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aces-to-apples · 5 years

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halo, spartans, and rvb deep lore

you wanna incorporate spartan lore into your rvb fic

okay then, first thing’s first: what you have to know, first and foremost, about the spartans (beyond a genuinely stupid amount of backstory) is that everything about the SPARTAN-II Program (not to be confused with the original ORION Project, or the subsequent SPARTAN-III or SPARTAN-IV Programs) from start to finish is fucking buckwild

tw: child abuse, kidnapping, mental abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, human experimentation, human rights violations, medical experimentation, child soldiers, slavery, murder, torture, ptsd, war, genocide, psychosis, non-consensual body modification, suicide (i missed that one, sorry), let me know if i missed anything

ORION Project (retroactively termed “SPARTAN-I Program”)

okay so picture this, it’s 2494. humans have been out there, colonizing space for a good couple hundred years. there’s a Unified Earth Government. there’s a United Nations Space Command. everything still runs on capitalism, and the military is basically the government. now up until now, because Capitalism, earth and its closest neighbors (the Inner Colonies) have been demanding more and more from the poorer and sparser working class Outer Colonies with diminishing returns for the Outer Colonies because space capitalism, and it’s been getting progressively worse and worse for decades. it’s very star wars, slow decay of the republic, because CAPITALISM IN SPACE, folks! so, 2494, after decades of trying to negotiate better conditions and compromises with a government that doesn’t listen and doesn’t care, finally the demands for independence start pouring in in earnest. these demands are, of course, denied, with prejudice. fighting breaks out; it’s unofficial war. the Insurrection. unbeknownst to you, humble average joe trying to live your life without GODDAMN SPACE CAPITALISM, the unsc (specifically ONI, the office of naval intelligence, which is basically the space CIA, who does all the really shady shit) saw the writing on the wall a few years before and put restarted the efforts to biochemically augment regular soldiers for more effective use. super soldiers, ya dig?

(full disclosure: they’ve been trying this for years, decades, like a century and a half or some shit but it never really worked out and last time they tried it, in like 2321 or some shit, they scrapped it and shove the initial volunteers back into regular duty and they all ended up mysteriously dying.)

so, super soldiers. stronger, faster, enhanced sight and hearing, enhanced brain function, the works. and work it does, sort of. the first 65 test subjects are a success, and deployed in 2496 because the Insurrection is picking up steam and actually winning battles and taking control of new territory and using spies and just basically freaking the shit out of the military. another batch goes into the works. things get worse. bombings continue, insurrectionists grow bolder, spies become harder to root out, civilians get caught in the crossfire, hatred for the unsc continues to grow. at its height, there are 300 active duty ORIONs, and they’re good at what they do, but it’s not enough. because of War and also Science, the ORIONs also become a game of diminishing returns, most of them growing too traumatized, too jaded, too sympathetic to the insurrection, or too sick (physically, mentally, and even genetically) to continue. 2502: the leader of the Secessionist Union is assassinated by the ORIONs, the Union falls apart but the Insurrection only gains strength from a martyr, and honestly when does any military actually stay smart and efficient? the ORION Project is quietly retired in 2506 and the remaining 165 active duty ORIONs reintegrated back into regular unsc.

(another quick aside here: the Insurrection refers less to any specific group of insurgents and more of the overall cause of independence from earth imperialism. the Secessionist Union was the most visible, organized, and effective of the bunch, having gather about a dozen world initially to all petition for sovereignty from the Unified Earth Government.)

(fun fact: ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) were modeled off of the ORIONs and became the most badass and effective soldiers in the UNSC, barring SPARTANs themselves.)

(another one: due to all the biochemical and genetic fuckery, the ORIONs who didn’t develop ridiculous scary physical/genetic health problems, or completely understand mental health problems, really did kind of end up like captain america-y super soldiers and continued serving well past when a baseline human would have retired or just gotten Too Old For This Shit. Avery Johnson, a notable and dare i say Iconic character from the Halo franchise, was an ORION and that led him to surviving: all of the ORION Project fuckery missions, the Harvest incident AKA: When Humans Met Covenant And It Went Poorly, the Fall of Reach AKA: When The Covenant After 20 Years Of War Found And Glassed Earth’s Next-Door Neighbor Signalling The Beginning Of The End Cuz When They Found Earth It Was All Gonna Be Fucking Over, the Battle of Installation 04 AKA: Halo 1, and the first Battle of Earth and the Battle of Installation 05 AKA: Halo 2. he was a key leader in the Human-Covenant Alliance following the Great Schism and participated in the Battles for the Ark and Installation 08 AKA: When The Elites Realized Their Religious Leaders Were Full Of Shit And Started Their Own Rebellion And Teamed Up With Humanity To Stop The Flood From Spreading Or The Halo Installations From Firing And Wiping Out All Sentient Life In The Galaxy AKA: Halo 3. also, the biochemical fuckery kept the flood, aka: space zombies via spores, from infecting him. the monitor, also known as epsilon’s ball-form, shot and killed johnson with his lazer face at the end of halo 3. i cried. this badass motherfucker survived like legit 55 years of war to be taken out by an a.i. who can’t wear pants having an existential crisis.)

SPARTAN-II Program (spiritual successor to ORION Project)

2510. shit’s been fucked for awhile. the Unified Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command have been fighting an unofficial civil war for like 15 years. people are Tired, they want the war to end, but they don’t want to admit that they’re in the wrong, so they decide to throw more firepower at the problem. enter Dr. Catherine Halsey, a motherfucking 18 year old civilian child prodigy scientist, I DIDN’T EVEN FUCKING KNOW THAT SHE WAS THAT FUCKING YOUNG WHAT THE F U C K, walks up to the Vice Admiral of ONI (remember, Space CIA, alllll the shady shit) and says “hey i got an idea let’s try super soldiers again but this time it’s Worse” and ONI fucking agree because ONI is Fucked Up and i fucking Hate them, fuck ONI. anyway, it’s “spartan episode 2: attack of the clones” up in here. oh, you think i’m kidding? you think i jest?

“the first problem is,” says arrogant petulant 18 year old catherine halsey who’s never been told no a day in her life because she’s just So Smart, she’s Emily Grey up in this bitch but without the perky attitude or respect for people’s wishes when they say they don’t want a robot arm, “the problem with the orions was that the genetic fuckery y’all did was done all willy-nilly, y’all didn’t even make sure the soldiers would be compatible. now you’re got avery johnson, real like Captain America, running around but also orions who retired and had children need to give their kids special injections on the regular to keep their genes where and doing what they’re supposed to be. so you gotta genetically test all your subjects before you fuck with their dna.”

“okay, that makes sense,” says oni, “go on.”

“right so the second problem is,” says halsey, who will eventually become pretty much the worst that Humanity has to offer to the Universe, in my opinion, “that some of your knock-off super soldiers developed a little touch of the ol’ ptsd, or caught some Feelings about the insurrection maybe being Not Wrong, so we gotta make sure to brainwash—i’m sorry, did i say brainwash, i meant indoctrinate—all your slaves—i mean subjects!—in Military Values and Warfare because who wants super soldiers with empathy. so they’ve gotta be pretty young, which ties in nicely with the genetic component which requires they be prepubescent. neat, right?”

“brainwash children,” oni replies, nodding and making notes, “got it. anything else?”

“ah ha!” says halsey, whom i hate possibly more than any other fictional character across the board. “so! after we find these really genetically specific children who are all in the single digits, all possessing not only genetic but superior physical and mental capabilities, and after we kidnap them and replace them with flash clones—which, i’ll remind you, are illegal to create because flash-cloning speeds up the development of the cloned fetus to such degrees that they almost unfailingly develop compounding biological and congenital defects that cannot be corrected us thus almost all of them end up dying awful painful deaths—so we abduct the children and replace them with clones almost guaranteed to die quickly, ruining untold hundreds of lives in the process, we’ll physically, mentally, and emotionally abuse them into compliance and ruin any chance of them functioning in society by turning them into child soldiers. and then! and this is the really fun part, and then when they’re fourteen we’ll subject them to the most despicable violations of their body that i can possibly concoct using chemical, biological, and physical let’s call them ‘augmentations’ to make them grow obscenely large and strong without their consent because they’re slaves—soldiers!—and really who needs consent or ethics or basic human rights, amirite?”

“entirely,” oni says, nodding in agreement. “so what’s the survival rate on that, by the by?”

“hmm?” asks halsey, distracted by her own fucking evil brilliance, “oh right yeah well you originally okayed that i steal 150 kids from their parents but then i added in that whole flash-clone bullshit to soothe my own almost non-existent conscience so you bumped it down to 75 and then, like, 30 of them won’t survive the augmentation process at all, and then like a dozen of them will become so painfully and tortuously disabled that we’ll just kick them out of the project—you guys can find a use for those wash-outs, right?—and like a couple of them will probably kill themselves so like…” halsey trails off, counting her fingers silently. “33, maybe? did i count that right? yeah so like between thirty and thirty-five i’d say. less than half, to be sure! that’s cool right?”

“…….sounds good to me!” oni agrees enthusiastically, because they’re irredeemable pieces of shit. “what happens next?”

what happens next, dear readers, is that after all the children are kidnapped when they’re six years old in 2517, they’re treated like *waves hand in above direction* THAT, until 2525, when the planet of Harvest was discovered by the Covenant. you know, that alien coalition that decides to wipe humanity out of existence for Religious Reasons. i won’t get into the politics of the covenant because even after all of this i think that’s Too Much, but suffice it to say that the leaders of the Covenant were Full of Shit and They Knew It Too. so, harvest happens, and Covies go on a decades long rampage, and the insurrection doesn’t so much die as it gets sort of pushed to the side because Genocidal Aliens. so the Covies are glassing planets left and right—despite the Cole Protocol which states that any UNSC or civilian ship must not make any direct slipspace jumps from Covie engagements to any human populated planet because they can track slipspace vectors and calculate where you’ll come out, and also if you have to evacuate then you damn well wipe all your data and activate the ship’s self-destruct so they can’t find more humans to mercilessly murder—and with the addition of Genocidal Aliens to the mix, the SPARTAN-II Program speeds the fuck up and introduces Project MJOLNIR.

MJOLNIR Power Assault Armor, a high-powered 1000 lb. combat exoskeleton system designed not just to protect, but to enhance the already substantial physical capabilities of the spartans (all now somewhere in the upper six-foot range, to my memory) and to house fully-formed smart a.i.

(a.i… are a whole ‘nother deal. quick an dirty version: a ‘dumb’ a.i. is programmed like any other and can continue on as it is pretty much as long as its physical contain can. a ‘smart’ a.i., on the other hand, is based on an actual human brain but due to the limited nature of its processing matrix, the longer it operates, the less ‘space’ it has in its ‘brain’. a smart a.i. times out around seven years, sometimes before, because it literally thinks itself to death. once it times out, they call it rampancy. remember that term? yeah, it’s cuz season 10 talked about the four stages of rampancy, which can be compared to human psychosis, at which point the a.i., having been gathering incomprehensible amounts of data for seven years, begins to break down and dip into, kind of, debilitating amounts of emotion. sigma wanted to achieve the meta phase because it was the closest he could find to being human again, but he needed all of the fragments collected again because merging together might make them a full a.i. and thus closer to achieving, or i suppose, regaining full personhood.)

right anyway mjolnir armor, the distinctive halo armor, makes spartans absurdly strong and difficult to kill. not invincible, but damn fucking good. the spartans, along with the ODSTs, run of the mill marines, the cole protocol, and human refusal to just lay down and die pretty much holds the line against total annihilation by the Covenant for *checks watch* twenty-seven goddamn years. for twenty-seven years the Covenant sprinted around the galaxy squashing every human colony and settlement they could find but couldn’t find earth or much of the inner colonies. two, three generations of people who never knew anything but war in some form or another is pretty fucked up, guys.

anyway so, fast forward through, Yikes, All Of That to 2552. 2552 was a big year yall. ngl, like twelve huge battles all happened pretty much concurrently right now, but wrt the spartans: the Covenant found Reach, which was pretty much Earth’s next-door neighbor (and, incidentally, where all the spartan ii’s were “trained”) and they found it right when all of the spartans had been recalled back to it for a super secret mission. most of them died. john-117, master chief, and his buddy (i……wanna say linda?) made it off the planet with cortana the a.i., kickstarting the first halo game, while a little group got up to their own crazy space-magic shenanigans that i……i honestly can’t even get into right now, i just can’t, it’s all so fuckin weird and spans like seven books and i honestly don’t remember most of it. so, master chief and cortana the a.i. who is based on halsey’s brain because jen taylor is a hell of a voice actress, go to halo and meet the space zombies and stop halo from firing and killing everyone by blowing it up and that’s basically halo 1 for you. same thing happens in halo 2, except now there’s alien politics and you also get to play as a sangheili soldier who comes to the startling realization that his religious leaders are Full of Shit and starts a civil war. halo 3 is all the crazy shit happening on earth and also more alien politics and honestly i enjoyed that game least so i don’t remember much of it tbh. like i said, most of the spartans die on reach, but john and his buddy who might be linda live, as well as a little handful, one of whom is definitely named fred.

SPARTAN-III Program (AKA: "Make the units better with new technology. Make more of them. And make them cheaper.“) (god everything about this universe is so fucking buckwild)

the spartan ii’s were a resounding success but there literally being less than three-dozen kinda cut down on their usefulness, and also halsey refused to train a second batch of spartans because of her goddamn “age requirement” and like i’m not complaining that more children weren’t abducted and experimented on but halsey really was a fucking moron really just out here to stroke her own damn ego, jesus fucking christ. not, of course, that the spartan iii’s were MUCH better, mind you. so, 2531, six years into the war with the covenant and an equal amount of time without a second batch of spartan ii’s, this asshole called ackerson goes, “pfft, i can make more of these fuckers and i can make them cheaper and i won’t have to kidnap kids, who’s with me?”

and ONI said, “wait we’re not kidnapping anymore?” and it looks kinda put out cuz it likes that shady shit.

