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pseudonym-lux · 5 years

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Character Questionnaire - Astrid Turner

Basic Character Questions. 1. First name Astrid 2. Surname Turner 3. Age When writing the journal: eighteen During the events in the journal: five, ten, sixteen, seventeen

Physical / Appearance 1. Height 5′6 2. Weight 115lbs. 3. Build Athletic/hourglass, lean and a little muscular 4. Hair colour Black 5. Hairstyle Loose, or tied back out of her face 6. Eye colour Brown 7. Scars Plenty. Left thigh, right ankle and right arm from her mother. Many others from her many fights with rogue vampires. Most are hidden beneath her clothes 8. Type of clothes Edgy. Leather jackets, anything black unless it’s a dress or skirt. Ripped jeans. Combat boots. 9. Are they in good health? Well aside from not having a heartbeat and being half-dead, I would say so.

Personality 1. Are they more optimistic or pessimistic? Pessimistic without a shadow of a doubt. 2. Are they introverted or extroverted? Introverted. 3. What bad habits do they have? Keeping secrets. 4. Mental Handicaps Minor PTSD. 5. How do they want to be seen by others? As strong, like she can handle anything the world throws at her even if it should crush her under the weight of it. 6. How do they see themselves? She knows she’s a generally closed off and distrustful person 7. What is their greatest fear? She won’t be able to protect the people she loves, that her secrets will get the hurt or killed or something even worse 8. What are their biggest secrets? That she hunts vampires, doesn’t have a heartbeat and is a Vampire-Human hybrid. 9. When was the last time they cried? When she killed her mother and watched her burn up from the garlic oil she injected into her. 10. What haunts them? Killing her mother. 11. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be? Her knowledge of vampires and hybrid status.

Friends and Family 1. Is their family big or small? Who does it consist of? She has a small family. It consists of her grandparents. 2. What is their perception of family? It’s important and you should never take it for granted that you have one. You never know when they’ll be taken from you forever. 3. Describe their best friend. Well, you see, she has two, so I will describe both of them. Hazel Warner is a ray of sunshine. She is bubbly and sweet and kind and the person you go to when you don’t know what to do and just need someone to lean on or listen. Theo Beckett is the defiant jock stereotype. He cares about his friends and is actually really smart and good at school and wants to be a good person. 4. Ideal best friend? Combine Hazel and Theo into one person. 5. Describe their other friends. Ha. Funny. You think she is capable of having more friends. But I suppose that this is the category that Lonnie would fall under. Alonzo “Lonnie” Bonilla is an approximately 300-year-old vampire that was friends with Astrid’s father, Malcolm, and is a reformed vampire that helps to reform other vampires as well.

Past and Future 1. What was your character like as a baby? As a child? She was a very sweet baby and child (up until 5 that is). 2. Did they grow up rich or poor? Neither. Maybe upper middle class. 3. Did they grow up nurtured or neglected? She was nurtured for sure. Her parents were very loving and her grandparents were as well. 4. What is their greatest achievement? The fact that I can’t think of one is very sad. 5. What was their first kiss like? She hasn’t had it yet. 6. What is the worst thing they did to someone they loved? Killed them. 7. What advice would they give their younger self? Life is a shitstorm. But you will survive it. 8. What smells remind them of their childhood? Blood. Ice cream parlours. 9. What was their childhood ambition? To be a ballerina. 10. What is their best childhood memory? Running around in the backyard on a sunny day with both her parents. 11. What is their worst childhood memory? Watching her father be killed. 12. Strongest childhood memory? Watching her dad cut a vampire’s throat, choking on the blood spray and then having to watch as another vampire then killed her dad.

Love 1. Do they believe in love at first sight? She did when she was little but doesn’t anymore. 2. Are they in a relationship? Nope. 3. When did your character last have sex?

4. What sort of sex do they have?

5. Has your character ever been in love? Nope. 6. Have they ever had their heart broken? By someone she’s romantically interested in? Nope.

Conflict 1. How do they respond to a threat? Not well. By trying to fight it. 2. Are they most likely to fight with their fists or their tongue? FISTS. 3. What is your character’s kryptonite? Her friends and family. 4. If your character could only save one thing from their burning house, what would it be? Saying thing implies this to be a material item, not a person, so she would save her book on vampire lore. Since this is her house that would mean all the photos of her parents would be at her grandparents' house and that would be the only other thing she would try to save. 5. How do they perceive strangers? With distrust. 6. What are their phobias? Atychiphobia - Fear of failure (failing her friends and family) Autophobia - Fear of being alone (losing her loved ones and having no one) Heliophobia - Fear of the sun (instinctual, she knows it’s bullshit) Iatrophobia - Fear of doctors (she was poked and prodded a lot by doctors as a kid) Nosocomephobia - Fear of hospitals (again, she spent a lot of bad time in the hospital) 7. What is their choice of weapon? Typically a stake, but she also really likes knives. 8. Have they ever been bullied or teased? Pity the fool who tries.

Work, Education and Hobbies 1. What is their current job? Vampire Hunter. 2. What do they think about their current job? It doesn’t pay, like, at all, but the job satisfaction is high and it’s a good way to get her anger out in a productive manner. 3. What are their hobbies? … vampire hunting 4. Educational background? She hasn’t graduated from high school yet. 5. Intelligence level? I mean, she’s no genius protege but she’s smart for sure. 6. Do they have any specialist training? Does knowing how to kill vampires count? 7. Do they play a sport? Are they any good? No and No.

Favourites 1. What place would they most like to visit? Literally anywhere warm and sunny because that brings the likelihood of encountering a vampire down to practically zero. 2. What is their favourite colour? Black. 3. What is their favourite day of the week? Friday. 4. What is their favourite food? Doritos.

Possessions 1. What is in their fridge? Food. Beverages. Probably lunch meat, cheese, lettuce, assorted fruits and veggies, juice of some kind or another, milk, leftovers. 2. What is on their bedside table? Probably Doritos. 3. What is in their bin? Crumpled paper, wrappers, empty Dorito bags. 4. What is in their purse or wallet? Not a lot. The essentials mostly (ID, debit card, cash, points cards/gift cards). She has a stamp/rewards/etc. card for the ice cream parlour as well that she always carries with her. 5. What is their most treasured possession? The book of Vampire Lore she got from Lonnie.

Spirituality 1. Who or what is your character’s guardian angel? Ha. 2. Do they believe in the afterlife? She wishes that she could. 3. What are their religious views? If, and this is a big if, there’s a God out there, he’s abandoned Earth. 4. What do they think heaven is? She doesn’t think there is one. 5. What do they think hell is? Her life? 6. Are they superstitious? Not generally. 7. What would they like to be reincarnated as? She doesn’t want to be reincarnated. 8. How would they like to die? Peacefully.

Values 1. What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? Being turned into a Vampire. 2. What is their view of ‘freedom’? Having the choice to do what you please, when you please, without having to worry that the potential consequences could cost someone their life or cause an injury or something else bad to happen. 3. When did they last lie? She told her friends she imagined the “man” (vampire) that she saw watching them. 4. What’s their view of lying? Sometimes it’s necessary to protect people and keep them from worrying.

Daily life 1. What are their eating habits? Doritos. 2. Do they have any allergies? Nope. 3. Describe their home. Homey? Cluttered in a “lived in” sort of way. Cozy. 4. Are they minimalist or a clutter hoarder? Whatever the middle of that spectrum is. 5. What is the soft drink of choice? Dr. Pepper

Miscellaneous 1. Who is their hero? Her dad. 2. What or who would your character dress up as for Halloween? She wouldn’t if it were up to her. 3. Are they comfortable with technology? She’s a teenager living in 2017. She’s very comfortable with technology. 4. If they could save one person, who would it be? Her dad. 5. If they could call one person for help, who would it be? Lonnie. 6. What is their greatest regret? If she had to pick one, maybe killing her mother. But even if it’s something she is haunted by doing, she doesn’t necessarily regret it. 7. What is their perception of redemption? It’s very possible, but it takes a lot of work and effort to truly redeem yourself. 8. Do they believe in happy endings? Not really. 9. What is their idea of perfect happiness? No Vampires and her parents are alive. 10. What would they ask a fortune teller? To fuck off. She doesn’t believe in fortune tellers. 11. If your character could travel through time, where would they go? Back to when her father was killed. 12. If they could have a superpower, what would they choose? She would trade her “superpowers” for a normal life any day.

#Children of the Dark #astrid turner #the journal of astrid turner #original story #original character

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jungblue · 7 years

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→ writing & other tips!

Hello! This entire post is essentially stemming from the fact that I get messages often about the subject of writing / running a writing blog, and what advice I have in the area. In all honesty I’m not sure how new this information will be to anyone looking at it, but it’s more so to serve as something I can have linked in my FAQ, for anyone interested in my opinion on the matter. This post will be updated as I think of more things to include, but the basics that will be covered is writing advice, writing-blog advice, and just my overall opinion on certain aspects of writing in general on a public platform.

↠ Running a Writing Blog

My initial advice for this is just going to be technical / formatting aspects of posting your writing. Nothing all that earth shattering, just creating masterlists, links in your bio, dealing with demands kind of stuff.

Formatting

When it comes to formatting, choose one that really displays what your fic is about. For example, my usual format is: Pairing, Genre, Word Count, Description, Gif / Banner. I find this important just because I think some people might underestimate the importance of a good format. Because if I’m being honest I usually won’t even click on a fic if there’s no word count. Not to say it’s necessary, because I’m not here to tell people specifically the 100% way to run a writing blog, but this is just my experience / personal preference.

Tagging

Now once you’ve got your fic written and post formatted, next you have to put some tags. I tend to use very broad general tags such as, bts fanfic, bts scenarios, bts smut, bts angst, ect. Once you get into specifics there are tags such as seokjin fanfic, yoongi scenarios, hoseok smut, ect. This simply allows for people to find your fics when searching.

