iterate new ideas as quickly as I can. I won’t know for sure if an idea I have is good or not until I implement it and get it out into the market. Then the consumer can tell me what works for them. Lastly, not being afraid to fail has been important. There are things that I thought would make the app more intuitive that did not work, and that’s okay. In constantly trying to reinvent the app, a lot of things are not going to work and you just move on to the next idea. The true failure would be staying stuck on an idea that didn’t work and not continuing to learn, grow, and adapt. My favorite part of the job My favorite part of my role has to be experimenting. It’s fun to come up with an idea and see if it works or not. You can’t wait to get the problem solved! If an idea doesn’t work, you try again with something else. Millions of potential shoppers and daily active users means lots of opportunities for experimentation. You just have to put your ideas out there and see what happens. We are looking to hire more growth market managers to further customize the Wish experience. If you’re interested, check out our current job openings at www.wish.com/careers!

https://medium.com/wish-engineering/wish-is-hiring-growth-market-managers-e7076ece4c87

['Nicola Azevedo']

2018-08-14 01:01:15.113000+00:00

['Growth', 'Engineering', 'Growth Marketing', 'Design', 'App Store Optimization']

Build an Interactive, Modern Dashboard With Dash

Building a Dash App Any Dash app is divided into two main parts: 1. Layout — Considers the static appearance of the app in the UI. 2. Callback functions — Considers the interactivity of the app. Having a Python class for each and every HTML class is just another example of how easy Dash has made it to build web-based front ends using Python. They maintain a set of components in the dash_core_components and the dash_html_components library but you can also build your own with JavaScript and React.js. You can use any IDE as per your preference and you can simply name your file “ app.py ” and start using the Dash framework. Here is a basic example of a graph that can be used in the Dash framework. import dash_core_components as dcc import dash_html_components as html external_stylesheets = [‘ app = dash.Dash(__name__, external_stylesheets=external_stylesheets) app.layout = html.Div(children=[ html.H1(children=’Weather Dashboard’), html.Div(children=’’’ Dash: A web application framework for Python. ‘’’), dcc.Graph( id=’example-graph’, figure={ ‘data’: [ {‘x’: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], ‘y’: [60.56, 150.43, 76.98, 80.49, 250.80, 110.56, 80.33, 20.44, 15.32, 90.11, 150.67, 150.55], ‘type’: ‘bar’, ‘name’: ‘Expected Rain’}, {‘x’: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], ‘y’: [40.09, 128.82, 51.57, 88.53, 295.47, 47.94, 42.05, 3.41, 14.4, 113.65, 226.95, 142.51], ‘type’: ‘bar’, ‘name’: Actual Rain’}, ], ‘layout’: { ‘title’: ‘Rainfall in SL in 2016’ } } ) ]) if __name__ == ‘__main__’: app.run_server(debug=True) import dashimport dash_core_components as dccimport dash_html_components as htmlexternal_stylesheets = [‘ https://codepen.io/chriddyp/pen/bWLwgP.css ']app = dash.Dash(__name__, external_stylesheets=external_stylesheets)app.layout = html.Div(children=[html.H1(children=’Weather Dashboard’),html.Div(children=’’’Dash: A web application framework for Python.‘’’),dcc.Graph(id=’example-graph’,figure={‘data’: [{‘x’: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], ‘y’: [60.56, 150.43, 76.98, 80.49, 250.80, 110.56, 80.33,20.44, 15.32, 90.11, 150.67, 150.55], ‘type’: ‘bar’, ‘name’: ‘Expected Rain’},{‘x’: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], ‘y’: [40.09, 128.82, 51.57, 88.53, 295.47, 47.94, 42.05,3.41, 14.4, 113.65, 226.95, 142.51], ‘type’: ‘bar’, ‘name’: Actual Rain’},],‘layout’: {‘title’: ‘Rainfall in SL in 2016’])if __name__ == ‘__main__’:app.run_server(debug=True) Here, “Dash Core Components” were imported as dcc and form the Graph component to plot this graph. Again, the format of the data feed is quite simple. x represents the values of the x-axis while y represents the respective values of the y-axis. So, as you can see, we only have to give our data as two Python lists so that Dash will take care of the rest and plot an eye-catching graph for you. Furthermore, there are plenty of customizations which can be done, such as in type , names of the axes, colors, grids, background colors, etc. Dash includes “hot-reloading”. This feature is activated by default when you run your app with app.run_server(debug=True) . This means that Dash will automatically refresh your browser when you make a change in your code. This will make your life far easier if you’re a developer. The dash_html_components library has a component for every HTML tag. You can use any HTML element in the format html.<element> . But there is a slight difference in the notation. If you want to use <div> in Dash you have to use the html.Div instead of html.div . The html.H1(children='Hello Dash’) component generates a <h1>Hello Dash</h1> HTML element in your application. The children property is special. By convention, it’s always the first attribute, which means that you can omit it: html.H1(children='Hello Dash’) is the same as html.H1('Hello Dash’) . Also, it can contain a string, a number, a single component, or a list of components. For the dash_html_components , each component matches the associated HTML component exactly. From the documentation, you can get further information. If you’re using HTML components, you also access properties, such as style , class , and id . All of these attributes are available in the Python classes. The HTML elements and Dash classes are mostly the same but there are a few key differences: The style property is a dictionary. Properties in the style dictionary are camelCased . . The class key is renamed as className . . Style properties in pixel units can be supplied as just numbers without the px unit. Not all components are pure HTML. The dash_core_components describe higher-level components that are interactive and are generated with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS through the React.js library. For dash_core_components , there are many examples and a reference guide. See this link for a dropdown example. For dash_core_components.Graph , the syntax of the figure matches that of the Plotly.py library and the Plotly.js library. So, any examples that you see in https://plot.ly/python/ apply and all of the available attributes can be found in the documentation. Styling the elements Styling the elements is achieved with CSS through the style property. An example from the documentation: html.Div([ html.Div(‘Example Div’, style={‘color’: ‘blue’, ‘fontSize’: 14}), html.P(‘Example P’, className=’my-class’, id=’my-p-element’) ], style={‘marginBottom’: 50, ‘marginTop’: 25 These key-value pairs in the style property can be found in any CSS tutorial online, they aren’t in the Dash documentation yet. The community has been compiling some nice resources for this. The fonts in your application will look a little bit different than what is displayed here. This application using a custom CSS stylesheet to modify the default styles of the elements. external_stylesheets = [‘https://codepen.io/chriddyp/pen/bWLwgP.css'] app = dash.Dash(__name__, external_stylesheets=external_stylesheets) There are various kinds of dashboard templates which are already available in Dash. So, we can use one and customize according to our needs. These templates can be found in the Dash App Gallery. A graph component has many arguments where most of them are optional. If you want more insight about those you can refer to the community.

https://medium.com/better-programming/build-an-interactive-modern-dashboard-using-dash-ab6b34cb515

['Uditha Maduranga']

2019-08-19 03:16:05.117000+00:00

['Python', 'Data Visualization', 'Dash', 'React', 'Programming']

How You Can Improve Your Writing With Bubbles and Squares

But what next? Have I launched all my rockets? I didn’t want to keep re-writing the same story. I needed to find other related topics that I thought my growing audience would find interesting. These stories are also in that Q1 wheelhouse. I wanted something for those who were already engaged, but I hoped somewhat different stories, submitted to different publications, would increase my audience. I will continue to write for Q1, but I know it’s not going to be enough. Q2: What are the other things that I am interested in, passionate about, and have some expertise? How can those topics be enlarged and deepened with a bit of planning and research? I don’t know what other readers think, but some people write stories they aren’t equipped to write. I don’t mean to sound elitist, but if someone who hasn’t gone beyond Psychology 101, are they qualified to write “5 Easy Ways To Deal With Your Anxiety Disorder,” a listicle that you’ve seen in every magazine in your doctor’s office? For me, that’s a Q4. Has life ever been so free from nuance and ambiguity that a shortlist of solutions will fix every problem? I don’t want to waste my time reading those stories, and I don’t want to write them. I don’t mean to imply that only a psychiatrist or therapist is qualified to write about anxiety disorders. If a person wants to write, “How My Anxiety Disorder Ruined My Life and How I Learned to Cope,” I am more apt to read it. I want to dig my teeth into how that personal struggle feels. That can be your Q1. The beauty of Q2 is that you can have a piece in progress that you tussle with over a more extended period. What can you write that’s different or better than most of what you’ve read? You can think about it and incubate ideas. You can search Google Scholar to see what others have written. When I want to review academic research on physician burnout, for example, I type into my search, “physician burnout site:edu” and then I can retrieve only current research on the topic. I’m not just gay. I’m an old psychiatrist, and I’ve treated psychiatric disorders for a long time. Here’s a Q2, story I wrote about Depression that brought attention to “old” and “psychiatrist,” and I wrote it slowly: If I want to amplify my thoughts or see what others think about a subject, I will post a somewhat provocative question on Twitter or Facebook, as I did for my stories about circumcision and being “gay fat.” Waiting for responses takes time, and if you wish to quote someone who responded, it takes even more time to request permission from the person who commented. I keep a file of half-written stories. I continue to work on them as I collect the supporting information, and allow my thoughts to congeal. I fertilize these essays on Q2 with small stories from my own life to keep them alive and exciting. It seems to be working because several have been curated, and my audience has expanded beyond the LGBTQ community. Q3. What has touched your life that you think might resonate with others’ lives? I think of these as feel-good stories, such as my story about cardinals and angels. The idea came to me while sitting on the deck with my husband drinking our morning coffee. I heard a cardinal sing, and I had a warm feeling about my mother. I shared it with Doug, and I could see he shared my sentiment. Perhaps others might feel it, too, I thought, and when I investigated, I found it was far from unique to us. I had sewn a seed. I had a similar experience when I was riding my bike and lost control on some mud. You can’t steer in the mud, I thought. My next thought was That’s an interesting metaphor. As I continued my ride, I thought of several more ideas, and I quickly wrote the entire essay when I got home. Although a listicle, it is my listicle, not a reproduction. Every day we have these human experiences. Capture them and put them in Q3 for when you run short of other things to write. These pieces need to capture your emotion as well as that of your reader. By tagging them in areas in which you don’t usually write, you will attract an even broader audience. Q4. Check these off your list. You’ll never write them, or if you do, no one will want to read them.

https://medium.com/beingwell/how-you-can-improve-your-writing-with-bubbles-and-squares-10a27fadc249

['Loren A Olson Md']

2020-08-18 12:15:24.748000+00:00

['Creativity', '52 Week Writing Challenge', 'Writing Tips', 'Writer', 'Writing']

How Apple’s AR Glasses Can Benefit the Blind

How Apple’s AR Glasses Can Benefit the Blind Current technologies can provide many benefits for the visually impaired if Apple develops it further Photo by Alexandr Bormotin on Unsplash Apple has yet to release or announce any sort of smart or augmented reality glasses, yet many rumors have been circling about its potential release. When Apple announced AR Kit, a software development kit for developers to create augmented reality applications for iPhone and iPad, many video game and furniture apps took the opportunity to use AR Kit as a means of bringing virtual items to real life. Furniture apps project their products into the user’s living room, and video games like Pokémon Go became immensely popular. However, assuming Apple launches its AR glasses soon, Apple could use AR Kit and Siri with their smart glasses as a means of making things more accessible to those who are visually impaired or blind. Reading could become immensely simpler If Apple plays their cards right, by which I mean, if their developers combine AR Kit with Siri, they could quickly help the visually impaired identify text. Apple currently has a feature on iOS devices where Siri can read a webpage or PDF to the user simply by swiping two fingers down on the screen. To a visually impaired or blind person, purchasing Apple’s rumored AR Glasses could be of immense benefit. Currently, the cost of purchasing books in Braille is very expensive, with one book in Braille running around $100 or more. This is because books in Braille do not use ink. Instead, it uses a system of creating bumps on the page for the blind to read using their fingers. This uses a lot of paper since the letters must be big enough for Braille readers to understand, and obviously, it cannot be double-sided. If a user wears the glasses when handed, say, a worksheet at school, the user could instruct Siri to read the worksheet to them (this is of course assuming Apple integrates a camera into the glasses). By advancing Siri’s intelligence, Siri could read the text to the user and pause when appropriate. If Siri could be advanced even further, Siri could scan the document using its camera, read the text to the user, and ask the user questions from the worksheet. When the user responds, Siri could create a digital version of the assignment and type the responses the user provides. Siri could then ask the user if they want to e-mail the digital version of the assignment to their teacher, and the user would be able to complete their work. This would allow the visually impaired to complete their work without requiring worksheets to be printed in large fonts, nor would families have to purchase equipment needed for reading or writing in Braille. Moving around the house becomes more reliable With Apple’s AR Kit, users have been able to identify objects using the camera on their iPhone or iPad. So far, Apple’s AR can indeed recognize household objects, such as cups or couches. On that note, if a visually impaired user purchases Apple’s AR Glasses, they can easily use Siri to identify where something is. All the user has to do is ask Siri, “where is my cup?” and Siri can respond with “to your left” or “six inches in front of you”. If Apple advances Siri’s intelligence and updates their AR Kit, similar to what Google’s Project Tango offered in 2014, users could even identify objects in their home. The user could ask Siri, “where am I right now?” and Siri could respond with “in the kitchen”. The user could follow up with “I want to go to bed”. Siri could respond “Okay, take ten steps forward”, and so on. This would allow the user to walk around without being worried about foreign objects. Siri could tell the user an object is in the way and guide them around it without the use of a walking stick. Siri and Apple’s AR Glasses combined with AR Kit could easily become eyes for those who are blind or visually impaired for families who cannot spend thousands of dollars on eye surgery. Of course, this is all assuming Apple developers work to update Siri’s available responses and comprehension of questions, as well as Apple updating their AR Kit to provide better accessibility options. Facial recognition While some corporations and local governments are now banning the use of facial recognition by the police, facial recognition can still be used ethically to benefit the public. Using the camera on Apple’s Glasses could benefit the visually impaired or the blind if Siri identifies the person walking up to the user and notifies them. A simple “John is approaching” would suffice. Imagine how happy the user would be to acknowledge and greet the person as they are walking towards them! Going shopping Probably the riskiest one, but Apple could enhance their tools even further for users to leave their house on their own. Granted, this is a far-fetched and dangerous idea, but let’s explore it anyway. A user can walk out of their house, and Siri could guide them by telling the user how many steps ahead to walk. Once the user arrives at, for example, the supermarket, Siri could guide the user through each aisle and help them find whatever they need. If the user tells Siri “I need to buy bread, ground beef, and sliced cheese”, Siri could scan the aisle numbers and its food categories to help identify where the items are located. Siri could then guide the user, telling them to walk forward, left, or right a certain number of steps, then tell the user the prices available of the product. Siri could even read the text on the products to the user, letting the user know the different kinds of ground beef or cheese available, or whether the user wants wheat or white bread. Once the user tells Siri they want to head over to the cash register, Siri can guide them there, then head home. Conclusion Should Apple release its Glasses within the next few years, it could provide accessibility options for the visually impaired and the blind, which would be of immense benefit. It would provide a better option for those that cannot afford to purchase books, equipment, or computers for writing or reading in Braille. A one time purchase of Apple’s AR Glasses would save the users hundreds or thousands of dollars in the long-term, and would quickly simplify their life.

https://medium.com/technology-hits/how-apples-ar-glasses-can-benefit-the-blind-6771af7673c4

['Aj Krow']

2020-12-06 07:44:23.521000+00:00

['Technology', 'Gadgets', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Future', 'Innovation']

What Are You Waiting For?

What Are You Waiting For? All you need to do is take one step forward Photo Credit: Florian Klauer on Unsplash Last January, I set a goal for myself. I intended to publish my first book. I had two ideas, and I hoped to self-publish one and submit another to a publishing company. I set up a calendar, I set up a monthly goal plan, and I wrote. Until, the pandemic. As a teacher, I was overwhelmed in the spring with the switch to online school in addition to the general stress, anxiety, and isolation the pandemic lockdowns brought for all of us. The last thing I wanted to do was sit alone in my office and reflect. Writing seemed impossible, and my pre-pandemic topics were not resonating with me in the moment. Over the summer, a few weights were lifted. I no longer had daily lesson plans and new technology to manage. While I was still planning and prepping for fall, I could manage my own time, and the daily commitments were released. In addition, our strict lockdowns began to be lifted. I could at least get out of the house and go to the outdoor pool for a respite from my quiet house. My mental state shifted, and I began to write again. I created daily goals, not expecting too much from myself. I decided to focus solely on self-publishing as I thought it would be more manageable than crafting a sales pitch and first chapter to be reviewed by some stranger. So I devoted about an hour or so each day to writing, and I wrote 1500 words a day. By the end of the summer, I had a good size draft. However, back to school 2020 was more challenging than anyone imagined it would be. Schools waivered back and forth between virtual and in-person school, and I was again overwhelmed with planning. My book was put to the side, and I could not imagine facing the editing aspect of the book. I am published professionally, and I know that the writing is the “easy” part. It’s the editing that takes the most time and effort for a writer, and I could not even begin to think about tackling the editing of a nearly 100 page book. I essentially gave up on my 2020 goal. All along, I kept writing on Medium. I set no plan, but I just allowed my thoughts and ideas to take charge. When I felt inspired, I wrote an essay. By December, I had a collection of over 80 essays in my Medium account. While the content was varied, a significant number of the writings were the musings of a teacher stuck in a pandemic. A lightbulb in my brain came on-why not publish a compilation of essays? My ego battled me. No, I wanted a “true” book. A compilation of Medium essays was not what I had imagined. And yet, something about the idea resonated with me. Publishing teacher’s musings in the moment seemed timely. I knew many teachers who were struggling this fall and looking for validation. I knew teachers who were looking for a voice. And so, I began the project on my first day of holiday break. Using Amazon’s KDP, I compiled the essays into a book, checked the editing, created a cover I liked on Canva. And voila, I had a published book within a few hours. I went to bed in shock. I had done it! I knocked out my 2020 goal in the midst of a pandemic. Pandemic Teaching: Reflections from the Playground was published, and I suddenly became an author! While it was not the book I had intended to publish, perhaps this was the book that I needed to publish. I had been focused on a linear path. I envisioned writing a traditional book even though I am far from a traditional personality. I had become bogged down with the idea of writing, and writing, and writing until the idea overwhelmed me. While in reality, I had been writing and writing and writing just in a different way. I have already received comments from teachers with screenshots of their favorite parts of the book. I have received thank yous from teachers for giving voice to their thoughts and feelings. And I could not be happier; that was my intent. Writing a book seemed like such a lofty goal, yet now that I have published one, I am ready to write the next. Sometimes the idea of the actions that need to be taken can hold us back from achieving our goals and dreams. Do not allow what you imagine to be challenging or hard prevent you from moving forward. What you imagine to be the traditional path may not be the path you are meant to use. Do not be afraid to reimagine how you might achieve your greatest life. All you need to do is take one step forward. What are you waiting for?

https://medium.com/the-innovation/what-are-you-waiting-for-bb0c229c3682

['Jennifer Smith']

2020-12-26 18:32:06.270000+00:00

['Education', 'Writing', 'Pandemic', 'Society', 'Lifestyle']

Epipen® and Why Carrying One May Save Your Life

Epipen® and Why Carrying One May Save Your Life If you suffer from serious allergies, you need one. Image courtesy of Epipen® Epipen® is an intramuscular auto-injector that administers a single measured dose of Epinephrine (you probably know this as Adrenaline) in the event of an anaphylactic attack. If you have a severe peanut allergy, then you would carry an Epinen® everywhere with you. If you accidentally ingest peanuts and develop breathing problems (Anaphylaxis), the Epipen® can save your life. Image courtesy of Epipen® What is Epinephrine and how does it work? You’ve probably heard of epinephrine under it’s non-technical name — adrenaline. When you ride a roller coaster or give a presentation, you may feel your heart beat a little faster, your breath intake increase and a sudden burst of energy. That’s adrenaline at work, a substance your body naturally releases under stress. The medicine inside EpiPen® and EpiPen Jr® (epinephrine injection, USP) Auto-Injectors and Mylan’s authorized generics happens to be a synthetic version of adrenaline — epinephrine. Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing. However, the preferred name of the substance inside your EpiPen® Auto-Injector or its authorized generic varies by where you live. In Europe, the term “adrenaline” is more common, while in the United States the term “epinephrine” is used. During a life threatening event, Epinephrine (Adrenaline) constricts blood vessels to increase blood pressure, relaxes smooth muscles in the lungs to reduce wheezing and improve breathing, stimulates the heart (increases heart rate) and works to reduce hives and swelling that may occur around the face and lips. According to national food allergy guidelines, epinephrine is the only recommended first-line treatment for anaphylaxis. Not antihistamines, which do not relieve shortness of breath, wheezing, gastrointestinal symptoms or shock. Therefore, antihistamines should not be a substitute for epinephrine, particularly in severe re-actions where rapid medication is required to ease breathing. As Epipen® delivers the epinephrine directly into the muscle. It is almost instantly available to the body. Image courtesy of Epipen® Who should carry an Epipen®? Everyone who suffers from any of the following conditions should discuss with and request their doctors to prescribe Epipen® Allergies to foods such as peanuts, shellfish, etc, particularly if you’ve experienced trouble breathing in the past. Bee Sting Allergy Allegies to environmental allergens or other that may affect your breathing Certain types of medication Eczema sufferers may also consider carrying an Epipen® as there is conclusive evidence that a large number of eczema sufferers also experience reactions to certain allergens. These reactions may in some instances, without warning, become severe. My child requires/uses an Epipen® If your child experiences severe reactions to certain allergens, ensure the following; If the child is old enough, ensure they know how to use the Epipen® themselves. Frequently go over the directions for administering the injection and the site (upper thigh) to be injected. Allow them to use expired Epipen’s® to practice on an orange or other suitable surface. Ensure the child’s teachers, coaches and any other caregivers are well versed in the use of the Epipen® Request at least four Epipen’s® from your doctor. One should be carried by the child in their backpack to ensure it is always close to hand. Keep one in the family car, away from heat and direct sunlight. Ensure the school/daycare/creche has an Epipen® on site with specific instructions. Keep an Epipen® in the house, in a clearly marked container and within reach of everyone. Epipen’s® expire quickly. Set an alarm on your phone for a date two weeks prior to the expiration. Ensure you change all the packs at the same time to simplify keeping track of the dates. If you, as the adult, require the Epipen®, then obviously many of the above points are not applicable, but many are. Remember the car, the home and the briefcase or office. One of these is usually close at hand. You can also purchase a sling for around your neck that will hold the Epipen®, these can prove convenient from time to time if your hiking, running or cycling. Safety and can I use my Epipen on someone else? If you know the person uses an Epipen®, then absolutely. However you need to be cautious with an Epipen® in case the person has an underlying health condition or if they are old, as an Epipen® can have dangerous side effects for some people. Epinephrine can affect your heart and interact with certain medications. If you’re on the line with 9–1–1 tell them you have the Epipen® and allow them to advise you. There are also a few safety precautions you should observe with an Epipen®

https://medium.com/beingwell/epipen-and-why-carrying-one-may-save-your-life-1d4b04d8a590

['Robert Turner']

2020-06-27 10:16:17.552000+00:00

['Health', 'Anaphylaxis', 'Allergies', 'Wellness', 'Medication']

Converting a Picture into an Excel File

Converting a Picture into an Excel File Python exercise for computer vision A question popped up in my head. Images are basically raster files. As a raster file, naturally, an image consists of rows and columns filled by colour values. You can see this by opening a picture in Photoshop and zoom in. Or just open the picture and zoom in, you’ll see it’ll get pixelated. So technically, an image can be converted into an excel file that also consists of rows and columns. How to convert an image into an excel file Image as a Raster File (Source: Author, 2020) Diving into computer vision (CV) science, there is a way by utilising Python and VBA for Excel. In CV, commonly, images are treated as an array. Usually, the colours are expressed in RGB values that range between 0–255, but it can also be in another model such as the HSV value scale. These colour models need 3 channels, one for each element. but for excel, we need a colour expression that only needs 1 channel. Well, not really, but it’s easier this way. And that’s where the hex colour model comes in. We can visit the science behind the hex colour model, but it’s just too long for this essay. My concern for this essay is that one colour must be represented in one channel. So, this essay's objective is to describe how to convert an image into an excel file with coloured cells corresponding to the input image. Let’s get into it! The Principal Steps there are many tools to do this, but I think the principles remain the same. convert the image into an array object (for this case, a NumPy array) (optional, but recommended) resize the image so that it won’t be too heavy in excel. My preference is to scale the width to 100 px. This means that the result excel file will contain 100 columns. this array, naturally, is a 3-dimensional array (height, width, RGB value); the RGB values must be converted into Hexadecimal form. (well this is also optional, but it’s easier in excel to convert hex form into colour for the cell) export the array into an excel file (the shape will be (height, width, hex value) colour each cell based on its hexadecimal colour value. Use VBA! VBA is used because this work is mathematical and scalable. don’t waste your time by colouring it one by one…. All right, let’s get started… Converting The Image into an Excel File with Hexadecimal Values using Python let’s just go to the python script! the philosophy behind the script: I want to run the script, type my image file name, type my excel file name, and that’s it (for now). The terminal (Source: Author, 2020) # input the image name via command line name = input("what is your filename?: ") # check if the image name is valid or not. if valid, continue to the next step! # use PIL for image manipulation readmode=True from PIL import Image while readmode: try: img = Image.open(name) readmode = False except: print("can not read", name) print("please input your file name again: ") name = input("what is your filename?:") # resize the image basewidth = 100 wpercent = (basewidth/float(img.size[0])) hsize = int((float(img.size[1])*float(wpercent))) img = img.resize((basewidth,hsize), Image.ANTIALIAS) # convert the image into an array object # I also convert the image into a pandas DataFrame because I'm going to convert it into an excel file import numpy as np arr = np.array(img) arr_container = np.empty((arr.shape[0], arr.shape[1]), dtype=np.str) import pandas as pd df = pd.DataFrame(arr_container) # convert the R,G,B into hexadecimal # populate the DataFrame with the hexadecimal value for l,x in enumerate(arr): for m,y in enumerate(x): r,g,b = arr[l][m] hexval = '%02x%02x%02x' % (r, g, b) df[m][l] = hexval # save it! yeay! save_file_name = input("your excel file name, without '.xlsx' please: ") df.to_excel(str(save_file_name) + ".xlsx") print("success!! now colour the file") Colouring the Cells with VBA The source code for the VBA can be found here. basically, the code colours the cell every time the cell is typed a hexadecimal colour value. open the excel file result add the VBA code into the sheet (copy the code from below) copy all cell, and paste into the same location (the cell will be coloured automatically) (ctrl + a, ctrl + c, ctrl + v) delete all cell values (ctrl + a, delete) adjust the column size voila converting the hex values into colours (source: Author, 2020) Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range) On Error GoTo bm_Safe_Exit Application.EnableEvents = False Dim rng As Range, clr As String For Each rng In Target If Len(rng.Value2) = 6 Then clr = rng.Value2 rng.Interior.Color = _ RGB(Application.Hex2Dec(Left(clr, 2)), _ Application.Hex2Dec(Mid(clr, 3, 2)), _ Application.Hex2Dec(Right(clr, 2))) End If Next rng bm_Safe_Exit: Application.EnableEvents = True End Sub The Result and yeah, that’s it. you can see in the gif below that the cells are coloured, and we still can change the cell color. good luck!

https://towardsdatascience.com/converting-a-picture-into-an-excel-file-c735ab4e876d

['Sutan Ashari Mufti']

2020-12-26 23:23:41.214000+00:00

['Python', 'Excel', 'Vba', 'Raster', 'Computer Vision']

6 Best AWS Developer Associate (DVA-C001) Certification Practice Test, Mock Exams and Dumps

6 Best AWS Developer Associate (DVA-C001) Certification Practice Test, Mock Exams and Dumps 1600+ practice questions and dumps to prepare for AWS Developer Associate certification in 2021. image_credit — udemy Hello guys, if you are aiming to crack AWS developer Associate certification in 2021 and looking for the best resources then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared the best AWS Developer associate certification courses and in this article, I am going to share best practice questions, mock exams, and dumps to build the speed and accuracy you need to pass the exam on the first attempt. Time and again I have said that practice questions and mock tests are an integral part of passing AWS certifications be it AWS solution architect or this AWS developer associate exam. They not only help you to prepare in the exam-like environment with time constraint but also re-enforce and solidify whatever you have learned from online courses, books, tutorials, and white papers. It doesn’t matter whether you have joined AWS developer courses like Ryan Krooneberg’s AWS course on Udemy or Stephane Maarek’s AWS developer course, unless and until you have practiced enough problems, you are not really ready for the exam. My readers, often asked me which AWS developer practice test is best? Should I go for an exam dumps? how many practice tests should I solve before appearing for the AWS Developer Associate exam and so on? With so many mock tests and practice questions flying around the internet, it becomes very difficult to choose the right one, and that’s where this article will help you. If you stick with an inferior quality practice test then you won’t be as ready for the exam as the practice test shows and this disconnect may cost you your chance to pass the exam in very the first attempt. Remember, you need to score 76% to pass this AWS certification and I have seen many cases where many people failed the exam with one or two mistakes. By choosing the good quality practice tests you can avoid such kinds of mistakes. It’s key to remember that knowing just what does a particular AWS service is used for is not enough, if you want to pass the exam, you must know about how to choose the most appropriate AWS services based upon a given scenario. These mock tests present such kind of questions to train your mind for real exam. In this article, we’ll share some of the best mock tests and practice questions for the AWS Certified Developer Associate mock test exam. These practice questions are tried and tested by many cloud professionals who have passed the AWS Developer associate exam with flying colors. 6 Best Mock Tests and Practice Question for AWS Developer Associate Certification Without wasting any more of your time, here is a list of best practice tests and mock exams you can take online to prepare for the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam. I strongly suggest you go through as many mock tests as possible to develop the speed and accuracy required to pass this exam with a high score. As soon as you start hitting 80% on these exams continuously, you can go for a real exam. This is one of the most up-to-date and useful practice tests you can take to prepare for your AWS Developer Associate exam. This practice test is created by Stephane Maarek, one of my favorite Udemy instructors and an AWS expert who has passed most of the AWS certification with flying color by himself. Talking about this practice test, it contains 325 quiz questions on DVA-C01 (AWS Developer Associate exam) which is divided into 4 practice papers of 65 questions each, and a bonus test of 33 questions which was added later to cover new topics for AWS Developer Associate certification. Here is the link to join this test — Practice Exams | AWS Certified Developer Associate 2021 Talking about social proof, this practice test has been trusted by more than 24,000 AWS certification aspirants and it has on average 4.7 ratings from close to 1000 participants which are simply amazing. If you don’t know, Stephane has done all the AWS certification and I remember he scored around 980/1000 on the AWS SysOps exam which is simply amazing. For better preparation, you can also combine this practice test with the Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2021 — NEW! course by the same instructor. This will help you to pass this valuable AWS certification in the very first attempt.

https://medium.com/javarevisited/6-best-aws-developer-associate-dva-c001-certification-practice-test-mock-exams-and-dumps-9e24573f509a

[]

2020-12-25 08:34:04.142000+00:00

['Certification', 'AWS', 'Amazon Web Services', 'Cloud Computing', 'Programming']

How Do Neural Networks Learn?

How Do Neural Networks Learn? Understand AI… without the math! Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash In the previous two posts, we saw what a neural network is and even how we can simulate one inside a spreadsheet. Feel free to go back to have a refresher, if you like! You can also get the whole series as a book! Let us now have a closer look at how a neural network can learn by itself. After all, this is the main attraction of neural networks over conventional computer programs. Synaptic weights Image by the author Imagine again that you have a neural network like this one. This is the same that we used in our examples before. But now imagine that it is not trained at all. So, in the beginning, its synaptic weights will be initialised to random values. Clearly, then, the behaviour of the network will be random too. When you apply some input pattern, you will get some random output pattern. Now, how do we make this neural network learn? Let’s say we wanted to teach it the or function. What we would do is take the first line of our truth table. The first line says that if the inputs are 0 and 0, then the output should be 0 too: Input A Input B Output ------- ------- ------ 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 ---------------------- Now we set both inputs to 0, and we tell the network to start changing the weights until the output is also 0. In the beginning, as we saw, the output will be a random number. Now the network will change one of the weights by a little bit and look at what happens to the output. Will the output change, or will it not change? If the output does not change, then the network will try to increase or decrease the synaptic weight a little more. Then it will try the same with the other synaptic weights until finally, it reaches a combination of synaptic weights that brings the output to the desired value of 0. The activation function You can already see now why our threshold activation function was not a particularly good idea. If you have a binary activation function like this, which can only jump from 0 to 1 and back, then there is only one particular change to the synaptic weights that will completely flip the output from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0. Every other change will be ignored as long as the sum of the inputs does not cross the threshold value. This makes it difficult for the neural network to guess whether particular small changes in the synaptic weights represent any progress towards reaching the desired output. It is a little like someone being blindfolded and then trying to grab a particular object in the room. Being blindfolded, the player of this game does not have any idea whether a step in one direction brings him closer to the object he wants to grab or not. Every step he’ll take in that room is just a random step that either succeeds or fails in terms of grabbing the object. It would be much better if the player had some feedback. For example, a second player telling him how close he is to the object. Then the player could make successive steps that bring him closer to the object, and he would notice when particular steps are not useful in approaching the object. In order to model this with our neural networks, we can change the so-called activation function to be not a simple threshold but a function that continuously maps its inputs onto an output value. We could then calculate the difference between the actual output of the neuron and the desired output, and we would always know whether particular changes in the synaptic weights are bringing us closer to the desired value or not, instead of having the output suddenly jump to the desired output value or do nothing. Training a network So, let us now assume that we have such an activation function, for example, this one: Sigmoid function. Source: Wikipedia This is called the sigmoid function because it looks like the letter S, which in Greek is called sigma. Think of it like this: the horizontal axis is what comes into the neuron as the sum of its weighted inputs. The vertical axis determines what the neuron will output to its axon, and what, therefore, the neurons that come after it will see as an input. The sigmoid function (or any other activation function) has the important property of normalising all output values of neurons to a range of 0 to 1. Since every neuron can have multiple inputs, if we didn’t do that and just added up the inputs, the results would possibly be greater than 1, and they would grow and grow as they walk through the layers of the network, and neurons keep adding up their inputs. This would make it difficult to handle the synaptic weights because some synaptic weights would be multiplied by very big numbers, and others by very small numbers. Mapping all outputs to a range between 0 and 1 solves this problem. The activation function has the important property of normalising all output values of neurons to a range of 0 to 1. Now let us again apply the input values 0 and 0 (as in the first line of our logical or truth table) and let the network change the random weights just a little bit. Now the network can observe the output value, which it knows should become 0. With every change of the synaptic weights, the network would know whether it is making progress in the right direction or not. After a while of changing the weights this way and that, the network would manage to approach a 0 output value. Training more patterns So now we have trained the network to correctly classify the first of our patterns: the first line in the logical or truth table. We can now go for the second line. Again, we apply the input values, in this case, 0 and 1, to the input side of the neuron, and we tell the neural network that the desired output value, in this case, is 1. The neural network will again start changing the weights slightly so that it reaches the desired output value. Of course, this will now probably destroy the result we had before. By training the network with a second pattern, we might erase the previous training of the first pattern in the truth table. So now the network has a more difficult task: it has to try all of the patterns we have shown it up to this point and try to adjust the weights in such a way that they can all be satisfied at the same time. You can see that, as you add more and more patterns, this process will take more and more time because it will be more difficult to set the weights in such a way that previous knowledge is not erased when the network learns a new line of our truth table (i.e. a new pair of input-output patterns). This is precisely why training a neural network takes a long time. The network has to go again and again through the patterns and adjust all the synaptic weights one after the other until it can produce all the desired output patterns. Eventually, the network will be able to adjust the weights in the right way, and all the patterns will have been learnt. Since our activation function is not binary any more, but a continuous function, it is probable that the network will not reach exactly an output of 1 or 0 for each pattern. It might only get an output of 0.9 for a 1, or 0.1 for a 0. This is still fine with us because we know that we only expect 0 and 1 as output values, so it is clear that the value of 0.1 has to mean 0 and that a value of 0.9 has to mean 1. The goal of training a neural network is to minimise the error. The difference between the value that comes out of an untrained neural network and the desired output value of a well-trained network is called the error of the network. So we can say that the goal of training a neural network is to minimise the error. The trainer of the network can decide which error is considered as successful learning. We might be happy with a value of 0.9 instead of a 1. Or we might want a value of 0.99, perhaps because we have to distinguish not only between 0 and 1 but also between 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0 in our outputs, where each of these values means a different thing to our application. If we train the network long enough, we can get smaller and smaller error values. It depends entirely on the application, what error value we consider acceptable. What we are doing is essentially a trade-off between training time and accuracy. If we want the network to be more accurate, we have to train it longer. If we want to cut down on the training time, we can do it by accepting greater error values.

https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-do-neural-networks-learn-82d5e067887

['Moral Robots']

2020-10-16 17:46:42.407000+00:00

['Neural Networks', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Artificial Neural Network', 'AI', 'Programming']

Case study: Rethinking Google’s new icons

Google’s latest redesign sparked a debate over prioritizing aesthetics vs. usability. In this project, I attempted to rethink how Google’s icons could leverage their old look while sporting a refreshing look consistent with Google’s latest design language. The main challenge of this project was to keep Google’s new colour palette while creating a new set of easily recognizable and distinct icons, prioritizing usability over aesthetics. The Problem In Google’s latest update, the Californian company chose to unify its visual look through its four brand colours: Blue, Red, Yellow, Green. While Google’s intent was to create a cohesive suite of icons for its new ‘Workspace’ product, the execution was for many, underwhelming. As I researched Google’s average user profile, I confirmed my beliefs that most of Google users interact with its services on either their smartphone or internet browser. Furthermore, I discovered that the average number of opened browser tabs for a single user is between 10 and 20 — if not more! As I gathered feedback from friends and colleagues, it became clear to me that Google’s icons had never been reminders of Google’s brand, but instead, they served an important function: visual cues inside a chaotic row of tabs. Reflecting on the Problem As users interact with their phone, they become accustomed to the look and layout of their icons. On iPhone, users that wish to communicate with someone, will be looking for a green icon (i.e. Phone, Messages, Facetime). Alternatively, if they seek to use a utility app, they will likely be looking for a grey icon (i.e. Camera, Settings, Calculator). In the field of cognitive neuroscience, we call this concept pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is the process of retrieving a long-term memory (e.g., memory of the iPhone messages icon) based on a stimulus (e.g., visual representation of the iPhone messages icon). We recognize dozens of patterns every day. From traffic lights to our smartphone home screens, we become habituated to specific patterns that have become quick and easy for us to recognize. We are coded to contrast icons based on their differences in colour and shape. As we introduce new icons in our daily lives, our brain has to encode this information into our semantic memory for retrieval later on. This allows for swift retrieval later, which becomes extremely beneficial for productivity. In the case of Google’s new redesign, the concept of pattern recognition was forgone. Feedback from many users highlighted one critical issue: users rely on the icons’ shape and colour to easily differentiate one tab from one another. Now homogenous, Google’s new icons are no longer easily recognizable. Their new shape and colours make swift pattern recognition difficult for many, subsequently threatening productivity. The Solution To bridge the gap between Google’s new redesign and its usability, I had to think of a solution. Howbeit a simple one, the redesign required that I meticulously select the parts reminiscent of Google’s old design and blend them with the new design in a way that would make it quick and easy for most users to recognize and differentiate them. Behind the Thinking Gmail For the Gmail icon, I chose to keep the famous red-bordered white envelope most users are used to. I reshaped the envelope to be simpler and more symmetric, removing the old pseudo-reflective shadow effect of the old envelope. Since the red colour was so prominent with the old icon, I maintained it for the slip and added the blue and green colours to each side, blending into dark red and yellow at the junctions. With these adjustments, the icon retains its former shape and outline while having a refreshing look on both the envelope and the ‘M’ shaped slip. Docs The Docs icon was one of the less challenging ones to do. Other than the blue of the original icon, the outline of it did not look so much dated. The gist of it was maintained, keeping the elongated shadow of the fold and then colouring the four lines to Google’s new colours. Alternative icons were explored, such as adding a picture icon above the lines, adding bullet points before the lines. However, those changes clustered the icon and made the icon less distinguishable when reduced to a favicon size. Calendar The Calendar icon proved to be a challenge when trying to blend the old with the new. The old Calendar icon had an old skeuomorphic-like look that was hard to refresh without significantly altering it. For this icon I decided to keep the old number look in the centre, but I changed the outline to one that resembled the newer Calendar icon. This combination of Google’s old and new Calendar icon created an icon that was both refreshing, yet slightly different. Meet The Meet icon required a different thought process. While it would have been easy to make an outline akin to the Calendar icon and call it a day, it would have been too similar to the Calendar icon when viewed in a tab. I sought to create an icon that had all four of Google’s colours on four different components. Since the old icon only had a camera body and a lens, I had to figure out a way of adding two other components that would complement the icon. Reflecting on the concept of Meet, I realized that while we record ourselves through our webcam, we also project ourselves on the other participants’ screen. Drawing from that, I decided to have two circles reminiscent of old-school projectors. This alternate shape now fits with the concept of Meet but also allows for four components that can individually be coloured. The Takeaway Google’s latest icon redesign, though refreshing, sparked an enormous debate on whether aesthetics should be prioritized over usability. As demonstrated by the findings above, a significant percentage of Google’s users rely extensively on favicons to get around their tabs. Unfortunately, Google’s recent design changes defeated this purpose and created dissatisfaction for many. The takeaway? Form often follows function. As designers, it is our duty to see beyond the design and understand the many impacts it may have. After all, designing around constraints can only expand our creativity!

https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/rethinking-googles-new-icons-cc99a72b94aa

['Maxence Parenteau']

2020-11-25 23:35:38.508000+00:00

['Case Study', 'Google', 'Design', 'Icons', 'Illustration']

Digital Twin Solutions

Combined Power of IoT, AI, Data, Cloud, Machine Learning Digital Twin Solutions An architectural overview and business value for industry Image by ArtTower from Pixabay In this article, I want to introduce Digital Twin concept as an emerging technology used in various industries. My aim is to give an overview and shed lights on this emerging technology, architectural construct, and business initiative based on my experience. I explain the digital twin concept using the Cyber-Physical System architecture, business use cases, and value proposition. Digital Twin concept is simple however manifesting them in reality can be complex and difficult to due to combination of underlying technology stacks, tools, and integration requirements. Therefore, a structured and methodical approach to the topic is essential. What is a Digital Twin? At the highest level, a digital twin (DT) is an architectural construct which is enabled by a combination of technology streams such as IoT (Internet of Things), Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, Fog Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning, and Big Data Analytics. Even though the term digital twin was coined in 2002, by Michael Grieves in the University of Michigan, this technology architecture was used by NASA in the Apollo 13 program in the 1970s to create identical space vehicles, one in space and one on earth. But we lacked the underlying technology capabilities on those days: no Cloud, no ML, no IoT, no Big Data. With limited capabilities, this approach enabled the NASA engineers to manage the physical device using the virtual counterpart on the surface. As you may have read, the famous book, Mirror Worlds by David Gelernter, popularized the concept in 1993. The digital twin concept turned into reality thanks to rapidly growing new technology stacks and capabilities such as Cloud, IoT, AI and Big Data. DT nowadays are used in various industries, in large business organizations, and the startup companies. Manufacturing industry embraced it for its compelling business proposition. There are many DT initiatives globally. DT initiatives use the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) method. PLM is implemented using various agile approaches integrated with propriety methods belong to business organizations. The method is supported by Design Thinking workshops during the conceptual stage. You can find more on Design Thinking in the attached article. To add clarity, let me give you an architectural overview of the DT concept. The Architecture of Digital Twin Concept In DT concept, each physical object has its virtual counterpart. These virtual counterparts are called virtual mirror models. These virtual mirror models have built-in capabilities to analyze, evaluate, predict, and monitor the physical objects. This innovative architecture of DT concept creates a powerful communication mechanism between the physical (material) and the virtual world by using data. In DT architecture, physical and virtual components integrate synchronously to create a close loop. Digital twin initiatives are the practical implementation of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) architecture in engineering and computer science domains. To understand the technical aspect of the digital twins, we need to know the CPS architecture. In a nutshell, CPS is a technical construct converging physical and virtual domains. The core architecture of CPS is to embed communication and computing capacity into physical objects so that physical objects can be coordinated, controlled, and monitored via virtual means. CPS integrates physical processes, computing, and networking as a single entity called embedded object. We can use embedded objects in various devices and appliances. The prime examples are medical devices, scientific instruments, toys, cars, fitness clothes, and other wearables. CPS requires architectural abstraction and modelling. Based on the models, we can develop designs leveraging computation power, data, and application integration for monitoring of physical phenomena such as heat, humidity, motion, and velocity. CPS can leverage IoT (Internet of Things) technology stack. CPS can be part of the IoT ecosystem in global IoT service providers. You can read the details of the IoT ecosystem in the attached article. Scalability and capacity of the embedded objects are critical. You can read more about the architectural implications of scalability and capacity of IoT devices from this article. Use Cases & Business Value of Digital Twin Initiatives The primary use case for DT is asset performance, utilization, and optimization. DT enables monitoring, diagnosing, and prognostics capabilities for this use case. For example, DT can be used to optimize cars, locomotives, and jet engines. This use case can improve the productivity and customer satisfaction. DT can be ideal for creating 3D modelling of the digital objects from the physical objects. This use case is a critical success factor for smart manufacturing initiatives. DT is commonly used for identifying symptoms with constant monitoring and finding the root causes of production issues in factories. The business value for this use case is to improve productivity. Healthcare projects commonly use DT for simulation purposes. For example, doctors practice risky operations in simulated environments before attempting them in the patients. This approach address the safety concerns. Town planners use DT initiatives by using the virtual models to improve the city conditions in a proactive manner. This approach can reduce the complexity and simplify the processes for planners. In Enterprise Architecture initiatives, we use DT as an architecture blueprint of the business organization. This helps us articulate the big picture to our business stakeholders. As a stream of the hyper-automation concept in the IT industry, we use DT as part of the Robotics Process Automation (RPA) initiatives. You can check the details on RPA in my attached article. Conclusion Digital twin is a reality now. It is not a concept any more. Even though it is seen as an emerging technology, it is widely used in various industries such as manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, and smart cities. There is a growing interest for use of this technology globally. For example, last week in Australia, the NSW government launched a large DT initiative. The initiative includes virtual environment of more than half a million buildings. Understanding the underlying technology stacks is critical for architecting and designing digital twin solutions. To this end, the key technology considerations are IoT, Cloud, Edge, Fog, AI, ML, Robotics, and Big Data Analytics. You can check the following articles related to these technology domains. As a concluding remark, while architecting and designing digital twin solutions, we need to understand the business goals, requirements, and use cases based on the industry. There may be additional industry compliance and ethical considerations that solution architects and designers need to know upfront. You are welcome to join my 100K+ mailing list, to collaborate, enhance your network, and receive technology newsletter reflecting my industry experience.

https://medium.com/technology-hits/digital-twin-solutions-c5288fcc3bc7

['Dr Mehmet Yildiz']

2020-12-06 06:31:05.434000+00:00

['Digital Twin', 'Technology', 'Future', 'Design', 'IoT']