“nah,” says ackerson, waving a hand, “we’ll just recruit orphans from glassed planets who have a grudge against the covenant. like, ya know, eight and nine years olds and shit. it’ll be fine.”

so the first batch of spartan iii’s was produced in 2531: alpha company, 300 strong, all of whom survived the augmentation process at the age of twelve because it, like, got refined and dulled down a little or something, it’s been awhile. so alpha company is doing good, real good, trained by a the guy who trained the spartan ii’s and even one of the spartan ii’s themself.

(kurt-051, also known as kurt ambrose, real name kurt trevelyan because the spartan program literally fucked him up so bad he couldn’t remember his family name so ackerson just fucking gave him one, oh my gooood. anyway, so kurt was the leader of green team and they were sent on a mission but ONI fucking, they fuckin sabotaged his jetpack so that it malfunctions while in space so that he’s presumed dead but actually ONI just abducted him so he could train the spartan iii’s without halsey knowing about it because MILITARY POLITICS I GUESS?)

right anyway so alpha company, they do good, they do good, and then nine months after deployment in 2537 all of them (with a few exceptions who got pulled out to do other shit in other branches) get wiped out in Operation: PROMETHEUS, a mission to destroy a Covie shipyard or whatever. ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT CASUALTY RATE. okay, so, this is fine, we’ll try again. 2539, beta company, 300 strong, we’ll train them even harsher than the spartan ii’s were, drill them even more on unit cohesion. what happens, can you fucking guess? 2545, DING DONG, YOU ARE WRONG, same thing fucking happens in Operation: TORPEDO. only two survivors of that massacre, and the handfuls who weren’t sent on the suicide mission en masse.

in halo: reach, the game that bridge halos 3 and 4, carter, emile, jun, and thom (who was the original noble six, whom you, the player, replace in-game after he dies) are spartan iii’s from alpha company. kat and the player’s character, spartan-b312, are from beta company. jorge is an og spartan ii. there were also rumors of a couple different teams of iii’s helping evacuate civilians from reach at the same time. the LONEWOLF Headhunters were also spartan iii’s: basically two-person assassin teams.

(also, just to clarify, because the appeal of spartan iii was that it was cheaper, not all, and not even many, of the spartan iii’s were issued mjolnir armor, because making a single suit cost as much as making a full battleship. because space capitalism.)

alright, so, gamma company, third time’s the charm. 330, average age of six years old, all of them survived augmentation in 2551 and were shipped out only a few weeks after the fall of reach, so around december of 2552/january of 2553, maybe. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT PROJECT CHRYSANTHEMUM! Project CHRYSANTHEMUM was the name given to the NEW AND IMPROVED biological augmentations given to gamma company. you wanna know what makes them new and improved? why, fucking up your brain to make it wayyyyyy more aggressive, resistant to shock, and more able to access the “animal part of the brain in times of shock”! i mean, when you hear “depresses higher reason centers of the brain over time; requires regular doses of [special meds] to be taken to avoid uncontrollable aggression” doesn’t that just fill you with confidence and positivity and something that isn’t homicidal rage?? so yeah in addition to having the body of an adult olympic athlete at fucking twelve years old and stupid fast and three times as strong as a normal soldier, now your brain can’t regulate itself! isn’t that fucking dandy! take your smoothers kids or you might just murder everyone in sight!

delta company was scheduled to be a thing but was likely never put into practice. why they went out of order on the naming i’m not sure.

the spartan-iii program was disbanded after the end of the human-covenant war in 2553 and the remaining spartan ii’s and iii’s were folded into Spartan Operations, which was a brand-spanking new military branch designed specifically for oversight of spartans because…

SPARTAN-IV PROGRAM (AKA: And Look At That, We’re Back To Consenting Adults)

2550. listen yall. shit. shit’s fucked aight? has been for awhile. and like maybe, maybe super soldiers in walking tanks is too much to ask for? maybe just regular super soldiers, but ones that are already full-grown? yeah let’s go back to the drawing board on that one. yeah let’s just do some unauthorized testing—whoops! 10% survival rate, that bites. let’s just, uh, not tell anyone about that—

“hey there,” says lieutenant commander musa, former spartan ii candidate who was tortuously disabled by the augmentation process and carries a grudge the size of pluto against catherine halsey.

“we weren’t doing anything!” shouts oni, because fuck you, oni.

“i wanna help make more spartans,” says musa. “i hate halsey with every fiber of my being but spartans are doing good work, important work, and i wanna help them do it but only if they’re consenting adults.”

oni looks at that latest batch of spartan iii’s who, due to circumstances, had to go off their smoothers during a planetary battle and freaked out everyone and their mother. “yeah good call.”

so with ackerson dead and halsey fucking finally arrested for war crimes, musa and jun (spartan iii and only survivor of noble team from halo: reach) take the lead on the spartan iv’s, the candidates of which are pooled from fully-grown human adults in a variety of military branches, from grizzled veterans to promising young soldiers with experience under their belts.

2553, the first batch of 145 iv’s is live, include My Girl Commander Sarah Palmer who kicks ass and takes names. 2554, second class is initiated. SPARTAN-IV Program is headquartered in a dedicated facility on Mars; spartan iv’s are trained in a top-secret facility orbiting an unnamed dwarf planet.

as previously mentioned, spartans gain their own military branch, Spartan Operations, and remaining ii’s and iii’s are offered to be folded into the new branch. many accept, but some decline in favor of non-combat roles. hundreds of spartans are assigned to the UNSC Infinity, literally the biggest fucking ship in human history, i love it so much it’s great. in halo: 4, a big part of the plot is that john was missing for like four years and when he’s found again there’s this fuck-off big ship filled with people calling themselves spartans who are also fuck-off big but also Strangers. anyway i love the spartan iv’s and anyone who didn’t like spartan ops or halo: infinity are cordially invited to me in the fucking pit.

SO! i’ve been at this for literal hours and am going to bed now! hope you learned something helpful, i’m sure i forgot a lot of shit, not even including all the shit that i left out on purpose because it’s two in the goddamn morning.

#by apples #halo #red vs. blue #halo meta

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theambivertaritst · 4 years

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What is Hue Heroes?

Here’s a small Q and A for Hue Heroes if you have any questions about the series! So what is Hue Heroes exactly?? Hue Heroes is an 18+ comic book that I’ve been creating from the ground up. As of right now, they’re just my original characters and I won't reveal too much about them on my posts I make because I’m constantly changing them and their stories.

What inspired you to keep up with Hue Heroes for so long? When I created Laura Watts, I wanted to do something with her and not keep her as just a character I made on some school paper, so I made her some friends; Skyler, Valerian, Elletta, and Xymera came in but then I just stopped from there and didn’t go back to it due to school. One day I was watching some GinjaNinjaOwO videos and saw how she was able to juggle 2 series and it gave me the extra push to do Hue Heroes. So after school was over for the summer, I busted out my sketchbook and just started drawing and I did it for the entire summer. What inspires you when you create characters? Movies, Cartoons, and Shows I watch. Every time I go through a writers/artist block I just start binge-watching shows and movies to gather inspiration in some form but at the same time, I don’t force it or rush it. Why so many LGBTQ+ characters? I have to admit they are a bit harder to write, but I enjoy the challenge and I enjoy writing them too. I wanted my first series to have a good amount of representation because it was the one thing that I wanted as a kid growing up with cartoons; I wanted more black characters, more LGBT+ characters, stuff like that. Why is it going to be 18+? Not gonna lie, I just love adult cartoons because they’re fun and more entertaining in my opinion. Another reason is that I plan for it to have swearing, a bunch of violence, possibly some gore-y moments, and maybe some smexy moments~ What made you come up with the name Hue Heroes? Basically what I went through with the title:

“Okay so they all have something to do with colors... so whats some other words for color... *Googles synonyms for color* Hmm.. tint heroes? shade heroes? Hue Heroes...*1 minute of silence* Hue Heroes... Cool..” That's it. I just found it cool lmao. When will you start doing this comic? I’m not sure honestly... I want to start on it during 2020 but at the same time, I don’t want to rush things with the process of the comic cause I have so many plans and ideas for it that I want to come out as good as it can be like I started this project only a year ago and I only have 5-6 characters out of the 12 I plan to have. So in short: I don’t know. What even is the story of Hue Heroes? I’ll keep it as short as possible:

A black hole monster is found at taking the energy/magic (or the Hue) of everything around it. 12 Gods come to stop this monster, but both the gods and the monster die. In a strange phenomenon, it causes a big bang and basically restarts the universe entirely. The story beings when a scientist creates a machine that can manipulate Hue itself, it was found as a very brilliant invention, but that was the problem... it was TOO brilliant. During the time, Hue was still fairly new to earth so the fact that this college dropout scientist even thought of this machine was amazing to both the world and the scientist community. After a long debate, officials feared that the machine would be used to evil intentions and deemed the machine illegal.

Inraged by the scientist community and the world, the creator stole the machine back and repaired it. During the repairment process, he found out about the history of the Black Hole Monster from before, he later came up with the idea to fuse both the machine and the Black Hole Monster together so he can control and take Hue. At the same time, researchers find out that there are people across the world who are resurrections of fallen gods and must be re-united to stop the rejected scientist and his plan to take the universe. THE END UvU

Thank you for keeping up with me and enjoying what I have for Hue Heroes, this has been my dream for 2 years now and I’m pretty close to showing it to the world!

#Hue Heroes #q and a #questions #awnser #storytelling #comic books #web comic #lgbtq #black characters #digital art

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wroammin · 6 years

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A Prince Has Got To Slay

Part 1 (Here) | Part 2 | Part 3?

Roman | Patton | Logan | Virgil

Word Count: 1076

Pairings: Logicality

Warnings: IMPORTANT!! lots of blood mentions!! there will be fighting!! manipulation!! DEATH IS A BIG PART!! this is not a happy story. do not read this for fluff. stay safe ❤️❤️

Summary: Roman is the embodiment of creativity. He has the most control over the imaginary mind space he is a part of, so he decides to create friends for himself using other aspects of his mind host’s personality. Things go terribly wrong, but Roman finds a way to fix things over and over. But then he gets bored, so what if he makes things go wrong on purpose?

A/N: yeah, so, this was an idea i had in my head where it was basically like, what if roman was the most powerful one?? what if he could keep creating and erasing all the sides whenever he wanted?? technically a halloween thing, so no group project for a while, sorry :/

There was no blood. Only shock, confusion, and eventually acceptance as he realized what Roman had just done. The blade sliced right through the other’s abdomen expertly, and Roman felt a rush of adrenaline as it did.

This was new, but Roman was so glad he tried it. He’d never killed the others before, always just befriended them. But eventually that got boring.

[]•[]•[]

Roman, being the embodiment of creativity, was alone before. He hadn’t always had a body, but then he planted the idea in his mind host’s brain. What if he gave a physical representation to his creativity? And so Roman was formed. Roman was the name of this figure, which he himself had chosen.

He’d played around, tested the limits of what his new form could do. Roman could join his mind host’s physical realm, but no one else could see him. He could conjure up things whenever he wanted, but they were always imaginary. He explored the vast land of the mindscape, which was his home. But all the while, he was alone.

That’s when he created the others. Logan and Patton were first. His mind host’s logic and morality respectively. Roman introduced them to the mindscape and all of its quirks. Of course, he made himself the most powerful one, and revealed that fact to them.

He called them sides. Sides of his mind host’s personality, and nothing more. Roman did not associate himself with the other sides. Creativity was more than just a side of a person. But he let his mind host group them all together.

At first it was all just fun. Roman created Logan and Patton to be his friends, and they were. But eventually, they became resentful. Logan knew Roman had created them, and he knew he was far too powerful for his own good. He was worried what Roman would do with that power. So Logan confronted Roman about it.

And Roman had to get rid of him. Not kill him, but just snap him out of existence. And then he did the same to Patton. That was the first try.

Soon after, Roman discovered that whenever he created a new body for them, they never remembered previously existing. Moreover, with a little searching, Roman found a way to erase his mind host’s memories of Logan and Patton altogether.

Trial number two went about the same. Logan confronted Roman and Roman had to get rid of him.

Roman had to admit, it hurt. The first time he had gotten rid of Logan, it had been, quite literally, a snap decision. An impulse, like a child instinctively lying to stay out of trouble. It took a while for Roman to recover from that trial. He had actually begun to become attached to them. So he kept trying to befriend them. Over, and over. And each time, Logan found out. Once, he tried it with only Patton, but even that little puffball discovered Roman’s abilities. Somewhere around this time, Roman started recording his trials in a journal, treating it like some kind of science experiment where he documented all the variables he changed in each trial.

Then, he created Virgil. Virgil was his mind host’s anxiety, and Roman’s new bad guy. The first trial with Virgil was the longest Roman went without being confronted. It lasted for a couple years. But then, Roman made a mistake. Roman got fond of Virgil, and he was no longer the bad guy. Then, almost immediately after, Virgil found out about Roman’s power. He confronted him about it, and Roman restarted.

It was always troublesome to restart. Not only because of the long, painstaking process and work it took to do so, but because of the emotional attachment. Roman knew it was torture for him, but he did it anyway. He’d befriended Logan and Patton so many different times and so many different ways and it was always fun. He’d laughed, and cried, and opened up to them, and loved them so much. And now with Virgil, it was the exact same thing.

Except, it wasn’t. Because when Roman restarted on the second trial with Virgil, Virgil remembered everything. He remembered all of the things that had happened in the first trial with Virgil.

And he panicked, at first. He considered confronting Roman again, but he knew that Roman would just restart again. Virgil played dumb. He pretended to hate Roman at the start, which was not hard, and then gradually opened up. Virgil wanted to talk to someone about it, but realized eventually that Logan and Patton did not have any recollection of the past restarts like he did. That freaked him out. How many restarts had Roman gone through? Why could Virgil remember them? Why was Roman doing it all? But, most importantly, what would he do when he became bored of befriending them?

Virgil shuddered at the thought. After the first Virgil trial, Virgil never confronted Roman again. It was always Logan, or sometimes Patton, who would find out. Roman didn’t know why, but he didn’t question it. He always made small tweaks on every restart, trying to stay in it for as long as possible.

