#I tried putting the image id in like the alt text like suggested but I couldn't figure out how to edit that?? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

copperbadge · 9 months

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Well, Still Salty.

I was cranky yesterday and I thought a good night's sleep would provide some adjustment in perspective, but unfortunately "spending yesterday not on tumblr" also offered perspective and got there first.

Up front: feel free to comment or reblog on this post (replies may be heavily delayed) but if you feel the urge to Like, I'm going to ask you to take one more step and go to https://www.tumblr.com/support, select "feedback" as the category, and enter a line or two about the new dash. It can be as simple as "Your new dash design is difficult to use and is driving people off the site". I'm not asking everyone to do it, but if you're going to Like this post, that would be a helpful action in addition. You can delete any response they send; no reason to expose yourself to the unique combination of incompetence and condescension with which they handle feedback generally.

Also up front: yeah, if I find somewhere else to go and go there, I will certainly let you guys know beforehand, I'm not going to just evaporate. I'll be broadcasting about Tumblr's replacement on Tumblr very heavily. But I can't deny that it is now an active goal of mine to find a viable replacement for this site. (More on this in a moment.) You will always be able to find me on AO3 as copperbadge, or via [email protected]. (More on this in a moment also.)

This kind of thing is why I refuse to fuck with staff now or ever; I don't trust them and I never will. Watching @wip respond to almost every complaint or suggestion with "but that would be really hard" is telling. Whoever is pushing blocks around at Tumblr wants a lucrative site that's easy to code, but lucrative is hostile to community and code is difficult by nature, and when the architecture of the meeting hall is hostile and cheap, people don't stick around.

I've been watching the site as every change made it incrementally worse, from a buggy post window that doesn't allow ease of editing to the new dash (which is the reason I'm writing this in a text window off Tumblr). I genuinely do not think I can use desktop Tumblr like this unless I can install something that will put it back the way it was, and roughly 40% of the content you guys get HAS to come through desktop. It's impossible to do on a phone or so time-consuming it's not worth it. I cannot code Radio Free Monday on a phone; it's a struggle to code it on a single-monitor laptop (I usually write it on my work computer, where I have two monitors). Even writing image IDs on the phone is difficult and something I rarely do. Tumblr is becoming an actively difficult place for me to make content, introducing friction left and right.

But where does one go? I've tried other platforms and they're either worse to use or they don't have the constituency. The problem with a lot of discourse around internet addiction is that it often points out how glued people are to their phones without asking what it is they're doing on those phones. I'm not addicted to social media; I don't doomscroll, I don't care what celebrities have to say, I don't find 140 characters useful or interesting, I don’t find most “funny” videos very interesting. I create a lot of original content for public consumption, significantly more than many social media users, and if that becomes difficult, then the site suffers more than I do. But it's undeniable that social media, and this social media in specific, is where my people are, and yeah, I like seeing you all every day. It makes it difficult to leave even when Tumblr is the best of a bad set of options.

It seems like a lot of the internet, lately, is the best of a bad set of options.

All that said, Tumblr forced a sudden, unwanted, and unchangeable reskin on me a day after I listened to a two-hour podcast about addiction while working on building a newsletter system for my author site. I spent the evening before this happened in contemplation of my relationship to social media and to my readership and how I might alter it to my benefit regardless of whether that's also to Tumblr's detriment. Their poor timing, I suppose. A lot of the theories advanced on the podcast were, to put it kindly, bunk, but one of the suggestions for people questioning their relationship to an activity was a dopamine fast -- removing something in your life that gives you quick but unsustained dopamine hits, so that you can take some time to level out and examine your behaviors. On the one hand, that's not at all how dopamine works; from the jump it's a bad theory. But on the other, pulling back from something you think may be causing you difficulty is generally speaking a good tactic.

Removing myself from Tumblr yesterday was an active process: because I have ADHD and often will forget something exists if I don't systematize my engagement with it, Tumblr is normally pinned to my browser, with the app on my phone's top screen. Removing the app and closing the window meant that while I occasionally reached for Tumblr, it was less frequently than I expected, and the lack of access reminded me why I wasn't there. I missed you guys, but I didn't miss getting distracted from work by my dash, or the pressure to respond to the volume of communication I receive through the site daily. I don't think my use of tumblr as my sole social media has been unhealthy, per se, but certainly yesterday felt both quieter and calmer after I walked away.

But that's a temporary relief, because you are my community, and not only do I not want to leave my community, it's a resource for me. One of the reasons I do things like Radio Free Monday and the weekly Hug on Saturdays is that I try to make sure that resource is reciprocal. Leadership involves service. Leaving would be easy in the short term, but in the long term, leaving my community without having another place to meet it, or another community to go to, would be harmful to both of us. I'm already someone who isolates, and while I have a strong brickspace circle of friends, they fulfill sometimes different needs.

Though I do appreciate the wild vote of confidence from the comments to my last post telling me people would come with me where I went. That means a lot to me. I will attempt to make it either unnecessary or as painless as possible. Just know, I see your faith and friendship and I appreciate it.

Sometimes at my old job I'd be in very tumultuous meetings where a lot was discussed and not much agreed on, and the most useful thing to me was always to say, "What are our next steps? What would you like me to do because of this meeting?" So what are next steps, all this being the case?

First, I'm going to be off Tumblr, mostly, for another couple of days, because clearly I need the break and a few days won't matter too much. Again, I will be back either to continue on the site or to let you guys know, at length and volume, where I'm headed. The former is much more likely.

Second, I'm going to be actively looking for both a widget I can install to reset the dash (recommendations welcome, I currently don't even use xkit) and a wholly new platform that's a realistically viable alternative. Even if the dash gets reset, the shitty post editor is here for good. Attempts to source alternative platforms in the past have taught me that it needs to have a mobile-friendly site or an app, a similar structure to tumblr, and a reasonable chance of actually attracting users. That's a heavy venn diagram unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon, but I'm now invested in finding it, instead of just passively waiting for it to happen to me (as Tumblr did when it pulled me off LJ).

Third, I do have an email newsletter in the works! I'm just wrestling currently with setting up how people sign up for it. This wasn't meant to be "my main broadcast platform"; it's meant to be a once-monthly email to share book news, targeted at people who aren't on socials or who just really love content from me, I guess. :D The plan was for me to assure Tumblr users that it was not extra content, just select content repackaged into a digest. But it will be one way to ensure that if I'm moving around outside of Tumblr, you'll know about it. I hope to have a link to a signup page soon. (I'm....dealing with some code issues.)

Fourth, I'm going to be combing through the last ten years I've spent here and pulling anything I think is of value into an archive. For now everything will remain here as well, and I'll let you guys know if I think that's going to change, but it's clear that this space is moving only one direction, towards a place I can't exist, and when/if it crumbles I want to have already evacuated what's important.

So there you go. I'll possibly be posting sporadically (the Saturday Hugs are queued six months in advance so that'll happen) but if nothing else and if not sooner, I'll be back full-time next week starting with Radio Free Monday. I appreciate your patience and your kindness in the meantime!

#tumblr #social media

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cipher-fresh · 8 months

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hi! i hope it’s okay to ask this, but i’m trying to write alt text for pictures i include in my own posts and i’m not super sure how to. i’m just kinda worried i’ll fuck it up lol. i see u write image IDs often, so do u have any advice? thank u!!

Hi! I’m delighted you’re asking, I’m always glad to see more people regularly describe images on tumblr.