7 Ways to Limit Scope in Your Code

7 Ways to Limit Scope in Your Code Easy methods you can adopt to keep your code clean, concise, and testable Photo by Ludovic Charlet on Unsplash. As a general rule, developers should limit the scope of variables and references as much as possible. Limiting scope in every way possible, from the big things (never, ever use global variables) to the subtle little things a language can do (declare const whenever possible), can contribute to clean, easy-to-test code. The limiting of scope has all kinds of benefits. First, limiting the scope of a variable reduces the number of places where a given variable can be modified. The reason we rightfully abhor global variables is there is no telling where or when a global variable might be changed. A global variable hangs out there like that last donut in the break room. You know you shouldn’t touch it, but it’s so tempting and easy just to grab that variable and use it for whatever you need to do. Limiting the scope of a changeable thing reduces the chances that it will be changed in a way that it shouldn’t be — or worse, in a way you don’t even know about. By definition, limiting scope is also a main feature of object-oriented programming. Encapsulation is probably the first thing you think of when you think of OOP, and its basic purpose — its whole reason for existing — is to formalize the process of limiting scope. They don’t call it “information hiding” for nothing. The term “information hiding” really means “Hide the scope of your variables so much that they can’t be changed except in the exact way you let them be.” Encapsulation enables you to ensure that data you don’t want to be exposed isn’t exposed. And if it isn’t exposed, it can’t be changed. Limiting scope also limits the ability for people to depend on code that they shouldn’t be depending on. Loose coupling — the limiting of the dependencies within a system — is a good thing. Tight coupling is a bad thing. Limiting scope makes it harder for one class to latch on to another class and create dependencies that make code hard to test and difficult to maintain. It also makes it harder for changes in one area of code to have secondary effects in other, coupled areas. There is nothing worse than changing code in (metaphorically speaking) New York City and having that change cause a bug in code all the way over in Los Angeles. This is commonly called “Action at a distance” and is something that should be avoided like a bad burrito.

https://medium.com/better-programming/7-ways-to-limit-scope-in-your-code-e3052cdb91a4

['Nick Hodges']

2020-06-17 15:10:07.308000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Startup', 'Mobile', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming']

How To Build Your Writing Space

How To Build Your Writing Space Helpful tips to create a workplace which allows you to create Photo by Georgie Cobbs on Unsplash We have all heard that you need to make your workspace a place where your mind can do its fabulous duty of writing. But what makes a workplace that way. Below you will find ideas that have worked for me, along with the ideas I have tried which didn’t work for me, but could work for you. Grab a cup of coffee, tea or whatever tickles your fancy. Have a separate space One of the biggest things you need to have is a separate space to perform your writing. Don’t sit in the living room if someone else is in there, the same with the kitchen or bedroom. The distraction level will go through the roof and you won't get much done. An office would be preferable, but not many of have that luxury of a spare room with a door. Just find a quiet space to write. You will want to ensure you don’t place your desk or computer in front of a window. Watching the cars and people walk by will distract you. Pull the blind or curtains, or steer clear of windows. Keep organized As a master of disorganization I know what it is like to have a messy desk. Find a place for everything to go, whether it be in the drawers of a desk, a filing cabinet or a bookshelf. The only things that should be on your desk are the computer, keyboard, mouse, a lamp, a notebook, a pen and your drink. Always have a drink with you, it will deter you from getting up to grab something when thirsty. A snack is also good to have, we all get the munchies once in a while. Your notebook and pen will be useful as this is where you keep your notes on ideas and story plots. If you outline, something I don’t do, then this is where your outline will be. Always have a notebook with you to write down your ideas wherever you are. Put down your cell phone When preparing to sit down and write, it is imperative you avoid any and all distractions. Treat this as you would a job, most jobs have rules against using your cell phone during working hours. Use this rule to your own advantage. Put it on vibrate or silent. A little trick I do is put it on the charger in another room, on vibrate. I tell my family the hours I work and if they need me to send a quick email, but only if it’s an emergency. Writers need as few distractions as possible. Especially if you are a fiction writer who is creating a world in a your story. Shut the door Try to find a space where the door can be shut. If you have animals this can be useful, you don’t need your cats to have a fight right behind your chair. The shut door means they can’t come in. This is also true for dogs, as much as they want love, you need to concentrate on what you are doing, writing. I find that when I shut the door, I can become more focused because the distractions of the rest of the house are filtered through the door. I am lucky enough where I have an extra room we call the office. It is my own work area, free from distractions. When I shut the door everyone knows not to bother me as I work on my next creation. Tiny nuts and bolts When you sit down to write decide how long you want to write for. I have a timer on my computer which I set for the amount of time I want to work. Usually I work well past the time, but it gives me an idea of how much time I am giving myself as a minimum. Anything over that is gravy on the potatoes. It was once recommended to me to have some soft music in the background. I did try this, but it created more of a distraction for me. Some say the music inspires their writing and while I didn’t find this to be the case for me, I can understand why it would be for someone else. Some have suggested going outside to write, I have tried this also and while I can see how the inspiration can happen by viewing the scenery, I found I couldn’t actually write a full piece, however, I was able to write a bunch of notes that I used later to write a fabulous piece of fiction. Final thoughts In the end only you can determine what works and what doesn’t. Distractions are everywhere, especially in this age of technology. But strong discipline and a desire to create something magical with words can make all the difference in the world. Find your place of quiet and solitude and write to your heart's content.

https://medium.com/the-writers-bookcase/how-to-build-your-writing-space-1483ee533f9

['Tammi Brownlee']

2019-12-05 20:29:42.718000+00:00

['Advice', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Hacks', 'Productivity']

Jupyter Notebook Shortcuts

What is Jupyter Notebook? Jupyter Notebook is widely used for data analysis. I started to learn Data Science 2–3 months ago and I used this tool to explore some datasets (a collection of data). It’s awesome! Let’s see the definition from the docs. The notebooks documents are documents produced by the Jupyter Notebook App, which can contain both code (e.g. Python) and rich text elements (paragraphs, equations, links, etc..). The Jupyter Notebook App is a client-server application that allows editing and running notebook documents by a browser. Here you can find more detailed information if you want to. Shortcuts As a developer, I like to use shortcuts and snippets as much as I can. They just make writing code a lot easier and faster. I like to follow one rule: If you start doing some action with the mouse, stop and think if there is a shortcut. If there is a one - use it. When I started using Jupyter Notebook I didn’t know that there are shortcuts for this tool. Several times, I changed my cell type from code to markdown and I didn’t know how. As you can guess this caused me a lot of headache. One day I just saw that there is a Help > Keyboard Shortcuts link in the menu bar. To my surprise, it turned out that Jupyter Notebook has a ton of shortcuts. In this article, I’ll show you my favorite ones. Note that the shortcuts are for Windows and Linux users. Anyway, for the Mac users, they’re different buttons for Ctrl , Shift , and Alt : Ctrl : command key ⌘ : command key Shift : Shift ⇧ : Shift Alt : option ⌥ First, we need to know that they are 2 modes in the Jupyter Notebook App: command mode and edit mode. I’ll start with the shortcuts shared between the two modes. Shortcuts in both modes: Shift + Enter run the current cell, select below run the current cell, select below Ctrl + Enter run selected cells run selected cells Alt + Enter run the current cell, insert below run the current cell, insert below Ctrl + S save and checkpoint While in command mode (press Esc to activate): Enter take you into edit mode take you into edit mode H show all shortcuts show all shortcuts Up select cell above select cell above Down select cell below select cell below Shift + Up extend selected cells above extend selected cells above Shift + Down extend selected cells below extend selected cells below A insert cell above insert cell above B insert cell below insert cell below X cut selected cells cut selected cells C copy selected cells copy selected cells V paste cells below paste cells below Shift + V paste cells above paste cells above D, D (press the key twice) delete selected cells delete selected cells Z undo cell deletion undo cell deletion S Save and Checkpoint Save and Checkpoint Y change the cell type to Code change the cell type to Code M change the cell type to Markdown change the cell type to Markdown P open the command palette. This dialog helps you run any command by name. It’s really useful if you don’t know some shortcut or when you don’t have a shortcut for the wanted command. Command Palette Shift + Space scroll notebook up scroll notebook up Space scroll notebook down While in edit mode (press Enter to activate) Esc take you into command mode take you into command mode Tab code completion or indent code completion or indent Shift + Tab tooltip tooltip Ctrl + ] indent indent Ctrl + [ dedent dedent Ctrl + A select all select all Ctrl + Z undo undo Ctrl + Shift + Z or Ctrl + Y redo or redo Ctrl + Home go to cell start go to cell start Ctrl + End go to cell end go to cell end Ctrl + Left go one word left go one word left Ctrl + Right go one word right go one word right Ctrl + Shift + P open the command palette open the command palette Down move cursor down move cursor down Up move cursor up These are the shortcuts I use in my daily work. If you still need something that is not mentioned here you can find it in the keyboard shortcuts dialog ( H ). You can also edit existing or add more shortcuts from the Help > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts link in the menu bar. Clicking the link will open a dialog. At the bottom of it there are rules for adding or editing shortcuts. You need to use hyphens - to represent keys that should be pressed at the same time. For example, I added a shortcut Ctrl-R for the restart kernel and run all cells command. Other Blog Posts by Me LinkedIn Here is my LinkedIn profile in case you want to be connected with me. Newsletter If you want to be notified when I post a new blog post you can subscribe to my newsletter. Final Words Thank you for the read, if you like this post please hold the clap button. Also, I’ll be happy to share your feedback.

https://towardsdatascience.com/jypyter-notebook-shortcuts-bf0101a98330

['Ventsislav Yordanov']

2020-01-13 21:27:25.327000+00:00

['Jupyter Notebook', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Productivity', 'Data Science', 'Shortcuts']

12 Things You Can Do to Advance Your Startup While Maintaining Your Day Job

Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash 12 Things You Can Do to Advance Your Startup While Maintaining Your Day Job And answering the question “When is the right time to quit”? The idea for my first business came to me in January of 2014. I was working with my 6th manufacturing client at McKinsey, and realized the fundamental behaviors driving the problem we were there to solve mirrored the previous 5 companies almost to the “t”. My engineering brain went into overdrive, and I began thinking of what a technology platform would look like that could both address and improve those behaviors. As the idea took shape in my brain, I pitched it to 2–3 friends at the client and received extremely positive feedback. This feedback was enough that I immediately decided I should pursue the idea full time. I considered those few conversations the full extent of my market research. I’d never started a business before, but I knew 2 things. First, I knew it was hard, and second, I knew it took all of one's time/attention to pursue. Thus, I began plotting my exit from McKinsey. Without any declared goals or specific milestones to hit first, I determined at that moment I would leave McKinsey in 12 months. In 1 year, I would quit my job, and go full time — which in my mind, going full time was the only way to legitimately start a business. I didn’t think there was any way I could keep my day job and make material progress on the business. One year was the minimum amount of time I needed to save enough money to go full time and to develop the idea enough that I knew what I’d be building. For the next 12 months, I basically focused on filling out a business model canvas. When the declared day of leaving McKinsey finally arrived, I may as well have spent my first day googling “How to start a business”. One of the many lessons I have learned since was — this is a terrible way to approach starting a business. You don’t have to be a seasoned entrepreneur to see this. Top 12 ideas you can pursue with a day job With no coach, no mentor, and nobody really to provide guidance, I had a very myopic view of entrepreneurship. Now, nearly 7 years later, my hindsight is quite clear. There are literally an endless number of things I easily could have pursued while maintaining a full-time job. This article is for the first time entrepreneur who’s wrestling with this same issue. So that you can learn from my mistakes, here are 12 of my top ideas of things I could have done before leaving my job, but didn’t. 1. Figure out your company name/brand There is literally no reason I waited to leave my job before figuring this one out, and neither should you. Think of your company narrative, and think of ideas that support it. Share the name with your family, friends and get their thoughts. Google it and see what comes up. Check with the USPTO to see what name competition exists, and how you might want to vary the name you do business under from the name you market. Use Upwork or Fiverr to find a freelancer and design a logo and your color palette. 2. Buy a domain Real-estate on the web is a crowded place. The most obvious names are all claimed, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still good opportunities. It just takes a lot of time. So start your research now. Use tools like Google domains to check what’s available, or Snapnames, which will be more expensive, but there are great domains available there. Brandbucket can be even more expensive, but you’re also buying a starter kit to jumpstart your brand, which can be helpful if you find something you really like. 3. Create a landing page Design a landing page to tell your company’s story, and build it using a free/cheap service like Carrd, Mailchimp, or Wix. Create a specific Call to Action (CTA) that will help advance your idea. This could mean having visitors take a short survey and providing feedback or collecting their email addresses. If you’re feeling really ambitious, set up multiple landing pages with slightly different messaging around your value proposition, or perhaps targeting different segments of who you believe your audience to be so you can find which drive the most growth. 4. Test marketing messages/channels Connect your landing pages to Google Analytics (most of the platforms I mentioned above will have this as a configuration property) so you can start understanding how people are finding your site. Google “free google adwords”, “free facebook ads”, “free linkedin ads” to find options on getting and learning how to use some free ad spend credits. Use it to try and find which terms resonate the most with driving people to your site. 5. Build and curate a mailing list Use all the emails you’re collecting from your landing page(s) to start a weekly newsletter. Send out relevant information about your product/service. Give updates, progress, or share helpful industry-related information. Use a free service like Mailchimp or Hubspot Marketing to design, send, and track analytics on your emails. Track open rates, see what content people are reading/clicking on. As you’re consistent, people will unsubscribe, and others will keep reading. That’s good, you’re refining your audience and messaging. 6. Interview prospective customers/clients Use the emails you’re collecting to reach out to contacts and ask if they’d be willing to take a quick phone call. Identify questions you can ask that will test the hypothesis of your business. The goal is to get as clear an understanding of the customer pain as you can — not to get validation on your solution. Once you can understand and articulate the problem, as the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin that cat. 7. Build our your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Come up with the profile of the type(s) of individuals/companies that will purchase your product/service. If you’re selling to individuals, figure out their gender, age, interests, where they shop, and how they’re solving your identified problem today. If you’re selling to businesses, figure out what industry they’re in, the size of the company, and who within the company you need to be talking to. Write all these things down. You need to iterate on your definition, and continually refine/hone it. The clearer the definition of your customer, the easier it will be for you to find them. 8. Articulate your problem statement/null hypothesis Building a business is fundamentally a science experiment. Your null hypothesis is a statement of the problem you think you are solving. Everything you do to launch your business should be in the spirit of trying to disprove your null hypothesis, so you can rewrite it and make it stronger/more accurate. At some point, you’ll no longer be able to disprove your hypothesis, and you’ll know you’ve come into truth that resonates with your target market. The better you can articulate this, the easier it will be for you to explain your company’s value proposition. 9. Build a prototype of the product and get feedback Regardless if you’re building a physical product, software, or delivering a service, there are ways to create simple prototypes to get feedback. Get creative. As you build your mailing list and define your ICP, you have an audience that can provide feedback on your prototype. If you’re building software, this could look like visual designs. You can use Figma, Invision or even Google Slides to visualize the user experience. If you’re providing a service, contact your list and provide it for free to the first 10 respondents. If you’re building a physical product, find people in your local proximity so you can get the prototype in their hands. Test it yourself to solve your own problem. While the medium of your solution may change, getting customer feedback is a critical step that you can do on the side. 10. Identify and prove teammates Put the time into finding your “who”. While you can go at it alone, it’s much easier/more powerful to have someone(s) at your side. Find them. This is a great time to prove it out. You’re not reliant on each other yet, so find who you can work with, and who will show up to the fight. Work out the details of roles and timing of when you’ll leave your jobs. Make sure you’re all committed and work well together before formalizing any arrangement. Handshake partnerships are a quick way to get started before making anything permanent, as you have to be able to trust each other. 11. Incorporate the company When the time comes, move to incorporate your company, but don’t make it the first thing you do. You don’t have to wait until you’re full time to incorporate, but you do want to make sure you have the right teammates and are headed in the right direction with your product/service. If you incorporate too early, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money if things don’t work out. But once you’re confident, there’s no reason to wait until your full time, as this step takes much longer than you think. 12. Figure out funding Work out the financial model for your business, and figure out how much money you’re going to need to become sustainable. Will you be able to self-fund? How far can you get while maintaining your day job? Will you need to fundraise? And if so, what milestones do you need to hit to best position your fundraise? The best thing about working on all these things while you have a day job is you can often make much more progress on your own before seeking funding if you ever need to at all. The worst thing you can do is quit your job and then figure out how you’re going to fund it later (that’s what I did, and I highly discourage doing this). How to know when to quit your day job and go full time You might be wondering “These seem like all the things I’d be doing while working full time, so if I do them while I keep my day job, when should I actually leave to pursue it full time?” The simple answer to this question is — you will know. It might feel like a cop-out, but here’s what will happen. You’ll have your business fundamentals in place. You have your partner(s) figured out, the domain, brand, website, incorporation is all complete. The least sexy parts of starting a business are all taken care of, and now you’re primarily focused on two things: product and sales. This generally takes shape in the form of the feedback you’re receiving from prospective customers. There’s so much of it rolling in that the hours you have available are literally limiting your ability to react to it. If customers are providing feedback, it means they care. If you have so much of it you can’t respond, it means you’re gaining an audience. Translate that feedback into your product. Get it back in your customer's hands. Find more customers. Rinse. Repeat. At some point, your business will feel imminent. You don’t have answers to all the questions, but if you’ve done the items on this list, you will have a solid foundation to start from. Done right, you should have a very clear path to create value for your customers when you step away from your day job. Until then, keep building!

https://medium.com/startup-grind/12-things-you-can-do-to-advance-your-startup-while-maintaining-your-day-job-fa6512e0c9b1

['Jonathan Woahn']

2020-11-16 18:03:08.069000+00:00

['Startup Lessons', 'Life Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneur']

Old Mortality

My uncle died a few weeks ago. He didn’t die from the virus, but his funeral was affected by the ongoing restrictions. Today those of us too distant or too numerous to attend got to watch the crematorium service live-streamed to our laptops or smartphones. It made what would always be a sombre experience surreal and grimly affecting. It was a one-way connection, so I could see my Mum, Dad, widowed Aunt and other family members playing their part, but couldn’t interact in any way. They were all respectful, socially distanced, and in most cases mask-wearing. It seemed almost disrespectful to be watching remotely in comfort and casual attire, like a ghost at the feast.

https://medium.com/grab-a-slice/old-mortality-ed9c68fb8628

['Mark Kelly']

2020-09-17 14:23:15.949000+00:00

['Death', 'Nonfiction', 'Technology', 'Coronavirus', 'Funerals']

I ranked every Intro to Data Science course on the internet, based on thousands of data points

Our goal with this introduction to data science course is to become familiar with the data science process. We don’t want too in-depth coverage of specific aspects of the process, hence the “intro to” portion of the title. For each aspect, the ideal course explains key concepts within the framework of the process, introduces common tools, and provides a few examples (preferably hands-on). We’re only looking for an introduction. This guide therefore won’t include full specializations or programs like Johns Hopkins University’s Data Science Specialization on Coursera or Udacity’s Data Analyst Nanodegree. These compilations of courses elude the purpose of this series: to find the best individual courses for each subject to comprise a data science education. The final three guides in this series of articles will cover each aspect of the data science process in detail. Basic coding, stats, and probability experience required Several courses listed below require basic programming, statistics, and probability experience. This requirement is understandable given that the new content is reasonably advanced, and that these subjects often have several courses dedicated to them. This experience can be acquired through our recommendations in the first two articles (programming, statistics) in this Data Science Career Guide. Our pick for the best intro to data science course is… Kirill Eremenko’s Data Science A-Z™ on Udemy is the clear winner in terms of breadth and depth of coverage of the data science process of the 20+ courses that qualified. It has a 4.5-star weighted average rating over 3,071 reviews, which places it among the highest rated and most reviewed courses of the ones considered. It outlines the full process and provides real-life examples. At 21 hours of content, it is a good length. Reviewers love the instructor’s delivery and the organization of the content. The price varies depending on Udemy discounts, which are frequent, so you may be able to purchase access for as little as $10. Though it doesn’t check our “usage of common data science tools” box, the non-Python/R tool choices (gretl, Tableau, Excel) are used effectively in context. Eremenko mentions the following when explaining the gretl choice (gretl is a statistical software package), though it applies to all of the tools he uses (emphasis mine): In gretl, we will be able to do the same modeling just like in R and Python but we won’t have to code. That’s the big deal here. Some of you may already know R very well, but some may not know it at all. My goal is to show you how to build a robust model and give you a framework that you can apply in any tool you choose. gretl will help us avoid getting bogged down in our coding. One prominent reviewer noted the following: Kirill is the best teacher I’ve found online. He uses real life examples and explains common problems so that you get a deeper understanding of the coursework. He also provides a lot of insight as to what it means to be a data scientist from working with insufficient data all the way to presenting your work to C-class management. I highly recommend this course for beginner students to intermediate data analysts! The preview video for Data Science A-Z™. A great Python-focused introduction Udacity’s Intro to Data Analysis is a relatively new offering that is part of Udacity’s popular Data Analyst Nanodegree. It covers the data science process clearly and cohesively using Python, though it lacks a bit in the modeling aspect. The estimated timeline is 36 hours (six hours per week over six weeks), though it is shorter in my experience. It has a 5-star weighted average rating over two reviews. It is free. The videos are well-produced and the instructor (Caroline Buckey) is clear and personable. Lots of programming quizzes enforce the concepts learned in the videos. Students will leave the course confident in their new and/or improved NumPy and Pandas skills (these are popular Python libraries). The final project — which is graded and reviewed in the Nanodegree but not in the free individual course — can be a nice add to a portfolio. Udacity instructor Caroline Buckey outlining the data analysis process (also known as the data science process). An impressive offering with no review data Data Science Fundamentals (Big Data University) Data Science Fundamentals is a four-course series provided by IBM’s Big Data University. It includes courses titled Data Science 101, Data Science Methodology, Data Science Hands-on with Open Source Tools, and R 101. It covers the full data science process and introduces Python, R, and several other open-source tools. The courses have tremendous production value. 13–18 hours of effort is estimated, depending on if you take the “R 101” course at the end, which isn’t necessary for the purpose of this guide. Unfortunately, it has no review data on the major review sites that we used for this analysis, so we can’t recommend it over the above two options yet. It is free. A video from the first module of the Big Data University’s Data Science 101 (which is the first course in the Data Science Fundamentals series). The competition Our #1 pick had a weighted average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars over 3,068 reviews. Let’s look at the other alternatives, sorted by descending rating. Below you’ll find several R-focused courses, if you are set on an introduction in that language.

https://medium.com/free-code-camp/i-ranked-all-the-best-data-science-intro-courses-based-on-thousands-of-data-points-db5dc7e3eb8e

['David Venturi']

2018-11-14 16:41:17.584000+00:00

['Big Data', 'Programming', 'Startup', 'Data Science', 'Tech']

No One Has Their Sh*t Together

LET’S GET REAL No One Has Their Sh*t Together And why I don’t plan on getting mine together anytime soon (Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash) I’m sure everyone recognizes this feeling: your life looks like a mess. You’re behind on your work, you aren’t reaching your goals, the days seem to disappear before your eyes, and you’re just totally and utterly dissatisfied with your life. Then you open up the news or your Instagram or your LinkedIn and you’re bombarded with people talking about their new internships, the next child prodigy going to university, or how everyone is now a lean, mean, pescetarian, productivity machine. You sit there and think, Ugh, why am I like this? Why can’t I get my sh*t together? Why does everyone else have their sh*t together? The truth is… they don’t. Or, at least 99.9999% of them don’t. Let me explain. Four years ago, I was like any other try-hard high school freshman. I signed up for an abnormal number of clubs and admired all of the seniors who were either club heads or involved in elite entrepreneurship programs or running conferences. And as the little man who sat there watching or following their lead, I always thought that, well, you know, in order for them to have gotten to those places, clearly they’re absolute gods and know what to do, how to do it, and exactly who they are! But more importantly, all I could think at the time was wow — if I were like that… I’d have my sh*t together. My life would be COMPLETE, I would be living life like a BOSS. Four years later, as a try-hard high school senior that is now one of those club heads, entrepreneurship program participants and organization runners… guess what? I still don’t have my sh*t together. You heard me right. I still don’t have my sh*t together. I applied or joined these positions because I thought they were cool, because they would look good on a resume, or sometimes just because my friend needed another person. I thought that if I was accepted, surely I was either already fully prepared for this or someone was going to teach me “the way.” Nu-uh. I didn’t know how to manage a team, I didn’t know how to run meetings or teach lessons or whatever else I was being told to handle. I was running around trying my best to figure things out as I went… and that’s exactly the point: You sort of never have your sh*t together. And you might be thinking, What the hell? So we just go through our entire lives frantically not having our lives together and constantly feeling dissatisfied? No. You don’t. You learn to be comfortable with not having your sh*t together. You have to realize that nobody has their life together, and that’s the way it sort of should be. Think about it. The concept of not having your sh*t together means you don’t really know what to do. And the reason you’re not reaching the amazing goals you have is because you’re in unfamiliar territory and/or you have a lot of work to do. But this is bound to happen as you grow and take on bigger and more difficult challenges, because you’re encountering problems that you’ve never dealt with before. If every problem was simple to solve off the bat, not only would that be unbelievably boring, there probably wouldn’t be any problems left for anyone to solve in this world and everyone would have their sh*t together. But that’s clearly not the case. I think there’s only three types of people who “have their sh*t together”: People who stagnate and get good at doing something and don’t actively challenge themselves to do more and be more People who think that they know everything and anything but really don’t People who have accepted and are at peace with not having their sh*t together. And frankly, I think it’s much better to be someone who feels like they “don’t have their sh*t together” than to be the first two — because that means you at least acknowledge that you have work to do. Or alternatively, it means you’re actively pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Both facts mean you are on the path to growth. It’s only by recognizing problems that you can solve them, and it’s only by taking on new challenges that you can evolve. And if you fall into the first two categories… that’s okay! Maybe you’re totally happy with where you are in life and that’s awesome, live the lifestyle you want man and keep doing what you’re doing. Or maybe you aren’t and now you feel like you don’t have your sh*t together, in which case — I’ve done my job. Now it’s time for you to get comfortable with that feeling, and search for it. No matter how high of a ranking you attain or how old you get, you’re constantly going to be faced with new challenges, which means you and everyone else on this planet will NEVER have your sh*t together. That is to say, there is no concrete finish line or trophy you can obtain that will magically guarantee you the title or feeling of “having your sh*t together.” This means that the best thing you can do for yourself is to accept that. Accept that feeling of discomfort. Accept the fact that you don’t know what to do or that there’s so much to fix. In fact, I challenge you to SEEK IT OUT. Why? Because it means you’re growing and pushing yourself to your limits. You’re becoming a better person each and every day. That’s why I’m proud to say: I don’t have my shit together, and I don’t plan on it any time soon.

https://medium.com/bigger-picture/no-one-has-their-sh-t-together-14a44c0bb007

['Bonnie Chin']

2020-08-21 16:56:51.246000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Motivation', 'Self', 'Productivity']

Why Consumer Emotions Are Difficult to Read

Consumer Emotions Are Highly Contextual Many theories around emotion psychology have emphasized the universality and innate nature of emotions. They assume that we can detect facial patterns that express each time the same emotion, whether it is fear or joy. However, when famous psychologists Schachter and Singer had the idea of injecting epinephrine into patients, they realized the deep ambivalence of our emotions. After making them wait in a room in the company of fake actors, they confronted them in two situations. In one, the actors complained rather loudly about the difficulty of filling out a paper and expressing their anger openly. On the other, they showed enthusiasm and excitement by making paper airplanes and playing with them. Quite strangely, in the first case, participants affected by adrenaline also experienced significant anger, with no other connection. Meanwhile, in the second case, they showed euphoria in sync with the scene they had experienced. What the researchers then realized is that our emotions are not self-generated but are largely defined by context. The situation in which we may both feel joy or anger for the same internal stimulus (be it adrenaline, dopamine, or any other physiological reaction). As a result, our body or mind defines less what we feel, than the interpretation we make of what we feel. In this precise situation, participants inferred from cues in the situation that their beating heart was the result of anger or joy, and thus experienced that sentiment. Hence, the growing importance of the experience and context of consumption in marketing. Marketers have noticed the power of contextual targeting to get a more emotional impact. For example, P&G’s “Thank you, Mom” campaign played when people were watching the Olympics with their families. As such, it gets a big resonance from mothers thinking about their sons’ bright futures. The ads wouldn’t have had the same meaning when watched at a different time.

https://medium.com/better-marketing/why-consumer-emotions-are-difficult-to-read-dd58183e9026

['Jean-Marc Buchert']

2020-12-17 08:53:52.499000+00:00

['Advertising', 'Feelings', 'Marketing', 'Consumer Behavior', 'Psychology']

Lacking Motivation? By Doing These 3 Things You’ll Find You Don’t Need It

Who here has ever waited for the Monday to arrive when everything would change? We anticipate the changes to come by indulging in sinful acts of gluttony and binge-watching because come Monday, we’re clearing the decks for the much-anticipated change that’s a’coming! My hand is raised! I’ve always found that the excitement and the build-up to the day was a very motivating factor. The possibilities — oh the endless ways I was going to clean things up, make better use of my time, nurture my body with foods that would provide it with dense nutrients, and vitamins it had been lacking. I was finally going to do away with my bad habits and don a few healthy ones. But as the story goes, after day 3, which proves to be the most challenging, our motivation begins its inevitable descent. Our excuses begin hopping aboard again, like good friends we haven’t seen in ages, and our descent turns into a plummet. (Because these friends are right! I deserve a break, a treat, a cheat day.) Motivation is a fickle companion. It’ll leave you in the throes to wither and die, only to return again as if nothing ever happened, placing the blame on you for its disappearance. We’ve learned this lesson time and time again. So how do we tackle this “motivation” problem? Here’s what can help. Motivation gets you started, habit is what keeps you going is a well-used phrase. I’ve used it in many of my challenge emails as a way to help people see the flip side of motivation. Yes, it gets you going in the first place, but it’s not what gets you to the finish line. The idea is that you begin new habits because you’re excited to change things up. Once you have the habit, or routine in place, you don’t need the motivation anymore, you can solely rely on the power of habit. If only that were true. Because if that were true, we’d be the healthiest planet in the Universe. Hospitals would treat cuts, bruises, broken limbs, and deliver babies. Pepsi and Coca-Cola would be farm-to-table, and we’d all live to at least 100. Unfortunately, this isn’t our reality, and habits don’t always stick around either. (Just try to find your habit when you come back from vacation, or you recover from an injury. You’ll see it has found the world's best hiding spot! And no, I don’t know where that is.) So what can we do when motivation plummets and habits bail? Here are three best practices to employ when trying something new, something you’re set on making a habit. (Note: this is a practice, meaning you must work at it, tweak it, and try performing it better each new day.) Start off with these three things: Create accountability. In any form, but preferably in a friend, or group of friends who have no qualms calling your lame-ass out for being an excuse hoarder, because that’s exactly what happens… we hoard excuses and then hurl them at those who question us. Don’t be the one who thinks “I have no time” is a perfectly valid excuse either. A few other gems you may want to discard are: I’m too tired. I can’t get myself out of bed in the mornings. Work is too stressful. My kids need me. (Which is basically what you’re saying when you’re tired, stressed, or feeling guilty for not being available to your children 24/7. Psssst… they’re fine with the separation, it’s what will help them become socially acceptable individuals who can function independently. Plus, if they see you working out or eating delicious healthy snacks, it will impress them.) When you have someone, or a crew, to lean on when it comes to doing what needs to be done, even when you’re dead-set against it, you’ll show up more times than if you went it alone. It’s been proven in research… do you need me to go digging in Google scholar to prove it to you? Trust me, accountability is going to get you to show up more than motivation ever will! Action step: Take it upon yourself right now to think of one person you can call on to be your accountability partner (and it’s probably best to not use your spouse for this… don’t stir the pot if you don’t have to!) Decide what’s important, and what’s not, and stick to it! Instagram is NOT important. Facebook is watching your every move. Tik Tok is owned by another country that doesn’t have your best interest in mind. Email is full of junk — mostly ;) I’m in there soooooo yea… Anyway, my point is to stop the colossal “screen-suck” time-waster that you hold in the palm of your hand. It’s become the silent habit you don’t realize you have. Case in point, I’ve recognized my own bad habit with my phone. When I get an instant message from a friend, I’ll, of course, quickly check it — because the little ding or vibration is crack to my brain — and after I shoot off a reply, I’ll check my email. Why? I have no friggin’ clue why but somewhere along the way, this became a blind habit of mine. Once I noticed it, I noticed it often. I witnessed it happening —and it was freaky, as if my fingers and thumbs were in cahoots against my sensible brain. My brain would try to stop it, but it was always after I had already opened my email… too late, sucked in by junk. Pay attention to your phone habit because I’m certain it’s one of the things that’s sucking time away from you. And your attention, focus, and sensibilities. (We know better! We tell our kids to be better!) Action step: Put it down, walk away for 30 minutes, workout, come back to it, resume phone hypnosis. Don’t be vague. Starting tomorrow I’m going to workout! (that exclamation point is your ever-present initial motivation — which we now know is already beginning its descent!) is so vague and non-descript. It’s like saying I’m going on vacation tomorrow without having an itinerary, plane ticket, or hotel reservation. Sure you are. Tomorrow then becomes the next day, and then the next, and then you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night feeling like a failure because you can’t seem to get your life in order, or at the very least get in a 15-minute workout that you know will help you feel better, manage stress, and tire you out so you can actually sleep throughout the night! (And if you do suffer from a 3 am worry habit that keeps you up till the sun begins to rise, I have two tips to help you work through that.) There’s a reason there are time management guru’s out there making millions off people like you and me. It’s because we’re not specific. We do things like “winging it” and “playing it by ear” and give a lot of decision-making power to how we’re feeling in the moment. We think we’ll make time for something when what we need to be doing is making a plan for something. Action step: Here’s what I want you to do tonight, before you go to bed, or before you finish your workday and get distracted by the kiddos. I want you to take 4-minutes and plan out your day for tomorrow. Seriously, it will only take 4-minutes. I want you to place on your calendar three important things: 1. what time you will workout and the length of time you will do it for, 2. what workout you will do (i.e. yoga, Peloton, pilates, etc.), and 3. what you’re going to make for dinner. That’s it. Those three things are all you have to plan out. To reinforce this idea, or if you find yourself with a wonky schedule and you’re already saying, but AM, my day to days are always different, watch this, it can help! And for all my mom peeps out there… this is incredibly important to do when those kids have days off from school and you know there will be all sorts of distractions buzzing around you. Know when you are carving out time for yourself before the day begins… this way you get in some quality me-time that can make for a much nicer, and calmer mama! Your Turn! Now, these are three simple things you must put into action for them to be of any use to you, so don’t walk away without: Deciding who will be your accountability partner, and set it up with them! Eliminate your ‘screen-suck’ time by paying attention to your little sneaky phone habits. And get clear on how you’re going to spend your day, and your workout time. Plan ahead and be specific! Once you’re set-up, motivation won’t know what happened, you’ll be all “Bye Felicia” when it shows up at your doorstep because you no longer need to rely or lean on it for support.

https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/lacking-motivation-3-things-help-workout-routine-39401e747e56

['Am Costanzo']

2020-11-18 15:01:08.362000+00:00

['Self', 'Wellness', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'Fitness']

Announcing Cross-Chain Group - A Blockchain Interoperability Resource

We are thrilled to announce that Summa has partnered with Keep to form Cross-Chain Group; a working group focused on furthering blockchain interoperability. Cross-Chain Group is an industry resource dedicated to promoting the research, design, and implementation of cross-chain technology through collaboration, development, and educational events. By working closely with projects, chains, and technologists at the forefront of blockchain interoperability, we hope to drive innovation that leads to a more functional and robust ecosystem. At Summa, we build cross-chain architecture and interoperability solutions that break the silos between chains, allowing liquidity, users, and value to flow more freely throughout the ecosystem. Our work on Stateless SPVs, Blake2b support in Ethereum (EIP-152), and Zcash MMR’s (ZIP-221) all promise to help bridge the gap, bringing some of the largest chains closer together. “The initiative brings together two like-minded teams that want to see the industry mature through collaboration and connectivity,” said Matt Luongo, Project Lead at Keep. “Working with Summa and their cross-chain architecture means we can address more users on more chains. We look forward to bringing other teams into the fold who share this vision.” Keep, a chain-agnostic provider of privacy technology for public chains, has shown tremendous dedication towards driving interoperability. Our shared vision of a fully interoperable ecosystem made them a natural partner for us. We’re working closely with their team to build the cross-chain solutions necessary to bring privacy to all chains and will share additional details as they become available. “Partnering with Keep was a natural fit. Their tECDSA work allows smart contracts to write to the Bitcoin chain, which complements our read-optimized SPV work,” said James Prestwich, Co-founder of Summa. “Together, our technologies enable a wide array of interoperability use cases.” Meaningful discussion, collaboration, and alignment between companies will drive innovation in interoperability and lead to more functional and user-friendly solutions. While Cross-Chain Group is currently invite-only, we would love to hear from projects, investors, and members of the community about the work they’re doing in interoperability and the ways that we can support them. If you’re working on solutions that further cross-chain interoperability, please reach out at https://crosschain.group/ We’ll be continuing the conversation on interoperability next week with our new series, Blockchain Interoperability & Cross-Chain Communication. Until then, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter to ask questions and learn more.

https://medium.com/summa-technology/cross-chain-group-ae671b844dc9

['Matthew Hammond']

2019-08-01 17:04:15.108000+00:00

['Tech', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Blockchain', 'Programming']

Building a Java REST API

Rest (REpresentational State Transfer) API (Application Program Interface) a lot of abbrevations, but what is a REST API and how is it related to Web Applications? It’s very unlikely that you have never met or interacted with a REST API before, when using different web applications/services. Take forexample Google Maps, when you enter a location and the Map service provide you with driving guidelines presented nicely within the Google Maps GUI(Graphical User Interface). Such task is completed using API’s communicating with the Google Servers requesting the needed data. In that way you do never directly talk to the servers containing the actual information. Lets start with REST, what is it? REST is an architectual style, which in most cases is based on HTTP protocols to communicate between different services/clients. It’s in it’s simple sense a set of constraints and properties used to define such communication. When HTTP is used the following operations are avalible: GET — Request data from a specified resource (Get relevant posts on your Facebook Wall) — Request data from a specified resource (Get relevant posts on your Facebook Wall) POST — Submits data to be processed (e.g save a user in a Database) — Submits data to be processed (e.g save a user in a Database) PUT — For saving or updating a resource on the server — For saving or updating a resource on the server DELETE — For deleting a given resource With the basic understanding of how API’s are used and what operations are available over HTTP, it’s time to look into how such can be implemented. Within large web applications we will often need several API’s in order to process and offer different services like e.g creating users, saving posts and editing of profile information. When web API’s are combined we often refere to them as a Mashup. A Mashup in web development is a web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. 1. It’s therefore important to be aware of how we deploy different API’s based on how they are to be used. To do so, we refere to release polices. The following release polices are normaly used: Private : The API is for internal company use only : The API is for internal company use only Partner: Only specific business partners can use the API Only specific business partners can use the API Public: The API is available for use by the public With this short introduction to the different aspects of REST API’s it’s time to show how such can be developed and deployed. For this we will create a Public available API, in the programming language Java, running on a localhost environment. For the implementation Spring Boot will be used, which is a popular Java framework for building web and enterprise applications. For more info about Spring Boot Click Here. To start up our REST API project navigate to http://start.spring.io, here the packages and version for our project will be set. To ensure you have the right setup you settings should look similar to the following picture. Once your setup is similar to the picture above, click Generate Project. The Group/Artifact can however be named as you wish, to match your project. The next step is to open the project within an IDE. When opened for the first time, the IDE will most likely load for a few secs/min in order to setup dependencies. To ensure that you setup is right and that your application is able to compile and execute, run the project as a Java application within your IDE. If the build succeeded you will see something similar to this in the console: Tomcat started on port(s): 8080 (http) with context path ‘’ Started RestApiDemoApplication in 3.332 seconds (JVM running for 5.3) With that being tested it’s time to get into the code. Navigate to src/main/java/yourPackageName/yourAtifactNameApplication.java. Here we will create our first Controller, which is a normal .java file with certain specifications within the code. As an example we will create a GET method which returns a String. We will do the following steps. Create a java class, e.g HelloWorldController.Java Define your class as a Controller in order to specify that our class needs to handle REST Requests using @Controller Create a method which returns a string e.g helloWorld Define the request type by using @RequestMapping and the path in which we will access it over HTTP e.g “/Hello”. Once complete your file should look like this. Once completed, restart your application and you should now be able to navigate to localhost:8080/hello and see the following. We have now created our first REST API with a GET method. In order to secure a REST API or anything else for that matter, we need to have a formal understanding of what security is within this context. This tutorial will focus on security centered around Authentication and Authorization as this is what we are going to center our implementation around. Authentication Authentication is the act of proving the identity of who we are. So when someone is trying to access our REST API, we want to ensure that the caller can be identified and thereby only allow trusted users to access the service. The most basic way of authentication is by using a User/password approach which works if we trust that the password is kept secure. However there are other ways of Authentication and these can be combined in what is called Two Factor Authentication. Two Factor Authentication is acomblished by using two or more techniques to authenticate. See example of such techniques below: Something you know (e.g A user account containing a username and Password) Something you have (e.g A mobile phone where a SMS can be send with a unique code) Somerthing you are (Biometics e.g fingerprint or eye scanner) Authorization Authorization is the step following that a given user has Authenticated successfully. Authorization is the process of giving someone permission to do or access something. So if we have a Web Application there might be a set of Services which regular users can access and a set of admin services that only a admin is supposed to use. The users in the system is thereby divided into groups which will be given different authorization rights even though both groups can authenticate to the same Web Application. Securing our REST API Now that the differences between Authentication and Authorization has been established it’s time to look further into how we can achieve such for our Java REST API using Basic Authentication. In this guide we will make use of the Spring Security Framework which is the de-facto standard for securing Spring-based applications. For more about Spring Security, see: https://spring.io/projects/spring-security. If you have followed the steps in Part 1 of this tutorial you can implement this without much effort. All you need to do to add this Framework to your project is to add the following to your POM.xml file. within the dependencies tag. In this part of the tutorial we will stick to basic Authentication with the use of a single User account. To add such you will go to the resources packed and then add the following in the application.properties file. in the user.name you can specify a username whereas in the user.password you will write the password. When adding this you will see the following login page, next time you try to access your REST API. The REST API is now complete with Basic Authentication.

https://medium.com/vinsloev-academy/building-a-java-rest-api-9b36b295fa58

[]

2020-06-28 06:44:06.527000+00:00

['Software Engineering', 'Java', 'Programming', 'Rest Api', 'Web Development']

Design Leadership: On Trust and Empowerment

This is the third in a series of articles on the subject of design leadership (here are the first and second instalments). In this article, I’m going to attempt to dig into your role as a leader to build trust and empower others; creating both a safe and challenging environment in which folks can grow and thrive. Creating a space for people to thrive With a mission to create teams and set them up for success in our organisations comes the responsibility to create a culture in which that team can thrive. We go to great lengths to hire great, talented people, so our duty as leaders is to ensure we’re utilising and nurturing the skills for which they were employed. Setting them, and by virtue the wider team, up to succeed. How do you, as a leader, create the right environment where people can do their best work? How do you enable people to leverage and play to their strengths? How do you recognise when you’re overstepping as a leader and starting to stifle those around you? It starts with you and your outlook on management and leadership Do you possess and practice a mindset and philosophy around empowering others? As a leader, your role isn’t to solve all of your team’s problems, nor is to deliver exemplary design work, it’s about fostering the capability, impetus and belief that others can and should do that for themselves. Trust and safety are key here. People need to to be able to put themselves forward, take risks, raise concerns and enact change without fear of judgment and free from the governance and all-seeing the eye of management. Our job here is to lead, not to manage. To motivate more and demand less. To create a team of self-sufficient, problem-solvers, not a network of dependency where you, as the leader, are the single point of failure. As Grace Murray Hopper once said: “You manage things, you lead people”. Leading through empowerment The idealistic view is one of empowered, self-sufficient teams who feel supported in doing their best work. Where it follows that the more we empower others and create the environment in which folks can succeed, the greater the likelihood that they will experience personal growth and individual success. However, trust is the kicker! Without trust, we can’t sustain a healthy state of empowerment. At one extreme we are ‘that boss’. A lack of trust sees us bias towards a style of leadership that is more directive and seeks to micro-manage every situation. We bring everything under our immediate control to ensure it’s ‘done right’. Don’t get me wrong, there are times where a more directive approach is right and applicable, but we create a lot of problems where this becomes our default. Talented folks you’ve hired, many of whom will likely have more experience than you in certain areas, will be sidelined and worst still, demotivated, where not given the opportunity to act autonomously. In contrast, in the the scenario where there are high levels of trust and respect for the skills and experiences of the team, the leader assumes more of a coaching role, providing the right level of support as and when needed. The result is empowered individuals who act autonomously, operate without scrutiny and use their best judgement to solve problems in the way they see fit and appropriate. Trust and empowerment go hand-in-hand. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all approach and we must flex accordingly per individual and per scenario, but as a principle, learning to trust and allowing folks the opportunity to earn it is something all leaders have to work at. For most, it doesn’t come naturally and unfortunately is often very hard to rebuild when compromised. Trust-Empowerment Chart. Balance of safety and accountability As I mentioned earlier, creating a safe environment, one that is free of judgment and encourages failure is a foundation for any high-performing team. But safety and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Accountability is defined as: “The fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it or the degree to which this happens.” You can and I’d argue should create a culture of high accountability without fear of compromising a teams’ sense of psychological safety. Accountability is a key component of trust. As leaders, we are reliant upon individual accountability to evidence consistency through action and credibility through outcomes. In this below model, which I’m referring to as the ‘trust triangle’, there are three key components of trust: Opportunity: Identifying the right opportunities for folks to lead and be accountable for a particular outcome; based on a combination of skill and experience, or the need for stretch and exposure. Empowerment: Creating the right conditions and employing the right mindset that sets individuals up to succeed through their own merits; including the authority and autonomy to make decisions and act independently. Accountability: Ensure individuals recognise and take ownership of a responsibility; taking steps to ensure progress is visible and that they can reason and rationalise when this isn’t happening. The Trust Triangle. These three components create a virtuous cycle of leaders providing opportunities, empowering others to act in a self-directed way, with individuals that recognise the need to demonstrate accountability through action and results. Where any of these components are missing, trust quickly begins to erode! Trust is a two-way street Trust is a two-way street. You, as a leader, have to trust in the people you’ve hired and those on your team need to trust in you, as their leader, to provide them with the support they need. Similarly, they will also expect a level of consistency and a degree of accountability when it comes to you and your actions. It’s this reciprocal nature of trust that is so important, but easy to overlook. Often we expect others to trust us either by virtue of our role or some sense of entitlement, but just as we look to others to earn our trust, their trust in us must also be earned. How often do we find ourselves compromising our leadership approach or principles of empowerment? In times of pressure, do we unwittingly slip back towards a position of distrust and direction? Do we fail to live up to our promises and default on others’ expectations of us? The next time you pause to think about your current leadership situation and empowerment dynamics, consider the following:

https://medium.com/leading-design/design-leadership-series-on-trust-and-empowerment-f62af0e3894f

['Matthew Godfrey']

2020-10-12 07:30:56.733000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Design', 'Empowerment', 'User Experience', 'Trust']

E Pluribus Unum

E Pluribus Unum On John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. John Dos Passos’s trilogy U.S.A. — comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) — stands today like an unvisited historical monument in the annals of American literature, a Grant’s Tomb of the bookshelf. Despite its acceptance as a classic, and its being ranked twenty-third on the Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century, it seems to be little read today. Yet when we open it again at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first, Dos Passos’s innovative, panoramic documentary of America’s emergence from its nineteenth-century cocoon onto the world stage during and after World War I is as timely a piece of fiction as one could imagine encountering in the echo chamber of our contemporary political discourse. The author’s reputation preceding him (Gore Vidal once wrote, “Of all the recorders of what happened last summer — or last decade — John Dos Passos is the most dogged”), I was expecting an out-modishness barely tolerable when I reread it myself in 2016. What I found instead was an extraordinary fidelity to the faults at the core of our national identity, then and now. Immigrants of different nationalities are greeted with an all-too-familiar fear and aggression (“those damn lousy furreners”), and the realization of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots — be the having economic means, political power, or constabulary force — is similarly recognizable: “all right we are two nations” we read as The Big Money approaches its conclusion in the turmoil surrounding the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Through it all, we witness the author’s keen eye for the headlines, news flashes, and song lyrics that shaped the public mind in the first flush of mass media (how prescient Dos Passos was in his understanding of both its stimulating and stupefying effects). So if the trilogy is at times dated in expression, it is alive with a kind of scriptural foreshadowing, intuitive in its understanding of our enduring national character and the conflicts at the heart of it — between capitalism and the commonweal, finance and labor, the individual and the community, the familiar and the strange, the little guy and the big guy, us and them. In other words, the same impulses driving our current sense of crisis. “all right we are two nations” Dos Passos’s formal ambitions — the works are not conventional novels, but rather collages of voices, found language, stream-of-consciousness descriptions, “newsreels,” set pieces offering capsule biographies of inventors and thinkers such as Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Thorstein Veblen, and Charles Steinmetz, and running narratives following the development of a handful of characters — were bold at the time of writing and remain striking today. As Alfred Kazin astutely wrote of the first book in the series: What Dos Passos created with The 42nd Parallel was in fact another American invention — an American thing peculiar to the opportunity and stress of American life, like the Wright Brothers’ airplane, Edison’s phonograph, Luther Burbank’s hybrids, Thorstein Veblen’s social analysis, Frank Lloyd Wright’s first office buildings. (All these fellow inventors are celebrated in U.S.A.) The 42nd Parallel is an artwork. But we soon recognize that Dos Passos’ contraption, his new kind of novel, is in fact … the greatest character in the book itself. U.S.A. is like a vast history painting, a montage of carefully constructed panels juxtaposed to create a composite “voice” more vivid, more resourceful, more impersonal, and more capacious than that heard in ordinary literary composition. He wanted to find a wavelength strong enough to broadcast the speech of the people entire, with all its messy and often anguished noise. Kazin again: The artistic aim of his book, one may say, is to represent the litany, the tone, the issue of the time in the voice of the time, the banality, the cliché that finally brings home to us the voice in the crowd: the voice of mass opinion. The voice that might be anyone’s voice brings home to us, as only so powerful a reduction of the many to the one ever can, the vibrating resemblances that make history. If you read Dos Passos’s dispatches from eight decades ago in tandem with news reports from any recent week, you’ll see how long those vibrating resemblances last. If U.S.A. has been out of fashion, it might be time for it to come back in: it’s like a reading of the entrails of American modernity, an ominous prophecy that is wise to the collective nature of the democratic enterprise, and therefore alert to the desperate disillusion which can threaten that enterprise when our sense of all-being-in-this-together is more real as phantom than as fact — when we embrace too blindly a destiny not manifest but makeshift, afraid of the riskiness inherent in the freedom it purports to espouse.

https://jamesmustich.medium.com/e-pluribus-unum-d4e32995c01f

['James Mustich']

2019-02-27 13:36:10.978000+00:00

['Writing', 'History', 'Politics', 'Books']

What Are RBMs, Deep Belief Networks and Why Are They Important to Deep Learning?