Befriending them over and over, it was bound to get boring. And it did. One trial, Roman was in his room, a little corner of the mindscape that Roman designated for himself, when an idea creeped into his head. It was just an idea, at first. Then, Roman entertained it for a while. He didn’t immediately restart the trial, in fact, he went on for about three more trials before committing to the idea. Roman sketched out how it would work.

And so, Trial Red was born out of bloodlust, like furies born from the gods’ golden ichor.

It took a lot of time, preparation, and planning for Roman to be able to go through with Trial Red. There was the emotional aspect he had to get through first. Right before he had planned on initiating Trial Red, Roman initiated a trial that he had tried before and recorded in his journal. In this trial, Roman got off to a rocky start with Logan, Patton, and Virgil, and their relationship worsened from there. That specific trial didn’t restart because someone found out, it restarted because the chaos and infighting in his mind host’s head was unbearable.

But something went wrong before he initiated that trial again. Something went horribly, horribly wrong.

Roman | Patton | Logan | Virgil

General Taglist:

@ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @aurinkari @lamp-calm-sanders @heretoreadmyfics @fangirl-328 @friezan-is-tired @i-really-dig-the-purple @5notbrokenjustbent5 @princess-novalin @snazzy-weird-person @shaeshaetheravenclaw @punsterterry @xxladystarlightxx @4amanxiety @ughthatsprettygay @crownswriter123 @sympathetic-deceit-trash @sparkly-rainbow-salt @idontknowhow2namethisshit @cats-vetal-miking-vomit @iassureyouicannotdraw2 @clonenumber666 @theunoriginaldaisy @magnificentjellyfishballoon @laterpaladudeswheee @sanderfam @whispers-stuff-in-your-ear @rosesandstuff @geek-of-the-galaxy @finger-gunsss @the-fandoms-are-takin-over @derp-fox-ok @sky-army-rules @el-elephant

(if any of my generals do not want to be tagged for this, or if anyone does want to be, please tell me!!)

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ultraisabellaroyal-blog · 5 years

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Reflective Journaling

Experience

Week 7 of Creative Technologies Studio class and my team and I were working on the second assessment of the class which was data objects. The data objects assignment required us to map a set of data to an everyday object. The most frustrating and pivotal points of this assessment was when my group were told that we need to “kill the baby” - scraping our idea and restarting. This required us to now come up with new ideas and reflect and plan ahead for where we could take these ideas. The challenge we now had was how we would test our object with a now much more limited time frame.

Prior to coming into groups we were to find an object and a dataset individually, and develop prototypes and concepts for them. My dataset was drownings. A few people in the class were asked to show their prototypes and Ciara was one of these. Ciara had an idea of a scrapbook with some pages completely blacked out to represent the percentage of youth boys who had committed suicide. I joined a group with her. Everyone else in the group had chosen suicide/mental health as a dataset. Once in this group all the members had subconsciously decided that because Sangita had brought Ciara’s prototype up to show the rest of the class it therefore that meant that her scrapbook hit the brief perfectly and that we should continue working with it without pursuing other ideas in the group.

Reflect

In hindsight this was huge mistake as we had limited ourselves from the very beginning by not being so broad with our ideas. We did not have a plan B if this idea fell through. This is where we went wrong, and it caused us to have no backup when we eventually realised that our scrapbook had many flaws and did not meet the brief. We had to restart and only had three weeks to complete the assessment, not including mid-semester break. We now would have to spend our mid-semester break planning and working on this assessment, which was something we originally hadn’t planned to do. Everyone in our group had already restarted in the previous assessment Cards for Play and by doing so meant that they couldn’t complete that assessment to as good of a standard as they had originally thought. Because of this, when we had to do it in Data Objects it lowered our group morale drastically. As a group we learnt our lesson and aim to have backup plans in the next group projects.

Our group had to go through many different ideas, develop them to see where they would sit within the brief, and then either scrap the idea or bring it to the rest of the group. This process was repeated multiple times. The first couple days ended up with us walking around in circles, with different teachers giving opinions and suggestions on where to take the project. With this came confusion and division between the group, with some people wanting to continue working on the scrapbook, some wanting to develop existing ideas, and some wanting to do more exercises to generate more ideas. All throughout this time our group knew that we were passionate about our dataset. Mental health had affected everyone of us, whether that be through ourselves personally, the people we know, or the fact that it was a serious problem in society. Being passionate about our dataset meant that we did not change it, and that took out come stress of the project. When taking this dataset and mapping it to an object we over thought it. We would try create a metaphor to go with the object, instead of just getting an object that would achieve the brief. Overthinking and jumping into things slowed us down and made us frustrated when we realised that our ideas were not going to work. Eventually we wrote down as many ideas as we could, narrowed them down, asked our peers for their thoughts, and then went back to the teachers and gave them our top ideas. Our final concept was 4 different stress balls, with different amounts of matter on the inside relating to the percentage of anxiety or depression rates in NZ and the US. This idea was impactful and was fully mapped to the dataset, therefore achieving the brief.

Learning

Passion

Why was dealing with such a serious topic hindering us in this project? You would assume that because we were passionate that we would have achieved more, but this was not the case. A study done by Patrick Ndubuisi Eze called Managing Emotions in Project Teams[1] gave me insights into this. Being passionate can have a big impact on projects because more passion leads to a lack of confidence when issues arise. This can affect mood and overall frustration as the “long-term vision of the project has been truncated”, something that I definitely saw in my group. Along with this, the way that failures were dealt with previously can affect mood, eg, if the members of our group had to restart in the previous assessment, but if their group was overall proud of their outcome, us restarting wouldn’t have brought down their mood. In our case our members had restarted before, but their final project wasn’t to a quality they had wanted it to be, therefore their mood was lowered when having to restart in this assignment.

Everyone in our group had different levels of morale- some were completely downcast whereas others were still able to be creative and discover more ideas. Why was this? I personally felt that although I was disappointed about having to restart, I was also excited to think deeper and create something really interesting. “The higher the display of self- compassion by individuals, the lesser the level that negative emotions can interfere with learning from failure, thereby increasing the motivation to attempt again.” Between personality types, the more self-compassionate we are, the better we could get back up and try again. It was interesting to see this first hand in my group, and in the future I’m going to try and find people who are self-compassionate so that if in the future in a group should we need to restart, morale will stay high.

Restarting

It was interesting to me that most groups in our BCT class had to restart in not only Data Objects but also Cards for Play. It started to seem as though we were forced to kill our first idea and see where that took us. Was restarting a part of the creative process? An article by Stalp, M. C., & Winge, T. M. (2017)[2] allowed me to investigate this further.

The study expressed how vital failure is in the creative process, and how we learn by having to go back to the beginning. Although us having to restart was stressful it was also essential. In today’s society we are constantly being bombarded with successful people and their achievements that we are ashamed to have failures. By our teachers encouraging us to restart we are allowing ourselves to experience the full creative process and to dig deep into our creativity, which is the whole point of Creative Technology. Our group, by having to restart, discovered more “out of the box” ideas, something that only happened after restarting. Should I always go into an assessment thinking about restarting? No, probably not, but it is important to know that it is a part of the creative process and that the end product will more likely be higher quality because of it.

Future in CT

Through this process I have learnt that an idea being brought forward might not always be the best idea. It’s best to always keep a plan B in case things don’t work out exactly as planned. Figuring out which personality types clash and how to avoid conflict within the group is something that we all as a group figured out. At one point I had tension with a member of my group but kept that to myself for the good of the project and no issues came from it. Being able to put aside differences and handling a serious topic tactfully was something that we all learnt and is an essential life skill that we all can use in the future- not only in other group assignments but also in the workforce.

Having more knowledge around how personality types deal with creative blocks is something that I will be using when creating new teams in the future, as this is something that will always happen, and being able to adapt to new situations is essential when completing a project.

I will try and see restarting as a positive thing as it is a part of the creative process. Will this be an easy thing to do? Probably not, but it’s also important to keep challenging yourself, otherwise you’ll learn nothing through the creative process.

[1]- Ndubuisi Eze, P. (2017). Managing Emotions in Project Teams: The Impacts of Emotions on Project Teams: The case of a Swedish Project-Based Organisation.

[2]- Stalp, M. C., & Winge, T. M. (2017). If at first you don’t succeed, rip it out and try again: The benefits of failure among DIY handcrafters. Clothing Cultures, 4(2), 87-104.

#ctec502

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plumbobpost · 6 years

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Fanfic Friday: Spotlight on Skell’s Fortune & Romance

Sul sul!

Today Week of Woohoo continues with a very special twist. I have had the opportunity to ask Skell a few questions as part of a new series of posts about storytelling in The Sims community.

Skell’s Fortune & Romance serves as a prequel to the Pleasantview and Strangetown storylines in The Sims 2 from the perspectives of the Caliente sisters, hence the title which references their aspirations. Her story takes place in the time period between the first and second games and fills in the gaps between the contradicting timelines of The Sims, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3. Although the story is largely from Dina’s perspective, it features most of the iconic The Sims 2 characters ranging from Olive Specter to the Tricous to Bella and Mortimer Goth, establishing its own vivid mythology in the process.

In addition to writing, Skell has also created beautiful Maxis-Match content for The Sims 2 and is a frequent contributor to the Totally Maxis Tumblr and the fansite Garden of Shadows.

Without further ado, I’ll let Skell speak for herself.

You’ve said in the past that Fortune & Romance started out as your attempt to make sense of Maxis canon for the premade characters of Neighborhood 1, Pleasantview, and Sunset Valley. How did this evolve from your personal headcanons into a full-fledged story?

“I had played TS2 off and on for years before I was part of the fandom, mostly just goofing around but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and experimenting with posing. One day I discovered Strangetomato’s “Strangetown Here We Come” on TVtropes and was amazed at the way she fleshed out the premade stories from the game. Through her comment section, I discovered the whole fandom and started paying better attention to the premades. Eventually I came up with a backstory for Dina that I really wanted to write and share.”

Why did you choose Nina and Dina Caliente to be your protagonists? Did you ever consider different lead characters?

“It was always gonna be Dina because I was intrigued her backstory with the mysteriously inconsistent Michael Bachelor and the fact that she’s part alien. I wasn’t as interested in Nina until I noticed that she was shy (like me in RL) and also autonomously beating people up all the time. That’s when I realized she was gonna be a co-star and balance to Dina’s antics.”

Instead of ignoring Maxis’ characterization of Dina as a gold digger, you embraced it and made it a focal point of her character. Similarly, you fully acknowledge Nina’s romance aspiration while not making her a heartbreaker. How did you find a balance between their implied “villainy” in The Sims 2 and making them more sympathetic characters?

“I enjoy classic movies where Marilyn Monroe or Thoroughly Modern Millie is like “teehee I’m gonna marry a millionaire,” and it’s quirky rather than villainous. In those stories, she usually falls for a poor guy and chooses love over money (and often he turns out to be secretly rich.) Since Michael didn’t give her a “married a rich sim” memory, I wanted to write Dina the gold-digger as a modern version of that kind of story.”

“Maxis kind of setup Romance sims for “villainy” by not allowing for casual or open relationships, but of course that can be fixed with mods. With Nina, it’s interesting that she doesn’t really fit the “outgoing party girl” type. I think of her as a quiet person with a very intense energy. She needs lots of exercise and woohoo so that she doesn’t explode.”

There are a lot of unconventional relationships in your story. Nina and Servo. Olive and Ichabod. The Tricous. Even Dina and Michael. That being said, there is very definitely a theme of “love conquers all.” What motivated your approach to these relationships? How does that relate back to your attempts at reconciling Maxis canon throughout different games?

“I have a thing for mixed supernatural relationships. Dina and Mike bonding over their hidden supernatural heritages was always key once I figured Michael had a magic side. I knew I wanted to have Nina be intimate with a servo because that’s HAWT, but I didn’t foresee how intimate things would get until I figured out Servo’s character. The Tricous’ happy polyamory was my explanation for all the weirdness going on with their relationships and family tree. And I wanted Olive, Ichabod, and DJ make up this very loving and weirdly “normal” Unholy Family.”

Speaking of reconciling Maxis canon, you created your own version of Michael Bachelor in order to match his appearance in The Sims better and to create a resemblance between him and his famous sister, Bella Goth. Why do you think Michael was depicted so differently throughout the first three games? What did you draw inspiration from in creating “The Ultimate Michael Bachelor?”

“I think it mostly comes down to them wanting to use a familiar name for Bella’s brother/Dina’s husband in TS2, and carrying that forward. In TS3, I saw a boy who had his life all planned out for him by his father. In my headcanon, he screwed that all up and became the graduate of TS1 who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. His relationship to Bella is the reason why he’s still single by the time he reconnects with Dina, who helps him find direction.”

There is an abundance of strong female characters in F&R, some of which were not originally portrayed that way. Why did you feel that it was important to write them as such?

“Well, because I’m a proud “SJW,” of course! But seriously, it’s less about being strong and more about seeing them as people?”

^Best answer that I could have asked for.

A large portion of Fortune & Romance is dedicated to the mythology of The Sims universe(s) and to supernatural sims. How did you go about the process of world building? Did you draw inspiration from different games in the series and/or from outside sources?

“My biggest worldbuilding is the explanation of where the supernaturals came from. The fairies are sort of fallen angel types who each have an animal form, and their magic rubbed off on human sims to create the supernatural life states.”

“I try to base the worldbuilding off things in game or aspects of game play. The fairy backstory was heavily inspired by fairy tales, in the way they morally test humans for punishment or guidance.”

Aside from premade supernatural sims such as the Smiths, Calientes, and Summerdreams, how did you go about deciding which premade sims were supernatural and which weren’t? How did you decide what life state they were?

“Bella has that awesome bio about being descended from “occultists, decadents, and mystics,” but then in TS3 the Bachelor family is uber-normal, so it eventually became that Jocasta is a squirellier version of Samantha from Betwitched.”

How has Fortune & Romance evolved since you started? Are there things you would do differently if you were to restart it?