You don’t need to know every single detail about a post to give a good image ID, just the gist so people understand is fine. I describe a lot of images from TV shows where I don’t know the locations or characters, but usually the dialogue is the most important thing so I focus on what the point of the image is when transcribing.

Phrasing posts can usually feel awkward, I’ve started a lot of IDs like “A screenshot of people standing by a table talking, dialogue reading [something]” but it gets easier to phrase it over time.

One image ID is better than none, even if you’re not describing posts super often, looking through a post’s comments for an ID and reblogging that is really nice. If you want to reblog from a mutual who is reblogging a thread of a post without an ID or want to preserve another comment, you’re welcome to copy and paste other people’s ID’s.

If you’re putting a description in alt text, it doesn’t need an ID introduction, but if you’re putting it in the body of the post (generally preferred), having an ID introduction like ‘image description:’ is suggested, or the ID may look like a comment on the post instead of what the original image says.

I’ve made occasional mistakes when doing IDs, but my other image describing friends usually help me out and tell me when I make typos.

Since I’ve started writing image IDs I’ve tried to be on top of making sure I don’t post undescribed images on my original posts. I usually hold off on posting images to my own posts if I haven’t described them. I didn’t start describing posts until a year and a half ago so I have a lot of old original posts with undescribed images that I’ll find and add descriptions to if I feel they’re worth a reblog.

Asking the OP of a post for details about how to describe an image is also advised if you’re not sure. And it’s alright if you’re not able to get to every post, I know I haven’t.

There is a Google doc of image descriptions for popular meme templates floating somewhere around here, if I find it I’ll link it in a reblog.

Thank you for asking!

#this was a really nice ask actually I should have put together a mini guide to image id’ing things ages ago #updates from cipher #I would adore adore adore it if more muruals did image IDs. if for nothing else just their own images

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ocean-sapphics · 10 months

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what are ocean sapphics? & flags!

'ocean' is the umbrella grouping term for presentation labels that lesbian & bi/pan sapphics can use regarding femininity, masculinity, and androgyny.

these terms were initially coined by strwbryfemme on twitter, using their gimmick account sapphicimagines back in january of 2022. both accounts have since been deactivated and therefore this thread is long gone. i found them in an old flag hoard album on my camera roll recently and decided to respectfully reupload them in case anyone else would enjoy.

NOTE #1: i will not be putting the rest of this, admittedly quite long, post under a ‘read more’ cut due to the fact that all the information would be lost if someone decided to reblog it and the original post ended up gone sometime in the future. you would not be able to view anything under it, since whatever is there can only be seen on the original page. i apologize if you have to scroll a lot because of this, but that’s unfortunately one of the many inconvenient ways tumblr works.

NOTE #2 (MUST READ): i felt it would be best to swap their usage of 'pearl' to mean masc, not androgyne. this is because these chosen words feel unbalanced in their meanings to me. 'ocean' feels too broad and vague to cover just one category (hence why i made it overarching instead), and doesn't fit its place in the hierarchy of the theme. it'd be like saying, for example: 'cat' is fem, 'animal' is masc, and 'dog' is androgynous; instead of saying 'cat' is fem, 'dog' is masc, and 'furry' (lmao idk ok? bear with me) is androgynous. i then turned what was previously 'pearl' into 'coral' as a replacement, since that made more sense from my perspective. if this confuses you while reading the tweets below, i have put my corrections for the labels/flags in alt text, which you can click on each image to access. if that doesn't help, feel free to ask questions. i tried to make this as easy and least complex as possible, so i apologize if that didn't work.

NOTE #3: if cat (strwbryfemme) and/or atlas (ilikegaycookies, who designed the bi flags btw) finds this and would like me to take it down, i will do so upon request, directly or indirectly, and also delete this blog. i intend no disrespect to either of you and i'm posting this because i like your ideas and don't want them to rot and be forgotten anymore than they already have. i edited the words themselves because i thought they would fit better, but i can also revert them back to their original versions if need be.

with that out of the way, let’s get onto the flags first!

sapphic:

lesbian:

bisexual:

information (REMINDER THAT I HAVE RE-COINED A COUPLE OF TERMS. READ ALT TEXT TO KNOW WHICH WORDS TO SWAP OUT WHEN READING THE SCREENSHOTS!):

any and all help with IDs/PTs are appreciated! i do not have the spoons to write them out as of now due to the rest of the work i'm putting into this post, but if someone wants to volunteer then i can put all the text into a rentry (or multiple) and edit it here to make the images more accessible to disabled readers. thank you!

here is some more stuff i would like to add (please also read these too if you are interested in claiming, or even if you are not on board with all this):

you should keep in mind that i am a white tme bi sapphic who knows my history and claims 'butch', so i will not argue about butch/femme discourse because i strongly support the terms not being lesbian-exclusive. however, it should be understood that i still know my place and privilege regarding other applicable aspects and do not wish to offend anyone or start discourse here. this post is simply a reupload and attempt at re-suggesting cute terms for personal use only, entirely by choice. they are not designed to be forced on anyone or become mainstream, especially not to replace femme/butch/futch or even the infamous doe/stag/tomcat. you do not have to like these or agree with them. you are allowed to dismiss the idea and move on as it wasn't made to erase or hurt anyone. please hold anyone who does spread these in bad faith accountable, thanks.

with that being said, it is my opinion that we should grant their wishes for wanting to keep this series exclusive to the sapphic community. i do not personally consider either of these individuals to be overall 'bad people', even if we disagree on some things heavily. they still deserve respect for the positive contributions they have made to our community, which is why, again, i will remove all of the above without hesitation if asked by a credible messenger.

one last thing to be reminded of ─ if anyone else ends up playing around with the theme of these terms + flags, for any given reason (such as designing pan/trans/enby/etc. versions), please do not use the word 'fish', especially if you are also white, as that already exists within a Black-exclusive context to be a cultural identity adjacent to 'femme'! i will not speak or give an opinion about what to do or not if you are Black, as i'm sure you will be able to take it from there.

this is not necessary to read, so you can stop now lol ─ anyway, thank you for your attention, and enjoy! reblogs are appreciated, and comments will be listened to. if you have any complaints directed towards the content itself, then i unfortunately cannot help you with that as said content is not really mine. however, i will try to respond to stuff related to my act of reuploading and/or adjusting the terminology. remember that i self-identify as butch and am critical of coining ideas with a similar purpose to doe/stag, but obviously i am not against it. as long as you can understand my point of view, your opinions will matter, even if they (respectfully!) dissent. have a lovely rest of your day/night!