What Are RBMs, Deep Belief Networks and Why Are They Important to Deep Learning? In this article, we are going to take a look at what are DBNs and where can we use them. A Deep Belief Network(DBN) is a powerful generative model that uses a deep architecture and in this article we are going to learn all about it. Don’t worry this is not relate to ‘The Secret or Church’, even though it involves ‘Deep Belief’, I promise! After you read this article you will understand what is, how it works, where to apply and how to code your own Deep Belief Network. Here is an overview of the points we are going to address: What is a Boltzmann Machine? Restricted Boltzmann Machine Deep Belief Network Deep Boltzmann Machine vs Deep Belief Network What is a Boltzmann machine? To give you a bit of background, Boltzmann machines are named after the Boltzmann distribution (also known as Gibbs Distribution and Energy-Based Models — EBM) which is an integral part of Statistical Mechanics and helps us to understand the impact of parameters like Entropy and Temperature on the Quantum States in the field of Thermodynamics. They were invented in 1985 by Geoffrey Hinton and Terry Sejnowski. There are no output nodes! This may seem strange but this is what gives them this non-deterministic feature. They don’t have the typical 1 or 0 type output through which patterns are learned and optimized using Stochastic Gradient Descent. They learn patterns without that capability and this is what makes them so special! One thing to note, unlike normal neural networks that don’t have any connections between the input nodes, a Boltzmann Machine has connections among the input nodes. We can see from the image that all the nodes are connected to all other nodes irrespective of whether they are input or hidden nodes. This allows them to share information among themselves and self-generate subsequent data. We only measure what’s on the visible nodes and not what’s on the hidden nodes. When the input is provided, they are able to capture all the parameters, patterns and correlations among the data. This is why they are called Deep Generative Model and fall into the class of Unsupervised Deep Learning . Restricted Boltzmann machine RBMs are a two-layered generative stochastic building blocks that can learn a probability distribution over its set of inputs features( i.e. image pixels). Note: First, they aren’t used as much nowadays if at all and second they aren’t themselves neural networks, they are used as building blocks, more on this on the next section. RBMs were also invented by Geoffrey Hinton and has many uses cases such as dimensionality reduction, classification, regression, collaborative filtering, feature learning, and topic modelling. As the name implies, RBMs are a variant of Boltzmann machines with a small difference, their neurons must form a bipartite graph, which means there are no connections between nodes within a group(visible and the hidden) which makes them easy to implement as well as makes them more efficient to train them when compared to Boltzmann Machines. In particular, this connection restriction allows RBMs to use more efficient and sophisticated training algorithms than the ones available for BM, such as the gradient-based contrastive divergence algorithm. In simpler terms, this means that we basically have fewer connections. As shown in the figure above. RBMs hold two sets of random variables (also called neurons): one layer of visible variables/nodes(which is the layer where the inputs go) to represent observable data and one layer of hidden variables to capture dependencies(calculate the probability distribution of the features) of the visible variables. Forward pass Example without data Example using actual data. Image credits Backward Pass Example without data Example with data. Image credits RBM is a stochastic building block (layer) which means that the weights associated with each neuron are randomly initialized then we perform alternating Gibbs sampling: All of the units in a layer are updated in parallel given the current states of the units in the other layer and this is repeated until the system is sampling from its equilibrium distribution. Now Given a randomly selected training image 𝑣, the binary state ℎ𝑗 of each hidden unit 𝑗, is set to 1 where its probability is: 𝑃(ℎ 𝑗 = 1|𝒗) = ℊ (𝑏𝑗 + ∑i V𝑖 . W𝑖𝑗 ) — (12) Where ℊ(𝑥) is the logistic sigmoid function ℊ(𝑥) = 1/(1 + exp(−𝑥)). Therefore 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 can be computed easily. Where 𝑊𝑖𝑗 represents the symmetric interaction term between visible unit 𝑖 and hidden unit j, 𝑏𝑖 and 𝑎i are bias terms for hidden units and visible units respectively. Since there are no direct connections between visible units in an RBM, it is very easy to obtain an unbiased sample of the state of a visible unit, given a hidden vector 𝑃(𝑣𝑖 = 1|𝒉) = ℊ (𝑎𝑖 + ∑j ℎ𝑗 W𝑖𝑗 ) — (13) However computing 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 is so difficult. It can be done by starting from any random state of the visible units and performing sequential Gibbs sampling for a long time. Finally due to impossibility of this method and large run-times, Contrastive Divergence (CD) method is used. Contrastive Divergence (CD) Since Gibbs sampling method is slow, Contrastive Divergence (CD) algorithm is used. In this method, visible units are initialized using training data. Then binary hidden units are computed according to equation (12). After determining binary hidden unit states, 𝑣𝑖 values are recomputed according to equation (13). Finally, the probability of hidden unit activation is computed and using these values of hidden units and visible units, 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 is computed. Figure 3: Computation steps in CD1 method. 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 (𝑒𝑖𝑗) is related to computing 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 for 𝑒𝑖𝑗 connection. Negative (𝑒𝑖𝑗) is related to computing reconstruction of the data for 𝑒𝑖𝑗 connection. Although CD1 method is not a perfect gradient computation method, but its results are acceptable. By repeating Gibbs sampling steps, CDk method is achieved. The k parameter is the number of repetitions of Gibbs sampling steps. This method has a higher performance and can compute gradient more exactly. This method is great at learning features that are very at modelling/reconstructing data input data. Let’s say you take a binary matrix that is an image of handwritten digit(i.e. number 6), turn it into a binary vector and feed it to trained RBM model, using its trained weights the model will be able to find low energy states compatible with that image and if you give it an image that is not of handwritten digit the model will not be able to find low energy states compatible with that image. So what is this energy? An energy function can be defined as a function that we want to minimize or maximize and it is a function of the variables of the system(model weights and bias). We use energy functions as a unified framework for representing many machine learning algorithms(models). Deep belief network A Deep Belief Network(DBN) is a powerful generative model that use a deep architecture of multiple stacks of Restricted Boltzmann machines(RBM). Each RBM model performs a non-linear transformation(much like a vanilla neural network works) on its input vectors and produces as outputs vectors that will serve as input for the next RBM model in the sequence. This allows a lot flexibility to DBNs and makes them easier to expand. Being a generative model allows DBNs to be used in either an unsupervised or a supervised setting. Meaning, DBNs have the ability to do feature learning/extraction and classification that are used in many applications, more on this in the applications section. Precisely, in feature learning we do layer-by-layer pre-training in an unsupervised manner on the different RBMs that form a DBN and we use back-propagation technique(i.e. gradient descent) to do classification and other tasks by fine-tuning on a small labelled dataset. Architecture & Fine-tuning As we already know by now with most of Neural Networks whether CNNs, LSTM, Transformers and etc. Pre-training helps our network generalise better and we can slightly adjust this pre-trained weights to many downstream tasks(i.e. binary classification, multi-class classification and etc) with a small dataset. Applications Here are some of the tasks that this family of networks can be used for: Image generation Image classification Video recognition Motion-capture And Natural Language Understand(i.e. speech processing), for detailed description, read check out the paper by the creator of DBNs himself Geoffrey Hinton Deep Boltzmann Machine After DBNs another moodel called Deep Boltzmann Machine (DBM) was created that trains better and achieves a lower loss, although it had some issues like being hard to generate sample from. A DBM is a three-layer generative model. They are similar to a Deep Belief Network, but they while DBNs have bidirectional connections in the bottom layer on the other hand DBM has entirely undirected connections. Now that we are equipped with the theory it is time to dive into the implementation details. Code implementation If you looking for a plug and play like implementation of DBN but also Ives lots of flexibility, checkout: If you a looking for a DIY and step by step tutorial from scratch, checkout: Conclusion Deep belief Networks are family of deep architecture networks that uses stacks of Restricted Boltzmann Machines as building blocks. Furthermore, DBNs can be used in a both unsupervised setting for tasks such as image generation and in a supervised setting for tasks such as image classification, and it takes full advantage of great techniques such as unsupervised pre-training and fine tuning on a down stream task. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Ms. Esther M Dzitiro for suggesting the topic of this article. References Checkout for more detailed explanation: Lecture 12C : Restricted Boltzmann Machines Lecture 12D : An example of Contrastive Divergence Learning Gibbs sampling https://cedar.buffalo.edu/~srihari/CSE676/20.4-DeepBoltzmann.pdf https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/fastnc http://www.robotics.stanford.edu/~ang/papers/icml09-ConvolutionalDeepBeliefNetworks https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/ruhijournal.pdf https://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su14/lectures/CosPop14-2-2-BayesComp-2.pdf A Tutorial on Energy-Based Learning Loss Functions for Energy-Based Models With Applications to Object Recognition

https://medium.com/swlh/what-are-rbms-deep-belief-networks-and-why-are-they-important-to-deep-learning-491c7de8937a

['Prince Canuma']

2020-12-23 22:46:05.160000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Vision', 'Deep Belief Network']

Fairytale Retellings: What Old Stories May Still Offer to the Modern Reader

Fairytales have been around for a long time. Millennia-kind of a long time. They’ve accompanied us for a long, long time and some have become almost second-nature to us. Everybody has heard them as kids and recounted them as adults. They have insinuated in our lives in so many forms, always changing, always themselves. And of course, as writers, we have often appropriated them and make them our own. But isn’t it odd? As writers, we pursue the elusive idea of originality. If this is what we are expected to achieve, why are we still telling the same fairytales? And why are readers still reading them? Retellings are addictive I became fascinated with retellings when I was a teenager. After reading The Mist of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, I became obsessed with the Arthurian Legends. I discovered there were many different versions from many different periods, and — still more awesome — there were many different modern versions. Every time seems to have its own retelling of the story and, most fascinating of all, so many authors have given the story their own spin. I suppose that’s when I became addicted to retellings. The fact that I could get the same story I love over and over again, and never the exact same one. These stories are old and new at the same time. They are recognizable, familiar. In a way, they are like old friends. But at the same time, they are never the story we know. They always have something to offer, they can always surprise us. There is always something new to discover about them. This is something I’ve realised a long time ago. But writing my own retelling in the last few months have made me think more closely to what it is that retellings can give to a writer, and therefore to a reader. The power of these old stories The secret to the power fairytales still carry, in my opinion, resides in their antiquity. They have been told for millennia, changing many times over the centuries, but far from having worn out over this time, they have gathered meaning and strength. They have become richer, and at the same time, they have learned to adapt, they have learned new languages, over and over again. Adaptability is the magic world here, which is already a great lesson for a writer. But there’s even more. Fairytales have a strong message for our hearts This is often why they have survived so long. Their core message is universal. They speak to us as human beings. Their core message is universal. They speak to us as human beings. As readers, we consume stories because we want to learn something about ourselves. We read because we want to understand things about ourselves that we can’t quite explain. Deep inside, we all have the same fears and the same hopes and the same desires. And fairytales know this. When as authors, we pair up with fairytales, they lend us what they have learned about fears and desires and hopes over the centuries. We can let them lend us their characters, their plots, their twists, so that we may look further. We can experiment, we can search deeper. It’s liberating. But it’s also challenging and inspiring. Pursuing my own retelling has allowed me to address my usual themes with a different take. Even as I bent the fairytale, it forced me to explore new territories that I might have never tackle without that prompt. Fairytales speak the language of the heart When they were first told, fairytales didn’t have the form we know now. Many fairytales were first recounted in a prehistoric time. I’m not joking. Scholars who have analysed their structure and elements have been able to determine that some well-known fairytales probably date back to Prehistory. Snow White, and especially Little Red Riding Hood appear to be among these. It is clear, then, that fairytales have gone through huge changes through the many centuries of their existence. Little Red Riding Hood, for example, acquired the form we know today only a couple of centuries ago. Nothing, in comparison to its long life. It also appears that some of the older fairytales exist in many different cultures across the globe, even far away from one another (Cinderella has its own Chinese version, for example), though there is no accordance among scholars of how this happened. Fairytales don’t fear to change and adapt. This is how they survived over the millennia. They changed, but they remained the same, to the point that we can recognise them no matter the language and the culture or the time. Adapting doesn’t mean losing themselves. It means reaching out to new readers, speaking their language. Fairytales don’t fear to change and adapt. This is how they survived over the millennia. They changed, but they remained the same This is how the very concept of retelling exists: as readers, we’ll recognise the story no matter what dress it will wear. This means that as writers, we will be free to experiment if we stay true to the core of the story. Retellings show us what’s crucial and what’s just makeup. What’s crucial is universal, and we’ll always connect with it. And because we connect with the heart of the story, we can play around with everything else. Fairytales are old friends of ours When we combine the steady core with the shifting language, we come to the true power of fairytale retellings. Telling our own version of a well-known story puts us writers in a place where we would always want to be, but we seldom are: we know quite well what readers expect and think. Writer and readers both know the story, they both know the plot, the characters and the themes. So the writer has the opportunity to twist and turn the story, in a way that will surprise the readers once they have recognised the story. But it isn’t just a matter of surprise. Twisting the story will make it richer. Readers will have a notion of the original story, and the new twist, rather than destroy the old story, will enrich it. Our own theme will overlay the theme of the classic story, and the dialogue between old and new will give the possibility to spark even newer thoughts and reflection. If we are faithful to the story, we can afford to betray it in all possible ways. This is what I love about fairytale retellings. I’m thrilled that I’ve finally come to write my own. — — — — — — — — — — — Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently. She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/

https://medium.com/the-gogs-and-gears-storyteller/fairytale-retellings-what-old-stories-may-still-offer-to-the-modern-reader-5168b5bfefc

[]

2019-11-10 13:53:27.140000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Writing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Fantasy', 'Fairy Tale']

Help! I’m Working From Home. Now What?

Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash So you’re working from home now. Whether it is long-term or temporary, the truth is, it doesn’t really matter. You just know that you want to be as productive as possible. So on that note, here is a simple, practical guide to help you make the most of this opportunity. 1. Have A Dedicated Workspace. If you have a laptop, you’ll probably migrate to the couch, right? There’s an inherent problem with this. If you sit where you normally sit when you’re at home relaxing, you’re sending your brain mixed messages. To avoid this, consider using a desk or even moving to the kitchen table. Move to a chair. Last case scenario, move to the other side of the couch or another part of the couch you never use. At least that will help your brain realize something is different. Photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash Ideally, you want to have a work computer versus a personal computer. If those are one in the same, consider using another device for personal use such as your tablet or your phone. This will help you stay on track and cut down on distractions. 2. Set Yourself Working Hours Set some rigid working hours so you can stay on task. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have lots of time now. The truth is, time goes by very quickly when working from home. Schedule in time to take breaks as you would do in the office, so you remain productive and ready to start the next challenge. Without a set structure in place, it is very easy to get distracted and then your work time will end up eating into the precious time you spend with friends or family after your workday should be over. 3. Keep In Touch When working remotely, you must communicate well with your co-workers. For example, it might not be as clear as if you were discussing a project in person. Spend more time focusing on communication. Photo by Berkeley Communications on Unsplash Personally, I would recommend checking in via video chat like Zoom if possible. Email is not ideal (and it is often a time suck too). Direct communication over video chat or the phone will help convey tone of voice and body language. When in doubt, ask for clarification. You’ll be glad you did. 4. Take A Lunch Break. You need to set up some boundaries when you work from home. Lunch is one of the non-negotiables. If you eat in front of your computer, you will lose focus and mental fatigue will take a toll. It has been scientifically proven to truly help you out. Photo by Mike Mayer (Creative Commons) So step away from the screen. A change of scenery will help you come back refreshed and ready to come back to work with a new perspective. 5. Talk To People. I know I mentioned communication being important earlier but this isn’t just about communication, it’s about mental health. The truth is, working from home can be really lonely, especially if you are not used to it. Loneliness is a serious issue as it can lead to many chronic health conditions. Chat with a friend on your lunch break or on another break. We need human interaction, even if you’re an introvert. 6. Dress Up. This one is surprising, but it really makes sense. Whenever I stay in my pajamas or wear a hoodie or sweats, I’m always less motivated to work. When you dress up, you will find many benefits. For starters, it will help you with your morning routine and help define the line between work and home. Remember the example with the couch in #1? Wearing your comfy clothes is going to make you want to watch Netflix and take a nap. When you wear professional clothes, you’ll also be prepared for the inevitable impromptu video meeting. 7. Track Your Time. Make no mistake, tracking your time will make you more productive. Always. And it also gives you some data that you can look at, as opposed to just guesstimating. I really like Toggl. It’s pretty easy to use and the free version has plenty of bells and whistles. Even just tracking your time with a basic timer can be fine too. There’s also a Toggl version for IOS and Android too. Photo by Author/Toggl.com Using a timer is probably the most practical piece of advice I can give you. It makes THAT much of a difference. A timer creates urgency and let’s face it… the data doesn’t lie! 8. Be Aware Of Distractions. There are different distractions that pop up when working from home. The neighbor starts cutting their grass right by your office. You have to sign for the delivery of a package. You notice the dirty dishes in your sink. You realize you need to move the laundry over. The dog needs to go outside. Some of these distractions can be avoided, others cannot. Many of these distractions can be handled within your daily routine and the boundaries you put in place. Others cannot. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from family members with some of these things if possible. The Takeaway Working from home definitely has some benefits. Despite the popular image of someone working from bed in their pajamas like this… Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash the truth is, to work from home successfully, you really need to create a simple plan. Follow the steps above to create a positive work from home experience. Want some more help with this? Feel free to fire me a message.

https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/help-im-working-from-home-now-what-6385e8d733e7

['Jim Woods']

2020-03-14 01:27:28.381000+00:00

['Careers', 'Coronavirus', 'Work', 'Jobs', 'Health']

Internal Logic: What Is Our Business For?

A good commitment to a “how” — to being a certain way, as distinct from advancing a mission out in the world — should be explicit and stated in impersonal terms, versus personalized in terms of the desires of founders or leaders. A relatively small number of organizations are built in service of an idea that’s about the company’s way of being or what it produces for its employees or community, rather than for its customers. Greyston Bakery, founded by Zen Buddhist Bernie Glassman to create jobs for people in the Bronx, hiring them no questions asked, is one compelling example. 35 years later, Greyston is advancing its philosophy of Open Hiring beyond its own operations, for instance through a pilot with Unilever that we had the honor of helping set into motion through our work on employment of opportunity youth. While producing brownies is important to Greyston, serving Ben & Jerry’s as a customer is really a vehicle for Greyston’s primary goal, which is the creation of opportunity in the surrounding community. Another small group of organizations are approximately balanced in their intrinsic commitments to a what they achieve in the world and a how they exemplify on the inside. An example that stands out is Valve, the video game development and technology company and perhaps the world’s most successful exemplar of radically non-hierarchical management. The preface to Valve’s employee handbook — which I’d nominate as one of the most interesting business documents in the world — begins: “In 1996, we set out to make great games, but we knew back then that we had to first create a place that was designed to foster that greatness. A place where incredibly talented individuals are empowered to put their best work into the hands of millions of people, with very little in their way.” Plenty of companies might write something similar, but almost none would make the choices Valve has made based on the depth of their commitment to these ideas: for instance, allowing employees to work on any project they choose, refusing to take any external funding and adjusting compensation to fit value creation as judged by an individual’s peers. The question of whether commitment to a how is viewed as having deep, intrinsic value may seem like a philosophical debate. Perhaps so. But certain companies embrace a distinctive way of operating — whom they hire, how they manage, how they treat customers, what objectives they prioritize, etc. — that becomes integral to how they succeed out in the world. They tie themselves to the mast by treating this way of being as something they can’t compromise. Southwest is truly commited to irreverence and fun, and they’ve done the hard work of reconciling that with their equally bedrock commitment to make air travel cheap. In contrast, United may genuinely aspire to “fly the friendly skies,” but the operational priorities that would make that a reality for customers haven’t been viewed as intrinsically important and unacceptable to compromise. Rather, the “friendly skies” are a second-order goal, generally placed behind the goal of optimizing capacity utilization and pricing. These questions about commitments can be illuminated through the question of who has the most important claims on the organization, a question that comes to life when potential claims conflict. Valve doesn’t report its financials, but has been estimated to be the most profitable company in the US on a per-employee basis. There’s no mechanism, however, for the interests of shareholders — co-founder Gabe Newell being by far the largest owner — to outweigh other priorities for the company. What Valve’s team members do is driven by their personal views of what’s valuable for Valve to accomplish, not through any process of budgeting and allocating resources where they’d generate highest shareholder return. Financial logic doesn’t explain why Valve did X or didn’t do Y — that can only be understood through the lens of the people at Valve and why they believed X mattered and Y didn’t. By contrast, financial logic, connected to specific beliefs about what will deliver shareholder returns, explains almost all of the choices United has made in recent years. As explored above, a core question for founder-led organizations is whether the founders, in practice, have the most important claim on the enterprise, or whether the founders put the organization in service of something, to which the founders’ own opinions and even interests become subordinate.

https://medium.com/on-human-enterprise/internal-logic-what-is-our-business-for-85600f32a30f

['Niko Canner']

2018-06-12 15:26:14.306000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Strategy', 'Management']

The Day I Earned A Six Figure Salary Was The Day I Quit My Job

Two years ago on January 6th 2014, I quit my job. It was just four weeks after I’d been offered my first six-figure salary. My manager handed me the letter that day and there it was, right in front of me and clear as day. Your annual remuneration is now $103,000. I should have been ecstatic … but I wasn’t. As a country boy growing up in his teens, I’d had the audacious goal many years before that one day I’d reach a six-figure salary. I didn’t know how I’d do it, I just knew that I would. In 2013 I reached my goal, it had taken just seven years. I had moved from small town to big city and at the age of 28 I’d reached my goal. But this isn’t a self-indulgent story to brag and make you jealous, in fact it’s the exact opposite. The truth was that for the past 18 months I’d viciously hated my job. Was I depressed? It’s safe to say that I really wasn’t sure anymore, but the job had certainly taken its toll on me. What was more confusing was that I’d reached my goal, but I wasn’t happy when I got there. I didn’t understand why. It sounds cliché but truth be told, money isn’t everything. Identifying the root cause At the time I was working shift work for a bank which meant I was often working alternate hours to family and friends. For two out of every four weeks, the most I’d see of my wife was a brief kiss on the forehead to say “goodbye” as she hurried off to work and as I tried to catch up on my sleep. I often asked myself, “Why am I spending more time with colleagues than I was with my own family?” The truth was that I’d been employed to work in a global business, within a brand new team, to create and mature the capabilities of a global IT security response team. Sounds impressive huh? But putting it simply, it was us against the hackers in a game which is incredibly challenging for any business to win. I wanted to foster an environment where we at least had a chance but I soon realized that our best response was to raise a white flag. As I grew to understand the organisation I realized that our goal wasn’t to make the business more secure, we were simply ticking audit boxes that had little to no impact on overall security posture. It was deflating. Managers were inexperienced struggling to provide direction, accountability or even understand the issues at hand. It was like playing in a professional sports team that didn’t want to win any games with coaches who had never played the game. It wasn’t challenging, I couldn’t innovate and I wasn’t inspired in any way about my day. I wondered whether the legacy of my life was to live an unfulfilled life? It was like playing in a professional sports team that didn’t want to win any games with coaches who had never played the game. Inspiring the change In those last 18 months of the job I’d started to seriously consider my career path. Was this really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? What was I passionate about? I really didn’t know anymore. I started reading books like the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, The Art of Non Conformity by Chris Guillebeau and Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. My morning ritual in the office started by reading inspiring stories from this very site while trying to hide what was on my screen from my boss. If you’re at work right now doing the exact same then just know that you do have a choice, there is a way out. Regardless, my eyes had been opened, what these resources taught me was huge. They taught me: That it’s not unreasonable to seek a flexible lifestyle where family, travel and work can integrate seamlessly. They taught me the importance of time and flexible working arrangements. Why travel for three hours, to and from work, if you can do it all from home? Why work 9–5 if you work better from 2–10? They taught me to value my time and that 40–60 hours of time was more valuable than what I was currently being paid for it. These books also taught me about online business, affiliate advertising and many other alternative ways of generating an income online. I knew the only pathway forward was to start my own online business. So how do you quit a job you hate? On December 6th 2013, I handed in my resignation and gave my four weeks’ notice, this was just one month after my wife had quit her job too. (One Friday afternoon prior, after another bad week for both of us, I made a bet with my wife that she wouldn’t go back to work on Monday and quit her job. She did quit her job and she did win that bet.) Looking back the decision to quit seems so much easier than it actually was, but in reality losing two incomes ($170k+) is a very scary decision. For many of the readers on Medium I presume you might be in a similar position to the one I was in, struggling in a job you don’t like and wondering how to be your own boss. When you have children, mortgages, car loans, and many other factors the decision becomes that much harder. I hope to inspire you by highlighting the changes I made in my own life. 1. Start saving ASAP It all started with my wife and I saving money religiously so that we had something to sustain us for a period of time post quit. We realized that what we needed to live and to make us happy was a very small number of items and it became very easy to say no to bright shiny items that caught our attention. We also made the decision to sell our house as we felt the mortgage was restricting our ability to make the right decisions about our lives. Using this approach we had enough savings to sustain ourselves for 12–24 months without any extra income. 2. Reduce your possessions You might think that you own your possessions but more often than not your possessions can own you. The more you have the harder it is to let go and the more easily they can affect your decisions in life. Look around your house and think to yourself “how much of this do I actually use?” We realized that in most cases the reasons we bought new “things” was not because we actually needed them, but because they were a treat for getting through one more week of a job we hated so much. The once president of Uruguay José Mujica says it best, “When you buy something, you’re not paying money for it. You’re paying with the hours of life”. Life and time is a finite resource for all of us, we can’t make more of it. We began to eliminate everything in our lives that we weren’t using, didn’t make us happy or had a negative impact on our time. We were inspired by a minimalist approach. Remember, if you want a flexible life, with more travel and freedom, then you should only carry what is necessary. “When you buy something, you’re not paying money for it. You’re paying with the hours of life.” — Ex Uruguay President José Mujica 3. Develop your side hustle If you want to be your own boss there is no better time to start a business on the side. The more effort you put in outside of your 9–5, the better position you’ll be in to make the transition comfortably. You don’t have to sell your house or get rid of your possessions like I did, but that may mean it might take you a little longer before you’re ready. You can’t be the kind of person that comes home and binges on NetFlix because you’re “tired” or “you don’t have any time”. If you’re going to build a business or be your own boss then it takes hard work, so start working after your kids go to bed or for a few hours before you normally wake up. You’ve got to find the time, excuses will only hold you back. From the moment I finished dinner and often until the early hours of the morning, I was working on my side business and mastering my craft. At times I was running on five hours sleep or less, it will be a grind at times. I failed numerous times before I found success. 4. Ignore the gatekeepers At times the path less followed means you’ll be going it alone. Choosing a life of uncertainty versus one of security is often misunderstood by those around you. If starting your own business was easy then everyone would be doing it but the truth is that most people are afraid to try. Many of your family and friends will likely encourage you towards a path of conformity and security simply because it’s what they know and understand. Know that their fears come from a good place and wanting the best for you but you can’t let their fears hold you back from your own dreams. Steve says it best. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. — Steve Jobs. What happens when you master these techniques? Well, that’s up to you. Just three months after I quit my job my wife and I moved to Port Douglas in Australia, typically termed a holiday destination, for twelve of the best months of our life thus far. We rented within a 5-star hotel with our own swim-up pool deck for less than what we’d paid to rent in a big city, it was surreal. We lived within five minutes walk of one of the world’s best beaches. In that time we also spent a month living in Tokyo while at the same time running and growing a thriving online business. Now back in the big city, due to family reasons, and two years on, I’m the owner of a successful online marketing business called PixelRush. I work from home with a virtual team, avoiding the commute, while helping clients build profitable online businesses. The money I make in a day now frequently outweighs the money I could make in a month. It hasn’t always been easy, it’s a roller-coaster journey, but the life I now have is a life that’s worth living. So what are you going to do?

https://medium.com/career-relaunch/the-day-i-earned-a-six-figure-salary-was-the-day-i-quit-my-job-1d49f16c7f7c

['Byron Trzeciak']

2016-07-07 13:05:35.396000+00:00

['Lifestyle Design', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Career Change', 'Startup']

Is There a Difference Between Open Data and Public Data?

There is a general consensus that when we talk about open data we are referring to any piece of data or content that is free to access, use, reuse, and redistribute. Due to the way most governments have rolled out their open data portals, however, it would be easy to assume that the data available on these sites is the only data that’s available for public consumption. This isn’t true. Although data sets that receive a governmental stamp of openness receive a lot more publicity, they actually only represent a fraction of the public data that exists on the web. So what’s the difference between “public” data and “open” data? What is open data? Generally speaking, “ open data “ is the information that has been published on government-sanctioned portals. In the best case, this data is structured, machine-readable, open-licensed, and well maintained. What is public data? Public data is the data that exists everywhere else. This is information that’s freely available (but not really accessible) on the web. It is frequently unstructured and unruly, and its usage requirements are often vague. “Only 10% of government data is published as open data” What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that there’s a discrepancy between the open data that exists in government portals and public data in general. This is an important distinction to make because while there’s a lot of excitement surrounding open data initiatives and their potential to transform modern society, the data that this premise rests on — open data — is only a fraction of what’s needed in order for this potential to be realized. The fact is this: the majority of useful government data is either still proprietary or stowed away in a filing cabinet somewhere, and the stuff that is available is being released haphazardly. Does it matter? Does it actually matter that there’s a distinction between these two kinds of data? Well… yes. Open data, because it represents such a small portion of what’s available, hasn’t lived up to its potential. People, like me, who have very high hopes for the open data movement haven’t yet seen the ROI (economically or socially) that we were supposed to. The reason we haven’t is manyfold, but this distinction is part of the problem. In order for open data to be as effective as predicted, the line that demarcates open and public data needs to be erased, and governments need to start making a lot more of their public information open data. After all, we’re the ones paying for it.

https://towardsdatascience.com/is-there-a-difference-between-open-data-and-public-data-6261cd7b5389

['Lewis Wynne-Jones']

2019-09-28 13:24:17.885000+00:00

['Government Data', 'Open Data', 'Public Data', 'Data Science', 'Big Data']

What Is It Really Like Moving From a Big Company to a Start-Up?

1. It’s extraordinarily fast-paced; even faster than you probably think it is A small company with fewer people generally means there are fewer processes in place. Along with less people who need to have a say in something. It’s faster and easier to get things done. It’s liberating and I love the pace. It’s great for people who are action orientated. If you are the kind of person who needs to follow detailed instructions to do something, or have lots of meetings to plan. Or cross every T before you feel comfortable making a decision. You may find the lack of structure, speed and changeability unsettling. At least at the beginning. 2. You need to be mentally and physically fit The grind is real people. Very real. Prepare to work harder than you have ever worked in your life, particularly when trying to secure your first customers and earn enough revenue (or until then, raise enough capital) to break even each month. And you will likely face a large number of setbacks along the way. It’s not an easy life. Exhaustion is common. This is ok if it comes with a sense of achievement at the end. Less so if it is heavy churn or constant pivoting with little accomplishment and irregular payroll. Stress and burnout are perennial shadows and you need to think carefully about how you look after your mind, body and soul. From exercise to mindfulness and nutrition. A bit like a professional athlete. 3. People might be wary that you will be too “corporate” and damage the culture I received mixed welcomes. The majority of people were excited to see me and wanted to learn how things work at big companies to help professionalise processes and inform strategy to facilitate faster growth. Particularly with institutional clients on the fintech side. A handful were less friendly with a fear I would damage the team’s culture through introducing rigid corporate ways of doing things. Before you join, ask about the culture and make sure it sounds like something you would enjoy. It’s your responsibility to fit in. Make the coffee. Offer to help and be helpful. Listen more than you speak. Ask questions. Learn. Roll up your sleeves, get involved and show your value quickly. 4. You have the freedom to innovate and this may sometimes mean you fail In a big company, people can fear ridicule, criticism and damage to their career if they make a mistake. Failure may impact my bonus, for example. Yet failure is simply part of the innovation process. We conduct pilots and gather data. Information. Intelligence. It is an opportunity to learn, fix it, and make it even better. Or pivot in a new direction. Key is if you are going to fail, you fail quickly, safely and cheaply. To innovate, you have to be comfortable with the possibility of failing. And that’s a new feeling. 5. You learn a lot, and I mean, A LOT This is because you are expected to do a lot and learn as you go. And you have the opportunity to step up and take on responsibilities that can be way, way, way outside your comfort zone. At a large company there is always someone you can contact who knows how to do something and it is their job to do it. At a start-up, there are only a handful of people, so you need to be strong at problem-solving, willing to figure it out and do the work. Sometimes on your own, sometimes in collaboration with colleagues. The opportunities for rapid professional growth are exponential. 6. Have a strategy but keep it agile and keep an open mind Start-ups need the same strategic principles of a big company — purpose, mission, vision, and so on. You definitely need a clear market-focused sales strategy, and, of course, a solid pricing strategy. But until you’ve secured your first customers and are gaining momentum, it’s not wise to have a concrete plan. I have a framework and calendar for the year, a list of things I know I must do, and an ever-evolving list of monthly, weekly, even daily, new actions I update after each sales or product meeting. Life is difficult to plan at a start-up. If you need a long-term agreed plan, or prescriptive goals to feel in control, this might not be for you. 7. It can sometimes be difficult to get colleagues to focus Your colleagues are likely to be amazing entrepreneurs with lots of ideas, drive and enthusiasm. Which is truly energising. It’s the magic sauce of a start-up. People are reimagining the future. But there is a danger of people spreading themselves too thin by trying to implement too many ideas at once in their excitement. Throwing everything at the wall in the hope one idea sticks. With the limited resources of a start-up, its important teams identify the ideas which are the fastest to convert into real and sustainable revenue streams. And build a solid foundation for rapid growth. Once you have enough revenue to stay afloat each month, then start branching out. Laser focus is vital. 8. Time becomes a vortex and your personal relationships may suffer You will have very little personal time, certainly at the beginning. Quality time with family, friends and partners is rare. Weeks will pass in the blink of an eye. And when you are lucky enough to see them, be ready for the potential impact your absence will likely have as not everyone will understand or agree with why you are no longer as available as you once were. This is only temporary, but you need to be ready for how your sacrifice to try and achieve something incredible will likely impact your relationships. 9. You need to be passionate and really believe in the company Working at a start-up isn’t just a job. It’s a vocation. You’re going to need to work insane hours, make large personal sacrifices and there is no guarantee you will be rewarded with success. Sounds crazy right? It is crazy. So, you have to be passionate about what the company is trying to achieve as no matter how hard it gets, it’s your passion that will drive you in between paydays and during all the times when everyone else tells you to quit. If you’re not passionate about the company and just want a nine-to-five style job, a start-up probably isn’t for you. 10. Hiring the wrong people can be costly Think of your early hires and colleagues almost as cofounders. At a start-up, no matter what your job title. No matter what your level of experience. You have to be prepared to get in the trenches. Hire someone who shares the same rewards (or worse, has better rewards) but doesn’t put in the same hard work and it can severely impact team morale. Notwithstanding the financial impact, both in expenses and slower revenue growth. Plenty of talented people aren’t going to fit the mould needed of an early stage start-up employee. They might make great hires down the road, but right now, they might not be a good fit. It’s really important to be very clear in what you are looking for when recruiting and be very clear with candidates too. And if a hire is not working out as well as hoped, you need to be quicker in addressing issues than you might at a large company. 11. Know where every penny goes, and justify it One thing I have really come to appreciate at a start-up is the value of money. What things cost and the value of what you are buying. And not just physical items which you can see like advertisements, events, office equipment; even people. I also mean the cost of time. The cost of unnecessary meetings and chasing the wrong sales leads. The cost of nice to haves versus need to haves. The cost of delays. The cost of mistakes. In a start-up, you need a sharp eye on your balance sheet and be able to justify every penny spent. Overspends or bad investments do not just impact growth, they could impact your survival. Be smart with your budget and measure everything. And don’t spend any money (or very, very little with a clear justifiable rationale) on direct marketing until you have revenue. A good deal on an advert, for example, is a bad deal if it doesn’t directly align to immediate revenue generation at a start-up. 12. Perfection is your enemy but lowering your standards doesn’t mean poor quality results Lastly, they say as an entrepreneur, perfection is your greatest enemy. This is true. When you’re building a company from an idea to reality, I have needed to learn to not be afraid to pull the trigger on something I know isn’t perfect. If it does the job, that’s all that matters. I’m not advocating you accept mediocracy and throw just anything out the door (and anyone who knows me well knows I set a high bar). Strive for excellence, but make sure you balance quality over what’s best for the company. Put your ego to the side and take action. You can improve something on the next bounce. And just because you will likely have a small budget, that doesn’t mean you cannot deliver. You might be pleasantly surprised with what you can achieve with a little imagination, tenacity and ambition.

https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/what-is-it-really-like-moving-from-a-big-company-to-a-start-up-6461e485b9a0

['Louisa Bartoszek']

2020-07-18 11:51:18.157000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Startup', 'Work', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Careers']

5 Angel Investors of Color You Don’t Know, But Should

Entrepreneurship can seem like the ultimate catch 22 — making progress requires funding, but progress begets funding in the first place. The average seed stage startup is worth over $5M, and is bootstrapped by founders for about 2.5 years before the first venture capitalist (VC) invests money to help the business grow. Source: Tech Crunch Entrepreneurs of color however, disproportionately fall short of accessing the necessary capital to achieve the initial traction above. For instance, although the total venture capital investments reached nearly $70B in the U.S. in 2016, companies led by founders of color received less than 1% of that funding. What’s worse is there were only 138 active U.S. seed stage VC investors reported in 2014. Since VCs typically only invest in industry sectors that fall within their domain of expertise, 138 funds quickly becomes way fewer for an entrepreneur whose business tackles a specific problem. Stats like this make raising venture capital sound impossible, especially for people of color. But there is another road less traveled that more founders may want to consider. Approximately 300,000 high net-worth individuals in the U.S. invest in technology as angel investors today. 5% or 15,000 of those angels identify as people of color. Ta-da! The grass just got a little greener. People are drawn to others similar to themselves. Therefore, more diverse investors means a more diverse distribution of venture capital funds to those seeking it. Over the past three months as a Summer Associate at Kapor Capital, I got to know some of these angel investors of color, and I want to make sure all the founders of color out there know them too. Without further adieu, here are the 5 angel investors of color you should know: Tony Wilkins Bet on the jockey, not the horse. Young entrepreneurs need mentors with relevant experiences to help them gain perspective and move their businesses to the next level. Location: Chicago, IL Investments: 39 total (20 current), up to $50K each, 5 exits Investment Sectors: Consumer, Education, Fintech, and People Operations Tech Select Portfolio Companies: AgileMD, Kudzoo, Nexercise, New Aero, SA Ignite, SpotHero, and more Where To Find This Angel: Tony Wilkins (LinkedIn) After losing his first job out of college as an electrical engineer at Chrysler in 1980, Tony Wilkins, of Chicago, IL, quickly realized that he needed to secure multiple sources of income in order to achieve financial security. While building a strong real-estate portfolio alongside his career in asset management, Tony also decided to make his first VC investment in 1991. He’s been an active angel ever since. In 29 years of investing, he has made a total of 39 investments with 11 total losses, 5 successful exits and 3 successful shutdowns. Today, he has 20 companies in his personal portfolio located in Chicago, Madison (WI), Galesburg (IL), New York and the Bay Area. Tony invests across education, fintech, consumer, and people operations tech. He’s particularly interested in globally scalable, disruptively efficient digital companies, generally based in the Midwest where he can closely mentor young entrepreneurs. Seven of the 20 companies in Tony’s portfolio consist of founders who are people of color or women. Entrepreneurs can expect Tony to be an active mentor in the early stages, providing counsel, connections and capital. 2. Donray Von These businesses are the backbone of our economy, and not supporting them is a missed opportunity. I want to spur that change. Location: Los Angeles, CA Credit Facility: Up to $25M Investments: 11 total, 4 exits Investment Sectors: Consumer, Education, Fintech, and Media Select Portfolio Companies: DSTLD, Speakaboos, Speakr, and more Where To Find This Angel: donrayvon.com (personal website), Donray Von (LinkedIn) Donray Von built a 20-year career in the music industry where he worked with artists like Outkast and The Roots. After meeting Nick Gross, son of billionaire PIMCO co-founder Bill Gross, they went on to launch Castleberry & Co., a tech-focused angel investment venture fund. Castleberry invests in digital software and e-commerce companies across the consumer, education, finance, and media sectors. Donray has made a total of 11 seed and series A investments and has realized 4 exits. They have co-invested alongside funds like Google Ventures, Guggenheim, TPG, and Lower Case Capital. Donray’s newest venture, Currency, is a commercial finance platform focused on providing small to medium sized businesses, especially those run by people of color, with immediate access to the capital they need to grow without giving away ownership in their businesses. According to Donray, “These businesses are the backbone of our economy, and not supporting them is a missed opportunity. I want to spur that change.” When Black women are starting businesses at 6x the national average, there’s no better time than now. 3. Manny Fernandez People of color have an advantage. They don’t need to be taught it — they know it, and I want to meet them. Location: San Francisco, CA Investments: 30+ total, $25K-$50K each Investment Sectors: Real-Estate, Marketplaces, Enterprise Software, and Blockchain Select Portfolio Companies: LiquidSpace, Revel Systems, Task Rabbit, and more Where To Find This Angel: @mannyfernandez (Twitter), Manny Fernandez (LinkedIn) Manny Fernandez bought his first investment property at 20 years old. He went on to buy a portfolio of single-family homes in Sacramento and sold 34 of them at the height of the real-estate market. Manny later expanded his investments to include tech companies. He made his first angel investment in 2012 with TiE Angels and eventually founded SF Angel Group in 2013. Manny has a particular interest in tech platforms and marketplaces in the real-estate sector that have the ability to reach massive scale. Manny personally believes that Silicon Valley places too much emphasis on academic pedigree, instead of focusing on an entrepreneur’s level of sheer hustle and hunger. According to Manny, “People of color have an advantage. They don’t need to be taught it — they know it, and I want to meet them.” 4. Jill Ford Smart, scrappy people will find their way to success — no matter the challenges on the field. Location: Detroit, MI Investment Sectors: Consumer, Gaming, Mobile, and Social Where To Find This Angel: @JillFord313 (Twitter), Jill Ford (LinkedIn) After earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Jill Ford, now Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the City of Detroit, developed her mobile, social, and gaming expertise through a 15+ year career in business development and strategy at Disney, Motorola, HP, and Microsoft. Her passion and expertise in the space eventually lead her to begin making personal investments in young entrepreneurs she knew well. Three years in however, she found herself at a crossroads. She could stay in Silicon Valley and continue building out her portfolio as a dedicated angel investor and startup advisor, or play a central role in the modernization and revitalization of Detroit’s tech sector as a special advisor to the mayor. Although she ultimately chose the latter and primarily focuses on helping people of color transition from owners to investors, Jill still finds time to mentor young entrepreneurs in the mobile, social, and gaming space as a mentor in the Techstars accelerator program and beyond. When evaluating early-stage investment opportunities, Jill prioritizes people over product because “Smart, scrappy people will find their way to success — no matter the challenges on the field.” 5. Ryan Mundy I want to change what tech looks like from both sides — for future investors, and entrepreneurs. Location: Chicago, IL Investments: 5 total, $25K+ each Investment Sectors: Generalist (Fintech, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Consumer, and more) Where To Find This Angel: @RyanGMundy (Twitter), Ryan Mundy (LinkedIn) The average NFL career lasts 3.3 years, and 78% of players go broke within three years of retirement. Ryan Mundy, however, wrote himself a different story. After 8 years of playing with the Steelers, Giants, and Bears, Ryan set his sights on tackling life after football. He earned his MBA from the University of Miami during his last season with the Bears, and at the suggestion of a friend, began honing his expertise in tech in order to become an angel investor. Although he doesn’t solely invest in people of color, he saw an opportunity to be a financial resource and mentor for young entrepreneurs in his community. He spent the next year fully immersing himself in the tech world. He built his own framework for investing, expanded his network, learned the industry jargon, the standard financing vehicles, and the types of questions he needed ask to evaluate young companies. Ryan considers himself a generalist and makes it a point to evaluate all companies that find their way to his desk, regardless of industry. He even considers non-tech startups and traditional brick & mortar businesses, like restaurants, for investment. When evaluating companies, Ryan looks for a well-defined value proposition, and booked revenue. An intrinsic risk comes with investing in pre-revenue companies — a risk too high for his taste. Companies in Ryan’s portfolio can expect to leverage his strategy and operations, as he is a recently certified Six Sigma Green Belt. They can also expect to leverage his experience in health and wellness and his expansive network to get to decision-makers. His ex-NFL status still has its perks. Other Angels Worth Knowing 6. Charles King Location: Los Angeles, CA Investments: 30+ total, $50K-$500K each, 4 exits Investment Sectors: Consumer, E-Commerce, Media Select Portfolio Companies: Afrostream, Blavity, Mayvenn, Walker & Company, and more Where To Find This Angel: @IAmCharlesDKing (Twitter), Charles D. King (LinkedIn) Charles King has actively made angel investments for 6 years. The bad news is that Charles no longer makes active angel investments. The good news is that he is currently institutionalizing his angel investments into a venture capital fund housed under the larger umbrella of his multi-cultural media investment and production company, Macro Media. Charles leverages his 15 year media career and focuses on investing in consumer Internet and media companies. 7. Joanne Wilson Location: New York, NY Investments: 100+ total, $25K-$50K each Investment Sectors: Consumer, E-Commerce, Food, Healthcare, Media Select Portfolio Companies: Maker’s Row, Mercaris, and more Where To Find This Angel: gothamgal.com (Personal Website), @thegothamgal (Twitter), Joanne Wilson (LinkedIn) Joanne Wilson made her first angel investment in 2007. Although Joanne does not identify as a person of color, she has reportedly invested in three of the 11 black women-led startups that have raised over $1 million in venture capital funds. Joanne targets tech companies in the consumer, media, and e-commerce spaces. — Anastacia Gordon is a writer, backpacker, and investor interested in music x media x culture x tech. She is currently an MBA student at Columbia Business School and spent summer 2017 as a summer associate at Kapor Capital. Prior to that, she was a founding team member at Jopwell (YC S’15). Like what you’ve read? Sign up here to receive more music x media x culture x tech in your inbox.