Creating a Masterlist / Linking

Once your first scenario is posted you might want to make a masterlist to post in your bio. This probably isn’t new information for some, but I get an ask about links every couple of weeks, so I figured we might as well cover all of the bases. In order to create a masterlist, simply open up a new text post, type in the title of your fic (or however you’re wanting to organize it), get the url to your fic and copy it, highlight the title you’ve written on the text post, a series of buttons should appear above, choose the one that is the fourth from the left (it looks like an infinity sign), paste the url into the box that appears, and you have yourself the start of a masterlist. Once you have that done you might want to link your masterlist in your bio. In order to do so you simply:

1. Go to edit theme

2. Paste this code into your bio <a href=“url of masterlist”>masterlist</a>

3. Replace the things I’ve put in bold with your actual masterlist url, or whatever you want the link to be called, so masterlist, writing, mlist, ect

Dealing with Demands

It’s unfortunate, but more than likely you’ll get a demanding ask at least once in your tumblr lifetime. Sometimes it’s asking for updates, requesting repeatedly, or someone just being plain rude. To combat against the update asks, make an FAQ. It’ll cut down on some of the demands, but of course not all. As for the straight up rude anons / users, just block them. Don’t give them the satisfaction of allowing them to stay on your blog. If you really want to respond, screenshot it and answer it that way, but still block them. This is your blog. No one has the right to be demanding of you, and to make it a place that you come to detest.

↠ The Actual Writing Part

I would say the first piece of advice I have about writing in general is to make sure that you’re writing for the right reasons. This is only because I’ve seen a common trend of people saying how stressed writing makes them, to the point of them actually hating it. I think this is because before people start posting on tumblr, they sometimes don’t get what comes along with it, or some aren’t necessarily doing it for the right reasons (of course regardless of anyone’s reasons, it’s your hobby, so really do what you want! this is simply an opinion).

For instance if you’re doing it strictly for notes, you might be highly disappointed when the pwp smut that took your three hours to write gets a 1,000 notes, whereas that fic that took you three weeks to plan out, and six weeks to write gets 300. It’s going to really stunt your creativity if you’re doing it strictly for that particular reason, because unfortunately the previously mentioned scenario is quite common. Or there are some who start writing because they want to have a ‘popular’ blog of sorts with lots of followers who will message them… But unfortunately even with a lot of followers, people just tend to not send messages for the most part. You might really love a fic that you posted, but get maybe six or seven comments on it. So again, if that’s your specific underlying reasoning behind wanting to post your writing, it might not turn out how you expected.

I just wanted to say the above points because I see it time and time again, and I don’t want people to get discouraged if it’s not what they were expecting it to be. Don’t get me wrong, as a writer on this site, I appreciate so, so much the notes / comments / ect that people give to my fics, but if that is what’s specifically tethering you to the craft, then you might not enjoy your time posting on tumblr. But again, this is your choice, so if you want to write simply for notes or for whatever reason, then obviously that’s completely fine! I’m mostly just saying the above because writing can become tiresome after a while if it doesn’t bring the outcome you’re expecting and it’s not something you truly enjoyed in the first place.

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten this disclaimer out of the way, I’ll try to give tips on writing, sorry if they’re generic. Honestly, my writing process is really simple, so I’m not sure how helpful this will be, but I’m going to try my best.

Forming an Idea / Plot

This is probably the simplest part. Just the general idea that you want to write about. Not the details, just the main focus. Sometimes it can stem from just knowing what au you want to tackle, so college au, expecting parents au, werewolf au, ect. Or perhaps you don’t know the setting yet, but you know the conflict or emotions you want the characters to elicit. Maybe you just know in your head that you really want to write a Jimin fluff. With that you can sit back and mull over what the best template for displaying that would be. So maybe a first date, anniversary, cute frat boy takes you to the greek formal, it can literally be anything. So really play around with things. Write that vampire hanahaki au or fic that’s so cheesy you cringe (I’ve written many of those lol). Just explore the wonderful world of genres or aus, because in the end you should write what you want to write.

Planning

This section is quite flexible. I mean all of these points are flexible, but this one most certainly. If there’s one thing that varies to a great degree between each and every writer it’s planning a fic out. There’s hundreds of methods, and you really just need to find the one that works for you! I personally have a very simple approach to writing. I’ll use Loving Him, Loving Her as an example.

1. Simply think of an idea: Unrequited love + best friend AU

2. Make mental bullet points of plot: flash-forward scene, the oc and Taehyung meeting, time-skip, party at Taehyung’s lake house, sex scene —

3. Write it out with this loose template

4. Once the writing process is over, go back through, re-read for misspellings, grammar issues, spaces where a bit of added narrative is needed

5. Post

It’s honestly a very simple process, but it’s what works best for me, and everyone is of course different! Personally, planning a fic out down to the very scenes, just doesn’t work for me. Because then when I’m writing I feel very constricted. I much prefer just having a vague idea of what I want the plot to be, and tackling it that way. However, again this is my approach, and it’s obviously okay if it doesn’t work for everyone. Lots of people love to outline, and that’s a totally viable option. Plan out each scene, one by one, jot down the emotions, dialogue, actions, ect that you want to happen within the scenes. That way once you go to write your fic, everything is planned and you just have to follow the template you’ve set for yourself.

These are just two methods of the many that there are. Eventually, after writing a lot, you’ll find a specific process that personally works for you!

Process

Writing can honestly be really stressful. Even if the constant asks for updates or demanding messages don’t bother you. Sometimes it’s just stressful because you want to write, but it just isn’t coming as easily as you would like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in front of my laptop, wanting to write, but then I just blank. It’s incredibly frustrating to have a plot locked in your head, and knowing exactly what you want to happen, but then not being able to find the words to formulate it. So just understand that it’s okay to take breaks, to throw away a wip, to take a seven month hiatus on a series. It doesn’t mean that you should give up on writing, it just means that you need a break, a change in direction, or just something. People get burnt out on things they love all the time. Sports, drawing, writing, whatever it is, you just have to understand that it’s all a part of a process.

Know when to take breaks. Put your health at the forefront of everything, because finishing a fic isn’t worth jeopardizing that. Understand that the fic will be there tomorrow, the next day, and the next day, so take your time!

Again, I know all if this is stuff that you’ve all probably heard, but sometimes people ask for my writing advice, and this post pretty much encompasses my opinion on writing and the process of writing / posting on a public format such as tumblr. I hope it was somewhat helpful. Just remember that this is supposed to be fun. Don’t let the stress destroy your love for writing if it’s really something that you honestly enjoy!

#fanfiction #bts fanfic #writing tips

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salmankhanholics · 7 years

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★ Salim Khan on the ‘poverty of talent’ in Bollywood, ‘Tubelight’ and the death of the reading habit !

‘We don’t have writers of any calibre and that is because people have forgotten how to read.’

Indu Mirani | May 28th 2017

Veteran scriptwriter Salim Khan has a reputation for not mincing his words. His legendary partnership with Javed Akhtar produced some of Hindi cinema’s best-known movies in the 1970s and the ’80s. Khan now often graces the headlines whenever his son Salman Khan has a new movie out. The most recent one, Tubelight, severely underperformed at the box office, promoting a debate on whether the era of the all-encompassing and reliable Bollywood star is on the wane. The fault lies not with the stars but with the quality of scripts, Salim Khan told Scroll.in.

What really went wrong with ‘Tubelight’ and why did you find it necessary to compensate your distributors for their losses? Tubelight was a good film, which would have done well if any other actor had starred in it, but to have an action hero like Salman getting constantly beaten up and crying all the time just didn’t work with the audience. Someone like Raj Kapoor could do any role, the common man, the lover, the comedian, but Salman doesn’t have that sort of an image. The audience kept expecting him to fight back and when he did retaliate a bit towards the end, the entire audience cheered for him, but it never went beyond a couple of blows. Also missing was a love story and in fact the little you see was added later, there wasn’t any initially.

The reason for compensating the distributors was that the price it had been sold at was in expectation of it making Rs 250-300 crore at the box office like most Salman films, which it didn’t. If Tubelight had been sold reasonably, it would have been a hit.

You just referred to Salman Khan’s image and therefore its limitations. Is this good for an actor? All over the world, leading men of stature have had images. Actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have done the same roles all their life. Raj Kapoor was always a simpleton. If Tarzan wore clothes or James Bond didn’t romance women, they would not be who they are.

As for Salman, it’s not as if he is a character actor so he can fit into any role. He is a star, so he has to live with his image.

Is the audience getting fed up of stars? Recently they have rejected the films of Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor. The reason for this is very simply that we have been making bad films. And the cause is that we just don’t have writers of any calibre and that is because people have forgotten how to read.

In my time everyone read books, recommended them to one another. We visited bookshops, read bestsellers as well as books related to the craft. Most people don’t even read the newspapers they subscribe to. Often when I am passing Salman’s door [Salman lives on the ground floor and his family occupies the first] I knock on the door and ask his staff to take in the papers.

I had recently written a 10-page tribute to Raj Kapoor, which I was very happy with. But most of the people I gave it to didn’t read it even though it was just 10 pages. So I made an audio version of it and now everyone who listens to it is full of praise for it.

And yet Akshay Kumar has managed to successfully update his image. I have to say for Akshay Kumar that the way he has improved as an actor is something that no one else has been able to. The journey that he has covered is almost impossible to imagine. Today he is an actor who can tackle every kind of subject. Other actors like Ajay Devgn, Aamir Khan and Salman have also improved over the course of their careers, but none like Akshay.

Would your angry young man Vijay be relevant today? And who among today’s actors could play him? He will always be relevant because he fights for justice. There will always be the fight between good and evil so he will always have a relevant story. As for actors, there is so much of poverty of talent in the industry today, it is impossible to name any one.

What do you mean when you say poverty? Let’s talk about today’s filmmakers. What is their inspiration? Invariably it is Mother India, Ganga Jumna, Pyaasa, Salim Javed films, Bimal Roy and BR Chopra films. But they don’t make films of that standard. Their excuse is that they don’t want to make those types of films. But the fact is that they can’t make those films. They have made this out to be a virtue.