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radiomogai · 1 year

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tried to format my newest post as accessible as i could considering your feedback

i bolded the section headers for the name, pronunciation, etymology, and flag meaning, because otherwise i find it really hard to read :( looking through your reblogs, i saw many other posts with bold formatting in which there were no 'missing pt' tags found, so i hope that is okay?

the accessibility in IDs post you tagged me said to put ALT text no matter what, and also had a link to this post, which i used the idea of putting extra IDs at the bottom to help redundancy in ALT text's ID repeating for screenreaders.

is this better / anything else i can do?

it definitely looks better!!! we're off our meds rn so not 100% able to give advice right now, but i'd say the only thing we can think of would be to like, not put the image IDs under the cut/under a readmore as if you ever deactivate or even so much as change your url, it can make the IDs inaccessible {we always take IDs and PTs out from under readmores and cuts because of that}

we think we've seen some people say to put IDs right under the image but we're too foggy-headed right now to remember for sure and we're not able to get a source for that on account of, well, fogginess, and we think we've seen others say that it doesn't matter, so regarding that we suggest doing your own research if you want to. uhh i wrote this section because i completely missed the paragraph where you mentioned this, so yeah it seems fine, so long as it's not under a cut/readmore. we haven't heard to put it at the bottom if there's alt text to avoid redundancy but we'll keep that in mind since that's definitely good to know, a bit we didn't previously know

and yeah in regards to our tagging, we put 'needs ID' if it's only in the alt text {though we are forgetful about this, which is a fault of ours} or if it's not present at all, and we put 'needs PT' if there's text that's coloured, in a different font, in a larger or smaller size, if there's large sections that are bolded and/or italicized, if there's a typing quirk, or if it has like. every second word bolded for aesthetic reasons. we don't put 'needs PT' on things like your post where the sections are bolded or whatnot, nor do we put it on indented text as we've been told indented sections aren't a problem

i hope this coheres sdfsdfsdf if it doesn't, give us like a day or two so we can get on our meds again and then poke us again

#ask #do we tag it as ask or asks. i forgot #liommagic

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portpebble · 1 year

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sorry this is on anon but im the OP of that 2003 Leo art u reblogged a little bit ago!

thanks for letting me know it's less accessible under the readmore, i'm pretty new to adding image ids actually so i had no idea! I never have had an issue with using readmores so i genuinely didn't know

I was wanting to just put them in alt text for a while but i didn't realize i had to change the post editor on desktop (I really hate changing things and the one time i've tried to use the new post editor before i hated it)

I actually talked to some other folks abt it bc i didn't want to bother you, and going with their suggestions i'll try and use the alt text for image ids from now on :) thank you!

(also im glad u liked my art :D!) - 20s

Of course, of course I'm happy to help! And thank you for adding the ID in the first place, I appreciate it and you taking the time to listen to feedback :D!!! Your art is very lovely!!!

#asks for em

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nelvana · 2 years

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Back in October 2020, my good friend @tikki-tok (i.e @tikki-makes-art ) decided to start a Platinum playthrough together! We got into the Hall of Frame on March 12th, 2021, and after exploring some of the post game, we decided to follow my long standing tradition of drawing my team after beating a pokemon game, by collaborating on the art piece together. I did the sketch, Tikki did the lineart, I did the coloring, and then Tikki finished it off with the background and lighting effects!

We had tons of fun playing the game and coming up with this drawing, so now without further ado, some team info and playthrough commentary under the cut!

Team Tikki, in the order they were caught (Name, Species, Sex, Moveset):

“Paprika”, Infernape, ♀, Close Combat - Mach Punch - Fire Blast - Grass Knot

“Freya”, Staraptor, ♀, Close Combat - Return - Roost - Fly

“Korrina”, Floatzel, ♀, Aqua Jet - Crunch - Iron Tail - Waterfall

“Malibu”, Garchomp, ♂, Dragon Claw - Rock Slide - Earthquake - Crunch

“Skadi”, Glaceon, ♀, Shadow Ball - Ice Shard - Hail - Blizzard

“Leoru”, Lucario, ♂, Aura Sphere - Stone Edge - Dragon Pulse - Drain Punch

Team Nelvana, in the order they were caught (Name, Species, Sex, Moveset):

“Zest”, Torterra, ♂, Curse - Rock Slide - Earthquake - Razor Leaf

“Xena”, Luxray, ♀, Return - Crunch - Iron Tail - Spark

“Bridget”, Floatzel, ♀, Ice Fang - Waterfall - Strength - Crunch

“Fothe”, Drifblim, ♀, Shadow Ball - Fly - Psychic - Minimize

“Tottle”, Lopunny, ♀, Return - Jump Kick - Quick Attack - Bounce

“Tempest”, Glaceon, ♂, Blizzard - Hail - Shadow Ball - Quick Attack

General Playthrough Notes:

We played every Tuesday evening until we beat the game and explored as much as the post game as we could (I’ll get back to that in a moment) Which for me brings us to the in-game time of nearly 39 hours. I believe that Tikki’s in-game time was about ten hours more than mine because she spent a lot of time, among other things, actually doing honey tree shenanigans and catching extra pokemon (which had to be trained up).

Speaking of, the final team they used for the Elite Four was not all the pokemon used by Tikki during the playthrough! It was just the team that he felt was best suited for tackling the league with. Some other honorable mentions of teammates for her are: “Syrup” the Bibarel, “Titanium” the Heracross, “Majesty” the Vespiquen, and “Lancer” the Roselia.

Actually funny story, while Tikki was off using several pokemon at once and just switching the roster every now and again, I sat with a party of five for most of the game! I told myself I’d only use glaceon if I didn’t have a full team by then, because I love glaceon but you can only get it by the seventh gym, which in most instances would be way too late in the game to be adding new team members, but for me? I never found a different pokemon I wanted to round the team out, so Tempest got to come along after all!

Okay back to the post game, turns out Platinum’s post game is really weird?? You have to fill out the regional dex to access certain bits, which for a game that just seeing each pokemon fills out the dex slot, is reasonable, except that manaphy is part of that dex and you cannot see a manaphy in Platinum without trading or having Pokemon Rangers. Unless we were both missing something, we were forced to miss out on some of the cool bits of that whole northern island of Sinnoh.

When we fought the E4, we had trained both our teams up to at least level 45 (though half my team was at least level 50), which is still quite a bit low for Cynthia, but we made it work.

Tikki, however, tried going through the game without using healing items, and this extended to the E4. The E4 was so difficult for her with that rule that they had to reload the save and ditch the rule last minute.

Everyone in Sinnoh has ADHD. Sorry we don’t make the rules.

Because I was playing on an emulator and sometimes experienced lag, and Tikki was playing on an actual DS but sometimes knocked the cartridge out of place and had to reload saves, we started making the semi-joking headcanon that we were connected to space/Palkia and time/Dialga respectively, which then escalated to our rivals being connected to Arceus and Giratina.

Speaking of, because I was playing the female trainer and Tikki chose the male trainer, our Professor’s assistant rivals were swapped, so to make things easier in conversation, we started calling Lucas/Dawn “Sapling” instead.

Also! We came up with the headcanon that the in-game mother character, Johanna, kinda looks after trainers who are away from home and helps support them on their journey. Since she also gives you the costume outfits and I am not a fan of dresses but Tikki liked how the dress looked, we like to imagine that she meant to give me the suit and them the dress but accidentally gave me the dress and them the suit, so we just swapped.

Why were there so many npcs that talked about being starving while standing next to berry trees? Is this a Sinnoh thing? Why is no one eating?

The seventh gym was really funny because I just swept with Zest using earthquake, and due to a flinch on the steelix with the kings rock, I never saw a single one of the gym leader’s attacks. I finished it so fast, in fact, that Tikki hadn’t even started, so I just said “I’d give you advice on how to beat the gym but I didn’t even see what it had to offer”

All in all, we both had a really fun time and I would highly recommend the Platinum experience! The AI is the best I think it ever has been for pokemon so it even poses a good enough challenge on top of just being a really fun time.

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repertoire-art-design · 4 years

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Do you need a little more Namaste in your life?

The answer is YES you do. You may not know it. But you need a little more Namaste and a little less stress. A little more of all that Yoga offers? YES! YES! YES!