https://medium.com/kapor-the-bridge/5-angel-investors-of-color-you-dont-know-but-should-4004e9c49ff6

['Anastacia Gordon']

2017-09-05 18:12:41.655000+00:00

['Tech', 'Startup', 'Venture Capital', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Diversity']

Never Give Up Without A Fight

Never Give Up Without A Fight The day I stepped away from writing (this would be almost 7 years ago) it was with the deliberate intention of never putting another word on paper. Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash I was fed up with the stops and starts, the mixed advice, the ‘almost were’ projects, the half-finished manuscripts and my own sense of ennui. It felt like there was never enough time to write. And the worst part was — I convinced myself that writing was a frivolous waste of the time. Somehow I got the idea I should spend every waking moment building servers or learning Cisco networking or studying for certification tests or, well, anything other than writing. Doing those tasks was more ‘real’ than writing could ever be… It was a difficult and fairly negative time for me. I’ve read enough from other writers to know that many of us have gone through even worse while building their careers. I mean, let’s be honest, there are more reasons not to write than there are reasons to write. Most ‘reasons’ are excuses. Some are legit. A legitimate reason would be losing a job or a true family crisis. My experience tells me anything else is doubt masquerading as purpose. I learned the hard way that if you’re meant to write the stress of avoiding or ignoring it will eat you alive. How did I get over myself? For years I ignored my feelings. I told myself all kinds of stories about how it didn’t matter if I wrote or not. I reasoned that no one was waiting for anything I’d produce anyway. The vast emptiness that sometimes overwhelmed me HAD to have some other source, right? It sure as hell couldn’t be happening because I wasn’t putting words on paper. That was too silly to consider. I believe I’ve mentioned before that depression is an issue for me. I assumed the emptiness was just another bout with my old enemy. It took a while to comprehend that not writing removed one of my coping mechanisms. The printed word (reading and writing) helped me fight back. In a way, at least for me, writing is medicine. Every time I forget that I suffer. Since I’m stubborn, realizing the issue and then doing something about it was a real battle. The person I’d asked to be my mentor bailed on me. No one offered encouragement or even noticed. That meant it was my problem to solve. I was forced to take a hard look at why I loved writing so much. I also had to overcome the internal argument that writing was a stupid waste of time. Pro tip #1 — You can only ignore your feelings for so long. Eventually your body will get fed up with the lies and do something nasty to you to get your attention. I won’t go into what happened, but trust and believe my body’s response got my attention in a major way. It was time to get my shit together. I made a deal with myself which went a little like this — Produce just one book this year, get it published and into the hands of at least one reader. If I can do that then I’ve proven writing isn’t a waste of time. I also promised that if I kept hemming and hawing and produced nothing in that year, I would drop this forever and do something else. I am often scattershot in my approach to solving my own problems. I tried meditating on my own. I tried writing random pieces and creating a daily journal. I tried joining writing groups. I tried getting help from other writers I knew. I didn’t start to get any traction until I found some things on YouTube that resonated. Remember, I was searching for a type of internal approval. My struggle was more than just the mechanics of crafting stories and books. I needed to feel that it was ‘okay’ for me to write! Pro tip #2 — All of the pie in the sky motivational BS on the planet means nothing if YOU don’t believe in your own dream. It took a while but I finally found a few videos that sunk in and felt right. One of the first was a video featuring Les Brown, Eric Thomas, Will Smith and some others. The link to the video is right here. The other one featured a speech from Sly Stallone and that link is here. Why these two videos? I wish I had a single coherent answer for you, I really do. Something about them struck a deep chord. I watched them twice a day that first year. When I woke up and right before I went to bed. Finally it sank in. The message was clear — NEVER GIVE UP WITHOUT A FIGHT. The words and energy were correct. I’ve always loved Les Brown and Eric Thomas. I didn’t know Will Smith was doing motivational stuff but his words were awesome too. So I listened to them every day and after a while I took small actions every day. I spent time on my rebounder. I walked until the sweat stung my eyes. I started doing morning pages again. I wrote and published two books instead of one. I even sold some… Going through all that gave me back the one thing I was missing — my own approval. I still listen to them now several years later. Give them a try and see what you think. Never give up without a fight! Struggling with feelings is natural for creatives. Every one of us go through it once or a hundred times. Following your heart is difficult every time. If you’re brave enough it’s worth the effort. Feel like you’re at a crossroads on your own journey? I wish I had all the answers for you but I’m only one person. All I can do make suggestions. Like Morpheus said — “I can only show you the door; you’re the one who has to walk through.” What do I suggest? Before you decide you’re done with your dream, give it one last honest try. Finish that book (novel, poem, screenplay, article) this year. Spend time crafting several short stories, participate in NANOWRIMO next November. Make friends with another writer. DO something. Write something that matters to you. Work hard to keep your internal editor and self-limiting detractors at bay. Keep in mind YouTube can be your friend… Write to please yourself. If you can do that and have fun with it, you may puncture your own doubt. Should you choose to quit that’s fine. Put it down, walk away and turn your energy to something that matters to you. You must be clear though. Have you actually tried or did you just give up? Don’t sell yourself short, that way lies madness. Also, never give up on being creative out of fear of how someone else might view you. And for God’s sake don’t give up on writing because you feel that it’s a waste of time. Even if you only ever write for yourself, that’s worth the effort right there. Good Luck! Peace You just read another exciting post from the Book Mechanic: the writer’s source for creating books that work and selling those books once they’re written. If you’d like to read more stories just like this one tap here to visit

https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/never-give-up-without-a-fight-aa8e7a530dce

['Ronn Hanley']

2020-04-17 17:30:00.773000+00:00

['Keep Going', 'Perserverance', 'Trust', 'Writing Advice', 'Writing']

5 Valuable Lessons I Learned About Development After Multiple App Failures

Lesson 1: Perfection Is the Dream-Killer Ah, perfection. The quintessential idea of what we aim to achieve and in turn romanticize in our minds. It’s that overwhelming desire to achieve the exact outcome that we envision in our minds. We have high hopes that it’ll seize the attention of all those who interact with the final creation. Nothing has impeded my ability to make forward progress in development more than striving for perfection. It made me feel like whatever it was I was building out wasn’t good enough. I wouldn’t celebrate little wins. I wouldn’t focus on atomically approaching tasks. I wouldn’t focus on simplicity. I wouldn’t focus on refactoring. I wouldn’t know where to even start because my mind was way too focused on the big picture rather than the problem I was trying to solve right in front of me. This isn’t to say that being a big-picture thinker isn’t important at all. The idea you lay out for yourself is the driving motivation behind an entire project after all. But that doesn’t mean you should delay deployment solely because you aren’t where you want to be quite yet. Perfection takes time. Perfection is not something you can simply strive for. Rather, perfection is the result of the tiny achievements and improvements you make throughout the entire lifetime of the product you’re developing. Perfection is seen in the eyes of the user — not the eyes of the creator. That’s why rather than aiming to be perfect, you should deploy the imperfect and be willing to alter your course as a response to the results you sequentially see from tiny wins. If you can’t adapt, be fluid, and be dynamic in the way you move forward through development, you’re only setting the stage for failure to take the spotlight. Be willing to be criticized. Be open to the notion that you won’t achieve that perfect idea in your head. Be aware that the imperfect may just be the precursor to perfection that you’ve been looking for. What’s important is that you’ve developed something more functional and valuable than you did the day before. Focus on the small wins, and as time goes on, every tiny thing you achieve will evolve together into a fluid and functional application that people will want to use because you focused more on building out the little things very well rather than everything all at once. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Develop, refine, simplify, deploy, fail, reiterate, and you’ll eventually build an even better Rome than you imagined.

https://medium.com/better-programming/5-valuable-lessons-i-learned-about-development-after-multiple-app-failures-34fe07623978

['Zachary Minott']

2020-12-11 16:56:26.315000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Software Engineering', 'Startup', 'Life Lessons', 'Programming']

Bird Brains May Be Smarter Than We Thought

3. Comparing Corvids and Ape Despite a long history of intelligence testing in apes, as well as in various corvids, there is no direct comparison between these two animals using a single comprehensive panel of tests. The PCTB in fact has been used to compare a wide range of non-primate animals like monkeys, parrots, and dogs, which makes a lack of direct comparisons surprising. The authors of a paper just published in the journal Nature: Scientific Reports aimed to fill this gap. Simone Pika is the lead author of a paper titled “Raven's parallel great apes in physical and social cognitive skills”, reporting on their work to adapt the PCTB to hand-raised ravens. The main goal was to stick to the methodology of the PCTB closely, to enable direct species comparison, yet to adapt the test methods for ravens who use their beaks instead of thumbs. Pika called this the Corvid Cognition Test Battery (or CCTB). The authors bundled the many individual tests into larger groups which tested the animal’s understanding of: causality, quantity, space, communication, and theory of mind. The subjects were eight hand-raised ravens, tested after they were fully hatched at four months, eight months, twelve months, and 16 months of age. Comparisons to non-human primates (chimpanzees and orangutans) used previously published primate studies. The primary findings within the birds studied was that cognitive skills remained the same throughout the study period, and were approximately the same across types of cognition. In other words, raven’s impressive cognitive skills are already fully developed across a wide range of skills when they are only four months old. Cognitive performance of ravens at each age from 4–16 months (image by Pika et al., 2020) The ravens performed very similarly in both physical and social cognition, with their highest scores in quantitative skills, and lowest in spatial skills. The authors had a hypothesis going into this study that the ravens would perform higher in social than in physical cognition, given their complex societies and long-term monogamy. The author’s hypothesis that ravens develop cognition very quickly was supported by their data showing that their performance didn’t vary over time and was already at a high level at four months of age. The final hypothesis was that ravens would match apes in social intelligence because of their known complex social interactions, and that they would perform worse than apes in physical cognition. Their last hypothesis was not fully supported by their data. Ravens performed similarly to chimpanzees and orangutans in both physical and social intelligence. Only the raven’s spatial skills suffered in the comparison, all other skills matching the great apes.

https://medium.com/the-apeiron-blog/bird-brains-may-be-smarter-than-we-thought-7497f34f3d34

[]

2020-12-19 15:03:20.861000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'Animals', 'Intelligence', 'Psychology', 'Science']

6 Greatest [Marketing] Insights from the School of Startups

6 Greatest [Marketing] Insights from the School of Startups I was lucky enough to be both a volunteer and a participant at the School of Startups, organised by The Shortcut. The School of Startups is series of creative business workshops, bringing the insights on different sides of business, from tech to design. This year specialists from different fields and startups came along together to help and encourage future startup stars. Being at the same time a volunteer, I had a chance to be a mediator between speakers and the audience and get insights from both sides. Excited by marketing, I am happy to share my greatest findings from 6 marketing-related workshops I participated in. Content is about how you get on that first Google page — by Peter Seenan from Leadfeeder Although blogging seems to be everywhere, marketers come up with new ways to catch attention. Search engine optimisation, or keyword search together with proper linking will skyrocket your content up to the first Google pages. Ever thought of using Quora? Quora turns out to be of great marketing use in terms of generating leads. When used properly, Quora enriches your personal brand together with bringing high-quality traffic to your website. Leadfeeder itself is a very powerful b2b marketing tool, that gives you a prospects on which company visited your website. Business development is everywhere around you — by Dean Pattrick There is Oreo and there is Burger King, both very successful and well-known brands. How can you boost sales then? The answer is simple, but genius, all you have to do is to get them together. Examples are endless: Marabou + Domino, Oboy + Daim, Fazer + Angry Birds etc.. Famously stated by Seth Godin, business development is “for entrepreneur or small business to have fun, create value and make money”. Magic of Facebook Ads — by Kalle Tiihonen from Smartly Hard to deny that internet advertising revenues continue to grow, last year Facebook & Google Ads reached unbelievable 99% in the US market. Although, for anyone, who has ever worked with Facebook Ads before this seems to be obvious, my first impression was that Facebook used pure magic to know everything about everyone and the professional use of it is even magic of higher level. Want to target travellers interested in web-development, who recently visited Helsinki? Want to find one more million users, with the same interests as your 100 existing customers? There is no limit for you. Why branding is not only for corporations — by Robin Lemonnier SME and starting entrepreneurs often mistake branding for logo and visual designs. Taking branding not serious enough might damage your business from the very beginning. In a nutshell, branding is the promise you make to your customers and technically covers your relationships with customers from the start till the very end. Lean Branding goes together with storytelling — by Pouria Kay from Grib “Lean” becoming a very trendy business concept still is getting power. Lean branding is about innovation and being flexible in the world of constant changes. Lean branding, explained by Pouria, a good friend of The Shortcut, in 4 steps starts with identifying the problem, offering value delivered through design and storytelling. The message of storytelling can not be underestimated either, same as lean branding itself. Experiment with Google Analytics! — by Tatu Mäkijärvi from Nosto Google Analytics tells you everything about the audience of your website: audience acquisition, behaviour, conversion and demographics. Google Analytics, let’s say, uses the same magic as Facebook Ads. Except that in this case, luckily for us, Google assists in learning the basics of Google Analytics via Demo Account, allowing you to try and experiment with all the main features. The Shortcut is a community-driven organisation empowering diversity as an engine for growth through gatherings, workshops, trainings and programmes that help people explore ideas, share knowledge and develop skills to enable new talents required in the startup life. Follow The Shortcut not to miss next School of Startups and many more entrepreneurial events.

https://medium.com/the-shortcut/6-greatest-marketing-insights-from-the-school-of-startups-472f782b7e63

['Anna Pogrebniak']

2018-09-18 12:29:50.825000+00:00

['Finland', 'Startup', 'Marketing', 'Hacks', 'Digital Marketing']

A Creature Without Emotions 2.0: A Thought Experiment

Imagine a creature or some kind of unusual animal without any emotional life. Could such a being survive in the everyday world? The Harvard philosopher, Nelson Goodman, once remarked that we probably rely more on feelings in our everyday lives than arid and cold cognition. Indeed, much of everyday thought is bound up with our fluctuating emotional lives. For instance, as some clinicians are fond to point out, strong emotional arousal has a tendency to significantly narrow our range of attention. Attention itself is a conscious process in which we selectively focus our mind-brain-body on one thing while we ignore other things, divide our attention among several things or sustain our attention on a single thing over an extended duration of time. What we focus our minds on and what we think about are highly determined by our level of emotional arousal as well as the range and kinds of emotional states we have experienced in the past. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, suggests that bodily signals — visceral sensation emanating from our abdominal area as well as bodily sensations arising from other parts of the body — modify the way the brain handles information and this is accomplished primarily through use of our prefrontal cortices in the thinking part of our brains. Because they lack these bodily signals or “somatic markers,” patients with damage to the frontal lobes are unable to even anticipate the future. That is, they are unable to predict future events, such as make simple, ordinary choices in everyday life, because they possess no biasing somatic state to rely on in decision-making. Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash Imagine yourself standing in a buffet line and having to decide between a piece of chocolate cake and a piece of apple pie. How does one typically make this type of decision? Certainly, there is no logical choice between the two if they are essentially the same price or calories. That is, there is no logical calculus that one can apply to arrive at deciding whether one option or another is preferable. That’s because we typically make choices based on our preferences, and our preferences are closely aligned with our pleasurable or non-pleasurable experiences in past encounters. We choose the chocolate cake because of the extraordinary memories we experienced of its exuberant sweetness, notes of cheery and almond, and the dark, rich flavors underneath — or something similar. The sensual joy of a gourmand is what prepared us for this experience not a series of logical steps in deductive thought. It would appear, then, that a creature without emotions would thus be helpless in the most mundane of everyday tasks. Captain Spock of Star Trek fame is a convenient dramatic fiction not a character that has any rational basis in science or real life. Just like children that fail to survive because of a lack of ability to perceive and respond to pain (commonly referred to as “congenital analgesia” denoting a class of sensory neuropathies), our fictional Spock, bereft of the ability to perceive and respond to emotions in himself and others, would be unable to make even the simplest of everyday decisions — often to avoid harm — or form enduring relationships with caregivers and others that are essential for survival. Q.E.D.: “Spock” is a dramatic fiction. Which again brings me to the main point of this short intellectual dalliance. Never take seriously anything you watch in a Hollywood sci-fi flic or TV show.

https://medium.com/peter-lang/a-creature-without-emotions-2-0-a-thought-experiment-35ef5731e8e4

['Peter Lang']

2019-02-27 13:06:00.795000+00:00

['New York', 'Science', 'Emotions']

Continuously extending Zarr datasets

The Pangeo Project has been exploring the analysis of climate data in the cloud. Our preferred format for storing data in the cloud is Zarr, due to its favorable interaction with object storage. Our first Zarr cloud datasets were static, but many real operational datasets need to be continuously updated, for example, extended in time. In this post, we will show how we can play with Zarr to append to an existing archive as new data becomes available. The problem with live data Earth observation data which originates from e.g. satellite-based remote sensing is produced continuously, usually with a latency that depends on the amount of processing that is required to generate something useful for the end user. When storing this kind of data, we obviously don’t want to create a new archive from scratch each time new data is produced, but instead append the new data to the same archive. If this is big data, we might not even want to stage the whole dataset on our local hard drive before uploading it to the cloud, but rather directly stream it there. The nice thing about Zarr is that the simplicity of its store file structure allows us to hack around and address this kind of issue. Recent improvements to Xarray will also ease this process. Download the data Let’s take TRMM 3B42RT as an example dataset (near real time, satellite-based precipitation estimates from NASA). It is a precipitation array ranging from latitudes 60°N-S with resolution 0.25°, 3-hour, from March 2000 to present. It’s a good example of a rather obscure binary format, hidden behind a raw FTP server. Files are organized on the server in a particular way that is specific to this dataset, so we must have some prior knowledge of the directory structure in order to fetch them. The following function uses the aria2 utility to download files in parallel. Create an Xarray Dataset In order to create an Xarray Dataset from the downloaded files, we must know how to decode the content of the files (the binary layout of the data, its shape, type, etc.). The following function does just that: Now we can have a nice representation of (a part of) our dataset: And plot e.g. the accumulated precipitation: Store the Dataset to local Zarr This is where things start to get a bit tricky. Because the Zarr archive will be uploaded to the cloud, it must already be chunked reasonably. There is a ~100 ms overhead associated with every read from cloud storage. To amortize this overhead, chunks must be bigger than 10 MiB. If we want to have several chunks fit comfortably in memory so that they can be processed in parallel, they must not be too big either. With today’s machines, 100 MiB chunks are advised. This means that for our dataset, we can concatenate 100 / (480 * 1440 * 4 / 1024 / 1024) ~ 40 dates into one chunk. The Zarr will be created with that chunk size. Also, Xarray will choose some encodings for each variable when creating the Zarr archive. The most special one is for the time variable, which will look something like that (content of the .zattrs file): It means that the time coordinate will actually be encoded as an integer representing the number of “hours since 2000–03–01 12:00:00”. When we create new Zarr archives for new datasets, we must keep the original encodings. The create_zarr function takes care of all that: Upload the Zarr to the cloud The first time the Zarr is created, it contains the very beginning of our dataset, so it must be uploaded as is to the cloud. But as we download more data, we only want to upload the new data. That’s where the clear and simple implementation of data and metadata as separate files in Zarr comes handy: as long as the data is not accessed, we can delete the data files without corrupting the archive. We can then append to the “empty” Zarr (but still valid and appearing to contain the previous dataset), and upload only the necessary files to the cloud. One thing to keep in mind is that some coordinates (here lat and lon) won’t be affected by the append operation. Only the time coordinate and the DataArray which depends on the time dimension (here precipitation) need to be extended. Also, we can see that there will be a problem with the time coordinate: its chunks will have a size of 40. That was the intention for the precipitation variable, but because the time variable is a 1-D array, it will be much too small. So we empty the time variable of its data for now, and it will be uploaded later with the right chunks. Repeat Now that we have all the pieces, it is just a matter of putting them together in a loop. We take care of the time coordinate by uploading in one chunk at the end. The following code allows to resume an upload, so that you can wait for new data to appear on the FTP server and launch the script again: Conclusion This post showed how to stream data directly from a provider to a cloud storage bucket. It actually serves two purposes: for data that is produced continuously, we hacked around the Zarr data store format to efficiently append to an existing dataset. for data that is bigger than your hard drive, we only stage a part of the dataset locally and have the cloud store the totality. An in-progress pull request will give Xarray the ability to directly append to Zarr stores. Once that feature is ready, this process may become simpler.

https://medium.com/pangeo/continuously-extending-zarr-datasets-c54fbad3967d

['David Brochart']

2019-04-18 14:47:00.954000+00:00

['Open Source', 'Python', 'Pangeo', 'Data Science', 'Science']

How to Practice Misogi (Cold Meditation) in Your Shower

For millennia, shamanistic and nature-based religions have made heavy use of the elements in their spiritual practices. And the fact is, whether we’re aware of it or not, many of us have also long engaged in such elemental practices — often ritualistically and religiously. Think bathing in the sun for hours on end. Doing breathing exercises. Going to the sauna. Subjecting the body to intense pressure, strain, and workouts. Or hiking in winter. Traditionally, such practices as cold and heat exposure were believed to cleanse ourselves of impurities and act as a restorative balancer between mind, body, and spirit. And in the modern-day, we’re starting to see these claims being backed up by science (apart from the spirit bit). But here’s the thing. There’s a major difference between how such practices are typically approached today and traditionally. We often don’t see such activities as meditative practices and ways to connect to ourselves and nature, but rather as tools to improve our health and wellbeing by reducing stress or getting a tan or breaking a sweat. One such elemental practice that’s joining this health-boosting craze is cold exposure. Cold exposure has a tonne of benefits, from enhancing immune function to aiding weight loss. But before science got its hands on it, for thousands of years cold exposure has been used to bring us closer to and into greater harmony with ourselves and nature. One such tradition that has a long history with the cold is Shinto. Japan's oldest and still most practiced nature-based religion, Shinto is known for its practices called misogi or “cold water purification”. Misogi sounds more sophisticated than it is: squatting under a freezing waterfall, standing in the sea in winter, or dousing yourself with ice water. But like other Shinto practices, misogi has a special purpose. It’s practiced to help bring us into direct, unmediated communion with nature and to cultivate greater harmony within ourselves and with the natural world. This approach to healing through engaging in practices that bring back balance to mind and body, as opposed to problem and treatment-based methods, has much in common with the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. The Mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young found this out directly, when, during his 100-day initiation into the secret practices of Vajrayana (a kind of practical version of Buddhism), he had to throw a bucket of ice water over himself three times a day, in the middle of winter. Rather than focusing on analyzing, fixing, and cultivating things in order to find solutions, like in many Western methods, such practices are instead focused on restoring imbalances that may be causing us to forget or not see the reality of wholeness and connectedness that is present in the first place. With the modern world often leaving us feeling out of balance and out of touch with nature, cold exposure can work wonders. Let’s get into how to (and why you should want to) make this ancient practice a regular part of your routine by taking advantage of your own private waterfall a.k.a. your shower. 1. Eat the freezing frog We all know we could take a cold shower if we really need to, say when the hot water isn’t working or after a really hard workout. But knowing this and actually proving it through doing it regularly are two massively different things. Typically, we have the choice not to take a cold shower. So it almost seems stupid and even masochistic to purposely subject ourselves to one when we have the choice not to. And it is. If we only consider exposure to water as being about cleaning our smelly bits. Eat the frog is a principle from the productivity world that has come to mean taking on the most difficult or challenging part of your day first. It comes from something Mark Twain once said: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” The idea is that if you eat the frog, the frog won’t eat you. Meaning you won’t spend most of the day procrastinating and avoiding what you really need to do. You’ll gain momentum and a sense of achievement from the get-go. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see eating the frog as being about facing the most horrific task possible first. It’s not about getting through your taxes as soon as you can so the day can‘t get any worse from then on. It’s more about the mental space you get yourself into by consciously choosing to do something difficult and eat the frog. In doing so, you take advantage of the night of sleep and don’t spend your day being eaten up by “Resistance” (more on that soon). Right from the start, you banish or “cleanse yourself of” doubt and you know it in your bones that you can face anything the day throws at you. Tip: I find writing harder than taking a freezing cold shower. So every day I write, workout, and take a cold shower in that order. With the demon of not being able to write off my shoulders, there’s much less reason why I can’t handle a measly bit of cold water. More so, I’m much less likely to be in my head and therefore gritting my teeth and enduring the pain, and instead breathing into it and feeling the water. 2. Willpower vs limitless power Cold showers are often talked about as a way to build mental strength. In this way, you might think that cold exposure is all about willpower. It’s about putting on your motivational playlist and beating your chest and gritting your teeth until the timer is up. Some people even recommend clenching your jaw or tensing all your muscles to help you get through cold showers. As if you didn’t make the choice to be there. The way of willpower can be highly effective for enduring difficult feats. But it does little for improving your relationship with difficulty or helping you to welcome it. Defined as the “capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse”, willpower is a limited reserve. All of us have access to it, but it’s typically constrained by conditions like emotion, energy, stimulants, and other external inputs like music that’s present in any given moment. Real power is not relying on any external conditions to deal with the unwanted and control your experience, but rather, meeting the experience, no matter how difficult, and being able to embrace it fully with calm and equanimity. You see this difference in high level mixed martial arts fighters. Some have to get really angry and revved up to fight, and then puff out after a few minutes. While others are composed and relaxed from the start and barely change their expression or level of performance throughout the fight. Now, I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag, but it’s clear for anyone to see that these two types of fighters are relating differently to their experience. One is trying to get through what they’re facing, the other is choosing to meet it head-on. This is the fundamental difference between enduring a cold shower using willpower, and welcoming it as a meditative practice with mindfulness. In the second approach, it doesn’t mean everything will be all pleasant and fuzzy. The difference is you’re welcoming the feelings, thoughts, and sensations that are present, instead of trying to ignore them, push them away, fight them, or otherwise try to change them. You’re letting them in and allowing them to be there. Tip: Not using willpower doesn’t mean you can’t use other means to help you be more present with the cold. The idea isn’t about dominating the cold and going hard or going home. It’s about being with and responding to the cold. So grunting/chanting, deep breathing, jumping around, and warming yourself up with exercise beforehand are not cheating if they help you actually be with the cold rather than simply endure it for longer periods. 3. Make a friend of Resistance No matter how much calm and equanimity you have, there are just some days when you really don’t want to take a cold shower. After more than two years of more or less daily cold showers, I still often have these days. But by recognizing I’m not trying to dominate my experience with willpower but instead become more in touch with it, I can recognize such thoughts and feelings as what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance”. Resistance is a universal, impersonal force that appears in the face of any worthy or challenging endeavor. The problem is, it often feels incredibly personal to the point it hijacks the driving seat and feels like it’s us. According to Pressfield, Resistance will use any means necessary to stop us in our tracks and make us feel incapable. Including using internalized negative tapes from our childhood or the past against us. We thus identify Resistance as being our thoughts and our limitations and shortcomings, and then feel trapped and unable to take action. This is how deceptive Resistance can be. But Pressfield says we don’t need to suppress this voice or push through. We don’t need to fight with it at all, because it’s not your thoughts. It’s not you. It’s Resistance. There will always be Resistance in life. Especially if you want to do anything meaningful or worth doing. You can make an enemy or close and faithful friend of Resistance. You can come to recognize it and get familiar with it by meeting it by doing things you don’t want to do like, for instance, taking a freezing cold misogi shower. Make a friend of Resistance, instead of fighting it, and you will become unstoppable. Tip: Resistance won’t be a friend if you don’t respect it. Start slowly and gradually by splashing cold water on yourself before stepping in, practicing with milder temperatures first, and not expecting too much of yourself. I also make sure the room is warm and begin with hot water. Gradually these conditions matter less and less, but when starting out, Resistance often takes hold as we’re holding ourselves to too high or unrealistic expectations. 4. One lifetime, one moment What do you want from your life? I need to ask myself this question on a daily basis. Otherwise, I can easily while away the hours doing meaningless tasks and before I know it, the day is over. When you ask the question of what do you want from your life regularly, you close the gap between what you want and what you actually do. It’s easy to have a nice idea of how you want to live your life. But like the difference between knowing you can take a cold shower and actually doing it regularly, we may still continue to ignore the everyday moments that actually make up our lives. If you ask it regularly and sincerely, the answer to what you want from life shouldn’t look any different from how your life is today or how you are in this very moment. This is the principle of “one lifetime, one moment”, or “ichi-go ichi-i”, a Japanese saying from Zen Buddhism. Ichi-go ichi-i is about fully appreciating this moment. And in doing so, as life is just a series of moments, making sure we actually live—not imagine we are living—life to its fullest. Without ichi-go ichi-i, we may be more likely to succumb to Resistance and get lost in its endless doubts and excuses. We might be more likely to not eat the frog and opt for comfort over discomfort. We might be more likely to keep putting our plans for life on hold until a better day. This is especially true when so much of modern life is oriented around achieving and maintaining comfort, pleasure, and stability. If we truly succeed in getting rid of the uncomfortable and unwanted and are just left with the pleasant and pleasurable, then we may never want to step outside this fabricated world. We may continue to relate to difficulty by pushing it away or gritting our teeth through it, and we thus may never feel fully able to appreciate or take advantage of the life we have in this moment. Resistance is a sign of something worth doing. And most often, if not always, it’s also a sign of discomfort. This doesn’t mean we have to suffer to find any meaning in life. It just means that pleasure and comfort aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. And that we can learn a different way of relating to difficulty that includes it as a valid, expected, and even welcomed part of life. This is the beauty of cold showers. Taking a cold shower isn’t just something you do for mental toughness or the health benefits or the pride of knowing you can do it. It’s a millennia if not eons-old practice that helps us to wake up to and inhabit each moment of our lives. Because ichi-go ichi-i — each moment is unique unto itself, never to be replicated ever again. And as long as we are fully here to live this moment, and the next one, and the next, then the rest of life will take care of itself. Tip: All of life is precious. But it often doesn’t feel this way when we’re stuck in the rhythm of enduring or avoiding the bad and craving the good. Disrupt this habit by regularly including conscious discomfort in your life. If there was ever one tip I could give you (and myself) it would be don’t think about it too much. Your life might be over before you decide. Just do it. And get used to just doing it.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/how-to-practice-misogi-cold-meditation-in-your-shower-a738c0dac936

['Joe Hunt']

2020-12-29 16:45:12.700000+00:00

['Self-awareness', 'Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Mindfulness']

3時間で本格的なJupyterHub環境を構築！！そう、Kubernetesならね

JupyterHubのトップページに以下のような2つのユースケースが紹介されています。 1. If you need a simple case for a small amount of users (0–100) and single server take a look at The Littlest JupyterHub distribution. 2. If you need to allow for even more users, a dynamic amount of servers can be used on a cloud, take a look at the Zero to JupyterHub with Kubernetes .

https://medium.com/voicy-engineering/3%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E3%81%A7%E6%9C%AC%E6%A0%BC%E7%9A%84%E3%81%AAjupyterhub%E7%92%B0%E5%A2%83%E3%82%92%E6%A7%8B%E7%AF%89-%E3%81%9D%E3%81%86-kubernetes%E3%81%AA%E3%82%89%E3%81%AD-31d29436509

['Yoshimasa Hamada']

2019-07-09 00:24:07.407000+00:00

['Jupyter Notebook', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Data Science', 'Kubernetes']

9 Powerful MS Excel Features That You May Not Be Aware Of

1 — Power Query (Advanced) Are you spending a lot of time extracting and formatting the same data in Excel? There is a big chance you could automate all of this using Power Query. Power Query is an Excel ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tool. You can pull data from multiple sources (CSV, TXT, SQL, Hadoop, SalesForce, Web) and compile it into one table which can be refreshed in one click. For example, let’s say you have 1000's of files with the same format that you want to compile into one file.With one simple query you can get all the data in a report with just a few clicks! 2 — Power Pivot (Advanced) Power Pivot is one of the most powerful features in Excel and hands down one of the best enhancements in the past few years. Power Pivot works in tandem with Power Query: you use Power Query to acquire / format and load the data, then you use Power Pivot to do your analysis. You can link entire sets of data together, then create a data model that can handle millions of data records! You can then connect other tools like Power View/Power Map/Pivot Chart to visualize your insights. Relationships in Power Pivot 3 — Conditional Formatting (Intermediate) Most Excel users know how to use the built in conditional formatting options, you can achieve a lot more by writing your own conditions. You can see on the screenshot below how you can highlight cells in green that have a higher return than the average of the whole list of stocks. Conditional Formatting Example 4 — Forecast Tool Are you manually doing your own forecasting? You can now do it straight in Excel using the forecasting tool. You can find the option on the Data tab. These are forecasted sales figures for Tencent for example: Sample Forecast Chart 5 — INDEX/MATCH (Advanced) If you want to do a lookup in Excel you would usually use a VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. However, many people are not familiar with INDEX/MATCH; once you understand the logic around it you will quickly understand that INDEX/MATCH is more powerful and will let you do lookups both horizontally and vertically. Example below shows how the function used to get the 1 Week return of a specific stock: Index / Match Function Example 6 — Keyboard Shortcuts (Basic) Ultimately you should aim to use your keyboard as much as possible to be more efficient using Excel. There are multiple cheat sheets online for Excel shortcuts. Below are some shortcuts that you might find quite useful: Ctrl + 1 — when you select a chart to bring the formatting panel. — when you select a chart to bring the formatting panel. Ctrl + E — Flash fill — Flash fill Create a quick bar chart -> select your values, then press F11, it will automatically insert a bar chart in a new sheet. Ctrl + Arrows — you can navigate one your table using Ctrl and the arrows. — you can navigate one your table using Ctrl and the arrows. Highlight entire row/column then Ctrl Shift plus sign (“+”) , this will insert a row or column. To delete you can press Ctrl and minus sign (“ — ”) . , this will insert a row or column. To delete you can press . Ctrl + ; — to add today’s date, Ctrl Shift + ; — to add current time. 7 — Flash Fill (Intermediate) If you are doing a task that follows the same pattern, you can select the entire range of cells and press Ctrl + E. Excel will then apply it to the entire range. As per below, I’m removing the dot in the stock Ticker and replacing it with a space: Flash Fill 8 — Sparklines (Intermediate) This is another option in Excel that lets you visualize data within a cell. You can just select your data, click on insert -> Win/Loss. Which will give you a quick visualization of stock returns, for example. Sparkline Charts 9 — Azure Machine Learning add-in (Advanced) You can now use different machine learning techniques using the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning add-in. You can either use an existing model or create your own on the Azure Studio website. It’s very easy to set up and let you access very powerful tools. For example, using the Sentiment Analysis tool, I pulled a list of stocks headlines and use the tool to see which headlines are negative / neutral / positive. All it takes is a few clicks to get this setup. This is a simple example, it could be used to analyze information on Twitter.

https://medium.com/lets-excel/9-powerful-ms-excel-features-that-you-may-not-be-aware-of-eb077c898be6

['Don Tomoff']

2018-01-26 21:52:48.522000+00:00

['Excel', 'Business Intelligence', 'Automation', 'Financial Modeling', 'Productivity']

Enhance Your Learning by Calculating The Learning Compression Score

Enhance Your Learning by Calculating The Learning Compression Score A (futuristic) method of assessing a source’s learning efficiency Learning compression score = Quality / Size reduction Calculating Learning Compression Score This method, which I will call “Learning compression score”, is a (futuristic) method that I can imagine will accelerate learning. Essentially, this “score” says how efficiently you learn things from a particular source in terms of time e.g. two similar articles may talk about the same idea, but one of them explains it in half the time required to read it. So how can we “calculate” the compression score of a source? Let’s say you are aware of a book containing 70,000 words but, instead, there’s an article summarizing the book in only 1,000 words. In other words, the source has been compressed by ~99%. This, however, is just a component for calculating the learning compression score. In order to calculate the compression score, we have to “calculate” how much (subjective) “quality” we have retained from the original source. Often, the quality goes down when summarizing sources, but in rare cases, it might even go up. Let’s say we have retained 80% of the “quality”. Now, in order to calculate the compression score, we have to divide 0.8 with 0.01 = 80. This number essentially means that every second you spend on reading the summary, you learn things 80x faster than when reading the original source. Futuristic Method To Enhance Learning? I think we can become more and more precise and efficient in calculating things like how much calories, proteins, and vitamins certain food contains. In fact, we might even be able to do such things in the future via brain augmentation by simply staring at food. Perhaps it might even be possible to calculate more precisely how valuable and efficient a certain source would be to read for us. I mean, we already are doing that (subconsciously) based on our feelings of curiosity, joy, and so on. What do you think of this concept?

https://medium.com/superintelligence/enhance-your-learning-by-calculating-the-learning-compression-score-bec27c18638c

['John Von Neumann Ii']

2020-02-12 09:22:10.443000+00:00

['Books', 'Self Improvement', 'Reading', 'Education', 'Productivity']

What is Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence??

“A baby learns to crawl, walk and then run. We are in the crawling stage when it comes to applying machine learning.” ~Dave Waters Let’s answer the fairly obvious question. Machine Learning is a broad set of software capabilities that make your software smarter. The ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Let’s take an example of translation service. Lets just say you want to translate from one language to another language. So if you want to do this as a coding exercise. What would you do?? First, you would take that language, then, you will write certain rules for that language and you’re going to implement the translator to translate from this language to the next language. Now see if I ask you to do it for other language you’d have to start over. You’ll have to start from scratch again and write the rules for the programming language. But that is not the case with machine learning. With Machine Learning, all you have to do is to actually train your machine learning model for translation from one model to the next. Once your code is ready your model is ready. And if you want to implement a new language translation all you have to do is to feed a data-set of that language and the machine learning model will take care of the rest. So, you’ll be able to create a translation without even changing a single line of code. Machine Learning produce predictions Machine Learning is a paradigm in which we think about problem solving. Also in machine learning we think more like a scientist, we observe, we run experiments and analyze experiment to form conclusions like we did in chemistry labs at school. A breakthrough in Machine Learning would be worth 10 Microsofts ~Bill Gates Now this is somewhat different than usual programming (problem solving) but once you understand it, it becomes very easy to implement machine learning algorithms. Artificial Intelligence creates Actions Now, Let’s discuss about AI yeah Artificial Intelligence, it is just about making machines mimic human behavior i.e. making computers as smart as humans like walking, talking, listening, reading, understanding and even learning new things. Over the past few years computers have automated tasks. For example identifying a cat in an image. Now AI is not a new term. Researchers have been trying to teach machines and give them human intelligence since 1960s that is 60 plus years since then researchers have tried many different techniques to program computers to mimic human intelligence. The classical AI approach of using logical rules to model intelligence and understanding the world meant that giving precise rules and data structures created by researchers to implement those models. But those methods never lasted longer. They were wrong again and again. But in today’s world, these modern techniques are slightly more advanced. And they do represent similarity in which we learn. Like, instead of explicitly telling a computer what we do is we make sure, we feed a bunch of data and machine learns from it, whether this is Cat or the dog you have to of course explicitly state that this image is of cat and this is of a dog. But after giving lots of data of cats and dogs like What is cat or what is not a cat or what is not a dog. A machine can fairly and easily identify with a reasonable accuracy which is a cat or dog. Cats vs Dogs So talking about few terms we generally confuse them like ML vs AI vs Deep Learning. Artificial Intelligence is a super-set of machine learning and deep learning. Now AI is defined basically as a broad set of machine learning techniques and other things as well like symbolic reasoning and behavior based techniques etc. Now Machine Learning is a subset of artificial intelligence, and Deep Learning is even a subset of machine learning techniques and There are a lot of machine learning techniques, so Deep Learning is one of them you can say. In other terms, we can see the difference between Strong/ Weak/ Shallow/Deep Machine Learning algorithms. Generally we listen and hear about strong or weak or shallow or deep machine learning algorithms. Now weak and shallow ML algorithms are those which are specific to machine learning problem like identifying an image, Computer vision basically or natural language processing and strong or deep machine learning techniques are techniques which are generic machine learning algorithms where you can use the same algorithm for accomplishing multiple task. To be Continued…… If you liked and found informative, Don’t forget to give a Clap, Thanks

https://medium.com/codingurukul/what-is-machine-learning-and-artificial-intelligence-34861ab35f58

['Mohit Sharma']

2019-06-13 15:06:28.222000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning']

This One Simple Exercise Tells You What You Really Believe about Money

The turn around. Once you identify your deep-seated relationship with money, what your negative programming looks like, you can do a positive affirmation on it. Even though I did not know this consciously — I was unaware I held this negative belief — my machine was running on the sub-conscious thought that, “There’s probably something wrong with anyone who has a lot of money.” To reverse this negative belief, I can say to myself a few times a day, “There is nothing wrong with someone just because they have a ton of money.” A turn around. Now aware, I can do something to change it. I can change it by recognizing it as a false belief and manifest a different reality. I can tell myself, ‘Oprah has a ton of money, I don’t think there is anything bad about Oprah.’ I don’t know Oprah personally, but I’m fairly sure Oprah is a good person. She does a lot of good with her wealth. I know this. The same goes for Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott. She received billions in her divorce settlement, making her one of the world’s wealthiest women. Recently, she gave much of her wealth away to causes I believe in to aid marginalized people in our society who have been systematically beaten down and economically and politically thwarted through systematic racism and sexism. The previous belief my mind was running on isn’t true, there is nothing wrong with someone just because they have a ton of money. Just because someone has gobs of money, doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. Tell the reverse to yourself daily, put it up on the wall, read it. Persistence in changing any negative belief takes care of the negative belief. Your mind has to be disciplined, but it’s possible to change it. The more you give authority and own what is healthy about you (for me answers to the statements 1–9, excluding #4), the more your trauma side is reduced. Even though I was programmed to believe anyone with a lot of money must have something wrong with them, I’m reversing that negative belief. It is just a false belief I picked up somewhere (no big deal), and I’m going to manifest from my true self all the comfort and money I desire, letting go of this one negative belief will help me do so. When we know better, we do better. Know thyself. Knowledge is power. Keep working at it to reprogram the machine. It isn’t hard. It takes persistence, not a struggle. The more you own and give authority to what is healthy about yourself, the healthy choices you make, the more your trauma side is reduced. There is nothing you can do that is better for you than to give authority to your healthy self and stay out of your traumatized self. On the financial side, that means to be in alignment with your financial success. Identify those things where if you held that belief (like number 4 for me), it clearly could not serve you. It isn’t serving me, it hasn’t served me, and if I continue to believe it, it won’t serve me. It won’t serve you to carry the belief that people are better than or worse than you because they have money. Get rid of that belief. It doesn’t serve you to have the belief that money is scarce and is a struggle to obtain. “The universe is abundant” is a more productive belief to carry because it’s true. The universe is abundant. The pendulum exercise helps you identify your best way to manifest the money that aligns with your true self. To feel comfortable and safe and to be doing what you want to do in life. There is no separation between having the life you want, having the money you want, and being who you truly are. You can have it all.

https://medium.com/the-happy-spot/this-one-simple-exercise-tells-you-what-you-really-believe-about-money-574794deda02

['Jessica Lynn']

2020-08-27 11:46:01.610000+00:00

['Self-awareness', 'Life Lessons', 'Money', 'Psychology', 'Success']

Grace: Self-Discovery Oracle Card

Grace is when you wake up in your deepest darkness and realize someone put flowers around you while you were sleeping. Grace is both what prompts and carries you through your evolution. Grace is your guide on the spiral path deeper into yourself. This spiral path leads you so deep into yourself that you find oneness with all that is. Grace shows you what it means to belong to the infinite as well as to yourself. Grace is what helps you hold the mighty paradox of, “Things are not okay,” and, “All is well.” There is always enough grace to carry you from this moment to this moment. Let grace carry you.

https://medium.com/just-jordin/grace-self-discovery-oracle-card-c1fe5fbb52da

['Jordin James']

2020-08-02 16:40:09.969000+00:00

['Spirituality', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Psychology']

WORKSHOP: how to use the properties, characteristics, and benefits of marketing and copywriting