Then there is the fact that they want to make offbeat films but want big actors in it because those are the actors with the draw and the audience and the ones who will get them money. Earlier, the filmmakers who made these films would take good actors and make a small film with a limited budget, which reached its intended audience. But if you take a Shah Rukh or a Ranbir you have to make a film to suit their image, which their storyline doesn’t, and so the film does badly.

Let me give you an analogy. Why was Gautam Buddha such a renowned fakir? Because he left a kingdom with its riches and luxuries to become one. How can he be compared with the 200 of them who sit outside the Mahim dargah? They are beggars not fakirs.

So don’t say you don’t want to make Sholay. First make it and then move away from it. There is nothing wrong in having ambition. But having ambition without talent or capability is a recipe for disaster.

What does the industry need to do to come out of its slump? Very simple: we need to make good films. What filmmakers seem to have forgotten is the importance of the screenplay. They focus on the story. Very frankly, if we had narrated the story of Deewaar to anyone, we would have been thrown out of the office. What made it exceptional was the screenplay.

You have said that if a director’s worth emerges after his third film. Why is that? Because everyone has experiences in life for material for three films. It is after that that his creativity can be recognised.

Most directors today don’t show anyone their films before release. Isn’t feedback important? Yes, it’s very important. Do you know that when Manoj Kumar was making Kranti, the print would be kept in the lab and anyone could watch it and give their feedback to him? It was the same with Raj Kapoor too. After all you’re making a film for public exhibition.

Today’s makers often say they make films because they want to say something, not for the returns. My question is, say something to whom? You already know it, so presumably you want to tell the audience. Then shouldn’t the house be full? And if the house is full, the film will make money. So how can you separate the two?

What do you think of today’s songs? We used to write situations for songs, but today’s songs are more like item numbers to which the actor can perform at shows. Having said that, we have some very good lyric writers today like Irshad Kamal, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Prasoon Joshi and many more.

I’ve often wondered how the ‘Mere Paas Maa Hai’ line from ‘Deewar’ originated. It was just a line like so many. Any good conversationalist with a hold over the language can be a dialogue writer.

Dialogue writing in the industry originated because most films were written by Bengalis or South Indians who needed someone conversant in the language to write the dialogue. Otherwise, the writer is supposed to do everything – story, screenplay and dialogue. When Timemagazine would review Hollywood films the only two names it would mention would be the director’s and the screenplay writer’s.

How did you and Javed Akhtar write so many successful films? We worked with passion. We were sometimes paid more than the lead actor, which was an added responsibility on our shoulders, and we had to be equal to it.

You asked me about the Mere paas maa hai dialogue. You only see the final one. Do you know, we tore up almost 50 versions before we arrived at it. During our 15 years together, we have only written 18 films because we gave our all to those films.

Who among the two of you was the more creative one? We were a team and we bounced ideas off each other. And though we as a team were popular, in fact most production houses like BR Films or Sippy films had their inhouse teams. So team writing worked well.

But the strange thing is so many people, even film literate people, would ask us who was the writer between you too. If just writing makes you a writer than even the guy who sits outside the post office and writes letters would be a writer. No one ever asked us, who was the thinker?

Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s book ‘Written by Salim Javed’ was released recently. What is your reaction to it? The author did not reach out to me and I don’t know if he met Javed for it but I’ve heard it is an interesting and authentic book though I haven’t read it yet.

Which of your films would you like your grandchildren to see? I have written a lot of films good, bad and ugly and many have been super successful, but real creative satisfaction has come with Deewar, Zanjeer, Sholay, Shakti and Don.

Any unfulfilled wishes? Yes, I want to open a restaurant, which would have books related to screenplay writing and other aspects of filmmaking, where patrons could come have coffee or tea and sandwiches and read and study those books. Bu it has to be a ground-floor place with a good ambience and I haven’t found such a place yet.

Scroll.IN

#salman khan #salim khan #interview #text interview #poverty of talent #tubelight #salmankhanfilms #skf #scroll

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connecticut-seo-adwords · 6 years

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Today's SEO News

How Mobile First Indexing Will Change SEO in 2018 You’ve heard about it for months now, and it’s finally here: mobile-first indexing. Google has announced that it is investigating ways to roll out their mobile-first indexing strategies which would put mobile devices at the forefront of the search criteria. In other words, if your website is not mobile-friendly, now is the time to get started making sure it becomes mobile-friendly as soon as possible. There have been other rollouts of mobile-friendly algorithms that Google announced, while they emphasized the importance of mobile user interfaces and navigation. But the mobile-first indexing aspect of Google’s search engine is the most critical factor to the success of website owners because of how it determines whether people will be able to find your site in the future. What about SEO? Will it still be around in 2018? As the 8-ball says, “My sources say, ‘yes.'” Search engine optimization will still be around, and it will still play a large role in how people find your page. But again, the search criteria will shift to the mobile user rather than traditional desktop users. Why? Statistics show that mobile users will soon outnumber desktop users by at least 2:1 and this trend is only expected to grow by leaps and bounds shortly. With so many people accessing content via mobile devices, you can start to understand why Google plans to make this their priority in 2018 and beyond. It’s not just a matter of knowing what SEO is… it’s also a matter of knowing how to set up your site properly for success. Duda, a website creation platform, has focused their efforts on not only informing site owners and brands on how to best create their sites for mobile, they’ve actually just adapted it into their platform. While ‘mobile first’ is of extreme importance, it’s not something every site owner or brand thinks about when creating their site – however, that is no longer an issue for anyone creating a site on their platform, as it’s instantly done for them. While it’s clear that the Duda platform has made it easier for site owners to create their sites without any tech skills required, and also making sure they are mobile-ready first — Duda is also making the resolution in 2018 to provide the best learning and resource tools for site owners and brands as well. Even with all of this in mind, it may be some time before we start to see Google rank mobile-first sites higher, while pushing non-mobile friendly sites down in the rankings. Many sources within Google such as Gary Illyes, of Google development and search, say it may be a long time coming as to when the new indexing system will be fully ready and implemented, so this is good news to web owners who are worried that they won’t make the grade when the teacher gets the grading pen out! Before you panic and start outsourcing a team of mobile-friendly gurus to make your site mobile-friendly, know that the word in tech circles right now is that it will likely be a low impact update to start. Google may start with using the mobile-index on websites that they know won’t be impacted at first. These would be sites that are already mobile-friendly or that have passed the test previously for having a “responsive website.” That being said, it’s essential that you know the day is coming when sites will be indexed first on their mobile aspect primarily, and you could get penalized later if your site is not up to par by the formal release date. At the same time, it’s not just about making sure your site is mobile-friendly and good in the eyes of Google, it’s also important to make sure it’s loading fast as well. This is just one of the many parameters Google will be looking at when indexing a website. To further back up this statement, just a single second delay in page response can decrease your customer satisfaction and engagement by a whopping 16%. Click here to read up on even more statistics about how a slow site can literally ruin your online business. —jeffbullas.com Local search industry optimistic about 2018 -- but less likely to hire The local search landscape is a constantly evolving beast, regularly changing at the whim of Google My Business and, more and more these days, reliant on consumer reviews. As such, the folks working in this niche of the wider SEO industry have had to be quick on their feet to adapt to changes. It’s no surprise, then, that the recent Local Search Industry Survey performed by my employer, BrightLocal, saw some significant changes occurring. The results of the survey, in which we polled 1,121 US-based local SEO professionals on everything from personal earnings and annual revenue to client pay and in-demand services, will be interesting reading for anyone looking to benchmark their services against competitors, and even those selling products and services to SEOs. In this column, I’ll be picking out some of the most revealing results from the survey (some of which are actually more in-depth than those found in the original study) and explaining what these could potentially mean for the local SEO industry. I think it’s fair to say we’d be surprised if agency SEOs didn’t earn more than freelancers per year, but what does come as a surprise is how much more they earn. Obviously, the agency model can work better at scale, and larger clients bring in larger payments, but it would be interesting to see whether clients of agencies feel they’re necessarily seeing more value than clients of freelancers. The higher salary could also be due to how much agencies bill per hour (this is covered below) compared to freelancer rates. To calculate these figures, we looked at the medians of typical hourly rates for agencies and freelancers. From this, we can see that agencies certainly consider their time worth a significant amount more than freelancers’. The amount charged can obviously be somewhat dependent on the size of the client (and as mentioned previously, the agency model tends to suit larger businesses with multiple locations), but if freelancers are confident they can deliver the same results as agencies, they might consider upping their rates to increase perceived value and earn more along the way. Sticking with the ever-popular topic of payments, we learned that local SEO agencies are paid far, far more than freelancers per client per month. This is admittedly expected, considering the results reported above, but there are some other interesting nuggets here worth exploring further. A massive 71 percent of local SEO freelancers get less than $1,000 per month from each client. This is especially notable as, elsewhere in our results analysis, we found that the average local SEO freelancer personally manages nine clients. That’s a significant proportion of freelancers bringing in $9,000 or more per month (not including overheads). Moving away from the comparison of local SEO agencies and freelancers, we wanted to know what some of the most requested local SEO services were in 2017. Even with the growth in importance of Google My Business and reputation management, local businesses still see traditional on-site SEO as their number one priority. —searchengineland.com SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018 Content Marketing Tools and Technology / SEO SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018 Businesses should use 2018 to break the bad habit of viewing aspects of an SEO marketing strategy as a one-time exercise. Too often, some companies optimize a website page and never adjust it. Though 61% of marketers in a 2017 HubSpot study say increasing organic visibility is their highest inbound marketing priority, they don’t always follow through. You can tell they don’t fully embrace an SEO strategy any time: SEO page titles lack a keyword focus. SEO page titles merely mimic the content headers. Page URLs are a mile long. Nothing is ever modified (take a quick look with the Wayback Machine , a popular archive of more than 300 billion web pages). Now is a good time to take a closer look at SEO marketing data because search is getting worse for all types of B2B and B2C businesses. Your keyword phrase that continues to rank No. 1 organically is no longer the top result seen by searchers because of design changes to Google’s search engine results pages ( SERPs ). That lack of visibility jeopardizes the effects of your organic traffic – leading to fewer clicks, leads, sales, page views, and conversions. No. 1 organic ranking in Google no longer means it’s the top result seen, says @mikeonlinecoach. #SEOMarketing Click To Tweet SERP elements (like videos or images) have been around for years, but they appeared intermittently. In the last couple of years, their use has intensified and shows no signs of slowing down. Featured snippets are the summaries for the searcher’s query that appear at the top of the page (below the ads from Google AdWords). Click to enlarge The People also ask feature includes related queries to the original search phrase and is displayed on the front page of results. Click to enlarge Here are some other SERP elements: AdWords – up to four at the top with optional extensions can make each ad deeper Knowledge Graph – boxes that include data ranging from companies to celebrities on the right of search results page Sitelinks – multiple links to subpages within the website result visible below the primary website Local packs – several local listings appear together (often under a map marking the location of each one) Carousel listings – interactive visual display of results for things like movies, songs, and restaurants Reviews with star ratings (make some organic results deeper) Image packs – often a single row of images appearing on the results page In-depth articles Twitter content To go more in depth on these elements, Moz has good tips on how to get your website included in the specialized SERP features. Search Engine Land touches on some of them as well and explains some other notable ranking trends, such as schema markup (instructions that help search engines understand types of content). Even if your website isn’t included in SERP features as often as you would prefer, you still can work to improve your regular organic results by updating and/or expanding your content. HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Google’s Featured Snippets FAQ: How to Get More Traffic From Search Engines Use these three steps to make SEO updates. Without trying too hard, larger enterprises can rank for many keywords because they’re credible in the eyes of search engines (the number of pages and backlinks help). Unfortunately, too many businesses don’t make enough updates to exploit their potential. They’re like a smart student who is a constant underachiever. Too many businesses don’t make #SEO updates to exploit their content’s potential, says @mikeonlinecoach. Click To Tweet 1. Find your SEO sweet spot based on data; set realistic expectations You can target any keyword or phrase, but you face two primary challenges. The word may be too competitive or not searched, which would offer little to no value for your business. Use a tool like SEMrush to better understand what keywords would be reasonable to pursue. —contentmarketinginstitute.com How to Push Great Content that Isn't Ranking Well Countless hours spent researching, writing, and editing until your eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of your head and what do you get for it? Just a blog post sitting dormant on Page 5 of Google search results. Sadly, content isn’t always enough to give your website the visibility you need to grow. As we currently understand, the two most important ranking factors for organic success include: While content and link building have become the focus of SEO, remember, we’re out here trying to create unicorns. Google’s main focus remains to be their own users’ experience. If users aren’t clicking, sharing, engaging with, or returning to the content on your site, no amount of manual link building will be enough. What do you offer users and search engines that the competition doesn’t? Here are a few strategies and considerations that you should keep in mind when trying to push content to the top of Google SERPs. One reason your content may not be ranking well is because you’re competing against established brands in a saturated vertical. Our keyword research and content marketing strategies often focus on underserved niches or keywords with high volume and little competition in the space. But consider how saturated the cryptocurrency space has gotten. While it’s ideal to create content that focuses on Bitcoin, it’s going to face much more competition to scale than other topics. For example, a Google search for “What is Bitcoin?” comes up with a CNN article as its first result. Check out the total search volume and number of backlinks this CNN article has, according to Ahrefs: The second result from Coindesk has over 21,000 backlinks. The 10th result? Not nearly as much. While there is definitely room to push for the keyword query, it’ll be hard to crack the top four spots where a majority of traffic and clicks goes to. Manual link building and content promotion will be wasted if you’re competing against an established brand in the space. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t write about broad topics. They’re still important for crafting pillar pages and other subtopics. You’re providing user value while increasing your indexation rate. So how can you acquire greater organic visibility? Well, if you’re writing a topic about Bitcoin, you could create a title tag featuring “The Complete Guide to Understanding Bitcoin” or “The Ultimate Guide to Bitcoin” to attract more user clicks. Go in-depth as well to provide information that the competition isn’t providing. A better strategy is to try push content on alternative topics with high search volume. Consider our Bitcoin example. The search volume for “how to invest in Bitcoin” on SEMrush is 18.1k. Check out the first result in the featured snippet box: What does Investopedia’s backlink profile look like? Also, if you click on the content, it’s no more than 300-400 words. This wouldn’t even be considered a niche topic either. Other areas, such as a buyer’s guide to Ethereum and Ripple or understanding ICOs gets more in-depth and captures the same intent. This is important to understand before you waste your time and budget on manual link campaigns on a piece of content that has very little wiggle room to move. Big brands don’t have to work as hard to get content to rank because they’ve already established trust with search engines and users. Google understands that people are more likely to click on these listings, which is, in part, why they rank high. With this in mind, we now need to understand how to push content to that first-page ranking to acquire that visibility and trust. So you’ve conducted an exhaustive link building campaign and generated a lot of exposure and shares to your content. Yet, it’s still not the number one result – maybe it isn’t even ranking on Page 1. Well, there are a lot of factors hidden underneath the surface that may be preventing your content and website from ranking. —searchenginejournal.com