If you answered YES or you already practice yoga and want MORE, I have a suggestion for you —begin a yoga journaling habit. You will just find a little more OM in your day, your week, your month, your year. A little less stress. A little more connection to your yoga community. A little more understanding of yourself, and your practice. You will learn to reflect, observe, explore and express yourself more fully within your yoga practice.

Here is my story…

Life happens, so there is yoga

Life happens. The kind of happenings that make us question our choices and decisions, but also make us ask WHY!? me? We all recognize that uncomfortable feeling of dread. Sometimes happenings creep up on us like a cat after it’s prey. Only to pounce on us, as we realize we weren’t ready. But what if instead, we WERE ready for it after all! We were ready because we had learned the tools to cope. Like many of you, my coping skills have been learned through my practice of yoga.

My yoga journey

My “yoga journey” happened that way. Creeping up so slowly over nearly twenty five years that I didn’t even notice the progression. So slow, steady and pure in it’s pace that I didn’t realize the habits I had formed or the growth I had made. Yoga began as “exercise.” Seriously. I had no idea it’s power and strength at first. I just went from treadmill or step class to yoga. It was part of my healthy regimen at The Women’s Club. I loved it. But back then, I didn’t realize it’s gifts. That can be enough. That is the beauty of yoga. It is to each of us what we need. No more and no less. A port in a storm or a warm hug. A kick-ass workout AND/OR on any given day, a restorative exhale. All things to all people. The greatest gift I have every given myself. The gift that keeps on giving.

Eventually, as time went on, I added a home practice to my guided studio practice. Something to “fill in” on days when there were no classes or I was traveling or the weather was too bad to drag myself to the gym. I chose good music; I got on the mat for 30 minutes; I felt better. Mission accomplished. End of story, or so I thought.

Over time however, I realized there was more. Again, slowly I began to become interested in the philosophy of yoga, the Sanskrit names, the types of yoga; there WAS so much more to know and ponder and discover. I began to read about yoga, mostly to learn about “how to” become a more informed yogi about poses and flows, how to sit, how to breath. Not really studying it, just informing myself. More or less admiring its story, I searched out retreats and new classes. I began making notes in the books, asking questions, wondering about my own practice, but also what it meant to be “open to grace” or “present” or grateful. I grew in new ways on and off the mat, only beginning to understand the impact on my life.

Eventually I became aware of yoga’s healing powers because I needed to lean into that aspect of my practice. The MIND + BODY + SOUL pieces became inseparable over time for me, supporting me in hard times, guiding my decisions without needing to think or answer hard questions. I had learned how to apply what I learned on the mat in my day-to-day life and I didn’t even consciously realize the growth. Yoga was a constant, unwavering part of my life. It served as exercise for my body, therapy for my mind, and support for my soul.

#gallery-0-9 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 20%; } #gallery-0-9 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-9 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Still I didn’t realize the complete picture of yoga’s profound effect on my life until I was over 50. Truthfully it was there all the time. Nurturing me. Supporting me. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, yoga was bonding me to a lifestyle, to a great friendship with myself on and off the mat, to something intangible but substantial. But like the practice of yoga, the most important “moment” for me yet in my “yoga journey” snuck up on me. The next “step” for me in my yoga journey wasn’t something I was searching for, or striving for, it was something I needed, and it found me.

Life Lessons

As humans we don’t always realized we are absorbing –learning something that needs to be honored and shared. I knew from teaching visual art for almost twenty years that this could be the case. Sometimes important information seeps in slowly or unawares, guiding us without our conscious acknowledgment. And then when we need it most, the “thing” we learned and needed is there. There for the taking, using it depends on the needing of its knowledge. A need to sustain us.

But there WAS still another aspect to yoga for me that I hadn’t encouraged or acknowledged- journaling about my experiences. Keeping visual journals had become part of my life. But I hadn’t realized that my yoga practice could be one of the themes. Then one day I did; I tried writing about my yoga experiences. My curiosity about the “study” of yoga, MY study, became a new passion, and it was life-changing. Literally like a clap of thunder, I jumped at the shock of the sound in my head. I experienced that “ah-ha” moment when we realize we have discovered an answer to a question in our life we didn’t know needed answering.

#gallery-0-10 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 16%; } #gallery-0-10 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Writing about the journey

Hope, gratitude, healing…

Yoga Journey 2020

RAD journaling

Journaling day…

Yoga Journey 2020

Yoga journaling

Journaling became a way for me to process and apply all the positive ways yoga was manifesting in my life. Learning about the asanas, Sanskrit, philosophically challenging myself about the pillars, chakras, mudras, meditation. I was enthralled. Who knew? A lot of people knew. But I hadn’t put the practice and the study together before in my own life. I was mesmerized and distracted by its powerful nature. I decided that others might be interested too. And guess what? They were.

So I shared about yoga journaling in posts on my blog. I shared in a yoga journaling group in my local studio, Montana Om: how to create a journal, what to write, how to study, and how to take what was taught by our teacher and practiced by us, engaging more with it in a journal format. And then I began sharing within a Facebook Group. It drew a small following.

This yoga journaling process came to me slowly over almost twenty five years, yet blindsided me like a cat catching a bird. But I WAS ready, and that cat has become my confidant. I have taken flight instead of being trapped. I am loving the connections, the opportunities to share and learn, and the peace I find in the process.

I hope that some of you will join me. It’s pure perfection in the way yoga is pure perfection. What we need but different every time we step on the mat. We never find nirvana. We don’t have to. It was there all the time in the practice (and the journaling about the experience). Here’s to learning on and off the mat.

Namaste

Cultivating a more inspired life…through yoga Do you need a little more Namaste in your life? The answer is YES you do. You may not know it.

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welldresseddadblog · 5 years

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If you’re a wearer of spectacles, you’ll relate to the problems of choosing eyewear that suit you. Apparently there is a science to this, as at least one of my local opticians offers the services of their qualified eyewear stylists. In my experience, it’s more a case of starting at one end of the always immense selection and then working through trying to find something that fulfils the criteria of looking ok and not costing an absolute fortune. Being of a cranky and obstinate nature, I’ve long eschewed the offerings of the evil empire of opticals (aka Luxottica) and made efforts to support the independents and smaller companies. This isn’t all that easy to do, as the evil empire has a strangle-hold on even my local purveyors of spectacles.

Still, the world is your oyster and all that, so why not cast an eye further afield and see what can be found? I wanted to see what professionals in the field would suggest, based on my style preferences as they are documented on my Instagram account. It should be possible to come up with an idea at least, given the sheer number of shameless self-portraits I’ve put out there. So I contacted a maker of frames in the UK, Kirk and Kirk, and a shop selling frames, Seen Opticians. Plus I visited Sees Optikk, an independent optician with an interesting range of frames in Oslo. Oh, and then I ordered some frames from an online emporium that allows you to “try them on” after uploading your photo. So, was I successful in choosing eyewear on my own and with help?

Naturally, a lot of it is down to taste, and there is no accounting for taste. I see people every day that have eyewear that I find tasteless and unsuitable but have to accept that to them they’re wearing something that both suits them and reflects on who they want to be seen as.

I’ve documented the results below, and I’d really like to hear your opinions. I don’t think there is any dissent in that how we see ourselves can be quite different to how others see us, and the glasses we wear are so “in your face” that they are a likely the first and foremost feature you notice about a person. At least when it comes to features you can do something about. And no, we’re not getting into facial tattoos!