How to use the properties, characteristics, and benefits of marketing and copywriting An interesting trend. New copywriting sites and blogs are springing up like mushrooms after rain. On the one hand, this is good, because the direction is developing. However, the other side of the coin is the quality of most resources. Many of them simply rewrite superficial things and even manage to distort them to such an extent that they do nothing but harm. For example, many of you have heard about the properties of a product and its benefits for the consumer (if you haven’t heard, it’s not scary, I’ll explain everything further, tell you and show it). If you ask most copywriters and marketers what should be indicated in the text: properties or benefits, most of them, without batting an eye, will answer: “Of course, benefits!” Moreover, now many copywriting training “gurus” repeat like a mantra: “Benefits, not properties, benefits, not properties …” As a result, dozens of “Zombo-writers” come out of such training who are obsessed with benefits, but who do not bother to think about whether the benefits are appropriate in their particular case. However, let’s talk about everything in order. Characteristics, properties, and benefits Each product or service has its own characteristics. Some features are important for suppliers, others for consumers, others for manufacturers, etc. All these features can be conditionally divided into three large groups: Specifications Properties Benefits Sometimes it happens that one feature is included in 2 groups at once. For example, a characteristic or property can itself be a benefit. Further, we will consider this point with examples. 1. Characteristics Characteristics are numerical parameters that characterize a product or service. Here are some examples of characteristics for three areas — home appliances, auto, and online advertising. Characteristics The strength of the characteristics lies in their specificity and certainty. The disadvantage is that certain segments of the audience do not understand what these characteristics mean. 2. Properties Properties are the characteristics of certain goods or services. This also includes various functions, chips, and goodies. As a rule, properties are based on characteristics and can include them. Please note that properties can be both concrete and abstract. In the case of abstraction, it is better to supplement them with numbers. Let’s look at what properties can be in our examples, based on the described characteristics. Washing machine Washing machine Vehicle Vehicle Contextual advertising Contextual advertising 3. Benefits Benefits are what a person ultimately gets in a language he understands. The last 4 words of the previous sentence are key. And this is where the main highlight lies. The same product can have different benefits for different groups of people. This nuance is the most common mistake of novice copywriters. They show benefits, but not what their buyer is looking for. This mistake is especially common in the B2B segment, where companies buy goods in bulk to then sell them at retail to end consumers. Let’s take a closer look at examples. a) Washing machine This is a typical example. Household appliances can be purchased by both wholesalers for sale and end consumers. The first is interested in the profit from the sale, and the second — in the quality performance of the functions assigned to the device. Consequently, the benefit sets for different audience segments will differ. Take a look. For retail buyers For retail buyers For wholesalers For wholesalers See the difference? Let’s take a look at the following example. b) Vehicle I chose a car as an example for a reason. The point is that a car belongs to a special category of goods, in which the characteristics themselves can be advantages for certain segments of the audience. Our car is abstract, and different people can buy it. Let’s compare the benefits for professionals and ordinary buyers. For professionals Professionals are well versed in the automotive market. Moreover, they are guided most often by characteristics. This means that for them the characteristics will be an indicator of benefits (this is the main criterion that professionals rely on). The same is true for a variety of equipment purchased by technicians. They are interested in characteristics. Let’s do it again. Specialists who buy complex technical goods are primarily interested in characteristics, not benefits! Benefits can be shown differently, focusing on buying from you and not from other sellers. For professionals For ordinary users To illustrate the differences in this example, let’s take a “simpler” group of people. For ordinary users This table shows only 5 bundles of characteristics with benefits, but with a real sale, there are many more. It is also worth remembering that to save money, people prefer to buy cars with diesel engines, and here you also need to show your benefits (savings on spare parts, simplicity, and cheapness of repairs, etc.) c) Contextual advertising When we talk about any advertising in principle, here you need to understand that this is a B2B segment, where the main motivator for action is the return on investment and economic feasibility. Naked calculation. This must be understood and distinguished from the B2C segment, which has completely different values. Contextual advertising What to include in promotional materials? There is a simple rule: you need to indicate what interests the person and what contributes to the achievement of the goal. If you don’t know what to specify, try using the link: PROPERTIES BENEFIT based on CHARACTERISTICS. At the same time, characteristics and properties can be used both together and separately, but in both cases in conjunction with benefits. Please note: if your product is the same as that of your competitors, then you are showing the benefit not of the product, but of purchasing it from you. For example, if your distinguishing feature is that you are an official representative of the manufacturer, then the benefit for your client is saving money due to a lower price (say, 10–15% compared to competitors). A few more examples of the implementation of the formula for consolidation. Saving up to $100 per month on electricity thanks to energy-saving bulbs, which give the same light as incandescent lamps, but consume 4 times less power. 100% return of receivables without any extra effort at the expense of the debtor. Just one call to the “One Window” service of “Wall Street Kind of Investors” LLC, and the problem is solved. Quiet and pliable neighbors, thanks to the Infrabass function with a frequency of 10 Hz and a power of 300 watts in Shardex speakers. 66 of your favorite movies or 12,500 songs are always with you on one flash drive with a capacity of 100 GB. Send photos in 1 click to all social networks: the application works with JPG and PNG files. You get the idea. Proceed from the task that you are facing and the audience to which you deliver your advertising message. I have a special setup for such cases. I called it the “ATHYW” installation. It stands for “Always Think With Your Head”. Believe me, it will be a little more difficult, but more reliable. Once I came across a text that was selling a foot massager. This massager was designed for American 110-volt outlets. A man in pursuit of profit, without batting an eye, concluded: energy savings are 2 times compared to analogs (without indicating the voltage of the network). A gross mistake that, at best, will result in a search for an adapter for an outlet with a transformer, and at worst, will make it necessary to buy a new device. Another point: not always turning properties into benefits is the best solution. For example, if a person chooses a refrigerator, and he needs the NoFrost function (he initially knows what it is). Explicitly indicating the presence of this function (in fact, a property), and you make it easier for a person to choose. At the same time, if you turn it into a benefit and write it down in detail, the required criterion may get lost in the mass of the text, and a person will consider that this function does not exist. The result is predictable — a lost customer. Another example: You are selling headphones. Of course, you can use all your epistolary skill in describing the sound, but knowledgeable people need not this, but the frequency range. Moral: Give people the information they need to make a decision. Benefits are good for persuasion, and properties and characteristics are good for targeted searches. Remember this and let your texts sell! Yours sincerely, Alex P.S. Try to write down the characteristics, properties, and benefits of your products and services. Which one is the most important for your clients? What benefits do you use to detach from your competitors?

https://medium.com/marketing-laboratory/workshop-how-to-use-the-properties-characteristics-and-benefits-of-marketing-and-copywriting-9bbafc77801c

['Alex Koma']

2020-10-16 11:38:48.919000+00:00

['Writing', 'Blogging', 'Marketing', 'Blog', 'Copywriting']

Spark 3.0: First hands-on approach with Adaptive Query Execution (Part 1)

Apache Spark is a distributed data processing framework that is suitable for any Big Data context thanks to its features. Despite being a relatively recent product (the first open-source BSD license was released in 2010, it was donated to the Apache Foundation) on June 18th the third major revision was released that introduces several new features including adaptive Query Execution (AQE) that we are about to talk about in this article. A bit of history Spark was born, before being donated to the community, in 2009 within the academic context of ampLab (curiosity: AMP is the acronym for Algorithms Machine People) of the University of California, Berkeley. The winning idea behind the product is the concept of RDD, described in the paper “Resilient Distributed Datasets: A Fault-Tolerant Abstraction for In-Memory Cluster Computing” whose lead author is Spark Matei Zaharia’s “father”. The idea is for a solution that solves the main problem of the distributed processing models available at the time (MapReduce in the first place): the lack of an abstraction layer for the memory usage of the distributed system. Some complex algorithms that are widely used in big data, such as many for training machine learning models, or manipulating graph data structures, reuse intermediate processing results multiple times during computation. The “single-stage” architecture of algorithms such as MapReduce is greatly penalized in such circumstances since it is necessary to write (and then re-read) the intermediate results of computation on persistent storage. I/O operations on persistent storage are notoriously onerous on any type of system, even more so on one deployed due to the additional overhead introduced by network communications. The concept of RDD implemented on Spark brilliantly solves this problem by using memory during intermediate computation steps on a “multi-stage” DAG engine. The other milestone (I leap because I enter into the merits of RDD programming and Spark’s detailed history, although very interesting, outside the objectives of the article) is the introduction on the first stable version of Spark (which had been donated to the Apache community) of the Spark SQL module. One of the reasons for the success of the Hadoop framework before Spark’s birth was the proliferation of products that added functionality to the core modules. Among the most used surely we have to mention Hive, SQL abstraction layer over Hadoop. Despite MapReduce’s limitations that make it underperforming to run more complex SQL queries on this engine after “translation” by Hive, the same is still widespread today mainly because of its ease of use. The best way to retrace the history of the SQL layer on Spark is again to start with the reference papers. Shark (spark SQL’s ancestor) dating back to 2013 and the one titled “Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark” where Catalyst, the optimizer that represents the heart of today’s architecture, is introduced. Spark SQL features are made available to developers through objects called DataFrame (or Java/Scale Datasets in type-safe) that represent RDDs at a higher level of abstraction. You can use the DataFrame API through a specific DSL or through SQL. Regardless of which method you choose to use, DataFrame operations will be processed, translated, and optimized by Catalyst (Spark from v2.0 onwards) according to the following workflow: What’s new We finally get to get into the merits of Adaptive Query Execution, a feature that at the architectural level is implemented at this level. More precisely, this is an optimization that dynamically intervenes between the logical plan and the physical plan by taking advantage of the runtime statistics captured during the execution of the various stages according to the stream shown in the following image: The Spark SQL execution stream in version 3.0 then becomes: Optimizations in detail Because the AQE framework is based on an extensible architecture based on a set of logical and physical plan optimization rules, it can easily be assumed that developers plan to implement additional functionality over time. At present, the following optimizations have been implemented in version 3.0: Dynamically coalescing shuffle partitions Dynamically switching join strategies Dynamically optimizing skew joins let’s go and see them one by one by touching them with our hands through code examples. Regarding the creation of the test cluster, we recommend that you refer to the previously published article: “How to create an Apache Spark 3.0 development cluster on a single machine using Docker”. Dynamically coalescing shuffle partitions Shuffle operations are notoriously the most expensive on Spark (as well as any other distributed processing framework) due to the transfer time required to move data between cluster nodes across the network. Unfortunately, however, in most cases they are unavoidable. Transformations on a dataset deployed on Spark, regardless of whether you use RDD or DataFrame API, can be of two types: narrow or wide. Wide-type data needs partition data to be redistributed differently between executors to be completed. The infamous shuffle operation (and creating a new execution stage) Without AQE, determining the optimal number of DataFrame partitions resulting from performing a wide transformation (e.g. joins or aggregations) was assigned to the developer by setting the spark.sql.shuffle.partitions configuration property (default value: 200). However, without going into the merits of the data it is very difficult to establish an optimal value, with the risk of generating partitions that are too large or too small and resulting in performance problems. Let’s say you want to run an aggregation query on data whose groups are unbalanced. Without the intervention of AQE, the number of partitions resulting will be the one we have expressed (e.g. 5) and the final result could be something similar to what is shown in the image: Enabling AQE instead would put data from smaller partitions together in a larger partition of comparable size to the others. With a result similar to the one shown in the figure. This optimization is triggered when the two configuration properties spark.sql.adaptive.enabled and spark.sql.adaptive.coalescePartitions.enabled are both set to true. Since the second is set true by default, practically to take advantage of this feature you only need to enable the global property for AQE activation. Actually going to parse the source code you find that AQE is actually enabled only if the query needs shuffle operations or is composed of sub-queries: and that there is a configuration property that you can use to force AQE even in the absence of one of the two conditions above The number of partitions after optimization will depend instead on the setting of the following configuration options: spark.sql.adaptive.coalescePartitions.initialPartitionNum spark.sql.adaptive.coalescePartitions.minPartitionNum spark.sql.adaptive.advisoryPartitionSizeInBytes where the first represents the starting number of partitions (default: spark.sql.shuffle.partitions), the second represents the minimum number of partitions after optimization (default: spark.default.parallelism), and the third represents the “suggested” size of the partitions after optimization (default: 64 Mb). To test the behaviour of the dynamic coalition feature of AQE’s shuffle partitions, we’re going to create two simple datasets (one is to be understood as a lookup table that we need to have a second dataset to join). The sample dataset is deliberately unbalanced, the transactions of our hypothetical “Very Big Company” are about 10% of the total. Those of the remaining companies about 1%: Let’s first test what would happen without AQE We will receive output: Number of partitions without AQE: 50 The value is exactly what we have indicated ourselves by setting the configuration property spark.sql.shuffle.partitions. We repeat the experiment by enabling AQE The new output will be: Number of partitions with AQE: 7 The value, in this case, was determined based on the default level of parallelism (number of allocated cores), that is, by the value of the spark.sql.adaptive.coalescePartitions.minPartitionNum configuration property. Now let’s try what happens by “suggesting” the target size of the partitions (in terms of storage). Let’s set it to 30 Kb which is a value compatible with our sample data This time the output will be: Number of partitions with AQE (advisory partition size 30Kb): 15 regardless of the number of cores allocated on the cluster for our job. Apart from having a positive impact on performance, this feature is very useful in creating optimally sized output files (try analyzing the contents of the job output directories that I created in CSV format while being less efficient so that you can easily inspect the files). In the second and third part of the article we will try the other two new features: Dynamically switching join strategies Dynamically optimizing skew joins Stay tuned!

https://medium.com/p/ff987f66b5c0

['Mario Cartia']

2020-10-14 05:31:47.419000+00:00

['Big Data', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Apache Spark', 'Advanced Analytics', 'Machine Learning']

What I Learned From My Little Experiment With Short-Form Posts

What I Learned From My Little Experiment With Short-Form Posts The good, bad, and the face for radio Photo by OCV PHOTO on Unsplash Over the last couple weeks I’ve experimented with short-form Medium stories. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. To qualify (and get listed as) a short-form story, you need a few things: The things No title The first sentence must be bold The whole lock, stock, and Harold must be under 150 words (a shortcut for word count is a quick click to your drafts stories section and it’ll tell you). Short-form posts can even get curated, so don’t forget to use all your favorite tags. These little posts are shown in the entirety, versus getting a regular story truncated on your page or the various Medium screens. This means every view also counts as a read. I wrote a total of nine short-post. They all got at least 30 reads. Some, many more. They all earned money. While these shorties aren’t a Medium miracle or anything I think they are a really good tool to promote your longer stories fast. While I’m still investigating, there are a few good things I learned: Every short-form story gets a 100% read rate, eventually. Sometimes the stats take a bit to catch-up. So don’t get discouraged if your stats are wonky when you first publish. You will earn money from these little posts. They take about 1 minute to write. My top-earner got me a dollar. Most earn around 25–50 cents. Do not look at these as a way to make money, but it’s not nothing. You can use them as a secondary sounding-board to promote something you just published. People can click your links straight from the summary window. They can click your full story as they scroll past the short-form post. Pretty cool. And I’m positive this has led to additional traffic for a few stories, by the way the read numbers coincide with spikes in the stories. The bad: I thought this would be a great way to help grow my email list, but the links I’ve added don’t seem to do much of anything. I think the primary benefit for short-form is their ability to reach more readers for your long-form stories. The radio face: Short-form stories are gimmicky. They aren’t that exciting to read since they’re under 150 words. I look at them as a commercial post for your real writing. I believe they have their place, and I’ll continue to use them as long as readers keep reading them, but don’t go too crazy, thinking that writing 50 of these a day will somehow get you more traffic. I think a strategy of one short-form post per real story is a good metric. If you bomb Medium with a bunch of short-forms you’re traffic will get throttled as spam, so take ‘er easy, Cheesy. That’s all I’ve got. Try adding short-form stories to your portfolio. They’re stupid-easy to write. There isn’t much of a downside. People clap and maybe even comment on them too. Add a link to your most-recent story and see if they’ll help add a couple new readers. Don’t forget to use your tags! I’ve got something. Just for you… I want to invite you inside the fence. When you build a tribe around your best work, even if you’re starting-out, you’ve got an instant audience when you’re ready to fly. No matter what kind of work you create. I want you inside the fence, but you’ve got to move fast, so I can shut the gate behind you. Therefor, I built a free email masterclass for you. I hand-crafted the whole thing. It took me a couple months. I call the masterclass the Tribe 1K. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) readers without spending a hot nickel on ads. Past students include New York Times bestselling authors. Yep, the ones you see in the bookstore. Your email list will help you build a legacy creative business. If you want to grow your creative business you need email before you lose that valuable reader’s attention. Start your list before you need one. Once you need a list it’s almost too late. Tap the link. Guarantee your seat before I start to charge an enrollment fee. We’re waiting for you.

https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/what-i-learned-from-my-little-experiment-with-short-form-posts-8e1650c13c11

['August Birch']

2020-12-16 16:07:59.574000+00:00

['Medium', 'Marketing', 'Money', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing']

How I Deal With Dissociation as an Abuse Survivor

How I Deal With Dissociation as an Abuse Survivor I can’t function when I’m not present Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels I have a hard time feeling my feelings. I often don’t know they are there, until several of them gang up and perform an intervention on me — and then suddenly it’s all too much. Abuse survivors are well known to dissociate. It’s a fairly common maladaptive response to trauma. For me, dissociating from early on in life was what saved me. I could leave my body, and exist in a dialogue-only part of my mind, where I could comprehend what was going on, but it didn’t break me. I could stay quiet and small, and that kept me safe. While it was an essential life skill for me as a child in an unsafe home, today as an adult trying to make it in the ‘normal’ world, I find myself lost from time to time. I miss important cues that most people would get from their feelings, because mine are locked away. I can go for days, weeks, and sometimes months without connecting with my feelings, especially the negative ones. I’ve been hearing the term ‘toxic positivity’ a lot lately, in relation to other people forcing their need for positivity onto others. But personally, that’s something I’ve been doing to myself for as long as I can remember. When something goes wrong, my immediate response is “It will be fine.” Then I tell myself to suck it up, and I press on. At the root of it all, I’m scared that if I acknowledge an emotion it will carry me away, and I will stop being an independent and functional adult. In my early 20s I slipped into a period of low functioning depression where I didn’t get out of bed for many months. I don’t remember how I got out of it, but I just know that I can’t go back. For abuse and trauma survivors, our fear of feeling our feelings can be related to our fear of losing control and efficacy over our own lives. We know that our grief will engulf everything if we let it, and so we don’t. We march on, chanting our mantra of “It will be fine,” because that is the safest way for us to be. But this is only effective in the short term. So what happens when we get so emotionally constipated that we can’t breathe anymore? What if life has become black, white and grey because all of the joy has slipped away? And most worryingly — what happens when we fail to read the warning signs that our life is going in the wrong direction. Take 2020 for example. I think most people accepted that something was very off about this year long before I did. While our economy was shutting down, I ploughed on with my self employed freelance lifestyle, while friends of mine who are more rooted in reality were applying for any jobs they could get. Looking back, I wish I’d started that process sooner. Now my freelance work has dried up, and I still don’t have a job. I also haven’t been processing my anxiety about my lack of income, at least I wasn’t until it started coming out as anger. How to feel feelings again So now that I am finally awake to the fact that I have been floating about in a dissociated state for most of this year, I intend to do the work to get unblocked emotionally, process my feelings, and join the rest of the population on planet Earth — and also to sort out my lack of income. I need to be present, aware and feeling everything to make better decisions. Step 1 — getting back into my body The thing about dissociating is that it takes me out of my body, which is full of aches and pains, bad memories and horrible feelings. I don’t really want to be in there. But I know that my body can be a good place too. It’s also where I feel joy, love and light. But I have to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. We can’t cherry pick the emotions that we want to feel. So in order to begin feeling — all of it — I first have to get back into my body. I have to remind (or convince) myself that today I am physically safe, and so my body is a safe place to be too. In a previous post, The Law of Attraction for Abuse Survivors, I said this: Getting into an abused and painful body is like stepping into a freezing cold and rapid river. The current is strong and it will take your breath away! I want to raise this point again just as a reminder not to force yourself to get back in to your body, or do it too quickly. Take your time and stay calm. As for the how part, I find anything tactile can help me with this, from petting my cats to having a hot bath. Touch is a great way to reconnect with ourselves. But it has to be done mindfully — and this really is the key. If you are attempting this process too, then just focus on being in your physical form, and notice sensations like hot and cold, soft and rough. You might find that a mantra helps too — try a few things and see what works for you. Step 2 — Let a little out first Whether at this point you are still reaching for any scrap of emotion within you, or you find yourself now suddenly holding back the flood gates, it’s again important to go slowly. Processing your feelings isn’t another task or chore for you to power your way through. This is deep work and should be done carefully. Try just letting a little out at a time. Try to focus on just one feeling, or just one situation in your life that you had been avoiding, and not the whole bigger picture. Have a trusted friend on standby if you need somebody to support you. This is always a smart move. If you are trying to feel but still nothing comes, then maybe music will help you. This usually works for me. I go for a walk or a run with a well chosen playlist of songs that make me feel, and I usually manage to cry a little. It feels great to finally vent some of the pressure. Final step — have a way forward So, if you have reconnected with your body, felt your feelings and vented them a little, you will now need to know what comes next. This is important for everyone, but perhaps feels even more important for abuse survivors. We can’t stand not knowing what to expect — for obvious reasons. So making yourself a plan to deal with whatever you have been bottling up or avoiding is the smartest thing you can do now. Don’t just think about it, writing it down and making it your official plan will give you a sense of security that you will likely need to avoid dissociating and floating off again. Try and stay down here on Earth for as long as you can. You are more effective at solving problems and keeping your life on track while you are here, in your actual life. Finally, remember that any habits we form in our early years, such as dissociation, are incredibly hard to break. So keep working at it, but don’t beat yourself up when you drift off again — because you likely will. We all need reminders to stay on track. For me, I remind myself best when I write or talk about my dissociation. Maybe that would help you too? Be gentle with yourself. You have come a long way and this year has been especially challenging for us all. But if you read to the end, then you are clearly thinking about processing your own emotions and that’s a great first step. Just take one step at a time and keep being brave.

https://medium.com/the-virago/how-i-deal-with-dissociation-as-an-abuse-survivor-8dfff09f2919

['Sarah K Brandis']

2020-11-25 14:56:15.302000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Abuse Survivors', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons', 'Women']

Life Isn’t Supposed to Be Lived Alone

Stop isolating yourself and start living. Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash It takes a special type of person to be fine living in the woods completely on their own. I wonder if they are truly happy. Maybe, but I know that’s not me. Isolation is a punishment for most people. Being social is good for you. I do love spending time alone. I am such an introvert that I look forward to the times when I know I don’t have to talk to or be around anybody. However, I know I couldn’t live like that all the time. I use my alone time to recharge from being social, but I need to spend time with my family and friends. I never regret going over to a friend’s house or having my partner sleep over. I never wish I hadn’t gone to visit my parents or my brothers. It’s a necessity to interact with other people, to feel their energy and to have great conversation. I can spend a couple days alone and feel fine, but after several days, I feel lonely. I feel a little sad. My mental and physical health are better when I’m socially active. It’s important to step outside of your introspection and focus on other people. When I catch myself being too self-absorbed, I turn to my social circle to pull me out. I always feel better when I take my attention away from myself and whatever issues I’m going through and live in the moment with friends and family. Aristotle said that human beings are social animals. We thrive on interaction with our peers. We depend on it for our overall well-being. It helps to keep our mind and communication skills active. Think about it. When you’re alone, how much speaking do you do? Can you develop your interpersonal skills by yourself? Muscles atrophy if you don’t use them. That goes for any type of practice. We aren’t meant to live in complete silence. Meditation is great, but only for a period of time. Even monks socialize with each other. Interacting with others is great for mental health. It can decrease feelings of depression and loneliness. Having others to talk to can help you deal with feelings of anxiety. Being a productive member of society can certainly improve your mood and self-esteem. Knowing that other people are counting on you can give you purpose and lift your spirits. When you feel like isolating yourself, try to go out into the world instead. Make an effort to hang out with friends. If stepping outside is too much, then a phone call is a good first step. It’s always good to at least have someone to talk to. There are too many possibilities and opportunities in life that are waiting for you. You’ll miss out on most of them if you keep to yourself. You’re one of billions. You fit in somewhere. Don’t hide from the world. Go out and find your place in it.

https://maclinlyons.medium.com/life-isnt-supposed-to-be-lived-alone-80aa51bb2788

['Maclin Lyons']

2019-08-04 17:55:04.040000+00:00

['Self-awareness', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Self']

Recidivism, Rehabilitation, and the Grand Tour

Recidivism, Rehabilitation, and the Grand Tour The US prison turnstile Unsplash — Pablo Padilla In theory, prisons should perform the dual function of rehabilitating and deterring its convicts from becoming repeat offenders. Inmates would be trained with a skill to make an honest living once they get out. And prison life made uncomfortable enough to leave those subjected to it in search of a better way. Well, maybe in other countries those in control are doing a good job on this front. But judging from my experience, I’d have to give the BOP a failing grade here in the USA. To be fair (to the BOP), I was locked up in a transient facility where most inmates would not be serving a lot of time. So I can understand why the authorities might skip over our prison. But there were some prisoners “down” for a year or two. And if you incarcerate somebody for that duration, you ought to have programs in place to help him make a living upon release to society. When it came to rehab, it was mostly non-existent at MCC. Though I personally had no financial need for skilled training, most others did. And whether I did or not, even I was hoping to get some if for no other reason than to fix my plumbing (or car) when the need arose after I was released — or to simply have something to occupy my mind. Alas, there was really almost none to be had! The plumbing jobs were administered by a hispanic man who rumor had it, took care of his own. So if an inmate wasn’t hispanic — and had no experience or expertise in the skill — he wasn’t likely to get that job. And if a non-hispanic and inexperienced inmate did luck into that employment, he’d be hazed forthwith. One inmate told me he was soaked to the bone performing a task that the others knew would give him a good dousing. Similarly, the electrician jobs went almost exclusively to loud-mouthed gangbangers of color. Maybe I was imagining things, but rumor and my vision claimed differently. In fact, the only employment which seemed to be open to all regardless of race, ethnicity, or experience was suicide watch. And that was hardly employment that might help an inmate navigate the square world on the outside. With respect to course work (as opposed to the mostly non-existent on-the-job training I just described), the BOP was equally lacking. I was told by my first bunky (Benji) that the prison offered a class in commercial driving (big rigs). I figured “What the hell! Let me learn how to drive a big rig.” I asked the head of education when I could sign up. He looked like a deer in the headlights when I presented the question. In reality, there was no course in commercial driving. It, like much else at MCC, existed only in the theoretical — and not actual — realm. Finally, 9 months into my sentence, the prison actually offered that course (though the prison brochure claimed it was a constant offering) in commercial driving. And who taught it? An actual teacher? Not quite. Try an inmate who was serving 6 years for the crime of transporting cocaine across state lines in his rig. Was he qualified to teach the course? Maybe. Maybe not. In theory, there was a GED class for the many inmates who’d dropped out of high school and never got a degree. My bunky Chan was tasked with teaching that class by virtue of the fact that he volunteered for the job (Chan was not one to do physical labor) and had a college degree — albeit no experience teaching. Whether I questioned his abilities as a teacher was irrelevant. The BOP did not. It was all moot anyway. Chan reported that the woman who administered the program was only semi-literate herself — and mostly absent. I roomed with him for 4 months, and he never (not once) descended to the library (where the education department was located) to teach a class. Occasionally, somebody would stop by for a little tutoring. But mostly, Chan sloughed him off. He wasn’t getting paid to do the job and really, had little interest in doing it. His teaching position simply fulfilled a requirement that all inmates work. All in all, hardly an educational scenario in which any student — let alone slacker inmates — could excel. Oddly, John, an inmate with a PHD from Berkley in Astro-physics, was allowed to teach a college-level course in Astronomy. In truth, John was brilliant. And the course was excellent. Far and away way too cerebral for the surroundings. But really, what is an inmate going to do with the theoretical knowledge John’s course of study provided those matriculated in his class? While I enjoyed his presentation — and others did as well — the class certainly wasn’t going to help a prisoner make a living on the outside. The federal government has a program called RDAP, an intensive 500 hour course with which druggy offenders with more than two years remaining on their sentence can enroll to trim a year off their time incarcerated. Two things about that program: First, it wasn’t available at MCC. Because most (but not all) inmates in our prison were transient, the BOP didn’t bother. Those who managed to qualify were sometimes shipped out to another facility to participate in that program. But not always. It was a struggle many qualified inmates endured. And second, nobody I knew who applied for RDAP really did so with an eye toward reforming. They were simply losing a year off their sentence. From what I heard, guys mostly talked out their drug shit, reminiscing to their old get high days while the teacher might interject here and there to direct the conversation. In short, the “high road” was not in evidence in that program. On to the subject of recidivism. You would think that a country as modern and forward-thinking as the United Sates of America could figure out a way to convince its first-time offenders to not offend a second time. But unfortunately, not even close. While at 68, my entrance into MCC was but my first go-round in the federal system, I was almost alone in that distinction. The prison was filled with guys who’d been in and out several times before. There were precious few of us who were rooks. And the ones that were struck me as people who didn’t hurt anybody…would not ever return…and probably never would have been incarcerated in the first place in another modern country. One thing I noticed about the majority of prisoners (and especially those who’d been in and out for years) was how comfortable they were with prison life. The problem is if you’re a criminal type, you have a plethora of like-minded guys to hang out with behind bars. You can relate to most of the other inmates. You don’t really have to make a living. All your housing and food is provided for you. You got your three hots and a cot! That’s significant for some inmates. All they’re really missing is women. And if they could get that, I’m quite certain that a surprising percentage of prisoners would choose to stay. It’s called being institutionalized. And trust me, there was no shortage of institutionalized prisoners at MCC. Clearly, this is not a formula to prevent recidivism. So many of the inmates had been in and out of the system so many times — for so long — that I coined a term for what turned out to be the majority of the prisoners at MCC. I’d say so-and-so had done the “Grand Tour.” Meaning “they’d been everywhere man, they’d been everywhere.” And actually, much of the conversation in prison centered around conditions and features in a wide menu of prisons. “When I was on the compound,” or “at Canaan…or Laretto…or Otisville…or Danbury…or Fort Dix,” were words and phrases I constantly heard in prison. Even Paul Manafort’s conversation had that institutionalized feel. (Manafort was my celly for a spell during my stay at MCC.) It has occurred to me that making prison an absolutely horrible experience during which inmates are tortured to the point that they’d do anything not to return might prevent recidivism. But it would also induce rioting — and murders — and suicides — and basically, a laundry list of collateral damage I can’t even fathom. Honestly, I don’t have the answer to the recidivism problem. And from my experience in the system, the BOP was as clueless as I — if not more. I can only report that the issue was not addressed properly where I served my time. And clearly, from the stats, however the BOP is trying to rectify the problem isn’t working particularly well. Thus, we have all those inmates doing the Grand Tour. While I’m confident I won’t be one of them, I can’t say that the majority of my fellow prisoners at MCC can honestly make the same statement. The USA has a problem in this area. And that problem is at least being acknowledged if not rectified. Keeping so many prisoners behind bars is getting too expensive for the American taxpayer. Which is mostly why the situation is being addressed. Sympathy for the devil is in short supply.

https://medium.com/doing-time/recidivism-rehabilitation-and-the-grand-tour-5768b712e643

['William', 'Dollar Bill']

2020-11-25 12:56:12.814000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Prison', 'Culture', 'Psychology']

How to Get Your First 100,000 Followers (Redux)

I was looking through some old posts today and I came across this one. I’d forgotten about it. I had this big fat goal of building up to 100,000 email subscribers in a year. That was in spring 2017 — so exactly two years ago. Yeah. That didn’t happen. Instead, right around that time I started an MFA program. And I sold a book. And my focus shifted. Which is pretty clear when you look at this. My email list numbers, April 2017 And compare it to this. My email list numbers, May 2019 So. I have 200 fewer email subscribers. Le sigh. There are a few reasons for that. Two are big ones. Big One One I’ve cleaned my email list twice since April 2017. That means I sent an email out to cold subscribers (that’s people who haven’t opened an email for at least 90 days) and when they didn’t respond, I deleted them from my list. I’ve deleted roughly 10,000 email addresses from my list in the last two years. About 5,000 each time. The last time was just about a year ago. That reduced my email list to about 8,000 people. So in the last year, I’ve added in the neighborhood of 6,000 subscribers or 500 a month. Big One Two Around the time I wrote the post I linked to above, I cut my Facebook ad spend from about $600 a month to about $300 a month. By the end of 2017, I cut it to $0 + the occasional boosted post. Maybe $250 a year. Part of the reason for that was because while Facebook ads were building up my email list quickly and that was exciting, they weren’t giving me a very health list, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to delete more than 40 percent of it as ‘cold subscribers’ over the last two years. Just having a big email list isn’t enough. It has to be full of people who don’t only want your one free thingie. You want fans, right? Mine live on my list, but they were getting buried under people who use a special email address to sign up for freebies and don’t really want to read what I write. So, It Makes Sense But it also means that overall, my email list building mojo has gone stale. I think that having a goal of building a giant list in a very short amount of time was probably never a great idea. I mean, it would be awesome if something happened and suddenly a gazillion people were leap frogging onto my email list — but trying to force that didn’t work out very well for me. Not really, anyway. Because my email list is awesome. My followers are the bomb. I have the best followers in the whole world. I’d rather not pay for the people who are on my list, but aren’t really following me. They’re welcome to my freebie. But I’m okay with saying goodbye if I’m not their cup of tea. Lately my email list kind of churns. People come — mostly via my blog posts here. Some from Google sending people to my website. Some organically via Facebook. People leave — maybe they don’t like how may emails I send out (a lot), maybe they just wanted my free thing (like I said), maybe they just aren’t into writing right now. It seems healthy to me. The people in are coming to my list organically, because they’ve read something of mine all the way to the bottom, to my email form. The people are leaving make me grateful. I’m Ready for Growth, Though No crazy 100,000 followers in a year goals. It’s pretty clear how that worked. Photo by Dušan Smetana on Unsplash That, my friends, is a sad panda. I feel like just paying attention will help. It’s been a while since I did that. I don’t plan to run ads, at least not specifically for list building. Here are a couple of things I do plan on trying this week. I created a new free mini-course about starting a Creativity Practice. I’m working on making some connections with people who have followers who are in my space. I’ll keep you posted. I like my original every two weeks plan. (Just two years late!)

https://medium.com/the-write-brain/how-to-get-your-first-100-000-fans-redux-9744c73b64b8

['Shaunta Grimes']

2019-07-23 13:27:30.632000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Digital', 'Email']

How to Succeed at Your Own Speed

There’s so much potential for success in the world. So, what’s holding you back? A fairly common answer is age. This year, I turned 30. To some, that means I ought to be settled comfortably into a life that will carry me to the grave. I must have a stable career, a family, possibly own multiple properties, etc. And a quick browse on Amazon turns up several resources I could use to achieve these expectations. Books such as Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Good Luck Don’t Suck: A Tactical Guide to Early Success in the Workplace, and Unlock Your Career Success: Knowing the Unwritten Rules Changes Everything are available to anyone chasing this dream. But, the more I wax poetic about these expectations, the less I describe the actual world I live in. Furthermore, the more I concede to these fantasies, the less control I retain over my life. As stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote in his classic The Art of Living: “Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people say or do. Hold true to your aspirations no matter what is going on around you.” While easy to remember, this lesson is increasingly difficult to practice. Nowadays, learning to succeed on one’s own is a revolutionary act. It requires one to take a lonesome path, away from so many who are quick to offer advice or tell stories of how they found success. Rich Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes Magazine, posits that our cultural obsession with early success actually dissuades many from achieving success later in life. In his book Late Bloomers, Karlgaard depicts just how obsessed our culture has become with early achievement by citing a parenting article from the Washington Post about youth sports. “Our culture no longer supports older kids playing [sports] for the fun of it. The pressure to raise “successful” kids means that we expect them to be the best. If they’re not, they’re encouraged to cut their losses and focus on areas where they can excel,” it reads. But, this mantra isn’t just coming from parents. Karlgaard found evidence of this thinking in admissions applications from the nation’s top universities. Not only do they want “solid SAT scores” and “continually improving grades in challenging coursework, [but]” they also want students to be interested in “a few activities” and those who “go the extra mile to develop a special talent.” Read: If you’re not quantifiably special, we don’t want you here. Some colleges have taken steps to retract this philosophy. A report by The National Center for Open and Fair Testing found 85 of the country’s top-100 liberal arts colleges and seven Ivy League universities will be test-optional in 2021. This means students won’t have to take the SAT or ACT to be admitted. Instead, these schools will admit students based on a holistic application. Moreover, adolescents are bombarded with similar rhetoric on social media. Some of the most commanding voices on these platforms are teens and young adults. Charli D’Amelio is dominating TikTok at just 17 years old, Corey Maison has amassed a huge following on Instagram for documenting her transgender life, and then there’s Billie Eilish. To this end, a poll by CNBC found that 86% of adolescents want to become a social media influencer. So how is one supposed to rise above the fray when youths often portray models for success? What does success for late bloomers look like in a world obsessed with young stars?

https://medium.com/curious/learn-to-find-success-at-your-own-speed-27f5d0aa26e1

['Robert Davis']

2020-12-21 11:37:45.226000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Personal Development', 'Life', 'Success', 'Science']

A Beginner’s Guide to Tesseract OCR

This tutorial consists of the following sections: Setup and installation Preparing test images Usage and API call Fine-tuning Results Conclusion 1. Setup and installation There are multiple ways to install tesserocr. The requirements and steps stated in this section will be based on installation via pip on Windows operating system. You can check the steps required via the official Github if you wanted to install via other methods. Github files Clone or download the files to your computer. Once you have completed the download, extract them to a directory. Make sure you have saved it in an easily accessible location — we will be storing the test images in the same directory. You should have a tesserocr-master folder that contains all the required files. Feel free to rename it. Python You should have python installed with version 3.6 or 3.7. I will be using Python 3.7.1 installed in a virtual environment for this tutorial. Python modules via pip Download the required file based on the python version and operating system. I downloaded tesserocr v2.4.0 — Python 3.7–64bit and saved it to the tesserocr-master folder (you can save it anywhere as you like). From the directory, open a command prompt (simply point it to the directory that holds the whl file if you opened a command prompt from other directory). Installation via pip is done via the following code: pip install <package_name>.whl Package_name refers to the name of the whl file you have downloaded. In my case, I have downloaded tesserocr-2.4.0-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl. Hence, I will be using the following code for the installation: pip install tesserocr-2.4.0-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl The next step is to install Pillow, a module for image processing in Python. Type the following command: pip install Pillow Language data files Language data files are required during the initialization of the API call. There are three types of data files: tessdata: The standard model that only works with Tesseract 4.0.0. Contains both legacy engine (--oem 0)and LSTM neural net based engine (--oem 1). oem refers to one of the parameters that can be specified during initialization. A lot faster than tessdata_best with with lower accuracy. Link to standard tessdata. tessdata_best: Best trained model that only works with Tesseract 4.0.0. It has the highest accuracy but a lot slower compared to the rest. Link to tessdata_best. tessdata_fast: This model provides an alternate set of integerized LSTM models which have been built with a smaller network. Link to tessdata_fast. I will be using the standard tessdata in this tutorial. Download it via the link above and place it in the root directory of your project. In my case, it will be under tesserocr-master folder. I took an extra step and renamed the data files as tessdata. This means I have the following folder structure: .../tesserocr-master/tessdata 2. Preparing test images Saving images The most efficient ways to get test images are as follows: Search images online using keywords such as “road sign”, “restaurant” “menus”, “scanned”, “receipts” etc. Use snipping tool to save images of online articles, novels, e-books and etc. Use camera to take screenshot of labels or instructions pasted on top of household products. The least efficient ways to get test images are as follows: Find a book and type out the first few paragraphs in any word processing document. Then, print it on a piece of A4 paper and scan it as pdf or any other image format. Practice your handwriting to write as if the words are being typed. Earn sufficient money to purchase a high-end DSLR or a phone with high quality camera. Take a screenshot and transfer it to your computer. Study up on the basic of pixels to fill up a 128x128 canvas with blocks of characters. If you feel that it is too time-consuming, consider take up some programming and algorithm classes to write some codes that automate the pixel-filling process. I saved the following images as test images: A receipt An abstract from a published paper Introduction from a book Code snippet A few paragraphs from novels (Chinese and Japanese) A few Chinese emoticons Pre-processing Most of the images required some form or pre-processing to improve the accuracy. Check out the following link to find out more on how to improve the image quality. A few important notes to be taken into account for the best accuracy: dark text on white background black and white image remove alpha channel (save image as jpeg/jpg instead of png) fine-tuning via psm parameters (Page Segmentations Mode) Page Segmentation Mode will be discussed later, in the next section. We will start with converting a image into black and white. Given the following image: Sample code snippet from my Notebook If you are using Jupyter Notebook, you can type the following code and press Shift+Enter to execute it: from PIL import Image column = Image.open('code.jpg') gray = column.convert('L') blackwhite = gray.point(lambda x: 0 if x < 200 else 255, '1') blackwhite.save("code_bw.jpg") Image.open(‘code.jpg’) : code.jpg is the name of the file. Modify this according to the name of the input file. : is the name of the file. Modify this according to the name of the input file. PIL : refers to the old version of Pillow. You only need to install Pillow and you will be able to import Image module. Do not install both Pillow and PIL. : refers to the old version of Pillow. You only need to install Pillow and you will be able to import Image module. Do not install both Pillow and PIL. column.convert(‘L’) : L refers to greyscale mode. Other available options include RGB and CMYK : refers to greyscale mode. Other available options include and x < 200 else 255: fine-tune the value of 200 to any other values range from 0 to 255. Check the output file to determine the appropriate value. If you are using command-line to call a Python file. Remember to change the input file and import sys: Black and white version of the code snippet Feel free to try out other image processing methods to improve the quality of your image. Once you are done with it, let’s move on to the next section. 3. Usage and API calls Using with-statement for single image You can use with-statement to initialize the object and GetUTF8Text() to get the result. This method is being referred as context manager. If you are not using with-statement, api.End() should be explicitly called when it’s no longer needed. Refer to the example below for manual handling for single image. from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI with PyTessBaseAPI() as api: api.SetImageFile('sample.jpg') print(api.GetUTF8Text()) If you encounter the following error during the call, it means the program could not locate the language data files (tessdata folder). RuntimeError: Failed to init API, possibly an invalid tessdata path: You can solve this by providing the path as argument during the initialization. You can even specify the language used — as you can see in this example (check the part highlighted in bold): from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI with PyTessBaseAPI(path='C:/path/to/tessdata/.', lang='eng') as api: api.SetImageFile('sample.jpg') print(api.GetUTF8Text()) Manual handling for single image Although the recommended method is via context manager, you can still initialize it as object manually: from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI api = PyTessBaseAPI(path='C:/path/to/tessdata/.', lang='eng') try: api.SetImageFile('sample.jpg') print(api.GetUTF8Text()) finally: api.End() Get confidence value for each word PyTessBaseAPI has several other tesseract methods that can be called. This include getting the tesseract version or even the confidence value for each word. Refer to the tesserorc.pyx file for more information. To get the word confidence, you can simply use the AllWordConfidences( ) function: from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI with PyTessBaseAPI(path='C:/path/to/tessdata/.', lang='eng') as api: print(api.GetUTF8Text()) print(api.AllWordConfidences()) You should get a list of integers ranging from 0(worst)to 100(best) such as the results below (each score represent one word): [87, 55, 55, 39, 88, 70, 31, 60, 18, 18, 71] Get available languages There is also a function to get all available languages: GetAvailableLanguages() . You can use the output as reference for the lang parameter. from tesserocr import PyTessBaseAPI with PyTessBaseAPI(path='C:/path/to/tessdata/.', lang='eng') as api: print(api.GetAvailableLanguages()) The output that follows depends on the number of language data files that you have in the tessdata folder: ['afr', 'amh', 'ara', 'asm', 'aze', 'aze_cyrl', 'bel', 'ben', 'bod', 'bos', 'bre', 'bul', 'cat', 'ceb', 'ces', 'chi_sim', 'chi_sim_vert', 'chi_tra', 'chi_tra_vert', 'chr', 'cos', 'cym', 'dan', 'dan_frak', 'deu', 'deu_frak', 'div', 'dzo', 'ell', 'eng', 'enm', 'epo', 'equ', 'est', 'eus', 'fao', 'fas', 'fil', 'fin', 'fra', 'frk', 'frm', 'fry', 'gla', 'gle', 'glg', 'grc', 'guj', 'hat', 'heb', 'hin', 'hrv', 'hun', 'hye', 'iku', 'ind', 'isl', 'ita', 'ita_old', 'jav', 'jpn', 'jpn_vert', 'kan', 'kat', 'kat_old', 'kaz', 'khm', 'kir', 'kmr', 'kor', 'kor_vert', 'lao', 'lat', 'lav', 'lit', 'ltz', 'mal', 'mar', 'mkd', 'mlt', 'mon', 'mri', 'msa', 'mya', 'nep', 'nld', 'nor', 'oci', 'ori', 'osd', 'pan', 'pol', 'por', 'pus', 'que', 'ron', 'rus', 'san', 'script/Arabic', 'script/Armenian', 'script/Bengali', 'script/Canadian_Aboriginal', 'script/Cherokee', 'script/Cyrillic', 'script/Devanagari', 'script/Ethiopic', 'script/Fraktur', 'script/Georgian', 'script/Greek', 'script/Gujarati', 'script/Gurmukhi', 'script/HanS', 'script/HanS_vert', 'script/HanT', 'script/HanT_vert', 'script/Hangul', 'script/Hangul_vert', 'script/Hebrew', 'script/Japanese', 'script/Japanese_vert', 'script/Kannada', 'script/Khmer', 'script/Lao', 'script/Latin', 'script/Malayalam', 'script/Myanmar', 'script/Oriya', 'script/Sinhala', 'script/Syriac', 'script/Tamil', 'script/Telugu', 'script/Thaana', 'script/Thai', 'script/Tibetan', 'script/Vietnamese', 'sin', 'slk', 'slk_frak', 'slv', 'snd', 'spa', 'spa_old', 'sqi', 'srp', 'srp_latn', 'sun', 'swa', 'swe', 'syr', 'tam', 'tat', 'tel', 'tgk', 'tgl', 'tha', 'tir', 'ton', 'tur', 'uig', 'ukr', 'urd', 'uzb', 'uzb_cyrl', 'vie', 'yid', 'yor'] Using with-statement for multiple images You can use a list to store the path to each images and call a for loop to loop each one of them. tesserocr provides us with a lot of helper functions that can be used with threading to concurrently process multiple images. This method is highly efficient and should be used whenever possible. To process a single image, we can use the helper function without the need to initialize PyTessBaseAPI. Other available helper functions include: If you would like to know more about other available API calls, check the tesserocr.pyx file. Let’s move on to the next section. 4. Fine-tuning In this section we will be exploring how to fine-tune tesserocr to detect different languages and setting different PSMs (Page Segmentation Mode). Setting other languages You can change the language by specifying the lang parameter during initialization. For example, to change the language from English to Simplified Chinese, just modify eng to chi_sim, as follows: lang='eng' lang='chi_sim' In fact, you can specify more than one language. Simply pipe it with a + sign. Note that the order is important as it will affects the accuracy of the results: lang='eng+chi_sim' lang='jpn+chi_tra' Certain languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, have another separate category to recognize vertical text: lang='chi_sim_vert' lang='jpn_vert' Refer to the following code on how to change the language during initialization: Setting the Page Segmentation Mode During initialization, you can set another parameter called psm, which refers to how the model is going to treat the image. It will have an effect on the accuracy, depending on how you set it. It accepts the PSM enumeration. The list is as follows: 0 : OSD_ONLY Orientation and script detection only. Orientation and script detection only. 1 : AUTO_OSD Automatic page segmentation with orientation and script detection. (OSD) Automatic page segmentation with orientation and script detection. (OSD) 2 : AUTO_ONLY Automatic page segmentation, but no OSD, or OCR. Automatic page segmentation, but no OSD, or OCR. 3 : AUTO Fully automatic page segmentation, but no OSD. (default mode for tesserocr) Fully automatic page segmentation, but no OSD. (default mode for tesserocr) 4 : SINGLE_COLUMN -Assume a single column of text of variable sizes. -Assume a single column of text of variable sizes. 5 : SINGLE_BLOCK_VERT_TEXT -Assume a single uniform block of vertically aligned text. -Assume a single uniform block of vertically aligned text. 6 : SINGLE_BLOCK -Assume a single uniform block of text. -Assume a single uniform block of text. 7 : SINGLE_LINE -Treat the image as a single text line. -Treat the image as a single text line. 8 : SINGLE_WORD -Treat the image as a single word. -Treat the image as a single word. 9 : CIRCLE_WORD -Treat the image as a single word in a circle. -Treat the image as a single word in a circle. 10 : SINGLE_CHAR -Treat the image as a single character. -Treat the image as a single character. 11 : SPARSE_TEXT -Find as much text as possible in no particular order. -Find as much text as possible in no particular order. 12 : SPARSE_TEXT_OSD -Sparse text with orientation and script detection -Sparse text with orientation and script detection 13 : RAW_LINE -Treat the image as a single text line, bypassing hacks that are Tesseract-specific. You can specify it in the code as follows: with PyTessBaseAPI(path='C:path/to/tessdata/.', psm=PSM.OSD_ONLY) as api: If you have issues detecting the text, try to improve the image or play around with the PSM values. Next up, I will share some interesting results I obtained. 5. Results Here are the results from my experiment running tesserocr. Chinese emoticons (表情包) The images is the input file used while the caption is the results. 是 的 没 错 你 巳 经 超 过 1 尘 没 理 你 的 小 宝 宝 了 后 退 , 我 要 开 始 装 逼 了 The result is pretty good when the text are in one line. Also note that the emoticons have black text against white background. I did try white text overlaid on a scene from an animation (a colored scene, without any image pre-processing). The results were quite bad. English digital text The images is the input file and the caption is the category. Results are shown after the image. Receipt THE SUNCADIA RESORT TC GOLF HOUSE 1103 CLAIRE 7 1/5 1275 1 68E.1 SARK JUNOS' 11 10: 16AH 35 HEINEKEN 157.50 35 COORS LT 175.00 12 GREY GOCSE 120.00 7 BUD LIGHT 35.00 7 BAJA CHICKEN 84.00 2 RANCHER 24.00 1 CLASSIC 8.00 1 SALMON BLT 13.00 Y DRIVER 12,00 6 CORONA 36.00 2 7-UP 4.50 Subtotal 669.00 Tax 53.52 3:36 Asnt Due $722 .52 FOR HOTEL GUEST ROOM CHARGE ONLY Gratuity E-book ABOUT ESSENTIALS OF LINGUISTICS This Open Educational Resource (OER) brings together Open Access content from around the web and enhances it with dynamic video lectures about the core areas of theoretical linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), supplemented with discussion of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic findings. Essentials of Linguisticsis suitable for any beginning learner of linguistics but is primarily aimed at the Canadian learner, focusing on Canadian English for learning phonetic transcription, and discussing the status of Indigenous languages in Canada. Drawing on best practices for instructional design, Essentials of Linguistics is suitable for blended classes, traditional lecture classes, and for self-directed learning. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required. TO THE STUDENT Your instructor might assign some parts or all of this OER to support your learning, or youmay choose to use it to teach yourself introductory linguistics. You might decide to read the textbook straight through and watch the videos in order, or you might select specific topics that are of particular interest to you. However you use the OER, we recommend that you begin with Chapter 1, which provides fundamentals for the rest of the topics. You will also find that if you complete the quizzes and attempt the exercises, you'll achieve a better understanding of the material in each chapter. Abstract of a scientific paper Abstract Natural language processing tasks, such as ques- tion answering, machine translation, reading com- prehension, and summarization, are typically approached with supervised learning on task- specific datasets. We demonstrate that language models begin to learn these tasks without any ex- plicit supervision when trained on a new dataset of millions of webpages called WebText. When conditioned on a document plus questions, the an- swers generated by the language model reach 55 F1 on the CoQA dataset - matching or exceeding the performance of 3 out of 4 baseline systems without using the 127,000+ training examples. The capacity of the language model is essential to the success of zero-shot task transfer and in- creasing it improves performance in a log-linear Code snippet Generally results are excellent, except for some issues with formatting, spaces and line breaks. 6. Conclusion This is the end of our tutorial on usingtesserocr to recognize digital words in images. Although the results are promising, it’s a lot of work to create a pipeline for an actual use case. This includes image pre-processing, as well as text post-processing. For example, to automate the auto-filling of an identity card for registration, or a receipt paper for compensation filling, there is a simple application or web service that accepts an image input. First, the application needs to crop the image and convert it into a black and white image. Then, it will pass the modified image for character recognition via tesserocr. The output text will be further processed to identify the necessary data and saved to the database. A simple feedback will be forwarded to the users, indicating that the process has been completed successfully. Regardless of the work involved now, this technology is here to stay. Whoever is willing to spend time and resources deploying it will benefit from it. Where there is a will, there is a way! Reference

https://medium.com/better-programming/beginners-guide-to-tesseract-ocr-using-python-10ecbb426c3d