#seo #google

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aaliyahhill · 4 years

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theaveragekenyan · 4 years

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New Sensation...

The English have so many alternate names for their Police Officers.

Bobbies, Rozzers, Cops, Filth, Peelers, Old Bill, Plod, Boys in Blue, Fuzz, Pigs. Those are the ones I know, but I’m sure there’s a whole host of County Line inspired updates I don’t.

Here in Kenya, whether it’s out of respect or fear, I’ve only ever heard the Police given one nickname, Cop, that’s it, Cop, nothing creative about that at all.

Creativity to me, is not just about the ability to draw a lovely picture of a horse, create the next big thing on Amazon or share a witty meme on Instagram, I see it as problem solving for both individuals and groups. And with so many worldwide problems to deal with, it’s an endless source of creativity that should drive us all to make the necessary fixes to life.

The average Kenyan is highly creative and just like everybody, they can make the hardest of tasks seem easy and the simplest of tasks seem hard

However, from what I’ve witnessed, although creativity comes easy, using their imagination is a different story. Things are taken literally, and as a Brit, this is where i’m translated with confusion.

Phrases like “it’s time for these guys to pull their fingers out their arses” and “It’s like flogging a dead Donkey” are imagined as said and will be met with “stay away from my donkey”

I watched the film “Missing Link” and this literal interpretation theme is one of the difficulties covered in the movie. How cultures, especially my own English one, take their sayings for granted and then become disappointed when those listening from a different background don’t understand or become confused and take things literally.

I get it, and obviously I’ve changed my syntax to survive, but it’s not that straight forward.

I remember a cleaner that worked for us for a short time, she would love to chat to my daughter about this and that. One day my daughter picked up the cleaners cleaning cloth and flapped it around making it appear to have wings, my daughter said “look, it’s a butterfly” the lady said “no, it’s a cleaning cloth”

I saw the deflated look on my daughter’s face, she was old enough to use her imagination to turn a cleaning cloth into a butterfly, but not yet old enough to clarify the nullifying situation with the cleaner, so I did, I had to. I pointed out that in my daughter’s world anything can be imagined, it’s called pretend “she’s imagining the cloth is a butterfly”, “oh” responded the cleaner and that was enough for her satisfaction and back to her work she went.

That moment stands out for me, I realised then, that up to that point why I’d struggled in so many previous conversations or when I’d be giving explanations or when I would describe something particular, it’s because for many people in Kenya, using their imaginations is not encouraged.

Don’t ever get too invested when giving directions to a Kenyan. What you’re seeing in your head will be a fair visualisation of streets, turns, junctions, bends, signs, landmarks etc, or in my case Terminator visuals, whereas inside the average Kenyan’s head is a picture of a Mandazi. Opposite, adjacent, straight ahead, 1st left, 300 meters on your right all mean nothing. Keep things simple e.g. “straight ahead and ask the next person you see once you’re lost again”

Don’t ever physically with a finger point to something, in true Bruce Lee fashion the average Kenyan will stare at the finger unaware you are imagining a space and line to the object you are pointing toward.

As well, unless it’s a quote or parable from the Bible, don’t ever speak rhetorically, it doesn’t work. Kenyan’s focus on the wrong part of the comparison and will have difficulty in finding the required imaginary jump to understand the context of the question.

For instance, a question like “Let’s imagine you are in charge of the country right now, what would you change?” for most people, this is an easy question to answer, i.e; personally I’d Increase Health Spending, Stop Corruption, Change the style of Education, easy things for me to imagine I’d change if I were sat at State House’s largest desk. Ask the average Kenyan that question and they will deconstruct it differently, they’ll be wondering how did this happen? how am I in charge? how many died along the way? who are my allies? do I have a driver? what’s for breakfast? what do you want me to change?

I think it starts at the beginning from childhood and then right through the standard education system, by which time it’s often too late.

From what I’ve seen, through visiting schools here, although there is so much love taught, the emphasis of education remains about God, neat handwriting, counting from 1 to 100, tracing and copying, colouring in between the lines, call and repeat.

I’ve noticed it commonly with parents as well. Every child has an imagination, they are born with it and there’s no stopping it, well in Kenya there is. Whilst out with friends I’ll see the children playing and they’ll be mimicking either something they’ve seen a friend do, or perhaps seen on the television, maybe simply galloping around screaming “I’M A HORSE NEIIIIIGH”. And yet when this happens, so many times the parent will show embarrassment and say “too many cartoons”. The use of their imagination is viewed through an embarrassment filter rather than through a “I’m so happy my child has an imagination” type.

Education here is a cramming exercise, it’s about repetition, tracing, copying, being as one person. In a class everybody should be the same, hold the same opinion, write the same, have the same outlook on life. Whilst this maintains an easy teaching day, it drives out all forms of originality and uniqueness. Personalities therefore struggle to adapt to what’s actually going on inside their growing brains.

This then continues into the workplace. There’s a routine way of doing things, but anything outside of that binary logic can be impossible.

I work in a creative industry which has always been interesting in Kenya.

I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the best young creative talent in Kenya, but there have been too far few to realise their potential.