“I was such a younger, different person when I started it, and yes there are many things I would do differently. (Michael’s skintone, for example. I tried to split difference between games with a custom skintone in between S2 and S3, but everyone assumes he was whitewashed to S2.)”

“When recreating families for TS4 I came up with a backstory for Dulcinea and Nestor’s relationship as well as a backstory for Don that explains how he got to be the way he is. I still can incorporate these things, but it would have been nice to bring them in earlier.”

With your story having reached a climax, many readers are wondering whether or not F&R will come to an end sooner rather than later. Not to spoil anything, but will the story continue after the party and if so, do you intend for it to last until the events of The Sims 2?

“I never intended for it to last until the events of TS2 because then it would be really depressing. There is more stuff planned for after the party though!”

Aside from writing Fortune & Romance, you have also created a variety of Maxis-match custom content. Why do you prefer working in this aesthetic? How do you feel it complements your writing?

“The game is cartoony, and I like to use that style to tell the story. I prefer to keep things heightened and silly rather than realistic, which very much fits into The Sims aesthetic.”

Speaking of Maxis-match, you have been working on a project for The Sims 2 that involves adapting Maxis-based custom content to blend in better with the game files. Would you mind elaborating a bit on The Maxis Match Repository Project?

“The TS2 repository project is made up of conversions/separates/or otherwise adapted Maxis which pull their textures from the ones that are already in your game, rather than creating new ones. This makes the files much much tinier. I also wanted to create a catalog where you can easily find it all in one place rather than hunt all over the internet. Check it out and don’t miss out on the gems in the back of your catalog!”

You’ve played every main game in The Sims franchise, and you’ve even made some very popular 2t4 recreations of the Calientes and Michael Bachelor. Do you have a favorite game for playing? Creating sims? Making Content? Building?

“I enjoy a lot of things about TS4. The game looks great and CAS and Build Mode are the best of any game. My favorite aspect is making sims, especially that you can share sims with traits/careers/skills so they have their own little story packaged with them. However, it is much more difficult for storytelling since there’s not even a way to pick up sims and move them around.”

“TS2 is still the best as far as premade sims go, and it’s the only one I make content for. I’m a bit of a control freak with my sims, and TS2 has been mastered by fans at this point where you can have ultimate control.”

Why do you continue to play The Sims? Do you feel that the games provide a creative outlet?

“I always loved playing with Barbies as a kid and The Sims really is the ultimate dollhouse. The first time I ever heard about TS1 I knew I HAD to have it. My aunt bought it for me while I was on vacation, but I couldn’t play it until we got home! During the car ride back home and I read that manual from cover to cover multiple times, so many ideas buzzing in my head.”

Any parting comments, teasers, spoilers, public service announcements, etc.?

“I’ve been on hiatus a long while and am just now getting back into the swing of things. I’m currently working on finishing up the chapter I started posting on Tumblr but never finished. It was FreddyAirmail who got me back in the TS2 spirit by asking me to help out with the Crystal Springs neighborhood project. It’s a community hood with houses based on each of the Stuff Packs, and I made the families for Teen Style and Family Fun!”

Thanks again to Skell for answering my questions. To those of you out there who aren’t familiar with her work, go check out her Tumblr and make sure to catch up on Fortune & Romance.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to visit my ask box. If you are interested, give Plumbob Post a follow, and reblog for anyone else who you think would enjoy this blog. Stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Dag dag!

*Photo Credits go to Skell*

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snortingcode · 6 years

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SBT - Scala’s ((mistaken as) NOT SO) Simple Build Tool

The first thing that one notices when jumping into Scala development is its utterly complicated build tool. Complications arise due to several reasons (and reasons different for different people, I’m sure) but, a consistent gripe that people seems to have is the syntax used in the build definition file (typically build.sbt although, any *.sbt would work at the root of the project) for people not very familiar with some operators/constructors that the Scala community heavily relies on and, the monstrous amount of time it takes to get the first build started. The syntax seems strange at times even for Scala developers not familiar with sbt, that is because sbt is a DSL (Domain Specific Language). Let’s dive in to understand the essential basics!

[When I first ran “sbt run”, I wasn’t sure if things were even working at all, stared into the terminal for few 10s of minutes for several hours and nothing showed up. Google searches showed that it was a common problem! Although, in my case it was a conflict between the versions of Scala and sbt that were individually installed on my machine!]

With that welcoming note, let’s dive into the sbt world - it is bound to make your life easier if you know what you are doing. And it is an extremely powerful build tool.

I highly recommend that you read the sbt getting started guide completely before starting your project (this post is not a replacement as there are several details that are important and won’t be discussed here). I’m assuming that you’ve installed a recent version of sbt already. I’m writing this to provide a quick start (which might be a lot quicker than the “Quick Start Guide” that sbt documentation provides.)

Getting Started With “sbt new”

The recent versions of sbt (later than 0.13) provide a quick way to kick start your Scala projects -

$ sbt new sbt/scala-seed.g8

sbt uses g8 templates to create the basic structure of your project. There are tons of useful ones available and you can create your own as well. If you come from the Java world, think of these as Maven archetypes of sorts. The command above would ask you for some project details like the project name, my project’s name is: Whipp. (For reasons unknown to humanity!)

The previous command should set up a simple Scala project for you with a directory structure that resembles that used by Maven:

src/[main, test]/[scala, java, resources]

$ tree -L 2 . ├── build.sbt ├── project │ ├── Dependencies.scala │ ├── build.properties │ ├── plugins.sbt │ ├── project │ └── target ├── src │ ├── main │ └── test └── target ├── scala-2.12 └── streams9 directories, 4 files

The file that would the focus of our discussion in this post is the build.sbt file - the build definition.

(Don’t forget to add target/ to your .gitignore before you make your initial commit.)

Running the project:

Building and running the project is simple:

$ sbt #takes you to the sbt shell from where you can issue commands like run [info] sbt server started at 127.0.0.1:5522 sbt:Whipp> run #The task we wish to execute.

This would compile the project files and start the project. This could take a while if you are running your first project. Patience trumps hate!

Some cool things about the sbt shell are its tab-completion feature and history. It essentially behaves like your terminal’s shell. Pretty cool huh?

You could also provide tasks in a “batch mode” like this:

#takes sbt:Whipp> clean compile run

sbt provides a continuous build option. Append a task with ~ and sbt would watch for changes in your files, auto compile them and, execute the task - for instance, ~run would add efficiency to your development setup!

Here’s a list of all the commands available for you to use: https://www.scala-sbt.org/1.x/docs/Command-Line-Reference.html

The build definition - build.sbt

This is the most important and interesting section of this post so grab your coffee and read on! The key element in understanding the build.sbt file is that it is not just a properties file but, valid Scala code (well, valid sbt DSL code to be precise but, you get the drift!)

Read the generated *.sbt file with that perspective first and see what you can gather from it:

(Depending on which seed project you start with, this might look a little different. Hold on for a while and it would make a lot of sense to you!)

Let’s first look at what the below line is all about:

“lazy val root = (project in file(“.”))”

We are declaring a lazy value ‘root’ which happens to be everything followed by “lazy val root” in this case. Your build file is composed of several “val” and/or “lazy val”, these would typically fall under these 3 categories:

SettingKey[T]

TaskKey[T]

InputKey[T]

In fact, if you take a look at the config-classes under the target/ directory, you would find a cache file that has all the lazy val and val that you defined in your build.sbt file. You can also use the sbt shell to see what these keys are.

With that in mind, if you look at the build.sbt again, you’d see that we have a lazy val called root that contains the settings for each “project” in the current directory [project in file(“.”)]

Some of these are generic properties like the name of the project, organisation, etc. These are unlikely to change (it is a common practice to extract them out to a val and add it to the project.settings.)

In that sense, most of the build definition is just a bunch of key-value pairs => some help define things, some do interesting stuff. The value “name” is an example of a key that defines something.

A quick digression: If you try to assign a non-String value to “name”, you would get a typeMismatch error. The key “name” (which we did not define ourselves) comes along with the implied imports => sbt._, Keys._

Let’s try to add some interesting key that does something. Naturally, we would turn to a TaskKey[T]. Add these lines to your build definition:

lazy val doSomething = taskKey[Unit](“I do something cool!”)

Now, add this key to your settings. The updated build.sbt might look something like this:

import Dependencies._ lazy val root = (project in file(".")). settings( inThisBuild(List( organization := “com.snortingcode”, scalaVersion := "2.12.3", version := "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT" )), name := “Whipp”, libraryDependencies ++= Seq( scalaTest % Test), doSomething := {println(“Look what I did!”)} ) lazy val doSomething = taskKey[Unit](“I do something cool!”)

We defined a TaskKey[Unit] named doSomething using the method in the sbt DSL - taskKey[T]. Once you enter the sbt console (by restarting the sbt shell), you would notice that you can call this new task from the shell, simply by typing the task’s name - doSomething.

sbt:Whipp> doSomething Look what I did! [success] Total time: 1 s, completed 8 Feb, 2018 1:59:01 PM

You can thus, create a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) using these tasks and create a workflow for your project! Sweet!

A neat way to see what a task is doing is to “inspect” it:

sbt:Whipp>inspect compile [info] Task: xsbti.compile.CompileAnalysis [info] Description: [info] Compiles sources. [info] Provided by: [info] {file:/Users/prasoonjoshi/code/whipp/whipp/}root/compile:compile

(The actual output is rather long, so I’ve truncated it. Each [info] tells you important information about that task. (Try this out with the doSomething task you created just now and see if everything makes sense!)

We talked about the SettingKey[T] and TaskKey[T] a little bit, what is this InputKey[T] all about? Well, for now, you can just think of the InputKey as a method to take input from the user to create tasks on the fly (simple and powerful - we’ll talk about this in a future post soon!)

Let’s jump to the libraryDependencies

Yes, you know what they are! The essential information about this section of your build definition’s settings are:

+= is a method to append the provided dependency to the old libraryDependencies and return the new one!

libraryDependencies ++= Seq[<your list of dependencies>] is another way you’ll see the dependencies often defined in the build definition. (This is what our example build definition has.)

sbt uses Ivy for dependency resolution. The % that you see in the syntax below are sbt DSL’s methods that construct the Ivy module Id.

To define a new libraryDependency, you need to define the dependency first, then add it to the list of dependencies.

Here’s an example that adds mongo awesomeness to your project:

val mongo = "org.reactivemongo" %% "reactivemongo" % "0.12.6" libraryDependencies += mongo# # This line is part of my plugins.sbt file under the project directory. addSbtPlugin("com.typesafe.play" % "sbt-plugin" % "2.6.7") libraryDependencies += ws

Of course, you can add the val directly to the settings without declaring it first. See what works best for you!

I promised earlier that everything in your build definition is just a key (SettingKey, TaskKey, InputKey). See what the libraryDependencies key shows you on the sbt shell and see if that makes sense :)

A final note on the evaluation order in your build definition file: Since the build definition is just a DAG which is interspersed with “lazy val”, you should expect a sequential processing, with lazy val(s) evaluated only when they are required.

A point to keep in mind is that the SettingKeys are evaluated once, TaskKeys are evaluated each time the task is executed (these would usually have side-effects as you can see).

There are several beautiful aspects of sbt that we can’t explore here in this quick guide. I would encourage you to check out the documentation and Josh Suereth’s great talk on YouTube.

[Please do reach out to suggest improvements or corrections to this post :) ]

#sbt #Scala #functional programming #build tool

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cameron-ashurst22 · 5 years

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Week 24- Weekly Summary

Day 1 - Character design

Today I continued to model my character in Maya. I found this to be quite challenging as at first I didn’t feel that my skills had progressed from the previous workshop. However I did feel quicker at establishing the bulk of the character with its core shapes. I restarted multiple time as I began to get frustrated over the fact my design did not look like maquette in both shape and size. I was extruding too much and this caused the structure of the character to be fundamentally floored so later in the process as the character was placed into mud box I could not smooth down the angles of the character.

Upon restarting, I got feedback off John about the shape of the head as this was causing the most issue. I previously had a square head that would round off when I used the multi cut tool. This caused issue as when extruding around the nose the nose fold would go into each other leaving a floored model. John suggested that I use a round head as this would best accompany the shape of my sloths features. When I rounded the head off I found that the face was easier to split up onto planes and allowed me to create the nose and its bridge much easier. I was also able to extruded the points above the eyes to create a raised eyebrow socket so the eyes could be placed with. I found that these features where also difficult to establish through Maya as I was thinking ahead. By not thinking ahead I miscalculated the steps needed to create the shapes I wanted and got frustrated of my lack of progress. I continued to work through this frustration and established a head and features that I was happy to move into mud box with. When in mud box I found that the same problem had occurred and I couldn’t smooth down the shape. I will have to go back and fix this by either starting again or watching youtube videos to help my understanding of Maya modelling. At current stat I am happy with the progress I am making as I have grown quicker in process of building up a character in Maya. I also have the key shape of my character with the right proportions based on reference from my maquette. However I am also frustrated due to the lack of definition I could achieve with the facial features and fingers.More work is need to establish the characters shoulders and torso and although this is flat there needs to be more bulk and shape added to the skeleton of the character.

Also in the season I was introduced to substance painter which shows me an alternative to photoshop on how I could colour and texture my character. This was a brief introduction as the main focus of the workshop was completing a base shape for the character model.

Day 2- Media Roles in industry lecture

2nd year lecture - Oyku Baskin

Gobelins animation - A week intensive course on animation in Paris. Consists of conferences, a big assignment , new friends and people. They bring industry professionals that are currently working on projects which help guide new perspectives and ideas.

The 2 week assignment. A small exercise where you can choose the mediums of traditional 2D, Digital 2D or 3D. Receiving feedback from peers and tutors. The content changes every year.

What do you gain from this ?- Gain connections from all over the world.

Main tips for this course is to kill you ego. Removing your ego allows adaptation and a better realisation of what work you can produce.

Indigo Illusions lecture

1 Year after graduation

Tips for the university course

Go to everything the uni puts on

Separate your work and home space : come to uni to do work

Ask for help constantly

Get as experienced with software as possible. Use Lynda as much as possible

Draw everyday

Keep up to date with weekly summaries and blogs.