['Ng Wai Foong']

2020-11-09 05:29:05.051000+00:00

['Tesseract', 'Image Processing', 'Ocr', 'Python']

Medium Writer Resources

Medium Review | Blogging Guide Medium is one of the better known free blogging platforms. The site features amateur writers alongside well known…

https://caseybotticello.medium.com/medium-writer-resources-3df1f8540a05

['Casey Botticello']

2020-11-01 20:45:34.992000+00:00

['Medium', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Social Media', 'Medium Partner Program', 'Writing']

How to Stay Flexible in Life and Business

In improv there is no script. When starting and building a company and in life there is no script. Don’t write the script ahead of time in an improv show, in building new products or a new company, or in life. If you write the script ahead of time going into an improv performance, well, it’s not going to work. Because in improv there are other people involved. You have your scene partners, who have their own ideas and ways of seeing the improv scenes. You have the audience, who will react to your show based on what they think is funny, horrifying, entertaining, and worthy of applause and laughter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have ideas and characters and premises in mind, but ultimately, be willing to let them go and be present, because once you’re in the scene, if you’re not taking in information happening outside of your head, well, your scene is going to suck. In business, if you make the plan ahead of time, i.e. write the script ahead of time, and are too inflexible with that plan, well, you’re going to struggle. All companies are created from nothing and there’s so much we learn along the way that we can’t always predict and plan for when we’re putting together an initial plan. Take it from me — I started a gelato business when I was 14 years old. Before getting started my dad asked me to write a business plan, so I did. If I stuck to that initial plan the business would still look like this… Photo Credit: Thanks, Mom! Despite still having a youthful glow (thank you, thank you) I’ve learned and grown a lot since age 14. I no longer use Proactiv or wear Limited Too. Except for one pair of shorts that still fit and are reversible. Don’t judge me. I also learned a lot about business, from doing business, getting more experience, and from business school. It’d be quite a shame to not use customer feedback, lessons learned, and new ideas to improve my business. All to say — it’s important to let go of the plan. Let go of the script. If you have ideas in place and put together a plan, great. Just be prepared to be nimble and flexible as you learn more. In improv, we practice divergent thinking, a thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. There an infinite number of directions a scene can go. We practice using “yes, and” to generate and build ideas together, and at any time our scene partner can add something to a scene that we didn’t see coming and couldn’t plan for. At that point we choose to say “yes” to this new idea “and” build on that idea. We’re generating lots of ideas, and nimble to move to each new idea like a smooth sailing bird flying between clouds. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in plans and goals. If you saw my calendar and my journals you’d see lots of plans and goal setting. It is important to have a vision and a plan to get there. The point is not to throw away having a vision and plan in mind. The point is to have flexibility in thinking about how to achieve that vision. There are many ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes (note: I don’t condone skinning cats. It’s an expression.) First, know what your goal is. Know that you want to skin a cat (again, expression). Then, generate ideas for the many ways to accomplish that goal. Come up with 100 ideas to find 1 that you want to pursue. Then, start to do that idea and pay attention to whether it’s working or not. Is it getting you closer to accomplishing your goal? If it is, great, keep doing it. If it’s not, let it go and go back to your many generated ideas, or generate new ideas, to come up with a new idea you can try for accomplishing your goal. As a leader, practice divergent thinking, coming up with lots of ideas, and not getting too attached to any single idea, in case you get new information that inspires adjusting your initial idea. Don’t get too attached or committed to any single idea and drive that idea forward as if there are no other ideas at all. Stubbornness with the ability to let go is a great combination of skills to have as an entrepreneur. The ability to make a strong choice, make a plan, and work towards that plan, and then being able to let go of the specifics for achieving that plan. Those may change. Like Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of this little website you may have heard of called “Amazon”, once said “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily.” Don’t give up on the vision. Be willing to give up your exact plans for accomplishing that vision. As a business leader, here’s how you can practice this, Define your goal. Write down your vision. What does success look like? Then, work backwards. Generate ideas for how to achieve that goal. Rinse and repeat. Do this for every goal and vision you have. Practice generating and pursuing ideas. Have lots and lots of ideas every day! Like shooting free throws, generating ideas is a practice. Each day, brainstorm a list of 10 ideas. Don’t worry about if they’re good or bad or related to your business in any way. The purpose of this is to get the idea generating muscle flowing. Not to come up with the single best idea ever. Like the great Kendrick Lamar once said, “Be nimble.” Wait. Shoot. He said, “Be humble.” You know. Both are important. Be both. ❤ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Improv4 uses improv comedy techniques to train leadership, team effectiveness, and communication skills to individuals, teams, companies. Learn more at www.improv4.com

https://medium.com/improv4/how-to-stay-flexible-in-life-and-business-bd3f112a2f0a

['Mary Elisabeth']

2019-02-05 21:40:53.155000+00:00

['Improv', 'Leadership', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Life']

Building Sustainable Circular Economy With Blockchain

Source: Circular Economy via Shutterstock Since the industrial revolution began, the world has focused on the production and consumption of products. Little or no attention is paid to where the materials are sourced from, the conditions in which the products are manufactured, and how they are finally disposed of. However, the toxic effects that the current processes are having on the environment, coupled with the rapid depletion of natural resources, have necessitated everyone to switch to a sustainable and environment-friendly circular economy. But, what are the hurdles in shifting to a completely different paradigm? Can technologies such as Blockchain address these challenges? Why Is Circular Economy the Need of the Hour? Source: Linear vs. Circular Economy via Shutterstock What Are the Challenges With the Current Linear Economy? Today’s linear economy adopts a take-Make-Dispose model of resource consumption. Raw materials are either extracted (metals and minerals) or harvested (agricultural products). They are then procured and used in manufacturing other products. These finished products are then purchased by consumers who dispose of them at the end of the product life. These products are eventually found in some landfills or are incinerated. Some of these materials are even toxic, and releasing them back to the biosphere has a dire impact on climate. Such linear systems result in the depletion of those natural resources used as raw materials. This depletion results in high prices and supply disruptions of these resources. All these factors have added a sense of urgency to finding alternate models and have prompted businesses to explore ways to recycle and reuse products and conserve precious natural resources. How Does the Circular Economy Address These Challenges? Circular economy creates a closed-loop ecosystem that extends the current take and make model. It adds processes such as repossess, reprocess, resell, and reuse, repeated multiple times before the materials are disposed of. This model emphasizes the use of renewable energy and reduced consumption of toxic chemicals. It also focuses on improving the design of products and systems. Additionally, businesses are also working on responsible waste management and industrial waste minimization. Today, an increasing number of businesses are transitioning to the sustainable, circular economy model. Ricoh was one of the pioneers in this space when they started their recycled copiers and printers GreenLine series back in 1997. Today, this model has extended to other industries such as textiles, electronics, tires, and automobiles. Circular economy is a trillion-dollar opportunity with the potential for innovation, job creation, and economic growth. This economy opens up new business opportunities that are also beneficial to the environment and the society. was able to reduce 80% of energy, 88% of water, 77% of waste, and a substantial amount of capital expenditure by transitioning to the green model. As per the Automotive Parts Remanufacturers Association (APRA), thousands of companies in the remanufacturing sector have created over 500,000 jobs in the US alone. What Are the Essential Requirements for the Success of the Circular Economy? Source: Circular Economy Via Ellen MacArthur Foundation Innovative Product and System Design Designing products that are durable and eliminating those that are not is vital for a sustainable economy. The consumables in the circular economy have to use non-toxic materials. Additionally, the energy required to fuel this cycle should be renewable by nature to reduce the attrition of the fossil fuels and increase system resilience. Materials Management and Provenance In its lifetime, a particular material changes its shape ever too often — from raw material, it becomes a component of a finished product. In the circular economy, the finished products of the forward chain get recycled into another product in the reverse chain. For instance, cotton clothing is transformed first as another apparel, then moved to the furniture industry as fiber-fill, and later reused in stone wool insulation in construction. Material management is a very involved process. First, the movement of materials spans across multiple industries and geographies. Second, not all materials have the same recycling values. Materials such as glass and paper have a high collection rate but also higher quality loss. On the other hand, polymers have lower collection rates and lack a systematic reuse solution. Third, the corresponding supply chains are highly fragmented. Finally, the products are recycled multiple times. For the success of the sustainable ecosystem, it is essential to establish an irrefutable chain of custody of the material throughout its journey from being a raw material to a finished good and a recycled product till its responsible disposal. Manage Complex Supply Chains The global value chains include several entities such as suppliers, logistics companies, governments, regulators, and consumers. The supply chain network will need a strong collaboration with the incumbent value chain partners and the auxiliary chain partners such as waste management. Companies have so far focused on the inbound supply chain, orchestrating the complex supply chain networks involving procuring the raw materials from suppliers and manufacturing the products. Now, they need to extend this focus to involving several reverse cycle partners. Hence, a credible, transparent, traceable, and secure information reverse supply chain and manage the post-usage value chain exchange system is essential for a circular economy. Create New Business Model and Markets In order to streamline the circular economy, it is necessary to foster new business models such as a sharing economy. In the sharing model, end consumers lease products instead of buying them. It leaves the ownership of the products with the manufacturers and retailers, making the reclaiming and recycling of these products at the end of their life more streamlined. Similarly, if the circular economy has to be made mainstream, it is vital to establish trustworthy secondary markets for the recycled products. Assuring the quality and provenance of the secondary products is crucial for the success of the secondary markets. Encouraging Companies and Consumers to Go Green Rewards are a constructive means to foster good behavior. Tax benefits and discounts to the businesses and consumers when they produce and use sustainable materials or when they repurpose and recycle products will spur them to adopt this environment-friendly mindset. How Blockchain Bolsters the Circular Economy? Tracing Materials in the Complex Forward and Reverse Value Chains Blockchain presents a viable solution to track the flow of the products in both forward and reverse value chains. Blockchain provides a reliable trace of the material flow in the multi-tier supply chain networks. Along with IoT, Blockchain can also give accurate information regarding the product condition, its location, its quality, and all the processing the material has undergone. Product Provenance The immutable nature of Blockchain gives assurance to the consumers about the authenticity of the product information they get from Blockchain. The technology also adds enhanced transparency about the origins of the product — how and where they are sourced. This increased scrutiny will steer the companies to change what and how they procure. It will drive ethical sourcing and fair employment. All these features help customers make informed decisions, thus enabling them to buy sustainable products and services. Incentivization Rewards for adopting eco-friendly practices will help drive the circular economy. Companies can issue digital tokens that are supported by Blockchain to their customers when they buy recycled products or responsibly return the end-of-life products. Similarly, the technology can be used to create and manage energy credits that the businesses earn for going green. Decentralized Marketplace There are several advantages of using a Blockchain-powered platform for materials and energy marketplaces. First, Blockchain upholds trust among the consumers of recycled products. The customers get accurate and authentic information about the goods they are buying. Second, the buyers and sellers can connect without any intermediaries, thereby reducing the transaction costs. Finally, decentralized energy markets can leverage Blockchain to issue unique digital identities to the natural resources in the form of tokens. Furthermore, people can sell, buy, and trade these tokens, thereby creating an open market for the energy they generate using renewable sources. Tracking Energy Consumption Regulators can track energy consumption and carbon emissions using Blockchain. They can then use this information to monitor whether the businesses and consumers are compliant with environmental goals. Smart Contracts to Encourage Recycling Smart contracts generally reflect the agreement between multiple parties. They initiate actions based on certain predefined conditions. They can play a vital role in accelerating the adoption of the sustainable circular ecosystem. First, smart contracts can automatically trigger payments to the consumers returning the products, based on the condition and quantity of the material. With automatically executing smart contracts, the consumers are better guaranteed of the incentives, thereby encouraging them to adopt a recycle and reuse mindset. Second, using smart contracts to calculate the incentives based on the type of products can foster a holistic recycling approach. For instance, companies can use smart contracts to award higher incentives when consumers return materials that they far more frequently discard than others. A Precompetitive Environment Fostering Collaboration Blockchain provides a trustworthy platform where all participants, including competitors, can collaborate. When all the members of the ecosystem can make joint decisions, conflicts and challenges are significantly reduced. The circular economy offers several benefits for both businesses and end consumers. It reduces costs, adds new jobs, and improves the existing processes. Blockchain technology can significantly contribute to creating a collaborative, trustworthy, and secure platform for building this sustainable ecosystem.

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/building-sustainable-circular-economy-with-blockchain-fba93775a040

['Deepa Ramachandra']

2020-11-17 16:09:16.596000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Supply Chain', 'Sustainability', 'Environment', 'Esg']

Passion as a Privilege

Profiles of Passionates We hear, from antiquity to the modern day, stories of people raising their kids to learn the family trade. By the time they reach adulthood, these children are skilled in the field, learning almost from birth how to navigate the field and build the necessary skills to succeed. Though the world has mostly changed, this is still alive and kicking in some regards. A doctor is generally in an excellent position to explain to someone how they became a doctor, the mistakes they made, and how they overcame them. As such, their child is in a prime position to enter the medical training system, as they have a guide for the entire journey. Jean was a seemingly happy-go-lucky Frenchman, a fellow student in my degree programme. He always seemed so excited, so engaged. Whatever you were working on, he loved to know, and would always find an angle of discussion, even if he had no direct experience in the area. One day, he showed me a photo on his phone. A family friend had printed off the title, author list and abstract of his first scientific publication, and put it into a frame next to the title, author list, and abstract of his father’s first publication from 20 years before. Then it made more sense. His father turned out to be an overly sociable academic, and growing up, there were always academics from some field or other hanging out in his parents’ house. He was surrounded by the energy that would impassion him and boost him upwards. Molly was an incredible musician. From a young age, she was a multi-instrumental prodigy. Learning musical instruments is good for the mind, and is found to improve learning in other parts of one’s life. This was clear from how she went from never having driven to passing her driving test in the space of a month and a half during a study period before exams and just before trying out for the national orchestra. She went on to study at one of the world’s best conservatories. Her parents were both trained musicians too. I heard fairly regularly about how her parents gave her new ways to overcome struggling to learn new instruments or more complex techniques. They helped her build her passionate livelihood. They also had the financial means and the priority to bolster her passion. Then there was Daniel. He’d grown up in the rural outskirts of a large city in the US Midwest. His parents were, in his own words, “loving rednecks”. I met them once. They seemed like kind people, but with little awareness of the greater world. However, he could get on his bike, and during his summers while in high school, he’d cycle to the nearby university, where he’d do research. This eventually netted him a summer studentship and later a place in the PhD programme at one of the best universities in the world. While his parents weren’t passionate people, he had easy access to people who were and facilities to help him pursue his passion. So what do these people have in common? They have easy access to Passionates; either in their home or not far from it, guiding them to build their passion, skills and knowledge in a healthy, manageable, and efficient way.

https://medium.com/swlh/passion-as-a-privilege-4ec8ceedc5c8

['Will Bowers']

2019-05-15 12:38:55.205000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Education', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'Academia']

You don’t know what you don’t know… until you know: The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect on full display in Clueless (1995). While doing research for my thesis, I came across an article entitled The Dunning-Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance. With a title like that, I felt compelled — not just out of boredom — to set aside the battered pages of my research and read the article. One month later, my friend texted me, describing someone as “clueless” and followed up with, “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” Later, a LinkedIn connection introduced himself and his blog and had written a recent post on the same topic. His therapist’s perspective on the issue was an interesting one. My first introduction to the topic of ignorance of one’s ignorance came by way of my own blog project called The Ardent Reader. I read and reviewed a book called The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life by Steve Leveen. One of my key takeaways was as follows: “[The book] begins with one simple lesson: the more ‘well-read’ you are, the more you will understand how little you actually know — and will be able to know — during the course of your life. Throughout the past year, I’ve been overwhelmingly disturbed by the fact that the less I knew, the smarter I thought I was. Hence the reason why everyone should make reading a priority.” Got the old noggin joggin’ yet? The less I knew, the smarter I thought I was. The more I read, the more I realized how much I didn’t know. Stay with me as I try to explain this, because it seems to go in circles. Ignorance — the word in its strictest definition — is a lack of knowledge or information. The Dunning-Kruger Effect deals with being ignorant of your own ignorance. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we aren’t aware that we don’t know it. As a result, we live our lives in a kind of bubble based on our limited awareness. Some people recognize their own ignorance and seek to become better informed. Other people never realize the extent of their own ignorance and go through life thinking they’re freaking great. They’re overconfident. This is the essence of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. David Dunning and Justin Kruger collaborated to name and study this effect. Here’s an excerpt from an article from Dunning (2011), published in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology: “In essence, we proposed that when it came to judgments of performance based on knowledge, poor performers would face a double burden. First, deficits in their expertise would lead them to make many mistakes. Second, those exact same deficits would lead them to be unable to recognize when they were making mistakes and when other people were choosing more wisely. As a consequence, because poor performers were choosing the responses that they thought were the most reasonable, this would lead them to think they were doing quite well when they were doing anything but.” Right now, you may be thinking of someone who could have made an excellent subject for this study. Or maybe you’re thinking, “Oh my GOD. Could that be me?” Sometimes we recognize Dunning-Kruger in others. We roll our eyes and whisper, “She’s in her own world.” Or, “He suffers from a lack of perspective.” But can we recognize it in ourselves? Good news: To a certain degree, we can, and we do. But only through acquired knowledge and experience. My personal prescription includes reading, writing, formal and informal education, doing grunt work (waiting tables, for example), and seeking other perspectives. And if you really want to gain new perspectives, do something that makes you uncomfortable. (For me it’s being dirty and camping in a tent.) Dunning wrote: “We have shown that once poor performers are educated out of their incompetence, they show ample ability and willingness to recognize the errors of their past ways. Evidence already suggests people who are more educated (which we can take as a proxy for literacy) are better able to separate what they know from what they do not.” Here’s a made up scenario: You ask me what I think of lightning rods. I am educated enough to know I know nothing about lightning rods. I say, “I don’t know anything about lightning rods.” Now we have a starting point for a conversation, in which you tell me what you know about lightning rods. And I might learn something. But if I shrugged and said, “Of course!” you might simply change the topic — and perhaps even write me off as a smug jerk. Life is full of paradoxes, and this is just another one: When we recognize our lack of knowledge, we see where we need to fill in the gaps. And then our education can begin.

https://estherhofknechtcurtis.medium.com/you-dont-what-you-don-t-know-until-you-know-the-dunning-kruger-effect-c32a4708263e

['Esther Hofknecht Curtis']

2019-07-14 20:49:15.712000+00:00

['Self-awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Dunning Kruger', 'Education', 'Psychology']

Want to Write More Words Each Day? Streamline Your Decision Making

Want to Write More Words Each Day? Streamline Your Decision Making The magic of planning ahead and helping your future self Photo by Burst on Unsplash Before I was a full time writer, I had to scrape words out of tiny minutes throughout my day. I was lucky if I wrote one thousand words before I left for work or even after I got home… combined. I understand the frustration of seeing writers who can churn out 5K or more words a day with little to no effort, some of which still balance their lives and families on top of other work obligations. In my early time of writing, I was working full time, traveling constantly as a softball coach, and a full time graduate student. I barely had time to breathe, let alone cultivate my newest passion. I envied all the writers who could produce one, two, three, or more articles every day. I could barely get a chapter done on a book that I absolutely loved. But the more I learned the skill of writing, the more I discovered that it wasn’t about having a million ideas running through your brain at once. It wasn’t about how fast you could type or how many minutes you could steal back while you were running to the bathroom or between homework assignments. The secret to producing more words was streamlining the decision making process. You see, when I sat down to write, I hadn’t actually thought about what I would write. Sure, thoughts ran through my head during the day, but I never had a concrete plan about what I would work on when I sat down to write. I would open my document and then decide what I would write. I left all of my decision making for the first twenty minutes of my writing session. By the time I got started, I’d barely have forty minutes to write what I had finally decided on, and that’s if I was lucky. I wasted all of my time trying to figure out what to write rather than actually writing. So, I started streamlining my decision making process. Instead of sitting down for the first twenty minutes to choose where my story was going to go, I used the last few minutes to decide where I’d pick up. My stolen minutes throughout the day became planning minutes, so when I could finally sit down and write, all I had to do was write. I started to write for an hour, uninterrupted, and learned how much more I could produce in that short time frame. Then, I started to plan in more detail the things I would write and found that my production increased yet again. I cut out all of my in-the-moment decisions and started writing more words. But it didn’t stop there. I discovered that so much of my time during the day, even outside of writing, was wasted on decision making. So, I started streamlining those decisions as well. I minimized my breakfast choices and cut out five or more minutes of prep time. I started meal prepping, using an hour or so over the weekend to cut out all prep time for the entire week ahead. I set out my workout clothes and work clothes before I went to bed and found an extra ten minutes in my day. Those moments didn’t feel like much, but over time, they added up. I started discovering entire hours during my day that I could use for writing by minimizing the wasted space in my day. I deleted social media apps and instead put the Google Docs app front and center so instead of deciding which social to scroll, I scrolled my book. Instead of an hour during my day, I found three free ones to write during. I started to get up earlier, write for a while, go to work, and come home and write again. When I was finally able to write full time, I transitioned those decisions into my day. I have such a streamlined process that I am able to sit down at my desk at or before 9AM every morning, write until lunch, and then use the rest of the afternoon to filter out ideas and prepare myself for the next writing session. You don’t have to write the same number of words as me, or anyone else, because we all have different circumstances. You can, however, write more words relative to your own typical productivity by eliminating wasted space. Prepare yourself, streamline decisions, and discover that empty time to dedicate to writing. More time saved means more time spent in front of your document.

https://medium.com/the-winter-writer/want-to-write-more-words-each-day-streamline-your-decision-making-59ce3015a2e0

['Laura Winter']

2020-09-09 10:36:00.928000+00:00

['Decision Making', 'Writing', 'Productivity', 'Writing Tips', 'Organization']

Set Up TSLint and Prettier in VS Code for React App with Typescript

First, install the following VS Code extensions: Prettier — Code formatter. VS Code package to format your JavaScript / TypeScript / CSS using Prettier. TSLint. Adds tslint to VS Code using the TypeScript TSLint language service plugin. After you have installed this plugin you need to enable it in tsconfig.json: { “compilerOptions”: { …, “plugins”: [{“name”: “typescript-tslint-plugin”}] }, … } In case, you might want to format your code using the Prettier extension after saving a file, you will need to configure VS Code Workspace Settings. You can quickly get there through the Command Palette… (cmd + shift + P, by default on MacOs) and type “>settings”: Choose the first option from the above, Preferences: Open Settings (JSON), and add the following rule to the settings.json: “editor.formatOnSave”: true If you open the workspace settings, you will see that the rule is reflected immediately after you save the changes to your settings.json file like so: Add Prettier to your project Prettier is a fully automatic “style guide” worth adopting. “When you’re a beginner you’re making a lot of mistakes caused by the syntax. Thanks to Prettier, you can reduce these mistakes and save a lot of time to focus on what really matters.” npm install prettier --save-dev Specify the formatting rules you want in a .prettierrc file, which you create at the root level of your project, same as package.json: { "printWidth": 80, "tabWidth": 2, "singleQuote": true, "trailingComma": "es5", "semi": true, "newline-before-return": true, "no-duplicate-variable": [true, "check-parameters"], "no-var-keyword": true } Add TSLint dependencies to your React project npm i --save-dev tslint tslint-react TSLint will be deprecated some time in 2019. See this issue for more details: Roadmap: TSLint → ESLint. So, in case if you are interested in migrating from tslint-react . Lint rules related to React & JSX for TSLint. Adding Linter Configuration Now, let’s configure our linter, TSLint, by adding a file called tslint.json at the root level (same as package.json ) of your project. Below follows the configuration that I am currently using in my CRA project. Feel free to copy and adjust the “rules” (on line 9) according to the needs of your project. Adding TypeScript-specific configuration Another file that you have in your CRA-based project is tsconfig.json , which contains TypeScript-specific options for your project. Also, there are tsconfig.prod.json and a tsconfig.test.json in case you want to make any tweaks to your production or test builds. Add the rest of the dependencies To make Prettier compatible with TSLint, install the tslint-config-prettier rule preset: npm i --save-dev tslint-config-prettier Usage Now, to actually lint your .ts and .tsx files, run tslint -c tslint.json 'src/**/*.{ts,tsx}' command in your terminal. Additional plugins In case you want to add tslint-plugin-prettier to your project, and it will run Prettier as a TSLint rule and report differences as individual TSLint issues. npm i --save-dev tslint-plugin-prettier You will then have to add few lines to the TSLint configuration file tslint.json like below: { "extends": [ "tslint:recommended", "tslint-react", "tslint-config-prettier" ], "rulesDirectory": [ "tslint-plugin-prettier" ], "rules": { "prettier": true, "interface-name": false } } However, I did not try using it in my own project, so this is just additional info. Finally I created the following script in my package.json , and named it lint:ts . You can name it whatever you want. "scripts": { "lint:ts": "tslint 'src/**/*.{ts,tsx,js}'", }, By adding this configuration you can now run linting on your project files in terminal like so: ➜ my-app git:(feature/new-feature) ✗ npm run lint:ts Running this command and fixing errors (if any) before pushing your code to the repo will help you avoiding failed Jenkins builds. 👌 🎊

https://0n3z3r0n3.medium.com/set-up-tslint-and-prettier-in-vs-code-for-react-app-with-typescript-5b7f5895ce37

[]

2019-08-15 19:50:20.976000+00:00

['Typescript', 'React', 'Vscode', 'Linter', 'Tslint']

Why Assemblage Had To Remove Its Submission Requirements

Why Assemblage Had To Remove Its Submission Requirements How To Get Better, Not Bigger Photo by Enrico Mantegazza on Unsplash Once upon a time, it made sense to have well thought out submission requirements that writers would read before making a decision on whether or not to apply to be a writer to a publication on Medium. Then the tide shifted and a deluge of “writers” descended on these screens like ants to an errant apple. And here we are. As of today, October 2, 2020, Assemblage is removing its submission requirements from all of its publications. No, that does not mean it is now open for anyone to apply. Exactly the opposite. Submissions are closed indefinitely. Because this is what it has come to. Widespread plagiarism, disastrous creative “coaching”, and the overwhelming entitlement of the Internet writer have all led to this. When you spend half of your publishing time each day reviewing submissions from “writers” who didn’t read the guidelines, tout their favorite Medium writer as themselves, or say they are applying to grow their audience first, you get a little tired. Not to mention that the more you uphold journalistic and creative standards as a bastion for your publication, the more sour “writers” bemoan the fact that you are restrictive and elitist. The amount of email flagellation that goes on because of the word no is beyond comprehension. Even writers who make it to the party often fall under the spell of creative egoism and fail to see the forest for the trees. If The New York Times can say that they won’t publish work by a freelancer who also publishes for The New York Post than why can’t Assemblage say that it won’t add writers who choose to write for Illumination, Illumination-Curated, The Innovation, Never Fear, or An Idea? (and Be Unique — added October 30, 2020, and now Paper Poetry — added November 15, 2020) The new-fangled, self-indoctrinated “writer” believes that a publication owned by one person, run by one person, with all the work done by one person should kowtow to every Tom, Dick, and Sally that wants to write everywhere and anywhere, no matter how high the pyramid, but also still wants to write here. Sorry. I thought by exposing the most disingenuous Medium strategies that it would curtail the ragtag submissions and spam sham follow-for-follow flavor hounds hellbent on hedonism, but I was wrong. Again. It’s a runaway train of glad-handing and fakeness and ego massage that will never leave internet writing. This is what it has become. But fortunately, at Assemblage, we don’t have to be or want to be what it has become. We’ve always fought against it since back in the days of Redoubtable and Uncalendared. And now we will continue to fight to make sure we are always getting better, not bigger.

https://medium.com/assemblage/why-assemblage-had-to-remove-its-submission-requirements-57f75077459c

['Jonathan Greene']

2020-11-15 14:47:54.122000+00:00

['Writing', 'Creativity', 'Standards', 'Integrity', 'Publication']

10 Best Coursera Certifications and Courses for AWS, GCP, and Azure in 2021

10 Best Coursera Certifications and Courses for AWS, GCP, and Azure in 2021 These are the best Coursera Courses for AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Cloud Computing Hello guys, if you are keen to learn Cloud Computing and essential Cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and looking for the best Coursera certifications, courses, specializations, and projects then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared the best Coursera courses and certifications to learn Artificial Intelligence, Python, Software Development, and Web Development, and, today I am going to share the best Coursera courses for Cloud computing skill like AWS, GCP, and Azure from reputed universities like Illionis and tech companies like Amazon, Google Cloud, etc. Cloud Computing is an in-demand skill for programmers, Software Developers, and any IT professionals including support engineers, sysadmins, and even QA and business analysts. In the last few years, more and more companies have moved to the cloud and most of the technical development happening there, hence Cloud computing has become an essential skill to service the tech world. If you are wan to become a Cloud developer or administrator or just want to know about Cloud computing then you have come to the right place. In the past, I have shared the best AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure online courses, and today, I will share the best Coursera courses to learn Cloud Computing with AWS and Google Cloud Platform. Coursera is one of the most popular online learning websites which allows you to learn from top universities of the world and top-class IT companies. The courses in this list are created by companies like IBM, Google, and Amazon itself. This means you will be learning from the most authoritative sources. Cloud computing is one of the big industries that have millions of users and attract investors from anywhere in the world and generate an unbelievable amount of revenue compared to the other services or industries in the IT area since all the organization needs to host their websites and services to engage and connect with their customers. The certification can make the difference between getting hired by your employees and have a professional career or stay away from the competition so for that, many platforms come to the real-world and offer some online courses for many industries and Cloud computing is one of them. Today you will see in this article several cloud computing courses from Coursera with the ability to get certified after completing their classes and covers many cloud services such as Amazon AWS and Google cloud. 10 Best Coursera Courses to learn Cloud Computing, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform Here is the list of the best Coursera courses, certifications, specialization, and guided projects you can join in 2021 to learn Cloud Computing with AWS and Google Cloud Platform. These courses have been offered by reputed universities and companies like IBM, Google, and AWS itself. Most of the courses are free for audit which means you can join them for FREE to learn but you need to pay for certifications, quizzes, and assessments. 1. AWS Fundamentals The best specialization to learn Amazon web services offered from amazon itself starting as a beginner such as how the AWS infrastructure builts and works then addressing the security issues and how to secure your applications then learn how to migrate your work to the cloud then introducing you to the AWS serverless applications. Here is the link to join this course —AWS Fundamentals

https://medium.com/javarevisited/10-best-aws-google-cloud-and-azure-courses-and-certification-from-coursera-to-join-in-2021-5c5e2029a8e7

[]

2020-12-14 06:42:12.348000+00:00

['Azure', 'AWS', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Cloud Computing', 'Cloud']

Men’s Vs. Females’ SHAMPOO

But what about men? Are they smarter? Pfttt. Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash MEN’S Shampoos Science has dictated that men and women simply care about different things in their shampoos and that’s okay. Men also have a process for choosing their hair care products and marketing companies are aware of that. Without further ado, here are the things men care about: 1. It Says Shampoo Somewhere on the bottle. Does it work for a specific type of hair? Does it cater to dandruff-ridden scalps? Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it says shampoo. If it doesn’t say shampoo but says shower gel that’s basically the same thing as well. Marketing companies are cleverly taking advantage of this by writing “Shampoo” on their shampoo bottles. And we’re just falling right into their trap. 2. It Cleans Fucking Everything As a man, I like to know that my shampoo can also wash dishes, my car, my clothes as well as my barbecue. It needs to be able to clean everything. Who wants different cleaning products anyway? However — going back to my first point — we don’t read anything on the shampoo bottle as long as it says shampoo (or shower gel which is the same thing). Marketing companies have catered to this by making our shampoos: 6 in 1 We don’t know what the 6 things are. But we assume at a glance that since the shampoo does 6 things, it can probably clear up oil spills as well as being used as paint remover… probably. So as long as it says 6 in 1 or 8 in 1 or whatever, we simply assume that is the alpha shampoo. The one shampoo to rule them all. And we buy the crap out of it. 3. SIZE Size matters to guys. The third most important thing that guys look for in shampoos is the size. And marketing companies are clearly aware of this. What we want in our shampoos is that they come in as many liters/ gallons as possible in one container, so we don’t have to buy one ever again. I bought my last shampoo when I was just in 6th grade. It came in a giant oil can which said 6 in 1 on it. I lugged it around and it dispenses shampoo right under my bathroom sink. All kidding aside, if our shampoo bottles aren’t at least the same size as buckets, we ain’t buying.

https://medium.com/the-haven/mens-vs-females-shampoo-e75d9f115e73

['Sabana Grande']

2020-12-28 17:10:10.229000+00:00

['Health', 'Marketing', 'Humor', 'Satire', 'Life Lessons']

You Hate Multilevel Marketing Because It’s Cringeworthy & Dishonest

The Multilevel Marketing Bible I’ve been around lots of multilevel marketing companies over the years because of my commitment to open-mindedness. I want to be proven wrong. I want to find one MLM company that is honest. I haven’t found one yet, although I’ll keep being the human MLM guinea pig for you (I promise!). This is everything you need to know about MLM. The purpose is to recruit, not sell products This is the biggest problem with MLM. It’s not about selling a product so much. It’s about recruiting members to your team. An MLM company needs lots of fresh victims because the churn rate is high. My friend who got the Ferrari from MLM doesn’t do it anymore. Neither do the others from my high school. (After writing this story I am going to find out why because I never asked.) The mantra with MLM is “if you bring in the people, we will do the brainwashing for you.” When you have a group of people who believe in something, you can do a lot — both good and evil. MLM functions like a cult I shared a story recently of getting sucked into a religious cult a few years back. You want to know the number one occupation of the people who were part of that church? Multilevel marketing. (Nothing against religious folk.) This is not the first time I’ve seen this. It turns out if you believe in a higher power you might believe in MLM. MLM companies actively target churches because they’re complex and highly spreadable social networks. Just like a cult, once you join an MLM company it’s hard to get out. The other members you helped bring in will shame you for doing so. You’ll get person after person telling you that you’re throwing your life away and if you stay for a little bit longer you’ll experience the magic. Hold annual seminars in exotic locations MLM is sold to you as a lifestyle. Part of the lifestyle is hanging by the pool and taking photos of your friend drinking a coconut cocktail. People don’t buy MLM products; they buy the lifestyle the products give them, regardless of whether the products being sold are rubbish. These annual conferences cost money to attend. If you’re a superstar at MLM you might get a free ticket. But the majority of tickets you have to pay a lot of money for. Everything in MLM earns money for the MLM company. You can’t not go to the conference, either, otherwise, your MLM buddies will hound you via SMS daily and hunt you down. Hold lots of events Live events are the lifeblood of MLM. Think of the model like a pyramid. You have the annual conference at the top of the pyramid. You have the country level conference next. You have the state level events after that. You have the regional level events weekly. You have the team member events daily. Not attending an event shows a lack of commitment. The purpose of having so many events is so you continually have the MLM message reinforced into your skull until your eyes bleed and you can’t *not* see it as being the promised land full of rainbow unicorns. Fly in winners (because there are none locally) The bigger events on the pyramid tend to have MLM winners from other parts of the world fly in. The reason is that there are so few people who do well with MLM. I reckon 1% or less ever actually make six figures from MLM. This means if you make it into the 1% by some miracle, then you’re going to be continuously flying to events all year and speaking about your Ferrari life. The number of hours is horrific My friends who have worked in MLM are hard workers. They would typically be pitching and attending events seven days a week. They didn’t have time to start families or get married (unless it was to another MLM person) because they were always finding ways to grow their business. Many people I’ve met along the way lost their normal jobs because they committed so much time to MLM that they had no time to do work of the paying variety using their skills. Replace everyday purchases with MLM products One clever trick with MLM is the products they often sell can be ones you’re already buying like supermarket groceries. This means the sell is easier. You’re not asking people to spend more money or believe in something special. You’re asking them to buy their food or energy drinks or essential oils from a different provider. This works well for the MLM company. If a person fails to master the business of MLM then they can always just be a customer for life and still make them money. Teach others using the potato method Once you’re an MLM goddess you are asked to become a teacher. The strategy they teach you is the potato method. You bring a bag of potatoes to a live event with your team. You show the model and how it works. You talk to one potato. That potato talks to another potato. You follow up with the potato. You pitch the potato again if they don’t believe in your potato philosophy. You leave the potato with some books to read. You invite the potato to the next event. You ask the potato how it feels. You keep discovering the objections from the potato. You bring the potato’s objections in list format to the next potato event with the team. You invite the potato to a potato conference, if all else fails, and let the Ferrari do the selling to the potato. (The potato is a human by the way.) The MLM model for society MLM mimics the model for an ancient society. Those at the very top get 99% of the money. Everybody else is a slave with no chance of reaching the top. This isn’t a philosophy we want to recreate. Products are hyped The results you get from taking the MLM products are hyped. There are huge claims that can’t be backed up. The list of disclaimers is longer than the Bible. Your grandma’s wisdom applies to MLM too: If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Secret coffees that are actually sales pitches The problem with MLM is it’s dishonest. You’re taught to ask people to have coffee with you so you can pitch them. But the victim is never told. The coffee is disguised as something completely random. (The coffee isn’t paid for by the MLM company either. So you could go broke by buying endless free coffees.) Trapping people into product presentations is weird. Mapping out how you can leave your day job on a serviette A bizarre experience I had much later in the journey was when I went to catch up with a friend. Out of nowhere, he hit me with the MLM spiel. I listened to it so I could keep my desire to be open-minded intact. He took out a pen and asked the waiter for a serviette. He then mapped out the exact numbers I’d need to achieve to leave my 9–5 job. It had an average sale price, number of units, risk-adjusted outputs, and timelines. It was a finance dude’s dream. I still have that serviette in my cupboard. It was an unexpected moment, and it’s another bizarre technique taught by MLM. You get paid in cars This part may surprise you. When you hit the big sales numbers in MLM you are paid in cars first. The goal of the MLM company is always to recruit, not to sell products. They know if they give you a luxury car you’re going to take a photo of it and spam it all over social media with the hashtag #BlessedLife Your followers on social media will then start to ask you about your car. This brings in more cold leads you can use the potato method with. If the MLM company gave you cash then there’d be no social proof. Unless you’re Dan Bilzerian, the average person isn’t going to take a photo of a pile of cash they made from MLM. Photos of cash aren’t appealing. But a photo of four wheels and a sunroof is enough to get the average punter’s heart greased and purring.

https://medium.com/better-marketing/you-hate-multilevel-marketing-because-its-cringeworthy-dishonest-a24d9ad043c4

['Tim Denning']

2020-12-22 18:02:09.887000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Social Media', 'Life Lessons']