The work, in terms of ‘doing the work’, is easy for a Kenyan, but because it is often devoid of imagination, ‘the work’ actually becomes a challenge.

What tends to happen is, a Kenyan will happily follow a clear set of instructions a>b>c>d>e>f>g, but when required to fill in those imaginary gaps between the letters and work instinctively, creatively and via ones own imagination, it’s not easy. From a business point of view, this is why I’ve never been successful in Kenya, I’ve had too many closed minds to face.

One of my jobs is to create media for various corporate clients and NGO’s.

The standard corporate client / NGO employee is a bean pusher who goes home satisfied they’ve made a difference to the redevelopment of Kenya. Where in reality, they’ve been hired to do a job, which is just like any other job, it pays the bills.

However now, their standard boring job is about to get better because they’ve just been tasked to produce a video for their donors to watch once.

This new sidetrack from their normal mundane procedures is exciting because they are now about to turn into Kathryn Bigelow or Christopher Nolan.

The project always gets off to a wonderful start, plenty of glossy chat with all the latest American buzz words shoehorned into conversation, and I’m now working with somebody who’s sole object is to justify their donor’s generosity via a video presentation, and they know nothing at all about video presentation.

I give them my vision, I explain how the video will look, run them through a script, explain how graphics will aid the viewer digest the story and explain the importance of a schedule. The employee will love all of this, but deep down, they have no idea what’s just been said, so will say something like “Great, the implementation of the discourse embraces the cultural impact via a holistic medium social intervention, yes?” “fuck off you knob-head”,I say in my imagination.

Next is when they come on location and hang out with people way cooler than at their office, they get the full Hollywood treatment.

They’ll be amazed at how long it takes to set up a shot, they’ll deliver their predictable classic lines perfectly, such as “Wow, I never knew it took this long to set up” they’ll offer standard creative opinion like “I think it would look nice if we shot over against the flowers”. They’ll howl with laughter when the interviewee says a wrong word or fluffs their lines and asks “we can go again, right” Oh how they love this part of production, by now they’ll have the confidence to say “Yes, of course you can answer again, It’s all edited in post-production” WOW, the Muppet has officially graduated their short media production course and now knows how to run this shit.

Of course, within 3 minutes of starting the recorded interview, the dull NGO employee is now utterly bored and on their phone and waiting for the first opportunity to flex their new media production knowledge by saying “this will take how much longer?” I have to feel sorry for them, usually when they’re ‘out of the office’ it’s usually at a “retreat” in Mombasa, drinking tea every 15 minutes, so once the reality sets in that media production is not as exciting as they thought it would be, the day becomes boring for them, so it’s back to their phone and generally disrupting the production as much as they can.

Then at the end of day once everybody has said “I think that went well” it’s off to post-production we go.

This is when the clients come into their own, for it is only now when they will display their total lack of imagination having seeing the first version of the video presentation and they can say, “I didn’t think it would look like this”

And here we are, imagination. They were never able to picture or visualize what was said right at the beginning of the project. What the camera was recording whilst they were on location and even what they glimpsed through the viewfinder is now all irrelevant. Now they can see something physical, now they turn back into Bigelow or Nolan and essentially are disappointed because it doesn’t look like “The Dark Knight”

Then comes the prosaic process of back and forth, change, review, update, review, update and review the video until the final product resembles something as close as can be to a power-point presentation. It is now ready for upload to their YouTube channel to gain its 43 views.

The bean-pusher goes back to their regular job of attending conferences and power-point training and the whole experience is forgotten.

The good news is, the system of Kenyan education is changing. A new scheme called Competency-Based Curriculum, CBC is to be introduced.

The Government is implementing new teaching methods and will gradually phase out old ones in an attempt to modernise an outdated system that hasn’t changed for a long time, essentially the education system never updated from Windows 1.

Problem is, there are about 3 generations of teachers currently teaching in that system who find it difficult to upgrade, sadly there are too many fearful of change. From what I have learnt is that within the new CBC application, one of its 7 core themes is ‘Imagination and Creativity’ Great! However, I feel this new way of teaching, coupled with the sizeable change in approach will take this country a long time to switch over to. And then of course is the actual reality of either CBC being fully installed or it reverting back to the Windows 1 version again, only time will tell.

Hopefully though, with some new ways of thinking by the real Kenyan’s that genuinely can buck the trend, by leading the way and teaching the average Kenyan just how good Kenya can be if they use their imagination, then there will be real-time visible, scalable and unmitigated empowerment throughout society as a whole, in the words pf some dull NGO employee.

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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20 Weird Psychological Reasons Why Someone Might Fall In Love With You

Certain factors make it more likely — though not certain — that two people will fall in love.

Some factors are biological, like the way you smell.

Other factors are behavioral, like your body language.

Love is mysterious, but it’s probably not destiny.

According to the research, your hormones, interests, and upbringing all help determine who you fall for — and who falls for you.

Since your partner plays a significant role in your long-term health, happiness, and even your career prospects, we’ve scoured the studies and collected some of the psychological reasons two people click.

If you’re really, really alike

Decades of studies have shown that the cliché that “opposites attract” is totally off.

“Partners who are similar in broad dispositions, like personality, are more likely to feel the same way in their day-to-day lives,” said Gian Gonzaga, lead author of a study of couples who met on eHarmony. “This may make it easier for partners to understand each other.”

Flickr/davebloggs007

If you look like their opposite-sex parent

University of St. Andrews psychologist David Perrett and his colleagues found that some people are attracted to folks with the same hair and eye color of their opposite-sex parents, as well as the age range they saw at birth.

“We found that women born to ‘old’ parents (over 30) were less impressed by youth, and more attracted to age cues in male faces than women with ‘young’ parents (under 30),” the authors wrote. “For men, preferences for female faces were influenced by their mother’s age and not their father’s age, but only for long-term relationships.”

If you smell right

A University of Southern California study of women who were ovulating suggested that some prefer the smell of T-shirts worn by men with high levels of testosterone.

This matched with other hormone-based instincts: Some women also preferred men with a strong jaw line when they were ovulating.

If you keep your hands and torso open

Body-language experts agree that posture speaks louder than words.

Keeping your hands stuffed in your pockets and your shoulders turned inward sends the signal that you’re not interested. But talking with your hands and standing in an open stance shows that you’re available.

If you stare into each other’s eyes for two minutes

University of Massachusetts psychologist Joan Kellerman asked 72 unacquainted undergrads to pair off and stare into each other’s eyes for two minutes.

“They later reported they had increased feelings of passionate love and affection towards the other person,” Scientific American reports. “This suggests that long periods of eye contact can connect you to someone and even ignite feelings of love inside you for that person you have never previously met.”

Ash Tproductions/Shutterstock

If you literally ‘warm’ your date up

Yale psychologist John Bargh performed an experiment in which participants held warm or cold beverages and had to rate whether someone’s personality was warm or cold. Participants who held warm beverages judged the person to have a warm personality, because their minds were already primed to think that way.

If you take someone on a coffee date instead of an ice-cream date, they may feel more warmly toward you.

If you own a dog

In a University of Michigan experiment, women read vignettes about men. Whenever the story featured a person who owned a dog, women rated them with higher long-term attractiveness.

This is because, researchers have hypothesized, pet ownership could signal a nurturing person or one with a tendency toward relationship commitment. It could also make you appear more relaxed, approachable, and happy.

If they are less or equally good-looking

In a 1996 study, each participant was rated on physical attractiveness and then randomly assigned to date another participant. Then, participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with their dates. The participants who were more attractive were harsher in their judgments — even if they were both equally attractive. The better looking someone was, the less satisfied they were likely to be.

But this only applies to the really attractive people. For the rest of us, according to the matching hypothesis, we are more likely to love those who are equally as attractive as us.

If you get Botox

In a European study about facial age and attractiveness, researchers wanted to determine whether Botox actually does help women find partners.

The women who went through facial procedures experienced a significant reduction in perceived age, and people rated them as much more attractive and healthy. The more treatments the women received, the more they were considered youthful, healthy, and attractive.

If you play music

Researchers in France found that musical practice is associated with sexual selection. In an experiment, a young man holding either a guitar case or sports bag asked 300 young women on the street for their numbers. When the man held the guitar case, more women were willing to give him their number.

Flickr/simon_music

If you wear the color red

In a Slovakian research study, women who wore the color red were more successful in mating-game scenarios. This can be attributed to sexual signaling, because women use the color red to attract potential mates.

Women are attracted to red on men, too, since, as The Huffington Post argues, it signals status.

If you have a certain type of facial hair

In an Australian experiment, researchers found that women consider faces with heavy stubble more attractive than heavy beards, light stubble, or clean-shaven faces.

Beyond attractiveness, researchers also found that facial hair affects perceived fertility as well. The more facial hair a man had, the more masculine a woman perceived him to be — especially when she was in the fertile phase of her menstrual cycle.

If you care about the environment

It’s easy being green — but only if you’re seeking something serious.

A 2016 study, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, found that men and women who make eco-friendly purchases are perceived as more desirable for long-term relationships, while those who make luxury purchases are perceived as more physically attractive and more desirable for short-term relationships.

If you play hard to get

A 2014 study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology General, found that men in a speed-dating experiment wanted a woman more when she played hard-to-get by acting disinterested in the men’s questions. But these findings only applied in certain situations.

Specifically, the men had to feel “committed” to the woman, which in this study meant that they’d chosen her as their partner, instead of being assigned to her.

It’s also worth noting that, even though the men wanted the woman more when she played hard to get, they liked her less. Alas, love is complicated.

Štefan Štefančík/Unsplash

If you display the right facial expression

Happiness is generally attractive on women — but not so much on men.

In 2011, researchers conducted experiments on more than 1,000 people, showing them photographs of members of the opposite sex and asking them how attractive the people in the photos were.

Results, published in the journal Emotion, showed that men rated women most attractive when they looked happy and least attractive when they displayed pride. Women, on the other hand, rated men most attractive when they displayed pride and least attractive when they looked happy.

Interestingly, shame was pretty attractive in both men and women.