Collaboration tasks tips

- Meet up every week, know what everyone is doing. Set goals for each other

- Work together

Constantly ask for feedback

Indigo illusions -Set up in the ideas factory

Their vision- contribute to the creative community of norwich swell as become a personal company. Getting new films and commissions on a regular basis

Day 3- Showreel

Today we had an induction in using adobe premier pro. This is the main software we will be using in creating our showreel. The software allows me to composite all the clips and images I have created throughout this year in one location. This allows me to manipulate and cut them across the timeline. As this was an introduction to the software we created a dummy showreel with other images and clips to show the process. I learned how to add music to the reel and time image cuts to the beat of the music. I also learned how to scale images and clips which are too big down to fit the 25fps model. Furthermore, I also learned how to create title and ending cards and how to give effects so they fade on and off screen.Overall I am happy with the progress made on this software and I can wait to create my own showreel using the techniques introduced in this workshop.

Day 4- Lip-sync

Today I made major headway in my lip-sync project as I rectified the mistakes I had made in the initial iteration. I found that the previous mouth shapes didn’t match the sounds created by the audio. This was due to me becoming fixated on the letter types and the shapes the mouth would make in creating the letters instead of the sounds. I found that by eliminating this and focusing solely on the sounds I created a more fluid range of motion using less mouth shapes than before. This was particularly evident on the o’s and l’s in the characters speech. This is because I created a new mouth shape for the L and also created a TH mouth shape which could be used to transition between.

I then began to focus on the chin of the character and got halfway complete with the movements of the chin. For this I made the chin longer when the mouth shapes where wide and shorter when the mouth was closed. This worked well to some extent however the transition between the frames isn’t fluid and I need to create in-betweens to create fluid motion.

Overall I am looking forward to adding more animation to the character and can see him coming to life a lot more.

#weeklysummaries #weeklysummary #ba1b

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zebraform4-blog · 5 years

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The Chronicles of JavaScript Interview Questions

Top JavaScript Interview Questions Secrets there could be some code mistakes that could be ignored but now they'll be thrown individually. Transpiling is a process of converting code out of 1 language into another. This code is a great illustration of hoisting. A benchmark mistake will be thrown by the above code once because fooVariable is not global, it attempts to log fooVariable beyond the function. Java code becomes whereas JavaScript code becomes interpreted accumulated. Netscape created javaScript. JavaScript isn't compiled but interpreted. JavaScript is used to create interactive sites. JavaScript is an Object-based design language. JavaScript has a lot of potential for web development, and a offshore JavaScript programmer will utilize everything JavaScript provides . Fundamentally, the JavaScript interpreter seems ahead to obtain all variable declarations and hoists them into the peak of the function in which they are declared. 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To understand what things to look at the CRM Developer will wish to learn Microsoftt Dynamics CRM's architecture. Remember you are proficient, you are smart, and you are important ( and you deserve better). 1 such way I know to earn someone interested in something is to create them speak about themselves. Among the most intriguing thing about Python is it looks like the English language and is, thus, more easy on the section of the student to get a hang of it. When asking about options, really good answers may be on the simple fact that sprites are usually for icons and icons often do not need to be raster. A number of the queries are very similar to other posts but there are a number of great, unique questions. It tests the typeof operator's understanding although the question seems a little silly. The matter is that the above code will get the job done for a year annually. New Questions About JavaScript Interview Questions You shouldn't try to enroll routes, some event listeners, or a different piece of performance . http://bit.ly/2kA8ySD They would have a comprehension of Java, only enough, although the interviewer may not know a range of the topics mentioned before. Take the opportunity to read the interview questions if you're an interviewer. A great deal of people find interviews are scary since they feature the unknown. A interview isn't a difficult nut to crack, as long as you get your basics. Every interview differs and the range of a job differs also. https://annuaire-du-net.com/javascript-interview-questions-and-answers/ The interview for all those developers can be tough as the competition is high and the market is filled with talent. The objective for the interviewer isn't just to speed your technical knowledge, but in addition your communication abilities and suitability (culturally) for the company. There are lots of frameworks within the business today whose base is JavaScript. Question Purpose Projects can fail, problems will occur. Your computer will automatically restart after the process is finished. Interview procedures might be great way to set a specification' . In a meeting you don't have sufficient time to run check and the code that's the method. Based on the statistics of my article 5 Average JavaScript Interview Exercises, it might appear that many you're searching for a new job or, at least, want to look at their JavaScript knowledge.

#javascript interview questions #javascript interview questions and answers

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tak4hir0 · 5 years

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Why Does Developing on Kubernetes Suck? Let me count the ways Published on 21 August 2019 Kubernetes has changed the way I operate software. Whole classes of production problems have disappeared–, arguably to be replaced by others. But such is the way of the world. All told I’m happier operating a microservices app today than I was before I started using Kubernetes. When I’m writing software, though, Kuberentes has only made things harder. In this post I want to walk through all of the problems I have encountered developing software on Kubernetes. Full disclosure: While I work on Tilt as part of my job, which we have designed to solve some of these problems, another part of my job is writing software that runs on Kubernetes. When there’s another tool that solves a problem better than Tilt, I’ll use that. So, how does developing on Kubernetes suck? Let me count the ways. Myriad Dev Environments Minikube, MicroK8s, Docker for Mac, KIND, the list kind of goes on. All of these are local Kubernetes environments. In other words: they’re Kubernetes, but on your laptop. Instead of having to go out to the network to talk to a big Kubernetes cluster (that might be interacting with production data) you can spin up a small cluster on your laptop to check things out. The problem comes when you want to run code/Kubernetes configs on multiple of these clusters because they each have their own… let’s call them quirks. They don’t behave identically to one another, or identically to a real Kubernetes cluster. I won’t enumerate these discrepancies here, but I’ll refer to this problem throughout this blog post when discussing thorny issues like networking and authentication. There’s no tool I’m aware of that solves these problems aside from just doing your development in a real Kubernetes cluster in the cloud, which is the way I prefer to work these days. If you’re in the market for a local dev cluster we recently published a guide to choosing a dev cluster to help make sense of all the options. Permissions/Authentication If you’re developing software on Kubernetes, you’re probably using Kubernetes in production. If you’re using Kubernetes in production, you probably have locked down authentication settings. For example, a common set up is to only allow your developers to access to create/edit objects in one namespace. To do this you need a bunch of things set up: A role A rolebinding A secret This works great if you’re using a “real” Kubernetes cluster, but as soon as you start using a local Kuberentes setup, things get weird. Remember all those local dev environments? Well turns out some of them handle RBAC very differently than you might expect. I ran into an issue where kubeadm had access control set to allow everything. As a result, I had false confidence going to prod that my settings actually restricted permissions, when in fact they didn’t. Granted, kubeadm-dind-cluster has since been deprecated, but it goes to show that not all Kubernetes clusters are created equal. I also ran in to another problem trying to reproduce the issue on Docker for Mac’s Kubernetes cluster where RBAC rules were not enforced. Testing things like NetworkPolicies is also fraught. NetworkPolicies don’t work at all on Docker for Mac or microk8s and require a special flag for Minikube. The troubles in networking land don’t end there. Network Debugging Network ingress is one of the most important things that Kubernetes does. Unfortunately, ingress is implemented differently by different cloud providers and is, as a result, very difficult to test. The different implementations also support different extensions, often configured with labels, which are definitely not portable between environments. I’m lucky enough to have access to a staging cluster to test ingress changes, but even then changes can take 30 minutes to take effect and can result in inscrutable error messages. If you’re on a local Kubernetes environment, you’re pretty much out of luck. Networking is my least favorite thing to work on in Kubernetes, and the area that I think still needs the most love. There are a couple tools that help out, however. One nice tool for at least seeing how your services are connected is Octant. Octant gives you a visual overview of all of your pods and which services they belong to. At least with Octant I can easily go from a piece of code to the way that is connected to the internet. For complex Kubernetes objects like ingresses that behave differently on different cloud platforms, Kubespy is an invaluable tool. Kubespy shows you what is happening under the hood when objects are created. For example, if I create a service it shows which pods at which IP addresses Kubespy will serve traffic to: kubespy trace svc test-frontend [ADDED v1/Service] default/test-frontend [ADDED v1/Endpoints] default/test-frontend ✅ Directs traffic to the following live Pods: - [Ready] test-frontend-f6d6ff44-b7jzd @ 192.168.1.1 Logging into a Container and Doing Stuff A common thing that every developer reaches for is SSH. Maybe in the future, SSH will be as anachronistic as the floppy disk icon, but for now, I want to log in to a container, poke around, see what the state is and maybe run some commands like strace or tcpdump. Kubernetes doesn’t make this easy. The workflow looks something like this: kubectl get pods Look for my pod name kubectl exec -it $podname -- /bin/bash Here’s where things get annoying. kubectl exec -it dan-test-75d7b88d8f-4p45c -- /bin/bash OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:345: starting container process caused "exec: \"/bin/bash\": stat /bin/bash: no such file or directory": unknown command terminated with exit code 126 What the heck is this? I know that in production I want my container images to be small (both for image push performance and security) but this is a bit much. Fine, let’s live in 1997. Just let me run strace. # strace /bin/sh: 1: strace: not found Ugh. It’s reasonable that this image doesn’t have strace, and kind of reasonable that it doesn’t have bash, but it highlights one of the Kubernetes best practices that makes local development hard: keep your images as small as possible. This is so annoying in dev. I don’t want to have to keep installing strace all afternoon as my container gets restarted. I also don’t want to add strace to my production image, for security reasons, and also because it would increase the image size I’d be pushing up and down to my registry, which would slow down remote cluster deploys. One of my favorite tools that solves this problem is Kubebox. Kubebox makes it easy to see all your pods and you just need to press ‘r’ to get a remote shell in to one of them. Anyways, large images aren’t a problem on local clusters, right? But I suppose if you really wanted to, you could put strace and bash on all of your development images–because large images aren’t a problem on local clusters, right? Pushing/pulling images Pushing bits around on your laptop should be super fast because there’s no need to go out to the network. Unfortunately, here’s where the myriad local Kubernetes setups rear their ugly head once again. Let’s talk through the happy path: Minikube and Docker for Mac. Both of these setups run a Docker daemon that you can talk to from your local laptop and from inside the Kubernetes cluster. That means that all you need to do to get an image into Kubernetes is to build it; your pod can “pull” it directly from your local registry, and doesn’t need to deal with moving data over the network. MicroK8s doesn’t ship with a in-cluster registry turned on by default, but it can easily be enabled with a flag. In contrast KIND is a whole other beast. It has a special command that you use to load images into the cluster, kind load. Unfortunately it is unbearably slow. $ time kind load docker-image golang:1.12 real 0m39.225s user 0m0.438s sys 0m2.159s This is because KIND copies in every layer of the image and only does very primitive content negotiation. What this means is that if you change just one file in the final 15 KB layer of your 1.5 GB image KIND can copy in the entire 1.5 GB image anyways. Fortunately the kind folks working on the KIND project have made a bunch of improvements to image loading recently. We’ve also released a proof of concept for running a registry in KIND which should help improve speeds further. If I’m going to be using a local development environment I tend to go with Docker for Mac or MicroK8s, though as I stated earlier, these days I prefer to do my development in a real cloud Kubernetes cluster. There are also great tools emerging in this space. Garden caches image layers in a remote registry, reducing what needs to be rebuilt by each developer. Tilt with live_update helps me bypass the need to push and pull images altogether so that’s what I use to solve this problem. Mounts/file Syncing Even if you can avoid going out to the internet when pushing an image, just building an image can take forever. Especially if you aren’t using multi stage builds, and especially if you are using special development images with extra dependencies. When compared to a hot reloading local JavaScript setup, even the fastest image build can be too slow. What I want to do is just sync a file up to my pod. Doing this by hand is relatively simple, but tedious: Plus if your container is restarted for any reason, like if your process crashes or the pod gets evicted, you lose all of your changes. There are tools like ksync, skaffold and Tilt that can help with this, though they take some investment to get set up. Logs/Observability/Events In dev, I want to tail the relevant logs so I can see what I’m doing. Kubernetes doesn’t make that easy. Each Kubernetes pod has its own log that I have to query individually, and each of these can have many containers. Naively, it’s easy to see the logs for just one pod (kubectl logs podname). However, to see an aggregate view, you need to know a lot about how your pods are organized, like which labels apply to which pods in which parts of your app so that you can run a command like kubectl logs -l app=myapp. Then there’s Kubernetes events, which you watch via an entirely separate command. This sucks because it’s in the event log that I’ll find important dev information like if my pod couldn’t be scheduled or the new image I pushed up can’t be exec’d. There’s a great set of observability tools I can use that help with this in production, but I don’t want to be running them locally. Sometimes I can’t afford the resources–my laptop is rather constrained. And while those tools are each excellent in their niche, I’d rather have one tool that makes it easy to do common tasks. In other words, I should always be able to start my debugging in one window. Some problems may be so unique or special that I end up going to other tools to resolve them, but I can’t be having to tab through twelve windows just to check for one problem. I explore this problem in a different blog post, and I think Tilt solves this well especially now that it includes Kubernetes events alongside pod logs. The aforementioned Kubebox and garden are two other great options. Conclusion While developing on Kubernetes still sucks, we’ve come a long way just in the past year. The biggest remaining hole that is begging for a solution is networking. If we want to empower developers to create end-to-end full stack microservices architectures we need to provide some way to get their hands dirty with networking. Until then that last push to production will always reveal hidden networking issues.

#Tilt Blog

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onlinemarketingcourses · 5 years

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Niche Site Project 4 Monthly Report for November 2018

Niche Site Project 4 continues to roll on! Over the past few months, I’ve been working diligently on my site and today I’ll be sharing the results for the previous month (November).

In some regards, I was able to accomplish some big things for my site; in other aspects, I didn’t accomplish everything that I wanted to.

So, overall, I’ll be reporting on my traffic, earnings, and strategies. In addition, I’ll be sharing the report from dozens of other people that are participating in Niche Site Project 4 at the end of this post.