How to Tell If You Have the Flu, Coronavirus, or Something Else

How to Tell If You Have the Flu, Coronavirus, or Something Else This symptom chart will help you determine which virus ails you Photo: Guido Mieth/DigitalVision/Getty Images Editor’s Note: This article is no longer updated and much has been learned about Covid-19 symptoms. For the latest on the disease, visit Elemental’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus outbreak here. The first sign of a scratchy throat is scientifically known to be accompanied by an “uh-oh” sensation, followed by the ironic hope that it’s “just a cold,” because otherwise it could be the onset of a disabling flu, the looming coronavirus, or some other infectious disease affecting the upper airways. “Because colds and flu share many symptoms, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in fact, the CDC’s own lists of symptoms for the two diseases draw notable distinctions in typical cases. Symptoms of the new coronavirus, Covid-19, can indeed be difficult to distinguish from flu symptoms, but in recent weeks, infectious-disease experts have gotten a clearer picture of telltale signs, particularly fever early on, and which symptoms are rare in most cases but may show up when it becomes most serious. There are distinct differences in the most likely symptoms of various viral infections and how fast they come on. So, how do you know whether to call a doctor immediately or just settle in with a good book and some chicken soup? There are distinct differences in the most likely symptoms of various virus infections and how fast they come on. This chart — and the deeper explanations below on four viruses getting a lot of attention these days — can’t replace a doctor’s diagnosis, but they may help you contemplate what you’re in for. If you have questions or concerns, consult a health care professional, and don’t let an unknown disease fester. Common cold Colds are caused by more than 200 different viruses, including strains of coronavirus and, more commonly, rhinoviruses. While miserable and exceedingly common, a cold is rarely as debilitating as the flu. Frequency Each year, a typical adult will catch two or three colds. Young children can get six or more annually. Common symptoms A gradual progression often starting with a sore throat, leading to sneezing, runny nose, stuffiness, and the annoying postnasal drip (that’s mucus running down your throat, attempting to wash the infection away). Possible complications Colds are much less likely to cause serious complications compared to the flu, but they can lead to ear infections, sinus infections, or, more rarely, bronchitis, pneumonia, or other secondary infections — all of which need medical treatment. Colds can also trigger or exacerbate asthma. How it spreads Through the air from a cough or sneeze, from the hands of an infected person, from hard surfaces, and via close contact with an infected person. Contagious period One to two days before symptoms appear and then until all symptoms are gone, as much as two weeks from the onset. Influenza Despite understandable fears of outbreaks like coronavirus, various strains of the flu — there are 29 different subtypes — cause far more deaths every year than most other viral outbreaks do across several years. Frequency About 8% of the U.S. population comes down with a flu bug every year. On average, it kills 12,000 to 61,000 Americans annually. Common symptoms Quick onset of fever over 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, aching muscles, and chills are the characteristic signs. Possible complications Ear and sinus infections, pneumonia, worsening of chronic medical conditions, and death. As with other viruses, the flu tends to be most problematic for the young, the old, and anyone with a compromised immune system. How it spreads Through the air from a cough or sneeze, from the hands of an infected person, from hard surfaces, and via close contact with an infected person. Cold and flu viruses can survive for 15 to 20 minutes on the skin and several hours on hard surfaces. Contagious period One day before symptoms start, and then for three to seven more days. Norovirus This fast-acting germ, often incorrectly called “stomach flu,” inflames the stomach or intestines and leads to intense but typically short-lived gastrointestinal discomfort. It’s the leading cause of outbreaks of food poisoning in the United States (more common than bacterial outbreaks from salmonella or E. coli). Frequency About 20 million Americans, or 6% of the population, suffer an acute case of norovirus-induced gastroenteritis each year. Common symptoms Unlike cold or flu viruses, norovirus brings on sudden, often severe and frequent vomiting and/or diarrhea. Possible complications Dangerous dehydration. Some 400,000 U.S. norovirus cases annually lead to emergency room visits, with children predominating. Between 570 and 800 patients die—mostly kids, older people, and people with compromised immune systems. How it spreads Most notoriously through human poop and vomit (including airborne puke droplets). A droplet of diarrhea the size of a pinhead can contain enough norovirus particles to make someone else sick. The disease is often transmitted by food harvested in contaminated water, or it’s passed along at a restaurant or at home by an infected person preparing food served raw or touching food after it’s cooked. Contagious period Before symptoms start and up to two weeks after recovery. Covid-19 coronavirus Symptoms of Covid-19 caused by the coronavirus, are difficult to distinguish from influenza, health experts say, and can range from mild and even almost unnoticed for some people to severe and deadly for others. (Scientists can’t yet explain why, but such varied reactions also occur with other viral diseases.) Frequency That remains to be determined through the lens of history, but cases are mounting in the U.S. and around the globe. [See the latest updates in Elemental’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus here.] Most common symptoms Fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Fever early on is a distinguishing symptom. Dry coughs follow in cases that become moderate or severe. Shortness of breath is a telltale and dangerous development distinguishing COVID-19 from influenza or a cold. But other people, including some children, have been diagnosed with the disease only after mild cold- or flu-like symptoms. Still others are infected and infectious while showing no symptoms. And recently, doctors say a significant number of people with COVID-19 have lost their sense of smell, though it hasn’t been studied yet to determine for sure if this is a symptom of COVID-19 or related to some other condition. Possible severe complications Pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, death. How it spreads Through the air from a cough or sneeze, from hard surfaces, and via close contact with an infected person (within six feet, the CDC says). Also, possibly in human feces, according to a study published February 17 in the journal Emerging Microbes and Infections, plus one other previous study and another one announced since. Researchers have said that the spread through poop and the potential for the disease to cause diarrhea could be a rapid transmission factor, but most evidence suggests this is not a primary means. Contagious period Possibly before symptoms start, but mostly when symptoms are present. (The specifics are not yet known to science.) Emerging view of coronavirus symptoms Because the Covid-19 coronavirus emerged only in December, the CDC has yet to firmly state the likelihood of the various symptoms beyond the three most common. “We do not have any more specifics at this time, because there has been a range of possible symptoms for people with Covid-19,” CDC spokesperson Richard Quartarone tells Elemental. However, researchers recently studied 138 people with advanced cases of the virus who had been hospitalized with pneumonia after being infected with Covid-19 in Wuhan, China. The research, published February 7 in JAMA, revealed preliminary data showing the percentage of patients with these symptoms: Fever: 98.6% Fatigue: 69.6% Cough: 59.4% Aches: 34.8% Difficulty breathing: 31.2% Nausea: 10.1% Diarrhea: 10.1% Headache: 6.5% Vomiting: 3.6% But these were patients with severe symptoms, and nearly half of them had preexisting medical conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, so the figures may not represent how the disease typically manifests in healthy individuals. In other research recently published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 81% of 44,672 coronavirus cases were mild, including some in which symptoms were like a minor flu and others that were like a minor cold. The fatality rate for COVID-19 is not known for sure, but data from cases in Italy, published on March 17 by the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds death rates ranging from 0.3% in people age 30–90 to 3.5% in the 60–69 set and 19.7% and higher for people 80 and older. (Seasonal flu typically kills about 0.1% of all people infected.) Serious symptoms A big caveat to all symptom spotting: No given disease presents the same in each person or each case, and there are many different strains of cold, flu, and norovirus with different degrees of impact. Sometimes fever does not accompany influenza, for example. Symptoms that are rare can occur. Children, the elderly, and anyone with existing health issues may experience more severe symptoms than others. Among the list of a dozen serious symptoms that should trigger immediate medical attention: Seizures Chest pains Trouble breathing or fast breathing Fever lasting more than four days or rising above 104 degree Fahrenheit Conditions that lasts beyond typical duration Conditions that improve then worsen Severe dehydration Bluish lips or face And there are, of course, many other diseases that may seem cold- or flu-like at the outset but require prompt medical attention. Among them: Measles may start out with mostly cold-like symptoms but is accompanied by a rash and tends to spike a fever to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Mumps starts out flu-like but typically swells the salivary glands, causing puffy cheeks and a swollen jaw. Strep throat tends to start quickly with a sore throat and painful swallowing. (Strep is a bacterial infection, not a virus, that can be treated effectively with antibiotics, which don’t work on viruses.) Seasonal allergies can also mimic cold and flu symptoms. But they’re often marked by itchy, watery eyes, which are not common to colds, the flu, or other infectious diseases. Allergies do not trigger headaches or muscle aches. And, of course, allergies can last weeks. Spread the word, not the virus Viruses have evolved over millions of years to be supremely capable of surviving outside a host and infecting another — to go viral — simply by floating through the air inside the mucus of a cough or sneeze. Even talking can unleash virus-containing droplets seeking a new host. “These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs,” the CDC says. Viruses can also spread when an infected person touches their face and then shakes a hand, turns a doorknob, or prepares food. Cold and flu viruses can survive for 15 to 20 minutes on the skin and several hours on hard surfaces. New research on Covid-19 suggests this coronavirus might survive for a few days on surfaces. If you think you’re getting sick, or if you have a fever or are coughing, sneezing or vomiting: If you feel desperately ill, have any of the serious signs mentioned above, or suspect coronavirus because you visited an area with an outbreak or have been around someone diagnosed with the disease, put down that great book, forget the chicken soup, and call your doctor immediately or get to an emergency room. This article has been updated on 3/19. The coronavirus outbreak is rapidly evolving. To stay informed, check the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as your local health department for updates. If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed, reach out to the Crisis Text Line.

https://elemental.medium.com/how-to-tell-if-you-have-the-flu-coronavirus-or-something-else-30c1c82cc50f

['Robert Roy Britt']

2020-05-18 13:35:12.633000+00:00

['Health', 'Cold', 'Body', 'Coronavirus', 'Flu']

Covid Casualties That Will Haunt Us Forever

Covid Casualties That Will Haunt Us Forever Things big and small that will never be the same post-pandemic Image: Pixabay With a fierce winter storm bearing down on the Northeast, Connecticut doctor Craig Canapari, MD, was asked by his kids: Will tomorrow be a snow day? “Sadly they will be disappointed,” Canapari tweeted. “One is already doing online school on Thursday. The other will be.” This arguably innocuous annoyance struck me as telling of the countless things that are being disrupted by the pandemic — small pleasures and larger ways of life we’ve long taken for granted but which will never be the same. Death is the ultimate horrific outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic, of course, and without meaning to minimize the pain and sadness left behind by the more than 300,000 departed Americans and 1.6 million deaths worldwide, I got to thinking about the many other ways Covid has, and will, irrevocably change the lives of so many people, of society as a whole, for years and even generations to come. I’ll get to the lesser things below. But first, there are several truly distressing and harrowing casualties of Covid-19 that will play out for years: Long-haul physical effects We have no clue yet just how devastating Covid-19 is for those who survive it. Already, we do know that thousands of people, young and old, are suffering physical pain and mental distress — including memory and concentration problems — months after they were declared Covid-free. Sadly, it’s appearing ever more likely that some of these long-haul symptoms could be lifetime afflictions. Economic catastrophe It will be many months and possibly years before we can grasp the full scope of disastrous financial effects on tens of millions of Americans who’ve lost their jobs or had their incomes slashed, or might soon. Already the devastation clear for countless families. Across the country, children are going hungry and parents are overwhelming food pantries like never in recent memory. Missed rent and homeowner payments are piling up, and broad wealth reduction will create hardship for millions of families — holes are being dug that will sink some people for the rest of their lives. Educational and earnings disadvantages The year of disrupted instruction, with more sure to come, will reverberate for a lifetime, especially among kids who are in (or out of) K-8 schools, in the form of lower earning potential. Research has shown what all parents have learned: Online education is not as effective as in-class instruction, particularly for young children. One study projects that one year of online-only learning would cause $195 billion of lifelong earnings losses for current K-12 students. Deadly side effects People are already dying from several non-Covid causes because they missed cancer screenings or didn’t get medical care for other serious health issues. Excess deaths in 2020, those that exceed the otherwise very stable annual average, will end the year above 400,000 (based on my own analysis of actual excess deaths through November 21, Covid-19 deaths since then, and the current daily pace of Covid-19 deaths). While the majority of the excess deaths are officially attributed to Covid-19, the others can be explained only by lapses in treatment, multiple studies and analyses show. The impact on reduced cancer screenings alone will result in additional unnecessary deaths for years to come, simply because treatments were not started as soon as they would have been without the pandemic disruption. Mental health crisis The pandemic is fueling increases in depression, alcohol use, and opioid deaths. We can’t begin to predict the long-term effects of all the current stress and sorrow, but we do know our social systems were not prepared to deal with it.

https://coronavirus.medium.com/covid-casualties-that-will-haunt-us-forever-1f8795ebccf1

['Robert Roy Britt']

2020-12-16 19:25:18.165000+00:00

['Society', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19', 'Culture', 'Coronavirus']

How Anxiety Can Be Your Secret Creative Superpower

How Anxiety Can Be Your Secret Creative Superpower It’s not always about worst-case scenarios Image by Jason McBride I used to control my anxiety by reminding myself that my brain was making things out to be much worse than they were. That worked for several years. But, this strategy gradually lost its effectiveness as the state of the world around me decayed. First, I lost both my parents within five months while dealing with a mysterious gut infection that led to me being hospitalized, where I discovered I had kidney cancer. That was 2019. After my successful surgery, I thought things had to get better. Then 2020 came. It seemed like my anxiety was laughing at me as I freaked out, unsure if I was rational or irrational. Now I have a new strategy for managing my anxiety. I have learned to be grateful for it. Because of my anxiety disorder, my brain works differently. I have learned that my anxiety is my secret creative superpower. Image by Jason McBride Image by Jason McBride You might wonder if you can calculate the volume of water a towel removes from your body after a shower by weighing the towel after you use it. Image by Jason McBride If you have an anxiety disorder or are neurodivergent, you may not know that thoughts like these were strictly a middle-of-the-night phenomenon for most people. Random thoughts like these are always passing through my mind. In my world, for better or worse, it’s always 3 am. I have anxiety brain. I imagine that my brain has two extra parts: a random idea generator and a worst-case scenario generator. There is a narrow tube that connects these two machines. When my anxiety spikes, it’s because the random thoughts generator is funneling all of its output into my worst-case scenario generator. Image by Jason McBride Image by Jason McBride Image by Jason McBride Thanks to my anxiety, while many people are limited to the occasional three o’clock musing, I am inundated with exquisite, weird thoughts all day long. These thoughts fuel my creativity and allow me to entertain friends, family, and strangers. While I may never have a million-dollar idea, I do not doubt that I will have a million one-dollar ideas. And that will get me to an even better place — creatively connected to people like you. Image by Jason McBride Your anxiety brain doesn’t have to only produce doomsday scenarios. You can use your overactive imagination to fuel your creativity. Let’s face it. Anxiety is your imagination run amok. Once you learn to harness that power, even just a little bit, you unlock a creative superpower. Having anxiety means looking at the world differently. Is there anything more powerful than that? Every scientific, cultural, and artistic advancement in the Earth’s history has been made by weirdos who look at the world differently and imagine something better. That can be you. Turn your anxiety brain into your secret creative superpower. The world needs you!

https://medium.com/weirdo-poetry/how-anxiety-can-be-your-secret-creative-superpower-22479da9c5ca

['Jason Mcbride']

2020-09-29 14:20:19.782000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Mental Health', 'Comics', 'Anxiety', 'Life Lessons']

5 Tips for your Live Coding Interview

You’ve just received an invitation to attend a tech screening interview at Revolut. This is your moment to shine! It might feel like a lot of pressure — after all, you only have between 30 and 60 minutes to show the interviewers what you can do. They want to see your real-time problem solving skills, and you’re wondering what you can do to prepare for the unknown. To help you go into this interview with confidence, here are my five top tips on what you can do to prepare yourself to get the best results. Be yourself One of the main goals of the live coding interview is to assess how you deal with given requirements and provide solutions to problems as if it were a real task in your day-to-day work. Some candidates might try to show off with a TDD (Test Driven Development) approach, or experimenting with things they wouldn’t use in everyday practice. This can be a mistake, as it often pulls all their focus into the technical problems of writing and debugging code. Instead, you should focus on your tried-and-tested methods of working to deliver a working and tested MVP (minimum viable product) solution, which you’ll then have space and time to improve and refactor before the end of the interview. One step at a time The task at hand will probably have several steps that you’ll need to complete, and your time will be constrained. Remember that this is a simulation of your day-to-day work, so approach the problem logically and break it into manageable chunks. It’s better to deliver some working functionality than to start many different little tasks and leave them all incomplete. Start with a plan, so you can better control the quality of your work in the time you’re given. Think loudly There’s no such thing as a stupid question. As a developer, most tasks will require some degree of clarification from your requestor. When in doubt, don’t be afraid to ask whether your planned approach is correct before wasting time on implementing your own interpretation. Don’t overcomplicate Let’s assume that you get a task to implement a piece of code which tells you if a given number is prime or not. You don’t need defining interfaces, REST APIs, or multithreading. Instead, form a simple working solution which fulfils the requirement, but without the unnecessary overhead. Be careful not to cross the line between creating a minimum working solution, and writing untested code which just prints some output to the console. Once you’re done with the little things, there’s always something in the ‘interview backlog’ to deliver next. Practice makes perfect There’s always something to improve in the way we write code. While you can read countless books and articles about it, there’s nothing better than sitting down and spending some time trying things out yourself. Nobody is expecting you to memorise all the APIs and structures in the world, but having several years of experience doesn’t excuse you from being up to date with the most recent language syntax and concepts. Take the example of Java — it’s 2020 and not everybody is familiar with the concept of Optionals and null handling. The answer to these problems is practice.

https://medium.com/revolut/5-tips-for-your-live-coding-interview-c6d5b05adf97

['Michal Gurgul']

2020-07-07 14:00:21.145000+00:00

['Programming', 'Backend', 'Development', 'Engineering', 'Fintech']

Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning

The general law of entropy. Source:[7] Let’s discuss entropy before diving into the usage of entropy in Reinforcement Learning(RL). Entropy Entropy is an old concept in physics. It can be defined as the measure of chaos or disorder in a system[1]. Higher entropy means lower chaos. It is slightly different in information theory. The mathematician Claude Shannon introduced the entropy in information theory in 1948. Entropy in information theory can be defined as the expected number of bits of information contained in an event. For instance, tossing a fair coin has the entropy of 1. It is because of the probability of having a head or tail is 0.5. The amount of information required to identify it’s head or tail is one by asking one, yes or no question — “is it head ? or is it tail?”. If the entropy is higher, that means we need more information to represent an event. Now, we can say that entropy increases with increases in uncertainty. Another example is that crossing the street has less number of information required to represent/ store/ communicate than playing a poker game. Calculating how much information is in a random variable, X={x0,x1,….,xn} is same as calculating the information for the probability distribution of the events in the random variable. In that sense, entropy is considered as average bits of information required to represent an event drawn from the probability distribution. Entropy for a random variable X can be computed using the below equation: Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning In Maximum Entropy RL, the agent tries to optimise the policy to choose the right action that can receive the highest sum of reward and long term sum of entropy. This enables the agent to explore more and avoid converging to local optima. It is important to state the principle of maximum entropy to understand it uses in RL. Principle of maximum entropy[6]: If we have a few number probability distribution that would encode the prior data, then the best probability distribution is the one with maximum entropy. In the intuition of principle of maximum entropy, the aim is to find the distribution that has maximum entropy. In many RL algorithms, an agent may converge to local optima. By adding the maximum entropy to the objective function, it enables the agent to search for the distribution that has maximum entropy. As we defined earlier, in Maximum Entropy RL, the aim is to learn the optimal policy that can achieve the highest cumulative reward and maximum entropy. As the system has to search for the entropy as well, it enables more exploration and chances to avoid converging to local optima is higher. The concept of adding entropy is not a new concept as there are RL algorithms that make use of entropy in the form of entropy bonus [1]. Sometimes entropy is called entropy regularisation. For instance, entropy bonus in A3C RL algorithm[3]. The entropy bonus is described as one step bonus as it focuses on the current state only and not much worry about the future states[1]. As in standard RL, the aim of the agent to learn the optimal policy that can maximise the cumulative reward or long term reward. Similarly, learning the sum of entropy or long term entropy instead of learning the entropy in a one-time step has more benefits. The benefits are in terms of more robust performance under the changes in the agent’s knowledge about the environment and environment itself[1]. The objective function of the standard RL is as shown below. It is the expectation of the long term reward. The objective function of reinforcement learning.Source: [8] The optimal policy of the standard RL is as shown below. The agent learns to achieve the optimal policy which can receive a high cumulative reward. In standard RL, the optimal policy can generate the highest cumulative reward by choosing the right action. Source: [4] The objective function of the Maximum entropy RL is as shown below. It is the expectation of the long term reward and long term entropy The objective function of Maximum entropy RL The optimal policy of the Maximum entropy RL as shown below. The optimal policy is the highest expectation of long term reward and long term entropy. In maximum entropy RL, the optimal policy is the maximum expectation of the long term reward and long term entropy. Source: [5] If you like my write up, follow me on Github, Linkedin, and/or Medium profile.

https://medium.com/intro-to-artificial-intelligence/maximum-entropy-reinforcement-learning-ee7ad77289c0

['Dhanoop Karunakaran']

2020-10-06 10:28:25.511000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Robotics', 'Software Development', 'Science']

Building a Virtual Assistant that Your Customers Want to Talk to (Part 2)

Building a Virtual Assistant that Your Customers Want to Talk to (Part 2) Adam Benvie Follow Nov 6 · 4 min read Ensure your customers don’t hit frustrating dead ends with your virtual assistant Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash Intro Here’s Part II of the Watson Assistant blog series on Building a Virtual Assistant Your Customers Want to Talk To. In this three part series we show how Watson Assistant’s web chat UI and service desk integrations help you build a virtual assistant that your customers actually want to talk to resolve their problems. In part one we discussed how to build customer trust and drive engagement. In part two we demonstrate how to ensure your customers don’t hit frustrating dead ends. Virtual Assistant Dead Ends Most people have little faith that virtual assistants will resolve their problems. Why? Because virtual assistants that they’ve tried in the past lead them to dead ends. Maybe you can relate. Hitting a dead end looks like this: Or this: Or this: If you’ve had one of these experiences, best case scenario you got annoyed before picking up the phone to call and wait for a live agent on phone. Worst case scenario you took a screen shot and posted it to social media where the New York Times used it as an example in a column on what’s wrong with customers service in the digital age. Okay, maybe that’s a dramatic worst case — but chances are you lost faith in the virtual assistant and did not return the next time you had a problem to resolve. No More Dead Ends The problem is that virtual assistants, like humans, can’t understand everything, but unlike humans, we expect them to. We train virtual assistants with data, but we don’t teach them to seek clarification, provide alternatives, or get help when they are having a hard time resolving a customer’s problem — until now. With Watson Assistant’s web chat user interface and service desk integrations, you can ensure your customers never hit a dead end by teaching your assistant to behave more like a human would when they’re having a hard time helping your customers. Clarify When Confused When people aren’t sure what someone else is asking them, they ask the other person to clarify their meaning before responding. Watson Assistant’s disambiguation feature teaches your assistant to do the same. With disambiguation your assistant acknowledges when it is confused between similar meanings and will prompt your customers to clarify. This way your assistant does not risk responding incorrectly with a dead end. Provide Alternatives When Wrong A common curtesy in customer service is to provide alternative options when the initial option does not seem to be what the customers is looking for. Watson Assistant suggestions feature now fills this role. If your assistant provides the wrong response, suggestions provides your customers with alternative paths forward. This way, even when your assistant responds incorrectly, your customers can find the response they’re looking for. Suggestions are always there for when your customers to access when they are not getting the response they want. As well, your assistant will nudge your customers to consider suggestions when it detects that it’s not providing the right response. Seek Help When All Else Fails Even the best customer service representatives can’t solve every customer problem on their own. Sometimes it’s necessary to get help. When it’s clear the customer is losing patience, good customer service representatives will find someone else who has the expertise to help. With Watson Assistant if your assistant can’t find what your customers need by clarifying with disambiguation or by providing alternative options with suggestions, it will connect them to a live agent who can. Your assistant will detect when it doesn’t seem to be getting your customers what they want, and before your customers give up, it will connect them to a live agent. Once again — dead end avoided.

https://medium.com/ibm-watson/building-a-virtual-assistant-that-your-customers-want-to-talk-to-part-2-49dc45de4c10

['Adam Benvie']

2020-11-13 13:01:09.306000+00:00

['Artificial Intelligence', 'Chatbots', 'Wa Announcement', 'AI', 'Watson Assistant']

MIT’s Free Online Course to Learn Julia — The Rising Star

MIT’s Free Online Course to Learn Julia — The Rising Star And why you should take it. Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash Background Python is the unchallenged leader of AI programming languages, used by 87% of data scientists. That said, there’s no guarantee of Python’s future, as languages come and go all the time — COBOL, ALGOL, BASIC, the list of graveyard languages goes on. Indeed, Jeremy Howard — AI expert and former President of Kaggle — says that “Python is not the future of Machine Learning. It can’t be.” In short, native Python is too slow and there’s too much overhead. Julia is faster, comes with a nicely designed type system and dispatch system, and has a lot of potential in the future of AI. While you don’t need to know programming to do AI, given no-code AI tools like Obviously.AI, Julia is a handy skill to have as a developer. Learn Julia From MIT MIT recently announced a free online course on computational thinking, taught using Julia. Ask yourself this: What programming language have the courses you’ve taken been taught in? Almost all data and AI courses are taught in Python, with a small number taught in R and other languages. That’s what makes this course stand out, besides the fact that it’s tackling a very timely issue: The spread of COVID-19. Syllabus The course includes topics on analyzing COVID-19 data, modeling exponential growth, probability, random walk models, characterizing variability, optimization and fitting to data, and more. A famous quote by Albert Bartlett says: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” This course will teach you how to understand and model exponential functions, which is useful far beyond the spread of disease, into financial markets, compound interest, population growth, inflation, Moore’s Law, or even the spread of wildfires. Knowing Julia is a Career Advantage Building a successful career is all about supply and demand. The lower the supply: demand ratio, the more opportunities you’ll find. For example, more people can be a cashier than there is a demand for cashiers, which is why those jobs typically earn minimum wage. On the other side, very few people have the skills to be an anesthesiologist, which is they have extremely high earnings. Let’s put this into practice. As of writing, when you search for the title “Python Developer” on LinkedIn, you get around 23,000 results. When you search “Julia Developer,” you get hardly any. Of course, many people have downloaded Julia, but there aren’t many specialists. The top LinkedIn group for Julia developers, called “The Julia Language,” has 2,300 members. Meanwhile, there are 1,644 groups that mention Python. The top 10 Python groups add up to over 600,000 members: Developers, Engineers & Techies: Python, Java, Javascript, C#, PHP | Blockchain (191,966 members) Python Developers Community (176,164 members) Python Data Science, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing Group (71,432 members) Group (71,432 members) Python Professionals Group • 59,635 members Python Web Developers Group • 43,553 members Programming Language (Java, C, C++, C#, Python, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Swift, Objective-C, R, PL/SQL) Group • 25,411 members Python Programmer / Developers Group • 20,003 members Scientific Python Group • 13,400 members Epic Python Academy Group Group • 13,127 members Python Developers Group Group • 10,270 members In short, you’ll stand out from the crowd by knowing Julia. Currently, almost 8,000 jobs on LinkedIn mention “Julia,” including: Summary Julia would be a valuable addition to any tech portfolio, and this MIT course is a great way to build your skills. Many believe that Julia has a bright future in the data & AI industry, which will help CVs with Julia float to the top.

https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/mits-free-online-course-to-learn-julia-the-rising-star-b00a0e762dfc

['Frederik Bussler']

2020-12-18 19:03:34.437000+00:00

['Python', 'Julia', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Data']

VR Journalism: The New Way of Storytelling

Journalism hasn’t changed much throughout the years — until VR (Virtual Reality) stepped into the game. In traditional journalism, an event happens, you pick up your notebook, slam the doors of your media van, and rush to the place of the scene. You talk to witnesses, conduct a few interviews, and check the surroundings. The cameraman follows you in every way as a second pair of eyes and ears. This has been done the same way for decades. With the arrival of 360˚ videos and Cinematic VR, you are able to bring the stories much closer to your audience. With a spherical/360 camera, you capture the real world. Journalists across the world are now embracing virtual reality as a new way to engage audiences and encourage emotional connections between viewers and the people in their stories. Journalism is changing. Journalism is there to inform and ultimately changes the way the world is perceived. A medium such as VR can enhance the engagement and empathy far more than a newspaper article or traditional footage. Which News Companies have embraced VR? The best known is New York Times. With their app (NYTVR) and the awesome promo stunt in which they distributed over 1-million Google cardboards, NYT is delivering 360 news to their readers through their phones. “The Displaced” gave viewers a close look of the lives of three children who represented more then 30 million refugee children across the world. With such a low-priced viewing tool such as Google Cardboard and a powerful storytelling medium, this type of journalism is made to reach larger market. NYT VR iPhone app New York Times aren’t the only one making good content. RYOT (a Los Angeles-based production company) has been acquired by Huffington Post is serving their master in the similar way. They have their own app through which viewers can consume 360 content. RYOT also helped the Associated Press last year. The Guardian’s first VR project, 6x9 put the viewers into solitary confinement and BBC made viewers witness the 1916 uprising in the streets of Dublin. Then there is also the Economist and Washington Post. Actually, New York Times is betting on VR Journalism to take off. Sam Dolnick, the editor of New York Times said: “The Times is always trying to innovate and discover new ways of telling stories and uncovering the World”. Why should you leverage VR? The Journalistic goal is to bring a reader/viewer into a space and tell a great story. VR has the ability to take the reader into the location itself, witness an event and see the place through their own eyes. As a storyteller you do have to be careful and you should always ask yourself — “how will this affect the viewer”. Only certain type of stories can be told with VR It seems like every newsroom, sports video centres, marketing agency is trying to bring in and sell VR. While VR can be applied in numerous ways, it won’t replace TV, print or radio. In fact, VR can show you an immersive world and bring you closer to the location, but it won’t give you enough context if you’re not familiar with the story background. The story is still going to be covered in print, where the editors are going to use the best writers to deliver the information and prepare the viewer for the next scene. How to get into VR Journalism? Jenna Pirog suggests to pick up one of the lower price cameras such as Ricoh Theta S or Gear360 and just start experimenting. Samsung Gear360 camera You will find tons of tips, tricks and suggestions which are a good read, but I would advise you to just experiment and allow yourself to make mistakes. Keep creating great content; the better the content is the better we all are. As a journalist who wants to get into a VR and 360˚ production, you’re an early adopter. Make mistakes and learn from them. Then create something amazing. “Journalism is a magic carpet that can take you to places you have never been and to experiences that many other people can never have. Enjoy the ride.” — Caryl Rivers, Journalism This article first appeared at Viar360 blog. Like this story? Get more in the weekly newsletter from CinematicVR.

https://medium.com/cinematicvr/vr-journalism-the-new-way-of-storytelling-ec5ef46996c2

['Dejan Gajsek']

2016-11-06 23:16:59.708000+00:00

['Journalism', 'Virtual Reality', 'Storytelling', '360 Video', 'VR']

Understanding Recursion With Examples

Understanding Recursion With Examples Read it again, and again, and again, and again… Photo by Josip I. on Unsplash. What is recursion? Open a browser and type “recursion” on Google. Did you notice the “Did you mean: recursion” message? Photo by author. Screenshot of Google. Click on that message. It will appear again. Click again. There it is again. Click it… OK, enough. You’re now beginning to understand what recursion is. If you scroll down on that very same Google page, you will see this: “Recursion: the repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition.” Even recursion’s own definition is recursive.

https://medium.com/better-programming/understanding-recursion-with-examples-f74606fd6be0

['Diana Bernardo']

2020-08-07 14:58:16.468000+00:00

['Startup', 'Coding', 'Technology', 'Java', 'Programming']

The Architecture of. Multilayered Storytelling through…

For each story we consider and pursue a topic we believe may be of particular interest to explore, ranging from current affairs to historical or cultural issues. Sometimes choices are driven by a fascination we have, sometimes by a compelling dataset we find and we would start from, other times we choose to present events and topics that are hot at the moment. We then analyze and compare different kinds of datasets trying to identify and reveal a central story, hopefully a not-so-expected one. We start from a question or an intuition we have and work from here, then try to put the information in context and find some further facts and materials to potentially correlate. Every time we aim at moving away from mere quantity in order to pursue a qualitative transformation of raw statistical material into something that will provide new knowledge: unexpected parallels, not common correlation or secondary tales, to enrich the main story with. In this respect our work here cannot be considered data-visualization in the pure sense: we are not just providing insight into numbers but into social issues or other qualitative aspects as well.

https://medium.com/accurat-studio/the-architecture-of-a-data-visualization-470b807799b4

['Giorgia Lupi']

2015-02-27 01:59:20.126000+00:00

['Data Visualization', 'Design', 'Journalism']

Open sourcing Singer, Pinterest’s performant and reliable logging agent

Yu Yang | Software Engineer, Data Engineering At Pinterest, we use data to guide product decisions and ultimately improve the Pinner experience. In an earlier post, we shared the design of Pinterest’s data ingestion framework. The first step of data ingestion and data-driven decision making is data collection. At first glance, data collection seems simple: it’s just about uploading data from hosts to a central repository. However, in order to collect data from tens of thousands of hosts in various formats, uploading data reliably and efficiently with low latency at scale becomes a challenging problem. In 2014, we evaluated available open source logging agents and didn’t find any that met our needs. As a solution, we built a logging agent named “Singer”, which has been in production at Pinterest for years. Singer has been a critical component of our data infrastructure and streams over one trillion messages per day now. Today, we’re sharing Singer with the open source community. You can find its source code and design documentation on GitHub. Singer supports the following features: Text-log format and thrift log format out of box: Thrift log format provides better throughput and efficiency. We have included thrift log client libraries in Python and Java in Singer repository. At-least-once message delivery: Singer will retry when it fails to upload a batch of messages. For each log stream, Singer uses a watermark file to track its progress. When Singer restarts, it processes messages from the watermark position. Support logging in Kubernetes as a side-car service: Logging in Kubernetes as a daemonset, Singer can monitor and upload loads from log directories of multiple Kubernetes pods. High throughput writes: Singer uses staged event-driven architecture and is capable of streaming thousands of log streams with high throughput (>100MB/s for thrift logs and >40MB/s for text logs) Low Latency logging: Singer supports configurable processing latency and batch sizes, it can achieve <5ms log uploading latency. Flexible message partitioning: Singer provides multiple partitioners and supports pluggable partitioner. We also support locality aware partitioners, which can avoid producer traffic across availability zones and reduce data transfer costs. Monitoring: Singer can send heartbeat messages to a centralized message queue based on configuration. This allows users to set up centralized monitoring of Singer instances at scale. Extensible design: Singer can be easily extended to support data uploading to custom destinations. Figure 1. Singer internals In detail, the services write logs to append-only log streams. Singer listens to the file system events based on configurations. Once log file changes are detected, Singer processes the log streams and sends data to writer threads pool for uploading. It then stores logstream watermark files on disk after successfully uploading a batch of records. It will also process log streams from watermark positions when restarted. Singer can automatically detect newly added configuration and process related log streams. Running as a daemonset in Kubernetes environment, Singer can query the kubelet API to detect live pods on each node, and process log streams on each pod based on the configuration. Please see the tutorial on how to run Singer. Open source is important not only for engineers at Pinterest, but also for companies like YouTube, Google, Tinder, Snap and others, who use our open source technologies to power app persistence, image downloading, and more. See opensource.pinterest.com and GitHub for our open source projects. Pinterest engineering has many interesting problems to solve, check out our open engineering roles and join us! Acknowledgments: Huge thanks to Ambud Sharma, Indy Prentice, Henry Cai, Shawn Nguyen, Mao Ye and Roger Wang for making significant contributions to Singer!

https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/open-sourcing-singer-pinterests-performant-and-reliable-logging-agent-610fecf35566

['Pinterest Engineering']

2019-06-20 16:54:02.130000+00:00

['Big Data', 'Open Source', 'Data Engineering']

In Defense of Daydreaming

In Defense of Daydreaming Leave science out of it Author’s photo I didn’t do well in grade school. I always thought I was dumb–and it’s possible I really was–but even after the teacher wrote on my third grade report card, “Ramona needs to work on her concentration. She daydreams too much in class”, I saw my lack of interest in learning the hard stuff as little more than a case of misinterpretation. Daydreaming is nothing more than thinking, and thinking, I knew even then, was good. My mom, always one to let me believe I might be the most important person on the face of the earth (A terrible burden to place on such young shoulders, I know, but back then I enjoyed the hell out of it), sighed over the hard evidence–the C’s and D’s–and winced when she spotted the notation. She was quiet for a minute and then she said, “Well, honey, you know I would never tell you to give up your daydreams. You’re just going to have to stop dreaming in school.” I never did give up my daydreams. They’re such a part of my life I might as well stop my daily breathing as to stop my daily dreaming. It’s a wondrous thing, the ability to slide away from the real and glide into the realm of imagination. It can cause problems, I will be the first to admit. I used to keep my thoughts to myself when I was younger but nowadays whatever is going on in my head is somehow coming out of my mouth. I don’t notice until I get the stares, and all I can hope for is that I was mumbling and they weren’t actually hearing, say, my acceptance speech at the Oscars. So, because my daydreams have been with me forever, I’ve never thought about them as being the kind of thing the scientific community might latch onto. Who but someone who doesn’t daydream would think it might be interesting to investigate the cause and effect of daydreams and write it up as scientific data? If these people really understood how delicious daydreams can be they would be doing more of it and less of the drudgework–which trying to dissect the makeup of daydreams must be. It’s like tearing the stuffing out of Winnie the Pooh to see what makes him so special. How would you go about researching them? Do you ask daydreamers what happens when they daydream? Any self-respecting daydreamer would never tell. What goes on inside our heads is nobody else’s business. (Forget what you saw above about the Oscar speech. I didn’t say that exactly.) What brought me to thinking about this is an article I found at Maria Popova’s wonderful ‘Brain Pickings’, called, “How Mind-Wandering and ‘Positive Constructive Daydreaming’ enhance creativity and Improve our Social Skills.” I’m a huge fan of “Brain Pickings” and of Popova, and I usually eat these things up, but this one sounded silly at the get-go. It’s a wondrous thing, the ability to slide away from the real and glide into the realm of imagination. I’m protective of daydreaming, even when it’s being dissected as the prime outlet for creativity, and any time it goes under the microscope–which seems to be every few years–I want to remind everyone to just take it easy. There is no mystery to it. I call it a relaxation of the brain. Even brains need some R&R. But here you go: In the 1950s, Yale psychologist Jerome L. Singer […] embarked upon a groundbreaking series of research into daydreaming. His findings, eventually published in the 1975 bible The Inner World of Daydreaming (public library), laid the foundations of our modern understanding of creativity’s subconscious underbelly. Singer described three core styles of daydreaming: positive constructive daydreaming, a process fairly free of psychological conflict, in which playful, vivid, wishful imagery drives creative thought; guilty-dysphoric daydreaming, driven by a combination of ambitiousness, anguishing fantasies of heroism, failure, and aggression, and obsessive reliving of trauma, a mode particularly correlated with PTSD; and poor attentional control, typical of the anxious, the distractible, and those having difficulties concentrating. Creativity’s subconscious underbelly? Good lord, really? Guilty-dysphoric daydreaming? Poor attentional control? (Attentional??) We’re talking about vegging out for a few unplanned moments in which we–at least I–get to be somewhere else but here. I don’t know about yours, but my daydreams are deliciously pleasant, moving ever so inexorably toward fame and fortune. If anxiety or fear invades, they’re no longer daydreams. Then they’re called nightmares. But, wait–was I just analyzing? Oh, Gawd. I was.

https://medium.com/indelible-ink/in-defense-of-daydreaming-264bc8f913bd

['Ramona Grigg']

2020-12-07 15:30:09.636000+00:00

['Humor', 'Creativity', 'Life', 'Imagination', 'Writing']

2015 year in review for Graph Commons

We wish you a peaceful and happy new year! This graph image is generated from The Emoji Graph. 2015 year in review for Graph Commons 2015 was a year of great new beginnings for Graph Commons and for our mission to provide an open network mapping platform, so that everyone can collectively involve in the act of mapping networks as an ongoing practice. This post was originally posted in the Graph Commons Journal. Here is our progress in 2015: May After six months of development, the new version of Graph Commons released on May 28th 2015 and witnessed a momentum of interest from people with varying interests, backgrounds and skill sets. June Network mapping at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris (view all workshops) Video tutorials released on network mapping using the new graph interface. SIMPOL data Hub started on financial systems simulation and policy modelling in EU. July August Force Atlas 2 layout feature released to provide better organization of large graphs. Graph Commons API alpha version released. Mobile view of graphs improved. September Graph Commons Hackathons site released for announcements and documentation. Structured Journalism and Network Mapping Hackathon brought together programmers, activists, and journalists to create tools for network mapping and analysis using the API. Private plans announced to help build a sustainable platform while supporting free public graphs. Graph Commons Slack Channel started for community chat, questions, discussions, meeting people, sharing work. October November December Workshop at The Brown Institute, Columbia Journalism School (view documentation). Networks of Dispossession project’s large prints and touch screen maps featured in the exhibition at MAXXI Museum in Rome. Better Filters released, enabling graph authors to compose their custom filters depending on the graph context. Node embed released for publishers to embed information cards in their publications. iklimadaleti.org, new journal on ecological justice, launched using graph embeds and node embeds. Better site wide search released (Elastic Search), so you can search among all public graphs, nodes, and members on Graph Commons. Coming up in January 2016… API refinement with general search, graph analysis + more API wrappers New Hackathon: Creative Use of Complex Networks, Jan 9–10 Thank you everyone for your great support and encouragement. We will continue to provide an ever-growing connected knowledge base and support a network-literate community flourishing around it. We wish you a peaceful and happy new year!

https://medium.com/graph-commons/2015-year-in-review-for-graph-commons-33610754cc95

['Burak Arikan']

2016-12-26 13:20:13.556000+00:00

['Open Data', 'Big Data', 'Social Network', 'Productivity', 'Data Visualization']

3 Brilliant Projects My 10th Grade English Teacher Used

The best educator I’ve ever had was my 10th grade English teacher. There are too many reasons to name here for why I felt this way about him nearly a decade ago, and still feel impacted by him all this time later. All you need to know is that he is a very gifted instructor, someone who thought outside of the box, if you will. What I want to share with you here is three of his most clever and ingenious projects that he had students complete throughout the school year. To connect with adolescents, to truly attempt to have them reach their potential, more teachers should take parts of these assignments and incorporate them into their own classrooms. Non-verbal presentation One of the first major projects of the school year, this assignment requires the class to make a slideshow presentation that shows peers all about who you are and what you represent. Sounds pretty basic. There’s a catch, though. As already stated in the subtitle, the project is non-verbal. You cannot explain anything to the class that isn’t already laid out in the slideshow. No misunderstandings can be cleared up, and no points that were made too short can be elaborated on. Everything must be made crystal clear through the text, pictures, and choice of song in the background that plays along with the PowerPoint. You know the saying “show, don’t tell”? This is the perfect scenario to teach students how to convey deeply personal anecdotes and storytelling skills to the class without just stating blah facts. It’s part ice-breaker, part narrative-driver, part visual essay. I don’t know whether my teacher came up with it completely on his own, or whether parts of it were adopted from other classrooms, but it’s a very mature literary experience. It will make your students think about themselves in a more artistic manner, and allows them creativity and leeway that a normal personal narrative essay would not. It makes shy students give more of themselves to the class, and it forces loud students to carefully introspect in a new way. Mask construction art project This assignment saw each student take advantage of their painting skills, molding a mask out of clay and then painting it with topics and ideas that are deeply important to each student on a personal level. Don’t worry, nobody was graded on their art talent, so there is no requirement to emulate Picasso or DaVinci. What you did need to do was convey things about yourself that you may not normally show, using the same symbolism that you access when discussing a book or piece of writing. My teacher wanted to demonstrate to the class that we all put on a “mask” each day depending on what mood we are in, who we are around, and what activity we are participating in. Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash The physical mask that students create would represent and tell a story about you asking that you put the things about yourself that you usually reveal to the world on the outside of the mask, and then share some things that you normally wouldn’t on the inside of the mask. Literal and figurative literary skills are being tapped, and the personal element makes kids get much more involved and active in their own learning about the most important thing you can think of: yourself. I will also note that you should not feel required to put anything on your mask that you are uncomfortable sharing with others. Keep everything reasonable and respectful if instituted in your own classroom. Parent/teen role-reversal project High school students not only have to adjust to the rigors of school, they also may be undergoing tumultuous relationships at home with their parents. This project asked each person to create a set of rules for how a parent should manage their teenager, presenting a sort of role reversal for students. The literary aspect was added when you are asked to make the entire project in line with an analogy or metaphor. You choose a position of authority and who they preside over that is in line with a parent and child relationship, and then build the set of circumstances and rules around that comparison. As a basketball fan, I chose the coach and player metaphor. I built what I thought the perfect player would be, the perfect coach, and the do’s and do not’s of each role, among other items. It was quite a revelation to see the overlap between the positive qualities of a great player and a great teenager, and then the same overlaps between coach and parent. Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash It truly is an immersive and life-changing activity for many students to see the way the world connects, and how many of the positive qualities we use when playing one role in our lives translate right over to another. Analysis skills and self-reflection are used heavily here, but in a much more practical manner than old books and poems.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-brilliant-projects-my-10th-grade-english-teacher-used-ab755ecf4fff

['Shawn Laib']

2020-11-20 11:49:54.467000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Schools', 'Education', 'Teaching', 'Writing']

Gestalt in visualizations

Gestalt principles or laws are rules that describe how the human eye perceives visual elements. These principles aim to show how complex scenes can be reduced to more simple shapes. They also aim to explain how the eyes perceive the shapes as a single, united form rather than the separate simpler elements involved. “Gestalt” refers to “shape” or “form” in German; the principles — originally developed by Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), an Austro-Hungarian-born psychologist. — were improved later by Wolfgang Köhler (1929), Kurt Koffka (1935), and Wolfgang Metzger (1936). Researchers have integrated all of these theories to show how people unconsciously connect and link design elements. Here are some examples of how they manifest in the work of data visualization- Similarity The human eye tends to build a relationship between similar elements within a design. Similarity can be achieved using basic elements such as shapes, colors, and size.

https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/gestalt-in-visualizations-b2e35d3f701

['Arushi Singh']

2020-12-21 01:57:58.535000+00:00

['Design', 'Psychology', 'Gestalt', 'Data Visualization', 'Infographics']

Vaccinating Against Anxiety and Depression

Vaccinating Against Anxiety and Depression Microbes in the dirt might lead to an innovative approach to reduce the burden of mental health. Photo by CDC on Unsplash I am fascinated by the intersection of mental health and neuroscience. It inspired me to pursue my graduate degree, studying the interactions between the bacteria in our guts and the brain. While we don’t fully understand how these microbes impact the brain, they might provide a new source of treatment for many common disorders. The absurdity and incredulity of a bunch of microscopic organisms aren’t lost on me. I want to share one of the coolest findings in recent years, centered on one such bacteria, found in soil. Depression is the world’s leading cause of disability, affecting over 250 million people every single year. People might experience prolonged sadness, fatigue, and apathy. Additionally, people with depression often also experience severe anxiety. Anxiety can cause our heart to pace while our mind thinks about impending danger or doom. Many people experience these debilitating symptoms in social settings. During particularly-stressful times, like global pandemics, people become even more susceptible to these disorders. How do we solve this problem? We still don’t fully understand what causes depression or anxiety or even how most medications work. In contrast, it is easier to identify what goes wrong during bacterial or viral infection. There’s a tangible target microbial cause that we can train our immune system to handle. By providing a part of a pathogen or an inactivated pathogen, our immune system learns to recognize and mount an effective response against it. The next time we might encounter this pathogen, our body can easily handle it. These strategies allowed humanity to fight diseases like polio and eliminate others like the Black Plague. Interestingly, a lot of intriguing research finds an overactive immune system in depression, anxiety and a whole host of other brain disorders. A lot of evidence also suggests changes in the composition and function of the gut microbial community in individuals with these disorders. An intriguing question arises: could we vaccinate against anxiety and depression? Towards a Vaccine for Anxiety and Depression In recent decades, we have seen vast increases in allergies and other immune-related diseases. In peanut allergies, our immune system overreacts to something harmless. In more severe inflammatory disorders, the body attacks itself, mistaking it for a pathogen. The Hygiene Hypothesis explains some of these increases. As our day-to-day lives became more industrialized and clean, we are exposed to microbial organisms much less often. Our immune system does not receive sufficient training early in life. When exposed to the mud and dirt of the outdoors, our bodies encounter substantially more bacteria and pathogens. Our immune system needs to learn to categorize different bacteria and pathogens to determine which are dangerous. Then it has to learn how to deal with these situations appropriately. Non-pathogenic bacteria or potential allergens do not need to be attacked by the immune system. Additionally, the immune system learns how to react to a particular threat without causing more harm to the host. Rates of allergies and immune disorders are substantially lower in less industrialized parts of the world due to this effect. Could these effects also predispose us to increased rates of anxiety and depression? Photo by Adrian Lange on Unsplash Christopher Lowry, an Associate Professor of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, is at the forefront of this exciting research. Using a strain of common soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, his research team reduces the impacts of stress in rodents. This strain of bacteria was isolated decades earlier in Uganda. Curiously, it boosted the effectiveness of the leprosy vaccine. This uncanny soil microbe showed incredible immune-modulating activity! In 2004, an oncologist decided to see the impact of this strain on cancer. This U.K. study enrolled patients with inoperable lung cancer who would receive chemotherapy. While it didn’t improve cancer-related outcomes or impact mortality, it showed promise in impacting the mental health of patients. In addition to a higher quality of life, patients receiving the bacteria also experienced fewer side effects of the chemotherapy itself and higher cognitive functioning. Though this trial did not control for the placebo effect, its results caught the eye of Christopher Lowry. Unlike humans, rodents cannot tell researchers that they are experiencing anxiety or depression. Elaborate behavioural tests were developed specifically to assess anxiety-like and depressive-like responses in rodents. While they aren’t perfect, they’ve allowed researchers to develop anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. Additionally, Lowry could look into the rodent brain to try and figure out exactly what’s going on. In 2007 he published his first study using this bacteria. Administering it to mice, his team found that the immune response activated specific neurons in the brain. This increased the amount of a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, called serotonin, in the prefrontal cortex of the mouse brain. This also reduced some anxiety-like behaviors in the mice 12 hours after being given this bacteria. In 2016, he showed how these bacteria promoted stress resilience across many different behavioural tests. The tests were conducted 1–2 weeks after immunization, showing that there was some sustained effect on stress responses in mice. They also determined that these effects required immune cells that regulated inflammation. More recently, his group is studying how these bacteria could reduce the severity of neurodegenerative disorders in mice. Vaccinating Neuro-Inflammation While M. vaccae boosts our regulatory immune response to certain pathogens, it is uncertain if these mouse studies translate to humans. Nonetheless, it could prove valuable in future clinical trials. We already know it’s safe when administered to humans but there are no currently registered clinical trials attempting to test its properties for treating anxiety or depression. A 2019 study from Lowry’s group identified a specific triglyceride molecule, derived from M. vaccae that interacts with mouse immune cells. Even the molecule alone without the bacteria could theoretically exert some of these immune-modulating effects. Perhaps a way forward would involve screening for immune activation in humans, and using these specific bacterial components to inoculate them against future stress, depression or anxiety. Lowry predicts that this might become a reality in 10 to 15 years. Perhaps a few decades from now, we’ll effectively reduce the burden of these inflammatory mood disorders through vaccination. Until then, scientists continue on with innovative approaches to tackle this prescient issue.