If they don’t know whether you like them

A little mystery might help you out on the dating front. 2011 research, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that people like you more when they don’t know if you like them.

For the study, some women saw photos of men who had seen their Facebook profiles and really liked them. Other women saw photos of men who had seen their Facebook profiles and rated them average.

A third group of women saw photos of men who had seen their Facebook profiles — but the researchers didn’t reveal whether the men had liked them or not. (In reality, the researchers had made up all this information about who liked who.)

Sure enough, women liked the men most when it was unclear whether the men had liked their profiles.

If you look similar enough to their current or last partner

We may all have a “type” — but women are more likely to adhere to it than men are.

In one 2011 study, researchers from the UK found that both men and women rated opposite-sex faces more attractive when they closely resembled their current or most recent partners. Men, however, were less attracted to faces that looked similar to their current partner than women were.

ESB Professional/Shutterstock

If you use a lot of hand gestures

Literally — fill up the physical space around you with hand gestures and an expansive posture. In one 2016 study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers observed men and women in speed-dating sessions.

Results showed that people were twice as likely to say that they wanted to see their partners again when those partners moved their hands and arms, compared to when their partners sat still.

For the same study, researchers set up profiles for men and women on a GPS-based dating app, showing them in both expansive and contractive postures. Sure enough, people were selected more often when they were pictured in expansive postures.

If you share three basic compatibilities

According to the work of Canadian psychologist Eric Berne, the best-matched couples vibe on three different levels.

His popular books about the model became best sellers, namely “The Games People Play.” Drawing somewhat on Sigmund Freud, his theory argued that every person has three “ego states“:

The parent: What you’ve been taught

The child: What you have felt

The adult: What you have learned

When two people are really compatible, they connect along each tier. Couples therapist Peter Pearson gave us a few questions for figuring out compatibility at each level:

The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world?

The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner’s hot? Do you like to travel together?

The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together?

If you respond to their ‘bids’ for attention and they do the same for you

Starting — and growing — a relationship seems to largely depend on how people attend to one another.

Over 40 years of studying couples, psychologist John Gottman says it’s a matter of “bids.” For example, if a bird-loving wife points out to her husband that a goldfinch just flew landed in a nearby tree, he can “turn away” from her by dismissing the remark or “turn toward” her by sharing her enthusiasm.

As Emily Esfahani Smith reported in the Atlantic, the results of the “bids” are staggering: in one of Gottman’s studies of marriage, couples who divorced after six years had the “turn toward” reply 33% of the time, and the couples that were still together had the “turn toward” 87% of the time.

Konstantin2017/Shutterstock

This is an updated version of an article originally written by Drake Baer and Maggie Zhang.

Read next on Business Insider: Some people are bad at committing to relationships because they’re ‘avoidantly attached’ — here’s what it means

Read more: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/20-weird-psychological-reasons-why-someone-might-fall-in-love-with-you/

from Viral News HQ https://ift.tt/2pZLxHq via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

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londontheatre · 6 years

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The Little Prince – Photo credit Tom Olney

Almost necessarily, this adaptation of The Little Prince has a tendency to be highly descriptive, but not, by its own admission, in the way “grown-ups” would describe things. The narrator, Martin Oelbermann (who, funnily enough in a one-man play, plays everyone else in the show as well) suggests to the younger members of the audience that adults contextualise too much, or otherwise under-contextualise. Either way, not being able to see the wood for the trees, they are “very strange”, and much caution and patience must be taken in dealing with grown-ups. A house cannot, for instance, be merely described in terms of its beauty and charm, insofar that it is only when its location and market value is known that a grown-up can appreciate it.

It is sometimes said that someone is on another planet, or in their own little world, a proverbial phrase for not (seemingly) paying attention to what is going on around them. But what if, assuming a suspension of disbelief at the theatre door, this idiom were to be taken literally? The idea of people having their own planets may sound like a zany concept out of The Book of Mormon musical, but the observations the narrator makes about people utterly consumed by whatever it is that gives them a degree of satisfaction is both amusing and thought-provoking.

Oelbermann adopts a very measured delivery style overall, making the few moments of relative hyperactivity all the more engaging. A good rapport is established very quickly with the audience as a whole, although some of the very youngest children, I suspect, will struggle slightly to grapple with the surprisingly complex themes. In terms of plot, however, I do not believe the story to be too sophisticated to comprehend.

Some impressive physical theatre adds some sparkle and delight to proceedings. There’s the occasional bit of music, but remarkably few sound effects. Projections of still and moving images make frequent appearances (in most versions and translations of the original book, because of the way the story is told, it is difficult not to take the illustrations into account when reading it) – but essentially, this is good old-fashioned storytelling. The music does not swell to try to heighten the audience’s senses, and the stripped-back approach taken here manages to find inventive ways of asserting a range of human emotions from elation to despair.

The performance space is used to the full and includes an ingenious way of depicting the stars of the night sky. If so many of the show’s characters are other-worldly, this creates a distancing effect that allows their conduct to be observed relatively objectively. Some characters, however, are mentioned in a particular scene, and in that particular scene only, and I wonder if, having achieved such a faithful rendering of the original book, an opportunity to take out one or two extraneous characters may have been missed.

It’s particularly appealing as a show for children where nuance reigns, particularly for this Playground Theatre run during what is pantomime season in a lot of other places. This play is far, far removed from the riotous atmosphere of baddies being booed and copious amounts of sexual innuendo. A thoughtful, subtle and scintillating performance.

Review by Chris Omaweng

When a pilot crashes his plane in the Sahara Desert, he meets the little prince who has left his home, Asteroid B612 to take a journey across the universe in order to understand how to love his rose. Caught between life and death, together they discover the secret of faith, friendship and the fragility of the human heart.

Written by pioneering pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince tells an extraordinary tale about childhood, friendship, love, loss and faith. The novella is the most widely translated book ever, after the Bible. It has been translated into 300 languages and dialects and, in France, it has been voted the best book of the 20th Century. Saint-Exupéry who had many near-fatal air crashes himself, including one in the Libyan desert, disappeared during a reconnaissance flight for the Allied Forces in 1944. Many years later, his plane was found in the Mediterranean Sea. It is believed that he was shot down.

In this new translation by Ros and Chloe Schwartz, The Little Prince is performed by London based German actor/director Martin Oelbermann. Employing circus, physical theatre and a minimalist approach, the work invites its audience to stay true to their childhood dreams and to carefully protect the inner child. It is a passionate call to nurture a child’s talent and a reminder of how we are all more in need of praise for trying rather than for succeeding.

Playground Theatre Presents The World Premiere of THE LITTLE PRINCE By Antoine De Saint-Exupéry Translated by Ros and Chloe Schwartz Directed and performed by Martin Oelbermann The Playground Theatre Unit 8, Latimer Rd London, W10 6RQ 15th December 2017 to 7th January 2017 http://ift.tt/2AdnTyX

http://ift.tt/2yTInrj London Theatre 1

#IFTTT #London Theatre 1

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dearscience-blog1 · 7 years

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How to Win the PowerBall Lottery Using Five Simple Strategies!

The Powerball Lottery is one of the most popular but elusive lotteries in the genre today. After playing and losing this game numerous times, I knew that I had to either find a method to the madness or give it up completely.

Fortunately for me, I didn't have to give it up and I found out through a bit of research by some experts that I could actually have success.

Your goal is to try to win now and not later so you will need to implement a consistent strategy.

People believe that the lottery is all luck. It is not.

5 Powerball Strategies

Here are five, simple strategies that you can implement immediately so you can change your fortune, literally.

1 - You must pick your own numbers. Numbers that are computer generated may seem easier and less complicated in other lotteries but are not a good idea with the Powerball.

The Power Ball carries more "choice numbers" than other lotteries so it is best to use numbers that are handpicked by you.

2 - You have to buy more tickets than you did before. The golden rule with lotteries is that you give yourself a better chance of winning by playing more. Playing more means winning more, more often than not.

By no means, should you step outside your budget or spend money that you can't spare but you do need to increase the number of tickets you normally purchase when playing the Power Ball. This should be a standard practice when playing this particular lottery. More is always better.

3. - Play the odds, whenever possible. Let's face it, trusting your gut probably haven't gotten you the best results so far--so playing the odds should be a refreshing change, right?

According to the insiders, playing the odds are much more consistent winners than your gut feeling ever will. Betting the house on your gut feeling is discouraged and will not likely give you the results you are after.

4. - Create your own Power Ball System. When using the Power Ball it is vital that you create your own customized system.

Due to the increasingly high odds, make sure you are steadfast on the numbers you use and how you use them. Developing a Power Ball System can be difficult but there are insiders out there with systems already in place.

5. - Use previous winning numbers as your guide. As I've done more research, I've learned that this game really isn't so much about luck. When picking your numbers, always look at winning numbers from the past for guidance.

Eventually, you will get a rhythm regarding the old winning numbers and should help put you on the path to lotto success.

How to Win the Powerball - 5 Steps to Win the Powerball Today!

I know what I just stated sounds harsh, but I want you to win the Power ball and if you are still reading this article I believe that is what you want as well. So let me prove my sincerity to you and dive right in with the 5 steps to win the Power ball right now.

Step Number 1

Throw out your lucky number sheet and actually compile a list of the most frequently picked numbers of your states Power ball. It is important that you only use the numbers from your particular state. Power ball numbers from a different state will disrupt the strategy I am sharing with you.

Step Number 2

After compiling the numbers begin to separate them into three categories. The categories should be low middle and high. Once completed type the compiled numbers into an excel spread sheet or jot them down neatly in a spiral notebook if you prefer.

At minimum your list should be compiled of at least one month's worth of data preferably two.

Step Number 3

Create your master list from the data you derived in step number 2 be sure your list consists of low numbers such as 2, 4, 6, and 8. Your list should also contain mid-range numbers such as 10,14, 16, 22 and finally high numbers such as 32, 40 and 29.

The numbers presented here are just examples and should not be used as your particular winning combination unless they represent numbers from your master list.