Let’s get started!

Niche Site Project 4 Timeline

As a reminder, I wanted to share what has happened in the project so far.

So, as you look at this timeline, you will see that as of 12/10/2018 it will have been 3 months since the first article was published. In the grand scheme of things this is not very long at all…but it FEELS like a long time.

I probably shouldn’t be checking the stats and rankings daily.

Traffic and Earning Results for November

Because this is a public project, I wish things were happening faster. However, I also realize that it’s been less than 3 months since I published the very first article, and most articles have only been on the site for a month or two.

If this wasn’t a public project, I wouldn’t be concerned at all. But only because I have to share everything so openly, I know the progress of my site is being tracked by thousands of people!

Rankings and earnings for niche sites take time. So, overall I don’t have any major concerns.

Earnings

Proof that I didn’t make any money! :). I’m getting some Amazon affiliate links, but no buyers just yet.

Traffic

The trend in traffic was a bit better than my earnings for November.

The yellow bar represents November compared to previous months. Organic, Social, and Total sessions all increased on the site…great news! Always nice when things are at least moving in the right direction.

In fact, when I look at total sessions, the traffic more than doubled from October to November! I know the numbers are still so small, but seeing a 109% increase in traffic in one month is a small win.

Again, I know the numbers are small…but this is the case for every new site. However, the above line is the type of thing you want to see with a new site.

Now, here’s the raw data for just November.

The spike for 3 days that you see around Nov 26 – Nov 28th was a small experiment I did with FB ads. I spent about $50 and drove traffic to a massive pillar article that I had just completed.

I wanted to see if this would get the article indexed quicker (it did), and wanted to see if any traffic from FB would buy some products through my affiliate links (they didn’t). However, this experiment did give me some ideas that I’ll explain in a bit.

The other spikes that you see in the graph are mostly from Pinterest.

What Was Accomplished in November?

November had some ups and downs. As with any website, it can sometimes be hard to find consistent writers.

I eliminated 2 writers in November and have finally replaced them near the end of the month. As a result, the content production was down considerably more than I had hoped.

Overall, only 7 articles were written for the month. However, one of these articles was a MASSIVE pillar article of nearly 13,000 words long! I think this is the longest article I’ve ever published on one of my sites.

However, this article is going to be a central topical theme for my site that I’m hoping established my topical authority. For the next few months, most of the content on my site will revolve around this pillar article.

I now have 4 authors for the site that I believe will start producing content on a more consistent basis.

Want to See My Advanced Keyword Research Strategies that Even a Beginner Can Learn?

Read my comprehensive guide on stealing keywords for competitors. I use this tool to cherry pick the keywords that I know I can rank for quickly…even if my site is newer.

Read the Strategies Here

Plans for Future Growth

Overall, the model hasn’t changed. I plan to continue ramping up content with the knowledge that over time Google with start indexing and ranking my content better. This increased organic traffic will lead to more people buying products through my affiliate links.

However, I’m really interested in getting on the “earnings board”. Maybe I’m just overly competitive (or impatient), but I hate posting results that don’t have any earnings associated with them.

As a result, I plan to start building an email list and start monetizing that list ASAP. The problem is that my site doesn’t get many visitors, so building a list through the traffic coming to my website is likely not going to build a list that moves the needle.

So, here’s my plan in a nutshell:

Build an email list as quickly as possible through giveaways and contests using sources off my website. I’ll start with FB ads that have a “viral” component. This means I’ll spend some money to start getting the giveaways noticed, but the “viral” aspect will come as people share the post, tag friends, and email people they know.

As people join, I’ll email them multiple times per week with products or deals in the niche they would be interested in. Since I can’t send people from an email to an Amazon page, I’ll have them go to a landing page or article on my website.

I’ll make money through affiliate commissions.

I’ve done contests and giveaways that have generated several thousand leads in a week, so the potential is there to build a decent list in a “short” period of time.

The key will be two things:

Building a list of people that are interested in the same niche as my website.

Emailing these people 3 to 5 times a week with offers or other content that keeps the list “warm”.

The benefit of doing all of this is 3 things:

The more people I get on my list and the more I email them, the more likely I am to earn money.

As I generate traffic to my articles using sources outside of Google (my email list), I believe that Google does take notice and starts crawling your site more often which can lead to improved indexing and rankings.

If I do future contests or giveaways, I won’t have to spend as much on ads because I’ll already have an email list I can “launch” it to. As these existing email subscribers share, like, and get their friends on my email list…I get lots of new subscribers.

Now, all of this is easier said than done, but I’m going to give it a shot this month! I’ve seen great results in the past with similar attempts, so I hope you don’t mind me adding this “wrinkle” to the project.

The Tools I May Potentially Use:

I may use all of these or only 1 or 2. I’ll test some things out and let you know what exact process I end up with.

Update from Niche Site Project 4 Participants

Below you will find the monthly report for many of the people participating in the project. As usual, I find it interesting to see people’s thoughts and how their sites are doing.

Overall, I’m happy to see the effort that people are putting in! If you would like to participate in the project, go ahead and register here.

Real Name or Nickname (What you want to be publicly listed as in this monthly report). Number of articles TOTAL published on your site since inception? Number of Total “Sessions” your site received in November 2018? Earnings for November 2018?

What was accomplished in November 2018 for your site? (Please limit to a few sentences if possible). Feel free to link to your niche site (if you want to reveal publicly) or link to your blog where you are giving more detailed reports about your niche site.

Kutluay 5 3518 99.63

No new articles – no additional work on the site. Just continued the process to drive traffic to my site from Pinterest. The experiment details are on my site: https://ift.tt/2quykad

RichP 8 27 0

My site was launched and 8 articles were published. I found a solid writer who I trust with the copy. We have been getting views which is huge!

Jesse 38 372 0.81

Facebook page created, about 7-8 more articles, made my second amazon sale

Diego Vizcaino 1 0 0

I built the site and created a massive article, I’m pumped! https://estudioso.co

Jac 0 582 0

Increase Social Media followers.

Jerry Jhonson 5 152 0

publish an article on every week. Done few blog comments.

Steve Allen 3 34 0

I made the decision to restart my niche site in a completely different niche and I launched this one just 3 weeks ago.

It was an old domain I owned but I had never written any content for it until now.

In November, I published 3 articles and I have already seen some traction in Google with 2 articles on page 3.

I will be documenting my journey with this niche site at my blog coffeeshopblogger.com

Jules 10 1227 4.43

I published 3 new posts in November, which is way less than I really planned, but I’m still writing all of my own content and this is a side-hustle for me. Having said that, one of my posts has become pretty popular on Pinterest! I’ve also been working on my own digital products/courses to sell on the site, which is also slowing the growth a bit because I’m working on those instead of more blog content. I also added a “resources” type page that is filled with affiliate links. But overall, I’m happy with the growth of the site and connected social media. https://ift.tt/2qwdQOn

Andrew Courtney 48 1948 0

Continued to publish articles. Keyword research for next 20 articles. Tidied up styling of site, improved images and formatting of articles. 319 organic sessions this month. The rest from Pinterest. I plan to publish another 10 articles in Dec.

Endre 0 0 0

I changed my niche after almost completing the keyword research. This time it moves faster, but I still struggle.

Ben Doyle 41 116 0

Write 6 articles, built around 100 links including guest posts, business citations and resource page links

Chris H. 1 21 0 Published 1 article Justin 2 0 0 Another post Alwayne 24 246 14.24

I was able to earn income for this month, i have got a few powerful guest post links. The sad part is i had to delete 6 of my articles so it’s now 24.

wendy 10 229 0.6

Connecting ads with site.. other than that, not much.. struggle to increase number of audience and try to see what work and didn’t work

Ally G. 3 0 0

Nothing, too busy dealing with personal stuff to work on my niche site.

Chadwick 13 75 0

I only posted one article as I have been very busy.

Dave Starr 0 0 0

Foundation Building and Procrastination

Christina 23 34 0 Low times this month! Kevin 20 30 0

Few backlinks and social signals, ill take it slowly but surely.

Md Billal Hossain Sarker 0 0 0

Somehow, I needed to change the domain. The domain selection was wrong. So I’ve bought a new domain and waiting to replace it. Due to huge busy in this December with my existing projects, I think, I can start work again for the NSP4 site from the January 2019 with a big breath.

Mr Alexander 1 0 0

About 3 articles have been created but not published. I haven’t done much otherwise.

Kawsar Jahan 14 1300 47.2

I just update my site with fiew article. And also also get 2 backlink from guest post

Bill 5 185 8.84

Slowly growth in this month only 5 published articles. But some of my articles is seasoning (Black Friday + Product keyword) rising to top 10 and got some earning from this keyword.

Renuga 0 0 0

I have not published any articles yet, but I have so far written ~10k words, planning to complete 20 full articles before I publish them. That would be 20*2k words, planning to publish before march. This has been my off-screen achievements so far.

Rohan Bhardwaj 86 64 0

The number of sessions dropped in November. I think it is partly because I didn’t write good articles in November. The drag was too much. I hope to write awesome in December. Fingers crossed.

Mike Ryan 21 53 0

Seeing less sessions this month, but more of those sessions are starting to come from organic traffic. Have done absolutely zero link building so far. Any traffic coming to the site is coming from targeting low competition keywords.

Hassane 10 20 0 More articles added John 0 0 0

Niche research is just about completed. Working on further shortlisting the niches. Found a niche that I liked before the research phase and after further analysis, found that it may be a viable niche to get into. Purchased a domain for it and setup hosting. Installing plugins and finishing up content ideas. Will begin to write about five articles in the next couple weeks and outsource about ten additional.

Sharkey 16 85 0

Set up a Pinterest account – pins are doing well, but not really translating to traffic yet. Burnt myself out on writing blog articles, but MUST get back to it. A trickle of traffic from organic search – enough to give me encouragement.

smshs 15 87 0 na Simon 15 5000 86

I did a few long product round ups that are better than anything I have seen. It was a lot of work. I got several guest posts on high authority sites published. I hit over 2k in instagram followers and my pinterest traffic is steadily increasing.

Hredoy 25 183 0 started backlink. Amit 9 200 0 Na Ryan Faucher 72 877 30.4

An off month for me. I got married! Full details: https://bit.ly/2RxEi67

Jobe 15 223 0

I am still focusing on how to run the site more effectively. I finished putting a system in place for writers and VA to speed up the content but still requires me to manage a big part of the process so now I am working in creating procedures for those tasks that I feel I am ready to delegate in someone else. Also started a backlink campaign and achieved a DA=14 / TF=9 / CF=10 so I think is working very well, however not much movement in Google ranks, have a few keywords in page 3-4, but taking into consideration that I started with the new site end of September beginning of October I think it is ok.

Nelly 13 30 0

After scrapping my initial niche site (due to the medic update), I got start late with my new niche. But ive got the site and logo built, had my first review article written, bought tablelads and have added my first comparison table. Researched and put together a new list of keywords.

Sakralarab 12 84 0

I am going to build more Web 2 Links , I have fixed some security issues reported by google and enhanced the content i i have sent more outreach mails and dealing with some guest posts , i will start paid traffic to get some traffic My website is https://ift.tt/2rqq6At

Mike 16 489 1.16

Finished branding, added a logo, added 4 new articles, set up an email capture, found more keywords to go after.

Rachel 15 432 6

2 new articles published, 4 new links secured. Progress slower than hoped. Pinterest still accounts for majority of traffic to the site.

Towfiq 17 182 0

Can’t fill up the target in November. I’ve a goal of publishing minimum 3 Buying Guide in November but I published only a Buying Guide.

Mouad Real 25 203 00

i get 5 guest post , and the keywords that i target all in 2 page right now

Angela Lewis 12 220 24

The site continues to grow. I believe publishing reviews on my YouTube channel on a couple of products and sharing on Instagram and Facebook is the reason for the views. Always improving and split-testing adsense ad placement.

Jae Jun 0 253 2394.31

Earnings down slightly from last month. Spent most of November making a huge upgrade to our infrastructure and working out the kinks. Bounce rate is still too high so I want to try and bring that down. Email open rates are average at mid 30’s%. Would like to get it up to 40-50% range.

Date Published 2018-12-06 9:37

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itsworn · 6 years

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Hollywood Stars Align With Racers and Rodders at 1958 Motorsports Events

Starstruck.

It should come as no surprise that photojournalists chasing interesting people, places, and things would lead interesting lives, themselves. Some of their shared experiences were documented on film that no Petersen staffer expected to ever be seen outside of the photo lab, recorded for internal entertainment only. Six decades further down the road, however, such outtakes glisten like gold amongst familiar, published negatives. Often, what determines whether or not such a nugget is selected for these pages is the story behind it—or lack thereof. We strive not only to identify who’s in a shot, but also why the credited staff writer or photographer deemed the particular scene worthy of fully 1/12 of that roll of medium-format, 12-shot film. Perhaps only that one person can say—or would’ve said, had we gotten to him in time. Those roving reporters were mostly in their mid-to-late twenties or thirties, already. Add 60 years, and it’s easy to understand why a tempting image might be rejected today only because its shooter either can’t remember or, more commonly, took that inside information to his grave. (Prime example: Fully half of this installment’s photography is the work of the late Eric Rickman, whom historians haven’t been able to pester since 2009.)

Luckily for HOT ROD Deluxe and y’all, Spence Murray and Bob D’Olivo are still around, able, and willing to suffer dumb questions about obscure images that neither had seen since their film was processed and proofed in 1958. The irony of using modern technology to digitize, share, and identify ancient negatives that belatedly appear here as black dots on paper—same as ever—is not lost on either nonagenarian. Though Rod & Custom‘s founding editor has been physically slowed by strokes that hinder typing, wife Carolyn expertly transmitted Spence’s memories of building, driving, touring, and crashing the Dream Truck. The same month he crashed into a Kansas ditch, D’Olivo bumped into Jill St. John at Riverside Raceway. Along with Bob’s four frames of the actress, we noticed Motor Trend‘s main photographer was shooting some 35mm film, instead of the larger formats used almost exclusively by Robert E. Petersen and his hirelings since the start. Mature readers will recall that the smaller, lighter, single-lens-reflex (SLR) design was as nearly as revolutionary in its time as Apple’s camera phone became. For this issue, the longtime Petersen photographic director listed the advantages of 35 mm for race coverage.