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/vaccinating-against-anxiety-and-depression-bfd3df324bbe

['Simon Spichak']

2020-10-22 21:30:52.480000+00:00

['Stress', 'Innovation', 'Mental Health', 'Medicine', 'Science']

Advanced Function Concepts in Python

The usage of functions in your program improves the simplicity of code and made the debugging simple. Python gives wonderful control over creating and utilizing functions in your programs. In the previous article, I have clearly explained the process of creating a function. In this, we will learn about some advanced functional programming concepts in python. Once you mastered these things you can write better programs than before. Let me try to explain everything in a simple manner as much as possible. On successful completion of this reading, you can create functions in one line of code, you can create iterators from the given sequences. Lambda Expressions Lambda is a pure anonymous function in python which allows us to write a function in a single line of code. It reduces the effort of programmer in writing multiple lines of code to create user-defined functions. Before going to write the actual code we must understand the concept behind the lambda function. Look at the explanation about lambda in Wikipedia. Lambda calculus (also written as λ-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine. Lambda Function Symbol Lambda calculus was introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church to investigate the foundational mathematical calculus. This calculus helps the mathematicians to understand the mechanism between basic arithmetic and logical operations. The symbolic representation of the lambda is λ Greek alphabet. In python, the function is denoted with the keyword lambda . Look at the syntax of the lambda function. Syntax: lambda arguments : expression Let us create a function to calculate the volume of given cube. def volume(side): return side*side*side side = int(input("Enter Side of Cube")) Volume_of_cube = volume(side) print( Volume_of_cube ) Look at the following code which contains lambda expression to create the function. side = int(input("Enter Side of Cube")) Volume_of_cube = lambda side : side * side * side print( Volume_of_cube (side) ) Both codes give the same output for similar kind of inputs as follows. Enter Side of Cube6 216 Why Anonymous? In the previous program, we have called the lambda function with the help of the name Volume_of_cube . But actually this name is not a function name. The previous program is just one of the ways to use a lambda function. In python the function created using the lambda does not have any function name. In the program, the variable name itself acted as function name. To understand clearly you can replace the entire lambda expression instead of the variable name. side = int(input("Enter Side of Cube")) print( (lambda side : side * side * side) (side) ) I hope you can understand the concept. That is why the lambda expression is called as an anonymous function. There are certain conditions in creating a lambda function in Python. More than one argument can be passed in the lambda expression but only one expression can be created in it. Some more examples are given below using lambda functions. add = lambda a,b,c : a + b + c print( add(5,4,6) ) multiply = lambda x,y : x * y print( multiply(3,7) ) power = lambda m,n : m ** n print( power(6,2) ) Output 15 21 36 Map function in Python Map is a function used to trace the sequencing objects. The map function reduces great effort of applying some functions for each elements of collections such as list and dictionaries. Let us try to get a list of interest amount of each employee for an particular sum of money using normal way. Photo by Honey Yanibel Minaya Cruz on Unsplash Syntax: map[] def interest(amount, rate, year): return amount * rate * year / 100 amount = [10000, 12000, 15000] rate = 5 year = 3 for x in amount: y = interest(x, rate, year) print(y) Output 1500.0 1800.0 2250.0 The same can be done easily with the help of map function in Python. The following code is created using the map function. def interest(amount): rate = 5 year = 3 return amount * rate * year / 100 amount = [10000, 12000, 15000] interest_list = map(interest,amount) print( interest_list ) Output <map object at 0x7fd6e45d90b8> Get confused with the output? The map function always return a map object. We have type cast the object using list keyword. def interest(amount): rate = 5 year = 3 return amount * rate * year / 100 amount = [10000, 12000, 15000] interest_list = list( map(interest,amount) ) print( interest_list ) Output [1500.0, 1800.0, 2250.0] Map function is not only take the user defined function. We can use the built in function also. name = ["alex", "felix", "antony"] cap = list( map(str.capitalize, name)) print(cap) Output ['Alex', 'Felix', 'Antony'] Filter Function in Python In some times you have to filter some elements in a list based on some conditions. Let us consider a list of ages of ten persons. We have to filter the persons based on their age. If a person’s age is greater than or equal to 24 then they can be eligible to be in the list. In a normal way, we can use something like the following. list_of_age = [10, 24, 27, 33, 30, 18, 17, 21, 26, 25] filtered_list = [] for x in list_of_age: if(x>=24): filtered_list.append(x) print( filtered_list ) Using filter function this can be very easy. The filter function returns an object that contains the elements that are true for certain conditions. Syntax: filter(function, iterables) def eligibility(age): if(age>=24): return True list_of_age = [10, 24, 27, 33, 30, 18, 17, 21, 26, 25] age = filter(eligibility, list_of_age) print(list(age)) The output for the previous programs are given below. [24, 27, 33, 30, 26, 25] Reduce function in Python Reduce is a built in function in a module called functools. It reduces the size of iterable objects by applying function in each step. The syntax of reduce() function is given below. Syntax: reduce(function, iterables, start) Let us consider a list of five numbers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] from which you need to find the sum of the numbers. The reduce function first takes the numbers (1,2) then pass them through the defined function. Then the return value from the first one and the third value will be passed through the function. Let the name of the function be add() then the steps involved in finding the sum will be the following. add(1, 2) add(add(1, 2) , 3) add(add(add(1, 2) , 3), 4) add(add(add(add(1, 2) , 3), 4),5) The actual code for the previous explanation is given below. from functools import reduce def add(a,b): return a+b my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] sum = reduce(add, my_list) print(sum) Output 15 Combining Lambda with Map, Filter and Reduce The higher order functions can replace the function object with the lambda expressions. The usage of lambda expression helps us to implement the discussed concept easily with a couple of lines of code. Lambda with Map The following code will help you to know how to implement the map function with lambda. Let us try to create a list of power of a list. list_of_numbers = [10, 6, 5, 17, 15] order = 2 power = map(lambda x : x ** order, list_of_numbers) print(list(power)) Output [100, 36, 25, 289, 225] Lambda with Filter The conditional statements can be used with lambda expressions. Using the return value from the lambda function we can use filter the list. numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] even = list(filter(lambda x: x%2==0, numbers)) print(even) Output [2, 4, 6, 8, 10] I hope this article helped you to understand some interesting concepts in functional programming. Practice more using the concepts explained in this article. Happy coding!

https://towardsdatascience.com/advanced-function-concepts-in-python-9c8f1a59711

['Felix Antony']

2020-06-14 12:45:46.679000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Programming']

Becoming Emotionally Intelligent

Try walking up to someone and ask them about academic intelligence. Although not guaranteed a smart answer, most will understand what you’re on about. Now try emotional intelligence. Chances are it will take them a minute to answer. Emotional intelligence requires thought to discuss; perhaps because we’ve always thought of intelligence as something to be found in books or academia. The fact of the matter is, “intelligence” is an all-encapsulating word that refers to our skills at solving a challenge. If you're paying a bill, then it’s mathematical intelligence you’re after. A chef will have high culinary intelligence whilst a professor of English will have intelligence centered around literature. A vet will be intelligent towards the behavior of animals. “‘intelligence’ is an all-encapsulating word that refers to our skills at solving a challenge.” This brings about the notion that intelligence is an accumulation of skill or experience. The above-mentioned chef was not born an excellent cook, but hours spent over a cooker have seen to that. When seen in this light, intelligence no longer becomes something innate, but an external factor. There is no such thing as I completely intelligent person; someone who is well versed and experienced and everything. Following the same logic, there is no such thing as a completely stupid one either. An illiterate person can make genuine contributions to the well-being of society and a top university professor can be amazingly capable of messing up their life. Intelligence is not something we are born with, it is merely an understanding (to one degree or other) of a function. Emotional intelligence works the same way. It is hard to quantify emotional intelligence, but indicators of it (or a high level of it) do exist. Things like the ability to communicate one’s feelings, to read the moods of others, to have patience when needed, and to empathize with others. These are all skills an emotionally intelligent person will have developed. “There is no such thing as I completely intelligent person; someone who is well versed and experienced and everything. Following the same logic, there is no such thing as a completely stupid one either.” Let’s give the theory some context, and use “love” as an example. Most of us have been taught (formally or informally) that love is a feeling (and a complicated one at that). We are not encouraged to question matters of love; if he/she doesn’t feel the same way, there is nothing you can do about it! Perhaps it is for this reason that we attribute a different organ to it; the heart as opposed to the brain — love does not follow the same thought patterns as other thoughts do. “It’s hard to blame someone for being emotional if they have admitted to going through a rough breakup.” To the emotionally intelligent person, love is a skill not a feeling. It is one that requires trust, generosity, and openness to a degree of vulnerability and resignation. An emotionally intelligent person allows themselves the time and thoughts that give their love meaning. This, in turn, builds up a confidence to juggle strong emotions such as love with the demands of daily life. It no longer feels larger than life, or unfathomable. That is not to say emotionally intelligent people are incapable of being moved or overwhelmed. They also have hopes, and are grateful when things go the way they expected. The difference? Emotionally intelligent people accept the fact that nothing lasts forever. They are at ease with the reality that they will be anxious in some areas in some areas of life at certain times. They apologize in advance for their shortcomings and warn those around them in good time. It’s hard to blame someone for being emotional if they have admitted to going through a rough breakup. In short, one of the key steps towards emotional intelligence is learning to identify potential pitfalls. This allows you to identify your shortcomings and let those around you know, thus preventing misinterpretations. Final thought; have a browse true world history, and I’m sure you’ll be able to spot quite a few national (or global) catastrophes that can trace their origins to the emotional ignorance of political leaders.

https://medium.com/swlh/becoming-emotionally-intelligent-4970101af3ce

['Daniel Caruana Smith']

2020-12-22 22:52:45.454000+00:00

['Emotional Intelligence', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons']

When Anxiety Is Inevitable

When Anxiety Is Inevitable Taming the uncertainty, chaos and mental noise that fuels it Photo by BERTRY Nicole on Unsplash Ever since I can remember, I’ve shared my life with a low-level hum in the background. Growing up, it was as amorphous and nameless as the strange electrical buzz that filled my head as I tried to sleep. At times I’ve felt a sense of impending doom; a worried edginess that may or may not attach itself to something specific. When things really get out of balance, an unsettling feeling rises up and dominates every part of my being. It’s only as an adult that I’ve been able to name this thing as anxiety and identify the ways it affects my life. Being autistic means that I perceive, process and respond to the world differently to others. Getting by in a world that’s built for neurotypical people is hard work and I’m never quite sure if I’ve got it right. It’s no co-incidence that I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder at the same time I was diagnosed autistic. For me, anxiety means never fully inhabiting the moment. It’s always there siphoning off my attention and preventing me from being present. It’s a nasty parasite, a cruel thief, robbing me of my enjoyment of life. I have hated myself for not making the most of life; of failing to find the joy in it that other people seem blessed with. Anxiety also lives in the memory. When I look back on ‘happy’ times I also see the dark cloud looming in the background. Pushing my baby daughter on the swing in the park, driving in the country, travelling the world — they are all tainted. I look back and puzzle over what it was that prevented me from owning these experiences. It’s difficult to think of a time when I fully inhabited happiness. I’ve lived a life on the outside looking in, marvelling at the apparently seamless way that other people’s lives come together. It amazes me how they seem to take it for granted that it will all work out: friendships, relationships, work, buying a car, finding somewhere to live, being an adult. By contrast, I often feel like my life is one step away from spiralling out of control. So I am ever-vigilant in the attempt to hold it all together. Anxiety gives my life a level of difficulty that has become my ‘normal’. It’s the expectation that nothing will ever be straightforward but instead fraught with complication. Sometimes I feel that I’m a magnet for complication. Even the most simple social interaction or errand is a multi-step exercise, each step representing the possibility of something going awry. If something goes wrong or there is some unanticipated factor thrown in, I can end up stressed out and unhinged. Sometimes for fun I revise my to-do list at the end of the day and fill in the actual steps involved. It is strangely validating to see just how much I did and realise why I feel burnt out. I live with a constant internal monologue and only realised recently that by and large, other people don’t. It seems that they just get on with things and immerse themselves in whatever is happening. It’s probably the same people who tell me not to overthink things. Like it’s a choice. Like it’s not my default in the same way that other people’s is zoning out. Even when things are going well, my brain will be in overdrive. Not being able to switch off can be really annoying at 4am. I wish I could chill out or go with the flow or whatever it is that people do. It would make my life a lot easier. My brain is constantly working to make sense of things that are self-evident to other people. Being autistic means that I lack the intuitive understanding that many neurotypical people have so my mind needs to put in the extra work. I’ve never really been able to trust my judgment. Not having an organic understanding of social communication and relationships means having to compensate cognitively to make sense of it. I’ve become quite good at applying my powers of observation and analytical skill to people and situations. The effort some autistic folk put into reading people makes us amateur psychologists — some actually go on to the formal study of psychology. If there’s a social event involving anything other than a catch up with a close friend, I can expect to expend a vast amount of energy. I’ll be mentally casing the joint in the lead up — will it be crowded? Will it be too noisy for me to have a conversation? Will there be somewhere to escape to? It doesn’t end after the event either because I will fixate on how it went — whether I did the right thing, what else I could/should have done and how I came across, what the other people were thinking and whether there might be any implications for me. So many times I’ve put myself into uncomfortable situations because I thought I had to. I felt that if I couldn’t cope with things other people didn’t give a second thought to, I must be feeble-minded and less of a person. I thought that I had to cope so I did whatever it took. I tried to push through the surging anxiety. Even if things went well, I would be exhausted from the effort required. If the experience brought awkwardness and social faux pas, I would spend days steeped in self-loathing rumination. But to stop trying to cope would have been to give the game away; to admit that I just wasn’t up to it. So I kept pretending that I was just as capable as everyone else. To some I would have looked perfectly calm and in control because I was keeping such a tight rein on the chaos within. To others, I’m sure it was clear that something was a bit off. I was always afraid of being ‘found out’ although I never really knew what for. By continuing to turn up I think I managed to maintain the illusion that I was coping just enough. There’s a lot of power in being able to name something. Discovering I was autistic meant that I could own the fact that I experience life differently to many other people. It meant that it’s okay to set limits. I now give myself permission to avoid situations that I know will take too much from me. When I examine what is most likely to trigger my anxiety, it’s uncertainty and the lack of control that this brings. Not feeling in control makes me freeze and takes away my voice. It’s a common misunderstanding that the need for control is about wanting to control other people but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s about having a level of self-agency that enables me to have my needs met. The anxiety isn’t necessarily tied to the magnitude of the event either. When I had shoulder surgery recently, I did experience considerable anxiety due to the date being changed, throwing my plans into disarray. However, once it was rescheduled and I was confident it would go ahead, I barely gave a through to the actual surgery. I trusted my surgeon who had explained everything to me and patiently answered my questions. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I could then just direct my anxiety to getting to the hospital in time for admission. There is a cruel paradox in having a greater need for order and certainty but being less equipped than the average person to achieve it. Most autistic people struggle with uncertainty. The world is chaotic and processing whatever it throws up requires constant effort — whether we’re aware of it or not. Unfamiliar situations equal high anxiety. Autistic people are fond of routines, structures and plans because they minimise uncertainty and anchor us in a chaotic world. I’m not someone who requires a strict routine but I do need to feel that I’ve got some measure of control over my immediate circumstances. I write things down. I make lists, I maintain calendars and I have several notebooks on the go. Usually if I can map out in my mind what is going to happen and feel reasonably confident that’s how things will pan out, I’m fine. Of course I rely on certain things being in place or being able to adapt if they aren’t. So I know that minimising the uncertainty in my life will help keep the anxiety under control. But the knowledge that life is inherently uncertain is pervasive. People are unpredictable and communication is variable. Some things are just out of everyone’s control. I will live with anxiety for the rest of my life but there are things I can do to at least keep it to the low background hum most of the time. I’ve realised how important it is to me to feel grounded. To feel attached to the here and now. To feel that I exist. For me self-care is about the things I need to do to feel grounded. Self-care is not what a lot of people think it is. It’s essentially about arranging your life in a way that adds to rather than takes from your capacity to deal with it. Self-care is about knowing your limits and setting boundaries. It’s understanding how you operate and putting strategies in place that support it. It’s prevention rather than reaction. It needs to be integrated into your life rather than an afterthought. It’s too late by the time you feel burnt out and need a week off. There is no set formula to self-care. Beyond eating well, sleeping and exercising, the things that count as self-care for different people vary enormously. For some people it might be spending time with friends or family. These things make demands on me. It’s solitude and space that recharges. If I’m doing self-care well, I’m aware of what’s going on for me on an emotional level. It gives me a good basis to identify and articulate my needs and feel that I am in control of my life. These are the things that help me: Being immersed in nature, especially taking long walks Spending time at home doing things like gardening, cooking, sorting shelves Being creative — drawing, painting, sewing, writing — anything involving self expression Meditation and reflection All these things give me a sense of inhabiting myself and being at home with who I am. They make me feel grounded and ready to put myself out in the world. Everyone deserves the time to explore what self-care practices work for them and to be supported to maintain them.

https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/when-anxiety-is-inevitable-26f8291d8f0

['Justine L']

2020-12-27 04:08:18.814000+00:00

['Self Care', 'Anxiety', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology', 'Autism']

The Best Ways To Get More Clients For Your Social Media Marketing Agency (SMMA) Today

When it comes to creating a profitable SMMA, sales is your most important asset. Sure, that can be said about any business. However, as I watch hundreds of people come and go in the SMMA industry, I’m noticing the biggest pattern for failed agencies: the lack of sales. More specifically, the lack of going out and getting them. It’s Really About The Sales If you search for a term like “online business” in Youtube or Facebook, you’re likely to get an ad for SMMA. Visitors are sold all the hype about how they can make endless profits from owning an SMMA. Like any online business, it’s just not that easy. Many people don’t understand how to get more clients, let alone their first. Don’t get me wrong, with most SMMA courses the sales training is provided. You can even go online and watch free videos on how to do all of that. But the unseen truth about starting an SMMA is for the first part of it, it’s mostly just sales. Before you plop down a few hundred (or thousand) dollars on a course about SMMA, let me show the sales process. If you can get sales, you have a chance at making great money with an SMMA. If you think you’ll struggle with sales, you’re doomed from the beginning. It’s something that can be learned, but real salespeople are a special breed as well. Under The Hood Of SMMA Before we get into the sales part, let me unpack the SMMA operating model. Like any marketing agency, an SMMA is composed of specialists. You need at least one person who is an expert at creating effective social media ads and content. In many cases, Instagram and Facebook is the focus because of the potential reach and ROI. It’s not rocket science to navigate the Facebook dashboard or to create a good ad. However, since policies, rules, and strategies constantly change an expert on the subject is often needed. Campaigns and accounts get shut down all the time, so working with someone very familiar with the landscape is imperative. In my agency, I never hire anyone with less than $150,000 in ad spend experience. And that’s the kicker. A lot outside the SMMA think that the business owner is the ad expert: they’re not. Most of what I see are owners who understand social media well, but hire experts (on Upwork or a similar website) as subcontractors to do the technical work. It’s like a restaurant. The owner is not always the chef. In many cases, SMMA owners also act as the social media expert to cut costs. However, running an SMMA and deploying multiple campaigns for clients can get complicated. So what’s an owner to do? Job #1 For SMMA Owners If they hire a subcontractor to place and optimize ads, an owner’s role is simple: get sales. That’s it. Technically, onboarding clients would be another major task but that can be automated with a video and an online form. I came to this conclusion early in my journey with SMMA. I had it all wrong. I focused on the mechanical aspects of mastering Facebook ads, but none of that really mattered if I had no one to create ads for. And to be honest, no one is good at getting fantastic results when they’re just starting out. That’s when it hit me. I felt like a poser. How could I go on about getting awesome results for potential clients when all I had was a couple of weak case studies I created with my friends? Business owners would be forking over $2,000 a month, and for what? An amateur cutting his teeth on paid ads? That did not hold a lot integrity for me, but unfortunately it’s a pretty common situation in this industry. That wasn’t for me. I decided to stop learning Facebook Ads and hire a real expert. I interviewed a lot of top-notch social media experts for paid ads and found a couple real pros with enterprise-level experience. I paid them nearly half of the retainer (minus client ad spend costs). It was more like a business partnership until I learned how the finances really worked in an SMMA. (It’s about a 70/30 split plus performance bonuses now.) After the first few clients, I thought things were going pretty well. Clients would get at least 1,000% ROAS and plenty of new business. But what they don’t tell you is that clients don’t always stay for the retainer you prescribed (usually 3–6 months with an incentive/discount to stay on). If you lose a couple clients, it’s a huge hit on your revenue. Therefore, the agency owner’s job is to keep new clients coming in. You can always hire more ad specialists if need be. Why SMMA Owners Give Up That brings us to the hardest part of running an SMMA. It’s where I see dozens of would-be owners lose interest and give up the business entirely. This happens daily. Here are the three patterns of SMMA failure: 1.FEAR OF FAILURE AND REJECTION — No one likes to hear no’s all day. You must build thick skin to compete in sales and some people just don’t have it. In the beginning, you’re calling on 50–100 people a day to get a presentation appointment. The best strategy is to never sell your service on the phone, but talk up potential sales results for the client based on your custom research. All the selling, data, and proof-of-concept happens in a lengthier face-to-face meeting. Because of this, prospecting calls only last a minute or two. Even so, every rejection adds up and it’s defeating. 2.LACK OF PROPER SALES TRAINING — Resources on how to sell are a dime a dozen. A lot of them are pure regurgitated hype. However, there are some sales training gems out there that are worth paying for. The truth is that sales are in the realm of psychology and communication. Both of those topics are not exactly scientific, though they try to be. In reality, it’s messy and speculative at best. However, refining scripts, body language, and responses have proven to be valuable to increase sales. 3.SMMA IS A POOR BUSINESS-FOUNDER FIT — Some people are natural introverts. While some introverts do quite well in this industry, a lot don’t because there are constant interactions with complete strangers. You have to serve your client, reach out to hundreds of people every week, and give talks on building businesses with social media ads. This is the job. If you’re an introvert that can’t “turn it on” when you need to, this is not the right business for you. Furthermore, some people just find that running an agency isn’t what they thought it was. The business-owner fit is completely off and perhaps another field would be a win-win. So how do you get over all of these obstacles to getting sales? What Great SMMA Owners Do There are a few solutions that have helped SMMA owners handle sales. Here are three actions great salespersons do to get more SMMA clients: First, they commit to reaching out every day (preferably by phone). If you called at least 50 people every day for a month purely for the experience with talking to strangers, you’re guaranteed to get better at your people skills. That is assuming you adjust your conversations based on feedback. I’m talking about using a little bit of The Scientific Method here. What worked and what didn’t? What did customers respond positively to? What things should you avoid saying? What tone works best? What time works best? There are lots of things to recalibrate when you do sales and seeing the whole process more scientifically will definitely improve it. Second, let others do some heavy lifting for you. I wrote about this in another article, but it’s a common tactic for the most advanced salespeople. They use their existing network to send them pre-qualified prospects. Here is a short list of networks most people have at their disposal: Friends and Family, Former Co-Workers, Email Lists, Former Classmates (alumni), LinkedIn Contacts, Facebook Contacts, etc. If your lists are full of mostly weak connections, leverage the network lists of close friends and family. It’s easy to spruce up your lists. You simply meet up with people you know, like, and trust. You learn what they’re up to lately, and you get a good handle on what their ideal client looks like. Then you do the same for your business. Lastly, you send each other potential clients. Over-deliver on your quid pro quo. (A good book about all of this is by professor Adam Grant: Give And Take: Why Driving Others Drives Our Success). The key here is to have your contact call the potential client before you call. This is called a “favorable introduction”. They can briefly talk you up and let others know you’ve done business with them. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but it’s worth a try. Me, I don’t like to get emails or calls that are unsolicited. I’ve seen the failed business hook-up scheme far too many times to count, and this is what goes through my head each time: Gee Bob, thank you for connecting me to this complete stranger in an awkward way that clearly points to a form of cross-promotional marketing. You’re disinvited to next week’s BBQ! However, if someone I trust really understands my business and deep down they truly believe some stranger can add value to it, I’m happy to give them a minute or five on the phone. This is the way empires, past and present, have been built. We only buy from whom we know, like, or trust — unless we desperately need something. A favorable introduction tactic is like standing outside in the long sinuous line at Club Business. You’re at the very end of it. After waiting, you bump into someone who knows and likes you. You get to talking and they realize you should meet the club owner because of your shared interests. From there, your friend walks you right up to the front of the line, tells the bouncer “he’s with me”, and suddenly the red velvet rope is unlatched for you to walk through. Next thing you know, you’re being introduced to the club owner. It works, so work your network! Third, get a sales coach or mentor. Learn from the best and someone who has done what you want to do. Model success: it’s that simple. If they’ve been where you’re at, it’s likely they know all the common ways to fail at selling in your field. They also know a lot of ways to succeed. Why waste your time and money trying to figure it out for yourself? If SMMA sales training is not a big part of your current program, get more training elsewhere. Remember, at the end of the day sales is a vital activity. No sales, no profit. The catch is, a lot of sales advice is misguided and unethical. So-Called Sales Gurus I have a strong and unpopular opinion on a few sales gurus that seem to get all the attention. It’s not that I don’t think their tactics work. Again, we’re talking psychology and communication here, the weakest sciences of all. Something is bound to work. What I look for in sales training are the three E’s. Training needs to be Effective, Efficient, and Ethical. Bottom line, the sales system must actually get sales (effective). Parts of this sales system and training must be scalable and automated to free up my time and energy (efficient). It’s the last “E” that is usually questionable. A lot of sales advice is too slick for me (ethics). So where should you go to get sales training for your SMMA? Learn from whomever you are comfortable with. If that’s Belfort or Cardone, go for it. My picks are the less flamboyant types like Zig Zigler, Jeffrey Gitomer, and Oren Klaff. But to each their own. As you learn more about sales, focus on the general principles and verify that it aligns with your company values and goals. All the details will be ironed out by putting in the long hours practicing it in the field. That can take a long time to master, but the good news is that the pains of SMMA sales are quickly being addressed. One key to SMMA sales is to hone in on specific platforms and niche strategists with proven results for what they do. For example, to get to decision-makers it makes sense to utilize LinkedIn. Recently, I came across a company that passes my 3 E’s test called (SurgeFlowDigital owned by Natasha Vilaseca — no affiliation). This company has done-for-you lead generation services and training on how to systematically acquire SMMA clients from LinkedIn. Since getting clients is difficult, this is a great solution. Quality Lead Sourcing To get the edge, I would look at the way you qualify your leads. A lot of time and money is spent on calling prospects that are in no position to qualify for your services. I have coached SMMAs to set up 5–10 criteria for their ideal client. Those items are put on a spreadsheet. You can hire cheap labor on Upwork or Fiverr to do this task. It’s called Lead Sourcing. Build a quality list of businesses to call by pre-qualifying them first. For example, here are a few things I look for. A good client must be bringing in at least $20,000 a month. In my town, there are several lists and reports that make his information available to all (The Book of Business Lists). They must also be within 15 miles from where my business is located so only focus on a few local cities in my region. Their website must not have a Facebook pixel (use Chrome’s extension called FB Pixel Helper and turn off any ad blockers). Other good signs are that they don’t have recent ads on their business Facebook Page. If they don’t have a page, but they’re a big business it’s actually a selling point for your services. Often I look at Instagram to evaluate their follower count and engagement, especially if they have visual services or products (gyms, homes, retail goods, etc). Low activity on Instagram could be a golden opportunity to discuss with them. Every criterion takes you a step closer to finding a high-quality lead. Guesstimating the average sale is a good criterion. You want that figure to be over $100, but ideally north of $500. If they’re already advertising on traditional media, this is a great sign. In my mind, they’ve wasted a lot of money on print ads or television and that kind of marketing is hard to track. Moreover, on Facebook they’ll simply get more exposure to their ideal and highly-targeted market. I like to take a look at their Google Business page and/or Yelp page see if there are only a few reviews. That’s a good indicator they might need social media marketing help too. There are many more things to look for when creating a good lead sourcing list. However, the list of things I look for above is a start. In addition, many SMMA owners have discovered that even though leads meet their basic criteria they still have to go one step further. SMMA Lead Scoring I first discovered a problem with basic online sales funnels when I had a luxury real estate client. My client’s task was to pre-lease fancy units from buildings that weren’t even finished. I learned that they spent a lot of marketing dollars to acquire new tenants (CoCA): $3,500 per sale. That seemed like a lot, but their year-long leases were worth over $80,000 a year per unit. The client’s goal was to get enough interested parties to go through the sales funnel and come out signing contracts. That was easier said than done. That’s when I learned that even within the funnel there were pre-qualifying features and segments that would determine the best kinds of buyers from the tire-kickers. From this point onward, I started to implement the idea of Lead Scoring into my high-end clients and my own agency. Sadly, this was a new term to me a few years ago. Lead Scoring is when you evaluate the best leads based on select criteria, urgency, and trust. For example: A prospect that downloaded your freebie is a better lead than someone who didn’t. Did the lead come from a guest post on a niche website or did they come from a general business directory? Is the visitor local? Have they attended one of your events or toured a unit? Which pages did they visit? Which videos did they watch? Was the website visitor male or female, and who controlled the family finances? All of these things add up and become prioritized in your lead scoring system. This is why my real estate client spent so much money on acquiring customers. They didn’t want a basic list generated from placing a few targeted video ads on Facebook. They needed more commitment and engagement to land customers. This process was like throwing a whole new dimension on to my basic funnel and lead sourcing activities. The payoff of lead scoring is that what you end up with the Glengarry leads. Leads that score the highest are truly the best and have the greatest probability of doing business with you. If you get lots of leads that don’t go anywhere and you sell high-ticket items, you need lead scoring. It takes more time and money, but this is another task that can be outsourced and automated with lead scoring software. When you get a budget for it, implement it immediately. The Selling Get Easier All this heavy sales stuff might sound daunting to new SMMA owners. It does get easier and more interesting. As you build up your case studies and client base, you’ll take on different roles. In the beginning, 80% of your time should be doing some sort of direct sales activity. However, when your agency is cruising along practically on auto-pilot because you have more help, the percentage of time flips. Now you spend 80% of the time improving business systems and only 20% doing pure sales. I’m lucky to have survived the pains of early SMMA growth. I have certainly learned a lot and failed a lot of times. But today, a big part of business development is simply collecting referrals from previously satisfied clients. I can’t remember the last time I did a cold call. Arlie Peyton is a coach for personal brands and online businesses. He has served as Oregon’s state representative for vocational education and strongly believes that everyone creates their own brand of intrinsic and commercial value. Peyton is based in Portland, Oregon — a magical and mysterious city enveloped by a Douglas Fir rainforest. Learn more at arliepeyton.com. READ NEXT ON THE STARTUP Do you want to learn how I got into SMMA? Read the article about my journey and the random course I took by Iman Gadhzi. This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +438,678 people. Subscribe to receive our top stories here.

https://medium.com/swlh/the-best-ways-to-get-more-clients-for-your-social-media-marketing-agency-smma-today-627167ee42a5

['Arlie']

2019-12-17 17:55:20.742000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Business Development', 'Startup', 'Smma', 'Sales']

How Can I Improve On My Writing?

‘Creating A Masterpiece’ How can I improve on my writing? Which is the best format, style and technique to use? Where can I get the ideas to write about? These are just some of the questions I have asked myself as I embark upon my curious writing adventure. I realize that perhaps I should have created this particular piece first, ahead of the previous two articles I recently produced, asked some of the above questions before jumping in and writing whatever was on my mind at the time. But I didn’t, so…. Where It Began My interest in writing has only recently been triggered again, I do not know why and I do not know what it was that ignited that smoldering ember, but I’m here now, intrigued as to what will come of this recurring interest. Writing first became of interest to myself in my school days, as I imagine was the case for the majority of people. A rebel without a cause, the class clown, slouched in my seat at the front of the class (so as the teacher could see what I was up to), shirt hanging out, top button undone and tie in a loose knot all accompanied by a far away glaze in my eyes that signaled to the educator, ‘I am just not that interested in retaining the information that is being forced upon me.’ In my naive ‘know it all’ teenage brain, all teachers had nothing useful to say and they were saying it all too loud! This was my opinion in each of my classes bar one, English. Perhaps it was the 6’3, square shouldered, balding giant of a teacher who conduced the class that compelled me to straighten up, smarten up and pay attention. That and he was also the vice principle of the school. Working our way through the various case studies of the school curriculum was when writing first engaged my curiosity. A Quick Fix? Jump forward a few years, 10 (and a bit) roughly, which brings us to present day, 2018. Besides the bare minimum at work or a social media post while under the influence, when we all become a deep and spiritual individual with the answers to all of life’s big questions, I have done next to nothing when it comes to writing, until now. I have decided to write as often as I can or whenever there is a moment of silence at home, which isn’t a common occurrence with a boisterous 1-year-old running amok and a prepubescent 10-year-old moping around like a lost soul. As a result of this decision, I have been eager to answer the questions previously mentioned and most commonly asked it seems: ‘How can I improve my writing?’ ‘Which is the best format, style and technique to use?’ ‘Where can I get the ideas to write about?’ to name a few. It then occurred to me, everyone already knows the answers to these questions deep down, the real question that is being asked is: ‘I need a quick fix to becoming a successful writer, where can I find it?’ As I am a complete newbie to writing I am not going to say for certain that I know this answer, but I would hazard a guess and say, ‘There is no quick fix’ Solutions? Through researching and on the quest to increase my knowledge on writing, I have come up with a few personal opinions on how to improve on my writing. 1. Practice — The only way to improve at anything, whether it be writing, sports, driving, you name it, is to practice. Repetition is the key. You will never master a task if you never perform the task, so get writing as often as possible, emails, social media posts, blogs will all contribute to increasing your writing capabilities. 2. Reading — Lately I have been paying closer attention to how pieces are written and formatted. By reading books, articles, blog posts, advertisements in magazines and newspapers, bill boards, anything were the creator/author of the content is trying to evoke an emotion I have not only been reading, but also thinking about why this has been put together in this particular style, what is the author trying to achieve, what can I learn from this etc. 3. Listening — This is the digital era and there is no shortage of podcasts, videos and audiobooks, to name a few, on almost any subject you could possibly think of. I have been listening to podcasts and interviews from professional writers on my daily commute, whilst I work and even as I drift of to sleep. The beauty of listening is it can be done on the move and be done whilst multitasking with the option to playback any thing you may have missed. 4. Online Courses — I haven’t looked to deeply into any of the online courses that are on offer as I believe there is more than enough free content to learn from for someone at my stage of their writing journey. 5. Where to get ideas — I have set up a Google Docs folder on my phone that I use to note ideas that I hear in my daily life. Perhaps I hear a certain subject mentioned on the radio that triggers an idea I could write about, I jot it down right there and then so as not to forget. There are ideas surrounding you every day, you just have to listen. Maybe you don’t wear your ear buds the next time you use the bus or train for example and just listen to what’s going around you, anything can set off a thought pattern in your mind and next thing you know you have 5 or 6 ideas to write about, give it a go. The points listed above include some of the steps which I use when I wish to learn or improve at anything in life and I believe the same methods will be just as rewarding as I seek to improve on my own writing skills. I would love to hear of any other methods you use to help increase your knowledge and skills when it comes to writing or anything that you have tried in the past that has been of immense value and help in moving you forward toward your writing goals.

https://weejusty.medium.com/how-can-i-improve-on-my-writing-37544ae10f89

['Ryan Justin']

2019-05-03 01:35:57.289000+00:00

['Ideas', 'Practice', 'Writing', 'Reading', 'Productivity']

Q&A with Sherrell Dorsey, Founder of The PLUG

Q&A with Sherrell Dorsey, Founder of The PLUG This week, The Idea caught up with Sherrell to learn more about The PLUG — a digital platform that covers the black tech sector. Read to learn about The PLUG’s data-driven journalism, how the outlet plans to close the gap between journalists and black innovation communities, and why Sherrell thinks media outlets struggle to draw diverse audiences. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis. Tell me about The PLUG. The PLUG is a subscription-based digital news and insights platform. We cover the black innovation economy and report on black tech, investment, ecosystems, workforce development, and anything pertaining to the future of technology from the perspective of black leaders and innovators. We deliver exclusive stories once per week. We’re increasing this frequency to two times a week in June. We also provide data indexes, reports, and other intelligence on the black tech space like black CIOs and S&P 500s. We also have monthly pro member calls where we feature different leaders in the space. Back in February, we launched a live summit to bring together researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. We currently have several thousand subscribers with hundreds of paid members. Most of these pro members actually opt for an annual subscription instead of a quarterly one. And, how did you come up with the idea? I actually stumbled across the idea accidentally. I have always worked in tech and one of the challenges for me was not seeing folks that looked like me in the tech scene in the media I was consuming. I grew up in Seattle, so I was constantly around black engineers, black programmers, black network administrators. It bothered me that I wasn’t seeing that reflected in the material that I was reading and that there wasn’t a rigorous and analytical look at what people of color are doing in the tech space In 2008, I started a blog and began writing about black tech innovators who were developing models to provide formerly incarcerated people with employment by training them in solar panel installation. At the time I didn’t have a journalism background, but I was calling publications asking to write about these topics. I found that as I was building up my freelance repertoire, people began reaching out to me because of my knowledge of this space. This inspired me to launch a daily tech newsletter in 2016. Our readers not only included black techies at companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon but also investors and other tech reports who felt that they had been missing a diversity lens on tech. The newsletter was getting traction and advertisers like Capital One and Goldman Sachs started reaching out to me asking to connect with my audience, which eventually allowed me to grow the newsletter into a platform that provides readers with highly data-driven journalism. How has the platform’s business structure evolved since its inception? When I first started, it was just me, my laptop, and my WiFi. Then, when Capital One and other sponsors came on board, I was able to grow revenue and start doing some testing on the structure of the business. I would also go on to secure a six-month publishing partnership with Vice Media where we co-published pieces on diversity and tech onto the tech vertical they had at the time, Motherboard. It quickly became apparent, however, that advertising isn’t the best way to play the long game. So, I started looking into how The PLUG can build a sustainable subscription model. In 2019, The PLUG participated in The Information’s Accelerator, which is an initiative that supports next-generation news publications. Shortly after, we launched a paid version of The PLUG in July. Aside from that, we also license our content and publish sponsored content. Every now and then, we also secure grants. What do you think mainstream outlets get wrong when trying to attract black and brown audiences? Way too often people treat these audiences as a charity and think that giving them free access will solve the issue. It unsettles me when media leaders treat this issue as a philanthropic initiative. We overestimate how much money factors into this. I grew up in the inner city; people pay for what it is they value at the end of the day, rich or poor. You have to have content that these audiences find valuable. Even if you give it to them for free, the content and coverage are not valued if it does not reflect their community or voice in an authentic way. Did you consider VC funding? Yeah, I initially thought I was going to secure VC dollars. But, I found that a lot of the pushback I was getting was “Well, we already invested in another black media outlet.” The real question is: why can there only be one? Do black and brown people not have needs and nuances? What do you think sets The PLUG apart from other black tech media outlets? Definitely our depth and analysis — The PLUG has extensive data libraries. For instance, we were the first one to develop a map of all black-owned coworking spaces in the country. We cover topics that no one else is asking questions about. Unfortunately, there’s no centralized source on black tech, and so The PLUG’s ability to bring this data, comprehensive indexes, and in-depth coverage has allowed us to garner a lot of attention. A talent scout for ABC’s Shark Tank recently told me that they use The PLUG to stay informed on emerging start-ups across the nation. What’s your long-term vision for The PLUG? I’d like to offer more city-specific reportage on black innovation communities across the country and the world and build a global network of reports. I’d also like to move into more research-based initiatives to help fuel academic research, investor analysis, and government policy on black innovation. In all honesty, though, I don’t even have a 10-year plan. The impetus behind our work is greater visibility and I hope that in 10 years we don’t have to continue staying niche. My hope is that more businesses and tech publications will cover communities of color with the same diligence and rigor as The PLUG. I hope that this kind of reportage is not seen as ancillary but instead more integrated in tech and business reportage. And with that, I hope that we get purchased and can grow within the walls of a publisher that recognizes our value and the importance of delivering this information to readers. RAPID FIRE What is your first read in the morning? The Wall Street Journal’s tech news briefing and The Daily Stoic. What was the last book you consumed? Arlan Hamilton’s It’s About Damn Time and Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable. What job would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role? This is tricky because I like the grind of building something from the ground up. If I wasn’t working on The Plug, I’d probably be teaching inclusive entrepreneurship at the collegiate level or within vocational training ecosystems.

https://medium.com/the-idea/q-a-with-sherrell-dorsey-founder-of-the-plug-8fd4227440d9

['Tesnim Zekeria']

2020-05-27 19:38:12.108000+00:00

['Journalism', 'Startup', 'Technology', 'Subscriber Spotlight', 'Media']

How to Easily Create Animated Gifs, Step-by-Step Guides, and Videos

You know that feeling in your gut when you get a loong email with complicated sentences explaining what you should do and where you should find it. This is a kind of email you need to read three times to understand what the person wants from you. Or that gut feeling when you’ve had a Zoom meeting with several of your co-workers explaining a procedure a couple of times, not once but a couple of times. And still, you get emails and phone calls with questions about the same procedure. Are you sick of endless phone calls and online meetings where you have to explain the same thing over and over again? Do you have a feeling you spend more time on meetings than you are writing code? I know how that feels. FRUSTRATING! Throwing your computer through the window is out of the question. The problem is not the computer, and no, no need to assume others are stupid or don’t listen. Here is the problem. Two-thirds of people understand information better when communicated visually. We process visuals 60,000 times faster than text How long does it take you to realize that a curved line with every point equal distance from the center is a circle? Is it not easier just to show? Still, many people rely mostly on writing long exhausting emails and having long fruitless phone calls. It’s time to put a stop to it. There is a solution to the problem. You can make a how-to guide, animated gif, or a video explaining a topic so coworkers can watch it over and over again without bothering you. In this article, you’ll learn about Snagit. Snagit is a super useful tool that helps you: create how-to guides, animated gifs, instructional videos You can create: materials for technical documentation, materials for marketing, or training materials. With visual materials, you can improve communication in your team. And no, creating these materials is not a long and challenging procedure. Snagit has a super simple screen recorder, snipping tool, screen capture and more How visual communication can help you be a better communicator In the next lines, I’ll demonstrate a few examples. Try to imagine the amount of time and effort it would take if you tried to explain the same thing with words or try to create the same thing with a graphic tool like Photoshop or Microsoft Word. Examples: You want to share a print screen of an app/page with sensitive data. You want to show extra attention to a part of the app/page, but you want to hide some parts of the app/page since it reveals some sensitive information. You want to record a simple video explaining the results of your last week’s work. You’ll make a simple HOW-TO guide. You’ll make it in less than a minute. Do you want to see how? You’ll pretend to be a designer that needs to give feedback on the new website. You’ll make an animated gif showing how to do a simple task. And you’ll optimize the gif size. These are just a few examples where using a visual is way more effective than using plain text. And Snagit makes it quick and easy for you. While I’ll demonstrate the examples, I’ll show you some of my favorite tools in Snagit. How to make a print screen and hide sensitive information… quickly Report with hidden information How to make a print screen with panoramic capture and hide sensitive information In the video, you can learn: how to make a print screen that needs scrolling with Snagit’s screen capture how to grab text from the print screen how to hide sensitive data on the print screen how to simplify an image how to add annotations to the image how to share it or host it in the cloud Snagit tools used in the video are: panoramic capture simplify tool grab text (only mentioned) annotations themes sharing to Screencast.com Panoramic screen capture One of the great features of Snagit is the ability to do a panoramic screen capture. With panoramic capture, you can make a print screen and include anything that needs scrolling. You can record the screen vertically or horizontally. Horizontal scrolling would be useful if you were recording something like a Trello dashboard. Simplify tool The simplify tool makes all the objects on the page simplified. The simplify tool is useful when: we are showing the UI that might change in the future, and we don’t want the user to get confused we have some delicate data on the screen, and we don’t want the user to see this information. The simplify tool takes the colors from the page. Grab text tool Grab text tool helps you grab text from an image. It’s super simple. Here is how: Themes If you want to use the same colors and styles in all Snagit tools, you can make a theme. Snagit themes make it easy to create and share a set of custom tool styles, called quick styles, to create consistency in your images. To a theme, you can add up to 8 colors. Create a theme when you want to stick to your companies branding throughout several projects. You can also download themes from their resources. Sharing One cool thing about Snagit is that it integrates with: Google Drive, Slack, Dropbox Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Outlook YouTube Camtasia and more. You can add more plugins for sharing. How to record a simple video from print screens Once you have your print screens created, you can make a video from these images. Snagit has a super simple screen recorder and editing tools. In Snagit, it’s a simple procedure: select images you want to use in a video, right-click and select Create Video from Images enable audio and/or camera record the video while explaining the content of the print screens add annotations and callouts where they make sense export the video and share it. This part of the Youtube video explains how to record a simple video from print screens to explain the results of your last week’s work: Present results of your work in a video How to create a HOW-TO guide This kind of guide would take some time to create in Photoshop or Microsoft Word. The latest version of Snagit introduced Templates that make creating guides a breeze. In Snagit, you do the following: select print screens you want to add to a guide, right-click and select Combine in a template rearrange images and add captions add title and subtitle export You have many Templates available for free and even more in TechSmith’s resources library. This part of the video explains how to create a simple step-by-step guide: How to make a simple HOW-TO guide with templates Give quick feedback using a visual You need to give feedback on the new app or website; you need to discuss the UI and functionality. Would it not be great if you could: make a print screen remove parts from the print screen that you don’t like add what is missing move the parts of the app that need re-arranging and add comments and callouts right on the print screen In this example, we pretend to be a designer that needs to give feedback on the new website: How to move elements on the page Create an animated gif showing how to do a simple task Snagit makes it simple to create a gif. The animated gif is perfect for showing a simple task like filling a simple form. Snagit lets you optimize the gif. Custom options include: Frame rate is the number of frames per second. A higher frame rate produces smoother video playback and can result in larger file sizes. Gif dimensions Dithering prevents color banding and helps produce smoother video content. Dithering can result in larger file sizes. Dynamic colors are recommended. Enabling this option can result in increased file sizes. With looping, the Animated GIF plays back on a continuous loop. Fade to black causes animated GIF to fade the last frame to black. In the video, you will see how to create an animated gif with Snagit: How to make an animated gif showing a simple task Snagit for visual communication I’m a Snagit user, I use it daily. I’m also their affiliate since I’m a fan of their software and cannot work without their products anymore. If Snagit is the right tool for you then I would be happy if you buy from the this link. I get a super small fee. Snagit is the golden tool for: developers, eLearning professionals, marketing gurus, and everybody that works in a field where good communication is the key to quality work. Before buying you can try a trial version. If you have any questions about Snagit, you can contact me via LinkedIn or add a comment to the YouTube Snagit review. I would be happy to help.

https://medium.com/ucan-learn-to-code/snagit-2021-tutorial-9175857a6fff

['Jana Bergant']

2020-12-22 12:30:57.735000+00:00

['Tutorial', 'Marketing', 'Documentation', 'Startup', 'Communication']