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1) Cheap frames ordered from an online retailer.

2) Frames by Garret Leigh from Seen Opticians, Manchester, UK.

3) Frames by Japanese Kaneko Optical from Sees Optikk in Oslo, Norway.

4) Frames by Kirk & Kirk, UK, using blue coloured acetate.

So, given the selections 1 to 4, which works and which doesn’t? I’d love to hear your opinions!

Choosing eyewear can be really tricky. Who should you trust? Can you really make a judgement yourself, or should you ask a professional? I've tried both, and would love to hear your opinion on hos successful I have been! #glasses #frames #eyewear @kirkandkirk @seenopticians If you're a wearer of spectacles, you'll relate to the problems of choosing eyewear that suit you.

#eyewear #Frames #Glasses #luxottica #optical #optician #spectacles

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guidinglightpage · 7 years

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Create Restaurant Ambassadors to Win At Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is a very powerful marketing tool.

What is a restaurant ambassador?

It’s someone who has been to your restaurant at least once, tried your food, and loved it. A restaurant, or brand ambassador appreciates everything about your restaurant including your service.

Why are they good for business?

Brand ambassadors are good for your restaurant because having tried your restaurant, they love it enough to tell everyone they know how good it is. (tweet this)

Restaurant ambassadors aren’t paid. They are strictly people who so appreciate your restaurant they’re willing to spread the word.

In this article, we look at how to create restaurant ambassadors to win at word of mouth.

Identify Your Restaurant Ambassadors

The first step in creating a program that helps you spread the news of your restaurant is identifying potential ambassadors from the pool of your regular customers.

Look for these people among those customers who already love your restaurant.

These are the ones that come back night after night. They are the ones who seek you out to tell you how much they enjoyed your new dish or how much they appreciate the great service.

You can also look for people among your online reviews – think Yelp, Google, Instagram and Facebook. You’re looking for the ones who shared very positive reviews about your restaurant online.

Another place to look is on your social media platforms. Note the customers who are enthusiastically sharing and talking about your restaurant already.

Take it one step further and look at the food bloggers in your area. Are any of them talking about your restaurant? If so, these could also be restaurant ambassadors for you.

How many people should you pick? As many as you want. Just make sure they really do love your restaurant enough to spend time promoting it for you.

Ask for Specifics

Once you have your restaurant ambassadors, you want to give them a list of tasks to accomplish. They can include some or all of the following:

Social media promotion on your restaurant’s pages as well as their own

Reviews on websites and blogs

Google reviews as well as social media reviews

Video testimonials

Community interaction such as help at events

Delivering samples to local businesses

Some of your ambassadors will be better suited for online activity, while others will be adept at mixing and mingling in the community.

Make a Plan for Measurement

Just as with any marketing strategy, you need a plan for measuring success.

Not only do you need to identify your restaurant ambassadors, but you need a plan to track how well your program is working.

Here’s some things to consider:

How will you measure the success? Is it new reviews, more social media posts, an increase in customers in the door, or a boost in sales?

What data and metrics will you keep, and how?

What analytics will you use?

It’s a good idea to assign a staff member to track your restaurant ambassador’s online activities. Over time and with some diligence, you can measure at least the online reach of your ambassadors.

Provide Content

Help your ambassadors by putting together some information for them to use.

This might include a file of menu photos or restaurant photos, videos, links to blog posts and more.

In addition, ask them to take their own photos and videos while they’re in your restaurant. These ultimately look more authentic.

Do also give them a list of your brand hashtags so they can add hashtags to their posts for brand consistency.

Encourage your brand ambassadors to share content from your restaurant.

Reward Diners to Get Them Talking

Now it’s time to put a plan in motion for giving your restaurant ambassadors incentive for spreading the word about your restaurant.

How can you reward them? With free food and gifts.

Why do you want to reward them? This incentivizes them to continue spreading rave reviews about your restaurant.

Check out these ideas for restaurant ambassador loot:

Coupons and free meals at your restaurant

Exclusive access to events

Aprons

T-Shirts

Oven mitts and digital timers

Cups and bags

Cooking classes with your chef

VIP tasting events

Celebrity guest chef events

The ideas are endless, so get creative and come up with the ideas that will really drive your ambassadors to spread the news about your restaurant by word of mouth.

Ask for Their Ideas

The great thing about restaurant brand ambassadors is they know just why they like your restaurant and what makes it stand out in the crowd.

They also know where and how to spread the word.

So, on occasion, solicit their feedback about your menu, service and ambiance. In addition, ask them what they think of your restaurant ambassador program.

They are well poised to offer you suggestions for improvement and show you where you shine.

Now let’s look at what triggers brand ambassadors. What makes them willing to spread your restaurant by word of mouth?

Restaurant Ambassador Triggers

Nowadays, good service and good food is expected. If people aren’t finding this at your restaurant, you can bet they won’t be back.

What sets you apart from the competition and triggers your restaurant ambassadors is how far you go beyond “good” and “acceptable.”

Is your food top notch and your presentation impeccable? Have you thought of everything when it comes to the interior of your building, ease of access and cleanliness?

Have you overly-trained your staff in the finesse of customer service?

To gain ambassadors and earn their positive reviews and their loyalty, you must go above and beyond. You must thoroughly exceed expectations.

Brand ambassadors are triggered when they experience something in your restaurant so far beyond what they could have expected, they’re willing to tell others about it.

Your staff must provide more than exceptional service. They must be generators of positive feedback by anticipating their customers’ needs and exceeding them.

Final Thoughts

Your restaurant benefits greatly when you have ambassadors speaking highly of you throughout your community. (tweet this)

Your restaurant ambassadors help you grow your restaurant by spreading the word online and in your city.

By rewarding brand ambassadors, you can increase your reach right along with your sales.

You’ll find that restaurant ambassadors give you more sway than traditional advertising because of the power of social proof – “If Cathy likes it, I know it must be great.”

Help your restaurant grow by establishing a restaurant ambassador program today.

At Restaurant Engine, not only do we create great, responsive websites, but you can count on us to create a website that includes your brand ambassadors. Ready to take the plunge and create a website with an online menu, blog and beautiful photos? Get your free website consultation today!

Images: Benjamin Voros and Josh Rose on Unsplash

Create Restaurant Ambassadors to Win At Word of Mouth syndicated from http://ift.tt/2oWDAoR

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englishmansdcc · 7 years

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Okay, that headline might be over selling it just a little bit – then again, with the tale I have to tell, maybe not. To set the stage properly, though: first things first.

As you wander around this site and check out the coverage we put up of San Diego Comic-Con, you may hear mention of a collective of Brits that make their pilgrimage to America’s Finest City every ear to inject a little sense of European class and civility to proceedings (and then dismantle that civility as they get royally hammered on the Sunday evening!), the SDCC UK ATTENDEES GROUP (THE BRITISH INVASION, SPIRIT OF ’86)!

This is a Group that I’m particularly proud of, as it happens to be something of my own creation – two weeks after returning from San Diego Comic-Con 2011, and still on quite the buzz from that years proceedings, I decided to jump on Facebook to see if there were any other likeminded Brits who also made the trip. At half past two on a Wednesday night / Thursday morning, I hit Create Group on the admittedly clunky-titled page and was stunned to find, over the subsequent weeks, a whole raft of equally excitable boys and girls, all ramped up from that years activities and more than up for doing it all over again with like-minded tea drinkers the following July. We were off and running!