Another thing that this latest round of archive research uncovered was an unprecedented number of entertainers and other celebrities not normally associated with our hobby. Stateside interest in sports-car racing was booming, especially now that underdog Corvettes and Thunderbirds dared to challenge European exoticars. Entertainment figures had been associated with hot rod shows since the very first one, in 1948, for which young Robert E. Petersen lined up some B-list beefcake to lure wives and girlfriends to the Los Angeles Armory (while Pete peddled the Jan. ’48 HOT ROD outside). Relationships created during and after his postwar stint as a Hollywood agent would increasingly bring those worlds together in Petersen-produced magazines, promotions, indoor shows, and special events. Thus does his incomparable photo collection contain a unique combination of show-biz and automotive milestones, along with mug shots of the employees who documented them. Many more examples await discovery. We can hardly wait to peek behind the curtain at 1959’s outtakes, next, before blasting into the ’60s.

Of approximately 3 million black-and-white negatives in the Petersen archive, this one was surely among the most mutually painful for an editor and his audience. Through five years and four custom iterations, Rod & Custom readers were encouraged to submit suggestions for modifications that would be performed in the magazine, then seen in person at the 47 car shows across America that featured the Dream Truck. Its 48th would’ve been Iowa’s 1958 International Motor Sports Show, had the tow vehicle’s left-rear tire lasted just 60 more miles. Editor Spencer Murray and helper Jim “Buzzie” Blair escaped uninjured. The new-model Chevy Fleetside with custom Barris grille and paint also survived. In fact, after a wrecker yanked the shiny side up, Spence drove it the rest of the way to Des Moines at the request of a nervous show promoter whose patrons were expecting to meet the editor and see a customized California pickup. (If any of you attendees took pictures of the damaged pickup on display, we’d love to share them in HRD.) Murray briefly referred to the October 21st incident in his Jan. and Feb. ’59 editions—the last two installments of a series that established the formula for long-term magazine projects. The Dream Truck appeared in too many R&Cs to list here, starting with Sept. ’53. (Also see Mar. ’58 HOT ROD; July & Oct. ’58 Motor Life.) The pre-crash ’58 Fleetside mild custom got a spread of its own in R&C’s Jan. ’59 truck issue.

If you young ‘uns ever wondered why the last inside page is consistently missing from Grandpa’s old Car Crafts, it probably went someplace his mother did not. Carol Grace’s turn in CC’s monthly “Coming Attraction” department teased in more ways than one, pointing (sorry!) young readers to Ted Long’s F100 custom and the upcoming truck issue. (See May & June ’58 CC.)

Richard Boone stood a respectable 6-foot-one, but the Have Gun, Will Travel guy looks like a giant in a toy car. Bob D’Olivo rushed a few shots for a May ’58 Motor Trend piece allegedly penned by “Paladin” himself (no byline, but written in the first person). Therein, we learned how Bill Devin—whose fiberglass Ferrari Monza knock-off came in 27 sizes and wheelbases from 75 to 100 inches—adapted this miniature model to the 80-inch wheelbase of a hot Porsche Speedster that Boone had crashed on location.

Hot rodding’s most-famous trophy was still jointly awarded for America’s Most Beautiful Competition Car and America’s Most Beautiful Roadster. Oakland’s big winners were Romeo Palamides’ canopied fueler and Richard Peters’ radical ’29 roadster pickup. The Ala Kart, destined to repeat as 1959’s AMBR, was built by George Barris (seen in the background—for once!). (See Oct. ’58 HRM; Dec. ’58 CC.)

“Have Camera Will Travel,” read the headline of a May ’58 HRM “house” ad, followed by the subscription pitch: “A man of action, our photo editor Eric Rickman is everywhere! You can go, too, by keeping your subscription to HOT ROD up to date. GO, MAN! $3.50 year, $6.00 for two.” We prefer this outtake because it shows more of Rick’s famous Corvette—here in recovery mode, following a single-vehicle street crash—and also because his camera case’s cool decals were “airbrushed out” for publication. We asked his longtime boss, photographic director Bob D’Olivo, about the hardware. “At the top is my personal Eastman Kodak 4×5 view camera,” e-mailed D’Olivo. “Coming down, one item looks like nothing I’ve ever seen, a small camera on a strap. Never saw him use it. On the bottom is my 4×5 Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic. The company had no equipment like this when I started there in August of 1952; we used the stuff that my wife and I brought from New York in my ’40 Ford Deluxe tudor when we moved to California in 1950.”

Four years before Carol Cox singlehandedly pressured Wally Parks into accepting the first female participant in NHRA-produced events, Rickman got this ironic pan shot of her and hubby Lloyd’s family car at sanctioned Inyokern Drag Strip. (See Aug. ’58 HRM.) The couple alternated driving at the drags and El Mirage dry lake—where Carol initially broke an unwritten rule against women racers by disguising herself in Lloyd’s overalls and signature hat until she was accepted. In 1962, Carol would wheel her daily-driven ’61 Ventura to SS/Automatic class wins at NHRA’s only two national events (Pomona and Indy).

What the heck were sprint cars doing on Riverside Raceway’s road course—running in the wrong direction, yet? All we knew was that Rickman submitted a few rolls identified as “CRA 500” for processing on June 2. Curators Jim Miller (American Hot Rod Foundation) and Greg Sharp (NHRA Motorsports Museum) each came through with details about a 500-mile California Racing Association show during the track’s official grand-opening Memorial Day weekend on May 30. The $10,000 purse was considered huge (equivalent to about $87,000 now). The course direction was reversed to counterclockwise for oval-track drivers accustomed to turning left. Some teams installed oversized fuel tanks to minimize pit stops.

Riverside winner Bud Rose was congratulated by a virtually unknown, 21-year-old trophy queen named Dyan Cannon. The hunky dude stepping on the tire is John Smith, soon to become famous on the Laramie series. Rose (whose given name was Harry Eisle) prevailed in the same, ancient Offy that he’d stunt-driven for Clark Gable’s action scenes in 1950’s To Please a Lady. Afterward, Joe Gemsa bought the roadster from the studio and named it the Clark Gable Special. Rose/Eisle was obviously a dead ringer for the movie star. (During filming, Gable supposedly told his double, “You drive the race cars, and I’ll take care of the broads.”)

You’d look befuddled, too, if your boss fired off a flash bulb first thing one morning—particularly if he was Wally Parks, not exactly a major prankster. HRM tech editor Ray Brock was probably sharing this Indianapolis motel room with Parks and possibly another staffer for Memorial Day weekend (note rollaway cot and partial person in foreground).

Would you believe Shirley MacLaine, queen of the 500? She was 24. The popular actress stayed through the race that opened with Pat O’Connor’s fatal first-lap crash on a restart to reward Jimmy Bryan with three big kisses in the winner’s circle.

A rare, unposed portrait of Parks was taken from telephoto range by colleague Tom Medley during the Indy 500 weekend. It’s no wonder the guy often looked worried while juggling simultaneous responsibilities as HRM Editor, editorial director of Petersen’s automotive titles, NHRA president, and drag-race promoter.

Another Medley photo from the crew’s Indy trip is a self-portrait that not even his son had seen. Gary Medley is a chip off the old block, continuing to publish new/old artwork featuring the adventures of his multitalented parent’s alter ego, Stroker McGurk. (See strokerbymedley.com.)

Although Backstage Past prioritizes unpublished outtakes over pictures you might’ve seen in the magazines, we’re making this exception partly to address HRM’s inexplicable failure to attach any caption to Tex Smith’s classic action shot in the Sept. ’58 issue—a rare showdown between the most-controversial dragsters of the preceding season: the California car that ignited the 1957-1963 fuel ban by running 166.97 versus the Florida fueler that reportedly reached 176.40 the previous November. HRM readers might’ve been informed that Wichita Falls was the farthest west that Don Garlits had yet traveled; that a $450 guarantee was his first-ever appearance fee; that he reset both the strip and Texas state records to 9.12/163.33; that the runnerup (far lane) was Kansan Loyd Davis in the former Cook & Bedwell fueler.

Four months before the Dream Truck’s crash, R&C’s editor posed at home with the fourth-and-final version of a ’50 Chevy that was first customized in 1952. A who’s who of custom shops contributed body modifications (e.g., Barris, Metz, Winfield, Valley Custom). Now 91, Murray’s memory is intact. Via e-mail, he answered all of our questions in detail, except one: Asked to identify the lovely lady in his driveway—twice—Spence curiously suffered amnesia, coming back with “Just a friend” and “One of my exes.”

Near-simultaneous exposures by HRM’s Brock and Parks accidentally produced mirror images of Pikes Peak champs Nick Sanborn Jr. (Stock Car), Bobby Unser (Championship Car), and Ak Miller (Sports Car). Both staffers can be seen in the opposing backgrounds. Brock (wearing backward ball cap) appears to be climbing some poor schmuck’s shoulders to get the high-angle, forward-facing composition that happened to include his boss (behind Miller in the sunglasses and white Mobil sweatshirt).

All we know about this intriguing frame is staff photographer Colin Creitz’s three-roll entry in the photo lab’s film log: “Art Center School.” The assignment was issued by Motor Life, but our incomplete collection failed to produce a related article. Experts’ predictions and artists’ impressions of Detroit’s upcoming compact cars were newsstand staples in the late ’50s. The clay models seem to hint at future Chrysler products. The custom-looking pickup makes us wonder why Dodge never produced an “El Dart-o” to compete with the so-called “car-trucks” introduced by Chevy and Ford for 1959.

Various closeups of the Scotty’s Muffler Service Special and team from this August photo session were published in tabloids as prerace publicity for NHRA’s Nationals. What’s unusual about our outtake is the absence of Wally Parks and the appearance of a full camera-and-sound crew, possibly outside its studio. Car-owner Charles “Scotty” Scott (behind seat) was joined by 9-year-old Billy “The Kid” Scott, his future Top Gas and Top Fuel prodigy, and mechanic Cub Barnett. Both Scotts are gone. Barnett still builds race motors and campaigns one of nostalgia racing’s winningest roadsters. As for Miss HOT ROD, a caption printed in Drag News—likely written by Wally himself—reveals that “Hollywood starlet Christine Callas was chosen by more than 70,000 hot rodders throughout the nation to reign over the 1958 National Championship Drag Races in Oklahoma City, Labor Day weekend. She is auburn-haired, blue-eyed, with 36-24-36 measurements.”

This may not be the first pair of rails ever to pull side-by-side wheelstands, but Eric Rickman’s example is the earliest we’ve noticed on archive film. The state-of-the-art California cars of Tommy Ivo (far lane) and Jim Nelson were tangling for Top Eliminator at Santa Ana. What seems like a sizable holeshot might’ve been calculated caution by Ivo, who held a half-second advantage. Earlier this Sunday, his Kent Fuller frame and injected Max Balchowsky Buick combined for a shocking, all-time-record e.t on gas, 9.50 seconds (at 141.68). The Aug. 23 Drag News ran a similar photo and reported that Ivo’s A/Dragster beat the carbureted-Chevy B/D by two lengths. Nelson sat in the second chassis built with Dode Martin. Dubbed the Drag Master, the car’s name would be merged into one word when the pals launched Dragmaster Co. with a handshake. (See respective car features in Feb. ’59 and Mar. ’59 CC; Apr. ’59 HRM.)

No, your old eyeballs are not seeing double, nor did Photoshop exist to fake us out 60 years ago. At the opposite end of this radical custom, a second pair of headlight housings was installed in the leading edge of the hood. CC Editor Dick Day brought the weirdness home from the World’s Fair Auto Show in Springfield, Massachusetts

Another of Tom Medley’s great portraits captured Bob D’Olivo with one of the earliest 35mm cameras used by his photographic team. “It’s an Asahi Pentax 35mm SLR (single lens reflex) model,” he tells us. “It had a no-return mirror, meaning that after the shutter is released, you see nothing until film is advanced. At least, it was a beginning. I also used a 35mm Nikon rangefinder model with a couple of lenses. Nikon SLR cameras did not exist yet. The advantages of 35mm equipment were compact size, higher shutter speeds, motor drives, wide-angle lenses and longer-focal-length lenses for racing, and getting 36 exposures in a small cassette [versus 12 frames per medium-format roll].”

Utah mechanic Athol Graham drew quite a crowd when his homemade streamliner lumbered onto the salt for the first time. Starting with a B-29 belly tank and a surplus Allison V12, he’d invested 12 years and about $2,500 in the project. An oil-pressure problem forced Graham to abort his first-and-only shakedown run, slowing to 84 mph. In the push-off photo, HRM’s Ray Brock approaches with a camera. Graham’s speed would improve the next year to 344 mph—shockingly close to Mickey Thompson’s 364-mph record in Challenger I’s debut. Shooting for the first 400 in 1960, he’d be killed after the left-front wheel reportedly snapped off, flipping him end over end. Nevertheless, the City of Salt Lake was rebuilt twice, raced at Bonneville by two true believers, and still exists.

Among the mysteries raised by this round of archive research is why such a killer Rickman shot of the season’s most-important match did not appear in extensive NHRA Nationals coverage in Petersen monthlies. Absent the late photographer and Wally Parks, who oversaw all automotive titles as PPC editorial director, we can only guess that the obvious darkness influenced rejection by a safety-obsessed boss whose other job was running—and protecting—NHRA. Parks had already convinced two slower quarterfinalists to bow out, eliminating one daylight-eating round of Top Eliminator. Ted Cyr (near lane) received no cash for beating Al Eshenbaugh in 10.04 seconds and earning 1958’s national championship, though he and partner Bill Hopper won the keys to a new Chevy Fleetside pickup. The California team had entered two rails in NHRA’s second gas-only Big Go, hoping to unload this older model here, plus an A/Altered coupe that Hopper drove. Amazingly, all three could’a, would’a, should’a competed in the quarterfinals that never happened, had Hopper’s class-winning Fiat not been one of the two cars prematurely dropped by darkness. Ted drove both dragsters in the semis, where only a sideways launch in the new car prevented an all-Cyr & Hopper final round.