Step Number 4

Now is the moment you begin to play the numbers outlined in step 4. There is one point to remember here even the best numbers need insurance. The insurance I am referring to here is an easy pick computer generated number.

Every you time you play a set of numbers from your master list you will also need to request an easy pick choice to play as well.

Step Number 5: It is imperative that your master list reflects numbers chosen from a proven system. This is the most important step out of the 5

5 Steps on How to Pick Winning Powerpall Numbers

Glen Hooke offers free of charge updates to the computer software once you make that 1st buy.

Cons It requires about five minutes to understand how to use the software package.

Conclusion

I would give this item a rating of 4.89 since of its low refund rate and buyer satisfaction. For the low price you pay for the system, it pays for itself swiftly.

I would highly advocate it to anybody who desires to take the guessing game out of lottery buying.

Would you like to really know why an individual winning at that lotto? Are you undoubtedly sure you want what you need?

Winning the lotto all balls into picking winning numbers and for everybody who is not following 5 pivotal steps that i outline outlined in this article you are charging yourself millions.

Okay I know you are willing to stop reading but prior to do that consider what if it has a slim possibility i am right. And if essential case wouldn't it make sense to read the content to the end merely see?

Okay that you're still reading so allow me to share the 5 pivotal steps to choose winning lotto amounts.

Step 1 Make up your mind what game you might play exclusively.

Step 2 Commit oneself to play exclusively that game for a minimum of 4 months.

Step 3 Determine a budget you will be willing to buy.

Step 4 Just remember commit to a system that was proven

Step 5 be patient and expect to help win.

Wow now does that seem simple? Of course as well as but will you are doing it?

Oh I recognize you have your own way of going through things and that's great but suppose following these 5 tips could put an extra 100, 000 that will 300, 000 in winnings within the next 6 months can you follow the 5 steps with the letter?

I hope you need to do but I know how might you be sure the can work? Well let's sport fishing tackle the 5 steps one by one and see if it truly makes sense provide something new. Is definitely that fair sufficient?

Okay so the 1st step says to express which game you are going to play exclusively. The real key term here can be exclusively. If you tend to be anything like me.

Appraisal play two or perhaps three different lotto games concurrently. Now generally speaking there isn't anything wrong with this course, but not accomplishing something wrong not to mention winning is two contrasting things. I wish to win; so once i found out by not stopping my pattern it was costing me cutbacks in not succeeding I stopped. Do you want to take the rebound of faith and consider it?

On to next step it piggy backside on step one you will definitely play one game for no less than four months exclusively. I know 4 several months seems like several years.

Powerball: 3 Tips on How to Pick Winning Powerball Numbers

Did you know that there are three guidelines you need to follow in order to pick winning Powerball numbers; and if you don't follow those guidelines you're just throwing away money?

Yeah what ever how can I say that? Because like most people I had no clue on what I was doing I played the Powerball blindly hoping my chosen numbers would hit. Does that sound anything like you?

Well if it does I am here to give you three tips that can change your life forever.

Okay that sounds too much like a sales pitch lets just say it will put you in the winners circle and help you not to blindly throw your money at numbers that have no chance of winning.

So let us begin shall we.

TIP 1

When choosing your Powerball numbers understand that the winning results usually follow a sequence of low to medium and then high numbers. Winning numbers may also follow the order of mid range to high numbers. It is on a very rare occasion that these two potential orders will not occur so when choosing your power ball numbers always stick with combinations that reflect these two facts.

TIP 2

Keep a journal or some kind of written documentation of the numbers you played and also the winning combinations shown for the current week of the Powerball. You can only find out what you're missing by seeing it visually on paper.

For the most part people treat this game as a hobby that they blindly throw money at. This action and consequently mindset causes them to lose repeatedly. In order to win you need to have written records. It does not matter what method you choose to record the numbers as long as you keep a running record of the numbers.

TIP 3

It is important that you invest your time and yes money in purchasing a system. The Powerball can make you rich past your wildest dreams but only if you get in a position to actually win. I hate to see you lose and will be doing you a disservice if I was not brutally honest with you. Have you really calculated your chances of winning this game?

I want you to trust me the odds are grossly against you. And let's pretend for argument sake the numbers were on your side how much time do you really think it will take for you to choose the correct number sequence on your own? In life the true asset is time. In this case it may take your lifetime.

Do yourself a favor and get a system.

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rojocorsa-blog · 7 years

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Mike Dillon On How He Began Making Reloading Machines.

...thanks to LittleLebowski for the find....

Old letter, I know, but still interesting The Highly Irregular and Somewhat Improbable History of Dillon Precision Products By Mike Dillon I got into the reloading equipment business purely by accident. It started when a friend of mine died in an airplane crash – MY airplane. A few other friends of his and I spent four or five months closing up his machine shop business and selling off all the tools for his widow. When we were finished, she said, “I guess I owe you an airplane.” I answered, “No you don’t. I didn’t lend it to you. I lent it to your husband. That was between him and me. But I WOULD like his Thompson submachine gun.” The Tommy gun came with a star loading tool, so I became a progressive reloader. Shortly thereafter, I bought an M-16, and wanted to load .223 ammo progressively, but Star said it wasn’t possible to do it with their tool. They said, “If you want to try it, we’ll sell you a .380 shellplate and you can try to make it work.” So I went to a machinist and cut down an RCBS die, ground the hardcoat off of the outside and had him thread it to the weird thread size that Star dies used and I made the damn thing work. I changed the link-arms to give it a little more stroke and came up with a kit so my friends could convert their machines. My friend Peter Kokalis was ridiculing me and sarcastically suggested marketing my kit as the “Superstar Conversion,” which I did. Maybe 100 or so kits were sold, but soon people started asking me for a conversion to load .30-06 rifle ammunition on the Star machine. That’s when I decided to make my own reloader. The RL-1000 was the first full-fledged Dillon Precision product. Manufacture started out in my garage, then we moved into a small shop. We started the company on a $30,000 loan against our house. Our first hobby-level progressive loader – The RL-300 – was a major learning experience. We built maybe 900 or 1000 of them, and lost about $100 on each one. This led to the RL-450, a less expensive machine to produce, and one that got the attention of the “big guys” in the reloading industry. By 1984, both Hornady and RCBS either had introduced or were preparing to introduce their own progressive reloaders, and they were much stronger than us in the distributor market. I wasn’t going to fight their fight. All good fighter pilots know that you don’t fight the other guy’s fight. Instead, I went into direct marketing. This was a go-for-broke thing. I spent every dollar I could raise on advertising. We had to sell 500 machines that month to pay for all the advertising we had purchased – we sold 5000. Our rapid growth in the reloading industry coincided with the growth spurt in action pistol shooting. This sport required the expenditure of mass quantities of ammunition, and we offered the equipment to allow shooters to affordably do so. I shot with Robbie Leatham when he was a kid and by the mid-80s I saw the chance to sponsor two shooters who were going to get us some publicity without spending lots of money that we didn’t have. Dillon Precision became Rob’s and Brian Enos’ first corporate sponsor – we gave them the components to load their ammunition and helped them with match fees and other expenses. For a while, we also had a contingency sponsorship program for shooting events. We gave a thousand dollars to any major match winner who used ammunition loaded on Dillon presses. In time, virtually everybody who won a match did it using Dillon-loaded ammunition. Our products have thrived for several reasons. First, I run the company based on my philosophy. You treat other people the way you want to be treated. I don’t want people calling me up saying, “You miserable S.O.B., you sold me this machine and now you won’t help me.” I don’t want anyone mad at me. This is reflected in our warranty. No warranty cards, registration or serial numbers are necessary. Whether you are the first owner, or the seventeenth, all our hobby-level reloading machines have a lifetime warranty. If you break, damage or wear out anything on them, it will be fixed or replaced – whatever is necessary to restore the machine to normal operating condition. If a minor part is all that is needed, contact us and we will ship the part. (International customers pay the return shipping costs) If something major is damaged or broken,contact us and we issue the customer a return merchandise authorization-RMA- to return the item to us for repair. The customer pays the shipping; we fix or replace as is warranted. Only our commercial machine, the Super 1050, has a one-year warranty, as do all electrical/electronic products and textiles. Our customers understand that they have a best friend at our factory. We are only a phone call, FAX or E-mail away. In return we receive an incredible amount of customer loyalty. Another reason Dillon reloading equipment does so well is because we are in constant contact with our customer base. We are constantly hearing from our customers. No one else in this industry gets the degree of field feedback that we do, because of our direct sales and our warranty. Several product improvements and new product ideas have come from our customers. Additionally, virtually all of our employees are shooters and reloaders. We literally have hundreds of years of widely varying reloading experience available in-house. We are never stagnant. We’re always testing design changes, constantly seeking improvements. The speed of change in the firearms industry will not allow you to rest on your laurels. In order to serve our international customers, we’ve made several appropriate design changes. Most of our equipment requiring power is now available in 220 volt, 50hz. The casefeeder for the RL550B/XL 650/Super 1050, both the CV-500 and the CV-2001 vibratory case cleaners and the electric primer tube fillers are available in 220-volt European versions. In conjunction with a major European arms manufacturer we have added many primarily European calibers to the list of caliber conversion kits available for the RL 550B and the XL 650. Besides playing with firearms and reloading equipment, one of the other loves of my life is flying. I always had that young boy’s fascination for airplanes, but didn’t think I could fly because I had a kidney removed when I was a child. Finally, at the age of 23, I found out that the FAA doesn’t discriminate against you for lacking a kidney. When I was in college I decided I needed to learn how to operate some piece of machinery, and get paid a lot of money for doing so. I went to school in Texas, and every day I passed the airport, seeing airplanes take off and land. So I decided to learn how to fly. I washed airplanes during the day and learned to fly them at night. I soon got my commercial license and my instructor’s license. I taught flying for about a year, then lied my way into a cropdusting job in Arizona because nobody would hire me unless I had experience. I have always had an interest in warbirds, both fixed and rotary wing. My first warbird was a P-40 I bought as scrap from another cropduster. It had a bad engine, so he was selling it as scrap. I paid eight hundred dollars for it. It took a long time to restore, and I almost sold it several times just to get out from under it. When I was finally finished, I flew it cross-country. I thought the main satisfaction would be from the act of restoration, but I discovered that the airplane was a real thrill to fly. My latest restoration project is a Huey UH-1H helicopter. It was built in 1967, and may have seen use in Southeast Asia. I bought it after it was retired from a National Guard unit. It had one-half hour of flying time left on it. We pushed it into the hanger and proceeded to remove everything. We rewired, rebuilt, repainted or replaced EVERYTHING on that helicopter. After it was finished, a good friend of mine, ’Slick’ Aguirre, taught me how to fly it. ‘Slick’ flew Hueys in Vietnam, where the birds were nicknamed “slicks.” After Vietnam, Slick used his G.I. Bill benefits to go to college, then joined the Air Force and learned to fly jet fighters for a living. Anyway, with Slick’s help, I qualified to fly the Huey in about one week. At Dillon Precision, our future plans are to build upon the foundation of innovation and improvement in our product line. We have implemented several design improvements to current machines, all of which may be retrofitted to previous versions. The Square Deal B now has machined brass link arm bearings. This gives tighter tolerances and greater rigidity than the molded Delrin bearings used previously. Another change is the innovative “lock-link” bellcrank for the powder measures on all machines. This design requires no return springs on the powder bars, and prevents the powder bar from returning until the platform is lowered to the at-rest position. This virtually eliminates ANY chance of an accidental double charge on the auto indexing machines. This design update will fit most older powder measures In a longer view, Dillon is working on several other projects. Most we will keep under our hat, but one interesting project is that we are now manufacturing an improved 7.62 NATO mini-gun. This is available to US State Department approved governments only, but it’s interesting that a company that traditionally provides progressive loading equipment is now involved with improving progressive UN-loading equipment.