(Quickly, an explanation of the Group Name. As those of you that know me are aware, I have a particular interest in that period of comics on the late ’70s and early ’80s when American publishers came to the UK to meet and greet with the rising stars in UK comics – Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, Chris Claremont, David Lloyd… these artists and writers met with the likes of Karen Berger and Paul Levitz from DC Comics, and were tempted across t’pond to inject a new life into the American comics market with their unique sensibilities and an auteur style. While the British Invasion took place way before, 1986 was a landmark year in its history, with the release of many pioneering books. Hence, the Group name.)

Now, to the point of this post. When I set the Group up, it needed graphics, some logos to pin the thing in place. I could’ve just gone for a generic snap from my Holiday Photos album but I decided to be a little more creative – and not just a little cheeky, too.

Taking my cue from the official Comic-Con International logo, I fired up Photoshop and decided to swap out the ‘comic eye’ from the logo and replace it with one with a British flair, choosing the most recognisable UK comics creation of all time: Judge Dredd, from the pages of 2000AD. I searched for a rendition of Mega City One’s most prominent judge, jury and executioner where Dredd was in a similar pose to the CCI ‘comic eye’. This, our first – and, to this day, default – Group Logo was born.

2012: JUDGE DREDD (The SDCC UK Attendees Group Logo)

(I have tried to find out who the artist is of this particular Dredd piece is, if anything to properly credit them with the work – if you do know that might be, please drop me a line or leave their name in the comments below. Thanks.)

This was at now three in the morning and I was feeling boisterous. I rustled up some more logo options, just in case I fancied a change down the line. (I’ve added to the pile of these over the years, usually my own choices, sometimes suggested by Group Members) All had the same brief: they had to be black and white, they had to be focused on the eye of the character to follow the original CCI logo, and they all had to be Brit-related, either by creation, characterisation or by publication. Harder than you think.

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Once we had a logo in place, I was thrilled to discover that Group Members were up for having it plastered over t-shirts at San Diego Comic-Con 2012 to proudly proclaim their membership to the Group. I’m not going to lie when I say I got a little choked up to walk out on to the Firepit of the Hilton Gaslamp Hotel and find a bunch of people wearing shirts with something I’d knocked up on a whim in the wee hours. Emotional moment.

For 2013, I thought we could even take it up a notch. What if we contacted a artist, someone from the world of UK comics, to come up with a commissioned piece for us to use in the logo, something not just plucked from Google Image Search? Summat proper, like. Same brief as before but done by a pro. I put a poll out on the Group as to which character we should ask for – that year, John Constantine topped the chart – and then I hit my email.

I threw out some feelers on social media and was stunned to find that one of the very first names I contacted, 2000AD‘s Leigh Gallagher, was more than up for the task – and he was up for doing it for free, too! I was gobsmacked… but not as gobsmacked as I was when his piece came through my letterbox.

Leigh did something wonderful in terms of his lighting of John’s face, keeping him in his trademark trench coat, skinny tie and shock hair, fag in mouth and throwing the audience that sly ‘Pudlian grin, but Leigh really emphasised the meddling magician’s darker side with sharp black shadows over the front of his face. It’s a gorgeous piece – and one I’m very proud to have framed in my house. What a way to start.

2013: JOHN CONSTANTINE (Leigh Gallagher)

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Fantastic stuff. It works well in the context of the logo but the full piece is just incredible to me – which kind of put me in a bit of a jam. How the hell were we going to top this the following year??

As well as my response from Leigh, I had several replies from my initial emails, with artists mentioning that they were interested and intrigued by the proposal but, for whatever reason, they were busy with workload or commitments. But one email I kept a hold of: Sean Phillips was a noted artist on Vertigo’s HELLBLAZER, which is why I had reached out to him to initially draw our John Constantine. He said he was too busy, at that time coming up with the Eisner Award-winning THE FADE OUT for Image Comics with Ed Brubaker, but to drop him a line after SDCC 2013 and see if he was free.

Miraculously, he was – or, as I later learned, maybe he was thinking of using us as guineas pigs. Either way, for SDCC 2014, the master artist rendered our choice of character that year: the X-Men’s Professor Xavier.

2014: PROFESSOR X (Sean Phillips)

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This was a bitch of a commission – chosen, if I recall, off the back of the success of the 20th Century Fox films and a character made famous by the portrayal by Sir Patrick Stewart (a Yorkshireman, a way the Group Members got round the rules of the poll), at the end of the day, it’s a bald bloke. How the hell was Sean going to create something which focused on his eye and ended up still being recognisable as the leader of the X-Men?

Safe to say, Sean knocked it out of the park (again, somehow without charging us!!). Even when the image was cropped to suit, Charles Xavier just extruded out of the logo, his mutant mental abilities almost blasting out of the frame, his gaze locked on to the viewer. I gave the image a little kick to match the CCI eye framing but anyone who sees it knows exactly who it is.

An explanation of my previous comments: using us a ‘guinea pigs’? It was at the Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in Kendal that year that I approached Sean – a Special Guest of the event – to say thanks for the piece. He said it was his pleasure and that it was something that he wouldn’t forget for a while, anyway: it happened to be his first ever digitally produced art piece. I was blown away! I don’t care if the piece was his way of giving the new tech a try without the consequences of it being ever widely published or seen by the wider world – safe to say, those that did see it in San Diego that year were struck by the gaze of Professor X!

As I’ve said, we’ve been incredibly lucky over the years to have managed to convince these master artists to come up with these incredible pieces, totally non grata – with one exception. Following SDCC 2014, I headed to London Super Comic Con at the ExCel Exhibition Centre in the capital and managed to speak to Ian Churchill, an artist of which I had been a fan for some time, thanks to his work in the awesome MARINEMAN, his own creator-owned Eisner-nominated comic, and also REVENGE, a book that he drew for Image Comics, written by Jonathan Ross. Yes, Wossy himself.

Ian was up to the task of drawing our choice for that year – the votes had gone to Gandalf, from THE LORD OF THE RINGS (yup, the film portrayal of Sir Ian McKellen in THE HOBBIT series was very much in Group Members minds and, hailing from Burnley in Lancashire, meant he was eligible within the brief). However, Ian wasn’t just going to hand over the finished piece without some recompense and he asked if we could raffle the work off to the Group, raising money for his chosen charity, the Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw) group, promoting reading of comics and graphic novels among children and young people. How could we possibly refuse?

2015: GANDALF (Ian Churchill)

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It’s beautiful. Gloriously framed in that wonderful circle, looking beyond to the majestic rolling hills in the background, the piece could be seen as just a fine caricature of McKellen, with his bulbous nose, baggy eyes and bony, withered hands, but it’s so much more than that, with Ian capturing the wistfulness, elegance and charm that McKellen brought to the role. With his staff poking beyond the ‘window frame’, he really has a magnificent presence in this piece and, I have to say, it’s my absolute favourite of the logo commissions we��ve had.

(It’s my mum’s, too – when she learnt that the original of the piece had been auctioned off in the Group, she was horrified to find I hadn’t told her that was the intention. She said that she would have loved to have bid on the piece, she adored Ian’s work as a cracking piece of art. She still hasn’t forgiven me.)

Looking back, 2016 was a bloody weird and awkward year: not because of the fact that we continued our run of bagging a truly magnificent artist to draw our logo – voted that year to feature MARVEL’S AGENT CARTER, as played by London’s own Hayley Atwell – but that we were given the thumbs up by TWO artists! Both of which to whom I just didn’t have the heart (okay, or the courage) to say no!