You won’t find Barbara Livingston’s name in any 1958 mastheads, but backstage, the former HRM secretary and future Mrs. Wally Parks remained involved as unofficial proofreader and fierce protector of Petersen and NHRA publications; too involved for editors and contributors who resented her outsized influence and interference (e.g., she and artist Pete Millar waged a running battle over the “butt cracks and flies” that Barbara faithfully erased from his illustrations). All PPC editors seemed to be go-kart enthusiasts. Wally’s twin-engined model rode atop an entry-level Delray sedan delivery thought to be NHRA’s first official vehicle, subsequently lettered and assigned to ex-HRM staffer Tex Smith.

Sporty-car fans’ favorite two couples could not have been more different. For starters, garage operators Max and Ina Balchowsky drove their homebuilt “special” the 60 miles from home to Riverside for USAC’s inaugural U.S. Grand Prix, while Lance Reventlow’s large crew was delivering not one, not two, but all three of the existing Scarabs on fancy trailers. Reventlow, whose supportive mom was Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, got rear-ended on the first lap and spent the day spectating alongside already-famous actress Jill St. John, his future wife. Team mechanic-driver Chuck Daigh salvaged their day by winning the main event in another Scarab. Meanwhile, Balchowsky ran near the front until a broken Jaguar gearbox—reportedly the only “foreign” part in his entire car—restricted Old Yeller to high gear only and a seventh-place finish. (See May ’58 ML; June ’58 & Jan. ’59 HRM; Jan. ’59 MT; May ’16 HRD.)

After aging out of the Mousketeers, child-stars Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk might’ve been practicing a magic trick or how to slow dance without swallowing a playing card, for all we knew. Our historical sources were likewise stumped until Margaret Simmons, a bride of 1958, recalled the “Suck-and-Blow” party game played by teens of the time—with one key difference: Instead of positioning the card vertically, for transfer by the lips, these crazy kids used their teeth. (No sucking and blowing allowed by Disney, apparently.) Later, they costarred in cheesy, teen-romance films such as Pajama Party, in which Tommy plays a clueless Martian who gets wooing lessons from Annette.

Spence Murray had the wreckage trucked back to L.A. as freight. He was not compensated personally for the Dream Truck’s loss, and George Barris’s $1,000-plus repair estimate left no practical option to stripping and selling an old, badly bent body and frame that nobody expected to see again. The custom made its final magazine appearance in the HOT ROD Mart classifieds in 1959 and was presumed lost for the three decades before freelance photojournalist Michael Lamm spotted it on a Stockton street. Bruce Glasscock tracked the truck down and started a restoration before selling to Kurt McCormick, who completed the job, and still has it. The body retains a surprising percentage of its old steel, including the signature fins that Bob Metz installed (now reattached to replacement fenders).

We can see why fuel economy wasn’t the main concern of folks shopping for new cars this fall. Sorry about ruining your next trip to a corporate filling station, though Mohawk’s pricing isn’t all that great, adjusted for inflation and modern technology: In today’s money, we’d be paying only $2.20, but that gallon wouldn’t take a ’59 Studebaker nearly as far as any modern gas compact. Motor Life averaged just 16.1 mpg testing a 90hp Lark that needed 20.7 seconds to reach 60 mph. (See Feb. ’59 ML.)

Had Mickey Thompson and Fritz Voigt dragged their dual-Hemi, 4WD monster directly to Oklahoma City’s NHRA Nationals this summer—as previously planned—rather than detouring to Bonneville for a test run of new Bob Sorrell bodywork, the overweight, second-hand dragster probably would’ve been footnoted in history as an early round Top Eliminator victim of much-quicker gas dragsters. Instead, they ran 242 right off the trailer, on gasoline, before borrowing some nitro and deciding to stick around for record runs. Eight passes later, the two drag racers had America’s fastest car, claiming both the unlimited streamliner record (266.204 avg.) and Top Time of Speed Week (294.117). Nobody we asked (including Danny Thompson) knows whether the Feb. ’59 HOT ROD Mart ad resulted in a sale, or where the car went. Greg Sharp suggests that the early image is an illustration, possibly commissioned for sponsor pitches (evidently unsuccessful, in the case of a cam company whose name never appeared on a car that ran Isky’s stuff). (See Nov. ’58 HRM; Nov. ’58 & Feb. ’59 MT; Dec. ’58 R&C; Dec. ’58 & Aug. ’59 CC.)

The post Hollywood Stars Align With Racers and Rodders at 1958 Motorsports Events appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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the-fitsquad · 6 years

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Public Access Computer Workstations

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Whilst workstations are frequently element of a network, they can be standalone machines as nicely. Even a property laptop can be a workstation if it is used for certain types of perform. So if you want to sound expert, the subsequent time you send an e-mail to a buddy from your home Pc, you can let him know you are sending it from your residence workstation. Dell initially manufactured computers visit this website in house and was a pioneer in the “configure to order” strategy to manufacturing—delivering person PCs configured to customer specifications. 93 In contrast, most Pc producers in these times delivered huge orders to intermediaries on a quarterly basis. 94 95 As PCs became a lot more commoditized, Dell’s “configure to order” strategy of manufacturing was no longer as efficient or competitive with high-volume Asian contract manufacturers.

Among our clients we see very few XP computer systems left. Those that are left fall mainly into the category of machine controllers or thin consumers. Thin clientele can continue to be utilized since they are locked down from change and don’t directly access the World wide web themselves. This makes them a lot more resilient to adjustments more than time and we can just keep those in place. For machine controllers we require to lock them down so that they have no Internet activity at all on them. This signifies no e-mail, no world wide web and only the very limited function that they have to do in order to run the machine that they are connected to. Any other functions need to be moved off to one more far more modern operating method.

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aluminiumwings · 7 years

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Stay Active After P.T.S.D.- Overcome Your Post-Trauma Predicament in 5 Easy Steps

According to the National Comorbidity Survey Reports over 7.5 million people are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder every year in the United States alone. Most of them suffer from the post-trauma predicament. A predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which prevents us from further trauma. We make a mistake when we think it is an unmanageable disease. Yes, it’s definitely a complicated health and mental issue but we can bypass it using simple techniques. Today I’m going to share with you the 5 steps I took to overcome my post-trauma predicament.

GIVEAWAY- Download The Activity Flowchart PDF

What is a trauma?

A trauma is condensed stress. When an event of our life or a chain of events pile up a huge amount of insecurity within our subconscious mind, we experience a trauma. The major characteristic of a trauma is that it is more of a subconscious affair than a conscious matter. So, to deal with trauma we need to specifically work on our subconscious mind and generate a habit of feeling protected. To do that we need to understand that our subconscious mind is connected to a few things, like- our body, our memory, our environment and the community we live in. If we can manage all these aspects then we’ll be able to balance rejuvenate our subconscious mind. When I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis in 2011, I took it easily but my subconscious mind became frightened instantly. In a few years, my subconscious brain was designed in a way that whenever it was a time to visit the doctor I used to get stressed. I could not move my legs, I couldn’t swallow the food, I couldn’t even pee. It took me a long time to reorder my subconscious mind. I went through a whole process of transformation. Now I don’t get stressed easily. I can control my temperament. I’ve analyzed the complete process for you in last few weeks and picked up the nuggets that changed my life.

How does post-trauma predicament behave?

The post-trauma predicament is a security system developed by our instinct which protects us from further trauma. Yes, it’s a security system that saves our butts. But in this process, it ruins us the other way. In a post-trauma condition, our body cuts the connection between our nerves and muscles. It stops the flow of oxygen in the Neuromuscular junction and we cannot move our limbs. We know this situation as a predicament. Let’s understand this in an example; suppose you want to check your email and you turned on the email app on your mobile phone but there’s no internet connection. You can see the “loading circle” on the screen. Your device is trying to synchronize the app with your email account. And, it fails. You try again and the same thing happens. The email app in your mobile phone cannot load the inbox page because the connection between your mobile phone and the internet is broken.

Same thing happens with us when we go through a predicament. We try to do some activity, our brain initiates the process but the muscles cannot perform it because the connection between our nerves and the muscles is broken. So what do to rebuild the connection? What do we do to restart activity? Before we start talking about the solution please go ahead and download the Activity Flowchart. It’s a concise documentation of the 5 steps, I’m going to teach you. It took me 10 years to perform them, 10 months to decode them, and it’ll take you only 10 minutes to consume them. I hope you’ll perform them better than I did!

How to stay active?

Most of the P.T.S.D. challengers spend a good amount of time lying in bed and sleeping. They get out of bed, have some food and go back to sleep. If you are one of them then don’t feel ashamed. I’ve spent years lying in the bed, sleeping all day long and waking up in the nights. It’s totally okay. Your body needs that rest. You need to give yourself a minimum time to recover from the immediate shocks of the trauma. The point is what you do next? How do you grow from ashes? Before we start I must tell you that you should hire a coach who can lead you through the step by step process to overcome predicament; who will be there to catch you when you slip.

Step 1- Start with ‘no-brain activities’: (Use your sensory organs)

You should start by doing the ‘no brain-activities’. After the immediate shocks of trauma, our body develops a practice of feeling stressed all the time. While feeling stressed there is more blood flow to the back part of our brain (mainly in the hypothalamus) and less blood flow on the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe executes all logical and analytic processes. So, it’s difficult for us to perform actions. That’s why we should start with no-brain activities. Use your sensory organs to start working. Use your eyes, your ears, your tongue. You can start by simply watching TV or listening to music. Some people start eating. I used to watch television shows like Phineas and Ferb, Man vs. Wild etc. While carrying out no-brain activities just do a trick, watch one show or listen to one podcast that teaches some activity you can perform easily. For example, you can follow Magic Mike who does awesome things with paints and scissors. Next what? Engagement.

Step 2- Engagement is the key (Use your hands)

Next, you need to do physical tasks. It’s the time when you introduce your hands with your eyes and ears. You need to practice what you have learned so far. Simply start singing, start dancing, try to enact your favorite scenes from your favorite TV shows, start cooking, start drawing, do make ups, start working out, literally anything that involves physical engagement. Just keep in mind you should pick one or two of the tasks you like. Do not overwhelm yourself. You can schedule a routine that you’ll cook in the morning and paint at night or whatever suits you. Don’t do the mistakes I’ve done. I used to overwhelm myself by starting a bunch of projects. I couldn’t finish them and I ended up sabotaging myself.

Remember, you still do not have enough blood flow to your logical brain so your brain cannot handle more than one or two tasks. Don’t set goals, don’t pressurize yourself. Just hang out with your task and try to create a relationship with it. I started by hanging out with my laptop. I used to learn designing online. Not that I’m an expert in designing but it helped me to create a relationship with my laptop and start engagement.

Step 3- Join a community (Utilize the power of collective humanity)

Next, you’ll need to join a community. A community is always helpful. You get to meet a lot of people dealing with similar challenges like yours. You also meet people who have survived similar situations. You’ll get to talk to them, you’ll get to listen to them. They’ll empathize with your pain. And, most importantly they’ll recognize your achievements. When I was starting the recovery process I got to meet a few awesome people. Whenever I was upset I called them and they helped me. One of my friend's father became paralyzed when he was 17 years old. Since then he is the only earning member of his family. He has been a great support to me for last few years. So, join a community that shares similar interest and beliefs. The community should be a physical community and not an online community.

GIVEAWAY- Download The Activity Flowchart PDF

Step 4- Start a venture (Use your legs)

It’s more of an advanced stage and probably the most difficult one. Most of the challengers fail to nail this one. But, the fact is if you are able to execute stage 4 you’ll never look back. It’s like a reward to yourself, it’s a gift from the Universe. So, what do you do at this stage? You start a venture. The best way to stay active in a post-trauma situation is to start a venture. Now, what can be a venture? Anything that is dedicated to a purpose and requires consistent engagement is a venture. If someone has a family he is a member of a venture, if someone works for a company then he is a member of a venture if someone works for a nonprofit group he is a member of a venture. Now you also need to be a part of a venture. Either join an existing venture or start a new one. It’s the best way to attract gratitude which will bring you recognition and empowerment.

Step 5- Keep the ball rolling (Maintain continuity)

Now, you have to maintain the continuity. It is said that most of the trauma challengers fail to stay active because they fail to continue the process. It’s a secret how to keep the ball rolling. Read the next few lines carefully. It might change your life.

You Need A Strong ‘Why’- define a purpose of your life. It’s a way to hack the rules of the Universe. As a human being, we tend to stay active if there are people depending on us. If you can convince yourself that there are a few people depending on you, you’ll more likely to stay active than if not.

Create a Community of Yours- create a support group of your own. They’ll keep you motivated and even help you to start a venture. Your community should contain a core and a buffer group to help you in different situations.

Establish your actions with rituals- you have to establish the activities I taught previously. Rituals are the best way to do that. A personal Mantra or Japa can help you. Even lighting up a candle can help you to continue your journey.

Hire a coach- It should be your first step to overcoming your predicament by hiring a coach. If you are serious about getting rid of your post-trauma difficulties then hire a coach in the first place. Make sure your coach has these three qualities-

i. He must have personal experience with P.T.S.D ii. He must teach you breathing exercises iii. He must teach you serious meditation.

JUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

It's all about what you believe. A trauma has a two-way effect. It affects our physics and our psyche. We do not have much control over our physics but we can control our psyche. And, by controlling the psyche we can govern our physics to some extent. The goal of a predicament-challenger should be to get full command over their psyche and guide their physics to recovery.

Before you leave download the Activity Flowchart. It’ll help you to remember the whole process and perform them in an order. Whatever the situation is that you have to face every day remember there’s always someone to help. There’s always a messenger near to you. All you need is to reach out and ask for help. Do you think you have a friend who needs to see this then SHARE it! And, do not forget to leave a reply.

Let me know what are your takeaways!

#ptsd #overcome trauma #trauma management

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