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lovecoffeewithkelly-blog · 7 years

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Tips and tricks for DISNEY trips!

Going to Disney World is no cheap endeavor. For most people its not something you can afford to do every other month. These tips and tricks are for all, but mostly those looking to get the most out of their time at Disney, and maybe, hopefully save a little money.

1) Pin-Trading: DO IT!

Disney pin trading is awesome! It’s this thing you can do with the cast members. At the park. If you have official Disney pins, you can go up to Disney cast members who have lanyards with pins on them, and ask if they do pin trading (they do) and pick one of your pins to trade for one of theirs. The best part is since Disney gives the cast members their pins, they will trade any of theirs for ANY of yours! Why is this great? Wellll you can buy bulk pins online (for pretty cheap) and get trade some mediocre pins for awesome limited edition pins that the members have! There are so many Disney pins to collect it’s insane! You can even use the pins to make a cool memory box when you get home. Just take a shadow box picture frame, line the back with cork, print up a favorite trip photo to put in the center, then stick your favorite Disney pins from your trip all around the photo in the cork. Great souvenir!! And let me tell you, the pin trading is just plain fun for everyone. My husband was skeptical at first, but when we got there, he was more into pin trading than I was. If you want to get some awesome bulk pins, check out this etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LuckyFeetTrading?ref=l2-shopheader-name (Lucky Feet Trading). Amazing customer service and 100% satisfaction with the pins. We even ended up keeping half of them we liked them so much!

2) Get the Disney World app.

It’s free. Download it. You can use it to pretty much plan your entire vacation. You make a profile, you link your fast passes to that profile. You can see all your reservations, all your “plans”, your hotel (if you’re staying on property), there are maps for all the parks! It works really well, it’s an easy to understand lay out and it’s definitely worth the effort it takes to download.

3) Take the time to plan out, in detail, each day you will be at the park.

Why is this a good idea? Well, because the parks are huge. And if you have never been to Disney world before, you are going to want to at least try and see most of each park. AND this can really help with choosing restaurants, fast passing rides, and deciding what you want to cut. For me, having the whole trip at least relatively mapped out, makes the trip more enjoyable and less stressful. I don’t want to miss anything when I’m at Disney! I make sure I’ve fit everything in by just taking a few minutes to map out my days. For your convenience, I have created a “day planner” for Disney. Take a look! (it will be the document posted labeled Disney Day Planner).

4) Check out a crowd calendar and plan your park days based on crowd size.

Here is the website I used to determine when we should visit and which parks to go to each day. As a general rule, Magic Kingdom is the most busy on Saturdays/Sundays, so choose to visit the most iconic park on a week day. Here is the calendar: https://www.undercovertourist.com/orlando/crowd-calendar/February-2017/

I also think this helps eliminate some people’s desire to spend the extra money on park hopper tickets. If you get to a park and it’s too busy, with park hopper you can just move along to another park. But I personally believe in the plan ahead method of seeing Disney, so you don’t spend the extra cash on the hopper passes, and fast passing really makes getting all your favorite rides in super easy and pain free.

5) Chose at least one “relax” day where you can go visit Disney springs, swim in the pool at your hotel, visit the beach-something relaxing!

Why do I suggest this when Disney-ing? Well, because theme parks although fun and amazing and worth every dime, can be stressful. Crowds are stressful, getting to reservations on time…. Stressful! So it’s always a good idea to plan a more casual and relaxing day while visiting the happiest place on Earth. There are also some amazing shops and restaurants at Disney Springs. Our favorite? T-Rex! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE the whole experience there! Which leads me to tip #6…

6) Make your dining reservations WAY in advance.

With the Disney World app, this is super easy, but you just gotta do it. When I planned our honeymoon trip, I started reserving our restaurant stops almost 5 months in advance…. And there were STILL restaurants that were already booked solid! But also keep in mind that not all reservations for Disney’s restaurants are booked online. They allow about half the reservations to be made online, so if you don’t get into a restaurant you are dying to try or go to, you can always check the wait times when you are at the park. You can also check for updated reservations on the app! There was one restaurant we really wanted in at, so I just kept checking, and about 5 days before our trip, there was a spot that opened up and I snagged it!

7) Get some friggin’ Mickey ears and spend a week letting your inner kid out!

There are so many amazing Mickey ears out there for sale! And some of them are just perfect! Find some, buy some and join in the fun of wearing Mickey ears for a week. I also highly suggest the more crafty of you to just make your own. 3 of the 4 day we were at Disney, I wore ears I had hand made and got a top of compliments. They are so simple to make, and really inexpensive. Most of the ears you find at Disney online or Etsy are at least $20, most going beyond that. So, maybe it’s time to let that inner craft goddess out for a spin.

8) Oh please, please get memory maker!!

It is $150 and worth every penny!

Disney has photo pass people EVERYWHERE. Photo pass people will take anyone’s photo, but if you have memory maker, the pictures end up being cheaper. On our last trip, we ended up with 300+ photos and not a single one that I just hated. They were all good! And in key locations. A lot of the photo pass people are also in spots where they can get a shot of you (and your loved ones) posing in front of iconic Disney places with few people in the back ground. The photo pass people are also next to most of the characters you can meet, and will take several photos of you getting your autograph book signed, the characters hugging you, and several candide photos. They are willing to take your photo with your phone too, but they do not turn out as well. Totally worth it. It was also fun to seek out the photo pass people and see how many photos we could get at different locations. We got lot. :P

9) Play Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.

Because it looks awesome! I have not actually played this myself, and just recently learned about it. But it looks like something anyone going to Disney should at least look into. Here is the official Disney World page on it: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/attractions/magic-kingdom/sorcerers/

10) Don’t be afraid to ask cast members to take photos of you and your party.

Some of our best photos are from cast members aside from the photo pass photographers. They are all more than happy to help you get a perfect shot and are super nice about it! While we were at the Aztec temple at Epcot, we ask a shop keeper to help take a photo of us beside the restaurant in the temple. When she wasn’t tall enough to get what she thought was a good shot, she asked another cast member, who helped her and who also made sure line ropes and people were out of the way! It was crazy! And made us feel so appreciated. I could not believe how accommodating they were! This was not the only instance that a cast member made some amazing, embarrassment feel photo dreams come to life, but it turned out to be one of my favorite photos. Definitely ask, they are more than happy to help! On a side note, also remember to be happy while at Disney World, you are at the happies place on EARTH and all the cast members are there to help make it the happiest days of your life. So, don’t get mad! Have a great time! And let your inner kid out. There were a few times someone got upset at a family member, or you could tell they weren’t happy, and it was so odd, it made everyone uncomfortable! I’ve never been on a vacation where it was more noticeable when someone was upset or angry.

11) Get a fanny pack!!

Not a fanny pack from the 90′s, a super hip, super cute fanny pack! There are a lot of choices out there (including some fanny packs from some pretty high end retailers) but my favorite’s were found on Etsy. There are a lot of cute, relatively small fanny packs for sale and they come in fun designs and patterns. There are also some leather, sequin, shiny ones that are a lot more expensive but still very wearable and amazing and cute! There are literally fanny packs for everyone’s style and price range. Now, why should you have a fanny pack at Disney? Well, because it makes keeping your valuable money and cell phones safe. AND it makes taking photos so easy! Just slide the pack to your back and it’s out of sight, or do what I did and show it off because it’s super cute (see example in above photo!). They are also light weight, and can fit everything you really need at the parks. It also makes going through security much easier, and riding rides without power gripping your purse. My favorite fanny pack etsy site (where I got my panda fanny pack I used the last time I was at Disney!) is from Chiradesigns, link below. Check them out! Let me know what you think. Are fanny packs something you would try for Disney?

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Chiradesigns?ref=search_shop_redirect

I may have to add some more tips later, but these are the first 10 11 I could think of that everyone should follow! Hopefully the planner helps, and you get use out of the included sites! If this post helped you plan your vacation to Disney, share! And please let me know what you’re planning for your Disney vacation and if you have any advice for me!

Thanks for sharing some coffee with me! Hope you enjoyed!

(Post edited January 23rd 2017- #11 added!)

-Kelly H.

#disney #disneyvacation #disneyvacation2017 #disneyplanning #vacationplanning #tipsandtricks #disneymoon #vacation #trip

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