First up, an artist who I had first met online, met in person as she won the British Comic Awards ‘Best Newcomer’ accolade and whose career I have followed since and beyond: the incredible Rachael Stott, a woman who I just don’t understand how she isn’t a household name and an absolute comics rockstar at this point. If you’ve seen here work for Titan Comics‘ DOCTOR WHO books, you know exactly how good she is – and she demonstrated as much on the outstanding piece she produced for us.

2016: AGENT CARTER (Rachael Stott)

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Look at it! If you hadn’t fallen in love with Hayley Atwell before, you would’ve after looking at this, with Peggy’s perfectly coiffed cascading hair, sparkling eyes, odd little dumpling of a nose and strong, defiant pose. I love how clean, Rachael’s lines are, how measured and considered but still bringing out the warmth and vitality of her subjects (check out her renditions of Peter Capaldi‘s Doctor, you’ll see exactly what I mean). With Rachael’s permission, I threw in some comic book flair, a drop shadow and a trim out of the frame to really make her lean forward to the audience. 007? Move over, pal!!

Which brought me to my conundrum. As Rachael was cracking on with her piece, I got an email from someone who I just never expected to hear back from – the master himself, David Lloyd, an artist who has defined the British Invasion from its very beginning. He agreed to do us a logo – but it was to be completely on his own terms. It had to be his own concept, we couldn’t reframe it, we couldn’t re-shade it one pixel. We couldn’t even say on the shirts who was behind it, David’s argument being, “…if you didn’t recognise who the eye belonged to, you didn’t know comics!” And he wasn’t wrong – sending us something which followed the brief EXACTLY: a framing of an eye specifically in the box, and that of a British comics icon. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: V.

2016: V FOR VENDETTA (by …)

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At first, I wasn’t too sure. After the logos past which were full of the character that we’d voted for, this was minimal, bare, restrained. But the more I looked at it, the more the eye fixated on me, I grew to love the initial simplicity and as I continued to stare, I grasped just how intricate and precise David’s intention with the design was. And the rest of the Group agreed, too – we were proud as hell, to have two logos for that year, both unique, both striking and both amazing logos.

Which brings us to this year, and our most recent contribution to our Group Logos, something which entrances me, every time I look at it. It’s my intention to get this one printed up on some fine quality paper and framed – it’s that tasty.

Jon Davis-Hunt is a incredible artist whose work has been seen in such books as 2000AD, TRANSFORMERS (IDW) and CLEAN ROOM (Image Comics), the latter which was he was Eisner-nominated at the 2017 Awards. (Again with the Eisner-tipped talent! I repeat, can you explain how the hell we’ve managed to pull this off, year after year after year?!!) I’d first met Jon in person at Thought Bubble Leeds 2016, where I had bagged the full run of CLEAN ROOM signed and he managed to charm the pants of Caroline with an ink sketch for her, which she cherishes to this day. I put forward the proposal for the logo, we exchanged details, and – after a bit of protracted delay from myself – Jon cracked on with the chosen character for 2017: STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS‘ Rey, as played by English rose, Daisy Ridley.

The lateness of the commission was entirely my fault, as I got more and more distracted by the workload on AEISD, so the Group got to see the finished piece a lot later that we would usually have it and I got a fair number of grumblings about when the piece would finally show. But, safe to say, when it arrived in my inbox, me and the entire Group were blown away.

2017: REY (Jon Davis-Hunt)

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In hindsight, maybe the piece would have benefitted from the instant brand recognition of Rey’s staff, just to bring home the whole outfit of the character. But, as I think you’ll agree, it’s not needed – you can recognise the scavenger of Jakku in an instant, with her determined stare bleeding from the page. The integration of the work into the logo frame was done with Jon’s permission and I’m glad that he too was happy with the way it sits in the ‘square’, with the horizon cutting a swathe boldly across the border. I’ve tried to reach out to Daisy on a couple of occasions as I think she’d love this piece as much as we do, to no avail. Never mind: I’m more than happy to wear the shirt this features on regardless. It’s a stunning, stunning piece.

And that brings us up to date. My task for the conventions I’m heading to here in the UK, over the next couple of months, is to somehow find an artist that can rise to the tall challenge set down by these master creative talents for our 2018. We haven’t chosen a character yet, but I’m betting nobody’s going to choose Pug from the BASH STREET KIDS, which I put forward as a suggestion every year! All of that is pointless if we don;t find someone to draw it for us and we’ve somehow, up till now, found ourselves being blessed by some of the best in the business. Ready for a familiar phrase? Because here it comes, one more time…

How the holy hell do we top these logos so far??

SDCC UK ATTENDEES: The Epic History & Enduring Legacy Of The Legendary SDCC UK Attendees Logo! Okay, that headline might be over selling it just a little bit - then again, with the tale I have to tell, maybe not.

#David Lloyd #Ian Churchill #Jon Davis-Hunt #Leigh Gallagher #Rachael Stott #San Diego Comic-Con #Sean Phillips #UK Attendees Group

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lovelaughwoof · 7 years

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Love, Laugh, Woof Product Review: The RV Pet Safety Temperature Monitor

by Lynn Stacy-Smith

If you believe in things like the Law of Attraction, you hear frequently that the Universe puts you right where you need to be at exactly the right time. I used to always think this was a mere coincidence, but in the last few years I have come to be a believer in this.

A few weeks ago I wrote about keeping your dog safe in summer weather even if you do not have air conditioning in your home. In fact, I even wrote:

Invest in a remote monitoring device: There are some inexpensive monitoring devices that will monitor the temperature in your home and send you text alerts or provide information via an app on your phone so you can determine if your home is at a safe temperature for your dog while you are away. I have not tried any of them so do not have recommendations but if I do you can be certain I will blog about it.

Yesterday I shared the story of how my husband and I have been shopping for campers and RVs for the last several months. One of our conversations while we were shopping was about our love for Disney and how my husband would love to stay at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground. He mentioned that if we did that, we could take the dogs with us, especially since we always spend as long as a week visiting my father and step-mother and that they have never met their grand-dogs. Plus we would save on a pet sitter, and most importantly, we would not have to be away from them for such a long time.

Of course I brought up the concern that I would not feel comfortable leaving the dogs in a travel trailer in the Florida heat because although we would leave the air conditioning on there was always the possibility that it could fail while we were off exploring the parks. I would rather the dogs stay at home in Illinois than put them at risk in a hot camper.

“There has to be something on the market to monitor the temperature in the RV and send you information via text alerts or an app! It’s 2017, we have an app and monitors for everything, we can see and talk to people through our doorbell anywhere in the world,” I had told him, and we agreed that before we actually took the dogs camping at Disney, or anywhere that we would need to leave them alone for more than five minutes in the camper without us, we would research such a device.

Shortly after I wrote the blog about homes without air conditioning and the hubby and I pondered RV solutions, I attended a pet event and found myself assigned to a booth next to a woman who was sharing information on the RV Pet Safety Device. As I often do when I get excited about something, I am sure I overwhelmed her with my enthusiasm. Let’s face it, there’s a reason I love the Labrador breed so much; they are just like me!

“Oh. My. Gosh! I am so excited, I literally just wrote about devices like this and my husband and I have been shopping for RVs and we were just talking about how we would need something like this,” I exclaimed, “I am so excited to meet you!!”

Throughout the event she and I chatted anytime we had a free moment and we hit it off immediately. Both of us were moms, we had both left the corporate world to pursue careers that allowed us to actually have flexible lives instead of long commutes through suburban Chicago traffic, and we both were super excited about the possibilities of the technology of the product that she represents and its life saving potential.

A few weeks later we met up again and I was excited to borrow a unit that I could test for myself. Although we are not actually camping in an RV yet, I was able to take advantage of the July heat to test it by leaving it in my car on various trips to do errands. It is important to note that my dogs were safe and sound inside our climate controlled home. Only the device was left in the car in the heat while I wandered around various stores.

Here are my findings:

RV Pet Safety Device:

RV Pet Safety Device

The RV Pet Safety monitor is small, compact, and extremely easy to set up. The actual device measures around three inches by three inches and less than an inch thick. It is designed to be able to be moved from home to RV or anywhere your dog or cat stays, and comes with a bracket that you can mount with an adhesive backing to your home or RV. You can also place it on a flat surface like a shelf or counter.

I would suggest mounting the bracket to your RV near an electrical outlet and laying it on a counter top at home. Although they do not sell the bracket separately on their website, I would email the company and ask if you could purchase multiple brackets so you could move it around.

The charger is similar to a mobile phone charger with one end that goes into the device and a USB port at the other. You can plug it into a USB port in a vehicle or laptop to charge it or into the adaptor plug and into a traditional outlet.

RV Pet Safety App:

The RV Pet Safety App is equally easy to use. I set up my test account in just a few minutes, complete with a picture of Jackson and Tinkerbell, my mobile phone information, and custom settings for my desired temperature alerts for the lowest temperature and the warmest temperature that I would want the dogs to experience. It is important to add a buffer in the temperature settings to give you time for the unit to detect the actual temperature and for you to return to the location where your dogs are located in the event of an emergency.

There are also some help options within the app should a user have any problems, including a robust set of FAQs on setting up the app. Here are some screen shots of the easy to navigate pages. Remember, my dogs were happily at home in the air conditioning when I tested this unit in my empty car.

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RV Pet Safety App dashboard

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Location

Alerts screen

In-app help options

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Additional in-app help options

Temperature alert email

Temperature alert texts

Love, Laugh, Woof Recommendation: Love it!

I found this device super easy to set up and use. Honestly, they could not have made it much more simple, plus they have a lot of help available should you need it, including a pop-up chat box for help on the website. In fact when I met with my new friend to pick up the test unit, I had arrived a few minutes before she did. While I waited I saw that she had sent me login credentials via email so within one to two minutes I had my app set up with my temperature specifications, alerts and contact information. When she said, “here, let me show you how to set up the app,” I said, “Oh, I already did it!” Now, in all fairness, I am one of those people who runs essentially their entire life from their phone, but it was still extremely user-friendly and simple.

The website is also easy to navigate with plenty of information. Check it out at https://rvpetsafety.com.

Love, Laugh, Woof Suggested Uses:

I want to be crystal clear here: this awesome device does not mean that dog owners can now leave their dogs in the car on a summer day when it’s 90 degrees outside and run into the grocery store for milk and bread with the car off and the windows cracked. That is still not safe because cars get too hot too fast. Period.

Home

I love the fact that the RV Pet Safety monitor can be used anywhere, including your home. If you do not have central air or if you do have central air and leave the house for more than a few hours at a time, if you live somewhere with rolling brownouts during summer, or if you experience a power outage which can of course happen anytime or anywhere. We have had our central air break and our house got very hot very fast. I would have loved to have this when I was in my twenties and had only a window unit for air conditioning and used to obsess over whether or not my Labrador Babe was safe and comfortable at home while I was at work. Imagine the peace of mind if you are at the office an hour away and you can check in to see the temperature of your home!

RV/Campers

Of course, as the name states, the RV Pet Safety Monitor is also perfect for RV or camper owners who camp with their dogs or cats and want to have peace of mind if they want to go somewhere that does not allow their pets, like a restaurant, a bike ride, a local attraction or to a store. I nearly cried with relief when I found out this device existed because of the peace of mind it will give me when we finally do go get to camp at Walt Disney World’s Fort Wilderness Campground and decide to take Jackson and Tinkerbell with us. It means that we could run over to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot for a few hours with the RV hooked up and the air conditioning running and get alerts to ensure that they are nice and cool despite the Florida heat.

Police/SAR Dogs

Police and Search and Rescue (SAR) dogs work under some of the worst conditions of working dogs. Some experts say that crime rates go up in the hottest months of the year, and police dogs are called upon constantly to help sniff out contraband and catch criminals regardless of the weather or conditions. The RV Pet Safety monitor could send alerts to officers or SAR handlers to let them know if the temperature in the car is safe for the dogs while they are waiting to be called into action.

Dog Show Handlers

Some professional dog show handlers transport and show multiple dogs at the same event, and these dogs are often transported in camper like trailers with built-in kennels. Although they should be equipped with air conditioning, the RV Pet Safety monitor would be able to provide additional peace of mind to handlers in case the air conditioning fails or there is a loss of power to the trailer.

Kennel Owners, Bird Hunters, and anywhere dogs are left alone

There are so many opportunities for the RV Pet Safety monitor to help alert owners or handlers to unsafe temperatures in any place that a dog is left alone without a human present at all times. Dog kennels, hunting dog trailers, doggie day care centers, even the long-term care areas of veterinary offices could all have peace of mind from this little device that was created by a company who gained significant expertise in monitoring food and pharmaceutical businesses before they launched their pet safety device.

Pricing

The RV Pet Safety monitor itself is $199 and you can save $50 with the special coupon code LYNN50 during checkout at https://rvpetsafety.com. Because the device operates with the same technology as mobile phones and goes through the Verizon cellular network, you will need a monthly plan for the device to work.

You can choose from one of two plans. With the Occasional Traveler plan, you pay $19.99 a month but you can stop and start it anytime, giving you the ability to only pay for the months that you use it. This is perfect for someone like me who is really worried about the warm summer months or only camps sporadically or during summer.

There is also the NoMads Plan, which is currently reduced to $14.50 a month and is paid annually in a lump sum of $175 a year. This is perfect for people who are living the dream of living in their 5th wheel or Class A motor coach and traveling the country or who want to monitor their home all year-long. If you are planning on using the device more than nine months out of the year, this plan makes more sense financially than paying monthly.

Finally, there is a discount for non-profit and government organizations and a special link on the RV Pet Safety website: https://rvpetsafety.com/k9-dogs or email me at [email protected] and I will put you in contact with my friend at the company.

The special savings code LYNN50 is an affiliate code and I will earn a commission from any purchase with this code. As always, I will never recommend a product that I do not personally use or strongly believe in as being something extremely beneficial for you and your dog. Like I mentioned at the start, I was so excited to learn of the RV Pet Safety monitor that I simply had to learn more about it because of the peace of mind that it can offer to every dog owner like myself who worries about the conditions in which their dog is left alone when I have to go or choose to go to places that they can not go by my side.

Love, Laugh, Woof Product Review: The RV Pet Safety Temperature Monitor Love, Laugh, Woof Product Review: The RV Pet Safety Temperature Monitor by Lynn Stacy-Smith If you believe in things like the Law of Attraction, you hear frequently that the Universe puts you right where you need to be at exactly the right time.

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